<The Flower Path of a 52Year Old Inner Room Door>

My mother's memory has grown hazy, so she cannot say exactly when it began.

I asked my older brother and sister, and they told me: 1973, the year after our grandmother passed.

For fifty-two years, this door stood as the guardian of the inner room — used for twenty years,

 then discarded during a home renovation.

I was just past twenty at the time. Someday it will find use again, I thought, and kept it as it was, 

stored away in a shed.

When I brought it out again after all these years, the sound came back on its own the rolling slide of the door beneath my small childhood hands.

The years had taken their toll: dust had settled in, the joints had opened, the wood had warped. 

I applied adhesive and clamped every part I could.

For the peeling section at the bottom, I tried to match the color using water boiled from acorn shells 

but I am no restoration specialist, and the clumsiness remains.

In the autumn of September 2022,on a beach on Imjado in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, 

I collected reeds that had lived close to styrofoam refuse, then been swept ashore by some wave 

and dried to death. I fixed them to one side of the door frame,

and photographs taken at the time were printed on hanji paper and applied like traditional window paper.

And so, to the inner room door that had exhausted its purpose and stood alone in a shed, I reattached the stopped time. The door is now ready to begin another use.

So many things are used once and discarded.

Somewhere, they can be used again. My life, too, is not something used once and thrown away it is something that has been used again. Someday it will be used again, 

in yet another form. When that time comes, may it walk only flower strewn paths.

-Written while working on the repurposing of the inner room door, August 12, 2025-