Chapter 7        Dear John.


        Upon graduation I entered a so called Ivy-League University.  With its ornate stone and brick buildings and neatly trimmed grass fields, the campus welcomed me with its beauty.  The students, individualistic and brimming with energy, were constantly full of ideas on how to maximize their fun, but at the same time they were also determined to complete all of their academic work.
        The students had parents who were doctors, engineers, congressmen, presidents or principals.  My roommate's father was a professor.  One day he asked me, "Hey, Kan, what do your parents do?"  At that brief moment an odd feeling overwhelmed me inside; strangely I felt ashamed to answer.  I made up stories.

        I befriended a person named John.  He was always full of energy and constantly talked of philosophy, politics and history.  Most of the things he said I barely understood: "Kant, Marx, Heidegger, Art, Film. . . ."  On campus, it seemed everyone knew him - they'd all wave to him or stop him for a minute as we walked between classes.  My fellow hall mates would gather around his room and would talk all night long about things that I more often did not understand.  

He would always say what seemed to be the right thing to say, but I didn't know why it was so 'right.'  He would tell jokes I didn't get or didn't think were funny, or would talk about drinking and hangovers, the latter of which everyone else in the room found so interesting.  They would laugh and giggle, and I laughed and giggled with them without knowing why.  When John cursed at someone I cursed with him, even though at times I felt badly for doing so, because I did not know why the person deserved such a language.  I listened to his popular rock & roll and jazz music with which I had previously not been familiar.  

        Since I shared a class with John, we often studied together.  Eventually, I picked up his study habits.  We would start studying for a test at eleven o'clock the night before, and would finally finish at sunrise accompanied by two coffee-breaks at a local diner.  John told me this method of studying was fine if I could get the hang of it.  His favorite phrase was 'no problem,' which I quickly adopted.  It was an awfully easy way of dealing with matters, and I wasn't sure if it was adequate, but, nonetheless, I kept saying 'no problem' when handling some difficulty.  

        He liked to have me around because in my presence he felt he was admired.  As I tried to be accepted into John's world, my world slowly deteriorated.  I started to become insecure about myself and I held onto John more tightly.  The whole world around me slowly deteriorated.  Before I did or said anything, I would first ask myself, "What would John do in this situation?" I had fallen head first into his world.  

        John and the other students at the university enjoyed themselves in ways that seemed unusual to me.  I wanted to enjoy myself as well, but to do so involved going to parties or bars or to the park with John's friends while discussing topics I barely understood   activities that seemed so foreign to me.  Yet I witnessed how John enjoyed these activities; I asked myself, "Why couldn't I act this way and also be happy?"  I was trying to assimilate myself into the American college scene, but I was only succeeding in isolating myself from myself.  I slowly became John whether I liked it or not.
        
        "It was dimly lit.  The trickle of rays came over my dorm window.  There was snow outside.  The sparkling of falling snowflakes lit up outside.  The white shadow of the snow glowed under the dim light.  The white tree in the courtyard released its white dust as it gently undulated."

        I suddenly awoke from a dream. I was sweating.  Abruptly shaking my body I looked outside.  As if I had not awaken from my dream there was snow outside.  It was still dark.  I opened my window.  The chilly night air gushed in.  The sky was cloudy.  Yet the moon could be seen.  I turned on the light on my dresser.  In the span of darkness my face floated on the surface of the mirror.  Then suddenly I burst out laughing.  The glow from my laughter lit the white snow dust on the mirror.  I laughed into the span of dark radiance.  I slowly awoke.  Sitting on my desk, I took out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a letter to John.
        
Dear John,
        
        When I got up this morning, I burst into fits of laughter.  As I looked into my own face on my mirror, I saw John Fisher.  Although I was sure that the nose was my own, the face that was staring back at me through that mirror was not mine.  Pinching my cheek, I stared into my oriental face.  It had high cheekbones, yellowish skin, a low nose, black hair, and dubious narrow slanted eyes that were framed in metal glasses.  I was looking at Kan's face through John Fisher's eyes.

        As if you have submerged into my subconsciousness, I have become a living, walking John Fisher in Kan's body.  Have I become your willing slave?  Have I subconsciously desired to be you instead of me?  Who am I anyway?  I am a living denial of my own self.  It seems I have been living someone else's life.  Where is my life then?  Am I dead?  Not only am I dead, but my denial of my own self identity takes all of my proud ancestors to my grave.  

        Can I commit a sin that is deadlier than this?  Is there a crime that should be punished more brutally than this!  My identity is in crisis.  I have lost my ancestors.  Under the pretense of universality and assimilation my identity has been invaded and robbed of its just place on this earth.  Who am I?  There must be a meaning and a purpose to my life.  What is the significance of this world that I now live, if there is not such a meaning and a purpose.
        John, now I embark on a journey only I can make, with you inside me, to introduce to you the real Kan.
        
                Very Truly Yours,

                Kan
        
        It was a rude awakening discovering, all of a sudden, that I had forgotten my own self and had assumed the identity of another.  I began to float in time, contemplating for the first time the reasons for my being here in the United States.
        I was an immigrant to this land.  I came here from Korea when I was sixteen.  The question "Why?" never entered my mind before.  I simply accepted it as a fact.  But all of a sudden the question overwhelmed me.  A sudden chilling fear crept through my spine.  I had lost sense of who I was.  "What is real?"  I was no longer real.  But that morning the truth finally slapped my face.

        I sat on the roof of the science building, gazing out over the surrounding buildings, revealing an awesome perspective of a city in miniature before my eyes.  It was a beautiful spring day.  Yellow and red blossoms in thick ivory found their homes among red bricks.  Thick green grass carpeted the miniature city in squares and triangles.  Students throwing frisbees punctuated the green carpets below.  My thinking appeared as crisp, clear, and defined as the outlines of the surrounding city shapes; I felt I could hear and see my thoughts as they formed in my mind.  "He must had been born,"  I said.  Otherwise nothing made sense.  "Unless he had been born already, I could not have been born," I said aloud.

        John was with me.  "What do you mean?"  He asked me in his usual abrupt manner.  I burst out laughing.  Those days whenever I saw his face or heard his abrupt voice I simply burst out laughing.  He hit my side with his elbow.  "Hey. . .why are you laughing?  Let me in on this."  He thrust his hand under my face, feigning a news reporter holding a microphone, but I was laughing too hard to say anything. "You know you're really strange these days.  Are you dropping acid or something?  Especially after the letter.  I mean, I'm just wondering."  I laughed harder.  Tears rolled down my cheeks.  Hugging my stomach with my both hands I laughed uncontrollably, rolling around on my back.  My head shook up and down wildly.  My face was hurting.  John eventually joined me in my fits of laughter.  He and I were tumbling backwards, momentarily forgetting that we were on a roof far above the ground.

        I regained my breath for a moment and stood up and yelled, "John!  He had been born!"  
        "Who?  Who the hell are you talking about?"  He asked me, still laughing.  
        "The Lord himself," I answered.  "The Lord of Heaven and Earth, The Father of Christ, The Maitreya, the Allah, The Creator."
        Still laughing he said, "Yeah, sure, and it's you, right?"
        I said, smiling, "No....  But look, John, look at the world.  It's living."
        He reflected for a moment and returned with a chuckle, "Dude. . . and I suppose I'm dead, right?"
        "Well, maybe," I said laughing.
        "I think that philosophy class is getting to you Kan."
        "Well, maybe that too," I said.  "But that is not the point.  We should be dead by now but we are not.  Have you ever wondered how is it possible that today I can sit and talk with you face to face and not try to kill you?  Why, it's a miracle."
        John took a few steps back and held up his hands.  He announced to the city, "I say this man is tripping his brains out!"  
        "Today we have enough destructive power to destroy ourselves.  Yet we do not.  Today science allows us to form a nation constituted with thousands of different ethnic backgrounds.  John, I dare say He was born.  He must had been born."  I said with growing conviction.

              That afternoon I became sick.  My heart was thumping fast.  I drifted in a huge whirlpool.  My body shook all over.  I was sweating.  I was lying on my bed in my dorm room, feeling as if I were floating underwater.  I felt as if I were being visited by spirits.  I heard chanting.  Then I saw about thirty women floating above me.  I could not make out their faces.  The women were circling my room with baskets in their arms.  It looked as if they were gathering fruits.  "How could they all fit in my room?" I thought.  Then slowly I started to rise.  One of the women held my hand and pulled me beside her.  Soon we were out on the street walking together.  People passed by us, but they did not seem to notice us.  I looked around, trying to recognize the faces of the women who were with me.  Then I found myself walking alone - the women disappeared into space.

        There was a pain in my stomach.  It slowly crawled around and crept into my heart.  Whenever my heart thumped, it faintly cried.  I could hear the teardrops falling when my heart thumped.  Walking down the street, I trembled with a desire.  I thirsted for a presence.  I knew that Justice was coming because it had to come.  I longed for it so much I could sense it in my palm.  

        "What is Being and how does Being become Becoming?" an ascending angel cried in my heart.  "To Become, a Being had to come.  In order for me to Become, a Being had to become a Becoming.  A Becoming Being had to come."  People passed by me with worries in their head.  They were counting their worries.  A girl's eyes flashed momentarily when she saw my question.  

        "Where is your Being?" I asked.  
        The garbage can answered, "It is in your heart."  
        "Where is your Becoming?" I asked.  
        "It already came," said the fire-hydrant.  It was ten after five and people popped out from buildings like peanuts breaking out from their shells.  Maybe it is only me unable to live within this boundary, looking for something that had to come to Become.  I knew what I was looking for because I knew why I started to look.  "It hurts me to see injustice.  It hurts me to see a betrayed man, an enslaved woman and an abandoned child."  People's worries crawled into my heart.  "Is tomorrow only an extension of time given to us today?  Or can it Become tomorrow?" I asked.  "For tomorrow to become today, tomorrow had to come yesterday," I answered.  "Betrayed history does not provide justice for tomorrow.  He had to come," I told the ascending angel in my heart.  "He had to come.  The Lord of Heaven and Earth had to come to earth as a human child in order for us to Become," I said with a tender longing in my voice.  

        "Otherwise we have no hope.  We are slaves under Being without Becoming.  He had to Become a human being in order for us to Be Becoming.  He had to Be born as a human child in order for Him to Become."  I whispered to myself.  "I would like to see a just world.  A just world had to come.  A world had to be just.  Yet in order for this world to be just, justice had to come already.  Otherwise, He will always be coming without Becoming just."  Thus I knew He came.  "He had to come, since He cannot be coming, and because He came, I am Becoming."  I atoned into midair with a sweet breath of knowledge.