Hush, Little Baby
Felix Im
To my shame, none of the following words can qualify for Fiction’s protection – only Insanity’s excuses. Also, for expediency’s sake – for we’re all so very rushed these days – allow me to throw your highness into the midst of the mess. Pardon the lack of introduction, as I was forced to compose a condensation.
“Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.” - Ambrose Bierce’s Satanic Lexicon
And it’s a rightfully Devilish source, at that, as my earlier forms of Self were certainly not of anything Angelic – although their recently revived remains still seek the blonde solace of a pale-skinned Angel whose legs I once heavenly brushed and felt under an elementary desk, with the awkward, hairless stems of my very own: One learns to progressively dislike that confused and unawares ecstasy of a certain beacon of 6th-grade memory – what’s one of Puberty’s many emerging moments throughout me.
Her name was – and still is, I imagine – Ali…short for Allison: Aryan-crafted princess of my childhood lust’s finalization into an Anglican frame (for I did indeed fall for many a brunette before then – sans erection, of course). Imagine a nervous stutter of a Korean-sheathed human being, who prayed throughout most of his amusingly developmental days to Life for bigger eyes of a more Caucasian leaning, only so I could render myself compatible with – and worthy to – staring into the snow-like blue of my dreams’ unrelenting standards of blonde. One recalls from his grade-school days a certain lassie by the name of Peng-Peng (no exaggeration implemented) whom a certain yellow boy wished to kick down the halls for her ethnic resemblance to poor, confused Me.
Thus, the originally Korean structures of my infancy’s linguistic makeup reverted into a self-loathing resurrection of a new Felix: Mr. F’s English – my Korean’s abortive interruption. My native English tells the story of its fallen minion of Asian loser, : allow for a moment’s marvel at the characters’ mysticality, for that constrained sector of my lexicon remains absent otherwise.
This tale is obviously told from a position of guilty usurpation; but Mother Modernity surely shouldn’t plague herself with remorse for her Romanized genetics, no? All’s egalitarian under digitalization, anyway, or so does F. say. Worry not, Friends, for she diligently installs other traditions as these very letters of unavoidable tribute compose themselves within their Microsoft context: She obviously utilized me to absorb one more sliver of Kim Jong Il’s southern enemy (those newspaper snapshots of handshake peace are lovely, though). I report to you live, from the fields of Progress.
I’ve seen very few souls more miserable from mediocrity than the suburban kind; consequently my perpetually emerging adulthood is but a compilation of gaudily devised trials: strings of developmental demons and sicknesses plague Felix’s blank slate of characterless disposition. Watch me swirl their wretched howls about me for dramatic.......continued in print edition.
