Sometimes I long for the rain, where silence and monotony emerge in a harmonious way, so I no longer have to ponder the origin of the world as I usually perceive. With umbrella or the forgetting to bring it, my mind is instantly diverted away from the rootless concern I have. But the rain doesn't come, or rather it does, and I'm too insensitive to see. So, more than often, when I take my imaginary walk down on the shaggy street of my unknown city, I raise my hand above my head to prevent the mental discomfort that might be enshrined by the fictional rain. The air I inhale contains a light thrill to my respiratory system - what a tangible hurt I tentatively ascertain.
In a similar way, I promenade towards the bathroom in my miniature flat several meters away - although I don't go anywhere, the advance of my mechanical steps remind me through the cracking floor that I'm going somewhere, that the difference between my seat and the toilet is fundamentally comparable to the difference between my home, in the less inhabitable part of Wuxi and a mansion, existent or non-existent, in downtown New York. My heart is calmed briefly every time I take one of those walks, so gradually the toilet has become my sanctuary. However, to depart from my seat is urgent - I have to pee, and to depart from the toilet is compulsory - I have work to do.
These abstract, utterly useless thoughts torture me - for I don't have concrete, utterly useful ones, and create a permanent illness that is the most dangerous of all illnesses. The danger that comes from it is imposed on me, but I have no way to capture it, and no way to confront it. Like I sit in a bus stop with no road beside it, and recline unconsciously that the bus has passed.
And all of sudden these sensations scatter like a whirring breeze across the noodle restaurant downstairs I've never patronized, all I feel, is the implacable sadness I suffer because I can no longer find it.
I'm well aware that the basketball court not far away is still there, lifeless because no one plays basketball in the midnight, and the school that used to give me homework is still there, unmanned because no matter how much homework there is, one has to sleep, but I'm not sentient to those places any more - I'm not playing basketball and no one gives me homework. I pretend to be frightened by this staggering epiphany, and before a microsecond, I see through my pretension and realize I just don't care.
As I'm writing to the end of this essay, I instinctively gaze through the window for the bright moon that could bring me peace and solitude, and not surprisingly the cloud is too thick for the moon to descend. But I control myself, and type these last few words:
The sparkling moon in the middle of the night sky becomes the entirety of my soul.
