1.
Subdivided hotel room, before smart phones, no Japanese nor English so analogue TV’s off. Air-con roar one long moment; double-bed most of the room is fine with us. We lay together, sweat. Thin walls radiating Seoul hum, C watches me stalk the room. A tiny contrast on whitewash and block-universe time concentrates. Firming at the mantis-hand raising just under algorithmic threshold, close enough it strikes and she laughs. I lap the room naked and repeat the show. Joking it up mosquito-wise, she’s happy. Content watching her young man hunt.
2.
Downtown’s like Tokyo but not for her. Aliens not long after the dictatorship, we do Art Park Museum that’s not its name. Spare green spaces under grey skies; a green tank on a concrete square in a circle of grass. Cool, otherworldly, Seoul is a tone. For young artists, Australian, Japanese, Korean contemporary art is mysterious. Muraoka-sensei showed with Nam June Paik and we wanted to see. Nova’s two week holiday arrives so we do.
3.
Doing Korea in C’s trusty guidebook means Seoul and Soreoksan. The -san is like in Japanese I guess. Or is it the other way round? Neighbours, former occupied and occupiers, language colonises and is colonised back. We don’t visit Occupation Museum; I would later living there alone. In South Korea, which to me is Korea.
4.
Central bus station, sweaty bays, crowd chat like between acts of a music festival. Trusty guidebook in hand, C meets neighbours. Two women befriend us. They negotiate ideas and new plans emerge. Loudspeaker information ripples our moist crowd and we shuffle bays.
5.
Bus is doily headrest-papers, nice seats, mid-90s coach aesthetic similar to Japan but not to C. Korea backs up, passes in the frame. Mega-city thins to time-warped landscape. Smog thins to patchy clouds over hills like MASH reruns. Guidebook guiding, C translates. Befriending, connecting, understanding, the three young women navigate. In this part of block-universe time, I’m happy. Content just to be the frame.
6.
In Korea, on holiday from Japan, moving to Germany where Marina will be, we’re heading further out. VHS ghostings in the alien frame, we’re analogue emergence never quite the same again. Ancient lands pass and women connect. Thoughts include: born colonial White in a Black land, I’m with her in the formerly colonised. White Asia on the postcard of our Kyoto show: my hanging logs with plastic-wrap bases on copy-paper gridded floor and walls; C’s signature black wool spiderwebs and acorns. Vertical energy, horizontal materiality, pattern; networks, nodes, attention. In the blackbox of relativity, metaphor is material and you see through its frame.
7.
New destination appears in the frame. Empty twin-tower hotel, the site still being landscaped. Our new friends are staying too. On holiday or they work there. Rooms unfurnished, there’s one with mats, pillows and a quilt in the closet, like Japan but not to C’s. I should still be content but something’s wrong. Hard white tiles, freshly painted walls, a malaise outlines me. Aliens moving outwards is one thing, but Jack Nicholson-staring into empty hotel space is all work no play. Alienation grinds. It grinds you into a home for the night or pushes you out.
8.
Though I don’t know yet, in block-universe time there’s another half-finished hotel in Ache, 1999. As that dictatorship collapsed, a similar malaise one night. Under my mosquito net, hoping it’s not Malaria, torchlight reading the same paperback page again, again. The mutineers thaw a part of the spaceship’s captain for information but then the virus advances. It advances and they freeze him again, again. Next morning, Javanese secret police summon me to the rec room and make me watch porn. Why porn? For my reaction. A kind of drug test? The way they watch me I’ll never forget. The intensity of malice poised; predation. Unsatisfied, they play tourists write down your address. A fun game, I insist you too. No no, just you. You too please and we’ll be pen-pals. Then they stop insisting and just stare. Attack algorithm trembling just below the threshold to strike, their mantis-hands raise towards my alien contrast on their wall.
9.
In Soreoksan, another floor, their finished room. Pictures are taken. Chatting on the antique-looking couch, the women translate. On their balcony, the sun’s fallen behind towering shield-wall mountains. Just look at them, we can’t believe it. Massive; intimidating. A tsunami of rock hanging in the sky, one shark’s tooth is Soreoksan. More photos. There’s us; me with a bad haircut she did; Korean smiles. You can see it in my face; something’s wrong. The women connect, laugh; I watch the massive silhouette bleed out. Not a cloud. Burnt sienna afterglow, jagged black teeth, the scene’s apocalyptic. That Romantics lecture back at art school. When beauty becomes unbearable, you’re into sublimity. It’s too much and the subject’s defenceless. Overwhelmed.
10.
On their balcony, in block-universe time, there’s the Mexican Eagle-god story screaming the horizon between night and day. Destroying, creating, screaming your mind seeing it. No wind but grip the railing. A long way down, get inside. Sliding glass doors; the legs of the Korean couch are French curves. Eagle screams a virus? Food poisoning? I’m not sick but; just freaked how that wall devoured the day.
11.
In block-universe time, before Ache, after Korea, servant-quarters bunk-bed on a French chateau estate. C’s there but not really with me. Fasting for a week, last night, I’m feeling my way along an inwardly curving surface. Whitish in the poor light, it goes on and on forever. Marina wakes me with a pad for one word; I write “wall”.
12.
Korean friends wish us goodnight. No-one in the corridors, no TV through walls, we find our empty room. We lay the bedding; the quilt is fluffy white. Tired but happy on holiday in Korea, we snuggle on the mats. Make love. Lots of new things in each others eyes; lots of ideas. We’re together, moving further out. No lamp, flick the wall switch off it’s dark. Windowless interior room, so dark you feel your eyelids to know if they’re open. C’s already going. Down and down. Gently falling after her, down into the darkness, but something’s wrong. A snake in the bedding. In one cartoon motion, I’m on my feet thrown the quilt in the corner and switched the light back on.
13.
In blinding glare, we cling, shaking. There’s a snake, I tell her. A goddamn huge one. We tremble-watch the soft white pile in the corner. Thick as a thigh, I explain. Some kind of adder; I saw it. Eyes wide, C looks at me. She looks at the quilt. In the dark, you saw it? Yes, I’m sure. In block-universe time, I still do. Thick, silvery, the wide band of its side curving away. Dead quiet in the empty hotel, I reach forward. Don’t, C grips my other arm from behind. She pulls me in balance but I’m stronger. Letting me, he’s Australian, maybe she thinks. Maybe, she thinks, Australia’s full of snakes, so Australia-boy knows what he’s doing. I don’t. When I was young, my uncle had a python I would hold. The way a tree holds a climber. But an adder? Regardless, I need to see. Leaning further out as she balances me back, I snatch a slip of cotton and yank.
14.
The quilt flies white against the wall. We stare at the empty corner, computing. She looks at me, looks at the quilt. Carefully, I hold it up at arms length. Turn it. No snake. But there was, I assure her. In the bedding, with us. C, wide eyed, watches me search the room.
15.
Early mini-bus to Soreoksan, we laugh about the snake. C says snakes in Japan are connected to God. In the West, I tell her, it’s Devil. Creation, destruction; day and night. Gods eating their tails round and around. Forests and foothills in our window frame, C relates Joseph Campbell’s comparative religion. Cross-culturally, he said, artists were shamans before. Outsiders in the group, they bridge the tribe to nature. Which is them too others forget. I’m a fool, I laugh; she kisses me it’s okay.
16.
We strike out on wide concrete. Big-time like, we’re power-hiking. Lots of tourists, Koreans; we show them a thing or two. We hit the range proper. Winding switchbacks up and up, it’s amazing. Upthrusting bodies of rock are huge ink paintings you’ve seen in national galleries. Thick forests, Bob Ross trees in crags. Waterfalls and no-frills metal bridges over raging rapids. Soreoksan’s hardcore beautiful; hours pass step by step. The path narrows past each bluff; we buy snacks at kiosks. At first fixed structures, then higher later, smaller outhouses more expensive. We buy chocolate bars. Then buy them again at the next stop twice the price. We think it’s funny and buy more expensive ones again and again.
17.
Higher and higher takes longer and longer. We were on the early morning minibus, now it’s afternoon and still climbing. Cooler, thinner canyon rivers plunge between monoliths; eagles. We take pictures, march on. The afternoon wanes. We buy hyper-inflated chocolates, munch and march. We’re going the distance; White Asia faking it ‘til you’re making it. Fewer people now and going the other way.
18.
Late afternoon, we hit the wall. We’re rooted, pretty much. Each step costs more with less to give and there’s no end. We’ve literally been walking up this mountain all day, and every time you think, at last, the top, it’s just another bluff. Up and up, chocolate bar inflation outpaces us. Above the treeline, we stand there smiling with the wiry old guy’s last one. Admiringly, we peruse his shoulder-strapped board of snacks for extraordinary prices. He laughs and we do too. The effort to hike them up here everyday, just wow. Old but tough, he reaps rewards until he can’t. Backpackers priced out of the market, our smiles part ways.
19.
Path dissolves into switchback trails. Onwards and upwards, the hill is your friend until one rubbery $10 Kmart sandal step, it’s not. I tell C. I say if it takes so long up, then it’s going to take so long down. But the guidebook, she reminds me. This isn’t just any mountain, Australia-boy. This is featured. Soreoksan’s must-tick. It doesn’t matter you’re going to be a big-time artist; peeps back home will know your ticks or not. If you’re Japanese, you’re compelled.
20.
Twilit inside cloud, we reach the summit. Soreoksan. We’re wrecked but made it. The view would have been wow, we agree. We could’ve seen the unfortunate North. Cloud interior is cool and wet and grey. In the proof-of-life tourist photos, there we are. Spent by the plaque and its pile of stones. Student backpacks empty, T-shirts and shorts in cloud is cold. C’s glowing; hams it up with peace-outs for the disposable camera. The one of me is haunted. How late it is; how hollow our tick. Bowl haircut slouching in black hairband slash off-cut skivvy neck, I’m yay but maybe we should go?
21.
A man appears out of cloud. He’s Korean—surprised what we’re doing here. C gives him the camera and he takes our photo. Guidebook translating, he’s staying at some summit lodge slash shack somewhere up here. It sounds expensive like the final chocolate bar. Did I glimpse it briefly in the clouds? Like leftish, maybe north-westish, whitish on dark lava ash-like dunes? Which sounds like cloud-tripping slash fatigue-imagination?
22.
C’s translating but this guy and I already know. We share a look and there’s a moment. We could go with you. Trusty guidebook questions may have been: Can we afford it? Another: Are there vacancies? But a better one could’ve been: Are there emergency protocols where stranded tourists in danger of perishing on the mountain are given shelter, any bill to be settled by the living later?
23.
The man leaves us. He disappears back into cloud like he never was. The deepening twilight isn’t just cloud now. Sun gone, it’s cold. Summer shorts and t-shirts don’t belong up here, let alone at night. A last picture of C.
24.
Then we’re pounding rocks. Basically running. Shivering, hungry, C’s city-slicker starts to get it. That’s right, Japan-girl. Almost dark, just coming off the summit in freezing cloud, we’re screwed. We’re in for misery. That feeling when you’re about to be hit. Smashed. How did you let this happen? you’re thinking. Because in block-universe time, you knew. You’d been told. You hiked and camped mountains, and those who knew better made sure you did too. Up time and down time; respect the time. Because time unrespected, it’s suddenly nightfall and you’re running down Soreoksan.
25.
Jumping down rock steps, ankles and knees red-lining, we finally get this will be all night. Not romantic, not cool, this is terrified stupid suffering that may be fatal. Time trickles down switchbacks. Unstable underfoot, it’s just rocks and gravel and cold darkening. In block-universe time, C gets it more. This is night-time dropping to zero. This is one blind step and twisted ankle from treeline disaster. The trail gets lumpier, then we’re making out a dry creek-bed in the gloom. The trail had been the creek-bed higher up, but it must have switched-back and in the dark we didn’t see. We kept going. Down and down something that wasn’t the path. Dark now, icy tears flow. I’m so sorry, I say. She’s sorry too. What the fuck do we do? For the record, I was told this too. First thing you do when you get off the track is get back on the track. But stupid with youth, fatigue, or just stupid stupid, we don’t do that. What we do is hug and cry for warmth as much as emotional support, then we keep going. Down and down, run-walking, ankles screaming stumbling over rocks, edging around boulders. We hope, hope, okay, the creek-bed connects back up with the trail. It doesn’t.
26.
It’s my fault. C, a future somebody, insisted, but it’s me who let us get lost at night on Soreoksan. Her Japanese obligations; my having been told. Whimpering, crying, we’re just city kids not so tough moving further out after all. We stumble and bump and tell each other sorry some more. Sorry I let this happen. Sorry I didn’t listen. Sorry to your nice mum and dad near Osaka who’ll identify you in a foreign morgue. In the moonless dark, water sound. It gets louder until it’s the end of the road for the dry creek. The night freezing, we’re so dead all we can do is keep moving. Feeling our way around giant boulders, using our hands for support over others, whimpering and crying and knocking and stubbing and spraining. No food, no matches, no waterproofing; nothing going for us but skin-to-skin attempts at warmth in the treeline when push comes to shove. Can that get us through a freezing night on a mountain flank? Maybe there are caves? Maybe warm with bears? Then on huge boulders of the roaring river’s shoulder, silhouettes.
27.
C points them out against the night’s sky where the stream turns straight. There are wolves in Korea? teeth chatter. The two of them watch us freezing. Bushy tail silhouettes curving up and back, ears front looking our way. We watch them watching us in the dark. Rapids roar. Are they dangerous? They’re big; they could rip us to pieces. They start barking. They bark and look at the stars and howl. Past them, the shoulder becomes a wide, grey beach of boulders from which a tiny shadow appears. Its black ink moves liquidly across the rocks. Scrambling this way then that, growing towards us. Frozen as the dogs howl, we watch it near.
28.
Darker shadow on darkened Earth, it comes right up to us. Confrontationally? It’s hard to tell. We say hi, hello, konbanwa; but Japanese maybe not a good idea? The black ink speaks angry Korean. Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing here? is not a stretch to guess. He’s suspicious; wary. Too dark for trusty guidebook, the dogs encircle.
29.
Past the shoulder, the beach of rocks guides the stream into darkness. Following the man, a black plastic dome emerges out of boulders. Another sheet is upheld by sticks over adjoining fire pit. We’re cloaked in old clothes, shown where to sit by the fire. Smells include smoke, stale sweat, dog. In block-universe time, there’s me and C and this guy watching us eat his noodles. In firelight, he looks how you think a hermit on a Korean mountain looks. I take out my trusty pocket notepad and we communicate. We translate pictures; laugh about things we think we understand. He seems okay. Dirty, yes, effectively homeless living rough on Soreoksan, with dogs he uses to hunt, or eat, or for security (from what?), but dead in the water like we were, we’re so thankful, humbled. We’re his guests. He likes it when C talks. Who doesn’t? She’s not known yet, not that he may know either way out here, but she is a young Japanese woman.
30.
Packet noodles equals feast. Not just sating hunger, noodles are we’re no longer out there in the freezing darkness maybe going to perish. He gives us hot tea. He tells us about this local plant or meth or something that he has sometimes to do a mountain rescue. One night, we figured out, he had to hike up and rescue some guy broke both his legs. A bad fall. Juiced, he carried him down, on a stick- stretcher with shoulder straps. We’re impressed, thankful. Clearly a tough guy, if maybe a misfit. The way he talks is different. Jagged. Rescuing people makes him sound connected but. Like they know about him? Rangers or whatnot? But there’s also is he out here because he’s done something?
31.
Bedtime, we’re to crawl into the black plastic dome first. Held up with branches, held down with boulders, most of the space is bedding. Pungent wardrobe is bedding in roaming torch light. His, we don’t have one. He’s insistent about the arrangements. You there, he points for me, you, C, here in the middle. We hesitate. Why exactly? You there, he answers me, C here. We’re his guests. We were on our own out there. We lay down how he wants.
32.
Thick blankets, old clothes, functional warmth, rank sweat and dog smell. Torch off, pitch blackness. Outside, the moonless night was dark, but inside now it’s total. Beyond exhaustion, I’m already falling, down into deeper darkness still. Like the night before, it’s so dark I’m unsure my eyes are open. I feel at them to tell. I can’t. In darkness like that, you’re awake or you’re not, you don’t know. You know where you think you are but where’s that really? Have you been drugged? The darkness goes deeper and I must be asleep because I can’t move.
33.
Shaken awake, it’s still dark but he’s saying go. Somehow I crawl into the night. I feel strange; beyond tired. His tone harsh, the way the dogs circle us isn’t good. Like listening for what’s prey. We thank him but he says go. We stumble back up the mountain to find the trail.
34.
False-dawn at the treeline, I hold the camera out and take the morning after shot. The look in our eyes.
Ben Stone studied art with Saburo Muraoka and Marina Abramovic and creative writing with Rohan Wilson. He almost died one night with Chiharu Shiota lost on Korea’s Mount Seoraksan, but a mysterious hermit with a black plastic shelter saved them from freezing, bears and wild goats, likely in that order. Ben has published fiction in several literary journals including Open Pen and Southerly, and his novel Meat Inc. is due out… eventually.