안녕 주리,
이상하게 처음 편지를 영어로 시작했다가 이방인이 된 기분이라 한글로 바꿔서 시작하게 되네. 인사를 했으니, 편지로 들어 갈게. Thank you so much for the prompt and for thinking of me. “알면서도 사랑한다”라- makes me think of so many things. Mainly, the use of “면서도” contrasts that of knowing and loving, as if they are on separate ends of a spectrum. That brings to mind a sadness almost, a grieving in which love exists and yet isn’t something that is wholeheartedly embraced. When your mind and your heart or entire being sing different tunes, what to do? How to move forward? 경화 seems to side with the impossible allure of love, giving into it, and universalizing it as she says “모두들 알면서도…”
Perhaps she means to remind us of the thrall that love drives us, circumstances where reason, or mind don’t coincide, and people’s lives tug against the hearts yearning. It does sound like a world where people are trying to reckon with the contradictions that capaciously live within us. This topic reminds me of a moment of revelation I had about this very oft dichotomized divide between heart and mind, reason and love, one that hit me in the middle of an impromptu yoga session with Y on the quad of Emory campus; a space that has changed meaning for me in so many ways over the year. At the time, however, the grassy plane was one of a spontaneous lightness, possibility, and joy. The sun was setting, and the air was tinged pink. We were luxuriating. You see, we hadn’t been on an American campus before, at least not in a mode where we belonged, and we were/ I was keen on simply basking in the expansive space. It’s funny how you come to meet spaces and how spaces come to meet you.
I don’t remember exactly why it hit in that moment but I remember thinking, how difficult is it—the work it takes to bring how I love in alignment with what I think, to not be torn, but to be fully in love, no remorse. How lovely would that be? The thought hit me like a truck, and I came out of a mishappen downward dog to try to explain in words that I haphazardly lunged at to express the gravity of how this thought was sitting with me. As I look back now, in a weird way, I think I could say that I was grappling with a desire finding its legs. What I found to be so profound tumbled out like the simplest thing in the world, and I struggled to grasp why language had lost me.
As per the universalization of 경화님, perhaps it is true, we are all somewhat torn in love. My realization tells me, although this is a knowledge that I have yet to know by living it, that this is not the way that it always has to be. Rather than a universalization (which I am not straw manning 경화님 into mind you – what an ingrate I would be since she’s provided such space to think), I lean into thinking of it as a liminal space between understanding and identifying a desire that has come to be, against what work is needed to embody it. Its twilight. I say this at the risk of sounding naïve, of being mistaken as brazenly declaring that contradictions could be resolved. For those who understand me already, you know that this is not the case. This is my utopic mode peeking its wee head out, thinking about the ways that love and knowing can converse, one day, hopefully, freely –a love that I myself would love to experience; one that I long to know as one knows an old friend.. A love that I have crafted, cried with, cradled, cajoled, cuddled, and committed myself to. A love that aligns. 편안하게. As I finish writing this, I come to see this sentiment repeated around me, in spaces that I had never before recognized. For instance, in the words of Rich,
I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence
Adrienne Rich, from “Splittings”, The Dream of a Common Language.