At about 11:30 AM, I received a phone call from Nanjing that either comes from my sister who wants to instruct me on which university should I consider or some advertisement that curses the well-being of my family if I dare hang up at first. Neither of them am I happy to encounter, so I didn't pick up the phone.
My sister is a high-ranking consultant in a state-owned financial company, a much respected position that can easily enable her to buy multiple properties as investment in China's bubbled real estate market, and is partly responsible for the regulation of house prices. My sardonic tone in describing her situation stems not from my personal disappointment of her dilatoriness in responding to my request for assistance regarding my own future, but from a coherent disdain of the entire social hierarchy, the dependency of that hierarchy, and outside people's fascination with it. She thought that because I don't have a penny to pay for my university tuition fee and no relation in the State to help me with my life, and I've never been to any other country, I shouldn't think of applying for prestigious colleges despite my current high SAT score, which seems unimpressive due to her lack of knowledge. I'm totally aware the rationale behind her behavior. Since the circumstance has defined me as mediocre, I shouldn't even consider transcending it for that would be potentially troublesome to people like her, as she's a Chinese government official and that government is famous for its public education and strangling of nascent revolt. Her early moving away from the family, and absence in all filial activity beside wedding and funeral clarify something, which other members of the family don't have a clue and I totally understand, even will encourage if it doesn't involve me.
I sometimes feel emotions, and I learn to stifle them as quick as possible. All sorts of emotions, levity or bitterness, despondency or disappointment, cannot fit me. Happiness makes me concerned of other times when I'm not happy. Bitterness makes me uncosmopolitan. Despondency drives me away from hope and disappointment creates disharmony in my shallow social ties. But understanding isn't feasibility. I understand a lot of things, probably too many things, and most of them, cannot be done or cannot be avoided, and that I want them to be done or avoided instantly becomes a problem.
Few years ago, when I went to Nanjing for a military exhibition and suffered a hand fracture, my sister came visit me, and that was infinitely easier for me to communicate, my lack of sophistication and her lack of vigilance led to something magical. She even wants to adopt me from my own parents, thinking that my parents didn't have the capacity to make me who I was supposed to be. Now I've said no to both of her assumptions, and both of us no longer care. Her snobbishness is unpleasant to me and my vegetarianism is unacceptable to her, a mutual discomfort out of a mutual indifference. But I don't know the truth of it, she is my sister, and I'm I, both of us shouldn't have changed fundamentally, so there's a way to get it through, or there's a way of quicker oblivion, and the latter is perfectly compatible with the temperaments of us as well. I've accomplished a lot. If I go back in time and meet myself, I will be amused and myself will be astonished. I developed interest in politics and de-developed it. I self-studied English and almost replaced my native language. I'm unprepared for the changes so I weep for them, but I've ignored that those changes aren't independent of one another. I should first be interested and then I can be disgusted, and should first start to learn and then learn very well. There's unchangingness between and the very unchangingness enables to reflect on what's been changed. The bird my father bought me when I was a little kid, because I wanted to touch the bird and it turned out I'd never succeeded before its death. The bird died nameless and deprived of freedom due to my lack of considerateness and anthropocentrism. But I know it after it has died. For all several years since I'd started learning English myself, I pronounced the "t" in fountain, and later I knew it was un-American to do so. But I learned it after deciding to go there. There's not a definitive pattern in it and I also go for perfection at the very beginning, and there's no perfection and I suffer from perennial disputation of the preceding axioms. I cannot see the point of it, so I try to leave and maybe settle somewhere I don't have to see the point to be satisfied, for I will then have a satisfactory life, and that will not be philosophical principle that makes it. A clue is yet seen in 10 days, and the ending remains endless.
I'm alive and feel hurt when I'm hurt, but that's only because someone has died do I grab the chance to be consciousness. And when it'll be finally my turn to give out the chance, I try to refuse and change the rule of game, hoping for some good outcome. And my way to do it is contemplate and deplore everything, so nothing will be overlooked and I take the full control of it. It's impossible, and I'm perverse, it's still impossible, and I'm perverse. When one day, I have to give up, that will be the end of my time and I will know that I've completed it.
May God bless me and my dream, however absurd and unreasonable.
Monday, May 20
Sunday, May 19
5/19
I was going to sit down and spend another several tens of minutes put down my musing and its utter unintention. But since this task, although not a drudgery, isn't captivating either (I have to enshrine my reasonless guts and put them in a way prettier than when they're originally born.), I browsed the YouTube site for some comical clips that would light up my post-supper night life. What I didn't expect is that, through a video called Christian the Lion, I noticed a humble, inconspicuous figure beside the main characters. Description about him is scant, but out of curiosity, I searched his name, and after quite a while, was deeply moved, the man's name, George Alexander Graham Adamson, with a Wikipedia page lengthed about 500 words dedicated to him and his name truncated to George Adamson.
In all scenes I watched from that clip, George appeared speechless and churlish, carrying his rifle on the shoulder with a pipe obliqued at his wrist, where lies his watch, a lesser known brand that is his only sign of being from civilization. He is dubbed the Father of Lions, and is perhaps the first and utmost successful person to establish an enduring relationship with wild lions, among them his favorite, Boy, was shot by himself for it tried to attack and then killed George's laborer.
The main characters of the clip are two young man from 1960s London. They purchased Christian the Lion as a pet and found out that the size of their pet is an increasing problem. Then they sent the lion to George, who helped train the beast back into the wilderness, and came visit one year later to have themselves hugged by the lion. The essence of the video ends here, and the essence of George's life ends here as well. For the next few decades he didn't leave behind any accessible writing except a photocopied letter, to indicate his existence, until his death at 1989 as he went to save the tourists and was shot by the mobster, Kenya police officer surely showed up, the media too, and that was it.
I'm today to print out the two letters by George, written in 1982 and 1983, because there's no existent text material on the internet, I thought it might be helpful that I type it out and make it distributable. I lack the insight required to revive a man, and the flair to influence other people, so this is the only thing I'm capable of doing for him.
-
"Kampi ya Simba"
Kora National Reserve
P.O.Box 135
Mwingi, KENYA
By the end of 1980, all the original lions which had come to us out of captivity had been successfully rehabilitated and gone off to do their own thing, inspite[sic] of being always well fed at Kampi ya Simba, some have crossed over the Tane River which forms the northern boundary of the reserve, the lions become vulnerable to poachers and reprisals of stock owners. No doubt, some have been killed or poisoned for this reason. Unfortunately, there is no control over the sale and distribution of "Coopertox" cattle dip which is a deadly poison which can be and is used illegally to poison lions and other predators. At the present time we keep in close contact with some of the offspring of the original lions. "Koretta", five years and three months of old, a magnificent lioness has produced three litters of cubs of which there are only two survivors, "Toughy", twelve months and "Kack" six months who are doing well. Koretta was not a good mother, prone to easy [a]education by "Blakantan" the wild lions, leading to neglect of the cubs. "Naja", three years old, a much smaller lioness has two cubs "Fritz" & "Fitz" aged nine months, she is an excellent and selfless mother. Without her help none of Koretta's cubs would have survived. Often even when hungry, she would carry meat to the cubs before satisfying her own needs. As if to make up for her early irresponsible behaviour, Koretta with an abundant supply of milk, would give all the cubs a feed. At one time, I entertained the suspicion that Blakantan was responsible for the loss of Koretta's first litter of four beautiful cubs and that he had killed and eaten them! I thought seriously of getting rid of him but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was as well that I did so, as he has turned out to be a model and indulgent father, allowing the cubs to rough-house him, pull his tail and bit his ears. Although shy and suspicious of humans, he is gaining confidence and often comes to camp with others and fairly shakes the place with his mighty roars at night. Always he chooses a position where the echoes off the hills can be heard to best advantage. Perhaps he likes to hear his own voice or may be wishes to intimidate visitors? Then there are two fine lionesses "Glowe" & "Growe" four and a half years old who have their territory some fourteen miles up-stream along the river. They have five cubs and are completely self-sufficient. We see them periodically when they are always friendly and pleased to see us. They have wild mate called "Abudo".
Early in July last year we acquired a pair of leopard cubs through a friend for rehabilitation in the Kora National Reserve. As it is not feasible to have lions and leopards together, we set up a small camp with an enclosure six miles away at the foot of a rocky range of hills, an ideal situation for leopards where my assistant Tony Fitzjohn stays to care for them. "Attila" & "Kamunyu" are nearly eleven months old and in fine condition. We think in a couple of months the process of rehabilitation to the wild and freedom can be started.
(Letter continues on the back side of page.)
Thank you for your contribution and also for contributing the Wildlife Trust.
After a delay of nearly four months, we finally got permission to keep the leopards and rehabilitate them in the Kora National Reserve. I think largely because of the adverse publicity for Kenya and in particular the Directors of Wildlife which would have ensued, had we been forced to return the leopards to Paris!
A couple of months ago, I was inveigled into appearing in yet another documentary film with Ali Mac Graw. The film unit could spent only one night here, a rare occasion when the lions decided not to turn up at camp! Next I was flown to Massi-Mars to give Ali an interview over a camp fire at night at the next morning we were taken up in a balloon. First time I had been up in one. I found Ali a very nice and charming woman, intensely interested in all she saw.
(The 1982 letter ends here.)
-
"Kampi ya Simba"
Kora National Reserve
P.O.Box 135
Mwingi, Kenya
1/2/83
Dear [?]
[Identical to part of the letter above, presumably written on the same piece of paper]
By the end of…
… rehabilitation to the wild and freedom can be started.
Since writing the above nearly nine months have passed. The lions and leopards are that much older. "Koretta", "Naja" and other young grow increasingly independent and go off on extended forays up 20 miles from my camp. Recently they disappeared for over a month and try as I did I could not locate them, until I feared they might have crossed the Tana River into hostile country, where they would be vulnerable to Somali poachers and stock owners. Then much to my relief I came upon them along the river heading in the direction of my camp. I bought them a camel and they feasted on the carcass for 2 days. One member of the family, "Toughy", is missing, but at 2 years old it is likely that he has joined up with his father "Blackantan", who hasn't been seen either for 2 months. The 2 leopards have been given their freedom. For the 1st month they stayed together fairly close to camp but recently Attila has gone off on his own and we have not been able to trace him despite his radio collar. Komunyu, the female has made her territory in an area around the camp, she recently had her first encounter with a warthog and received a nasty gash in her rump which might teach her to be more careful in the future!
Thank you so much for your Christmas card and kind good wishes.
All the very best for 1983. [Signature] George
-
Viva la George Alexander Graham Adamson, in his full name!
In all scenes I watched from that clip, George appeared speechless and churlish, carrying his rifle on the shoulder with a pipe obliqued at his wrist, where lies his watch, a lesser known brand that is his only sign of being from civilization. He is dubbed the Father of Lions, and is perhaps the first and utmost successful person to establish an enduring relationship with wild lions, among them his favorite, Boy, was shot by himself for it tried to attack and then killed George's laborer.
The main characters of the clip are two young man from 1960s London. They purchased Christian the Lion as a pet and found out that the size of their pet is an increasing problem. Then they sent the lion to George, who helped train the beast back into the wilderness, and came visit one year later to have themselves hugged by the lion. The essence of the video ends here, and the essence of George's life ends here as well. For the next few decades he didn't leave behind any accessible writing except a photocopied letter, to indicate his existence, until his death at 1989 as he went to save the tourists and was shot by the mobster, Kenya police officer surely showed up, the media too, and that was it.
I'm today to print out the two letters by George, written in 1982 and 1983, because there's no existent text material on the internet, I thought it might be helpful that I type it out and make it distributable. I lack the insight required to revive a man, and the flair to influence other people, so this is the only thing I'm capable of doing for him.
-
"Kampi ya Simba"
Kora National Reserve
P.O.Box 135
Mwingi, KENYA
By the end of 1980, all the original lions which had come to us out of captivity had been successfully rehabilitated and gone off to do their own thing, inspite[sic] of being always well fed at Kampi ya Simba, some have crossed over the Tane River which forms the northern boundary of the reserve, the lions become vulnerable to poachers and reprisals of stock owners. No doubt, some have been killed or poisoned for this reason. Unfortunately, there is no control over the sale and distribution of "Coopertox" cattle dip which is a deadly poison which can be and is used illegally to poison lions and other predators. At the present time we keep in close contact with some of the offspring of the original lions. "Koretta", five years and three months of old, a magnificent lioness has produced three litters of cubs of which there are only two survivors, "Toughy", twelve months and "Kack" six months who are doing well. Koretta was not a good mother, prone to easy [a]education by "Blakantan" the wild lions, leading to neglect of the cubs. "Naja", three years old, a much smaller lioness has two cubs "Fritz" & "Fitz" aged nine months, she is an excellent and selfless mother. Without her help none of Koretta's cubs would have survived. Often even when hungry, she would carry meat to the cubs before satisfying her own needs. As if to make up for her early irresponsible behaviour, Koretta with an abundant supply of milk, would give all the cubs a feed. At one time, I entertained the suspicion that Blakantan was responsible for the loss of Koretta's first litter of four beautiful cubs and that he had killed and eaten them! I thought seriously of getting rid of him but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was as well that I did so, as he has turned out to be a model and indulgent father, allowing the cubs to rough-house him, pull his tail and bit his ears. Although shy and suspicious of humans, he is gaining confidence and often comes to camp with others and fairly shakes the place with his mighty roars at night. Always he chooses a position where the echoes off the hills can be heard to best advantage. Perhaps he likes to hear his own voice or may be wishes to intimidate visitors? Then there are two fine lionesses "Glowe" & "Growe" four and a half years old who have their territory some fourteen miles up-stream along the river. They have five cubs and are completely self-sufficient. We see them periodically when they are always friendly and pleased to see us. They have wild mate called "Abudo".
Early in July last year we acquired a pair of leopard cubs through a friend for rehabilitation in the Kora National Reserve. As it is not feasible to have lions and leopards together, we set up a small camp with an enclosure six miles away at the foot of a rocky range of hills, an ideal situation for leopards where my assistant Tony Fitzjohn stays to care for them. "Attila" & "Kamunyu" are nearly eleven months old and in fine condition. We think in a couple of months the process of rehabilitation to the wild and freedom can be started.
(Letter continues on the back side of page.)
Thank you for your contribution and also for contributing the Wildlife Trust.
After a delay of nearly four months, we finally got permission to keep the leopards and rehabilitate them in the Kora National Reserve. I think largely because of the adverse publicity for Kenya and in particular the Directors of Wildlife which would have ensued, had we been forced to return the leopards to Paris!
A couple of months ago, I was inveigled into appearing in yet another documentary film with Ali Mac Graw. The film unit could spent only one night here, a rare occasion when the lions decided not to turn up at camp! Next I was flown to Massi-Mars to give Ali an interview over a camp fire at night at the next morning we were taken up in a balloon. First time I had been up in one. I found Ali a very nice and charming woman, intensely interested in all she saw.
(The 1982 letter ends here.)
-
"Kampi ya Simba"
Kora National Reserve
P.O.Box 135
Mwingi, Kenya
1/2/83
Dear [?]
[Identical to part of the letter above, presumably written on the same piece of paper]
By the end of…
… rehabilitation to the wild and freedom can be started.
Since writing the above nearly nine months have passed. The lions and leopards are that much older. "Koretta", "Naja" and other young grow increasingly independent and go off on extended forays up 20 miles from my camp. Recently they disappeared for over a month and try as I did I could not locate them, until I feared they might have crossed the Tana River into hostile country, where they would be vulnerable to Somali poachers and stock owners. Then much to my relief I came upon them along the river heading in the direction of my camp. I bought them a camel and they feasted on the carcass for 2 days. One member of the family, "Toughy", is missing, but at 2 years old it is likely that he has joined up with his father "Blackantan", who hasn't been seen either for 2 months. The 2 leopards have been given their freedom. For the 1st month they stayed together fairly close to camp but recently Attila has gone off on his own and we have not been able to trace him despite his radio collar. Komunyu, the female has made her territory in an area around the camp, she recently had her first encounter with a warthog and received a nasty gash in her rump which might teach her to be more careful in the future!
Thank you so much for your Christmas card and kind good wishes.
All the very best for 1983. [Signature] George
-
Viva la George Alexander Graham Adamson, in his full name!
Saturday, May 18
5/18
Several months ago, when I was still dangling in the campus and enjoying my blatant immature, I spent several hours chatting with one of my formulaic social life, about the prospect of going to somewhere other than my usual realm, an unknown country vernacular to an unknown language, so that I could take advantage of my delicate pretension by refusing to be understood by both the victim and the original person who I self-flawlessly imitated. And now half of that has become true - the reality ironically attests to my oracle, and another half is true as well, true in my imagination and the other people's impression of me based on the outward incarceration of that imagination. Perfectionism sure does play a large role, but pessimism plays a larger one in my aversion to becoming either ignorable or glaring.
My mom went to her mom after preparing my lunch, and while it was still lunchtime before her departure she didn't forget to urge me the necessity of dinner, which, despite her extortion and my impatience, I have skipped. I skipped it, for the primary reason of an insecurity that prevents me from doing anything that will not contribute to the result 10 days later, and a further squeamishness of my incessant verbosity on that issue.
I attempted to add something interesting to this post by introducing a third-person description about my brother. But I should confide that I severely failed. I've always been writing using the first person as if I'm the center of everything - I minimize the appearance of character, object, location or time, and only allow their entrance for the structure of the passage must be substantial in one way or another to be appreciated, by myself or a random boring reader dwell in the online community for the comfort of deserting the reality. I too, am agitated by the magic of putting down my thought, in a refined language, turn my misgiving into something within the grasp, contemplate the origin of my emotion, and feel the contemplation with my emotional mind. I write, without any consideration of the accuracy of my arrangement, or the veracity of my thinking, or the return from a distant future, because to feel innate is to feel everything, cramped and squished into nothing.
One miraculous aspect about my deplorable phone is that it not only restarts itself at a regular basis, but also reduces the demand of recharge. The former is my frustration of that device, and the latter is the consequence of my frustration. However, I'm imagining that I become an animal or just crawl out my tombstone erected several hundred years ago and since then untonsured. I will feel privileged to have this device in my hand, and see my manipulation of the docile icons flowing mid-air for my convenience. I will trade my land, clothes, or anything I thought was precious centuries earlier, for the use of that cell phone. But instead, now I'm renouncing its mystique and opposing its setback. I sit on the rooftop, using my mobile phone for the first time and having the starlight as romantic as my fantasy, and laugh on the chair on the 7th floor I'm currently sitting. After all, to have experienced or have not, to have died or have not, is only a blink of the eyes and when I open them again… I will not open them again. And I'm satisfied, as satisfied as the time when I have never existed, and view life from my never-existed point of view.
I seek for nothing like a decorational chrysanthemum beside the road, breathing in and out the nitrogen dioxide and thinking the smell is fragrant for its poison. It's the fermentation of a stagnation, and when I express it, it instantly become the stagnation of a fermentation, which judged from any angle, is illogical and quirky. I'm dizzy and I'm conscious, I'm empty and stuffed, for tomorrow morning, I will do the same thing and rationally wait for a radically different outcome.
I don't know because I can't know, and I know, for I know I can't. I've lost oneself, that's why I've begun this writing. And may I thank myself for bringing this.
My mom went to her mom after preparing my lunch, and while it was still lunchtime before her departure she didn't forget to urge me the necessity of dinner, which, despite her extortion and my impatience, I have skipped. I skipped it, for the primary reason of an insecurity that prevents me from doing anything that will not contribute to the result 10 days later, and a further squeamishness of my incessant verbosity on that issue.
I attempted to add something interesting to this post by introducing a third-person description about my brother. But I should confide that I severely failed. I've always been writing using the first person as if I'm the center of everything - I minimize the appearance of character, object, location or time, and only allow their entrance for the structure of the passage must be substantial in one way or another to be appreciated, by myself or a random boring reader dwell in the online community for the comfort of deserting the reality. I too, am agitated by the magic of putting down my thought, in a refined language, turn my misgiving into something within the grasp, contemplate the origin of my emotion, and feel the contemplation with my emotional mind. I write, without any consideration of the accuracy of my arrangement, or the veracity of my thinking, or the return from a distant future, because to feel innate is to feel everything, cramped and squished into nothing.
One miraculous aspect about my deplorable phone is that it not only restarts itself at a regular basis, but also reduces the demand of recharge. The former is my frustration of that device, and the latter is the consequence of my frustration. However, I'm imagining that I become an animal or just crawl out my tombstone erected several hundred years ago and since then untonsured. I will feel privileged to have this device in my hand, and see my manipulation of the docile icons flowing mid-air for my convenience. I will trade my land, clothes, or anything I thought was precious centuries earlier, for the use of that cell phone. But instead, now I'm renouncing its mystique and opposing its setback. I sit on the rooftop, using my mobile phone for the first time and having the starlight as romantic as my fantasy, and laugh on the chair on the 7th floor I'm currently sitting. After all, to have experienced or have not, to have died or have not, is only a blink of the eyes and when I open them again… I will not open them again. And I'm satisfied, as satisfied as the time when I have never existed, and view life from my never-existed point of view.
I seek for nothing like a decorational chrysanthemum beside the road, breathing in and out the nitrogen dioxide and thinking the smell is fragrant for its poison. It's the fermentation of a stagnation, and when I express it, it instantly become the stagnation of a fermentation, which judged from any angle, is illogical and quirky. I'm dizzy and I'm conscious, I'm empty and stuffed, for tomorrow morning, I will do the same thing and rationally wait for a radically different outcome.
I don't know because I can't know, and I know, for I know I can't. I've lost oneself, that's why I've begun this writing. And may I thank myself for bringing this.
Friday, May 17
5/17
For the dearth of any form of conceivable keenness to arouse me, the spaciousness in my mind manifested in the words I put on the pages. I whine about something that would be an unimaginable benediction to the orphan and dejected in those countries I won't travel to, and feel sympathetic to them like to animals in the farm I once touched and dream of their being my equal.
It seems to me that a tremendous portion of my functionality serves only to other functionalities. The breakfast I eat, the milk I drink which I lack the proper DNA to process, in turn become my unfeeling at solving calculus problems that already have an definite answer, or simply pressing the buttons on my costly calculator. I imagine those expenses replaced by indolence, so that my fruitless consumption can dwindle and my useless output can continue to be what pushes others to fill in the forms or put the coins meticulously in the slot on the bus. I don't have any idea how long the distance I've walked, but it's evident to me that I only reach out when I need the subsistence of humanity, and then carry with me prey awaiting to become the excrement next morning or the shudder of dream tonight. A contented man without greed has the jewels like those had by dragons for no pragmatic purpose other than more content.
The insistent noise of the drilling machine down the stairs suggests some vestigial part of the former construction was in the way, and therefore should be discarded. But the interesting thing is that because I have the vague impression that I've been there, I relate to it some unmeasurable degree. I'm feeling sorrier for the crash of a stone than for the millions suffering starvation and abuse. The situation irks me, but I can't be chastised or reprimanded, for I was irked by myself and that's always fine. I have those expressions I fail to express, and I gaze downwards with a palm on cheek, thinking that those future historians will be able to notice something my contemporaries or I don't.
When Fitzgerald was walking on the streets on New York and my memory was digging through the Earth to reach him, he subsequently wrote something memorable and elegant in his prose. I cannot. For Fitzgerald at least walked on those streets, at least live in New York that could provide him with some inspiration, and more than that, for concomitant with those inspiration is an entourage of tastes and reflections, which I don't have. I woke up today, brushed my teeth, did test problems, ate, sat, and that's everything I did. I endured the noise in the mist by listen to rock music, and gloat that with this magical blend I created something not only magical to me but also to some hypothetical and existential things that share with me a same threadbare expectation.
I sometimes want a huge barcode on my rooftop so that my information can be obtained through Google Earth, but I'm baffled and recoil for there are some troubles beyond solution. The first is that putting a barcode on the rooftop involves climbing to the rooftop, and I lack the interest to. The second is my rooftop was only a small one from a small city, not from Time Square. The third is that by the time I clean up schedule and prepare all the leisure, I will have forgotten to do so and instead play some game on my computer or take a nap. These told the way I feel it, of that chronicle negligible absurdity, of a bitterness stems from the willingness to feel bitter. I'm angry and I want to cry, or play basketball, but I am always on the verge of tears and reluctant to walk to the court or to get my basketball aerated. My body is wearied from all the activities I've never done and will never do. How pathetic, how insensible! Not only my attributes, but also the fact that no one but me glance at them.
I went to the bathroom, the peripheral place at this moment, and came back to resume the writing, the few things I don't know if they're valuable, and other disdainfully picayune and workday. I spend time in its divisions and deem some of them are more important and assign them with priority. But when I return from other, less fashionable divisions and take up the more important ones, I find out that the importance is only hallucinatory. For example, the semi-diary I'm composing now resumes nothing, begins nothing, and ends nothing. Only for my presumptuousness does it becomes worth doing. And I do it only because I know everything is worth doing out of my presumptuousness.
A rare bird in the drizzle just flew by my uncertain window, and that represents not the bird flying, but also the sensation of my seeing the bird flying, all in my appreciative and elliptical inclusion, that bears the wound of my unfinishable battle.
It seems to me that a tremendous portion of my functionality serves only to other functionalities. The breakfast I eat, the milk I drink which I lack the proper DNA to process, in turn become my unfeeling at solving calculus problems that already have an definite answer, or simply pressing the buttons on my costly calculator. I imagine those expenses replaced by indolence, so that my fruitless consumption can dwindle and my useless output can continue to be what pushes others to fill in the forms or put the coins meticulously in the slot on the bus. I don't have any idea how long the distance I've walked, but it's evident to me that I only reach out when I need the subsistence of humanity, and then carry with me prey awaiting to become the excrement next morning or the shudder of dream tonight. A contented man without greed has the jewels like those had by dragons for no pragmatic purpose other than more content.
The insistent noise of the drilling machine down the stairs suggests some vestigial part of the former construction was in the way, and therefore should be discarded. But the interesting thing is that because I have the vague impression that I've been there, I relate to it some unmeasurable degree. I'm feeling sorrier for the crash of a stone than for the millions suffering starvation and abuse. The situation irks me, but I can't be chastised or reprimanded, for I was irked by myself and that's always fine. I have those expressions I fail to express, and I gaze downwards with a palm on cheek, thinking that those future historians will be able to notice something my contemporaries or I don't.
When Fitzgerald was walking on the streets on New York and my memory was digging through the Earth to reach him, he subsequently wrote something memorable and elegant in his prose. I cannot. For Fitzgerald at least walked on those streets, at least live in New York that could provide him with some inspiration, and more than that, for concomitant with those inspiration is an entourage of tastes and reflections, which I don't have. I woke up today, brushed my teeth, did test problems, ate, sat, and that's everything I did. I endured the noise in the mist by listen to rock music, and gloat that with this magical blend I created something not only magical to me but also to some hypothetical and existential things that share with me a same threadbare expectation.
I sometimes want a huge barcode on my rooftop so that my information can be obtained through Google Earth, but I'm baffled and recoil for there are some troubles beyond solution. The first is that putting a barcode on the rooftop involves climbing to the rooftop, and I lack the interest to. The second is my rooftop was only a small one from a small city, not from Time Square. The third is that by the time I clean up schedule and prepare all the leisure, I will have forgotten to do so and instead play some game on my computer or take a nap. These told the way I feel it, of that chronicle negligible absurdity, of a bitterness stems from the willingness to feel bitter. I'm angry and I want to cry, or play basketball, but I am always on the verge of tears and reluctant to walk to the court or to get my basketball aerated. My body is wearied from all the activities I've never done and will never do. How pathetic, how insensible! Not only my attributes, but also the fact that no one but me glance at them.
I went to the bathroom, the peripheral place at this moment, and came back to resume the writing, the few things I don't know if they're valuable, and other disdainfully picayune and workday. I spend time in its divisions and deem some of them are more important and assign them with priority. But when I return from other, less fashionable divisions and take up the more important ones, I find out that the importance is only hallucinatory. For example, the semi-diary I'm composing now resumes nothing, begins nothing, and ends nothing. Only for my presumptuousness does it becomes worth doing. And I do it only because I know everything is worth doing out of my presumptuousness.
A rare bird in the drizzle just flew by my uncertain window, and that represents not the bird flying, but also the sensation of my seeing the bird flying, all in my appreciative and elliptical inclusion, that bears the wound of my unfinishable battle.
Thursday, May 16
Personal Statement
At 11:40 PM 5/16/2013 Beijing Time, when I've just slept for 2 hours, I'm already awake. Maybe before sleep I was so determined to change my schedule to fit it with that of D-day, my bodily function overcompensated. But the nocturnal setting offers more than fatigue, it makes the majesty out of the routine, that however menial and unknown, I can still do something of my own redemption. The rain rains still, it doesn't have to stop to indicate that I should do something to convenience the possible success of my diligence - writing Personal Statement the crucial document and occasioning my willingness and delight.
-
The sun had vanished when I left school that November Friday.
As usual I needed to walk several blocks for the bus stop, which was made inevitable by my carless family and a desire for quietude. En route agitation was scarce - the street was dull as it'd been walked a million times, and I was dull as I was a millionth that walked it.
Beside me were pedestrians passing by, in a discernable but inaudible voice; behind me was a shadow distorted and restarted by the stars, but beyond me was nothing, a visible nothing where only a pirouetting leaf and a solipsistic repetition could remain.
Someone at a distance turned on the lamp, but it didn't disrupt me, it freed me. Meanwhile, the mild saffron of air, the dance of wind, and the hush beneath them, created something poetic and unpredictable to my inattention, for as I looked back to the length I'd trodden, and looked forward to the bend I'd turn, I neglected the place I was standing. I went to a necropolis of my yearning, but I was no more than a witness of its reduction. I walked towards a completion that was indeed a completion.
Upon the verge of sleepless and sleepiness, of confront and confess, I stagnated between the vastness of destiny and the nothingness of my being.
The bus was crammed with people submerged in a mutual indifference, because difference would always be otherwhere, otherwise, and otherworld. At the meantime, no line would be crossed, no farewell would be waved.
I gawked at the endless flow of irrelevance through the window, and saw a phantasmagoria of dust and youth and elegy below, with a ginormous, monopolizing wall above. I felt like I was a deserter on a bus, except that the bus was circular, and there's no desert.
I was buttoned behind dream by impossible hands, and I realized I woke up in it, and I persisted in it, like the scrap of residue at the bottom of every sensation, positing itself to no one's interest. But such was my morality, or prophecy, or surrender, or me: a spectator of a show starring himself as protagonist, without exhibition or production, without film or camera, only a soul whose mere leftover was yet appeased into emptiness.
I was denied like a beggar, who didn't know what he's begging for, or did know but chose not to notice. Oblivion was my nostalgia; anger was my anguish. I hoped the hopeless hopes, lived the lifeless lives.
But I was tired, I wanted to go home, not the apartment downtown, not otherwhere nor otherwise, but someone who'd been me before I evolved out of it.
I gazed up for God that was never there, and he told me:
"Don't part with your illusion. When they're gone you may still exist, but you have ceasing to live."
I heard him.
I'm here.
-
P: Wish myself good luck :-)
-
The sun had vanished when I left school that November Friday.
As usual I needed to walk several blocks for the bus stop, which was made inevitable by my carless family and a desire for quietude. En route agitation was scarce - the street was dull as it'd been walked a million times, and I was dull as I was a millionth that walked it.
Beside me were pedestrians passing by, in a discernable but inaudible voice; behind me was a shadow distorted and restarted by the stars, but beyond me was nothing, a visible nothing where only a pirouetting leaf and a solipsistic repetition could remain.
Someone at a distance turned on the lamp, but it didn't disrupt me, it freed me. Meanwhile, the mild saffron of air, the dance of wind, and the hush beneath them, created something poetic and unpredictable to my inattention, for as I looked back to the length I'd trodden, and looked forward to the bend I'd turn, I neglected the place I was standing. I went to a necropolis of my yearning, but I was no more than a witness of its reduction. I walked towards a completion that was indeed a completion.
Upon the verge of sleepless and sleepiness, of confront and confess, I stagnated between the vastness of destiny and the nothingness of my being.
The bus was crammed with people submerged in a mutual indifference, because difference would always be otherwhere, otherwise, and otherworld. At the meantime, no line would be crossed, no farewell would be waved.
I gawked at the endless flow of irrelevance through the window, and saw a phantasmagoria of dust and youth and elegy below, with a ginormous, monopolizing wall above. I felt like I was a deserter on a bus, except that the bus was circular, and there's no desert.
I was buttoned behind dream by impossible hands, and I realized I woke up in it, and I persisted in it, like the scrap of residue at the bottom of every sensation, positing itself to no one's interest. But such was my morality, or prophecy, or surrender, or me: a spectator of a show starring himself as protagonist, without exhibition or production, without film or camera, only a soul whose mere leftover was yet appeased into emptiness.
I was denied like a beggar, who didn't know what he's begging for, or did know but chose not to notice. Oblivion was my nostalgia; anger was my anguish. I hoped the hopeless hopes, lived the lifeless lives.
But I was tired, I wanted to go home, not the apartment downtown, not otherwhere nor otherwise, but someone who'd been me before I evolved out of it.
I gazed up for God that was never there, and he told me:
"Don't part with your illusion. When they're gone you may still exist, but you have ceasing to live."
I heard him.
I'm here.
-
P: Wish myself good luck :-)
5/16
As the first rain obscured my vision of what is supposed to be seen, I came to a knowledge that the weather is connected with the status of my mood in some indiscernible way. I don't know if vice versa, but when the sun spreads over the ever changing flow of vehicle and the barely changing pavement beside it, there inherited a sense of joyfulness rare to be seen in the gloomy, forgetless days like this. And when I recall ambiguously to the distant things that happened in some corner of my mind, I do perceive there a mild distinction that separate them from the usual things that usually occur to me, the colorfulness of every angle, and the saturation of that colorfulness, all seems unavailable elsewhere other than the rosy garden at the gate of banality. Meanwhile, I have the certitude that their existence was once a part of me, and I wistfully disregard it for the uncharted probability of the future.
Now I sit behind the curtain that perpetuates the thoroughness of the blockage, and only the clicks of raindrops could remind me of the relevance outside. In my Sony Android phone I installed an ad-replenished free app called Sleeping. One of my favorite soundtracks contained therein is a seemingly real-time recording of the sound of rain, which turns out to be a few syllable incorporated as a form of completeness. I don't care about the regularity or the repeating nature of that soundtrack, nor the soothing effects it touts to bring, I only attend to the tranquility of that experience, as any of an affordable difference beside my chronicle pillow can bring me a moment of ecstasy, which is precisely the motivation of my bothering to tap on the screen. I see the entirety of myself in those things that now are presented in the form of loosely interrelated fragments. And my seeing them was as ridiculous as the haphazard result of a cat's montage.
My uncle, the quasi-stepfather of no one else but me, just came in to ask for the structures of another 5 Chinese characters that he encountered problem printing. For my severely limited poll of real learning, I had to type them on the computer, and replicate them exactly on the paper with my indecisive left hand. Before his entrance, without earthquake of anything impossible to concur with my state of affair, I felt like drowning into the absolute depth of the universe, that total directionlessness and a defiance of everything except the being for the sake of being. The norepinephrine secreted in my cortex makes my brain functioning in a deformed way, and puts me into a reverie of something peculiar no different from that of anyone else.
No need to confirm the existence of happiness, no desire to dispute, and no power to alter, it was a peaceful delight that sees through the representation of the substance and definition. I shouldn't do anything, to deter, or to facilitate its progress. For either action will go against its essential meaning, and thus will contaminate and diminish its purity.
I made it again up to 2300 in my self-monitored practice test, with materials exclusive to the legality in China, and a misfit 0.5mm refill in my 0.7mm pencil. It should be an occasion to do something meaningless and entertaining. But an inscrutable misgiving inevitably weighs on me, a collective mishmash of conscience, an arid yearning for the real, objective and eternal accomplishments of a human soul, weighs on me and turns into burning tears and laughters in the center of my heart. I resent the role of luck, the instantaneous condition of the rules that government the ensemble of everything, that plays in the results of my test, and my college, and my life. But with this longing nothing is settled but a begrudging acknowledge of its authority. My sensibility becomes lethal as I begin to walk and find a can of milk in the plastic box few steps away.
I'm challenging something and I don't know what it is, and no consequence will emerge, no negation will exert, no awareness of this endeavor, only left with myself a floundering consciousness of having been an infringement of someone's simplistic gentleness, of this guilt of not being able to commit a crime, and of a crime of thinking about committing it. And this is nonsense. And the formless, non-existent Gods laugh and make me interpret that laughter.
A vast calm, a drained stamina, precociously or posthumously, slave me, electrify me with black and dull infinity, only for the reason of revoking my mask so that I feign thoroughly into the world of nothing but reality.
P: May God bless the so little I've asked.
Now I sit behind the curtain that perpetuates the thoroughness of the blockage, and only the clicks of raindrops could remind me of the relevance outside. In my Sony Android phone I installed an ad-replenished free app called Sleeping. One of my favorite soundtracks contained therein is a seemingly real-time recording of the sound of rain, which turns out to be a few syllable incorporated as a form of completeness. I don't care about the regularity or the repeating nature of that soundtrack, nor the soothing effects it touts to bring, I only attend to the tranquility of that experience, as any of an affordable difference beside my chronicle pillow can bring me a moment of ecstasy, which is precisely the motivation of my bothering to tap on the screen. I see the entirety of myself in those things that now are presented in the form of loosely interrelated fragments. And my seeing them was as ridiculous as the haphazard result of a cat's montage.
My uncle, the quasi-stepfather of no one else but me, just came in to ask for the structures of another 5 Chinese characters that he encountered problem printing. For my severely limited poll of real learning, I had to type them on the computer, and replicate them exactly on the paper with my indecisive left hand. Before his entrance, without earthquake of anything impossible to concur with my state of affair, I felt like drowning into the absolute depth of the universe, that total directionlessness and a defiance of everything except the being for the sake of being. The norepinephrine secreted in my cortex makes my brain functioning in a deformed way, and puts me into a reverie of something peculiar no different from that of anyone else.
No need to confirm the existence of happiness, no desire to dispute, and no power to alter, it was a peaceful delight that sees through the representation of the substance and definition. I shouldn't do anything, to deter, or to facilitate its progress. For either action will go against its essential meaning, and thus will contaminate and diminish its purity.
I made it again up to 2300 in my self-monitored practice test, with materials exclusive to the legality in China, and a misfit 0.5mm refill in my 0.7mm pencil. It should be an occasion to do something meaningless and entertaining. But an inscrutable misgiving inevitably weighs on me, a collective mishmash of conscience, an arid yearning for the real, objective and eternal accomplishments of a human soul, weighs on me and turns into burning tears and laughters in the center of my heart. I resent the role of luck, the instantaneous condition of the rules that government the ensemble of everything, that plays in the results of my test, and my college, and my life. But with this longing nothing is settled but a begrudging acknowledge of its authority. My sensibility becomes lethal as I begin to walk and find a can of milk in the plastic box few steps away.
I'm challenging something and I don't know what it is, and no consequence will emerge, no negation will exert, no awareness of this endeavor, only left with myself a floundering consciousness of having been an infringement of someone's simplistic gentleness, of this guilt of not being able to commit a crime, and of a crime of thinking about committing it. And this is nonsense. And the formless, non-existent Gods laugh and make me interpret that laughter.
A vast calm, a drained stamina, precociously or posthumously, slave me, electrify me with black and dull infinity, only for the reason of revoking my mask so that I feign thoroughly into the world of nothing but reality.
P: May God bless the so little I've asked.
Wednesday, May 15
5/15
Today is another mediocre and anxious day. On my schedule are only broad instructions of waking up, doing test problems, reading, evading ramen noodles that testify my being in this apartment building lived by me and my mother and several hundreds of strangers.
I have uttered no more than three words since morning, and I notice that my contemplation is getting more derailed from the expression of language. I turn plain and pointless diction into something sophisticated and deep, I use the innate words like solipsistic and overwhelming to describe a colorless motion, and that only adds to the extent to its colorlessness. I'm reminded of a medieval temple where monks argued with other monks in an esoteric manner untainted by any perceptible reality, and strive to understand the principles underlying those rootless principles. For the mundane and the routine are deprived of any substantial improvement, and left only with the protraction of cadence, and substitution of some more syllabic and tongue-laboring word.
When, because of the demolition of my previous home, I moved to the apartment in the downtown area of Wuxi city, the cluster of 1970-style building in front of it was yet to be removed. There was a public bathroom stall that my uncle used to take me to for the price was adorably lower than any outside franchise. I then didn't have a hygienic sense and inherent snobbishness towards those people covered with sweat that turned into oil due to insufficient cleansing. That was the only available welfare for the workers in that loosely guarded factory, which was the reason of my entrance. Now those experiences, however unpleasant and base, become something of a precious memory - the permanent expunging of anything has an effect of enhancing its significance, and leaving me disturbed by the changing of the surrounding and at the same time a vague wish for drastic difference of becoming the noble and the respected. That sorrow and longing consistently distract and torment me, and instead make me impenetrable to neither of those fundamental sides of human contradiction. I'm those things that I'm trying to depart from and gloat at, therefore I'm nothing, as long as I don't admit it and deny if I've already done.
I have with me a strong impulse to see things as they are, that it doesn't disappear even after I close my eyes. I can still see restless dots and patterns that has nothing to imply and to do with my well-being. But I comprehend them as something abstract and transcending. The fading circle in this corner of my vision denotes the birth of another anomaly in the identical place. And I stare at them, and think that I'm staring at the wonderful and mysterious creatures in the flatland behind the curtains of my eyes. They're not only biological membrane to protect the integrity of my eyeballs, but also a mental and metaphysical one that might lead to an isolated garden in the middle of a distant ocean, of a heaven of the tranquility that is otherwise unreachable behind the dream of something absurd and enjoyable. And as a get tired of the profundity of that place, the ebb and flow of nothing other my conviction, I open my eyes again ready to be struck by the huge disappointment of seeing the same monochromatic and inscrutable things.
The bilingualism provides me something further than the convenience of communicating with strangers from other continents. It creates a different self that's interchangeable with the original one. The compactness of the Chinese language is so compelling that I must adopt a different way in organizing English, so that I can be thoughtless and thoughtful at whenever appropriate occasion.
I sometimes stagnated in the versatile inabilities of myself, and my subsequent effort to averse that inability and a disdain for that aversion. When the external and the alien is repealed from consideration, there will be nothing left. And I embrace and doubt nihilism as the answer to all things, however trivial and frivolous, may sometimes really offer me the pleasure of not having to think. But more often, I dowse myself in the sublime scenery of my own conjecture. I'm the God in my own sensation, and the only impertinence is that I'm the God of my own sensation.
In those empty thus childish moments, I put the mouse on the edge of the screen, and shaking it violently on the mat and watch the icon follow my madness. I savor the control of at least something, until an unexpected dialogue or option pop ups, and stops me. I confine my frustration to my possessions, and at some point I think that I want possession so that I can keep being frustrated.
But at the middle of all these, I'm privileged of few things I accept and not doubt, not think and feel the perfect understanding. The tiredness, the resignation to the flow of whatever pushes my humble being, to whatever direction I can enjoy and then cope, or cope and then enjoy.
I have uttered no more than three words since morning, and I notice that my contemplation is getting more derailed from the expression of language. I turn plain and pointless diction into something sophisticated and deep, I use the innate words like solipsistic and overwhelming to describe a colorless motion, and that only adds to the extent to its colorlessness. I'm reminded of a medieval temple where monks argued with other monks in an esoteric manner untainted by any perceptible reality, and strive to understand the principles underlying those rootless principles. For the mundane and the routine are deprived of any substantial improvement, and left only with the protraction of cadence, and substitution of some more syllabic and tongue-laboring word.
When, because of the demolition of my previous home, I moved to the apartment in the downtown area of Wuxi city, the cluster of 1970-style building in front of it was yet to be removed. There was a public bathroom stall that my uncle used to take me to for the price was adorably lower than any outside franchise. I then didn't have a hygienic sense and inherent snobbishness towards those people covered with sweat that turned into oil due to insufficient cleansing. That was the only available welfare for the workers in that loosely guarded factory, which was the reason of my entrance. Now those experiences, however unpleasant and base, become something of a precious memory - the permanent expunging of anything has an effect of enhancing its significance, and leaving me disturbed by the changing of the surrounding and at the same time a vague wish for drastic difference of becoming the noble and the respected. That sorrow and longing consistently distract and torment me, and instead make me impenetrable to neither of those fundamental sides of human contradiction. I'm those things that I'm trying to depart from and gloat at, therefore I'm nothing, as long as I don't admit it and deny if I've already done.
I have with me a strong impulse to see things as they are, that it doesn't disappear even after I close my eyes. I can still see restless dots and patterns that has nothing to imply and to do with my well-being. But I comprehend them as something abstract and transcending. The fading circle in this corner of my vision denotes the birth of another anomaly in the identical place. And I stare at them, and think that I'm staring at the wonderful and mysterious creatures in the flatland behind the curtains of my eyes. They're not only biological membrane to protect the integrity of my eyeballs, but also a mental and metaphysical one that might lead to an isolated garden in the middle of a distant ocean, of a heaven of the tranquility that is otherwise unreachable behind the dream of something absurd and enjoyable. And as a get tired of the profundity of that place, the ebb and flow of nothing other my conviction, I open my eyes again ready to be struck by the huge disappointment of seeing the same monochromatic and inscrutable things.
The bilingualism provides me something further than the convenience of communicating with strangers from other continents. It creates a different self that's interchangeable with the original one. The compactness of the Chinese language is so compelling that I must adopt a different way in organizing English, so that I can be thoughtless and thoughtful at whenever appropriate occasion.
I sometimes stagnated in the versatile inabilities of myself, and my subsequent effort to averse that inability and a disdain for that aversion. When the external and the alien is repealed from consideration, there will be nothing left. And I embrace and doubt nihilism as the answer to all things, however trivial and frivolous, may sometimes really offer me the pleasure of not having to think. But more often, I dowse myself in the sublime scenery of my own conjecture. I'm the God in my own sensation, and the only impertinence is that I'm the God of my own sensation.
In those empty thus childish moments, I put the mouse on the edge of the screen, and shaking it violently on the mat and watch the icon follow my madness. I savor the control of at least something, until an unexpected dialogue or option pop ups, and stops me. I confine my frustration to my possessions, and at some point I think that I want possession so that I can keep being frustrated.
But at the middle of all these, I'm privileged of few things I accept and not doubt, not think and feel the perfect understanding. The tiredness, the resignation to the flow of whatever pushes my humble being, to whatever direction I can enjoy and then cope, or cope and then enjoy.
Tuesday, May 14
Disquiet
I do not feel good, because everything seems to have gone beyond my control, and in the middle of that chaos was my meticulously attending to every detail in hope of improvement, which neither will be of actual help.
Last time I felt this glum sentiment I remember I spared an hour to sit by the window sill and talk to myself, with an English accent impeccable in the perspective of my surroundings, so that I could feel the superiority and smoke on that. My assumption was that once I escaped the College Entrance Exam, I would be free to devise my future on the blank page, but in fact I put myself in another, more cruel, for it depends of probability, College Application. I shared the disdain of pedantic undergraduate education with my father, I condemned aimlessly whoever I thought was on my way, and the problem retains, seems unsolvable, that chronicle lack of money. I should've been doing thing I'm interested in, installing OS X on the VMWare and solve the iMessage problem with Chameleon, reading novels in Chinese that after all, is my native language, continuing to miss the space after every punctuation and the line after every paragraph… because I don't have to work to obtain a 2000 in SAT, I prefer the depressurized life. But instead I'm working, ensuring, and hypothetically assuming, and worrying about where I'm going.
I think about what if the result turned out in the worst kind, then what should I do, what could I do to compensate for not only the failure of my delusion but also the disappointment, chiding, suspicion from all around me, my circle, and the social crust where I belong. I'm not an itinerant, who have nothing so that he can do anything, try out every way, and ponder the problem without mentioning the consequence. I'm an out-of-box thinker, that's why I'm here writing in English, listening to English radio, and tomorrow morning do English problems, but I'm not an out-side-box doer, that's why I'm doing the same thing. Months ago I made the most courageous decision ever in my life, because I believed that for my courage and sacrifice I should gain something in exchange, something as an institutionalized Chinese high school student will never be able to find out, but I didn't see anything. At school I can be managed, by teacher; at home, I have to manage myself.
I do have alternatives, but that alternative would be a direct proof of the failure of my entire strategy and aspiration. I don't want to allow that to happen, but I have only 15 days to know if it will. I have a sister and a brother who have a very decent and respected life, as a high ranking government official and a famous entrepreneur in Suzhou. But all of my attempt to get in touch with them came to nothing. I don't know if I had overestimated their weigh in the family, or the family's weigh in them. The world is a realistic one, although I claim to adore the romantic and the ideal, like for thousands of years human beings have been adoring, I only see the futility, in a way religious people struggling to prove their God and non-religious people struggling to disapprove it. I'm not measured by what I want to do, but how I can do it and if what I did could be seen as done, and hopefully I would never be measured that way, not only me, but any foreseeable future generation.
When I was taking shower today - absurd as it is picayune, I mocked myself that I only have traits, not capabilities, and the worse is that I'm still making traits to wish the capability coming. The dilemma originated not from me, the murder, nor my family, the victim, but the society's mandate of money as the threshold of everything, which involves some kind of relationship that when I don't understand, but am eager to, and when I do, I no longer care.
The most effective way of deviating from these sensations is probably reading. Fernando Pessoa said that reading is the most agreeable way to escape life. I did allocate 20 minutes to read the book Lying in the Drunken World. The plot, not surprisingly, consists of nothing deep and worth thinking twice. But I'm fascinated by the presence of another world, where everything imaginable not only imagined but also materialized. But after scanning few pages, I'm forced out of that bouncy castle. Because there's always something I shouldn't forget, something a lv 90 in World of Warcraft or a thorough enjoyment of books cannot surrogate. The things depicted in those books, among those pages, are graceful as they're untruthful. Only that I don't really differentiate between the real world and the virtual one when I see no peril imminent in either.
Everyone is perverse to some extent, and that extent is limited. I don't know if understanding the aim for life is happiness means understanding life. I have my mind, disproportionate to my status as it may be, deprived of clear reasoning and the euphoria of simplicity. And being 18 years old already, I don't have a way to truly realize my independence. Reading my classmates' update, I perceived distance; reading the wrinkle on the faces of my parents, siblings, all of them, I saw estrangement. A lot of people defy this inclination by something that endures, I don't exist in those people's world.
I want an iPhone (to replace my current sluggish Android), and a real Mac (to have a real Mac), and a Faber Castell propel pencil (so that my left hand writes more comfortably), and I can't afford them. And when I've gotten them, surely I cannot afford something else.
I want to leave my own country, China, out of disdain of its destruction of the past, of its people, but I can tell myself that I am leaving not for those reasons. I'm leaving because under this institution I cannot succeed, too much of my temperament is at odds with the temperament of this people, and that in United States I might feel better than I do here, where I don't need technological method to bypass the Great Firewall to have Facebook, Twitter, and post this blog. Or I will feel not necessarily better, since I've seen always those rich guys are not happy at all. But I cannot check the impulse of becoming rich first and maybe returning to poor then. I know there's a different between peasant and peasant-entrepreneur-peasant.
I do have nothing but the harsh reality that thwarted that nothing, and I'll have nothing. But at least at this moment, when I'm 18 years old, I'm not succumbing, and am doing what I want to do, and that's it, it serves my desire, albeit nonsensical. And after that, I might be one of the Big Green, one of the Wall Street, and one of the eco fanatics, or an ordinary office clerk stuck in downtown Wuxi city forever. I could be everything that varies by possibility, but I won't forget that I don't have my 18th birthday because I tried to implement those sentiments, that I bear something more important in mind, to give my life a meaning, delusional, meaningless meaning that I can live by just like I comply with a creed. No more proof, only that belief, that right now sitting on this chair that had been sat on since the beginning of this day, I'm trying my very best to practice English, to get it done, and to perfect the starting part of my life's journey.
God bless me and my dream, AMEN!
Last time I felt this glum sentiment I remember I spared an hour to sit by the window sill and talk to myself, with an English accent impeccable in the perspective of my surroundings, so that I could feel the superiority and smoke on that. My assumption was that once I escaped the College Entrance Exam, I would be free to devise my future on the blank page, but in fact I put myself in another, more cruel, for it depends of probability, College Application. I shared the disdain of pedantic undergraduate education with my father, I condemned aimlessly whoever I thought was on my way, and the problem retains, seems unsolvable, that chronicle lack of money. I should've been doing thing I'm interested in, installing OS X on the VMWare and solve the iMessage problem with Chameleon, reading novels in Chinese that after all, is my native language, continuing to miss the space after every punctuation and the line after every paragraph… because I don't have to work to obtain a 2000 in SAT, I prefer the depressurized life. But instead I'm working, ensuring, and hypothetically assuming, and worrying about where I'm going.
I think about what if the result turned out in the worst kind, then what should I do, what could I do to compensate for not only the failure of my delusion but also the disappointment, chiding, suspicion from all around me, my circle, and the social crust where I belong. I'm not an itinerant, who have nothing so that he can do anything, try out every way, and ponder the problem without mentioning the consequence. I'm an out-of-box thinker, that's why I'm here writing in English, listening to English radio, and tomorrow morning do English problems, but I'm not an out-side-box doer, that's why I'm doing the same thing. Months ago I made the most courageous decision ever in my life, because I believed that for my courage and sacrifice I should gain something in exchange, something as an institutionalized Chinese high school student will never be able to find out, but I didn't see anything. At school I can be managed, by teacher; at home, I have to manage myself.
I do have alternatives, but that alternative would be a direct proof of the failure of my entire strategy and aspiration. I don't want to allow that to happen, but I have only 15 days to know if it will. I have a sister and a brother who have a very decent and respected life, as a high ranking government official and a famous entrepreneur in Suzhou. But all of my attempt to get in touch with them came to nothing. I don't know if I had overestimated their weigh in the family, or the family's weigh in them. The world is a realistic one, although I claim to adore the romantic and the ideal, like for thousands of years human beings have been adoring, I only see the futility, in a way religious people struggling to prove their God and non-religious people struggling to disapprove it. I'm not measured by what I want to do, but how I can do it and if what I did could be seen as done, and hopefully I would never be measured that way, not only me, but any foreseeable future generation.
When I was taking shower today - absurd as it is picayune, I mocked myself that I only have traits, not capabilities, and the worse is that I'm still making traits to wish the capability coming. The dilemma originated not from me, the murder, nor my family, the victim, but the society's mandate of money as the threshold of everything, which involves some kind of relationship that when I don't understand, but am eager to, and when I do, I no longer care.
The most effective way of deviating from these sensations is probably reading. Fernando Pessoa said that reading is the most agreeable way to escape life. I did allocate 20 minutes to read the book Lying in the Drunken World. The plot, not surprisingly, consists of nothing deep and worth thinking twice. But I'm fascinated by the presence of another world, where everything imaginable not only imagined but also materialized. But after scanning few pages, I'm forced out of that bouncy castle. Because there's always something I shouldn't forget, something a lv 90 in World of Warcraft or a thorough enjoyment of books cannot surrogate. The things depicted in those books, among those pages, are graceful as they're untruthful. Only that I don't really differentiate between the real world and the virtual one when I see no peril imminent in either.
Everyone is perverse to some extent, and that extent is limited. I don't know if understanding the aim for life is happiness means understanding life. I have my mind, disproportionate to my status as it may be, deprived of clear reasoning and the euphoria of simplicity. And being 18 years old already, I don't have a way to truly realize my independence. Reading my classmates' update, I perceived distance; reading the wrinkle on the faces of my parents, siblings, all of them, I saw estrangement. A lot of people defy this inclination by something that endures, I don't exist in those people's world.
I want an iPhone (to replace my current sluggish Android), and a real Mac (to have a real Mac), and a Faber Castell propel pencil (so that my left hand writes more comfortably), and I can't afford them. And when I've gotten them, surely I cannot afford something else.
I want to leave my own country, China, out of disdain of its destruction of the past, of its people, but I can tell myself that I am leaving not for those reasons. I'm leaving because under this institution I cannot succeed, too much of my temperament is at odds with the temperament of this people, and that in United States I might feel better than I do here, where I don't need technological method to bypass the Great Firewall to have Facebook, Twitter, and post this blog. Or I will feel not necessarily better, since I've seen always those rich guys are not happy at all. But I cannot check the impulse of becoming rich first and maybe returning to poor then. I know there's a different between peasant and peasant-entrepreneur-peasant.
I do have nothing but the harsh reality that thwarted that nothing, and I'll have nothing. But at least at this moment, when I'm 18 years old, I'm not succumbing, and am doing what I want to do, and that's it, it serves my desire, albeit nonsensical. And after that, I might be one of the Big Green, one of the Wall Street, and one of the eco fanatics, or an ordinary office clerk stuck in downtown Wuxi city forever. I could be everything that varies by possibility, but I won't forget that I don't have my 18th birthday because I tried to implement those sentiments, that I bear something more important in mind, to give my life a meaning, delusional, meaningless meaning that I can live by just like I comply with a creed. No more proof, only that belief, that right now sitting on this chair that had been sat on since the beginning of this day, I'm trying my very best to practice English, to get it done, and to perfect the starting part of my life's journey.
God bless me and my dream, AMEN!
Examples for Essay
Despite my declaration that I should wake up at 7am every morning since the first day of the month, I still failed to do so after one half of that month is soon to elapse. Since doing a practice test has become a part of my uneasy schedule, I had to haste to complete each section, which means I don't usually have time to think thoroughly of every problem. I fancy that I'll be surely very nervous on the D-day, I should condense the time I spend in a relatively comfortable circumstance to simulate what's supposed to happen 16 days later in a hitherto foreign and tropical country Singapore.
To attend this test previously unknown to me 6 months ago, I'm entitled to the pleasure of taking the first flight, getting the first passport, and leaving the radius of 50 kilometer around my home alone. But with all other pragmatic concern, it's unlikely that I will truly enjoy the trip, with one day flying above in the sky worrying about possible plane crash and Islamic terrorist, another three before and during the test, prepping and fretting so that the quantum field could change to give myself an edge.
Although I admit I'm indeed distraught that any lapse prevents me from scoring a desirable result, I'm not all that unconfident. I understand that the biggest problem for me now isn't the comprehension of passage, or the grasp of subtle pedantic grammar, but carelessness in Maths, and total lack of premeditation of writing. I enjoy the writing without a set time limit and a set topic range, but I'm not adept at arguing for 500 words a question whose answer might appear evident, within 25 minutes. I do have some reservoir of knowledge that should be of help in the essay, but all of them are barely organized, some of them are even unwittingly erroneous. So I think it pertinent to make a list of those examples on this fairly accessible personal online space.
#Bill Gates
Microsoft is the company that dominates the personal computer market with its operating system, and its founder, Bill Gates was once the richest man in the world. But the start of Bill's career didn't not earn people's understanding, because it seemed a foolish choice to leave Harvard, presumably the most prestigious college in the world, to pursue a profession without a promising future. Although there's no way he could assure the validity of what he was doing, he persisted with no regard to the initial problem that stemmed from lack of experience. But as he gained experience through those trials and errors, he successfully convinced IBM to use his operating system against Apple, and got a happy voyage ever since.
#Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is the legend of not only the Silicon Valley, but also of the populist culture for his innovation and deviation from the mainstream perception. He is the one to push the concept of personal computer to the acceptance of public. With the success of Macintosh computer in the 1980s, he was instantly established as one of the youngest millionaire. He went through trouble and eventually was dismissed from the company he started due to the infight of different apartments within the Apple. But after his departure, he did not become a cynical upper crust, but instead started the Pixar studio, which later became the most successful animation producer in the world. After he returned to Apple, his keen sense of style did not diminish - the debut of iPhone, the first smartphone to fully implement the possibilities of touch screen, the debut of iPad, the first commercialized tablet in the world all add flair to his miraculous life. Now nearly two years after his passing, the Apple Company is still under his influence, meticulously adhere to the concept and spirit of Steve Jobs.
#Steward Brand
Talking about the originator of everything we enjoy today, the internet, personal computer, online community, there's a name that shouldn't be forgotten - Stewart Brand, the editor of the famous countercultural publication the Whole Earth Catalog, which influence a whole generation of technology pioneers. The famous aphorism: Information wants to be free comes from him, the phrase personal computer is coined by him. He is also one of the most enduring figures in the technology field. He is one of the representatives of the 1960s counterculture, and with the publication of his most recent work Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, he continues to influence the people today.
#iOS versus Android OS
When Steve Jobs introduced iPhone in 2007, the embedded operating system became well-known amongst smartphone users, but that reason that it is still dominant today is different. With the competition from other smartphone producers, who almost immediately revealed their own devices modeled after the iPhone, the survival of iOS operating system depends on innovation. One of its most formidable challenger, the Android OS, tried its best to absorb the advantages of the iOS, thus forcing the latter to keeping moving forward. For these two large companies, the clash might not be a pleasant thing, but to us consumers, and to the social development as a whole, certainly it's a driving force.
#Wan Hu
Ming Dynasty is the last feudalistic empire ruled by Chinese Han people, during this period, gun powder was widely used for military and celebratory purposes. One of the most noticeable event occurred in that dynasty at circa 17 century AC is an official called Wan Hu attempt to become the first human to fly. He purchased 47 biggest rockets available at his time, and a giant kite that could be used to land safely. But when he summoned his servants to light up the rockets, one of them unexpectedly exploded, thus Wan Hu lost his life, and the attempt failed. But the meaning it brings goes beyond the success of failure of an experiment, his dream of flying and the courage to be the first to attempt to do so are what's essential to his endeavor, his experiment failed, but the spirit of exploration behind him lived on. Then 300 hundreds later, Wright Brother succeeded in building the first airplane, and continued his unfinished laughter.
#Cold War
After the horror of the Second World War, there's supposed to be the beginning of peace. But the advent of Cold War shattered most people's unuttered appeal. The world was put at the verge of collapse multiple times. But the technological advancement it spurred cannot be neglected. Due to the Mutual Assured Destruction, neither participant would be able to apply or diffused the nuclear weapons, so their competition extends to other areas. Soviet Union put the first human into space, The United States put the first human on the moon. In dealing with potential threat from the USSR, the US Department of Defense mandated the construction of ARPANET, the prototypical network communication mechanism then became the Internet we're using today. And after the war, various military technology became accessible for private use, the world witness the rate of development unprecedented in the history.
#Cultural Revolution
The single greatest tragedy in human history, with more than 50 million people died of unnatural cause. It is the pinnacle of irrationality, which destroyed almost entirely the traditional Chinese culture. More than 2 million intellectuals left by the Kuomintang Government were fundamentally eradicated. The central planning, political radicalism, personal idolatry, and abuse of human dignity were at the center of that period. But the Opening-up denotes an era, though still conservative, is economically progressive. With the boom of living standards and personal income, China ranks the second in Gross Domestic Production.
#Chris Gardner
As the archetype of the film The Pursuit of Happyness, Chris Gardner had an uncommon life. When he abandoned his plan of entering a medical profession, he didn't not realize that a series of trouble was ensuing. With the introduction of Bob Bridges, he began his training in the financial world. But as he was a top trainee at Dean Witter Reynolds, he suffered homelessness with his son Christopher Gardner Jr. They slept in his office after hours, at flophouses, motels, parks, airports, even locked bathroom at a bart station. But he didn't give up his dream, and then became the most successful salesman in the world.
P: Exhausted, but I think I've got enough material compiled today.
To attend this test previously unknown to me 6 months ago, I'm entitled to the pleasure of taking the first flight, getting the first passport, and leaving the radius of 50 kilometer around my home alone. But with all other pragmatic concern, it's unlikely that I will truly enjoy the trip, with one day flying above in the sky worrying about possible plane crash and Islamic terrorist, another three before and during the test, prepping and fretting so that the quantum field could change to give myself an edge.
Although I admit I'm indeed distraught that any lapse prevents me from scoring a desirable result, I'm not all that unconfident. I understand that the biggest problem for me now isn't the comprehension of passage, or the grasp of subtle pedantic grammar, but carelessness in Maths, and total lack of premeditation of writing. I enjoy the writing without a set time limit and a set topic range, but I'm not adept at arguing for 500 words a question whose answer might appear evident, within 25 minutes. I do have some reservoir of knowledge that should be of help in the essay, but all of them are barely organized, some of them are even unwittingly erroneous. So I think it pertinent to make a list of those examples on this fairly accessible personal online space.
#Bill Gates
Microsoft is the company that dominates the personal computer market with its operating system, and its founder, Bill Gates was once the richest man in the world. But the start of Bill's career didn't not earn people's understanding, because it seemed a foolish choice to leave Harvard, presumably the most prestigious college in the world, to pursue a profession without a promising future. Although there's no way he could assure the validity of what he was doing, he persisted with no regard to the initial problem that stemmed from lack of experience. But as he gained experience through those trials and errors, he successfully convinced IBM to use his operating system against Apple, and got a happy voyage ever since.
#Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is the legend of not only the Silicon Valley, but also of the populist culture for his innovation and deviation from the mainstream perception. He is the one to push the concept of personal computer to the acceptance of public. With the success of Macintosh computer in the 1980s, he was instantly established as one of the youngest millionaire. He went through trouble and eventually was dismissed from the company he started due to the infight of different apartments within the Apple. But after his departure, he did not become a cynical upper crust, but instead started the Pixar studio, which later became the most successful animation producer in the world. After he returned to Apple, his keen sense of style did not diminish - the debut of iPhone, the first smartphone to fully implement the possibilities of touch screen, the debut of iPad, the first commercialized tablet in the world all add flair to his miraculous life. Now nearly two years after his passing, the Apple Company is still under his influence, meticulously adhere to the concept and spirit of Steve Jobs.
#Steward Brand
Talking about the originator of everything we enjoy today, the internet, personal computer, online community, there's a name that shouldn't be forgotten - Stewart Brand, the editor of the famous countercultural publication the Whole Earth Catalog, which influence a whole generation of technology pioneers. The famous aphorism: Information wants to be free comes from him, the phrase personal computer is coined by him. He is also one of the most enduring figures in the technology field. He is one of the representatives of the 1960s counterculture, and with the publication of his most recent work Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, he continues to influence the people today.
#iOS versus Android OS
When Steve Jobs introduced iPhone in 2007, the embedded operating system became well-known amongst smartphone users, but that reason that it is still dominant today is different. With the competition from other smartphone producers, who almost immediately revealed their own devices modeled after the iPhone, the survival of iOS operating system depends on innovation. One of its most formidable challenger, the Android OS, tried its best to absorb the advantages of the iOS, thus forcing the latter to keeping moving forward. For these two large companies, the clash might not be a pleasant thing, but to us consumers, and to the social development as a whole, certainly it's a driving force.
#Wan Hu
Ming Dynasty is the last feudalistic empire ruled by Chinese Han people, during this period, gun powder was widely used for military and celebratory purposes. One of the most noticeable event occurred in that dynasty at circa 17 century AC is an official called Wan Hu attempt to become the first human to fly. He purchased 47 biggest rockets available at his time, and a giant kite that could be used to land safely. But when he summoned his servants to light up the rockets, one of them unexpectedly exploded, thus Wan Hu lost his life, and the attempt failed. But the meaning it brings goes beyond the success of failure of an experiment, his dream of flying and the courage to be the first to attempt to do so are what's essential to his endeavor, his experiment failed, but the spirit of exploration behind him lived on. Then 300 hundreds later, Wright Brother succeeded in building the first airplane, and continued his unfinished laughter.
#Cold War
After the horror of the Second World War, there's supposed to be the beginning of peace. But the advent of Cold War shattered most people's unuttered appeal. The world was put at the verge of collapse multiple times. But the technological advancement it spurred cannot be neglected. Due to the Mutual Assured Destruction, neither participant would be able to apply or diffused the nuclear weapons, so their competition extends to other areas. Soviet Union put the first human into space, The United States put the first human on the moon. In dealing with potential threat from the USSR, the US Department of Defense mandated the construction of ARPANET, the prototypical network communication mechanism then became the Internet we're using today. And after the war, various military technology became accessible for private use, the world witness the rate of development unprecedented in the history.
#Cultural Revolution
The single greatest tragedy in human history, with more than 50 million people died of unnatural cause. It is the pinnacle of irrationality, which destroyed almost entirely the traditional Chinese culture. More than 2 million intellectuals left by the Kuomintang Government were fundamentally eradicated. The central planning, political radicalism, personal idolatry, and abuse of human dignity were at the center of that period. But the Opening-up denotes an era, though still conservative, is economically progressive. With the boom of living standards and personal income, China ranks the second in Gross Domestic Production.
#Chris Gardner
As the archetype of the film The Pursuit of Happyness, Chris Gardner had an uncommon life. When he abandoned his plan of entering a medical profession, he didn't not realize that a series of trouble was ensuing. With the introduction of Bob Bridges, he began his training in the financial world. But as he was a top trainee at Dean Witter Reynolds, he suffered homelessness with his son Christopher Gardner Jr. They slept in his office after hours, at flophouses, motels, parks, airports, even locked bathroom at a bart station. But he didn't give up his dream, and then became the most successful salesman in the world.
P: Exhausted, but I think I've got enough material compiled today.
Monday, May 13
Caprice
The construction of the shopping mall just outside my apartment building began as I began to talk with Xu regarding issues about the future. The noise was repellent, but somewhat I felt a tranquility that enabled me to ignore what's happening outside and delved into the retrospection and imagination. For the ordinary people as my classmates were, only three of us dared to escape what's been defining, and stood beside as spectators of vicissitude of life's mystery.
I changed a lot since I was out of school, but with the realization that my own change is heartlessly irrevocable, I valued the past, be it innocence or stupidity, even much more than I could be aware of.
Everything that's related to the past had a sense of history - my classmates, are no longer my classmates, they're people from a parallel world, the rumbling couple in the window across the building, or that infant who cries at an indeterminate time, and an indeterminate place.
My motto has always lain in the future, I believed that my regret shouldn't last longer than 15 seconds. Now that I have enough self-discipline to implement those rules, and I've deeply learned that, everything is meaningless and dull other than happiness, but happiness never lasts. My lack of interest in those previously interesting things, and lack of inspiration from my former inspiration, my exhaustion and indifference of that lack, constitute a major portion of my inner self. As if keeping the ambivalence means a burst of flame in the ocean stoic and lifeless for millenniums. That anguish is a sheet of glass, transparent as it is shallow, predestines the inside and outside, provides a sense of security from madness, and education from banality. It's misconstrued, pompous and self-imposed, but I still need it, I need that restrain so that I yearn for something that's unobtained, and unobtainable. This is the last moral citadel of humanity, the dim light in a desolate unchangingness, and going beyond that, will mean not only questioning of the validity of every existence, but also a thorough negation of all principles, all persistence, all those to worship and to deplore.
The past occurred to me, in the form of gratuitous fragments, without context or language, and overwhelmed me in every aspect of my life. And I, however rebellious, must prostrate, for the slight of that heritage, is the beginning of incongruity and illogic, which are the premises of any action, the first wave on the chain of possibility. It excludes the voice that's been calling me since the beginning of time, but it intends to, the process of being deceased is a process of being detached, from an omnipotent curiosity to a resignation to the fact of not being able to escape. The past suppresses me. It's the truth of nothing so that I want to find that truth. The future eludes me so that I want to know what's behind it. The present is a constant ephemeral, I dwell in it, but I ignore it like I ignore the wrong alarm clock every Saturday morning.
I dream of being a myopic, who feel content of having kept breathing and eating in consecutive days, but that's contemptible. I dream of being an emperor, who have everything except content, but that's equally contemptible. I dream of myself, and try to de-acquaint him, so that I can keep that sensation of being unreal, distant and intriguing, I'm tired but I refuse to beware of it, at least not now, when the lucid drunkenness still yet vanishes, before the monotonous repetition of the metaphysics of life inundates me, and dissolves me.
I changed a lot since I was out of school, but with the realization that my own change is heartlessly irrevocable, I valued the past, be it innocence or stupidity, even much more than I could be aware of.
Everything that's related to the past had a sense of history - my classmates, are no longer my classmates, they're people from a parallel world, the rumbling couple in the window across the building, or that infant who cries at an indeterminate time, and an indeterminate place.
My motto has always lain in the future, I believed that my regret shouldn't last longer than 15 seconds. Now that I have enough self-discipline to implement those rules, and I've deeply learned that, everything is meaningless and dull other than happiness, but happiness never lasts. My lack of interest in those previously interesting things, and lack of inspiration from my former inspiration, my exhaustion and indifference of that lack, constitute a major portion of my inner self. As if keeping the ambivalence means a burst of flame in the ocean stoic and lifeless for millenniums. That anguish is a sheet of glass, transparent as it is shallow, predestines the inside and outside, provides a sense of security from madness, and education from banality. It's misconstrued, pompous and self-imposed, but I still need it, I need that restrain so that I yearn for something that's unobtained, and unobtainable. This is the last moral citadel of humanity, the dim light in a desolate unchangingness, and going beyond that, will mean not only questioning of the validity of every existence, but also a thorough negation of all principles, all persistence, all those to worship and to deplore.
The past occurred to me, in the form of gratuitous fragments, without context or language, and overwhelmed me in every aspect of my life. And I, however rebellious, must prostrate, for the slight of that heritage, is the beginning of incongruity and illogic, which are the premises of any action, the first wave on the chain of possibility. It excludes the voice that's been calling me since the beginning of time, but it intends to, the process of being deceased is a process of being detached, from an omnipotent curiosity to a resignation to the fact of not being able to escape. The past suppresses me. It's the truth of nothing so that I want to find that truth. The future eludes me so that I want to know what's behind it. The present is a constant ephemeral, I dwell in it, but I ignore it like I ignore the wrong alarm clock every Saturday morning.
I dream of being a myopic, who feel content of having kept breathing and eating in consecutive days, but that's contemptible. I dream of being an emperor, who have everything except content, but that's equally contemptible. I dream of myself, and try to de-acquaint him, so that I can keep that sensation of being unreal, distant and intriguing, I'm tired but I refuse to beware of it, at least not now, when the lucid drunkenness still yet vanishes, before the monotonous repetition of the metaphysics of life inundates me, and dissolves me.
Poem
垂栖
夐厥之野, 祁寒而居; 喋血照烛, 飨赋靡闻.
怅望觿年, 窅缈惭叹; 名晖誉远, 意踬滋嬉.
乙亥謇降, 靥蠲姿攡; 鬻阃暇慈, 褧锦眉纶.
譬雏箧縢, 逸鳞曜嵫; 凌德峙牓, 晨兴寝辍.
既沓弱冠, 父輶母轩; 唳儵颜晦, 臆襞神剺.
幸赦镝徵, 始邅帷幄; 巉飗虽阑, 昭夷未闋.
樊骥伏枥, 肄宭瞽盲; 雨散魍魉, 书凭汨罗.
嵘幡西吟, 亚墨利加; 掘怀辄掎, 顿首唶声.
Pinyin:
Chuí qī
Xiòng jué zhī yě, qí hán ér jū; diéxuè zhào zhú, xiǎng fù mí wén.
Chàng wàng xī nián, yǎo miǎo cán tàn; míng huī yù yuǎn, yì zhì zī xī.
Yǐ hài jiǎn jiàng, yè juān zī lí; yù kǔn xiá cí, jiǒng jǐn méi lún.
Pì chú qiè téng, yì lín yào zī; língdézhì bǎng, chén xīng qǐn chuò.
Jì dá ruòguàn, fù yóu mǔ xuān; lì shū yán huì, yì bì shén lí.
Xìng shè dī zhēng, shǐ zhān wéiwò; chán liú suī lán, zhāo yí wèi què.
Fán jì fú lì, yì qún gǔ máng; yǔ sàn wǎng liǎng, shū píng mìluō.
Róng fān xī yín, yà mò lìjiā; jué huái zhé jǐ, dùnshǒu xī shēng.
Translation:
Perch
On this distant field, I live in my indifference;
Dipping the quill in my blood and the poor light fainting my heart, I compose the verse, to tell a story.
To take a look at my years of innocence, only a warm and fuzzy sigh remained;
My name is grandiose and my aspiration is huge, but my thought is parochial and my taste is flippant.
I'm knightly born in the year of 1995, with a clean feature and elegant manner;
My grandma spared her kindness with the minimum she had, that I have beautiful clothes and happy mind.
So thin my arm was I couldn't even reach the top of the cabinet, so naive my dream was I imagined I became angel and tamed sea;
I grew cynical and challenged ideology, days and nights I didn't stop.
So quick that I'm an adult, and my father and mother have gone separate ways;
My voice is hysteric, my face is obscure, my soul is collapsing and my sense has gone away.
God never forgets me and rings the alarm bell, all anew I gaze inward and plan the future;
No matter what suffering and brunt to come, I will not cry when my heart is still pumping.
Sometimes I feel thwart and disappointment, I'm soaked in a mistaken place that I don't even bother to flounder;
Rain drives away the demon and evil of alibis, I write a letter to the middle of the Miluo river where another thinker rests in peace.
In the singing wind I set sail westward, where the United States of America is another starting point;
O' cut me in half and pull my guts out, sincerity is all to be seen, I silently sit in obeisance and wait for my redemption.
P: To sum up what I wrote today.
Additional Information II
Usually by this time of the day I will be reading extensively on various academic website to get inured to the relatively obscure English they use, so that during the test (I know, but defiance of the education system is not an option for me) I can read those passages with ease. But I said few hours ago that I needed to write several candidate versions of the Additional Information, and one particular memorable scene is one bus trip last November that made me who I am and what I'm doing right now, and stop whining "what I want and what life has made for me!"
It was a random Friday, and the dusk in Wuxi city was just like any dusk in the past few thousand years. And I was walking towards the school gate, feeling certain that everything was going to be doomed the same way it'd started, miserable and unnoticed. For me, figuring out education, work, family and death or simply how to live covers all topics in my consideration, and I haven't figured out any of them. While witnessing myself sliding from stupid to cynical to numb, and eventually, snobbish, I was comfortable to leave my yearning and the reduction of its fever to whatever capacity that fulfills them, and whatever destiny that they're fulfilled.
The 5 days at school was a constant process of being paralyzed, and the other 2 days was no more than preparing for another. But in fact, I was always unusually agitated at this time of the week, especially when apocalypse was said to be approaching. Just like when death itself is not worth fearing, people's excitement over the assumption of dying, it gave me a perfect reason to forget all the important things for 2 days as if they'd never mattered.
Everything was beautiful from across the river, so was the ecstasy of being released from school. But when it's near, I didn't care anymore. At the end of the station I was waiting for the bus. Without anyone to accompany, I had nothing to do. So I stared at the distinct lights on cars. Because of a fatigue, I didn't adjust my eyes, so those shining beads on cars gradually mal-focalized into amorphous pieces, like myriad broken parts of an enormous ice wall.
I was then amused by my extension of association when I had nowhere else to extend myself. And I smile, ironically, to nothing, because I knew long enough that something ephemeral was made more ephemeral for me because I was neither willing to confront, nor willing to confess.
The acoustic mixture of rumbling traffic and noisy pedestrian was withering my nerve, yet I didn't bother to differentiate them. What was in my mind, at that present, was the deathly stillness I perceived in it, in the uprising of humanity, which was, more often and easily erased.
Fortunately, the thought was interrupted before long - the bus arrived. I walked into it, found the seat by the window, put my bag down, and abruptly the buildings of my school were immediately identical to those of the Political Bureau, which I might never enter.
The bus started.
Intentionally sitting above the wheel of the bus, I began to enjoy the little massage that the combustion engine gave me, that the traffic on the other side of the window gave me, and that my own lifeless body gave me. At that moment, with regard to the invisible camera above my head, this little massage was everything I was demanding from God.
Signs at every street corners were leading me, and the bus in which I was contained, to somewhere out of my range, somewhere not photographic or cinematic because it's real, somewhere nowhere but an indefinite one-dimensional point on a two-dimensional line. To me, unlike the bus route, the line had to terminus.
"This could be heaven or this could be hell." Maybe there's so few western name familiar to me, I quoted the Hotel California, or maybe I felt like I was living in the Hotel California. And I was befuddled - the bus 765 could no more suffice me - I wasn't sure if it's going to my home, I wasn't sure where it was going, wasn't sure where I was going. Just like all the people in this confined non-air-conditioning compartment, I languished into an aimless fear, of falling off, of a colorable resistance, of a futile disappointment, of a grief. Although nothing could be interpreted from my countenance, nothing was to be interpreted from my countenance, as well as theirs.
I assured most of the people on the bus know freedom - they watched movies, it's just assorted under the category of idealism, together with perfection, and communism.
"A red banner reading 'I have something to dream for' chained to their wrist was an enough alibi." I gloated contemptuously.
But all of sudden, just like a scalding cartridge case stirred up a blue fly, a radical disquiet penetrated me "My absurd audacity couldn't enfranchise me the right to ridicule other people, because compared to qualified members of the society as they were, I was merely an incompetent worker, who complained being exploited just to vent his twisted perspective of the world sinned and corrupt for not satisfying his own grandiose avarice.
For some time, I calmed down. The view on the other side of the window got changed, changed to something same-old but fresher than the prior. I began to feel nauseated of the weekly trip, to and from home - it was always the same-old outside, the only variable was the direction - or there was no variable at all…
Under two occasions, time presumably goes slower, the first is when the head is full, the second is when the head is empty. I was both, I didn't know what I was thinking, didn't know if I should think. Like Van Gogh's golden on his deathbed of a French cornfield, I was also capable of ignoring any conception that agonized me.
One week's curriculum were completed, the 17-hour working system, it was so engrossed, deeply fixed in my brain, however the inability to recall why I was being taught remained. I thought time would go faster when I was not in the classroom. I was wrong. It did not slow down or speed up in any sense. Those Chinese characters in my soul were still struggling to drag me down to somewhere I disliked but innately decreed, turn me to someone I didn't want to be yet constitutionally decided. I was eroded by something I'd been fighting against; it was further determined that ambivalence was the end of the journey.
Reasoned sadness cannot be fixed with consolation, so this time I didn't bother to ease the gush of my emotion - I always considered myself a rationalist, and in fact, no exception like this was made before.
Modernistic architectures lined along the road manifested into my eyes, and bulged, with a triumphant attitude - that didn't make any sense to me, because under all those changes, I saw something fundamental carved in the bone of this 5000-year-old land, something so incontrovertible that everyone takes it as the root of their security, of their pride.
After getting off the bus, I saw the safeguard of our community sitting around the gate, - he was reading the newspaper - he had to, like what he did, unlike what he will do; and Kedi - the Chinese version of 7-11, so far they're identical, to my relief.
However, beside the immobile qualities of my circumstances, thoughts hovering in my mind got somewhat different from what it was one week ago – I sensed a sort of strangeness form everything I saw, but I got out of it before long, because my reason then reminded me the place where I pertained. I repressed the delirious sensation, and climbed into the apartment. Following a warmth spreading through my heart, I smelled my own sleeping bunk not covered with an authority delivered blanket, and the silica gel of my new computer, which was intended for tech fetish like me.
Nevertheless, apart from pressing the button, as usual, I was out of things to do again, because this week and last week, every week of the year, had been allocated to do something essentially the same, checking emails and feeds, updating status, chatting with people who I almost didn't care, remembering and disremembering what I had been inculcated at school. It's relentlessly the same and I was still doing it, only for the sake that there's something dictating it's what I should do, or have to do.
Like the menial people of the social class, I kept reticent till my patience ran out, because it's not justified to comment on Yelp.com when I can't afford to use the item, because powerlessness was the major contribution to my politeness.
I opened the curtain to let in the moonlight, and the city light, different, but equivalently outward to my existence. I wished something would wash my eccentricity away. But nothing was going to stop for me, by me, as far as I could see, and beyond, was the ultimate blankness everything is going into, while I, was inexorably jostled unwittingly among.
I didn't know how many people on the Earth suffered this planet. I was thinking that being successful must have something to do with happiness. But I didn't know what it took to be successful, because I didn't know what success was. I knew nothing had meaning, so I could only have faith of my own creation. But how? I swore if there's a storm outside, I would be pleased to yell anything towards it. But the cloud was not thick that night - It was far from rain, and maybe farther from the sun. Without the monotonous but jaunty pattering of rain, without the religious and inspiring representation of sunshine, I sighted where the word cloudiness got its meaning, sighted that my pains were just repetitions of those of a saint, of a writer, of a musician, of a beggar, of any passer of life, in their respective brilliant ages.
I was just a sacrificial piece of a chess game without checkmate – there's no excuse for the useless and meaningless surrender of my ensemble. So there's no excuse for the membrane established between me and other stuff I deemed is either mediocre or noble. It's so thin but so inviolable - the threshold separating inside and outside of the school, the stair of bus stipulating insecurity and indifference, the piece of thin glass of my bedroom window – I can easily pierce it with my bare hands, and the spiritual and material encumbrance that towers over the Great Wall.
A peaceful anguish out of nowhere obsessed me, possessed me, desiccated me, and dissipated me. I consecrated my last shred of strength and dignity, consecrated my obedience where I had grudgingly floundered. Something that rang in each of my dream and daydream became louder and louder, became inextricably tangible from the verge of my faith. A ray of my own foreignness shimmered in front of my eyes, guided me the direction to where befall the truce, with God…
It said "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
I heard it, every word.
I'm here.
P: After writing this long and tedious article, I'm further bewildered by the prospect of my effort. I hope in the next few months the quality of the piece can be drastically improved. As I might not have any time to write another piece with desirable volume.
P: Have turned this article into Personal Statement.
It was a random Friday, and the dusk in Wuxi city was just like any dusk in the past few thousand years. And I was walking towards the school gate, feeling certain that everything was going to be doomed the same way it'd started, miserable and unnoticed. For me, figuring out education, work, family and death or simply how to live covers all topics in my consideration, and I haven't figured out any of them. While witnessing myself sliding from stupid to cynical to numb, and eventually, snobbish, I was comfortable to leave my yearning and the reduction of its fever to whatever capacity that fulfills them, and whatever destiny that they're fulfilled.
The 5 days at school was a constant process of being paralyzed, and the other 2 days was no more than preparing for another. But in fact, I was always unusually agitated at this time of the week, especially when apocalypse was said to be approaching. Just like when death itself is not worth fearing, people's excitement over the assumption of dying, it gave me a perfect reason to forget all the important things for 2 days as if they'd never mattered.
Everything was beautiful from across the river, so was the ecstasy of being released from school. But when it's near, I didn't care anymore. At the end of the station I was waiting for the bus. Without anyone to accompany, I had nothing to do. So I stared at the distinct lights on cars. Because of a fatigue, I didn't adjust my eyes, so those shining beads on cars gradually mal-focalized into amorphous pieces, like myriad broken parts of an enormous ice wall.
I was then amused by my extension of association when I had nowhere else to extend myself. And I smile, ironically, to nothing, because I knew long enough that something ephemeral was made more ephemeral for me because I was neither willing to confront, nor willing to confess.
The acoustic mixture of rumbling traffic and noisy pedestrian was withering my nerve, yet I didn't bother to differentiate them. What was in my mind, at that present, was the deathly stillness I perceived in it, in the uprising of humanity, which was, more often and easily erased.
Fortunately, the thought was interrupted before long - the bus arrived. I walked into it, found the seat by the window, put my bag down, and abruptly the buildings of my school were immediately identical to those of the Political Bureau, which I might never enter.
The bus started.
Intentionally sitting above the wheel of the bus, I began to enjoy the little massage that the combustion engine gave me, that the traffic on the other side of the window gave me, and that my own lifeless body gave me. At that moment, with regard to the invisible camera above my head, this little massage was everything I was demanding from God.
Signs at every street corners were leading me, and the bus in which I was contained, to somewhere out of my range, somewhere not photographic or cinematic because it's real, somewhere nowhere but an indefinite one-dimensional point on a two-dimensional line. To me, unlike the bus route, the line had to terminus.
"This could be heaven or this could be hell." Maybe there's so few western name familiar to me, I quoted the Hotel California, or maybe I felt like I was living in the Hotel California. And I was befuddled - the bus 765 could no more suffice me - I wasn't sure if it's going to my home, I wasn't sure where it was going, wasn't sure where I was going. Just like all the people in this confined non-air-conditioning compartment, I languished into an aimless fear, of falling off, of a colorable resistance, of a futile disappointment, of a grief. Although nothing could be interpreted from my countenance, nothing was to be interpreted from my countenance, as well as theirs.
I assured most of the people on the bus know freedom - they watched movies, it's just assorted under the category of idealism, together with perfection, and communism.
"A red banner reading 'I have something to dream for' chained to their wrist was an enough alibi." I gloated contemptuously.
But all of sudden, just like a scalding cartridge case stirred up a blue fly, a radical disquiet penetrated me "My absurd audacity couldn't enfranchise me the right to ridicule other people, because compared to qualified members of the society as they were, I was merely an incompetent worker, who complained being exploited just to vent his twisted perspective of the world sinned and corrupt for not satisfying his own grandiose avarice.
For some time, I calmed down. The view on the other side of the window got changed, changed to something same-old but fresher than the prior. I began to feel nauseated of the weekly trip, to and from home - it was always the same-old outside, the only variable was the direction - or there was no variable at all…
Under two occasions, time presumably goes slower, the first is when the head is full, the second is when the head is empty. I was both, I didn't know what I was thinking, didn't know if I should think. Like Van Gogh's golden on his deathbed of a French cornfield, I was also capable of ignoring any conception that agonized me.
One week's curriculum were completed, the 17-hour working system, it was so engrossed, deeply fixed in my brain, however the inability to recall why I was being taught remained. I thought time would go faster when I was not in the classroom. I was wrong. It did not slow down or speed up in any sense. Those Chinese characters in my soul were still struggling to drag me down to somewhere I disliked but innately decreed, turn me to someone I didn't want to be yet constitutionally decided. I was eroded by something I'd been fighting against; it was further determined that ambivalence was the end of the journey.
Reasoned sadness cannot be fixed with consolation, so this time I didn't bother to ease the gush of my emotion - I always considered myself a rationalist, and in fact, no exception like this was made before.
Modernistic architectures lined along the road manifested into my eyes, and bulged, with a triumphant attitude - that didn't make any sense to me, because under all those changes, I saw something fundamental carved in the bone of this 5000-year-old land, something so incontrovertible that everyone takes it as the root of their security, of their pride.
After getting off the bus, I saw the safeguard of our community sitting around the gate, - he was reading the newspaper - he had to, like what he did, unlike what he will do; and Kedi - the Chinese version of 7-11, so far they're identical, to my relief.
However, beside the immobile qualities of my circumstances, thoughts hovering in my mind got somewhat different from what it was one week ago – I sensed a sort of strangeness form everything I saw, but I got out of it before long, because my reason then reminded me the place where I pertained. I repressed the delirious sensation, and climbed into the apartment. Following a warmth spreading through my heart, I smelled my own sleeping bunk not covered with an authority delivered blanket, and the silica gel of my new computer, which was intended for tech fetish like me.
Nevertheless, apart from pressing the button, as usual, I was out of things to do again, because this week and last week, every week of the year, had been allocated to do something essentially the same, checking emails and feeds, updating status, chatting with people who I almost didn't care, remembering and disremembering what I had been inculcated at school. It's relentlessly the same and I was still doing it, only for the sake that there's something dictating it's what I should do, or have to do.
Like the menial people of the social class, I kept reticent till my patience ran out, because it's not justified to comment on Yelp.com when I can't afford to use the item, because powerlessness was the major contribution to my politeness.
I opened the curtain to let in the moonlight, and the city light, different, but equivalently outward to my existence. I wished something would wash my eccentricity away. But nothing was going to stop for me, by me, as far as I could see, and beyond, was the ultimate blankness everything is going into, while I, was inexorably jostled unwittingly among.
I didn't know how many people on the Earth suffered this planet. I was thinking that being successful must have something to do with happiness. But I didn't know what it took to be successful, because I didn't know what success was. I knew nothing had meaning, so I could only have faith of my own creation. But how? I swore if there's a storm outside, I would be pleased to yell anything towards it. But the cloud was not thick that night - It was far from rain, and maybe farther from the sun. Without the monotonous but jaunty pattering of rain, without the religious and inspiring representation of sunshine, I sighted where the word cloudiness got its meaning, sighted that my pains were just repetitions of those of a saint, of a writer, of a musician, of a beggar, of any passer of life, in their respective brilliant ages.
I was just a sacrificial piece of a chess game without checkmate – there's no excuse for the useless and meaningless surrender of my ensemble. So there's no excuse for the membrane established between me and other stuff I deemed is either mediocre or noble. It's so thin but so inviolable - the threshold separating inside and outside of the school, the stair of bus stipulating insecurity and indifference, the piece of thin glass of my bedroom window – I can easily pierce it with my bare hands, and the spiritual and material encumbrance that towers over the Great Wall.
A peaceful anguish out of nowhere obsessed me, possessed me, desiccated me, and dissipated me. I consecrated my last shred of strength and dignity, consecrated my obedience where I had grudgingly floundered. Something that rang in each of my dream and daydream became louder and louder, became inextricably tangible from the verge of my faith. A ray of my own foreignness shimmered in front of my eyes, guided me the direction to where befall the truce, with God…
It said "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
I heard it, every word.
I'm here.
P: After writing this long and tedious article, I'm further bewildered by the prospect of my effort. I hope in the next few months the quality of the piece can be drastically improved. As I might not have any time to write another piece with desirable volume.
P: Have turned this article into Personal Statement.
Additional Information I
In this morning's practice test, I scored 2260 at the 2012.10 SAT, so I think I'm entitled to some leisure of writing. With regards to my ever unpredictable college application, I'm going to write the first draft of the Additional Information section on Common Application. For I don't have an idea of what it should be, it's prudent to write several candidate versions.
Concerned my reader (evidently in this case the Admissions Officer) might not have much time, I think it fair to synopsize the contents at the first. In this writing that the author and the reader alike take considerable pain, I will create a series of parallels between the events in my writing, which recounts the moment I transmuted myself, and those of the 18 years I've spent.
I'm trendy, I don't use lunar calendar, which my parents have for their birthdays. I write with both hands, and that's not of wide availability. My name is very cutting edge; it literally means Universe Development Chan. But there was a time when I didn't know that, and felt way happier.
The beginning of time never allowed big worlds - papa, mama, me, and an apartment beside the river that is dug three thousand years ago were everything. The building I live was constructed after the Opening-up Policy, therefore hardly had any degree of history. But when I was a little boy, it seemed old, older than anything else, and was worthy of my awe. I woke up every morning in it with wonder - the plaster on the wall was brindled with complex pattern that I couldn't recognize. I spent a lot of time pondering its denotation. Mostly I failed, and I forgot, and I had a good time. For other, a bulkier portion of time, I ate. A bowl of congee that came with a bottle of milk took me hours to finish. I had everything in my hand except chopsticks - they were in my mother's hand. She would follow me around in the tiny room as I explored and found inspiration for doodling. By then I just learned the first character in my life, the Hill, so I drew it, in such an awkward, arrhythmic shape. But I wasn't evolved enough to interpret laughter as self-irony. I made my first business card for Alien Defense Ministry, an agency which I headed, and actually gave it out, in a magisterial face. Sometimes when the house needed extensive tidying, my papa would put me on the backseat of his squeaky bicycle, and squeak, squeak, I was then taken to mysterious places such as shopping malls and grandpa's house.
There were few obstacles on the road, traffic light were yet to replace police officers dressed like PLA officers. But the journey was long, long enough I could talk to my father without haste, and he always had a way to answer it. The people around us looked kind without the smiley icon, the grass was fresh and green, and colors, all kinds of colors, were overwhelmingly bright. The only defect was that my shadow was very short on the ground. So one night, after my mom told me a story about a planet full of people with animal heads, I hoped to grow up quickly, hoped that one day I could reach the top of the cabinet without bother, and I turned to sleep.
Well, I didn't expect it to come true. In fact I never felt it did, until I looked behind, so true that it startled. It was then several years later. I was in my middle school, and I went by a river, beside it, was a lawn. And before the lawn existed, there was my home. It had gone, like my papa's bicycle, papa himself, grandpa's house and grandpa himself. Overdose killed my grandpa, and divorce literally killed me father. I went visiting my papa when I didn't have homework, or exam or anything else. And he appeared bad, which partly counted as my reason of visiting, but I was civilized enough to look still. He told me, or rather confessed to me, that he had waited 10 years for the marriage with my mom, and she did nothing but spent another 10 years to replace him with another person. I said nothing. I looked down on my shoes to search for a way to tell him that there was no more another person, who had gone too without a notice. There wasn't such a way. I left after dinner for I didn't want to stay. After I returned home, I locked myself in the bathroom - I'd long been using bathroom as a place for absolute privacy. I didn't cry in there, but I looked at myself in the mirror, which was worse. I stared at my asymmetric image, and what manifested within it over-glittered any incongruity. The face looked polished, by ambivalence rare in the adolescence. The eyes were brown and black, dull color drained of magic - that perhaps was the reason it attracted multiple unsuccessful girls. The hair was untonsured - no one could see my anyway. The brows were furrowed as if something continuously disturbed the head behind them. And from the ensemble of the vorticism of youth and contemplation, there was a calm indifference, a gratuitous misgiving of any impulse that drove me to do anything other than keep stoic, because anything else added to my nausea of that indifference and misgiving. The thin, translucent glass called memory thrilled with fear in the corner of my body, and my ration was triumphant for easily erasing any clue that represented stupidity and immature. Sometimes my mind was full of narcissistic questions of self-importance, and some other times my mind was full of narcissistic lack of it. I had questions, but no one could answer them, so I no longer had questions and felt nothing and filled the mug and brushed my teeth.
P: I'm sensing that the length of this article has already exceeded the maximum patience of my potential reader. Purportedly they only have 7 minutes per application, so I should instead directly list the thoughts I was about to incorporate into this article, so that in the future I can have a swift understanding of the progress I'm making at the present.
#I'm not gifted, I'm not an automation, but I couldn't let anyone get aware of that. Because the reality has been only temporarily quarantined, and as long as the self-deception vanishes, I'm not able to handle the backlash. The transition from childhood to adulthood must involve some disillusion, but I'm the one trying to reverse the process, by doing something I'd hoped to do since a very early age. Thus for this endeavor I put myself in a predicament very hard to alter. There's no "backsies", only relegations, to my however perfect acceptance.
#My life is a repetition of something that has been repeated, a vicious cycle, a life under the shadow of life, but I keep doing it in hope of something different, like a doctor keeps defibrillating the corpse to fluctuate the flatline.
#I walked on the street that'd been walked a million times, and felt what a millionth should feel.
#When I whimsically alighted on the fringe of absurdism, in the peculiar atmosphere amidst this desert the time began to elapse in an aristocratic desolation, in the outward direction of my being, and in the inclement edge of my duality.
#I tend not to take offense, because I'm troubled by the futility of pointing out and the participation of ensuing consequences.
#Among the vast unchangingness of the sky, I, an equal of its monopoly, carefully narrate my traces, and solitude is my only listener.
Concerned my reader (evidently in this case the Admissions Officer) might not have much time, I think it fair to synopsize the contents at the first. In this writing that the author and the reader alike take considerable pain, I will create a series of parallels between the events in my writing, which recounts the moment I transmuted myself, and those of the 18 years I've spent.
I'm trendy, I don't use lunar calendar, which my parents have for their birthdays. I write with both hands, and that's not of wide availability. My name is very cutting edge; it literally means Universe Development Chan. But there was a time when I didn't know that, and felt way happier.
The beginning of time never allowed big worlds - papa, mama, me, and an apartment beside the river that is dug three thousand years ago were everything. The building I live was constructed after the Opening-up Policy, therefore hardly had any degree of history. But when I was a little boy, it seemed old, older than anything else, and was worthy of my awe. I woke up every morning in it with wonder - the plaster on the wall was brindled with complex pattern that I couldn't recognize. I spent a lot of time pondering its denotation. Mostly I failed, and I forgot, and I had a good time. For other, a bulkier portion of time, I ate. A bowl of congee that came with a bottle of milk took me hours to finish. I had everything in my hand except chopsticks - they were in my mother's hand. She would follow me around in the tiny room as I explored and found inspiration for doodling. By then I just learned the first character in my life, the Hill, so I drew it, in such an awkward, arrhythmic shape. But I wasn't evolved enough to interpret laughter as self-irony. I made my first business card for Alien Defense Ministry, an agency which I headed, and actually gave it out, in a magisterial face. Sometimes when the house needed extensive tidying, my papa would put me on the backseat of his squeaky bicycle, and squeak, squeak, I was then taken to mysterious places such as shopping malls and grandpa's house.
There were few obstacles on the road, traffic light were yet to replace police officers dressed like PLA officers. But the journey was long, long enough I could talk to my father without haste, and he always had a way to answer it. The people around us looked kind without the smiley icon, the grass was fresh and green, and colors, all kinds of colors, were overwhelmingly bright. The only defect was that my shadow was very short on the ground. So one night, after my mom told me a story about a planet full of people with animal heads, I hoped to grow up quickly, hoped that one day I could reach the top of the cabinet without bother, and I turned to sleep.
Well, I didn't expect it to come true. In fact I never felt it did, until I looked behind, so true that it startled. It was then several years later. I was in my middle school, and I went by a river, beside it, was a lawn. And before the lawn existed, there was my home. It had gone, like my papa's bicycle, papa himself, grandpa's house and grandpa himself. Overdose killed my grandpa, and divorce literally killed me father. I went visiting my papa when I didn't have homework, or exam or anything else. And he appeared bad, which partly counted as my reason of visiting, but I was civilized enough to look still. He told me, or rather confessed to me, that he had waited 10 years for the marriage with my mom, and she did nothing but spent another 10 years to replace him with another person. I said nothing. I looked down on my shoes to search for a way to tell him that there was no more another person, who had gone too without a notice. There wasn't such a way. I left after dinner for I didn't want to stay. After I returned home, I locked myself in the bathroom - I'd long been using bathroom as a place for absolute privacy. I didn't cry in there, but I looked at myself in the mirror, which was worse. I stared at my asymmetric image, and what manifested within it over-glittered any incongruity. The face looked polished, by ambivalence rare in the adolescence. The eyes were brown and black, dull color drained of magic - that perhaps was the reason it attracted multiple unsuccessful girls. The hair was untonsured - no one could see my anyway. The brows were furrowed as if something continuously disturbed the head behind them. And from the ensemble of the vorticism of youth and contemplation, there was a calm indifference, a gratuitous misgiving of any impulse that drove me to do anything other than keep stoic, because anything else added to my nausea of that indifference and misgiving. The thin, translucent glass called memory thrilled with fear in the corner of my body, and my ration was triumphant for easily erasing any clue that represented stupidity and immature. Sometimes my mind was full of narcissistic questions of self-importance, and some other times my mind was full of narcissistic lack of it. I had questions, but no one could answer them, so I no longer had questions and felt nothing and filled the mug and brushed my teeth.
P: I'm sensing that the length of this article has already exceeded the maximum patience of my potential reader. Purportedly they only have 7 minutes per application, so I should instead directly list the thoughts I was about to incorporate into this article, so that in the future I can have a swift understanding of the progress I'm making at the present.
#I'm not gifted, I'm not an automation, but I couldn't let anyone get aware of that. Because the reality has been only temporarily quarantined, and as long as the self-deception vanishes, I'm not able to handle the backlash. The transition from childhood to adulthood must involve some disillusion, but I'm the one trying to reverse the process, by doing something I'd hoped to do since a very early age. Thus for this endeavor I put myself in a predicament very hard to alter. There's no "backsies", only relegations, to my however perfect acceptance.
#My life is a repetition of something that has been repeated, a vicious cycle, a life under the shadow of life, but I keep doing it in hope of something different, like a doctor keeps defibrillating the corpse to fluctuate the flatline.
#I walked on the street that'd been walked a million times, and felt what a millionth should feel.
#When I whimsically alighted on the fringe of absurdism, in the peculiar atmosphere amidst this desert the time began to elapse in an aristocratic desolation, in the outward direction of my being, and in the inclement edge of my duality.
#I tend not to take offense, because I'm troubled by the futility of pointing out and the participation of ensuing consequences.
#Among the vast unchangingness of the sky, I, an equal of its monopoly, carefully narrate my traces, and solitude is my only listener.
Sunday, May 12
Father
Roughly 6 months ago, I left the school and intended to go study abroad in New Zealand. This decision could only be characterized as abrupt, because even I myself didn't have the slightest inkling of what's going to happen.
But it's suddenly there, one Friday when I returned home from school, I announced to my mother that I no longer wanted to study for the College Entrance Exam, and that I needed a different way to approach life, and a different life. Maybe my mother was dumbfounded, she didn't object to my decision.
Nothing goes as expected, so did my decision. As it turned out, I vastly underestimated the complexity of applying a college abroad, and at the meantime vastly overestimated the condition of my family. Though reluctantly, I had to embrace the fact that education is an investment, is a beginning of an even longer career, it is not an end but a means. So I changed and changed my plan. First from New Zealand to United States, then from New York University to Dartmouth College. I wasn't thinking about sitting an SAT test until I discovered that I can easily score more than 1900 without any preparation.
It's not that easy. I woke up every day at 7, and sleep at 10, except for meals, I was basically doing practice problems and reading, reading, reading like a madman. I couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees required of SAT training, so I had to do everything myself. There's no explicit explanation on how should I ready myself, so I followed only vague guidelines on Spark Notes that I should read. I read Wired, Vulture, AEON, New Republic, and gradually I secured my score around 2200. That was a monotonous, tough, and extremely off-putting process, because I'd never considered myself to immerse in literature, let alone literature in English. I matured so I felt not too concerned about the outcome, when I was distraught, I went to the bathroom and asked myself in the mirror, "Did you make progress in the past several days? Did you realize that without this somewhat imprudent choice you might never possess the trait and manner you have right now?" And I always nodded and smiled.
Now that I think about what did motivated me, to make such a daring move, without any consideration of the potential failure, and the answer is my father. Albeit subconsciously, I was influenced by him.
When I'm walking down the street with my father, people's first impression in mind won't be son walking with his father, but with grandfather. My father is 66 years old, and divorced my mom when I was little.
Because he believes that money means nothing and fails to conceive that most other people on this planet yearn for it. He's a really skillful at what he did for living, foreign clothing trade, so that as a little kid I experience what some might call the life of superiority. I never had to worry about things, I just asked for them, and they'd appear. There's even a huge company in Nanjing whose setup was inspired, or for a lack of better word, instigated by him, the boss calls my father Shifu.
When the enterprise became dramatic in size, for no particular reason my father resigned from the company and refused the share from the boss. I wasn't with him, but that day when he returned home, he argued vehemently in the dining room with my mother. When the war ended, he walked to me and said "I needed to do something more meaningful, I wanted to live, but not 'life'." - As he wished, he became a farmer, or peasant, more precisely, since farmer denotes a degree of dignity, wearing well-worn clothes that made him look even more well-worn, and living in a shabby shed in suburban Wuxi City.
Certainly I complained about him being arrogant about financial issues, but I don't resent him. In fact, every time when I went to visit, only a feeling of safety remained - after all, he's papa, and only by staying around him, could I become oblivious to my problems, I saw a strong man with strong hands when I was a kid, I saw a strong man with strong hands out of the old figure when I grew up.
I don't see him very often. We don't have a car in the family, and I keep losing my transportation discount card, and moreover it takes around 2 hours to travel to where he lives. But I'm confident and assured that there's someone at a distance loving his son, regardless of all his own miseries, loneliness, dirt, fatigue of long working hours, weakness of getting old, whatever. He doesn't do anything that might hurt me, or he doesn't intend to, even though it's encouraged me myself.
He is not chatty. Since the very beginning of my memory, I've been trying to not to let him down, and he's never said a strong word to me. People like my father can't get along with anything well, because in their minds, there's no space for what common people deemed desirable. It's a pattern that he's obeyed for decades, selflessness. His insistence on doing his own things in his own way often incenses people around him. And though people would sometimes admire him for being a really nice person because of his idiosyncrasies so rarely found in the modern-day China, they don't recognize his success - he only succeeds in his own way.
I lived with my mother after their separation. Because my mother was just so typical a housewife, and she's got me to feed, which was quite troublesome, she introduced me a new guy, other may call stepfather or downright father, but I insisted uncle till this day. She told me that I had to keep distance from my father, because he's a weirdo and in case his "stupid thoughts" have an impact on me. To her disappointment, I didn't. Then that I wasn't blamed but my father, again. He made no sound, I made no sound too. He taught me that life cannot be measured by wealth of social status or anything external, but living one's own way of life. It's not the result that matters, but the process, and the mood. He did impact me, but I agreed with him, truth resonates louder than pedantry.
I don't discuss serious topics very often with my father, because there's not that much to be uttered, and for a great portion that is, both me and my father are not entitled to utter. He's a friend of mine, it's a coincidence that he's also my father.
When I was little, my father used to bring me to various places. This is how I learnt that the world is big. And that brought consequence too. I broke my arm during a visit of a military exhibition, which obviously isn't suitable for people like me. He was railed again, and stopped bringing me out since elementary school. But I've been to those places, I don't recall where I'd been, or what it looked like, or how I felt about it, but I've been to those places, and that's enough of it.
After several years of hard labor and futility in the farm. He picked up doing business with my uncle. That was when I'd told my father of my little plan, and this man at his 60s, began to struggle again for his son's dream, which clearly differed his. But there's no confrontation due to the divergence of opinions, he knew who I am, and knew that I was going to do it. He didn't understand that what he's doing might still not of considerable help, but he's doing it, and I don't mind him.
I'm setting off a very long journey, a journey that is unfit for the age of my father. But I inherited his history, and I think it's time to create my own. I want to thank him, and I want to wish him a happy late life that he should take a break, but I also know that he won't accept my gratitude and that he won't stop working till the end.
So I have nothing to say, because I don't have to, and he knows it.
P: The first article of the blog I take seriously has been finished, and as a rule I'm not satisfied with its quality. But I understand this might be the place where I should be writing on for decades, so quality is not the focus but the documentation of my life, and the creation of my own legacy. I'm currently 18 years old, and in most cultures this age is deemed as the beginning of maturity. So here's the evidence of that journey.
But it's suddenly there, one Friday when I returned home from school, I announced to my mother that I no longer wanted to study for the College Entrance Exam, and that I needed a different way to approach life, and a different life. Maybe my mother was dumbfounded, she didn't object to my decision.
Nothing goes as expected, so did my decision. As it turned out, I vastly underestimated the complexity of applying a college abroad, and at the meantime vastly overestimated the condition of my family. Though reluctantly, I had to embrace the fact that education is an investment, is a beginning of an even longer career, it is not an end but a means. So I changed and changed my plan. First from New Zealand to United States, then from New York University to Dartmouth College. I wasn't thinking about sitting an SAT test until I discovered that I can easily score more than 1900 without any preparation.
It's not that easy. I woke up every day at 7, and sleep at 10, except for meals, I was basically doing practice problems and reading, reading, reading like a madman. I couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees required of SAT training, so I had to do everything myself. There's no explicit explanation on how should I ready myself, so I followed only vague guidelines on Spark Notes that I should read. I read Wired, Vulture, AEON, New Republic, and gradually I secured my score around 2200. That was a monotonous, tough, and extremely off-putting process, because I'd never considered myself to immerse in literature, let alone literature in English. I matured so I felt not too concerned about the outcome, when I was distraught, I went to the bathroom and asked myself in the mirror, "Did you make progress in the past several days? Did you realize that without this somewhat imprudent choice you might never possess the trait and manner you have right now?" And I always nodded and smiled.
Now that I think about what did motivated me, to make such a daring move, without any consideration of the potential failure, and the answer is my father. Albeit subconsciously, I was influenced by him.
When I'm walking down the street with my father, people's first impression in mind won't be son walking with his father, but with grandfather. My father is 66 years old, and divorced my mom when I was little.
Because he believes that money means nothing and fails to conceive that most other people on this planet yearn for it. He's a really skillful at what he did for living, foreign clothing trade, so that as a little kid I experience what some might call the life of superiority. I never had to worry about things, I just asked for them, and they'd appear. There's even a huge company in Nanjing whose setup was inspired, or for a lack of better word, instigated by him, the boss calls my father Shifu.
When the enterprise became dramatic in size, for no particular reason my father resigned from the company and refused the share from the boss. I wasn't with him, but that day when he returned home, he argued vehemently in the dining room with my mother. When the war ended, he walked to me and said "I needed to do something more meaningful, I wanted to live, but not 'life'." - As he wished, he became a farmer, or peasant, more precisely, since farmer denotes a degree of dignity, wearing well-worn clothes that made him look even more well-worn, and living in a shabby shed in suburban Wuxi City.
Certainly I complained about him being arrogant about financial issues, but I don't resent him. In fact, every time when I went to visit, only a feeling of safety remained - after all, he's papa, and only by staying around him, could I become oblivious to my problems, I saw a strong man with strong hands when I was a kid, I saw a strong man with strong hands out of the old figure when I grew up.
I don't see him very often. We don't have a car in the family, and I keep losing my transportation discount card, and moreover it takes around 2 hours to travel to where he lives. But I'm confident and assured that there's someone at a distance loving his son, regardless of all his own miseries, loneliness, dirt, fatigue of long working hours, weakness of getting old, whatever. He doesn't do anything that might hurt me, or he doesn't intend to, even though it's encouraged me myself.
He is not chatty. Since the very beginning of my memory, I've been trying to not to let him down, and he's never said a strong word to me. People like my father can't get along with anything well, because in their minds, there's no space for what common people deemed desirable. It's a pattern that he's obeyed for decades, selflessness. His insistence on doing his own things in his own way often incenses people around him. And though people would sometimes admire him for being a really nice person because of his idiosyncrasies so rarely found in the modern-day China, they don't recognize his success - he only succeeds in his own way.
I lived with my mother after their separation. Because my mother was just so typical a housewife, and she's got me to feed, which was quite troublesome, she introduced me a new guy, other may call stepfather or downright father, but I insisted uncle till this day. She told me that I had to keep distance from my father, because he's a weirdo and in case his "stupid thoughts" have an impact on me. To her disappointment, I didn't. Then that I wasn't blamed but my father, again. He made no sound, I made no sound too. He taught me that life cannot be measured by wealth of social status or anything external, but living one's own way of life. It's not the result that matters, but the process, and the mood. He did impact me, but I agreed with him, truth resonates louder than pedantry.
I don't discuss serious topics very often with my father, because there's not that much to be uttered, and for a great portion that is, both me and my father are not entitled to utter. He's a friend of mine, it's a coincidence that he's also my father.
When I was little, my father used to bring me to various places. This is how I learnt that the world is big. And that brought consequence too. I broke my arm during a visit of a military exhibition, which obviously isn't suitable for people like me. He was railed again, and stopped bringing me out since elementary school. But I've been to those places, I don't recall where I'd been, or what it looked like, or how I felt about it, but I've been to those places, and that's enough of it.
After several years of hard labor and futility in the farm. He picked up doing business with my uncle. That was when I'd told my father of my little plan, and this man at his 60s, began to struggle again for his son's dream, which clearly differed his. But there's no confrontation due to the divergence of opinions, he knew who I am, and knew that I was going to do it. He didn't understand that what he's doing might still not of considerable help, but he's doing it, and I don't mind him.
I'm setting off a very long journey, a journey that is unfit for the age of my father. But I inherited his history, and I think it's time to create my own. I want to thank him, and I want to wish him a happy late life that he should take a break, but I also know that he won't accept my gratitude and that he won't stop working till the end.
So I have nothing to say, because I don't have to, and he knows it.
P: The first article of the blog I take seriously has been finished, and as a rule I'm not satisfied with its quality. But I understand this might be the place where I should be writing on for decades, so quality is not the focus but the documentation of my life, and the creation of my own legacy. I'm currently 18 years old, and in most cultures this age is deemed as the beginning of maturity. So here's the evidence of that journey.