I gave my design students at MICA the assignment “Observe and React.” They had to observe the actions of three strangers on three occasions. They had to describe the events and then react to the events in separate paragraphs numbered one through six.

Jinhwan Kim is a Korean design student who speaks English as a second language. He struggles to translate his more abstract thoughts into English, and I had been helping him improve his more philosophical compositions. With this assignment, he surprised the heck out of me. He wrote beautifully and compassionately. I edited his language only slightly to soften some of the effects of translation, but some of those effects I left in. A little roughness in the texture of prose catches our reading eye and twists, just a bit, the way we see the world. [DB]

+

1: Observation

A young African-American woman loudly cursed in a bus. She cursed to the rhymes in a rap song. The bus was full with weary passengers returning home from work. No one in the bus bothered her, except the bus driver unkindly looking at her through a rearview mirror. But she made them feel uncomfortable with loud dirty slang. Few men around her enjoyed the song. The woman did not stop until I got off the bus.

2: Reaction

English is my second language. And I don’t master the slang in English. I was able to translate less than ten percent of the woman’s vocabulary. So I was not offended by her language. I could not look at her in the eyes, because she was very upset. I was once that upset when I found out my high-school friend was badly struck by bullies in an alley. I went crazy with the upset. So I’d understand her public manner if she experienced that kind of occasion. But she sang a song and enjoyed attracting public gaze. I wished I did not get on the bus.

3: Observation

An old couple walked by a bar at sunset. The couple walked in a very slow speed. They were well dressed with ironed pants, white shirts, a bow tie, shiny shoes, neat permed hair, white lacy gloves, and a glittering brooch. They seemed to be returning from a theatre or the special date for their 60th wedding anniversary. The man held the woman’s hand and both focused on walking. A drunken young man sat in front of the bar and looked at them. He might have been out there for a minute to take fresh air. Or maybe he just arrived at the bar. But he looked at the couple in the way that he wished to have someone to hold his hand. Not so long after, the couple passed by the bar and walked away. The man entered the bar. The sun still went down.

4: Reaction

I was happy to see the couple’s changeless love. They touched my heart. I smiled because of the romantic scene. I questioned to myself how long in my life I can hold my wife’s hand. Life is short. I want to be a good husband to my wife in a short life. In the other way, I imagined that the couple may be happy. They were just leaving the bar when I started to observe them. The drunken man sitting in the bar was their son. The parents asked their son to meet another alcoholic counselor, because he does not work but drinks every day and night. The son refused the suggestion and argued with the old parents. The reason for them to walk slowly is that the mother felt dizzy from the argument. The husband was helping her to walk. No one knows everything about others. I love my family.

5: Observation

A young woman read a book on a college campus at noon. She enjoyed the bright sunlight and cool breeze with a baby sleeping in a stroller. She sat on a steel-frame chair by a fountain. She wore dark sunglasses and a fashionable, wide-brimmed hat. A baby was sleeping under the bassinet sunshade.

6: Reaction

She seems to me little bit too young to have a baby. The baby may not be hers. She was a babysitter. I saw the fountain water was not clean and the sprayed water in the air going down to the bassinet. She and the baby nestled in the designated smoking area. I will be careful to hire a babysitter for my baby.

+

Jinhwan Kim loves simple, minimalist Latin and Korean typography. He is an MFA student in Graphic Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art.