Plein Air Painting of Sunflower Blossoms Amidst the Scorching Heat

#. An Unwelcome Guest That Arrived One Day: Gout

I honestly never thought I would develop a protruding belly, nor could I have ever imagined that life would become so harsh that exercising would feel impossible.

Back when I was young, running around in my rural village, and from middle school onwards, doing 5,000 jump ropes every morning, running 10 kilometers along a mountain path to school, and mostly running back home too—getting fat was simply out of the question, and developing a belly was physically impossible.

By high school, my chest was already measuring 105 centimeters, and I was well-known at school for having a great physique with a solid six-pack. I was quite confident in my body.

However, leaving my hometown for an unfamiliar place to scrape by and survive led to grueling physical labor. Eventually, through working by day and studying by night, I ended up changing careers. As expected, changing careers didn't magically make life any better. Driven by excessive workload and stress, one day, the joint of my left big toe swelled up, plunging me into excruciating pain that made even walking a struggle.

Yet, drinking alcohol—which helped soothe my nostalgia for my hometown and forget the misery of life and destined suffering—was something I couldn't quit. Perhaps it was an inescapable fate.

Twenty years have passed since my first flare-up. Now, I hardly drink at all, but the tophi (gout nodules) on my big toe, once removed by surgery, have popped out again like hard marbles, inflicting physical agony. And now, even my left knee and ankle have joined in...

A moment ago, after responding to a friend's call and walking two laps around a school playground, my toes are throbbing. It's agonizing. I barely manage to endure the heat—which feels hotter than a Finnish sauna—in a 40-plus-year-old walk-up building without an elevator, relying on an old air conditioner. But climbing up and down to the first floor with my aching knees feels like it has finally reached its limit.

And yet, leaving this place is not an option.

Things keep getting worse, and my body grows more exhausted by the day. My 60th birthday is practically tomorrow, and my debts refuse to shrink. My paintings, posted online at half-price, haven't received a single inquiry. Even so, I don't want to give up painting.

When my body hurts terribly, green capsules of Taxen (naproxen) work wonders. But I can't blindly rely solely on painkillers. I brew and drink Smilax rhizome (toboknyeong) and oxknee roots (useul), but there is no improvement.

Twenty years of suffering has now become chronic.

Have I lived too long with nothing to do? Compared to friends who have already departed this world, perhaps I have lived a long time.

Yet, my painting skills have not yet reached the level I desire, nor have I achieved what I set out to do, so I cannot die just yet.

No hope is in sight. At the same time, I cannot just die right now.

It’s not that I didn't expect life to turn out this way, but I didn't want to think it would flow down this path.

What is life! To be alive is to be accompanied by pain. Whether physical or mental, suffering is an unavoidable part of existence.

Did people who live the lives they want receive some kind of special privilege? — I sometimes catch myself having such useless thoughts. Is a life thrown into innate unfairness and enduring a gloomy destiny truly a harsh reality where the wings of hope can never spread again?

When I see artificial intelligence far surpassing my own capabilities, and find myself struggling in some fleeting moment to squeeze out financial profits by using AI, I truly wonder, "Why on earth am I alive?"

#. Finding Myself Through the Act of Painting

Yes, in the end, I comfort myself through my painting work. It is the pillar that sustains me and one of the meanings of my life. Let's call it my only escape hatch—something that allows me to preserve a shred of self-respect when faced with a friend's mocking remark about my grand life: "What have you even done until now?" — "Such garbage human beings aren't worth dealing with," but am I a petty person after all? I can't honestly say my heart hasn't been hurt by the words of such trash sometimes.

Tomorrow, the scorching heat will continue. Just like I did last year, if I can forget the agony of my body and mind by pouring the heat of the blistering summer all over a canvas, I suppose I can sleep tonight, even if it feels unfair.

Plein Air Painting of Sunflower Blossoms Amidst the Scorching Heat

Even without a breath of wind in the blistering heat wave, I wanted to capture a canvas full of sunflowers. Instead, I ended up sketching from 4:30 PM to 5:40 PM in the late afternoon, huddled under a tiny patch of shade by a senior center's wall.

Sweat poured down, my head spun, and I was gasping for breath... It was heat on a historic scale. Even last year, I went out for plein air painting more than four days a week during the summer heat, but it was never this severe.

The temperatures, baked to the absolute limit after a long drought, made it difficult even just to breathe.

<July 20th Air Field Plein Scene Shinbong Sketching Sunflower Village at —>

Today, August 14th, it hasn't rained even once. Even in the middle of the night, the temperature in my room—heated by the rooftop sunshine—refuses to drop below 30 degrees Celsius (86°F). The floor is burning hot, and the heat radiating from the concrete walls makes me realize all too well just how helpless a single old air conditioner is.

The water heated in the rooftop tank has already turned warm, so taking a shower doesn't offer any relief.

Was this what life was supposed to be like!

Why can't I escape this place?

And right in the middle of all this, I get scammed by my own brother... Let's laugh, let's laugh, hahaha.

When life hits a dead end like this, there is simply no way out.

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