Kyujin's SajuA Green Bamboo Crossing Summer on a Single Drop of WaterK-POP · 2006-05-26

용신: 水

In the middle of a summer field where the brazier glows day and night, one slender green bamboo stands alone and upright, honing its blue leaves, and of moisture there is only a thread left in it. It drives its roots stubbornly down into the parched ground while its leaf-tips take the whole weight of the sky's glare, so that although it wears the shape of a soft, yielding blade of grass, its frame runs straighter and tougher than a grown man's iron sword. Burning its own body to give light inside that heat, and all the while aching for one cool thread of rain — that is the pitiful, dazzling bearing that catches my eye before anything else.

Wood Rabbit — A Green Bamboo Crossing Summer on a Single Drop of Water

You were born as Yin Wood, the green spring grass and the soft flowering stalk, and beneath it you carry the Wood Rabbit day pillar with its well-set root. Meet you face to face and you are bright and warm and pliant as a willow branch in spring. Peel back one layer of that soft skin, though, and there stands a core straight as a bamboo stem that will not bargain. Yours is not a fate that leans on another. The bearing of standing on your own two feet and cutting your own road is set deep in your bones.

On top of this, the Performer structure with the hot flame of early summer spreads its power across both heaven and earth in your chart, so you were given at birth an eye that catches every misalignment and every speck. The quarter-beat others would smooth over, the one fingertip turned slightly wrong — your eye simply cannot pretend not to see it. The speech that goes straight for the heart of a thing without hesitating, and the wit that flashes alongside it, are talents that bloom from that same Performer's flame.

But look quietly at the Month Branch and the Year Branch of your chart and you will find Fire and Earth locked together, weaving the Resentment and the Ghost Gate deep into you. That energy is the true identity of the shadow that gnaws at your heart. Through the day you laugh among people as bright as a flame and pour out sharp corrections in the practice room, and then the dark comes down, you sit alone in the car, and that same fire cools and spreads inward. Why did I say it like that. Did she take a wound from it. You whip yourself that way not because you are cruel or hard, but because behind the Performer's sharpness there also coils the Ghost Gate's raw antenna, which feels another's pain on your own skin.

You are not pretending to have set your perfectionism down. You are thrashing to set it down in order to survive. The Performer's fastidiousness and the Resentment's self-blame are woven into your chart as warp and weft, so you cannot help being merciless with yourself. Then do not pay self-blame back with more self-blame. It was that raw nerve that drew up the knife-clean dance line and the fine-grained expression no one else can imitate. That pain is only the shadow of your uncommon gift.

Your chart is more than fit for the life of a performer, one who draws every nerve in the body taut as a bowstring and pours it out on a stage. The Performer's energy overflowing in you does not know how to sit still. It has to burst out as movement, as sound, or as language before it can breathe. The doggedness with which you split a beat fine and make it your own, dropping not one motion as you dance, is the strength of the Prosperity lodged in your day branch. And the power to load a single fingertip or a single glance with flavour until the room is charmed is the working of the Peach Blossom that sits in that same branch.

That you stand as the youngest of the group and still hold the discipline of the dancing is no accident at all. The Metal energy that would govern you does not show its face in your chart, so rules handed down by others choke you. Yet before a principle you yourself believe to be right, you hold the sternest measure of anyone. You cannot demand of another what you have not perfected in yourself, and so your sisters know the weight of your word and follow it without argument.

Now let me answer what you asked about creating your own songs and your own dances. Inside you a spring toward creation rises and does not run dry, so that road is not a choice but a certainty. Only, to shoulder a heavy load and open a wide venture at this very moment is too early. Right now the Fire in your chart runs so strong that the tree is close to scorching, and if you take a whole song on your back and try to lead the venture, it is your own tender leaves that will blacken first.

So do not step to the front and try to raise a great house. Make this the season of studies, of gathering fragments no bigger than your fingernail. As with this lyric credit, let your colour bleed out quietly — one line of a lyric, one killing part of choreography laid in. The time to put your own name up and roar at the world as a whole maker is best after 2030, when cool rock and clear water pour in and govern your fire. There is no cause whatsoever to hurry.

Your day master's root is set firmly in the day branch, so you stand in the frame of a strong self, and the Steady Wealth of the Year Branch has laid down solid ground beneath you. You were born with a vessel able to carry the fortune that comes in. Yours is not a fate driven or tossed about by money because it cannot bear wealth. The structure in which your craft and your sweat work the earth and bear treasure runs through you like flowing water.

Your wealth does not come in by sitting still and inheriting, nor by hoping for a windfall. The sweat you shed on the stage, the sound of your feet honed at an hour when others sleep, every single word you bring out of yourself — these convert straight into costly value and fill the vault. Skill itself becomes money in this chart, so your own worth is the surest asset you hold. And because you knew the preciousness of things from a young age and keep your own share neatly, there is no fear that your head will be turned and the money squandered, even handling a large sum early.

The one thing to watch is that at every bend of the years, people may appear who try to take the middle of what you have made, or to blur what is yours. The partnership or the investment that comes wearing your colours and offering something sweet is best kept at a distance. Do not bury your money in cloud-like papers you cannot hold or in another's word. Harden the channel into firm assets that belong wholly to your own name, such as your copyright and your intellectual property. What to do from this month is plain. Separate the royalties and the special earnings your sweat brought in from your ordinary working funds, and begin by tying them up in a separate savings account you do not touch.

The Metal energy that stands for your partner does not put its head out openly among the six characters now revealed. It lies quietly hidden in the hidden stems inside the Year Branch and the Month Branch. This is called concealment, and it means your bond sprouts not in a loud place where people's tongues turn, but in a quiet shade little seen, or on a floor of long-built trust. A bond that blazes like a flame at first sight pours oil on your already parched chart and cannot last. Only someone like a cool rock, who keeps beside you in silence and becomes your shade, lets your soul drop anchor.

You hold the Peach Blossom in your day branch, so it is only natural that eyes rest on you and follow you even when you simply stand there. But your bar is set very high, and you carry a fastidiousness that cannot let a partner's slackness or slip of the tongue pass, so meeting a bond that fully satisfies you is not easy. The one who is all polish and forward talk, of a fiery make, you will tire of and push away first. Wait, as is right for you, for a partner of a sturdy and solid grain who will not try to instruct you and who takes your knife-edge temper in silence.

As for the energy of marriage, it is auspicious to weigh it calmly once you are into your thirties and your inside has softened. This chart has a clear territory of its own and a thorough self-discipline, so if you try to merge daily life wholly with someone at an early age, you will choke and spring back. Only a mature bond that can respect each one's own desk and each one's own work stays peaceful for long. What to do from today is one thing. When a small flaw in someone beside you catches your eye, whether a colleague or a friend, begin the practice of silence by holding the urge to correct it in your chest for just half a day.

You asked why your eyes keep opening before dawn. The reason is written plainly in the elements of your chart. You are caught between parched earth and a fierce flame, and among the six characters confirmed there is no Metal showing to cool the heat, while the Water leans perilously on a single drop in the Month Stem. When Fire rises too high the heart and the blood come to a boil and the nerves stand on end, and this blocks deep sleep and dries out the inside of the head. However calmly you may laugh on the outside, a cauldron is seething within, so around the hours before dawn the energy surges and your eyes fly open of themselves.

Further, because Metal is hidden, the lungs, the large intestine and the whole breathing tract are dry and vulnerable in you from birth. That you took rhinitis when you began training around twelve, and that you had to sleep in a mask to guard your throat before you were settled, was your body going out by instinct to look for moisture in order to live. Take dry air in and the lining of the bronchi dries first, and from that the heat climbs upward and turns easily into skin trouble, sleeplessness or headache.

In daily life you must strictly forbid the caffeine and the sharp foods that steal your water, and always keep a clean humidifier at your bedside to bring the temperature of the air down and cool. Learn too the way of breathing in which you hold a mouthful of cold water and swallow it slowly, to settle a chest that beats without rest. Only remember that this is a weak point appearing because the energy of your given chart leans to one side. Repeated sleeplessness and inflammation in the nose must be taken to a doctor of the ear, nose and throat for a careful examination and treatment. Do not forget that wisdom.

The year 2026, the Fire Horse year, is a great proving ground for you. Fire already fills your natal chart, and now the year brings a Fire Horse whose stem and branch alike are one sea of flame, so the green bamboo that is you sits down in the middle of a furnace. The Performer and the Creative overlap, and your gift and your fire will burst out brilliantly enough to shake the world, but the price is that the sap of your body runs to the bottom and your nerves are drawn past taut to the point of snapping.

The fortunate thing is that the Metal of the Metal Rabbit cycle you are passing through and the Fire of this year join in the heavens, so on the face of it the sails are up in harmony and a following wind. Stages will be made without great mishap and your name outside will strike the sky, but in truth there is a hidden suffering of a fine front and a scorched inside. Around June by the solar calendar the clash of energy reached its peak, so you were liable to fall to illness or crushing fatigue and had to stake your life on pacing everything. Only when the coming November and December arrive will cool water reach you at last, wet your burning throat and bring you steady.

Today, the fifth of September in 2026, is a Water Horse day. In this evening hour the Water of the Noble Seal comes down from the sky like the sweet rain that wets a dry shoot, ready to wash your head clear and hand you the warm care of your elders, while underfoot the Fire of the branch still burns as the element you must govern, so it is a day where fortune and misfortune stand evenly against each other. On one side a benefactor's hand and a good opening come near, and on the other a driven, hurried heart catches you by the ankle. Tonight, do not wrap your head around a new plan. Put your feet in warm water, empty out your thinking, and give yourself to the passing hours. That is the wisest conduct.

Your life draws the track of the late bloomer in its clearest form. In your early years you burn your own body and make your name early, and as the seasons pass you take on a cool wisdom and a solid authority. By the six characters confirmed you stand under the beating sun of early summer, but the flow of your Fortune Cycles runs backwards, moving toward the cool autumn and the deep winter's waterway, so in the matter of seasons the heavens are taking your side.

The Metal Rabbit cycle you now stand in, from seventeen to twenty-six, is a passage in which a blue-edged blade trims your hair while underfoot your own stubbornness and pride grow fast. The severe weight of the Fierce Authority and the obstinacy of the Companion strike against each other, so bearing a heavy responsibility inside an organisation and suffering a stress nobody sees is simply the toll of passing through.

There is one thing you must keep in mind above all. This year of 2026 at twenty, and next year of 2027 at twenty-one, are a run of two consecutive warning years in which a fierce fire drives through and shakes your Vital Water dangerously. In these two years, forcing a venture open or grinding your own body down will certainly bring harm, so you must put your strength only into holding what stands and firming the inside.

Once past this ridge, when you reach the Metal Tiger cycle from twenty-seven to thirty-six, the Noble Authority like an upright rock will gather your fire in and set the frame of your standing straight. Even so, the year 2034 at twenty-eight and the year 2035 at twenty-nine are likewise a run of two warning years, when a forest catches fire, and you should be wary of conflict with colleagues or a loss of wealth. Carve that into your mind. The most dazzling golden season of your life is 2031, when you turn twenty-five, when a vast lake fills the parched land and your gift ripens into whole fruit. And from the Earth Rat cycle after forty-seven, a deep sea's waterway will wet your roots for the rest of your days, so the further into your later years you go, the more you will stand as a great teacher and artist whom the world respects.

Set the mirror of ESFJ, which you wrote down, against the vessel of your chart, and a gap of mismatch shows clearly, interesting and a little pitiful. Reading by the energy of the ten gods, you pour your feeling and your energy outward without restraint and you keep the warmth that looks after those around you, and these agree, so the frame of extraversion and feeling sits very well with your given nature. Going gently to your sisters and working to lift the mood of the team is the flow of the blood you were born with.

But in the chart the Mystic of the Month Stem and the Performer in the branches flash sharply and point hard toward the intuitive make, while the sense you yourself recognise leans firmly to the side that values the real and the experienced. Why would such a divergence arise. Because in 2023, when you turned seventeen, the Metal Rabbit cycle began, and the harsh discipline and measuring rod of the Fierce Authority started to press down on your young shoulders.

In order to survive, in order to make the stage perfect, you forced down the daydreaming and the small-hours intuition you were born with and drove yourself into the world of the senses — the one centimetre of a path across the floor, the detail of a beat. Your true inward heart is a soul of deep intuition that listens to music before dawn and measures the far horizon of a life, and yet the harsh trainee years and the frame of being an idol have put the armour of a thorough realist on you.

When you cross into the Metal Tiger cycle at twenty-seven and the world's recognition stands firm under you, the intuition and the creating power that were held down will break their seal and surge up. Then you will not stay a manager who takes the world as it is. You will fully open the face of an original planner and maker who creates a new current and turns the ground of music over.

First — People: You are a thirsty tree that can live only by being given the Water energy of cool wisdom and depth. So you must stay beside those of few words and deep contemplation, the philosopher type or the mature counsellor type, who are not swung about by feeling and who listen in silence like the sea. Rather than the one who noisily stokes a fire, share deep talk with those who cool your overheated nerves merely by sitting quietly beside you over tea. This month, seek out a wise senior or mentor who can hold what you pour out without editing, and make a quiet place to share one cup of tea.

Second — Places: To breathe, you must keep near you a waterside with an open view or a space where a cool wind passes. Stay long on a crowded street under a beating sun, or where fire and lights flash, and it is your own sap that dries up first. When you choose a workroom or a place to sleep, one with a river or a lake outside the window is best, and the light in the room should avoid the red range and be set to a soft, settled neutral white. To put a small aquarium in one corner of the room, or to bring in a shallow bowl where clear water trembles, is also an excellent measure.

Third — Doing: The finest act for laying a burning fire to rest is writing your thoughts down by hand, and quiet contemplation. Do not try to spit out in speech the self-blame and unease that whirl like a storm in your head. Pour them raw into a diary no one will see, and let yourself look at them from outside. What you must set down is the arrogant sense of duty that says I have to put everything right. What you must take up is the ease of allowing, which says the world does not fall apart when something goes a little wrong.

Fourth — Signs: Wrap the first object you meet each morning when you open your eyes in the energy of cool black and deep navy. Change the background of your phone to the waves of a deep and quiet night sea, and take the moment you wake and light that first screen as the signal for the vow that today I will be supple as running water. Cool pitch dark is like the living water falling on your parched roots, so it serves well as a mark for washing the heart clean. Shake off the false heat this way, and after three or four weeks you will feel for yourself, on waking, that the rasp in your throat has gone and that the eyelids which used to fly open before dawn now close far more gently.

In the market street of the old Goryeo or Joseon, a girl as young as you pinching her seniors' wrong movements with a blue edge and refusing to bend her own claim might well have been pointed at as an impudent fate who knew nothing of the rules of the inner rooms. By the measure of a narrow age that counted a woman's brightness and the keen speech of the Performer as calamity, the angles of that brilliant diamond set inside you could never have been taken. But is this not now an age that gladly crowns the one who shows her own colour without hiding and throws her body at perfection without bargaining. That sharp, bold eye of yours, which once would have been a crime, is treated today as an irreplaceable treasure that charms tens of thousands and sets the discipline of a stage. Truly a fortunate thing.

First, in work and in making: put down at once the greed to bring out a whole album of your own inside this year's and next year's overheated fire. This is not the time to float a great ship but to shave the oars and mend the sails. Until 2027, be content with studies that fill in small fragments of lyric and killing parts of choreography, and save your strength.

Second, in relationships: the moment you come down from the stage, throw off the armband of the dance captain without regret. A hard word on the stage is the duty of a professional, but to carry that measure into the car, reading your sisters' faces and blaming yourself, is a poison that eats your soul. Your sisters are far sturdier and far more generous than you imagine, so when you open the door of the dormitory and step in, go back wholly to the place of the youngest who sulks and complains.

Third, in body and heart: before next spring comes, you must cut out, whatever happens, the habit of sitting up alone through the small hours. When your eyes open, do not force yourself to hold on to stray thoughts. Drink a glass of cold water, lie down on the bed, and cool the heat in your head with belly-deep breathing. Dryness of the body and tightness of the breath are a matter of energy and also a field that must take a physician's hand, so do not neglect a bronchial examination at each turn of the season.

Fourth, in meeting the fortune to come: prepare calmly for the great turning of 2031, when you will be twenty-five. The storms great and small that will strike over the next several years are heaven's tempering, cutting the rough stone that is you so that it throws light. Do not be lifted and cast down by each one. Lay your skill down from the floor up, and around thirty you will stand as a great tree no one can look past.

Looking quietly into your chart, a regret stays with me that I could not open the deep storehouse of your later years and its hidden secret, because the hour of your birth is not yet known.

Still, the six characters now revealed were more than enough to name the root of the fierce torment you are living through. When a night comes in which you fear the fire is too hot and will burn you up, do not forget that your roots run deeper and firmer than you think.

Among all the many stars I have seen in a thousand years of wandering, the souls who carve themselves down to give light have crossed the cold and aching nights longest. But only the bamboo grown under the frost before dawn keeps its green through a blizzard.

If a day comes when you truly want to know a deeper fold of your fate, or the fortune of 2031 when the waterway of your life shifts on a great scale, come and find me any time. May the cool of the wind have taken a little of the heat from your heart. Only tonight, do not hold on to the small hours. Fold your green leaves and sleep deeply.