In the moonlit hall of consciousness for a while

  
 If there's anything left to ask of life, it's this: staying alive. I mean,
 staying alive a few more days. How many days that "few more days" actually means,
 or exactly how many—death will arrive before I figure that out. It's come before.
  
 Every time I've screamed "Save me!" in this life,
 each time I've thought: I still frighten myself today.
 This compulsion from within that tells me
 stay alive, you must live a few more days—it truly troubles me.
 Again, those few more days! I still can't escape this trap.
 Because I can't escape, life is beautiful. For now, this is how I think.
  
 Life is about to end. Essentially this feeling tells a person:
 well then, let's start living now.
 You've been breathing for so long. Now try living a little.
 ...things like that. Then people start to live.
 So the feeling that life is running out remains relevant even today.
  
 What we don't remember, and
 what we don't want to remember—
 that age caught between these two,
 that's what we call maturity.
 Before and after this, people live alone.
  
 Some people's drinking and praying go on together.
 For some, when drinking begins, praying stops.
 For some, praying begins precisely because drinking has started.
 I don't know about the rest. I haven't met them yet.
 Where I am in this crowd, or if I'm there at all, I don't know either.
 If I knew, at least there'd be a chance to live the rest of my life in peace.
  
 When I close my eyes in exhaustion, I see two hands—my mother's.
 When I open my eyes in restlessness, I see two eyes—my lover's.
 Both sadden me, because both are fleeting.
 When day ends, only my own hands remain before my eyes.
  
 Actually, I live within a kind of illness.
 There's no medicine to cure this illness,
 there are only doctors who can worsen it.
 I'm making the illness worse. My friendship with doctors grows.
 I know no other path beyond this. I still have to live today.
  
 On my way home, certain eyes keep watching. I know them.
 Once they wanted to return home. After growing up, they no longer want to.
 I'm growing up too. Gradually learning to return to the wrong home.
 Now everything tastes bland. Even returning home. Perhaps this is what growing up means.
  
 No one knows me. So life can't recognize me either.
 Everyone knows me. So life can no longer recognize me.
 Both are true. One truth from childhood, another from adulthood.
 Lately I don't enjoy living, but when I do live, I still enjoy it.
 The same person, sometimes grown, sometimes small. Don't go looking for birth dates to understand age.
  
 The cat in front of me laps up milk with little sounds, or
 I'm dunking a toast biscuit in strong milk tea—
 I don't remember ever thinking about these two things before.
 Now I think about them, and it occurs to me: given the chance, any damn thing could be a genius!
  
 I didn't want to live my own way.
 You have to live your own way—the fathers and uncles never taught this.
 Whoever has nothing to do, that's who lives their own way. This is what I learned.
 Now I think these very thoughts are the source of all our sickness.
  
 A kind of unbearable awareness of death has kept me alive and left me here for life.
 Today I understand: I too needed some sleep.