六月廿一   陰

I told myself I must write in Chinese but my thoughts again run faster than my mother tongue. English is a language I have never mastered either. Can I be sure that I have articulated my feelings every time when I click the login-out icon? What have I got in mind this time? Right…it is an image, an image of someone writing her diary. She is irritated…no, it’s not irritated, but precisely, jealous. Jealous of what? Jealous of whom? That I am not sure but one thing is clear is that, the girl feels ashamed of her feeling. That’s the image. Jealousy is not the point, feeling ashamed of her jealousness is what strikes me. Yes…we all feel ashamed of our ‘negative’ feelings. Envy, guilt, jealousy, vengence, nostalgia, hatred…they are all inside us but we just can’t admit that we suffer from them. Go back to jealousy. To be precise, jealous is not an emotion. What is jealousy? When you feel jealous someone has stolen something from you. That ‘something’ is your imaginary possession. You don’t possess it, but you thought you owned it. You feel jealous of the person stolen your love. But who is your lover and who is not? Is there an absolute to define an love relationship other than setting ‘In a Relationship’ in Facebook?

I said jealousy is not an emotion. Why? Emotion is something we can master. If we feel sad we can stop the sadness by doing something else to distract ourselves. If we want to feel happy we can sing a song, cook a dish or read a book. Emotion is uniting whreas jealousy is separating. How is it so? Through controlling your emotion you get a sense of existence. You feel you have come back to the world where people are connected to each other. Emotion is harmonizing; it makes you feel good. Oppositely, jealousy makes you seperate from the others. Or it reminds you that you are seperate from your mother in the very first place since you are born. If only you find yourself different from a person you start to feel jealous of her. You can’t control jealousy because it is not an emotion. It is what Freud called Affect, something comes back to you again and agian. Look at her. How ashamed is she to her own jealousy. It’s like a burning iron poker running around the body – shapless, itchy, piercing. That is the image. She is ashamed of her jealousy against another woman. A movie nor photography can tell her state of mind. Only language can, only language can……

Shall I continue to explore her emotions and affects? No I can’t. If I do I will only misunderstand her. What inside her is never what I wish to see. To write about a person is another step forward to an abyss of misunderstanding. Stop writing her! But can I? Is writing a channel to alleviate jealousy? I think not. I write and then I feel happier or less sad. Writing is only powerful enough for emotions…I need a cigarette to pull out all her images out of my mind. Lighter, I need a lighter. To burn, to burn every page of memories stored in my mind. Otherwise my memory for jealousy will come back and make me itchy again. A song, I need a song as well. To sing at the top of my voice, I shall transfer all my emotions to the song and it will dissipate in the dusty air.

I told myself I must write in Chinese but my mother tongue was deadened by the whirlpool of images. Every bit and pieces gather at the centre and clash. Some form a new word, most of them vanish like ashes. I think I have just taken a picture of her. Her image is now fixed in my mind. Violence! How dare you said that! But for the sake of a second of peace, I better stop here…