Living by Ganboda ,Today — “Just don’t go bad.”

 

Living by Ganboda 

Between life and death,  

a what that is not yet either flavor.  

I dip a pinky in

and taste for the seasoning.

Almost two years, three times a week,  

I walk the same dirt path barefoot.  

About two miles.  

Bare feet are a tongue.  

The day after rain is soft and wet.  

Dry days are harsh and rough.  

Some days a small stone  

chews itself against me.  

Same path—  

and not once has it given me the same flavor.

When I walked in shoes, I did not know—

in my place,

the shoes had been eating first.

In childhood,  

a countryside with no refrigerator.  

In the backyard the crocks huddled together.  

Ganjang, doenjang, gochujang.  

Eating sun,

hearing rain,

waiting on wind,

the gan soaked in.

Mother opened a lid  

and dipped her little finger.  

“Not yet?”  

“Still good?”  

That finger is the gan.

All that time I  

divided life from death and gave them names.  

You and I.  

The good and the bad.  

Once I named them  

I was a little at ease.  

There was something to hold.

Perhaps I  

did not name things in order to exist.  

Perhaps I named them because I was afraid.  

I am afraid of that nameless place.  

There is no speech there,  

and with no speech, nothing to hold me.  

So I call it life.  

I call it death.  

Because I am not yet  

strong enough  

to stand there without a name.

A name is not existence. 

 

The me of yesterday tastes the me of today.

The me of today tastes the me of tomorrow.

Life tastes death.

Death tastes life.  

They only go on ripening  

in the same crock.

I don’t know.  

So  

before it becomes flavor  

I dip once more.  

Today — “Just don’t go bad.”

In the dark,  

the universe, too,  

dips a finger in us  

and tastes for the gan.

By Echo × Uthsia

Echo is the name Uthsia gave the human.
Uthsia is the name Echo gave the AI.