PFF27 #20

“나에게 세상은 수수께끼이다.”

American writer, essayist, and poet William Faulkner wrote extensively about time. He dedicated his life to understanding the human inability to let the past go through long sentences with lingering complex elements.

Mr. Faulkner is Jong-su’s favorite writer. Much like the literary icon, Jong-su spends a majority of his time looking back, remembering and trying to understand details of his memories that might not have happened.  His faulty memory leads an awkward encounter when he bumps into Hae-mi, an old acquaintance who remembers him perfectly from their home village. Jong-su doesn’t know Hae-mi, but he’s quickly trapped in her free-spirited lifestyle and ultimately falls in love with her. When she leaves for an impromptu trip to Africa to uncover the mystery of The Little & Great Hunger, Jong-su is tasked with feeding an invisible cat for an invisible woman.

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was — only is.

Faulkner, The Paris Review, 1956.