夏天的一晚上

I found this browsing through my computer. It was the very first composition I wrote for Chinese in the fall. The English translation's not the best, someone once told me. And he is right. The Chinese is better. It's like there are two planes, and a graph on one cannot exactly project onto another. The blurriness is always what people who write fight against, and also what we want to preserve. The mathematics of language is an oxymoron, but only because the laborers make it so.

**

夏天初期的一晚上，我碰见了你。

那时候，夜里吹着一股凉爽的微风，悄悄的来，偷看我们之间表演的戏。你好像也感觉到了这个未被邀请的客人 ， 因为你什么也没有说，虽然你的眼光告诉了我很多。

那天晚上，我以为那风是空手的走的，但是后来我才明白，时间和它，什么都有权利带走， 包括记忆中的一晚上，包括记忆中的你。

夏天，也就是这样糊里糊涂的过去。

转眼就到了九月的第一场雨。那些蒙蒙的雨滴， 和树上的黄叶，一个一个的掉下来，落到一股熟悉的风中。那一刻，风带回来了你原先的眼光，但是没有带回来原先的你。

Some time in the spring, when the air was filled with possibility, I met you.

That night, there was a crisp breeze, quietly creeping up, watching the play that unfolded between us. You seemed to also realize that we have an interloper among us, because you didn’t say anything, though your glance betrayed more than the wind can tell.

On that night, I thought the air left empty-handed, but this summer I understood; time and the wind, they can take away everything, including the memory of a night, including the memory of you.

Summer was more or less spent this way, hazily yet in a flash…all the way until the first rain of September. The lazy raindrops and yellowing leaves fell from the sky one by one, until they land in a familiar breeze. And in that instant, the wind brought back last summer's glance, but didn’t bring back last summer's you.

**

hospital hallway

There are no words. Just perfunctory hugs, friendly smiles, some empty, general niceness going about, like a lazy kind of flu or something. Except this is not a sickness I can cure. Besides, if I were to complain about anything, it's that we are too sterile. Too bleached. What I want most of all is probably exactly like a sickness.

I don't know. I can't say much, not just because of others' constraints on me but because my mind is literally muffled. Nothing but incoherent noise reach the linguistic cortices of my brain. So there are no words. No words. Just noise, and niceness. Two very neutral things. Like beige, or a nice, forgettable blue plaid.

**

quilt

It’s the hope
That makes me

Put on a blindfold,
spin three times,
and trust that the darts
hit the bull's eye.

They have landed now,
(but only for now),
And now I've
wriggled them out,

a little pang each by each,
every pluck
merciless, fair, clean like bleach.

It’s the hope
That makes me

lay out more and more
red and blue chips on the table.
And this time I will win it all

The cards have been dealt now
(and already I’ve taken a vow)
the jacks won’t do me any good
I shout and I know and I say out loud

It’s the hope,
the hope of something so great I know not just how—-
It’s the hope.

It’s a rush.
It’s a monster.
It’s an out.

(It rears its head and I
beckon to its call
before the roar
's vibrations hit the air.
Its breath landed--just now--
in my ear.)

It's the game. It's in your head. It's the pre-original sin
It's my drug and it's his power and it's their win.
--It’s the goddamn hope.

I know that now.

**

lioness

I’m afraid I’m becoming the party to invest more than my partner does…again. Some part of me just loves the gamble…almost unconsciously, I lay out more and more red and blue chips on the table.

It’s the hope, the hope of something so great you don’t even know exactly how great, it’s the hope. It’s a rush. It’s an expensive habit. It’s a lovely monster.

It rears its head and I beckon to its call before the roar even vibrates through the air. It's my drug and it's his power and it's their win.

It’s the goddamn hope.

**

paint

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

-Plato

Beauty indeed makes man enlarge his kind. In ways of physical attraction. In ways of creativity. In ways of attempting immortality. People think pursuing beauty is shallow, and in the most base ways, it is. But it is also the way to paint elements of the fantastic in our lives. If we knew how gray the world really is, we wouldn't write, or look, or love another imperfect being. It is through the splattering of these colors on the canvas that we can even begin to understand these self-portraits--the only path available to us...without becoming so colorless we sink into non-existence.

Maybe in higher dimensions of reality we can live and desire and create significance without the pursuit of beauty. But in our constraints and in that here and in this now, we live only by seeing it everywhere...and not at all if we do not.

**

black holes

I saw a softball game today in the first wave of the sticky summer heat. It was wonderfully out of the normal scope of my life. To see these people doing something so different--and to see them doing it so well--leaves me a little in disbelief. It's weird what has the power to change entire perceptions: a little game, or two little hours.

Last night I went to a party where people of my peripheral circle came center stage. Similarly, to see them in their context, with their main characters, with their histories. I realize again how difficult it is to break into such bubbles...or at the very least, I see the bubble that needs breaking into. In that situation, the new context serves as a blockade, in the other, it is a new way of entry.

It's always unsettling when we realize the limits of our own visions. What else could we have missed? Are there more black holes undetected by our telescopes floating around out there, only to be guessed at by the presence of a dark ignorance, instead of a positive existence that we could have seen, had we only turned our lens earlier? The mind teems with unimagined possibilities.

Anyway, I would say it's something to think about. But I'm afraid the very act of thinking about it will be the exact time-thief that makes me miss these sights. What makes the bubble so limited (though clearer) is precisely the narcissism in thinking.

**

SIDENOTE: I realize this is all too worn a subject. All I have to do is get out of my head. Stop thinking so much. And get rid of my narcissistic self-examination. But I can't. I can't. And I can't. It's like I am that patient in psychoanalysis who, in the moment of the breakthrough, clings even tighter to the mirage of being a helpless child, praises the analyst instead of attributing to herself the solution, so that she would not lose the comfortable relationship with Him in her newfound possibility of independence. God I hate myself sometimes. (But maybe there is something about the allure of self-examination that speaks truly of some Good it will give me. However, I cannot postpone admitting that there's a real chance this might be a blind faith rooted in a sick pleasure rather than a sure bet stemming from the truth)

**

SIDESIDENOTE: In honor of making a real change I think I will stop posting on my tumblr so much, at least none of the mundane things that contribute no artistic value.

dartboard

I don't know why some people are built with softer skin than others. And the easier a target you are, the more darts you attract. (Or is it only a skewed perception? Yet it's gone on too long and too intense for it to pass for a coincidence or incorrect vision. Maybe it's group think, or whatever it is that makes people jump on the bandwagon).

In any case, there's something confusing about what's going on here. These people are not my enemies. They care. Or at least, I think they do. So I justify it in all sorts of ways...and they do too, mostly with the claim of a lack of intention to harm. They don't think it's anything bad, so it's not. Right?

How do I make people realize it's not all about their own view? That what they thought was painless actually prickles deeper than I care to even admit to myself? How do I make myself realize it's also not all about my own view? To what degree can I--as I've been so often told to do--"get over it?" How do I bring these things up without sounding immature or demanding or egocentric? Is it too much to ask? Is it necessary to even have to?

The darts have landed now, (but only for now), yet I'm still wriggling them out, a little pang each by each, every pluck even, fair, and merciless.

**