Two Moments that are Important to Me

I was going to take a shower and get some sleep after another slack Saturday. Yet the bathroom is occupied. I wonder who also likes to take shower at the mid-night, but I will never know. Came back and decide to jot down one or two things I ponder in the last few minutes. There are several psychological moments I’d like to capture, in case I will forget how significant they could be.

1. I am cooking again. A few flatmates come and go, hi and bye. I was eating the same amount, same kind, same color of food. I am afraid to go back to my room as it’s like a prison these days. I stay in the kitchen and eat with myself. Suddenly, I realize I have repeated myself. Not once, not twice, but a thousand time. Not only the food I eat, but the way I drag myself to loneliness. The fact that my life is of absolute flatness, the comparison with friends who have much colorful lives. No one speak to me, or I don’t speak to no one. It is not the loneliness of which I scare, but the shear empitness of my soul. No, emptiness is not fearful. It’s rather the encounter of emptiness. Yes, the psychological moment is the encounter of  an unspeakable emptiness caused by a repetition of everyday life. The very fact that repetition brings you nothing but the same. It’s horrible to believe it. Yet do we have a choice?

2. Finished eating. My hand hold a crispy apple. The crunch when I bite it is lovely. I stare at the window. Nothing much ouside, I keep on staring. All of a sudden, anthoer psychological moment crops up: My mind is so concentrated that it flies away from the soul. The concentration is not on any particular thoughts. A concentration on nothing. This is first step. After around 5-10 seconds of absolute blankness, my mind is pulled back to the brain. And this is it: I feel a sudden horror of myself. I nearly forget that I physically live in this world. The fact that I have to live on is terrible because I am not so sure who I am. It is like a new born child but with a developed brain! Can’t be more weird. But then you have no choice but to live on and tell yourself who you are. The answer is rather dodgy. Probably you yourself is the strangest person to yourself. If you always come up with this moment, perhaps unconsciouly you don’t like yourself very much. You’d rather live another life.

I guess the bathroom should be unoccupied now (or probably another man enters). If I had the chance, I would choose psychoanalysis for my major.

More than Real

Reality, what is reality? When we were asked to believe over thirty people were suddenly massacured by a 23-years-old Korean boy, can we be so sure to say what reality is? Things happened beyond experiences. People rampaged, buildings struck by planes, all these created in entertainment are re-created in the real. Reality is more than real. Brushing your teech and washing your face are not real: they are too trivial to be put into pictures. Rather, the extraordinary things mould perceptions.

People are fascinated by the 32 victims who died ‘without’ a cause. ‘What do they study? Which country are they from? How their relatives react?’ As if reality is not cruel enough. The desire to know everything about the massacre is a symptom of rational animals. Men have a thirst for reality. Hence the Chinese fable ‘desiring the plumb’. We can only fantasize what is out ‘there’, thus realities are percieved ever differently: mine is not yours; yours is not hers and hers is not mine.

When extraordinary things happen, a person feel so baffled that the only way to deal with it is to refer to past experiences. What do the we have in our minds? Probably all previous gun-shooting in America, video-game scenes, fragments of violent movies, all these mingle together and form a new percpetion of the real. The witness could be much more painful than the dead because they suffer from looking at reality through a pair of fantastical blood eyes. More we can never understand the motive of the murderer. The video clips sent to NBC are alibi of a criminal who even he himself knew not why he wants to kill. Should we trust the clips, or believe what the criminalogists say?

I doubt if reality could be ‘seen’ or ‘revealed’. People who use reality to expel fantasy are no less mad than those who use fantasy as an excuse to escape reality. Sorry about that: but the question ‘what is reality?’ was wrong in the first place.

聲聲慢的赤子

 

尋尋覓覓 冷冷清清 悽悽慘慘戚戚

遠遠近近裡 城市高高低低間 沿路斷斷折折那有終站

 

乍暖還寒時候 最難將息

跌跌碰碰裡 投進聲聲色色間 誰伴你看長夜變藍

 

三杯兩盞淡酒 怎敵他曉來風急

一生人只一個 血脈跳得那樣近

雁過也 正傷心 卻是舊時相識

而相處如同陌生闊別卻又覺得親

 

滿地黃花堆積 憔悴損 如今有誰堪摘

一生能有幾個 愛護你的也是人

 

守著窗兒 獨自怎生得黑

正是為了深愛便遺憾

 

梧桐更兼細雨 到黃昏 點點滴滴

你我似醉了 無法清清楚楚講 同屬你你我我愛的感受

 

這次第

世界太冷了 誰會伸出一雙手

怎一個愁字了得

圍住你再營造暖流

 

李清照(b.1081)/羅大佑(b.1954)

End of March

No more flattery: we had enough. After so many years, it is time to farewell and find someone else to massage my ego. The start of Spring means another cycle and my passion for you has ceased. Do you know the proverb ‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb’? Can’t you forget how we desired for each other like animals? My eyes couldn’t move away from yours. Your genius was burning inside your chest, which made me so wanted to devour you. Delicious! Only love can make the loved one more wonderful. I know very well but I chose to be deceived. Did you not fall into my silence in return? Intentional slience is my design to prey on genius men like you. If we were to quantify our relationship, who wins for deceiving the other more?

Quiting the game I am. I enjoy being with you, until you left for your luxurious career. Should I say career? Or it’s just another vocation to massage your little ego? To understand a person is far more difficult than I thought. Looking and touching are dangerous. Their pleasures blinded me like a foolish doll. I was disappointed with your behavior over there. Look at you, lazy and self-centred hedonist! Your genius is only effective in front of women. Little obstable makes you stumble like a retarded. I never see you cry. I can’t believe you were crying over such tiny bit of spilt milk! Where was your courage, your wit, your pride? Or are they just a mask veiling your long existed cowardice? Do you know ‘March’ come from ‘Mars’, the god of war, in Latin? You were like a lion. But March has ended, the warrior’s charm fails you. No more god of war, you lethargic man!

I shall not write anymore. To further reply such a loser marks my stupidity. Sooner or later, I will forget all our memories. Our letters, pictures and gifts I have either burnt or sent to other friends. My apologies if you could not forget or forgive me. Yet, I did both without any pain. So long my little lamb. April is the month of breeding. Let’s do that with somebody else. I have been a vegetarian since you left!

1.4.1997

歌詞

我們都寂寞 何不把悲哀感覺假設是來自你虛構 很清楚 惜花這個責任 試管內找不出她染污眼眸 這秒鐘 十分感動 接下來 只可以更加激進 偏偏世界是這種制度 真的身份不過送運 愈放膽說 代價便更高 我們都很想得到 若這一刻 吊燈傾斜下來 誰又來善心 親一親我 我有想過復仇 我沒有 新生活 我沒有沒有  遊玩時 要好好過 專家話 開心一點 不必掛念我 如果將香煙點給我 枯毀的溫柔 代表深愛 人人不開心 在最後會長回來  不甘心 寂寞因此牽我手 如提前 十步入電梯 和你也許不會再相擁 要每一根火柴 全為這一刻燃燒 俗套的歌詞 誰又被錯過 愛上你是我眼睛的錯 煽動你惻忍 我也沒有奈何 日後我會如何 即使再見面 請體恤耳朵 拿著你歌書 成熟地表演 吻你眉頭吻至寂寞 你還嫌不夠 待葡萄成熟透 靈氣大概早被污染 頭沾濕 無可避免 誰為了 生活不變

Lydia

Vacant, handsome and thoughtful, Lydia is a girl of thousand admirers in her 20s. She is cosmopolitan. Studying abroad, she has been travelling as a happy displaced person. Has she a home? ‘Do you mean the place I sleep? Yes.’ Lydia plays very well in her genders. She likes revenge. The greatest part in love, to her, is nothing to do with romance or love at first sight. She has intricate practices. First, hook up a man, pretending cute and naive like a doll. By then she secures his love. Second, act intellegently. She despises the man, breaks his fantasy, points out how shallow and condescending he is. At this point, make sure to initiate him to break up with you. Thirdly, revenge. Lydia likes it most. Befriend with the man’s loved object and make her depends on you like mother. Then break her heart cruelly like butcher, teach her how to seduce another man. Write few sentance to the man and never reply. Glow his hope yet never roar. Turn him into a failing, crippled, lame man. Lydia likes seeing men in ruins. To prolong his agony, she performs a few sympathy, just enough to sustain his life. She enjoys watching his lowly, begging manner. ‘Help, help, Lydia!’ Men find their vanity in conquers; women in their revenges. The man needs another defenless woman to exploit; Lydia looks for another blind man for retaliation. Every relationship is a dangerous relation. Lydia flees again. She will soon arrive another niche and dissovle her prey. Lydia, you and me and everyone we know, has enormous appetite. Lydia, Ly-dia, Ly-di-a.

Pasta Again

I am glad to know how much I saved when the balance sheet arrived my mail box. Light food and heavy books. Nothing else.

As usual, I was cooking some pasta in the kitchen. Mushroom, onions, ham, cheese, tomatoes and pesto, I almost can make a dish blindfold. A Bulgarian PhD was boiling her potatoes. She stared at my pan and said, ‘Pasta again?’ I return her look to her boiling potatoes. Forgot how many she has been devouring into her stomach, I said, ‘Oh, potatoes!’ Nothing more can be said. The woman eats very little. I keep every meal under 2 pounds, but she keeps under 1. Her research is on the mutation of Gypsy language in the world. Interesting topic. She has a lovely son whom she misses a lot. I wondered what occupies her behind silence.

Couple minutes later, the pasta was done. Our conversations never go beyond ten sentences. ‘See you later’ and ‘how are you’ are the most frequent language to avoid awkwardness. There are table and chairs in the kitchen. But nobody ever uses it. The kitchen could be very crowded but it only last for a few minutes. Ironically, when fire alarm gathers up all the people in the house, I cannot believe so many people are actually living next to me.

I met a Indian kid in the corridor. Happy, energetic. I taught him juggling and book-spinning. He sings My Bonnie aloud and wakes everybody up. He cries and chuckles at the same time. My flatmates almost murders him. I understand because he has been teaching kids for 13 years. He is crying again. Is not crying the utmost narcissism to catch the others’ attention? Ha, I like the kid. To listen a child crying at least is better than an adult sobs.

What is trivia? It is a few paragraphs I recreated.

A lot of interesting points can be made from the election dabate (15/3) and the Q&A session (1/3). 

http://www.rthk.org.hk/special/ceelection2007/

Highly, and seriously, recommended.

Thinking Too Much

The alarm clock, everyday, rings at 7am sharp. Its mechanics rattles the world, creaking like a saw, is asking for some attentions. Is not the world a clock, a clock the world? No minutes and hours, the world becomes nonsense. Without schedules and holidays, a clock tells you nothing.  

The building construction’s rattle is another alarm clock for her. Her brain can rest no more. She drags her body to the toilet, brushes her teeth and washes her face. Looking herself in the mirror, she mimics a face she prefers, for confidence sake. While moving the tooth brush in between teeth and pulps, she begins to fill in her schedule. Less than a minute, the day is full. Most of the time she will be torturing the others and feeling guilty. Every hour has a duty, every duty has a motive. Every motive is evil and every evil is greed. She feels so bad when she fails the every-hour torture. And she feels guilty of being such a totalitarian, controlling her students like idiots. But, I feel so good when telling my students off. 

Time proceeds and she never lags behind. She goes hysteric whenever she forgets the schedule. Her mind cannot bear a second of deep thoughts. Deep thinking pulls her away from the clock, so as the world. Philosophy and literature is poison to time. It’s not the first time she being criticized as ‘thinking too much’. Life is too short. And life is even shorter if it is filled with schedules and holidays. Why is there the saying ‘time flies’? Because working like a dog is the principle which divides time into years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds. When she realizes she was a dog, she thought, ‘time flies’. Nobody likes labour. Hence entertainment. In 24 hours, eight hours for sleeping, eight for work and eight for entertainment. Is not time cyclical? What about history?

She has just finished watching a television show on the internet. Sleepy. Guilty. Empty. Setting the alarm clock, without a second of retrospect, she lays down and is ready for another 24 hours to come. The only space can bear her to think a bit more, ironically, is her dreams. 

Can we not think too much in life? It is we ourselves who suppress deep thoughts. Hence the alibi ‘life is a dream’. Only the most sober person says such thing. A dreamer never knows s/he is dreaming.

Sobriety cannot think.

P.S. See Calderon’s play ‘Life is but a Dream’

Tears in Fridge

Why? Everytime. Everytime. Only we finished, could I then realize how much I wanted to tell you. You are like sunshine. Everything has a surface reflects your blissful beam. Though my face is rough, your light is strong enough to make me smile. No time for tears (it evaporates anyway), your happiness is contagious. Under sunshine, I always forget the despondency in my fridge. But when you left, I feel hungry. I drag myself to kitchen and defroze my ‘food’. Fridge opened, my frozen tears brittlely falls down. ‘Pang!’ They said ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’, I say I cry over the split tears. The kitchen is warm. The broken tears begins to melt. I try to collect my tears, but fails. They mix with water, spreading on the floor. From tile to tile, the liquid swims all over to my room. Yes, I physically step on my tears. I finally realize it is impossible to forget tears. If only you were here. So that sunshine could evaporate my melted bitterness. But sadly, I am often too happy to remember my tears in the fridge. Could you remind me next time? I promise I will not forget. I am so absent-minded. Always forget my sadness while talking to you. Actually, even if I present the blocks of iced-tears to you, they will melt immediately under your sunshine. By then, I cannot say the liquid is my tears. I cannot prove it. No matter how much tears in my fridge, I can’t let you know. Well, or I do not let you know? Putting my tears into fridge, have I been hiding my tears, or preserving my unhappiness?

My t/dear, I am less hungry now.