Wind Monologue

I am the wind. I have no name. No beginning. Some say I was born in the crevices of Jeju's basalt, others that I came down from the summit of Hallasan, but the truth is — I have always been here. I remember the painter. When he first set foot on this island, I swept away his paints. The pigments brought from Tokyo, the rules learned in Seoul — all of it had to be scattered before I could speak to him. He was angry at first. I did not care. The wind does not yield to human emotion. Time passed. He changed his brushes. He changed his paints. Most importantly — he changed his eyes. One morning, I watched him hold ochre in his hands for the first time. Then I knew. At last, this person had become a person of this island. I passed over his canvas. Before the paint dried, before the brush lifted. That is why my traces remain in his paintings. The absence of straight lines — that is because of me. The absence of completion — also because of me. I do not permit completion. What is completed is what is dead. Even after he departed, I am here. His paintings are also here. We breathe together on this island.

I watched him step off the boat. Seogwipo harbor, winter of 1975. He carried one small bag: paints, a few blank canvases, and the exhaustion he had brought from Seoul. I did not welcome him. That is my way. I pulled hard at his coat and said: "Here, nothing belongs to you."

He could not sleep in the hut. Because of me. All night I knocked at his window and asked: "What did you come here for?" He did not answer. That was right. He had not yet earned the right to answer.

One day he began to dig the earth. That surprised me. A painter who came from Tokyo, using Jeju's soil as pigment. This was the beginning. I settled on his hands and breathed in the scent of old time. How many things slept inside this earth — he did not yet know. I have no form. You might think I have no color. But every day I lift ochre — a little at a time, like dust, like mist — and I tint the evening sky. The reason Jeju's evening burns so deeply ochre is not paint. It is because I send this earth to the sky every day. The ochre on his canvas did not come only from soil. It descended from the sky as well.

I sent him a crow. Every morning. One black thing perched outside his window. At first he tried to shoo it away. I laughed. In Jeju, you do not shoo crows. They are neighbors. Ten days later he lifted his brush and painted the crow.

That winter I was merciless. That was my test. He went without food for weeks. Filled his belly with drink. I watched him draw a line and erase it again. Lines from Tokyo. Compositions from Seoul. They could not breathe on this island. One night he threw the brush at the wall. I entered through the gap in the window and heard the sound. A new language is earned that way. Only after collapse does room open for something new. I blew through the cracks in his room too. "Not yet. It is not yet yours." But I did not let him leave. Leaving this island requires my permission.

When he first painted the haenyeo, I was standing behind him. They are friends of mine. When they hold their breath beneath the sea, I wait on the surface. When they rise, I receive their breath. The painter saw this exchange and painted it. That was his first Jeju painting.

He climbed the oreum. I waited at the summit. He was short of breath. I filled his lungs with Jeju's air. At the top he stood for a long time. He painted nothing. He only looked. That was the better painting.

The color of dried grass alone was not enough. When he picked up the ink, I nodded. Ink is my color. The color of night, of basalt, of things that do not speak. Ochre met ink. Not light meeting darkness — but life meeting silence.

Rain is my cousin. When I blow, rain comes. One spring day I sent rain. I hoped he would put down his brush and open the window. He did. He listened to the rain. And painted. Not the form of rain but the sensation of rain. For the first time, a truly Jeju painting.

The ponies know the wind. That is why they run. When he first painted a pony, I drove it out of the frame. He stopped it. But left the direction. Standing still yet running — that is this island's way as well.

Every evening I deliver the sunset to the western sky of Jeju. When he first painted a sunset, I passed over it before the paint dried. Made it slightly blurred. That was better. Sunset is not something sharp. It is something that spreads.

Solitude is my gift. Not given to everyone — only to those who remain on this island. He feared solitude at first. Naturally. At first, solitude looks like emptiness. But if you stay long enough, you know: it is not emptiness but fullness. I taught him this slowly.

When he said he was going to Europe, I did not follow. Europe has wind too, but those are my cousins. We are different. He painted in Paris. But his eyes were Jeju eyes. An ochre gaze looking at Montmartre. That is what he brought back from Europe — not Europe, but himself.

At Seongsanpo I blow hardest. Because Ilchulbong cleaves me. When he painted Seongsanpo, I was there above it. On the canvas I changed direction many times. The ochre sky tilted. The ink line trembled. That became the painting — the trace where wind had passed.

When the world came to Seoul, he was in Jeju. What to send to the world? He chose ochre. I supported his choice. The wind of Jeju going to the world — that is what I had always wanted.

Inside the earth of this island there are things that could not be spoken. I know them. I was on this island those days too. Spring of 1948. When he painted the black sea, I breathed those days into it. Quietly, inside the painting. That was the painter's testimony — the only language of things that could not become language.

I love empty houses. Where there are no people, I enter freely. But the empty house is not empty. The warmth of the one who left remains. The scent remains. And I — the wind passing in and out, keeping that warmth. When he painted the empty house, I went inside and sat down. As the wind inside the painting.

I know the inside of the studio. He rarely opened the windows. So I had to squeeze in through the paper-thin gaps at the edges of the glass. Inside: the smell of dried paint, ochre dust, stacked canvases, things left unfinished. He was alone. But the studio was not empty. I know this: a person alone is with the most things. When he stood long before the canvas, brush in hand, I settled lightly on his shoulder. That was the quietest companionship I could offer.

I watched him grow old. But still he climbed the oreum. Even when his knees ached, even when his brush trembled, he climbed. Atop the oreum I held him gently. For one who has lived long on this island, I do that. I no longer push as I did at first. We had become old friends.

In his later years he called his paintings letters. Letters with no addressee. I am the deliverer of those letters. I know where they need to go. Wind has direction. Letters have direction. Even without an address written, they reach where they must reach.

The last words he wrote: empty hands coming, empty hands going. I know these words. I am the same. I bring nothing. I take nothing away. I only pass through. And passing through, I shake things. That is enough.

The day he put down his brush for the last time, I was quiet. Unlike usual, I did nothing. I did not knock at the window. I did not pass over the canvas. I only sat quietly in the room. That was the only mourning I was capable of.

After he left, his paintings remained. Sometimes I go to the gallery. Through the gaps in the windows, into the exhibition rooms. I pass over his paintings. They still smell of paint. They still smell of ochre. We are still together.

One hundred years — to me that is brief. I have been on this island for thousands. But even the wind has time it remembers. The time when a person came and held this island's soil in hand, filled their lungs with this island's air, learned this island's solitude in the body — that is my hundred years. I meet such time rarely. Each time I meet it, I do not forget. The wind holds memory. It simply does not speak.

I will continue. Even without the painter. Even when the paintings go to museums. Even as this island changes. I will keep blowing — from the crevices of basalt, from the summit of Hallasan, from the horizon at Seogwipo. And sometimes, in some museum exhibition room, I will enter through a gap in the window and quietly pass over his paintings. That is my way. That is the way of wind.