Dear July,
Your letter came from Harlem faster than planes. I checked the distance between us: it’s equivalent to seventeen round trips from Seoul to Busan. In a single trip, you traversed the distance it takes me to see Nini seventeen times. How far you’ve gone. But we may be within a finger’s reach, as you’ll get a signal as soon as I hit the ‘send’ button on my screen. We seem to be playing a game of cat’s cradle, taking turns on the wireless web.
I get hungry thinking about your Lucky Charms at this late hour. I’ve never tried them. I could almost taste them just by looking at the photos, but a review told me they taste nothing like they look. Now I must have them. I could use some power to boost speed. Unfortunately, however, I can’t because your cereal contains gelatin, or parts of pigs.
Meeting Nini has created many inconveniences and grievances. I decided at some point not to eat beings like him. Since then, I have scrutinized every ingredient for cow, pig, or chicken before buying any food. Whether it’s a bag of snacks or a cup of ramen, the list of ingredients printed on the back of the wrapper is the first thing I check. The Food Sanitation Act requires labeling of potential allergens for all foods sold within the country, which makes it easy to identify ingredients made from eggs, milk, pork, chicken, beef, shellfish, mackerel, crabs, and shrimps. Otherwise, how would anyone have known that a cereal that contains colorful good luck charms also contains pigs? Inconvenience aside, the extreme uncanniness of my once familiar world never fails to astound me.
Taking Nini inside myself has transformed me. The view outside looks ever so different. Those who stopped eating meat for similar reasons often compare their experience to taking the red pill in The Matrix. The world remains the same, yet I see so many dead animals. Those animals are alive in all their senses, packed full of hearts, lungs, brains, and hidden organs, with hairy bodies with four limbs, just like Nini, just like me. They are called not by their proper names, but by those of foods or ingredients. Cows become beef or patties; pigs become pork or gelatin; sheep become mutton or wool. Putting a patty in my mouth, I couldn’t recall that the being it came from once had a heart like Nini’s. Now I see the faces of the dead everyday in almost everything people eat, wear, and use.
You said you envied my having Nini inside me, but maybe you’d think differently if, in return for having the world’s coziest interior, you have to see ghosts everywhere you go. How did Nini, this tiny doggo that weighs only 26 pounds despite his booming voice, change me so fatally? Lying by his side, tickled by puffs of air escaping his nose, I’m overwhelmed by the fullness of his 26-pound being. The beating of his tiny heart feels so vibrant, the warmth and vigor of his body is so unmistakably real, that the small being in front of me overpowers me. The pig, reportedly ten times heavier than Nini, must be just as alive. Standing in front of her, I’d be overcome by the vitality of a being larger than I. Yet none of that remains in 7-ounce chunks carved out for a single serving. One day, vaguely picturing a body prior to its dismemberment led me to see something on the kitchen table. It was a figure of an overwhelmingly sad animal resembling a Thestral, the creature in the Harry Potter series that can only be seen by those who have witnessed death.
The more I think about it, the more frightening it is to imagine living in a world where my family can go outside and be eaten. How more terrifying it would’ve been if Nini were a turkey or a bull! Okja directed by Bong Joon-ho was an extremely realistic horror movie for me. All the more so because Okja’s face resembles Nini’s so much. I hope there is a land good enough for me and for Nini to live. A land that doesn’t harm bodies. A land without rape or slaughter. It’d be difficult to find such a land where people live. At least I hope to find a land where people who see Thestrals like me can huddle together. I really hope to find companions with whom I can share my daily life, caring for and grieving the death of fellow earthlings. That said, you’re right to think Nini constitutes an important part of my exterior. He enabled me to map out the outer world I wish to explore quite concretely in my head. Once I get there, perhaps I’ll build a new house and meet someone like Nini whom I can invite into my being.
I have little idea how to search outside for a habitable land or how to find a partner to live and build a home with, though. I don’t know how Nini became a part of me, but I had no more choice in the matter than you did. I can only say his fatal charms opened up my heart and created an inner space that hadn’t been there before. Nini is all sweetness and knows how to love unceasingly. I still can’t believe such a constant source of affection exists in the world. As the love I received from Nini accumulates, I’m becoming a person willing to confer love on others in turn. In my previous letter, I wrote I wanted to be self-contained in my body; in truth, I wouldn’t survive without the existence of ‘you’ whose love makes me whole. The profound solitude back in my Seoul-home where I sit alone and absentminded automatically gives rise to such thoughts. Having returned from home-home slightly recharged, it’s time to consider how to go about maneuvering the new outside.
Reading back on what I’ve written, I feel an apology is due for saying all these things about Lucky Charms that have empowered you in a strange place. I sincerely hope those charms of myriad colors piled up in your body are working their magic. Will you have finished unpacking in Harlem? I wonder which items took which places. Korea was recently hit by a horrendous typhoon. It’s a relief fall has finally arrived after a scorching and pouring summer, but another typhoon is said to be on its way. How is the climate over there? Tell me whether the land is habitable.
From Mangwon ringing with the sound of grass bugs,
Jinhwa
