2016년 데뷔하자마자 ‘휘파람’, ‘불장난’으로 국내 가요계를 휩쓸었던 블랙핑크가 4년 만의 정규 1집으로 세계 음악시장을 뒤흔들고 있다는 보도다.
추석 연휴인 10월 2일 발매된 정규 1집 ‘THE ALBUM’ (디 앨범) 타이틀곡 ‘Lovesick Girls’ (러브식 걸스)는 세계 최대 팝시장인 미국을 비롯해 총 57개 지역 아이튠즈 송차트 1위에 올랐고, 일본, 중국, 홍콩, 마카오, 싱가포르, 태국, 베트남 등 아시아 지역에서도 1위이며, 특히 일본과 중국에서는 아이튠즈뿐 아닌 현지 주요 음원사이트에서 정규 1집 수록곡들을 전부 10위권 내 진입시키는 ‘줄 세우기’에 성공했다고 한다.
해마다 가을이 오면 한국에는 가는 곳마다 길가에 깨끗하고 고운 코스모스가 하늘하늘 하늘에 피어 길가는 나그네의 향수를 달래 준다. 이때면 모든 나그네들 가슴앓이를 하게 되는가 보다. 아물어가던 가슴 속 깊은 상처가 도져 다시 한번 ‘코스모스 상사병’ 가슴앓이를 하게 되는 것이리라.
다음은 영어(英語/靈語)를 배우는 청소년들에게 (For the young people interested not only in the carnal/sexual language but also in the spiritual) 조금이나마 도움이 될 수 있지 않을까 해서 내가 평생토록 앓아온 내 코스모스 상사병(相思病) 이야기(My Cosmos-Lovesick Story)를 아래와 같이 영문으로 적어보리라. [관심 있는 독자는 지난 7월 17일 코스미안뉴스에 한글로 올린 ‘코스모스 연가(戀歌)’ 참조 바람]
When I was fourteen years old, I left home and went on a journey. People said I became a vagabond at an early age. One summer night, I wrote a poem:
Cosmos
When I was a boy,
I liked the cosmos
Cozy and coy
Without rhyme or reason to toss.
Later on as a young man,
I fell in love with the cosmos
Conscious of the significance
Of this flower for me sure,
The symbol of a girl’s love pure.
As I cut my wisdom teeth,
I took the Cosmian way,
Traveling the world far and near
In my pursuit of the Cosmos
In a chaotic world.
Upon looking back one day,
Forever longing,
Forever young,
Never aging, and
Never exhausted
By yearning for the Cosmos
I’d found unawares
Numerous cosmos
That had blossomed
All along the road
That I had walked.
The dreamland of a bluebird
Looking for a rainbow,
Where could it be?
Over and beyond the stormy clouds,
That’s where it would be,
Right there arainbow!
Come autumn, wherever you go in the countryside of Korea, the pure and pretty cosmos, shyly swaying in the breeze against the sky, catches the wanderer’s eye all along the journey. At times like this, you suffer from an old heart-ache. As a constant stream of humanity flowed by, I became a young man.
One day, in a bakery café’ in Seoul, I was instantly captivated by a girl so pure and pretty. It was the ‘love at first sight.’ If she were a flower, what flower would she be? There was a saying that among all the creations of God, the cosmos was the first and the chrysanthemum was the last. While I was in a daze, she was leaving. I hesitated before following her.
She became aware of being followed from downtown Jongno to Sinchon on the outskirts of town.
“Do you have any business with me?”
She asked. She had a clear voice.
“Please let me introduce myself, I’m a new philosophy-religion graduate of Seoul National University. I want to make your acquaintance, if I may. Do you mind?”
She blushed scarlet. I was delighted and decided to call her my Cosmos.
I started dating my Cosmos. We frequented music café’s like C’est Si Bong and The Milky Way, in downtown Seoul.
One day we went to see a film, The Brothers Karamazov. Waiting in the second floor lobby for the next show time, she asked, “Do you want to go the bathroom?”
I didn’t feel like going, but I went anyway. The entrance to the men’s and women’s bathrooms were side by side. I stood for a moment in front of the urinal and a thought crossed my mind that I and my Cosmos were not far apart with only a wall between us. I realized that if the distance were shortened by just a few feet, I could be in her.
At the very moment I experienced the contraction of space. Thereafter, I never felt lonesome again. Anytime, any- where, I could feel close to anybody. If the whole universe were compressed into a single dot, one could be united with all.
In the meanwhile, a powerful opposition politician asked me to work for him as his secretary. My involvement with the student movement opposing the corrupt and dictatorial government must have caught his attention. I declined the offer because I had other plans.
In the future, be it politics, economics, or culture, in all walks of life, I thought, it was going to be global, and therefore learning foreign languages was essential. Since middle and high school, I’d been learning English, Japanese, Chinese, German, French, and Spanish. And in college I studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic. I became fluent enough in English, German, French, and Spanish to tutor fellow students, businessmen, and military generals.
Being a greenhorn at that age, I decided three jobs were unworthy of a man: secretary, spokesperson, and ghostwriter. If you possessed a modicum of self-respect, I reasoned, why should you run errands, speak or write for somebody, instead of doing your own things? If you could become a secretary, why not a presidential secretary? Even that was not because I coveted the position of a presidential aide.
There’s an old saying in Korea: ‘You’ve got to enter a tiger’s den if you want to catch a tiger.’ This was not to say I thought of harming anyone, but it was rumored that President Syngman Rhee, the first president of the Republic of (South) Korea, was surrounded by a pack of sycophants and schemers blinding him to the true state of affairs. If I worked for him, I would open up the President’s eyes and ears to people’s needs and problems. In fact, I had secured glowing recommendations from several VIPs for a protocol post of the Kyungmudae, the President’s Office, now called the Blue House.
After graduating from Kyungnam Girls’ High School in Busan, my Cosmos attended the School of Pharmacy, Ewha Women’s University in Seoul.
Before going home for the winter break of 1959, she gave me a copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy as a Christmas present. I was going to visit her and meet her parents in Busan as soon as I got my official appointment. In case, I couldn’t make it for some reason, I also made an appointment to see her on the next Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1960, at the Lake Restaurant in Seoul.
A few days later, I fled the capital city of Seoul. Because of the active part played in the student movement, I had to go into hiding.
After going underground, I wrote a letter to my Cosmos. Writing in ink wouldn’t convey the urgency and the intensity of my love for her, so I drew blood from my forearm and calligraphed the note in blood. Apologizing for not keeping the appointment, I begged for understanding and asked her to wait for me until I could contact her. My message was rolled into a parcel and mailed.
Apparently frightened by this shocking ‘blood-letter,’ she replied with a short note saying, “Please forget me.”
Falling into an abyss of despair, I devised a plan on how to take my own life. If I could find a boat, I would row it as far as I could in that great expanse, the sea and the sky, often likened to a life-journey itself. If not, I would simply jump into the sea and swim as far as I could.
As if drawing a long-kept sword, I wrote a suicide note:
Dear Cosmos,
Call me a crazy, stupid madman, or what you may.
I’m going to jump into the sea, into the bosom of the Cosmos.
After sending this parting note off, I threw myself into the East Sea. Were life and death indeed providential? My one life was miraculously spared, escaping from nine deaths. In the hopeless turmoil, I hurt my back and was hospitalized. After my surgery at the Medical Center in Seoul, the simmering student uprising of April 19, 1960, finally erupted.
Reading newspapers one day, I spotted someone identified as Cosmos on the list of donors helping the victims of the Uprising who were killed or wounded by the police. I intuited that it was my Cosmos! She was grieving over my victimhood, for sure. I was deeply moved. Even if I were to breathe my last at that very moment, I could not have been happier.
After one surgery, I recuperated but I pretended otherwise and underwent two mor surgeries. Following operations on my spine to remove herniated discs, I wished I would have never awakened from the anesthetic. But even if I came to myself, I would be happy with vivid memories of my Cosmos forever.
Hospitalized for almost a year, thinking of my Cosmos, day and night, I happened to read a newspaper article on graduating students of Ewha Women’s University. My Cosmos was then a senior there. Asked about their personal views on marriage, a few students said they didn’t want to get married at all.
One observation in particular was penetrating: “A man’s life seems too tough and tragic.” These words took away my breath and soul.
“Oh, my goodness, my Cosmos thought I was dead and couldn’t forget me. And she wouldn’t marry. What a horrible thing I’ve done to her. I’ve got to set her free from this nonsense.”
Then I panicked when I recalled hearing that someone had become impotent after a spinal surgery.
“Have I become impotent too? Even if not, could I father a child?” I asked myself.
I was apprehensive of my conditions. Only after my sperms were tested and I received a clean bill of health, did I write to my Cosmos for an appointment to meet her at the Lake Restaurant on the next Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1961. I planned to get the two families together to arrange for our engagement.
I went to her school to check if she got my letter. The letter was still in the school mailbox, uncollected. I inquired her whereabouts and went to deliver it myself.
In no time, after speaking with her, it dawned on me that mine was the typical case of ‘a misconception at liberty and of a delusion at sea.’
She told me that she was seeing another man. Thunder-struck by the harshness of reality, I wished her all the happiness. And I mused.
Was the grass wet with early morning dew to pay my dues of life and love?
Were they dewdrops of life-giving and love-making, or rather teardrops of joy and sorrow?
Was that for breathing in this magic world to the full, and breathing it out to the last, before transforming back into the mystical essence of the Cosmos?
세상 사람 모두가 찾는 아름다운 우주 코스모스는 우리 각자가 각자 대로 밖이 아닌 자신 안에서 찾아야 한다는 것을 우리 모두 평생토록 코스모스 상사병 가슴앓이를 통해 깨닫게 되는 것이리.
있을 이 이슬이슬 맺혀
이슬이던가
삶과 사랑의 이슬이리
아니
기쁨과 슬픔의 저슬이리
이승의 이슬이
저승의 저슬로
숨넘어가는
우리 모두 자문해보리
사람이 삶을 산다는 게 무슨 의미가 있는지
사람이 삶을 살았다는 게 무슨 뜻이 있는지
무엇을 또 누구를 위한 삶을 살아야 하는지
그 답을 우리는 어디에서 찾아볼 수 있을까
What does it mean to live your life?
What does it mean to have lived your life?
For what and for whom one should live and die?
Where can one find the answer?
“우주는 네 밖에 있지 않다.
네 안을 보라
네가 원하는 것 모든 것이
이미 바로 너 자신이어라.”
루미
“The universe is not outside of you.
Look inside of yourself;
Everything that you want,
You already are.”
Rumi
이 글을 나의 ‘기도문’으로 끝맺으리라.
사랑의 숨 쉬는 순간마다
삶은 충만해지는 것이리
이렇게 살지 않고 쓰여진
삶이라면 헛된 것이 되리
빌고 또 빌건대
이렇게 헛된 게
내 삶이 아니길
Life is fulfilled every moment
When it is lived in love.
Life is totally wasted
When it’s written about
Without living it.
This is
not my case,
I pray.
[이태상]
서울대학교 졸업
코리아타임즈 기자
합동통신사 해외부 기자
미국출판사 Prentice-Hall 한국/영국 대표
오랫동안 철학에 몰두하면서
신인류‘코스미안'사상 창시
전명희 기자
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
