Four or five times around the pool were enough to tire him to a respite of ten minutes sitting on its edge and contemplating the movements of the people around him. Their forms transcribed into ideas concerning what he thought their lives might be like; and from there, feeling and the musical notes encroached from distant spaces within his imagination. There had been a time when the whole world seemed to him full of connections. Perhaps that is what made his childhood memories so special: as a child he believed that their meaning would go on forever. The temporary nature of family marshmallow roasts and monopoly games with his father; tire swings and neighbor's tree houses; bicycle radios fastened to handlebars; selling snow cones to passing cars; bicycle routes; meatloaves, potatoes, and onion rings; bi bi bop and kimchi chige; that trip to Arkansas at a distant relative's house and how he and his sister had played in the snow with a "cousin" the whole day; his sister.... Oh, how painful! He didn't want to think of that ever. He wanted to find the beauty of the present moment. How good it was to stretch out into motion; to feel the power of his arms; and the embrace of water. He thought about how on his walk here an ordinary happening had touched him without even then being aware of it. A young boy standing at a curb with other pedestrians waiting for the light to change rocked a metal, rectangular trash container, which swung back and forth on a hinge. Sang Huin put his hand on his head in passing; and the world could not have seemed more rich and connected by this impersonal incident than if Sung Ki's Buddha had manifested himself supplying answers to every question that Sang Huin had ever had in his head. This contentment and absorption in the poetic qualities of the present moment lasted only that long: a moment. He told himself that he continually wanted to be in the present moment as fully as this no matter how banal or what lonely patterns it consisted of. It was better than searching through memories of people long gone who had no capability of returning to him again. He pulled his dangling legs from the pool. So much came and went. It was hideous in a way: he could not determine who or what was important. He wasn't even sure how much people were supposed to mean to him, if anything at all. Of his friend, Yang Kwam, what importance to the long- term aspect of his life did this man make? Disconnection ran amuck looting the benign corpses of good memories. After sitting himself on a bench in front of the pool, a sadness at the loss of his friendship with Yang Kwam made him feel age that he did not possess.