2016년 3월 13일 일요일

The danger of haircutting & endless chatter


I hate the hairdresser. I really do. He had totally changed my life from before, leaving me the "well-cut hair". A week after I went to the beauty parlor, all I could feel was a cold, slimy head of a serpent. I looked into a mirror, and hissed in shock. How pathetic I looked in the long body. Then, finally every hair fell down from my body. I got shocked again. Oh my hair!


Then, with a sudden shock, I realized something. This was all because of our local hairdresser. Some might think this as absurd, but that moment, I could argue with everything I had to prove he was the reason for my distress.
 He was the most garrulous person I’ve ever met. He told me his life story which seemed a fabrication. He only focused on his story cutting my hair. Sometimes acting, jumping, yelling… He didn’t even see my head when his sharp haircutting scissors were heading toward my head.
You should know how fictional and useless the story was. I’ll abbreviate for you, but it’s still too long, so I want you to be patient. The story starts with the youth of the hairdresser. I’ll tell you the story as if I were him.


Originally, I was a painter, a desperately poor painter. One day, a friend of mine who was a novelist came to me and suggested a plan: I pretend to be dead, and he sells my works. You know, there were artists who became famous after their deaths. However, death itself doesn’t have significant influence. Death with STORY touches hearts. So he brought me various stories, and one of them was quite good. This is what he wrote.

He is in the dark room. No one could disturb his space, which has been locked for last 10 years. Before he hid in this room, he used to be one of the best artists in the world. But a car accident changed everything. He lost his both arms, and that meant the end of his career. He thought his life was meaningless then. That's why he trapped himself in his narrow cell, running away from the world. However, on that day, with a dim sunlight shining between the curtain, something sparked through his mind. He walked to his canvas crusted with dust. Now he is going to start his art again.
He carefully held his brush with his foot, and dipped it into a pink paint bucket. However, he recognized that the pink paint was all dried. He tried it in several different colors, but they were also dried lifelessly. He couldn't handle his disappointment and anger. He threw his brush away, and it flew to his cat Hannah. She cried, and stared at him. "Oh, I'm sorry." For apology, he passed a can of tuna to Hannah. But as he opened it, he found the tuna was dried up also. "Damn! Nothing's usable in this room!" yelled the painter. Hannah indifferently walked away from the can.
While he was sitting on his sofa hopelessly, something peculiar started to happen. The sunlight from the window got brighter and brighter, and it filled the whole room. It was so bright that he couldn't even open his eyes -- it was a white-out. Everything fell apart, and he mindlessly traveled in the magical illusion. After a few minutes, he could barely have a vision in front of him. saw something in a blurry light, and slowly approached to see it; but he couldn't help feeling disapointed again -- it was Hannah. Nothing wonderful, beautiful, or inspiring, but just his cat. He tried to kick her, but suddenly he felt dizzy and fell.
When he woke up, he was lying on his room. He could discover his cat Hannah lying down on the ground. In front of him, there stood an opened tuna can, and Hannah. This weird dream obviously changed something in his mind. Like the brightness he saw in the dream, he could feel his consciousness was also being lightened. That was the moment he realized the shocking truth that he have been ignoring for a long time -- It has been 9 years since he ran out of tuna cans.
He saw the tuna can which he thought was dried. It actually had nothing in it; it was an empty can, opened several years ago. He tried to recall the memory of the time he fed his cat for the last time, but he couldn't -- Hannah died long ago, but he kept believing that she did not. "It was all in my mind. Oh my god..." he murmured. Then, he reached the thought that he himself is no different from his dead cat. He was also dying alone in the dark room, with a dried paint buckets instead of tuna cans. 

I decided to go with this story. He gave me a new name and a passport. The name was “Mitchell”

           “You must take less than a minute to name it. Who on earth does an artist have that kind of dull name?” I complained. He said, “Ohhhh, I'm soooo sorry, my dear friend, but you can change it anytime! Now you are done with dry bread. Enjoy the rest of your life with a palace, tasty food, and servants. Do whatever you want. Didn’t you say you want to take over KFC? You’ll have enough money for your pieces!”


           
Since young, I always dreamed about being a boss of the chicken restaurant. I am totally confident of frying chickens, and I do love the scent, taste, all of it. I was just captivated. Fortunately, my friend’s plan hit the jackpot, so I could buy stocks of KFC, and finally I could control the company. However, my happiness didn’t last long. One of our chain stores sold a raw chicken by mistake, and someone sent us a written protest. Simultaneously, it was released to the media. People urged a worldwide boycott. Wait a moment, I will bring it for you.

I should have said he doesn't have to. It should be stopped at least at this point. However, I didn’t say anything, and he did bring the letter and started reading.


To. Head of Dunnae KFC Chicken Store
Good Afternoon. Weather has been much warmer these days, though it’s still cold enough or adorable chickens to lose all their body heat during delivery. Well, for you, Head of Dunnae Chicken Store, I reckon coldness did not bother you while frying chickens in front of sparkling oil :D I hope you didn’t freeze yourself last night. What I am really concerned about is the well fare of you oil. Inferring from last night’s bloody experience of chicken party, my friends are pretty sure that you poor oil is mistreated. When I walked into my classroom, half of the classmates were gone. All of them went to the hospital for stomachache. Since the meals school provides are all strictly tested, they are not the reason of this bloody disaster. Then, that leaves only one explanation. YOU. It’s you that mistreated you oil. It’s your oil that failed to cook chicken perfectly. And it’s that bloody chicken that caused this crisis.

I don’t want to read further since there are many harsh words. Well… so I ran away and came here.

            And he started to talk about how he became a hairdresser. DO YOU GET THE POINT OF IT? This is an ABBREVIATION of the original one. Furthermore, I just asked him to cut my hair for 2cm! However, it took more than 3 hours, and he totally messed it up, making it looks like a flying eagle.

Also, the time with him made me painful. I can still hear him laughing, crying, and yelling at me. It's traumatic. Yes.. I’m going crazy.. Now I know what I really have to do: to be the Kungfu master. Let's go to the Shaolin Monastery. I will be back, you hairdresser!! I will shave my head and practice silent performance. Let me see if you can crumble me again! If you can't, then I'll make you bitterly feel the world of kungfu!!

댓글 3개:

  1. I see a stream of cousciousness here ㅋㅋ It was brilliant to use many chain writings in one story. They were not that related, but by setting up a chatty character, those stories could be unified into one. I think there is a little lack of plausibility, but it isn't serious. It was a really enjoyable story overall :)

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  2. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
    1. I didn't know three chain writings could be made into a story that has 2? 2.5? layers. The story is funny in itself that diverse crazy stories are intertwined, and you can never know what to expect.
    2. And all of it still makes sense so it's nice.
    3. I also really liked the photo use. The flying hair...hehe
    4. One of the ideas that came to my mind just after reading this was that this could be an interview between a schizophrenic person and his/her psychiatrist. The person comes to counseling session, hair shaved and ready for Kungfu, and starts blabbering about all this stuff...
    4.5. but this might mess up the story even more..never mindㅋㅋㅋ
    5. OR a customer of the hairdresser's painting who was moved by the death story...
    6. Never mind. I just wanted to say I like it

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  3. I am sorry to be so mean to you guys, but I have to be brutally honest. This made no sense to me! And when did I ever encourage you guys to incorporate all these jumbles of chainwriting? I didn't say to use three. I said to use one. I said to make sense. I said to take this seriously. This is very similar to Josh's and Leo's in that I am not sure who is who or where is where, and I give up reading because I don't want to read "stream of consciousness." Jen and Jaehyun are wrong. First of all, this is not brilliant as Jaehyun says. Second of all, Jen - above - You didn't three chain writings could be combined? That's because THEY CAN'T. I am totally mengboonging right now. For the haircut, why not have the hairdresser tell this story to the first person narrator in bits of pieces WHILE they get their hair cut. Using two first person narraotors and jumping around in time just confuses the reader. Be nice to your reader! Anyways, I give up. Sorry I am mean. I promise to be nice next time by only assigning TOEFL essays.

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