The original text is in Korean, and this translation was produced by ChatGPT.
6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
My memory is poor. I would like to list concrete examples of things I failed to remember, but I cannot even remember those. Conversations with people, violence, debts: after I sleep and wake, they disappear. Only abstractions remain in my head. When I was young, I used to go to sleep thinking: why am I living a present I will not even remember; it would be nice if, when I opened my eyes, I were already in a happy future. By the way, thoughts I once had do not seem to disappear easily. The problem, however, is that thoughts are not concrete at all.
On August 28, 2016, I wrote this on my blog. “Question: A memory you never want to forget for the rest of your life? / Answer: My first meeting with Illya.” 2016 was the year not long after I met Illya. That must be why I remembered the first meeting then. Now I have forgotten it completely.
This kind of forgetting, too, is a sad thing that happens because my memory is poor. But I can endure forgetting precious things. Of course, forgetting my first meeting with the person I love is painful, but with Illya, I can meet her again anytime and anywhere, even right now. What I truly cannot bear are the x’s that left before they could even be spoken. No one can speak of them, and no one even tries, but each one must be a fantasy longer than In Search of Lost Time and more beautiful than Spring and Asura.
They are clouds, trees, and waves. People look at clouds and say they can talk about clouds. Yet even while looking at clouds, they only talk about imaginary fish or imaginary dogs, even UFOs; they do not talk about clouds at all. It is the same with trees. People say they can talk about trees by likening the shapes of cracks carved into bark or the branching of limbs to other concepts. But that is not talk about trees at all. In the case of waves, the situation is more serious. People talk about the rocking of a boat caused by waves, or worse, merely look at the sea and do not even glance at the waves.
No one can speak of clouds, trees, and waves. Yet they are there, and they are even shown to us. Still, I cannot give a name to a single cloud, a single tree, or a single wave. The only thing I can say is an exclamation. This incapacity of memory is what I truly cannot bear.
If the day ever comes when my memory becomes good enough, if that happens, I intend to read one cloud instead of one poem by Baek Seok, to cite one tree I met yesterday instead of Gilbert Simondon whom I read yesterday, and to gaze endlessly at the quiet waves of Wido, Buan County, instead of Last Year at Marienbad.