Jul 24th, 2006, 07:56 AM
Believing in Noja & Showing Them Your Jen A. Talia
Last weekend I got into a conversation with someone I never picked the brain of. She was dutifully cleaning up after someone else's mess after drunkenly knocking over a trash can and then laying down next to it and sleeping. I was just curious, and I had forgotten her name, but the conversation persisted:
"So that is good for you to clean up," I noted.
"Well, you have to."
"But some guy comes and cleans this in the morning..."
"He shouldn't have to." Now there was a slight silence. I disagree'd with her on this. The conversation was going nowhere.
"So do you like the Worker's Party?" I turned the conversation to politics because if somoene is respectable, usually they have some sort of thoughts on politics.
"Aw, no..." I now wanted to impress her by throwing out the Korean word for anarchist as opposed to the borrowed one, admittedly my ego was getting the better of me.
"Aw, are yuo some sort of mujeongbu-jueija?" I always loved the way this word for Anarchist rolled off the tongue. It was a little painfully slow to say, but at the same time each syllable was broken down for me in Chinese in my head, and saying the whole thing was just perfect... "Without-Government-Belief-person" is a poetic line indeed.
"Awww, yes, yes, I am a Mujueongbu-jueija." I was drunk, and so I decided to tell her the story that reminded me of Anarchism:
"When there was a bad king in China, right? He pissed off two men, because he was so unpure and so bad, so they went to live in the mountains. Everyone liked the two guys because they were smart and philosophers. So the King wanted them to come back. They sent the two philosophers a cow. The two philosopher immediately began cleaning the cow in the river by their small cottage, washign him down with water. The messenger with the cow said, 'Why are you cleaning the cow like that?' and the philosophers said, 'Because your king and your government is so dirty that the cow needs to be cleaned.'"
She began to laugh and nodded. I think it is probably more funny in Korean than in English. But it is not just funny, so I carried on:
"So isn't it true that every fuckign day we need to clean ourselves? We need to clean our hearts?" She nodded. "We need to fucking drink alcohol to burn the uncleanliness, we need to wash ourselves in fire to be clean and berid of the fucking cunts." She nodded a bit more.
"Yes, our hearts are impure because of other people..." Yes, and that was why she was picking up trash in the park that was put there by other people, ignorantly knocked over as cunts. Society operates on the basic premise that people will make trahs, will make impurity, but they need to deposit it into this trash can so it can easily be picked up and taken away; when people spill their trash everywhere it just re-iterates the fact that they are unclena idiot cunts and need to be controlled, need to be re-taught by their parents to put their trash into cans, and need to be re-enforced by the government that the trash can system is vital to public cleanliness. In the context of politics, the unclean need to go to jails so they do not get the rest of us dirty and forced to pick up their shits.
"Do you have a religion?" I asked. She shook her head, 'no.' The word for atheist is delightfully obvious and simple just as anarchist, Mujonggyo-juieja. 'Without-Religion-Belief-Person.' Delightfully flowing.
"Do you have a religion?" She asked.
"Yes, I like Noja." Her eyes brightened a lot, and she looked at me with a quirked brow. Noja is 'old-boy,' or Lao-tzu.
"Noja is my religion too..." She seemed taken aback and was shrinking away slightly, perhaps confused and surprised. I imagine like myself she rarely said the name Noja. Noja is not something yuo say casually. Like me, she had never really talked about it because talking about Noja is practically sacreligious, and sharign Noja with someone who does not already know Noja is like casting pearls at swine. Like me, she never noted Noja as her religion for a long time, and would rather suffice in saying "I am an atheist" than sharing this philosophy -- telling someone you believe in Noja is person.
If you tell someone you believe in Noja it is like telling them you are a member of a secret society of people who do what they want and do not desire to listen to them and in fact think following their opinion is slavery.
If you tell someone you believe in Noja it is like you have just s howed t hem your private parts for no reason, it is something that causes blunt-force trauma to the skull; you can talk it over with them for hours but in the end, Noja is Noja and if you cannot pick up and read Tao Teh Ching by yourself and immediately begin followign Noja, no amount of conversation or effort on your own behalf will let you.
She was brighter, I was brighter; it is sort of like finding a diamond on the street in some sense. Only my best friends do know I like Noja, my family doesn't know about Noja, only internet people know a little bit about my Noja and that is because internet people are of no consequence. Noja is so hit or miss... I told my girlfriend I liked Noja and she said I should just go live in the woods and play all day. Fair enough. How else do you react when someone shows you their philosophical genitalia? I am just satisfied if after I show the genitalia they say it looks nice and I can put it back -- I am not so rude to make people suck on my Noja, rather, I show it for a moment, and if they agree, we can play with my Noja and discuss it, and if they really want, I will put my Noja inside of them for a little bit, move it around a little, put it in all the way, take it out; only a handful of people have I ever deep-penetrated with my Noja and they were all strangers.
Right now, it sounds ridiculous but that is the way Noja works.
"Look at those cunts," I gestured again to the people bhind me, "these are the fuckign cunts and Noja knew it, and so we follow our own fucking way, and w do whatever we want, because if we are with them are impure."
"Yes! They just watch TV and do what people say... They believe in Mass Media." She said mass media in English. I was grateful. For a moment I felt like an anarchist. I did not bother to tell her I really am more of a fascist -- we should have a system that controls these people and organizes them well, because without guidance these pieces of trash will just start throwing spears at each other and living in caves again.
"Yes, and so we follow our hearts -- what is your heart? Did you go to college?"
"No," she noted, "I just work and my dream is to be make art..." I wanted to see her art. But I persisted:
"Are you just going to marry and live with a husband?" This is a very typical thing for some girls... Skip college, wait around, get a husband, be a housewife. She shook her head very distastefully. It was obvious that was a terrible question. So I proceeded drunkenly:
"You never want to get married?" She nodded. I sort of agree'd oddly and continued:
"If you get married to a man he w ill just want you to bring him beer and clean his house, give him babies and give him cunt, wash his dishes and iron his clothes." She nodded very strongly. Prior to this I had never understood the marriage dichotomy in these terms, but I could note that this dichotomy is entirely different if we look at it from th etraditional view. The wife is not an equal in tradition, and subjugates herself to a husband. I could not imagine Sukeyong to do that, that would be ridiculous for a talented person who thinks outside of a box to subjugate herself.
It dawned on me that my first memory of her was when she was with Yoobin and they were both wearing flowers in their hair; a person who puts flowers in their hair is regarded as beign mentally insane in Korea because after the Korean war the widows of the dead wore flowers in their hair as a sign they were widows, and the ones who persisted wearing them after the years fo the war were regarded as insane old widows. But she wore the flowers playfully. A foreigner actually pointed out it was 'crazy,' and the reply was, "No, it is genius." I agree'd: it was genius.
Really, it is fucking absurd systems that exist.
She cannot get married, she is above this, rather, she can only become a nun -- but not some tired, old Buddhist nun following a bizarre doctrine that has been diluted by 2,500 years from the truth. But a different nun -- a nun that follows simply the higher ideals of purity.
We agree'd that we have to clean ourselves because we are in the presence of the unclean, the idiots, those who are not privy to our thoughts and those who would not understand that wearing cut-off jeans is practical and cheap, but would be obsessed with the idea they should wear the latest jeans made by TommyHilfiger.
The concept she would become someone's Jubu, someone's housewife, would be the act of becoming unpure on levels one cannot explain; it would, simply stated, be rape. The idea she would slaughter her free thought and be subjugated in the style of these marriages is a terrible suggestion.
There is a new type of being a monk or a nun, and it is the act of maintaining purity through resistance to normalization. To normalize and conform to the social standards is a murder of a sacred part of yourself and sentencing yourself to having to nod your head 'yes' and 'no,' having to honor people who are your superiors when in reality these are just people with more money and more power.
People should be respected for who they are, not for the money they make or the positions they hold, and provided you do not give your heart to the sacred Buddha Amida or Jesus Christ, you are subject to respecting institutions (religions, even in the most rigid of societies, generally get a free pass on respecting rich men and powerful men under the guise of only respecting God).
But now we cannot give our hearts to Buddha or to Christ, because these religions are stooped in thousands of years of dogma that are of no relation to the ideals anymore. Instead we give our hearts to a ourselves, and to the people who are like ourselves, and form a modernized community of music and culture.
Living is a religious experience - not because living is religious, but because religion attempts to apply itself to all aspects of our living, and so to live by any values and with any consideration to your own behavior is fundamentally to be religious.
But we follow a path that is like some sort of animal -- the animal does not pay attention to the conventions of their time but stubbornly opposes other animals, swims with the currents, flies with the zephyrs and breezes of air, doing only as they please and having little regard. Animals do not really care for opinions of others, btu only for what feels right amongst themselves.
Lao-tzu's closest disciple named Chuang-tzu regarded humans as a type of animal, and we live in concordance with our own ideals as humans but not so different from animals, and so people who are following the right way of life would not have regard for the conventions of man but would follow their own hearts, not be controlled.
That is what it boils down to, really.
The conversation helped solidify a degree of familiarity and religiosity that I have had for a long time. It made sense.
I was satisfied. She promised to show me her Noja and we made smaller conversation, and that was satisfying. I spent the remainder of the night drinking beers and eating samgyeobsal, passign out in a hotel room and later rendez-vousing with Jean-Paul Sartre, but I think it is one of the more important conversations I have had in 2006, and it serves as a furhter basis of noja.
Not because of what was said, so much, but because I had spent a long drought of pure alcoholism and lack of Noja feelings, not really regarding for much beyond the natural way. I just did what I wanted and practice not-doing, which is important, but I think the drought is over and now I have a greater desire to put it out there -- I cannot drink and play all day and I work nights where I get to do as I please more, so there i snothing else to do but to talk about it more extensively.
I do not want to be a nudist, though.
The conversation solidified my decision in life, a decision that I had been re-iterating since I heard a punk song 10 years ago in the summer of 1996, noted it sounded terrific and adopted the lifestyle and the beign 100%; before I had only toyed with myself and was rather confused why the popular things fell dull upon me. and I was determined to continue living in the same pattern, and now that I was advancing in position rapidly it gave me the proper point of refernece for this context:
In the world there are cunts who have no regard for anything beyond themselves or base desires for recognition like a dog wanting to be pet by his master (notably, anyone who cares for the opinions of others is a slave to a master)...
And then there are people who do have the basic instinct to want to please others, but who do not care enough about others to let it interrupt the way that they live.
Our decisions are our own, and we live as God intended us: in direct comparison of ourselves, objective thought, considering and trying to be rational about something, trying to understand something greater than what we are.
Others have the guise of following God because they align themselves in direct position with how society says God wants them to live.
But I think that I follow God because I align myself exactly with the way that I was created by God, and have no regard for the false idols that society has created in its' stead.
I remember awkwardly giving myself a mohawk at age 12 and having my head shaved by my dad, and doing the same at 14 and 16 with similar responses, and I remember the first times drinking and fucking and fighting and treasuring these moments, and still treasuring t hem, but now I know I have a proper context from w hich to grow and to make conclusions.
I know now there is no need for a mohawk, theres no need for drugs but perhaps some drinks, there is no need for fighting someone else to 'prove a point' if the point was already proven when they unmasked themselves as an idiot for wantin to fight about it...
It is understood not through the collective law of society, but through the individual law.
For a person to know the context of themselves in the world they must remove themselves from the culture that people try to put on them and be the peg that shakes itself free for a moment to look back at the star s hapes, square shapes, and circle shapes, and then truly understand ifitis the star or the circle, and then re-insert itself -- sometimes removing yourself, rotating yourself a little bit, putting yourself in a different way into your peg can be fun (just as removing, rotating, and re-inserting is pleasurable in bed).
So the conversation gave birth to these thoughts and I decided to write them and share them with you because it would be good if someone could glean somethign from it for themselves.
Today, I feel better about it and I feel more set in my political ideology and the path that I have been traveling.
This is around my 10 year anniversary and I am excited.
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