Baram Writer

EXT. AN URBAN WOODLAND. WINTER. LATE AFTERNOON.

Wind blows through trees, rustling their dead leaves and making their branches sway back and forth in a creaking, slow dervish.

VO [male]: The wind has its own tone, its own feeling. It’s like … coldness, thinness.

It’s like hunger.

The wind has a body. The wind is someone.

JUMPCUT.
EXT. A HIKING TRAIL IN THE URBAN WOODLAND. A MOMENT LATER.

A married couple walks along the trail. We see the wife, walking ahead.

VO: You’re someone. I’m someone.

Your body: petite, source of warmth. A body to whom love is directed.

My body? Wind. That is, has been wind. Still feels like wind, but sometimes feels warmth.

In my confusion, I think this is the final state of love.

JUMPCUT.
EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

A view of nearby apartment buildings, owned by the rich. Several of the apartments, while in someone’s possession, lie empty. This gives the buildings a look both spectral and aristocratic: the second homes of the well-to-do. The empty homes of the well-traveled.

The couple on the hiking trail, dressed in their simple clothes, look at the buildings.

HUSBAND [in accented Korean]: ¿­·É Áý. ["Ghost houses"]

WIFE: They go somewhere, maybe to Swiss.

HUSBAND: We should go on a trip sometime. Get away.

WIFE: I can’t. I have too much stress at hospital.

HUSBAND: I know. That’s why we should go. Your job is too difficult.

The WIFE looks at her HUSBAND. She sadly shakes her head.

JUMPCUT.
EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

The HUSBAND follows his wife. He follows her along the trail as the cold sun sets.

VO: You walk along the trail. We’re together today. But the next day, a Sunday, you are obligated to change your work schedule and work an evening shift.

I’m alone.

I walk along the trail, getting my daily exercise.

The scene is quiet. But thoughts pour through my head.

I’m worried about you. Your job is too hard. It’s affecting your health.

This sensation is like wind, too. A stress-wind, blowing the chemistry of the mind around in circles, so that worries swirl like brittle, dry leaves.

Then a new sensation comes to me. It’s a sensation that combines worry for another along with love. It is a feeling in the bones that radiates out through muscle tissue, through the organs, through the eyes. It’s a reverse heat, as if the body has begun burning from its core.

And it’s more than heat. It’s also an impact. Something evanescent in the world colliding with our lives: an interior shake, an earthquake of marrow. It’s as if the wind of reality has made some kind of impact.

But the body must withstand this impact. The body must marry the mind, and tell itself it is the wind that is weak, not the individual being it shakes.

JUMPCUT.
EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

VO: The sun sets behind the trees. A blackness descends upon the world.

And as the sun sets, the wind dies down, retreating to its apartments, its clouds.

___________________________________________

Finn Harvor is a writer and artist living in South Korea. His literary work has appeared in THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE KOREA TIMES, RABBLE, THIS MAGAZINE, THE CANADIAN FORUM,  PRISM, THE QUARTERLY CONVERSATION and elsewhere.