Conversations in the Book Trade

[note: this originally appeared in Dark Sky Magazine]

BARAM WRITER

EXT. AN URBAN WOODLAND. WINTER. LATE AFTERNOON.

Wind blows through trees, rustles dead leaves, makes branches sway in a creaking, slow dervish.

VO [male]: The wind has its own tone, its own feeling. It’s like … coldness, thinness.

It’s like hunger.

The wind has a body. The wind is someone.

JUMPCUT

EXT. A HIKING TRAIL IN THE URBAN WOODLAND. A MOMENT LATER.

A married couple walks along the trail. We see the wife, walking ahead.

VO: You’re someone. I’m someone.

Your body: petite, a source of warmth. A body to whom love is directed.

My body?

Wind.

That is, has been wind. Still feels like wind, but sometimes feels warmth.

I think this is the final state of love.

JUMPCUT

EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

A view of nearby apartment buildings. Several of the apartments, while still in somebody’s possession, lie empty. The buildings look spectral and aristocratic: the second homes of the well-to-do. The empty homes of the well-traveled.

The couple on the hiking trail, dressed in their simple clothes, look at the buildings.

HUSBAND [in accented Korean]: 열령 집. [”Ghost houses”]

WIFE: They go somewhere, maybe to Swiss.

HUSBAND: We should go on a trip sometime. Get away.

WIFE: I can’t. I have too much stress at hospital.

HUSBAND: I know. That’s why we should go. Your job is too difficult.

The WIFE looks at her HUSBAND. She sadly shakes her head.

JUMPCUT

EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

The HUSBAND follows his wife. He follows her along the trail as the cold sun sets.

VO: You walk along the trail, together today, but tomorrow, Sunday, you have to work an evening shift.

EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. THE NEXT DAY. DUSK.

VO: I’m alone.

I walk along the trail. My daily exercise.

The scene is still, quiet. Thoughts pour through my head.

I’m worried about you. Your job is too hard. It’s affecting your health.

The sensation is like wind, a stress-wind, blowing the chemistry of the mind in circles.

Worries swirl like brittle, dry leaves.

A new sensation comes to me. It’s a sensation that combines worry and love. It is a sensation in the bones. It radiates through muscle, through organs, through eyes. It’s a reverse heat, as if the body burns from its core.

It’s more than heat. It possesses a force, subtle yet existent in the world, which collides with our lives: it is an interior shake, an earthquake of marrow. It’s the wind of reality. And it has made an impact.

The body must withstand this impact. The body must marry the mind, tell itself the wind is weak, not the person it shakes.

JUMPCUT

EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER.

VO: The sun sets behind trees. Blackness descends upon the world.

The sun sets and the wind dies. It retreats to its apartments, its clouds.