This morning I am advised to stop breathing the air, which is full of smoke particulates -- very unhealthy -- esp for me because I am elderly. I will not take this advice. Yesterday was rushing wind -- today is flatly still and thick. More orange than pink. The news is similar except for the red of blood. No comfort there. We were warned.
So I will escape to far away and long ago -- to a group I never knew about. The place was not Korea yet because it was the year 572 after the death of Christ, which these people knew nothing about. The King Chinhung of the Silla Dynasty decided to organize a band of exceptional people to be leaders and examples. They were called the "Hawrang" or "Flower Boys."
First there is a little sexist story about a false start. Chinhung chose two women who attracted just the right sort of admiration, but then they became jealous and greedy. Chunjong, the most jealous, took violent means to be the only one. She invited her rival Nammo over for a little party (all other courtiers were told to leave the palace), got her drunk and pushed her into the river where she drowned. Somehow the king knew anyway and swiftly executed Chunjong.
Like an early Pope, he determined that women caused all the problems, so he would now deal only with young men. Celibacy was not part of the deal, but their goal was "rightness" and intimacy is necessary to a right life, so the boys who were drawn in were allowed to be close to each other. What can be learned only by passing wisdom from skin pressed again other skin was included. Since the two formal classroom skills were religion and combat, they also broke skin, flesh and bone, but only when necessary.
We do not know what they thought religion was, but this had been the territory of Confucian thought for a thousand years. Therefore, the Five Relationships were:
1. To serve the king with loyalty.
2. To serve one's parents with loyalty.
3. To always show loyalty to one's friends.
4. To never retreat in battle.
5. To never kill unnecessarily.
There were also Six Arts, Three Scholarly Occupations and Six Ways of Government Service. (I haven't found those lists.) These boy/men were something like Japanese Samurai or -- on the other side of the world -- King Arthur's Round Table. The prevailing account of this group is called the Samguk Sagi, written by Kim Busk in 1145 after the trajectory was mostly over.
The members of this group were not like the gladiators of Rome. Called "Flower Boys", they were androgenous, accomplished, noble and cultured. Think Prince.
Nor were they ineffective or unknown as individuals. Kim Yu-shin fought in the battle of Nangbisong in 629. Alcheon defended Chijung Castle in 638. Kim Wonsul fought off Chinese invaders during the Unification Wars of 668-676. Like Blackfeet Dog Soldiers who picketed themselves by driving their spears into the ground and tethering themselves to force standing their ground in the face of the enemy, the Flower Boys had no fear of death or mutilation. Once, to show contempt, they sent only two boys out to face an oncoming horde, an early model for Kamikazi who crashed their planes as living bombs.
This group was rediscovered in a manuscript called "The Chronicles of the Hwarang" in post war times needing sources of pride and rebuilding. Our times being what they are, this became a popular 2016 television period drama called "Hwarang: the Poet Warrior Youth". They're on YouTube. You will notice right away that they've given up the idea of excluding women from their love life. This leaves plenty of room for today's gay Flower Boys to invent an alternative. The existing television version seems to neglect the poetic and scholarly in order to appeal to those who love fly-through-the air swordplay and boy-band bravado.
Much of the tone seems to be controlled by the biggest fans, who are girls who love romance but are frightened and intimidated by full-scale sexual encounter. Theorists think this is where Michael Jackson's appeal came from, a clinging to childhood (in more than one way) while pretending to be worthy of sexual commitment.
More than one parishioner expressed in women's groups that they had been abused and therefore avoided all big hairy burly men as untrustworthy. They tended to relate to Asians and indigenous Americans -- the supple, smooth and bronze. Sometimes the ties were indeed through poetry and scholarship. Is there a niche here for a marvelous novel? Reading the many Twitters about moons and flowers, it seems only natural. I'll try a paragraph of pillow talk.
_________________________
Tonight the moon is only a silver slipper but it's warm so the lovers had moved out to a porch where the tall trees embraced that bit of sky elegance. One hand slid down the ribs along the side of the other and paused at the hip curve stretched over the crest of the pelvis, before moving around to cup one buttock just so.
The other responded with a slow surge against his lover's stomach and a gentle mouthing of his ear, then a swift, sharp bite on the lobe. Sliding hands, spread fingers, raking through the heavy dark hair that hung over shoulders glistening in the dim light, and lifted it away from the damp neck so that new air touched it gently, coolly.
Somewhere above an owl pronounced these words: "We are as one but we are also as two who speak to each other."
They smiled. "This is only one moment that cannot last more than one night and may never be repeated for tomorrow is battle where crimson blood will sheet its way down these beloved bodies and possibly end their lives. The worst would be if only one survived, for the grief would be endless."
Their mouths found each other and silenced any thought but faithfulness. In a thousand years would anyone even remember them or their dedicated group? What did it matter?
___________________
We forgot them but now we remember. The wars go on. Where are the Flower Boys when no one deserves loyalty? If we cannot breathe, who can live?
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