Wutai in Winter, 2010

2010 Winter in Wutai, Taiwan

A new decade begins and I am reflecting on transitions, between the passing decades, years, seasons, months, weeks and days. For me and Brusan, it is the conclusion of an annual winter ritual and the transition into the ‘other’ life, spring in Seoul. In our life it is the playing out of an impossible exchange between realities. There is the Mountain in Winter, and there is the City in Spring, entirely incongruous ways of life.

Indigenous ways on the mountain

On the mountain there is a compound of small houses that we built ourselves, a growing physical presence of built spaces and landscapes. And returning there we re-discover a growing circle of friends that over the years have integrated into a family, a team with a purpose, to be together. We watch the sea of clouds from the cliffs, circling eagles, risings and settings of the sun. We work together. We eat and drink together. We laugh and cry together.

I handle power tools, chainsaw and grinders carving wood and cutting firewood, welders fusing metal. I handle paintbrush and airbrush. I wear work clothes. I cook meat on an open fire. I travel on dirt tracks through the mountain by motorcycle. It is a primal life full of movement.

Cosmopolitan ways in the city

In the city there is a high-rise apartment building and an office at the university. There is luxury and distance from nature. There are students and professional colleagues and partnerships based on the economy of information exchange. There are computers and an information superhighway. There are papers to write and documents to sign.

I handle a pen and a keyboard. My hands are never dirty and my face is never sunburned. I wear expensive sports jackets and leather shoes. I travel by taxi, limousine bus and subway. I eat in fine restaurants. It is the life of commodity-fetish and it is insular.

Perimeters

Life is short and shortened by transitions or perhaps magnified and made more intense by the ‘long commute’. We throw ourselves into one extreme after the other. Like a Korean sauna we are in the hot water and then the cold and then we repeat the process. It seems just as we are opening up new potential in Wutai it is time to return to Korea in order to start the whole cycle over again. This year in Taiwan the house on the mountain never looked better. Despite the damage from Morakot in August 2009 it is beautiful. The resilience of people, smiles on their faces as they slowly and steadily repair the roads and homes while comforting and encouraging each other. It is beauty incarnate. The Rukai: polite, resolute and dignified. I was missing the mountain before I ever left.