The skies above Pusan continue to hemorrhage rain like the slit throat  of a bull.  Empty eyed hoards of Gwee Shin continue to flow over the streets  like the acidified rain in the gutters and open sewer ducts.  All of the  Gwee Shin but one.  While the masses radiate towards a central phantom  point, a lone pale ghost of a woman breaks off from the nether worldly  migration and begins a small pilgrimage towards the north end of the city. 

   Relentless rain passes effortlessly through her dim form.  The raindrops  don't roll down her sallow sculpted shoulders.  The moisture doesn't touch  her long black hair.  Not even the winds can pierce her aural veil of  nothingness.  Her lips cross her face like the underbellies of two ruby  snakes; her nipples point slightly to the left and right, and her lower back  is arched concavely in opposition to the easy roll of her hips leading down  to taught cheeks and thighs.  But as her calves narrow below her knees, they  drop into an airy void of space; as she has no feet, and floats steadily  above the pavement.   

  Neither does her mouth emit the low moan that is coursing forth from  other Gwee Shin.  She blows silently north along with the howling wind.   Past the umbrellas of street market shoppers.  Through the Tongnae subway  station; past the students at Pusan National University; no one seems to see  her.  She blows up city hills and through rain soaked children playing in  the street.  Perhaps one of the small girls whom she flowed through felt the  emanations of spirit in her little heart and bones, but she did nothing more  than tremble momentarily with a sudden twinge of inexplicable grief.  

   Up through the streets of Kuso Dong and Nopo Dong.  Eventually coming  to one of the Northern corners of Pusan, and a road leading up into the  mountains; up the road; she passes through oncoming cars; past a large  verdant terraced farming plot maintained by many gardeners; past soju bongs,  soft drink machines and a closed coffee cart; past quiet walkers who fail to  see her; finally arriving at the North Gate of Pomosa Temple.

    A freshly shaven monk in his new model Korando sport utility vehicle  sees her as he drives down the cobbled temple road; but after briefly  inspecting her form in a single mindful moment, he averts his eyes, as he is  not unaccustomed to such spectral sights at this holy place.  Shortly after  he clicks open his hand phone and dials a fellow monk by the name of  Sang-Tong, who answers after the first ring.  The monk doesn't bother to  open the conversation with a greeting, "Sang-Tong, when was the last time  you saw a Gwee Shin spirit on the temple grounds?" asks the driving monk  in rapid Korean. 

    "So, they are walking again.", Sang-Tong replies.  "I've heard of such  movement of late; many friends have seen them throughout the city ever since  the onset of monsoon season."

   " Yes, very curious.  I hadn't heard, but I've only arrived home from a  retreat in Kyungju this morning.  Do you fear the coming of a darkness?"

    "No, I have no fear.  But there is an end to such appearances.  Perhaps  we shall witness an event of transition ... it would seem that the signs of  such change are rising."    

   " Hmmm, perhaps.  Have you already taken your afternoon meal?".  

   " No, not yet.  Let's have the special at that fantastic restaurant  near the University, the one with cooked and raw fish.". 

   "Yes, that would be nice.  I'll ask Master Yee if he'll dine with us  today.  Let's meet there in an hour.".   

   " Excellent.  Maybe we'll see some more of the Gwee Shin as we pass  through the city.".  

   "Perhaps.  I hope so.  I'll see you there."     

   " See you ...", answered Sang-Tong, clicking his hand phone shut and  reopening it to dial Master Yee's number.

      The foregrounds of the temple show few signs of activity as the Gwee  Shin passes.  It is a slow time of day, and the tourists are few in the  heavy rain.  Most of the monks are busy with chores, studies and meditation  within the Temple's inner sanctums.  She flows up and over the paths;  veering easily to the right, through the lush greenery of the mountain  temple; over a creek that is alive and flooding with rain.  Up a dirt path,  winding around and through a small unmanned guard post.  The sides of the  road are thick with pine trees and bamboo shoots; contained by wire fencing.  Into a clearing, a pagoda rises to the left, and to the right a single  floor, long box shrine composed mainly of rain streaked Plexiglas panels. 

    Rising high above the roof of the shrine sits a giant golden Buddha who  wears a jewel and heart stone encrusted crown, with heavy, sleepy slitted  eyes gazing peacefully down at the foreground.  He sits atop a multi-tiered  platform of granite slabs and is surrounded by nearly sixty smaller wrought  iron statues of various other Buddha.  Amongst the assembly of of Buddha's,  most sitting with legs akimbo, there are lovers and warriors; healers,  conquerors, invigorators and devastators; ascetics and hedonists ... ugly  dragon headed gods and peaceful cosmic ponderers show don't bother to open  their eyes.  One is enshrouded in flames while another stands atop a beast  ... some possess the moustache and beard of a man, while others lapse into  androgyny.

     The Gwee Shin climbs a few of the platforms tiers before coming to a  standstill before the central golden Buddha.  She stands for a moment before  the giant statue which dwarfs her opens its eyes.  In an instant, the temple  grounds surrounding the congregation of Buddha has disappeared ... blinked  out of existence.  All that is left is the Gwee Shin, the giant gilded  Buddha and his sixty companion Buddha, floating amidst the constant colorful  light pulses that compose Brahma-Space ... the trans-dimensional creation  point ... the nexus of all things; a state which is composed of nothing less  than sonic vibrations ... a place where even light exists as sound.  All of  the Buddha have become active and alive in their sonic state, as if they'd  never been sleeping on the temple grounds in the first place.  Anchored in  the middle of the orbiting minor Buddha's, Giant Goldie and the Gwee Shin  remained fixed.

    "What shall I be called?" asked the Gwee Shin to the giant golden  Buddha.     

    "You shall be ?Kum?Yang,", answered the smiling giant in gentle  transonic thought waves."

    "Why have you summoned me from my sleep dream Golden Buddha?". 

    "It was no me who awakened you and your kind to roam this city;  perhaps it was simply the monsoon storms ... I do not choose to know."   

    "Yes, I understand your place amongst the way of things,", she answered  bearing a slight frustration in her thoughts. " None of my kind are able to  rest these days.  We find ourselves roaming the streets, seemingly aimless  ... as so many of us did even when we lived as humans.".

    "You, Kum Yang," answered the Golden Buddha," Of all spirits, have  dreamed long enough to understand the way of things ... and the slowness of  knowing the purpose of some many events which occur without warning.  Such  as the current predicament of you and your sisters.". 

   " Yes," she answered emptily. 

   A spectrum of electro-sonic colors blazed into infinity around the  floating beings as the Golden Buddha opened his mouth to answer, " Kum Yang,  I will tell you something. Understand it however your nature dictates."

   Her ghostly face perked up with a spark of hope.    " You and your sisters ... I assume your dream has been interrupted ...  not by some cosmic gamers, engineers or tricksters ... but by the living  dreamers ... those who still survive amongst men ... and I am doubtful that  those fleshly conjurers are even aware that they've brought you up from the  reaches of your dream."

   Still looking hopeful, Kum Yang screwed up her face with confusion in a  subtle way.  "I don't claim to understand this," she replied, "But after  all Golden Buddha, you are the god of such small moments and revelations.  I  will consider your prophesy.  Thank you for this consideration.  I must  return to my sisters now."

   "Yes, Kum Yang, it is time for us," he gestured to the orbit of living  sonic Buddha's circling them with outstretched and flattened, golden palms, "to return to our own peaceful dreams ... along our stretch of the  dimensional continuum, and you to your earthly plight.  I have shared all  that I am able.  Let us join in the union of transmigrational pleasure that  will recorporate us with the realm of earthly matter."     At that, the Gwee Shin, the Giant Golden Buddha, and the many other's  circling them shimmered and flickered into a sub molecular orgy of sonic  spasm ... vibrating through the onion-like layers of the dimensional  continuum.  Their faces saddled with the instantaneous euphoria of the  pan-cosmic orgasm, and stretched and distorted into the sonic infinity that  would deliver them from Brahma-Space and back to the static matter state in  the land of men.

    Aside from the pelting rain, all was still on the temple grounds.  Kum  Yang's life electricity's were still scattered from the trip across  negasonic-timespace.  She lay down arms outstretched, to do nothing more  than lay still above the granite slabs as she allowed her energy to  recollect and stabilize.  In an inner mental mantra, she reminded herself  that considered properly, the chaos that is the order of al being could be a  comfort; that the uncertainty of consciousness in any form is an inverted  pillar that insures the ineveibility of motion and change; it was this that  would give her the strength ... whether she willed it or not ... to carry on  with the plight of her sisters.

   Some time later, the recollected Gwee Shin descended from Pomosa's  mountain temple grounds; to the concrete streets of Pusan, to rejoin the  exodus of diminishing distances. 

(...to be continued soon with Part 4 ... Creatures Of Habit ... )