Nanda's timely, eighth story!

Poet Han Jeong-won collected them every day
of August, by August, for August
Just one book to read

Meet poet Han Jeong-won's August in the "Timely" series, which accumulates reading material for 365 days a year, one book a day, one book a month.
The poet, who describes this hot summer, when he cannot love completely, and his feelings, which are somehow doubtful and inadequate, as “this is the fourth season I love.”
A poet who speaks of a little love instead of all the hatred.
So, for the poet, August is a month that focuses on traces of summer rather than summer itself.
The shade of a tree behind the sun, a puddle filled with summer rain, something like the sound of a bell leading into silence.

This is the poet's first prose work in four years since 『Poetry and Walks』 (Time Flow, 2020), and as he travels through the four seasons, he must have looked at winter "with a winter heart."
I wrote poetry and prose with the spirit of the season, and captured some traces in photographs.
Like a brief breath in the scorching heat, like a hole, time accumulates in every open space.
Of course, silence is the poet's home.
Now, after my fourth summer, I remember the summer, just tracing the traces of summer that will linger in my nose and ears for a long time.
A thing that lasts a long time.
So now, a book that will make you stand up lightly and quietly follow the flowing seasons.

A trace of the shadow of existence rather than existence itself.
Extinct lines that remain, such as the human tailbone and third eyelid, and the whale's hind legs.
August is that kind of line for me.
It's a time when you can't sleep or hold on to that line.
Days and nights, with faces and circumstances that endure the small heat and the great heat, the lingering heat, the passion and enthusiasm that have subsided, and the fatigue.
Days spent delving into the origins of things that no longer exist, waiting for the future only to confirm that this is not the end.

After seven months, I pick up my brush.
August, which will soon be gone, trying to catch the shadow between July and September.
It is obvious that the attempt is doomed to failure.
Because time cannot be captured anyway.
Even so.
As if caressing a person who is about to disappear.
- From the text

The beginning is boundless before those who love.
The beginning is limitless.
Time opens up anew, space unfolds anew.
As I was starting off with such a solid foundation, one day, somewhere, I realized that there were soft endings in the world, and I was startled as if I was learning about them for the first time.
The end is the future, so it will definitely arrive before your eyes and someday become the present.

What can you do at that moment?
I can't do anything.
Usually, they end up crying and go their separate ways.
They call it a breakup.
But some people don't break up.
Without going beyond the end, you become the end yourself.
I'm cutting off time right now so that the future of living apart doesn't come.
So, should we say that love ended there or went to an endless place?
---p.30 From "August 4th Lacrimosa"

Wrinkles mean there are valleys.
It means there is a hidden part.

Secrets exist in everyone and everything.
Humans, trees, foxes, seasons, night, language, good and evil, disease, and death all have corners that cannot be explained or understood.
Bright secret, dark secret, bright secret, dark secret.
A line of lost words engraved with joy or hurt.

I promise that I will wonder about it for the rest of my life, but I will not delve into it recklessly, and I will watch over it from afar for a long time, like watching a lighthouse flicker alone.
---p.95 From "If There Were No Waves on August 19th"

Summer slips away like sadness, wrote Emily Dickinson.
It's definitely different than when other seasons end.
Why does summer seem to disappear so quickly?
Evaporates and volatilizes.
Is it a gas?
Something that cannot be grasped.
Is it like a love that can't be helped?
Will sadness disappear like summer?
Will the sadness ever stop?
---pp.104-105 From "Stopping on August 22nd"

One day in the summer of 2024, you and I were together for about twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes in a hundred years.
There must have been countless twenty minutes like that.
There are people you want to see at least once in your life, but you definitely won't be able to.
Their twenty minutes will pile up a hundred years.

There was a time in August when I was sitting under the shade of a tree and was delighted by a rare, cool breeze.
To me, it was like brushing past you, the beautiful one.

I won't regret a relationship that only ends once.
Without any hope of waiting for something, without any promise of how long I will wait, I will close my eyes and wait.
Guessing if it's the wind, you, poetry, sadness, or all of them.
And when the time comes that 'it' passes me by again, I hope that I will realize that 'it' is what I have been waiting for.
I hope I can stand up lightly and follow quietly.

---p.142 From "Summer Stops on August 31st"