Busan, Beomeosa (Temple of the Nirwana Fish)*
Scene 1
Often, what a secret agent does is quite meaningless. He flies through half the world, follows the vaguest of clues, meets all manner of informers – only to end up discovering that the spurs often lead to nothing, the guides are pipsqueaks or braggarts, and the great search ends in a small worry about the exotic pathogens that one could have exposed oneself to by drinking water at the fountain in a local temple.
For real tourists there are travel guidebooks that describe in minute detail exactly what they must experience in order to have a successful time in this or that land: climbing the Eiffel Tower, purchasing a carpet behind the Blue Mosque, relishing a strudel in «Griensteidl», taking a camel ride through Palmyra, eating Peking Duck at «Quanjude» and, not least, tribal dancing on the stage of the «Sheraton» (with great penis-circles).
Like tourists, secret agents are also basically seekers of meaning – the difference being that they often slip inexorably into innumerable forms of existence. Then they circle around their own bodies, worried by any scratches on the surface, like espionage satellites over one's propper sensitivity.
* beom (범;梵) = nirvana; eo (어;魚) = fish; sa (사;寺) = temple