Dossaa dossaa

moss footprints

Butuki stopped by and left a comment on The sound of snow, as I’d hoped he might.

Hey Dave, a good way to reach the end of a long, heavy day (dossaa dossaa! sound of huge, heavy footsteps, like those of a work horse). Outside today a cold rain patters against the office window (pata pata), while my fingers are tingling from having been out in the cold and now sit in a heated room (piri piri), but my cheeks are still soft like a baby’s bottom (puyo puyo). Too many hours staring at the computer my eyes feel like prunes (chika chika, also the feeling of itching, dry skin) and since the store is closed downstairs I’m thirsty (kara kara). I have to head home soon on my bicycle but I’m pretty exhausted (hero hero) so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to ride in a straight line (yura yura). It’s raining pretty hard so I’ll most likely be splashing through puddles along the way (dzubaaa! goshi goshi) and the sound of the cars booming along the highway nearby (GOH GOH!) will make it hard to listen to the gravelly crunching (gara gara) of the dirt path around the potholes in the dark so that I fall into them (dzut’ton), and maybe go flying over my handlebars (buwaaa!), and break my arm (pohkih! said very quickly). That may or may not bring the screaming police cars (pii pohhh pii pohhh!), but will surely give me time to lie there in a muddy rice paddy to contemplate the existence in the universe (DOH DOH DOH DOHHHHH!).

See also Soen Joon’s comment for some examples of Korean onomatopoeia, such as:

“bbusool-bbusool,” a kind of soft rain that’s more than a fog and less than the kind of rain that falls in steady plops, which goes “chulok-chulok”

We’ve been hearing bbusool-bbusool a lot here over the last few days.

7 Replies to “Dossaa dossaa”

  1. Hi, Michael. I don’t believe he’s blogging at all right now, though I could be wrong about that. His novel has been published in Nigeria by Cassava Republic, but so far isn’t available stateside. I’ll probably post an announcement if/when it is. Are you in Kenya? Perhaps you’ll be able to order a copy.

  2. Thanks. Not the classic winter wonderland, certainly, but fog, moss and snow did seem like a wondrous enough combination to be worth documenting.

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