What have I been doing in all these years? When people were writing their resume, I was writing my polemic proses, hoping for few virtual comments and praises.
What else can I do if I am not allowed to love you? Please frogive me for being possessive. Loving you is one thing, to say I love you is another! But if the relationship is not called love, what else could it be? How rigid if a relationship is judged by whether you have said ‘I love you’ or not. We have a thirst for adjectives, don’t we? Do we behave according to our ‘mighty’ will, or to how we are described? He works like a madman because he is the father; she complements like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle because she is a mother. Can I just be a madman with no identity? Do I kill hence a murderer? Or as a murderer, I kill? Every time I name a deed, giving an identity to my dead, it loses its genuine meaning. Like gift-giving, if I say I give you a gift, that’s not a gift anymore. Because what I have just said begs a return in terms of another gift, any rewards whatsoever. Giving implies taking. A gift is not a present anymore because the sense of selfless giving is absent (Derrida). I called it a gift, apresent is the other name. Similar principle applies to the language of love. If I say ‘I love you’, I desire you to say ‘I love you’ in return. (Lacan) Enough with talking about love, lets make some!
I recall two years ago I was in front of this computer, reflecting on the London bomb which was only less than a mile from the hostel I inhabited. Now I am using the same computer again. My body is more used to the place though my mind is not. I become less sentimental and my words more stiff, less appealing. Sketches of my recent experiences: the father teaches his son history. The former hates the idea of studying genetics for public exam. I become a Maths tutor to the son and things haven’t change much since 2004. I keep on checking my inbox to see if there’s any new letter. I share my thoughts bits by bits, thinking of your 2600-words. Got a new copy of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. More than 3000 pages wrapped in simple white covers with a sketch of his portrait. When shall I finish it, given that another pile of novelty awaits in the next study room? I lost my primitive pleasure in reading Bristish novels. How boring they can be! The daughter burst into tears suddenly. ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong?’ The mothers keeps asking. I sit in another room and listen. The sob last for few minutes. Slience. She carries Chaucer in her arms and walks down the stairs. Everyone is reading again. Hardly can I find a clock around: it’s good and bad. Clock is a modern concept. ‘Time is running out’ is a phrase of maddness. We tend to forget to remember time, but the clock is always there, staring at you from the wall. It’s 5:07pm. Everything outside the house is invisible. Deadline is less than a month from now. Reading is accumulating like the dead generation in the past. And countless of responsibility to take up. How do we give a balance on friendship, family, work and love? (As if that’s all.) The failure of being responsible, is that what makes us feel guilty? Shall I send a few comforting lines to the daughter, even if I am indifferent? Am I indifferent, or do I feel indifferent? Am I a member of the family, since they are so hospitable, or just a pathetic disinterested lodger? Should I feel guilty of myself? Or can I choose to be not feeling guilty? Is every New Year wish an attempt to remove our guilt? ‘Be more diligent’, ‘be more determined’, etc, wishes stepts on the last minute in 2006. Time reminds you of your guilt and fantastically spare your sense of guilt at the same time. To play on Dostoevsky a bit, ‘Time is intentional and unintentional.’
Ah. What is my timely wish for 2007?
Christmas Time
1. The library finally closed. 4:45pm. When a voice from those amplifiers announced the library service had ceased, every staff, especially those old ladies, clapped their hands and shouted ‘hooray’ to each other. A thirst for Christmas, a thirst for a break.
2. Now I understand why many mainlanders hang around in hku library during Christmas time. Not that they have no thirst for holiday. But they are hostile to the city; so does the city to him. No matter how close we are, every where are strangers. They choose to stay. At least the library ensures their peace and security. When people celebrating for the count down, the mainlanders drag themselves into study and revision. Looking at the clock, with a contemptous smile, 2006 has passed.
3. She needs to work all day long when the others laze themselves in cinemas, K-rooms and restaurants. off from work, she choose to stay at home, enjoying her little tranquility. Outside crowded with people crazy for christmas light; inside she is reading her favourite novel. Crowd is her enemy. Perhaps she even wants not a companion except her lovely pet, who is lying tenderly on her legs. The clock struck 11:59pm. She is disturbed by the idea of calling her friend. Very disturbed. That 1 minute is dreadfully long. The words on the novels dissolve and solidify, and dissolve. She closes the book. ‘Happy New Year!’ 2007 arrives from the streets to her ears.
4. He talked with her on the phone at the very last hour of 2006. He was so excited to experience that moment with her. Their conversation is filled with trivial yearly summary. What did you achieve this year? And what will be your resolution plan? She is damnly bored. How could this dull man be so obsessed with his achievement and schedule? At the very last minute before 07, ‘hang on.’ She left the phone and ran to her friends in the dining room. ’10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4……..’ The man struck. It’s the frist time he ever miss a count down. Because of her, the clock struck 0:01am silently at the other end of the telephone. He switched it off, fling it to the floor. Count down means something different thereafter.
5. 哎呀, 衣架唔夠用, 點算!
I got a X’mas present for you, everyone of you, the narcissistic part of you. Sing it aloud and you will be saved. It’s a line from 解藥 by Eason Chan:
你約會過某人 我 我說不要緊 你去玩到夠吧 我在這裡等
Like it? You will say no, a ‘yes’ in disguise. Pride. Is that a statement of pride, or selflessness in love? Is s/he affirming self importance, or giving out limitless freedom to the other? Pride, what a interesting word. It was the most evil sin out of the 7 deadly sin in old Christianity. Now it is glorified by individualistic persons. How to be humble and confident at the same time? How to be proud of yourself and not be arrogant? Is pride a repressed affect? Is pride legitimate if not be articulated in groups? (eg. gay pride) If pride is a crime, then it’s a structural crime. It provokes in the others envy, wraths, lust, greed, jealousy, etc… But pride in a love relation is almost unavoidable. Pride shall be translated as narcissism before further discussion. Rather to be loved than loving. If ‘I’ love you, ‘I’ incorporate you into myself and love it. In order words, I love you means I need you. I need you to be loved by me. Freud says ‘loving is the relation of ego to its source of pleasure.’ (“Instinct and V.”). But is narcissism a self-sustaining character? If no one loves me, no matter how narcissistic I am, I cannot attain my pleasure from the others. What if a group of narcissistic persons come together? Shall I say their self-love is at the same time an affirmation of the other narcissis? Perhaps a person of pride needs another person of pride to live with, eg. celebritiy-celebrity or academic-academic affinity. After all, better ask Dante what does pride mean.
My friend once threw me a question, ‘if you could choose, would you want to be a simple-minded man, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean naivety. Or still you would choose to be a complicated – if not cynical – person, whom only few people understand?’
I chose the latter immediately. But a second thought – as a complicated person always contradicts himself – reminds me that my answer is somehow partial because I am already described as complicated. I can hardly empty my self, then imagine a simple-mind installed in my brain. Just like people who are fond of simplicity, never choose the latter of the question. Being complicated is okay, but be aware of the bottomlessness of your abyss. Dray yourself out from time to time – well, if you can.
You can know more about a person’s character by evaluating what she likes. A person who likes Dickens is quite opposite to one likes Dostoevsky. David Lynch’s movie fans are not in the mind of Kieslowski, aren’t they? And if someone likes Japanese tv serial drama, probably she wiill hardly read A Tale of Genji. And from which part of history a person likes you can speculate her character as well. If history is read as narration, characters are portrayed through letters, pictures, memos, historians. Compared with realist novels, between fictional and historical character, which is more real?
PS. Discoverd a German novelist named Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote a the novel Venus of Furs! You must read this! He, likes his name, dedicateds to the idea of masochism in the novel. Must read it some time later. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is very uncomfortable. Melancholic is the summary. And I like the cover very much. A painting by Millais: The Martyr of the Solway (1871) and I can’t help link it with Lucian Freud’s naked portrait (I am glad that I didn’t major fine art.) Seems that every melancholic materials do appeal to me. The more light-hearted Great Expection is to be read dully this Christmas.
PPS. Thank you for waking up at 5am in the morning. It must be chilly. Much, much, much appreciated : )
Bliss
If only happiness could be explained in words, I’d need not to spare every night to remind myself those wonderful experiences. For a few times I even re-experience those happiness in dreams. But can I put happiness into words? I can write a cheerful entry. But the cheerfulness you get is cheerless to me. I cannot represent my happiness. Or the articulation of happiness is bound to be a mis-representation. In fact, proses are easier to make you sad than happy. Not only because of the difficulty of representing happiness, but also happiness is also a form of narcissism. Happiness is something you will not want to share. No you don’t. Pleasure is always personal. The naivety in thinking that ‘when other is happy then I am happy’ is uttered from a hypocrite. Two persons can be happy together though, they share not the same happiness. They appropriate each other’s lower emotion as a spring for manufaturing their own pleausure. Happiness asks for an identity; it is not carnivalesque enough.
Having said that, I have to emphasize that happiness can still be shared, expecially in love. Perhaps in love happiness exisit in a different form of pleasure which is opposite to what I have talked about. Shall I call it BLISS? Bliss is more enduring happiness which dissolves identity. Hence the cliches, ‘I was melted by love.’ To actively seek happiness is to drag yourself to bodily excitement, to death, whereas bliss is a kind of passive happiness where you find your heart emptied by yourself and refilled with the sweetest honey by the other. But I shan’t deny that Bliss can be destructive because it usually comes to you in a form of shock, unexpectedness. Many are happy, but I doubt how few people are blissful. I recall Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Bliss” in 1920. And I shall say in the beginning, ‘if only bliss could be articulated……’. But how can I put this if I really want to? …I am blissful! As long as you do!
So far, nobody can really understand him. Don’t get me wrong. He is not a cranky or stubborn person. He is full of humour and middle-class charm. He is very well-read and able to give insightful comments on any issue you may want to touch on. Friends are very fond of him, so does his family and teacher. Yet, nobody understand him at all. It’s very true that a person who succeed in social circle often screw up in the understanding of himself. Firstly, to be liked you need to satisfy the others. To satisfy the other the most convenient and efficient way is to make use of language. Flattery is the word. Those whose expertise is socializing, they flatter without flattery. Those who are flattered do not see the flattery as pretentious. But of course nowadays we cannot find out if you are flattering me ‘sincerely’ or not. Flattery itself is a double-edged sword. Secondly, and back to describing him, I would say he speaks like an author who is writing a novel. He speaks not what he feels; what he speaks is the utterance of community. For example, instead of saying ‘I love Christmas’, someone may say to you, ‘this is going to be a wonderful Christmas, isn’t it?’ Who said this? You or him? The answer is niether. The person who says this is authoring the world. He is writing a novel. ‘The christmas is wonderful’ may not be his thoughts, but certainly is the view of majority. These kind of utterance is most probable to be recognized. Hence, sociable. But be aware that these sociable creatures are terribly pathetic in a sense that they never expose themselves to you. If you say a novel writer is reporting his own experience, then you are not very far from a high school student who is obsessed with origin. A sociable person – the skillful one I repeat – you can never understand him in a social circle. He only pulls away his mask – if that’s possible – when he talks to his intimates, those whom he need not to socialize with. I seem to say that it’s possible to understand a person. But in fact you cannot do so at all. If you think you can understand a person, possibly you are either way too naive or way too aggressive. So far, nobody can really understand him.
Looping the song Caro Mio Ben. The player indicates its translation: If you love me, a 18th century song. What a lovely song. It’s not vulgar, nor mild. It’s tranquil, and heartening. I wish I could speak Italian, so that I can read the song but not only feel it. The only thing I know about the song in English is: if you love me. Who invented the If-clause? Who came up with the future tense? Because of ‘IF’ future is foreseeable; because of ‘Because’ ‘IF’ is explainable. What is after the clause ‘if you love me’? Can I just stop there? Can I open the thousands of possibilities of my reaction to your love? When you really love me, for quite sure I will not act as I have just said. It’s only we still believe in grammer we still believe in love, isn’t it? Whom do you love? The one who communicate without words or the one who has been the most talkative girl in the world? If you love me….only if…if only….’If you love me I love you in return as stiff as the exchange of goods’. But if you love me, love me more. Don’t expect of any reward. Love as much as you can but don’t lose your dignity. Your dignity is the necessary condition for me to love you back. Your love is one-way if it’s selfless; Hold your opacity then love goes in both ways. Love…is language the biggest but neccsary obstable in love? If you love me…I love you! Twenty times of Caro Mio Ben are floating in the room. Time to give a halt and let the notes create the latter part of the IF clause.
Obshchechelovek 