[story] Knitting in Almost-Complete Darkness

Knitting inside a dark night-bus, lights off, is quite a challenge. 

With decent eyesight and nimble hands, knitting through arrays of knots is never really a problem for me. Manual, repetitive work is my go-to way of relaxing, letting go of trivial contemplation and brooding. It’s almost like meditation. Flickering my gaze between the white wall of the dorm and the mustard-yellow ball of cheap yarn, I soon find myself thinking about — nothing. And then utter calmness of the mind dominates my body. The slightly sour numbness of the fingers I poke so many times with my knitting needles comes only after I put them down. 

But in darkness, it’s a different story. Meditation becomes a luxury too ludicrous. Without the aid of sight to count and separate each ringlet wrought around the needle, I have to use the tips of my fingers as my guiding light. I have to distinguish, almost-only with my left thumb, between the texture of wood and fiber, to detect the minute valley where my thumb touches the bare needle and the barely-bumpy ridge of the yarn. Then, when I finally determine that I have found and separated a single strand of yarn, I push it up, just slightly, toward the tip of the needle and dissect it ruthlessly. I shove the righthand-side needle into the middle of the tiny yarn-ring, hoping I’m poking it through and coming out of the right side — for there is no way to determine that by touching, it’s in such a difficult position to reach with a finger. Even with such work, one out of ten times, I’m prone to get the wrong ringlet, poke and dismantle a single strand of yarn into tiny tangled fibers, push a ringlet too far and tip it off the edge of the needle. 

With such devotion needed, really, it’s impossible to meditate — I thought on the bus to Seoul, a Friday night, with one friend sitting behind me and one two seats before. 

 

An express bus full of people is intimidating, especially in a world where Covid19 is very much alive and well. I sat in the single-seat of the bus, wearing a jacket borrowed from a friend (because I exchanged the chance to bring winter clothes to the dorm with the chance to sing aloud in my room over the weekend). In its pocket was a plastic bag with my in-progress knitting project. I took it out and began knitting. Around me were men and women, silent and asleep — or perhaps feigning sleep. Every part of that bus signaled toward slumber. The driver that turned off all lights as soon as the bus started moving, the lady two seats left of me that whispered to her phone, my friend behind me who messaged me instead of talking. I remained alert, knitting in the midst of darkness and anxiety. Did these people all feel nervous about the density of population in this bus, but simply pretend to be asleep for they needed a way to chase away fear? Or were they actually asleep? I could not answer as I fumbled endlessly with my fingers. 

An hour ago, I had met M and D in front of the dorm. We walked down the almost-completely dark hill, through the shrubbery next to the archery field and up the concrete hill of the Pasteur factory ground. There had been a couple sitting next to each other at the bus stop right in front of the factory. I’d escaped school on Christmas last year and come back on the bus that stops there, I thought as we walked past. “Wear your masks, psst, strangers ahead. Wear your masks,” I muttered at my friends. I guess I am a bit of a freak when it comes to possible causes of death. The stars of Hoengseong were freckled as usual. “Oh, the stars are pretty!” M exclaimed nonchalantly. I didn’t know the full meaning of that before — exclaiming nonchalantly. Living under a visible Milky Way for three years, now I find it almost bothersome when people exclaim too excitedly at the sight of stars. It’s strewn across an area between special and nothing unusual — in essence, almost-special. That’s what makes nonchalant exclamations possible. 

We soon reached the Seoul-side Sosa. Since M and D and I had all skipped dinner, we each got a snack. The Seoul-side Sosa was in full operation except for the few snack stands that had closed due to the time being pretty late. Every seat had a clear plastic partition installed in the middle — like those rooms in prison where inmates can talk with visitors. We ate our food. And then, out of nowhere, she came. The music teacher. “What are you guys doing here?” She was still wearing her hanbok. I would have been less surprised if she were a ghost, really. We stammered that we were going to Seoul for a competition. She laughed. On a normal Friday, D said, people occasionally escaped school and went to Sosa — as if they were going home. Then they would get something to eat, usually ramyeon, devour their food, return to the dorm before 7, and pretend as if nothing happened. She had a valid reason for being so surprised. I laughed at everything D said. I always did whenever I heard stories about my own school I hadn’t known. 

 

Two knots slipped off — tick, tick — before I noticed. Ah, darn it. I could sense that I hadn’t pulled it so far off as to dismember it completely. But in the dark, I couldn’t figure out where the fallen knots were with my fingers. Looking for the knots by touching and tracing the line of the knit could easily unravel the knots. I took out my phone and turned on the light. Two knots, mustard yellow, hanging at the tip of the needle. I turned off the light. 

M and I were leaving school. I realized. The picotement of the knitting needle on my fingertip told me. It didn’t seem plausible: two seniors, in the middle of the application season, leaving school on a precious weekend and going to Seoul for an acting contest. Two other friends had won the grand prize last year — (another) D and B, a skinnier-than-skinny international physics nerd and a tinier-than-tiny domestic all-rounder. And it was just a couple of months before then that my love for acting had sprung. So, having been a little too late to participate in last year's competition, I had to do it this year. I remembered, last year, how the two had almost cried in distress during another theatre contest — Talk-Scene. They had thought they'd be performing on the first day and leaving, when it turned out that the performance was scheduled for the second day of the competition. Unfortunate how they'd placed the Math-Talk competition on the second day in a completely different city. Should we give up on Talk-Scene? Or give up on Math-Talk? With D and B almost in tears, with Talk-Scene advancing without time for us to time out and think, my first out-of-school play seemed to be coming down to tragedy. But in the end, everything turned out just fine. We performed on the first day (I behind the stage), they went to Math-Talk the day after, and I — having seen the desperation and anxiety of D and B and the sighs they infinitely processed on the two-bus-one-taxi-ride to the Talk-Scene competition hall — somehow knew I I would be plaiting the same string of sighs in 2020. So there we were, M and I, seniors stressed out to the tip of our toes about college essays. We'd sighed so many times during our shabby rehearsals, smiled awkward frozen smiles whenever kids we didn't know passed us by while we were talking about integrals in the middle of the school forest, gasped and immediately stopped the rehearsal whenever a cat walked by or stared at us. I suppose I knew it would always be like that. M and I were people born to be a little pathetic, a little planless, a little dreamy. We were leaving school for an acting contest. 

The yarn I was using was certainly not good-quality. Braided up of six thinner strands that unraveled as if they were meant to be individuals, I could feel so many times that I was poking through the middle of a strand. But I couldn't fix it. Not in the dark. I didn't want to tuck an illuminating phone under my chin throughout the whole ride. Let it be. Some knots would be thinner than others, some strands might stick out like loose hair in the middle of the garment. But, let it be. 

B was the one who inspired me to knit in darkness. A few days before, she'd sold handmade scrunchies in school to raise money for a charity helping victims of sexual abuse. It was a total success, a 90 dollars business. I was sitting in her room with two other friends. I looked up from my phone and threw the idea at her: "I wanna do it too." I knew how to knit. Scrunchies were less than a handful for me. And B loved it, too. So I took out the knitting box I hadn't looked at for two whole months, stumbled a while trying to figure out how to begin the first knot, and got down to business. A 100 dollar business, that would be so much more than enough. I smiled at the idea of it. Nobody on the bus could see it — nor the hands that were knitting, nor the ball of yarn nor the needle. I was in almost-complete darkness. 

At 8:40, the bus arrived in Seoul. The lights were turned on. I woke up.

The ball of yarn, the needle was neatly placed inside the plastic bag. 

 

Almost-complete darkness. The world to me was nothing more and nothing less than that. Time for meditation was scarce; I stood and tapped on my toes, like a rabbit on guard, scared I'd let a knot slip off beyond the point of reconnecting. Sometimes when I stayed alone in the dorm, I regretted my choice to stay behind — it seemed my friends would slip off to infinity and never return. The sour sparkling pain and numbness of my fingers, it was a pain I couldn't ignore but could get used to. In my small world, all pains were like that. I was learning to swallow the sours and the sparkles. But in the end, everything was just right, and there was always time for sleep. A little flaw, a little stupidity. I was susceptible to all — but when the time came, everything was okay. The ball of yarn, the needle was still in the same place where I could pick them up from. 

I think I'm gonna miss them all, I told M after one of our outdoor rehearsals. He and I were sprawled on the stone bridges in front of Chungmu, looking up at the sky so high. He didn't ask what I would miss. Yeah, he said. 

It was almost-complete sunlight that we were looking at. It felt good. 

... 

And besides, we won the Grand Prize. So, laziness worked out just fine in the end. Ha. 

* 점점 한국어로 긴 글을 쓰는 것이 힘들어지고 있다. 영어는 원래 힘들었으니 할 말이 없다. 

* 입시를 위한 것이기는 하지만, 영어로 에세이를 쓰는 것은 나름의 장점이 있다. 에세이를 쓰면 쓸수록 내 이야기를 할 때에도 단어를 토하는 것이 아닌 제대로 된 글로 말하는 법을 배우고 있다. 그리고 그것이 생각보다 재미있다는 사실도 배우고 있다. 영어 실력은 잘 모르겠다. 

* 모순적이긴 하다만, 이 블로그에 쓰는 글은 거의 다 첨삭을 안 거친 초안인지라 토하는 것 뿐일지도 모른다.