"But I don't want to," said Sang Huin kindly. "I'm tired of saying little things and hearing little things. I don't mean to be rude."
"Are you happy to lie out here like an animal?"
"Yes. You know…" he paused. He had trouble getting out words that would refute the visual evidence of him lying in the dirt. Such words had to be special if they were to vindicate a nation and its people not to mention himself and all physical evidence. There were no words that he possessed for such a feat so he reverted to attitudes fixated in his childhood and thus became childish in the process. "You know, Americans think that South Korea is a little third world country composed of nothing but dirty people."
"Is that so? Is that your opinion of your people?"
"No," he said sullenly as he shook his head, not knowing who his people were. "I have to think out here in the dirt. I know it is strange. You don't know me. Of course you think I'm strange. I just enjoy seeing insects crawling around in the dirt and the dirt itself- everything that comes from it is inspirationally calm." He laughed. "I guess I like playing in the dirt like a child." He knew that he must be an amusing caricature for them.
"You don't have to do much. It is kind of hard to fail. Just drink a beer and ask them little things. 'What is your name? Where do you live? How many people are in your family?' They can't interact with tape recorders. Can't you do that?" Sang Huin ignored him.
"Don't you have any goals?"
"No, not really." He sat up as if he were taking a defensive posture within the limits of his personality. He spoke with mild sincerity squeezed in with a bit of sarcasm, giving the depths and secrets of his being in a laconic paragraph to this stranger. "No, I have come to the conclusion that doing nothing in a bad world is improving it so I want to contribute in this way. You know, maybe there are people out there who do nothing but lie around in the dirt. I don't know that they are any worse off to be dirty. I don't know that I'm better than they are by usually preferring not to act that way. I'm just another creature out there with microorganisms in my body helping to clear out my intestines." He felt his warm burning face. "I guess I am getting a little sun burnt out here but so far it has been a good experience." Around him little pieces of trash were dancing around circuitously. He heard the sound of a vehicle he could not see since it was at a distance. The world was alive.
"Suit yourself," said the man.
Upon awakening and sitting up in his blanket and futon on the floor, there was such a clear image erect and tilted in the forefront of his mind that it almost seemed to be registered in his perceptions as reality and not a part of his dreams. It was of a German American woman in a Volkswagen driving southwest through America's heartland to the destination of Mexico but driven insatiably to an isolated state as if the car could take her straight into Antarctica. She, Gabriele, spit her snuff into an empty beer can as she drove. This odd and unusable vision was not, to his knowledge, reflective of any psychological state of his own, and yet it somehow seized him. She was broad and burly, isolated and insulated but worldly and perceptive. Sang Huin sensed a story within her. It was not music. She had too many notes. The stagnation of the room, however, pushed him into the drone of movement and this movement flattened this vision and made him the doormat under the weight of the day.