Red

I witness red everyday. From ass to arms, from teeth to nose. Sometimes it flow like drainage, as if cannot wait any longer to disintergrate in the fresh air. But most of the time it dries up very fast. Dripping on your hand, it forms a little cute bubble. Deliciously crimson. I can’t avoid the thought of licking off my own creation. Its color is not always as tense as faeces. When you are healthy, the color usualy goes lighter. Perhaps when you are perfectly healthy one day, your red turns colorless. Then nobody, including yourself, knows who bleeds and who does not. If tears squeezed out with any fit or moan, is it called crying? If bleeding is like water pouring out from a lifeless slit, however painful we are, are we seem to be less passionate for a groan? Glad that I am not perfectly healthy. I can still witness red everyday. From night to night, from day to day, the red reminds me of vulnerability. When they are theorizing body as performative or carnivalesque, most of us feel blood leaking out everyday. ‘It hurts!’ she said. Perhaps thats the most non-theoretical criticism to theories. We cannot escape from the sight of our own red. And whats the difference between your red and the others’? Despite the same color and fluidity, we seem to love our own red more. Is there a life in red? When it drips on your hand, are we sure that it doesn’t crawl on your skin, saying ‘my lord finally we meet!’ ? For red, witness is not the right word. I see red everyday.

More on Love

Let speculation leads my arguments to unexplored knowledge. It is said that loving (contrasts with being loved) makes people humble and selfless. But it is also said that if I love you, it implies ‘I want you to love me’. To say love is unreserved giving to the other(s) is like how adults rewrote Brothers Grimm’s fairytales to create a more fantastical and peaceful world for children. (though many helpless adults did not free from that world). Living in fairytales is nice (only nice). From time to time, cruel things happen to you (or the others), telling you that life is much more palpable and hurting than you thought. The older we are, the less fantasy remained in our mind. We can preserve fantasy through presentation: fill your bed with thousands of cartoon dolls and bring one of them in your graduation photo; watch a cartoon film no matter how trash the plot is; speak cutely and use particular ‘cute’ slang which you create or adapt from fairytales. But all these are not going to work. ‘Love is unreserved giving’ is a cliche. Its worshippers will suffer when the other sides of the argument unveiled, breaking the fragile, brittle, pathetic fairytales. Now I shall say more about love as gift-giving which always begs for a return.

My day

A wonderful date means a wonderful day. Pasta, laughters, recordings were made. Taste, speech, hearing and sight, nothing were ever put in shade. Raise! Happiness is never sated. Too many rhymes for memories sake. Courage to sing was ever so big. Time is running but anything is late. Sing! Blissful tunes keep the snow in white. The falling white shall remind tonight. Night, night. I troubled by you? Not quite. Women aren’t the only narcissis. My day, dear, you say: a wonderful day or a wonderful night?

Be a Friend of You

 

Literature is not like accounting. Exams do not guarantee your ‘literariness’. An A-grade student in literature proves intellengence but not humanity. One can write a brilliant essay on Jane Austen and know nothing about what’s happening in Somalia. So can a person who have read every single novel in the 19th century, fail in his social life. The humane influence of literature lacks in a post-colonial city. When you say you study literature, people only think that your English is good and nothing else. Under such imperial discourse, Even students themselves becomes oblivious to what literature really means. Writing an essay for them is not far from doing an exam after all. Profundity has to give way to Popularity. The foundation of the theoretical tower is so fragile. What is literature? What is theory? And what is life? Their advocates reject the others and deaden communications. Every creature is selfish; politics is greed in disguise. I want a literary person to be my friend. She knows Chopin’s decadent Nocturnes, Bach’s cello suites. She knows Durer’s Malancholia and Bacon’s surrealism. She knows Dante is not only the figure forged on a Eruo coin. And she knows Dostoesvksy is dark but interesting; Beckett is fun but pessismist. But even if she knows nothing of those, I appreciate her passion for mankind all the same. Her tears, however blissful or tragic, do not come from books but fleshes. She won’t be mad at her heart bleeding because tears reminds her of pain of the others. Instead of asking why literature students lack humanity, we should ask how humanity can be promoted outside literature. And of course it begs the question: What is Literature?

Opti / Pessimism

How to know whether a person is optimistic or pessimistic? Is there a clear cut between the two? Are they binary opposite? My friend P never elevates his lips. He likes watching Monty Python and football matches (he has his own philosophy on football) but he inwardly resents people around. Never praise the others, he is reserve and taciturn. K likes reading upsetting literature. Russian literature is the cup of tea. Teachers say he is a serious person and the only commodity he likes is book. Yet he smiles a lot to you. If not, he makes sure you do to him. Humorous is the adjective. Friends seldom find him boring. When they ready to make tears, he holds a bucket, makes sure they don’t spill on the floor. 

Thinking of the good part of the situation rather than the bad part, this is the definition of optimism. To disavow the bad part does not mean it disappears. The tendency to think of the good part is to reduce stimulations. The good part of a situation is always peaceful and harmonious. Like a moth bottled up in a jar, never can it fly out the cap. Where is the bad part then? Thinking too much the bad part you are called pessimistic. But why cannot I think of the possible bad situation? Because those bad-part-speculations is unpleasant. They give you too much excitation to the brain. They cause you to ignore work and reduce your efficiency. You become an unproductive person. But are we not approved to be unproductive in society?

You taught to be happy because a optimistic citizen contributes to a productive and peaceful society. But we should not discourage pessimism all the same. It is an adventure to our naked thoughts beyond consciousness. Envy, jealousy, greed, gluttony, erotic, death, they are adjectives that you never want to use (but you are compelled to follow). Optimistic people avoid understand themselves too much, whereas pessimistics overdo it!

In Cantonese filmic gags, a thief threatens you and says, ‘You want Money, or Life?!’. To answer this entertaining line in a serious way, an optimist chooses Money; a pessimist chooses Life. Money blinds your understanding of life. Your blood veins clogged by a heap of coins and dollar-notes. Disgusting though, who realizes?  When money becomes our blood and excrements, who else can say money is evil? When people gently say ‘let’s not talk about money’, money is the most lovable possession that we are too selfish to put it on the table.

Be optimistic, money will love you. And write the word ‘pessimistic’ in your cover letter, see how many employers are interested to hire you.

Note. In OED’s etymology, ‘Opti-‘ has to do with vision and the eyes. ‘Pessi-‘ has to do with women and medicine.

Can Men and Women be Good Friends?

Can’t remember how many people have asked the question: Can men and women be good friends (forever!)? Funny enough, this question is not about friendship at all. It is Love actually. Only the people who suffer from love are so lost that they have to look at the sky and utter this problematic question: Can men and women be good friends?

The answer will not be neutral until the difference between love and friendship can be distinctively stated. Unfortunately, everyone who thought he can make a distinction in fact get stuck with his female friends relationship. They called it the ‘In between love and friend thing’. Wow, what a definition! I like it. So vague, so interpretable.

Let’s make it easier. If good friends are closer than friends, then the answer shall be negative. Because if you two are so good friends, why don’t you two make one step forward and become so called lovers? So men and women can only be friends, but never at ‘good’ term. If I were to make a scale, as some people like to do this very much, women and men can only be friends as long as their friendship does not exceed level 7 out of 10. Oh no, let’s make it 6.5. People will just jump over the threshold and forget what I said, so better reserve a buffer zone. Once you get over 6.5, there you go. Time to fall in love. Time to get cuffed.

Well, you may say I am in the state of ‘7 up and 8 down’, what shall I do? What shall you do? Man, that’s your ‘in between love and friend thing’, what can I do for you? To make it short, you are flirtatious. Freud would warn you not to flirt too much in your life. Because you and me and everyone we know have a tendency to stability, peace and security – homeostasis if you like. Flirtation is like playing roller-coaster. You don’t play roller-coaster when you are brushing you teeth do you? To flirt is to stab yourself. The exponential increase of your heat beat rate. The feeling of flirting is not far from the feeling of standing next to death. Pleasure of stability or pleasure of excitation. The latter kills you faster. Make a choice – if you can.

Can’t believe how many time people just drag themselves into mental sufferings. Seems that they quite enjoy their hearts being torn in pieces, bodies wither because of tears. Of course we do not admit it. Because we never realize how pleasurable it is until we personally experience the very pain of pain.

Can woman and men be good friend? If you ask this question, you probably feel a bit uneasy with your relationship with him/her. I would say please do not ask this question anymore, because it’s an excuse. You think you love her, but due to some reasons, some reasons, you just can’t be with her (You are being selfish here). Or you two break up, thinking that you two shall be good friends. Oh, give me a break. You thin-skinned. Forget the Face! Be crude. Be as evil as you can when you split. Don’t ask for ‘good friends’ anymore. Unless, unless you are tough enough to endure the pain of pain. If so, welcome in. Start another game in Hell.

Thus spoke Eagles’s Hotel California, ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.’

Perhaps the most evil thing to do to a person who is supposed to be working so hard, is to send this link to him/her:

www.peekvid.com

The Tower

The underneath of a person can’t help to surface in her public entries. As if your notes from underground can wait no longer to climb to the top and yell, ‘Look at me everybody!’ Be reminded that entries do not fully represent your friend. Because writing an entry is like bringing up one’s own confession. Every comment you leave to your friend is how a confessor sympathizes or empathizes with a confessant. I guess we do not want to confess in every 24 hours and 7 days do we? That is why friends speak objectively. They tend not to put themselves into the spot; they objectify themselves. Science, for example, totally objectify us. ‘You feel sad because it’s raining.’ Theories in general is hostile to subjectivity. Psychoanalysis says that your subjectivity is constructed and unreal; there’s not a real subject. At the same time the whole discourse is so obsessed with subjectivity! We know that our free will is being threatened, but we want to free ourselves all the same. Going back to objectivity, please do not believe in objective views. Because you realize that someone’s objective opinion is actually initiated by his-story, the past. Why radicals in social movement are often said to be born from working-class? Why do people go crazy to improve their English? Is Hong Kong a subjective city or an objective one? Why is it a problem to be objective? Is truth a single objective opinion? In classroom teachers punish us if we speak too much; writing essays is to satiate the authority. What do we learn after all 3 years of university education? Thanks to public entries, people start subversing the objective environment. No matter what I write, the act of writing as such is at least the budding of subjectivity – the consciousness of being. I don’t mean that writing is all the way subjective, but at least we think we are (this’s an important point). The ‘other’ in a subject is another issue. Everytime you write here you climb up the xangarian tower, mourning at the top, waving your hands like hysterics. Few comments reduce your pain for waiting. And then you drag your hands to the tower again. ‘Look at me, look at me!’ If I am not confessing, I probably am ready to listen to some confessions.

The time difference is 8 hours. While I start to work, you take a rest . When I cook myself dinner, you go to bed. When I close my eyes, yours open. My clock is left at home. I am afraid I am still dreadfully attached to….to what? I have no idea. Can you imagine losing something which you have any clues what the something is? It’s like the difference between anxiety and fear. The latter has a definite object but the former has nil. The third one is fright. Well, you need not my explanation if you studied Biology. Surprise is the keyword for fright. Ok, I have wasted another half hour. To spread it out, everyday cost me at least $500. I have just wasted ten dollars from my parents. Sometimes I wonder how people can feel not guilty with their feverish expenditure on luxury. How funny when we work to death for little sum of money we spend it on luxury as quickly as throwing a glance at a stranger in a bus. People are not only too busy for work, but also for luxury. We feel guilty after playing, our body returns to work as redemption. It’s almost 7am there now. You probably are going to wake up. Brush your teeth and wash your face. Drag your body to the kitchen for a light breakfast. Change your clothes and wear your shoes. Check if everything is off and closed. Slammed the door, you remember something undone. Go back, you find the house strange. You are rarely at home after 9am. The space changes. You become stranger of your home. You touch the sofa. It’s much harder than you thought. Time to have a change, you murmur. After all you live by yourself in this house. The time difference is 8 hours.

2007, seems that everyone feels happy. How true is it?

Probably ‘is happy’ is more suitable for a city like Hong Kong. Happiness is not from within but atmospheric. You don’t feel happy but you ‘are’ happy; It’s inapprpriate to feel unhappy, and since everyone is happy, I shall be happy. What is the origin of ‘celebration’? We were educated to celebrate; our happiness is memory. We are indebt to festivals and breaks. Clocks and calenders remind you of the fragmentation of time. As if we are too civilized to have a sense of time. Most of us are obssessed with watches, do you know why? When a clock tower is being removed, and everyone mourns and be nostalgic to the past, do we realize how are we indebted to time? Buying a watch means buying guilt. Throw away the former, the latter persists. Time is a little bank in your little chambers. Like guilt, time has a rate of interest. Like snowball, time-debt can never be balanced. In accountancy, drafting a balance sheet for guilt and time is almost unthinkable, especially for accountants. 2007, lets wrap up our past and let go for sea reclaimation. But we will, I am afraid to say, stumble on our doomed memory one day again.