Sunday, August 18, 2013

Global Fevering I


Fade in. 
Exterior. A beach in South Korea. Day.

VO: "We arrive at Daejin by bus. We're only a kilometer or two from the DMZ. On the way here, we passed army base after army base. Military usage sill seems the main engine of the local economy.

"At Daejin, the terminal is so small that at first it looks deserted. But after orienting ourselves, we find our way down to the beach.

"It's beautiful -- crescent-shaped and, unlike several of the beaches farther south along the coast, filled completely with light brown sand. It's also -- apart from a pocket of people crowded at the foot of the town's pricier, slicker 'pensions' -- pretty much deserted. There is a fence between the road and the beach. Near the section where we are, it's strung with barbed wire; a vestige from the days when this region was walled off from civilian use. 

"Now the beach is open for business ... but business isn't very good. When we get hungry and want a bite to eat, we find that to locate something as basic as a "supa" (convenience store), we have to trek almost the entire distance of the beach, to the area with all the people and their inflatable rafts and multi-coloured, easily-punctured, animal-headed inner tubes.

"Back at our spot on the beach, a siren goes off. Then, the voice of an ajusshi blowing into the mike, as if to clear it of dust. Then his garbled warning: 'don't go too far into the water in your floaty thingies' -- or something ... I can't make sense of it, and you have to do translation on the basis of a chipped and incomplete text.

"More time at the beach. First swim in the salt-cool water. The shock of ocean. The clear, healthy residue of frigidity of it. Its being summer tolerable. (I think of my brother during his days at Cape Breton.)

"Then, the siren again. More mike blowing and another warning, this one even more garbled.

"Another swim.

"Another siren.

"I turn to you. '이상한 아저씨," I say. Strange guy.

"By the time of the fourth siren/announcement, I start making my own. 

"'Fwee-wee-WEEEEEEEE. Foof! Foof! 여러분! 자 들야지! Wife를 빨리 아나줘!'

"And, following the instructions, I give you a hug."






Global Fevering is part of the Plastic Millennium project. It links to two screenplay module novels: a mega-novel (Plastic Millennium), and a conventional-length work (Paper Keys to Burning Kingdoms). Both these projects are complete and being shopped around to publishers and agents. 

Global Fevering is an experimental online work-in-progress; it links the two former projects and occasionally quotes from them, while taking the narrative in new directions. It, too, is intended for eventual print publication. For now, however, it is digital, it is here, and it is free to read.

Copyright © 2013 Finn Harvor. All rights reserved.

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