“Envy,” they say when they find out I happen to live in a foreign country. “I’m jealous,” they say, and then again, when they happen to find out that I own a small restaurant in another country, they say the same thing. “You’re amazing,” I’d hear, and I’d wonder where this soulless, consistent reaction came from. I reflect on my day, which was so ordinary by my standards, a day of greatness and envy, of living in a foreign country, of being the only Korean in a beautiful spa town near Barcelona. The most boring months for me are November and February. Equally cold, equally hazy. (Blurry things that have no beginning or end)
You pedal your bike under a hazy, cloudy sky and quickly turn the wheel to the right. It’s a five-minute bike ride to the gym. In those five minutes, I pass through three major alleys. The first one is downhill, right after I cross the crosswalk in front of my house. The cold, damp wind cranes my neck and pulls my jacket zipper up to just below the tip of my nose. I turn right, watching for traffic coming out of the alley and onto the main road, and pass the Concourse River. Some days the river is full of ducks, other days it’s dry and just a big patch of grass. After crossing the bridge, checking for precipitation, it’s the last deserted street on the way to the gym. In an old cafe, locals sit and drink coffee, cold or hot. When I return home from the gym, I’m usually greeted by Luis or Jorge saying, “Ola Mina! They’re friends and family now, having helped me with small and large projects for two years.
When I travel to other countries, or even when I’m at home, the first thing that comes to mind is the fruit of Spain. Mornings with seasonal fruit ripe with the Spanish sun are a joy. I’m slicing apples, pears, and mangoes to make breakfast when Luis starts removing the balcony shutters. After two or three trips back and forth from the third floor to the first, I ask Luis, who is catching his last breath, “I’m having breakfast, do you want some?” And so we sit on the terrace. We start with the balcony fence cement that Luis has just finished cementing, and then we talk about the big job he took on and didn’t get paid for, and then we talk about other jobs, big and small, and then we talk about the first time he came to my house. The sun is warm on my back, and I can understand half of what he says and half of what he doesn’t, but we don’t really care. We eat breakfast and run errands. He returns an Amazon package, picks up his bike from the repair shop, buys glue, stops at a computer store, drops off his clothes at the tailor, and returns home. On the first floor, charisse texts. “I’m having lunch and tea in the garden, come out when you’re free!” I texted back. “Then let’s have lunch in the garden!” And just like that, the picnic table was set up in the garden again. Charisse brought out the rice and chicken, and I brought out the curry and salad from yesterday’s meal, as well as a bunch of leftovers from the house. Louis was working outside, so we were invited to stay for breakfast and lunch. Seo Jin-yi, who didn’t go to school because of exams, woke up late, took a shower, wrapped his hair in a towel, and sat down to his first meal. Ah… The sun is warm. He happened to be wearing a black cashmere sweater, so it was perfect for keeping his back warm. We talked about the Charisse’s trip to Mount Montseny to see Uri’s favorite frogs, Luis’s construction adventures, the disastrous state of our first house, and the secret room and secret passage that Luis still believes in. I don’t mind any of the stories. My stomach is full and my back is warm. The stories go on endlessly, and I slip out of that world and into my own, small and warm. The sounds become noise and my inner senses come alive. I simply surrender my senses to the February sunshine.
Every day was a battle. Starting and running a shop. I never really believed in the sincerity of people who said it was cool and great, but it was pretty far from cool and great. It was hard, I was alone, I had to fight, I had to be beaten. I had to protest, I had to give up. I had to forget, I had to bury. It was myself that I had to take care of, but I failed to take care of that very thing. I was preoccupied with taking care of everything but me. My work, my clients, my family, my people, my home. Clearly, they weren’t me, but after all those foolish days of believing that taking care of them was taking care of me, I’m comforted to know that I learned a lesson, and that lesson was not to use them. The pool that was supposed to be finished by the end of May was not finished until the end of August, and I lost a lot of Airbnb guests, compensated them, cursed at them, but in the end, I became friends with Luis, the contractor, and we had breakfast and lunch together. It’s about taking out a loan blind, getting audited, filing an appeal, changing tax lawyers, getting a decision, and then having the bitter experience of coming face-to-face with the raw selfishness of human beings and the bottom of humanity. All this drudgery and roasting yourself is never great and never cool, that’s for sure, but there is something great and cool that I figured out instead, and for that I am happy.
It’s a dive into myself with my back to the sun. For a moment, the noise of the world turns to ice. Only the flame inside me feels as warm as the sun on my back. The moment I meet that warm orange flame that hasn’t gone out is the moment of my special day. It’s a great, wonderful thing that no one else sees and only I notice.