A Time of Lost Name ≈ The Water Ghost

I love to see the water. The ocean or the river? All have their own charm. By looking at them, I forget everything around me and even myself. I sometimes fear seeing them for too long, as if I will be taken by them for good. Or is that what I wish for?

In Korea, there is a story about the water ghost. This story does not apply to a specific person but to any person who died in the water. Most of the time, it does not matter who and when they died but how much the strength of their sorrow and grudge remained strong. Any form of water can have them. A river, pond, sea, ocean, and canal. It is an invisible pure force of emotion that grasps people who are swimming or around in the water. Because of this, the story about the water ghost is only handed down by someone’s experience or from the observer.

Invisible hand, someone said,
There is an invisible hand, someone shouted,
Only the sound of water and echo left.

One guy went to the river with his friend. He sat near the riverside and looked in the distance. When he realised it, he was already in the water. Cold and sharp water surrounded him. Beneath it, a strong force grasped his feet, legs, and his waist. He tried to shout to help, but he could not make any sound from his voice. Empty voices float in the air.

Some stories make that invisible hand in the form of a woman's ghost, but I believe that is an unnecessary addition to make the sudden death understandable. Not all events and accidents have their own reason for explaining rational ideas. Sometimes, sadly, it just happens. How can someone explain so wholly put the invisible and strong force of the water? It tricks us into looking at them for uncountable times and calls us to come close to the deep centre until it captures us dead. When someone gets possessed by the water, it is not a meditation but a time of empty thought or lost self, a time of lost name. Ultimately, our brain waves synchronise with the water wave and become the water. However, any form of the still image, painting or photograph, figurative or abstract, fixes the force into a fixation and mummifies it into a stuffed thing. Awe and wonder, we have followed through the extracted ghost. An empty ghost, a visualised ghost. How much that sensation or emotion is strong enough to shock us, it does not empty us. It does not grasp us into the water and become the same.

What is the movement? What is the moving image? This question struck me for a long time. It is maybe a water ghost. It possesses us and grasps us into the water, changing our brain waves into something else, something other than human waves.