Owing to an uninvited, effortless privilege of making money, my sense of economy has been greatly diminished. Just today I spent 399.99 USD to buy a copy of the Microsoft Office 2016 Professional, which, alternatively costs only 5 EUR on Taobao. And then there's now, at 3:24 AM in the morning, with an impending 8:15 AM International Economics presentation, I forsake sleep for writing.
It is not, however, that I haven't tried to fall asleep. I was keenly aware that although the Economics presentation has nothing concrete to offer to what I am doing, I should still perform well because my sub-par presence may actually deprecate the endeavor of other group members. Take Ping for example, his dedication to this simple little assignment is truly astonishing - I, for one, am not able to comprehend him, let alone to mimic. The reason that I failed to sleep, therefore is still some other annoyance. The pajama bottom is too loose, yet the shirt is a bit rigid - and I didn't take shower before going to bed, all of these compounded, coupled perhaps with some undying subconscious infatuation, make sleeping exceedingly hard, that the more I struggle in bed, the farther-off the objective of sleep seems.
Oh crap, these are just plain excuses, which especially smart people are adept at using to cover up their otherwise eye-catching flaw - I am, at the moment, among the less smart in this group of people with whom I associate. And it is either because the excuses I use aren't good enough or my flaw is overly blatant that I get to see through it.
Quite surprisingly at this time of the day people are baking pizza in the kitchen. The language they speak presumably comes from Southeast Asia - the sound is loud, and the syllables uncluttered and rapid - I feel proud for them, like I feel proud for the whistle Tian makes every time after I go to bed - they have fun in what they do, and are usually unaware of how they appeal to others.. But what is the appeal when one is fighting to sleep? Even the bed itself is an enemy, and it is outright impossible for the limb to find its place. Therefore, I have nothing to complain about.
On the previous installation of my computer, I had an additional clock showing the time in Shanghai, where my parents are. With this new build of operating system, I hardly feel the need to adjust the setting. Merely one year into leaving home and kicking off by myself, the word family has already turned into an unfamiliar concept. After all, who are they but a pair of humans? And in particular if they are those humans who seldom bear significance outside their own surroundings? Of course, they are clean and honest - they are staunch in believing in their own life; they have never committed a crime nor prevented one. But who has not? And so, intelligible is my choice of saving the energy of adding a clock of my parents' time zone for some thirty seconds of Facebook browsing and YouTube watching.
OK, alright. Husain is snoring behind me, and tosses around fairly frequently - his poor sleeping quality has a soothing effect on me. I am getting sleepy as well. Less than four hours until the presentation, my laptop, the moonish spray bottles and a tissue roll are the only bright objects in this room. I take a sight of what I have written, a pageful! A pageful of words that are utterly unreasonable! To write has become a different form of emptiness - to induce sleep, to fill up these littery moments, and to pitprop life! And finally I am sleepy! Thank God!
Friday, October 30
Wednesday, October 14
10/15
Organizational Narrative Project
Protagonist: He, co-founder at Bund Education Co., Ltd.
[Introduction]
Caved in the weird, inveterate smog of Shanghai, he drifts slowly along the asphalt road - almost three years ago the night it had all begun he used to walk like this - only then it was high school, and he was a waiter. O' those dreadful times have long passed. He's settling down, though temporarily, almost tentatively - having served in New Oriental as a teaching assistant for nearly one year it was high time to start out on his own - co-founder, as he writes on his CV for whatever murky applications in the future. He's an adult now. Matter of fact he has been an adult for one year! But what sense to make with it? The four youthful souls in this upscale office building near the Bund of Bund Education Co., Ltd., stuck together, balled-up to keep the money rolling in - plenty of it. But that's one of the few things he deploys to delight himself. What else? Parents in the country? Dull and nearly repetitive. Spouse? So far, only a girlfriend below the planet beneath. Until he seems to find another, not dream, but fantasy experimented, FUSE.
[First Report]
Having no intention for an actual venture at first, he followed headlong into a world which is alien to him and which, unexpectedly he finds agreeable, for it imbues him with a sense of being alive that he had aspired but never truly attained. It is so soothing, so genuine, like how the bird must have felt when perching on a spring's tree. Though for him, for anyone with an inkling of rationality, the tree is but in its crudest, tattiest form, blood-fed with the money that was once part of his tuition fees next year, an apartment that is, in an old, French-style office building thirty-second of walk away from the Bund - he goes there all the time, usually after dinner. In the beginning the grand Shanghai skyline dazzled him. Mesmerized, he would rest his shoulder and arms on the handrail by the river and take gazillions of pictures to flaunt. But before long it becomes norm. He even feels a connection, however diluted, between the shallow pumping heart of his and the much more tangible ambition of this entire nation on the other side. He neither touches nor feels it. But he knows it's there. And it pleases him. He feels light-hearted all the time - those penniless hipsters, complaining about food and courting girls, carefree as they appear to be, they ain't even convinced of themselves, he thinks, and he's at least got something to grasp, and cheers to that.
Occasionally he would niggle over some petty issues with his boss, who he finds quirky. The boss is an unstable man, and earthquakes all the time. He can be quizzical and clingy on this second and disinterested and aloof the very next. The only thing constant about the boss is an unwavering greediness - "300 yuan per hour? That's too little, make it 500 yuan. For God's sake I would make it 1000 as long as these rich bastards are foolish enough to accept it." And it unsettles him, he doesn't want to come off as a vampire. But he faces no choice but to accommodate the boss, after all the boss is the boss, and boss makes right decisions.
It's a small company still. He has to take on multiple roles, mostly as marketer and teacher, but routinely as garbage collector and dishwasher as well. And the crucial part is the former. He needs to find students, and to teach them, together with his boss in a cohesive way. It is easier for him to work with the boss and the other two paperwork dudes. Workload is divided and he gets to work on what he does the best; during the downturn he can also assure himself that the others are suffering with him. But it is not without trouble, in fact sometimes huge pain in the ass, to have to deal with his boss, to always find a middle way, and to consolidate the schedule when the boss is off 2000 kilometers again for his girlfriend. Nonetheless, at a day's end, he's content.
[Second Report]
Sometimes he wonders, in this shabby place made of bits and parts glued together under the name of a single man, a tender body veiled often by beach pants and slippers, what propels this truckload of otherwise commonplace men to move forward? There must be something, something special about that man! His imprudence in making a decision and his firmness in fulfilling it! The way he leads! He neither subordinates nor negotiates. He merely talks, using his rationality to sell and to convince almost wholeheartedly the minds of skeptics like him. His annoyances are consistent but only mild, his derangement is severe but never consequential. He readily shatters, rives, and tosses what he and the rest of the comrades take as believes, faiths, and principles without it let known, and miraculously squeezes out new rules, new forms and new creeds under which they smilingly bask. Towards the end, therefore, he gives up fighting; he even gives up preserving what is left of him; he flows willingly and inexorably along.
All of these though, has an underlying premise - he will not bet a dime on his boss if one day the boss fails to turn that dime into more, and the other guys share a similar view - that to be revealingly frank, the only things that matter are the dimes - there simply is no other reason, be it to compete, to control, to like or to emphasize, for nobody, the boss himself included, feels a sense of mission in the tasks being carried out. After all, he agrees, this industry exists only in the crevice, of aspirant, wealthy parents' uncontrollable urge to send their sons and daughters to schools that are not necessarily excellent, but nevertheless elite. It is under this integrated culture of essential indifference that they preserve themselves.
And it never occurred to him that he would need to find another person to help. It was only after that the amount of work borders on the unmanageable that he, casual and nonchalant, reached out to various universities for manpower. He recalls most vividly, when he sifted through so many applications of an unvarying butt-shaking eagerness, the despicable ease with which he picks and decides - these people, who spent years and years in school, in turn, get to work for him and his boss - it all seems ludicrously surreal.
Yet it isn't that he intends to mistreat these young people. Once they are onboard they instantly become like him - to take orders from the boss, to begin to function, and to get paid according to the hours they work. There are only four people, and there isn't much to be said. It is even better, sometimes, for the boss to be the one to make the cuts - it is infinitely easier to obey than to confront over the decisions which nobody feels sure about. Hence, perfect! Sehr perfect! To be able to work like this he thinks, with his job as an extension of life rather than as a part of it.
P: Five reports were originally intended for the Organizational Narrative Project. However, the last three reports have been canceled due to "academic inaptness". And the boss in the reports was me.
-
Blessing gravely thrice the sofa, I wandered about and placed my buttocks on the bar stool. Quite sensibly the feet went on the table beside the fridge that never seemed full - the red Coca-Cola paint on the edge was even a bit cocked up. But it was no matter. I came only to shack up for a moment, and then I would have to leave as well.
After these mystically few months I finally got to peek out, from this giant array of buildings and the fences around them. Yet I did not feel a sense of liberation - the momentum of having been an inmate makes me almost suspicious of the world outside - back in my constrained and thus leisurely days I simply whammed and whistled on the mattress, seeking not to amplify but rather, to allay - the life in flesh and Eden was ever so anciently peaceful, like a rhyme hummed by the oldest words, that it had become vital for me to make it appear less so.
Actually there wasn’t anything particular about the room I was in - it was one of those places patronized only by people in need. I had watched movie while lying on the couch at the rightmost corner of the room. Then Alin was often around and seemed fairly energized by a youthful upkeep which he didn't manage to maintain, and Husain still unquestioning and glad - since, though not entirely certain, after the movie he could always come down one stair with me and enter the room opposite of mine that was, after all, legitimately his.
And all of sudden I felt concerned, almost apprehended - like how watchfully I would listen to a piece of music as the melody tapered - so scraggy was the sound that it could fall and break. Though why did it matter if after several sonatas either I got bored by its repetition or it eventually came to an end not fully expressed but nonetheless conclusive I didn't know. Just that, while I was thinking about it, I intuitively pressed every button on my touchscreen keyboard stronger, so the characters manufactured seemed more convincing:
"Do remember to take care; always ask for a blanket before the cabin gets cold."
I viewed these letters individually as they piecemeal formed, making sure that the font was well-spoken and that I did use the correct punctuation. I always had a standpoint that by having a flawless style in one's writing, things will somehow become smoother - such that I mawkishly persevered in the road I had chosen to destine.
It was, if I had remembered correctly, around noon. I was sleep-deprived and unusually thrilled - the familiarity of it all, the clean awareness of where exactly I was, the conviction that when strolling here I was dispensed with the need to defend, the cheer and terror I keepsake for its possible loss, felt startlingly alien. I was like an upcoming whoremaster who for some unkempt reason became attached to the brothel he never felt the need to visit, let alone to stay, and of which, he had gradually realized and regretted.
Fine. Anyways, I was about to finish up. I had already bought the ticket, folded my outfit into the suitcase, and sprayed deodorant. I could've waited a bit longer but there was no need - the blazing sun was high in the sky; the fast food restaurant was there one last time for a box of beef rice with noodles - a little reluctance was normal and appreciated.
So I packed up, chewed the last wad of Dextro from the servery, wiped my hand, wreathed a smile, and turned away.
-
Sometimes being a human means to deceive oneself, especially for those who haven't had the privilege to lead a life that isn't entirely fulfilling. I, however, am among those people who are supposed to cheat and forget yet who couldn't take the courage to really do so. I reason, while unfortunate and vulgar, my life isn't without commendable moments to remember, and profound changes to rethink, and therefore, it is not proper to discard all of them indiscriminately, though it might be quite easy and reassuring.
Protagonist: He, co-founder at Bund Education Co., Ltd.
[Introduction]
Caved in the weird, inveterate smog of Shanghai, he drifts slowly along the asphalt road - almost three years ago the night it had all begun he used to walk like this - only then it was high school, and he was a waiter. O' those dreadful times have long passed. He's settling down, though temporarily, almost tentatively - having served in New Oriental as a teaching assistant for nearly one year it was high time to start out on his own - co-founder, as he writes on his CV for whatever murky applications in the future. He's an adult now. Matter of fact he has been an adult for one year! But what sense to make with it? The four youthful souls in this upscale office building near the Bund of Bund Education Co., Ltd., stuck together, balled-up to keep the money rolling in - plenty of it. But that's one of the few things he deploys to delight himself. What else? Parents in the country? Dull and nearly repetitive. Spouse? So far, only a girlfriend below the planet beneath. Until he seems to find another, not dream, but fantasy experimented, FUSE.
[First Report]
Having no intention for an actual venture at first, he followed headlong into a world which is alien to him and which, unexpectedly he finds agreeable, for it imbues him with a sense of being alive that he had aspired but never truly attained. It is so soothing, so genuine, like how the bird must have felt when perching on a spring's tree. Though for him, for anyone with an inkling of rationality, the tree is but in its crudest, tattiest form, blood-fed with the money that was once part of his tuition fees next year, an apartment that is, in an old, French-style office building thirty-second of walk away from the Bund - he goes there all the time, usually after dinner. In the beginning the grand Shanghai skyline dazzled him. Mesmerized, he would rest his shoulder and arms on the handrail by the river and take gazillions of pictures to flaunt. But before long it becomes norm. He even feels a connection, however diluted, between the shallow pumping heart of his and the much more tangible ambition of this entire nation on the other side. He neither touches nor feels it. But he knows it's there. And it pleases him. He feels light-hearted all the time - those penniless hipsters, complaining about food and courting girls, carefree as they appear to be, they ain't even convinced of themselves, he thinks, and he's at least got something to grasp, and cheers to that.
Occasionally he would niggle over some petty issues with his boss, who he finds quirky. The boss is an unstable man, and earthquakes all the time. He can be quizzical and clingy on this second and disinterested and aloof the very next. The only thing constant about the boss is an unwavering greediness - "300 yuan per hour? That's too little, make it 500 yuan. For God's sake I would make it 1000 as long as these rich bastards are foolish enough to accept it." And it unsettles him, he doesn't want to come off as a vampire. But he faces no choice but to accommodate the boss, after all the boss is the boss, and boss makes right decisions.
It's a small company still. He has to take on multiple roles, mostly as marketer and teacher, but routinely as garbage collector and dishwasher as well. And the crucial part is the former. He needs to find students, and to teach them, together with his boss in a cohesive way. It is easier for him to work with the boss and the other two paperwork dudes. Workload is divided and he gets to work on what he does the best; during the downturn he can also assure himself that the others are suffering with him. But it is not without trouble, in fact sometimes huge pain in the ass, to have to deal with his boss, to always find a middle way, and to consolidate the schedule when the boss is off 2000 kilometers again for his girlfriend. Nonetheless, at a day's end, he's content.
[Second Report]
Sometimes he wonders, in this shabby place made of bits and parts glued together under the name of a single man, a tender body veiled often by beach pants and slippers, what propels this truckload of otherwise commonplace men to move forward? There must be something, something special about that man! His imprudence in making a decision and his firmness in fulfilling it! The way he leads! He neither subordinates nor negotiates. He merely talks, using his rationality to sell and to convince almost wholeheartedly the minds of skeptics like him. His annoyances are consistent but only mild, his derangement is severe but never consequential. He readily shatters, rives, and tosses what he and the rest of the comrades take as believes, faiths, and principles without it let known, and miraculously squeezes out new rules, new forms and new creeds under which they smilingly bask. Towards the end, therefore, he gives up fighting; he even gives up preserving what is left of him; he flows willingly and inexorably along.
All of these though, has an underlying premise - he will not bet a dime on his boss if one day the boss fails to turn that dime into more, and the other guys share a similar view - that to be revealingly frank, the only things that matter are the dimes - there simply is no other reason, be it to compete, to control, to like or to emphasize, for nobody, the boss himself included, feels a sense of mission in the tasks being carried out. After all, he agrees, this industry exists only in the crevice, of aspirant, wealthy parents' uncontrollable urge to send their sons and daughters to schools that are not necessarily excellent, but nevertheless elite. It is under this integrated culture of essential indifference that they preserve themselves.
And it never occurred to him that he would need to find another person to help. It was only after that the amount of work borders on the unmanageable that he, casual and nonchalant, reached out to various universities for manpower. He recalls most vividly, when he sifted through so many applications of an unvarying butt-shaking eagerness, the despicable ease with which he picks and decides - these people, who spent years and years in school, in turn, get to work for him and his boss - it all seems ludicrously surreal.
Yet it isn't that he intends to mistreat these young people. Once they are onboard they instantly become like him - to take orders from the boss, to begin to function, and to get paid according to the hours they work. There are only four people, and there isn't much to be said. It is even better, sometimes, for the boss to be the one to make the cuts - it is infinitely easier to obey than to confront over the decisions which nobody feels sure about. Hence, perfect! Sehr perfect! To be able to work like this he thinks, with his job as an extension of life rather than as a part of it.
P: Five reports were originally intended for the Organizational Narrative Project. However, the last three reports have been canceled due to "academic inaptness". And the boss in the reports was me.
-
Blessing gravely thrice the sofa, I wandered about and placed my buttocks on the bar stool. Quite sensibly the feet went on the table beside the fridge that never seemed full - the red Coca-Cola paint on the edge was even a bit cocked up. But it was no matter. I came only to shack up for a moment, and then I would have to leave as well.
After these mystically few months I finally got to peek out, from this giant array of buildings and the fences around them. Yet I did not feel a sense of liberation - the momentum of having been an inmate makes me almost suspicious of the world outside - back in my constrained and thus leisurely days I simply whammed and whistled on the mattress, seeking not to amplify but rather, to allay - the life in flesh and Eden was ever so anciently peaceful, like a rhyme hummed by the oldest words, that it had become vital for me to make it appear less so.
Actually there wasn’t anything particular about the room I was in - it was one of those places patronized only by people in need. I had watched movie while lying on the couch at the rightmost corner of the room. Then Alin was often around and seemed fairly energized by a youthful upkeep which he didn't manage to maintain, and Husain still unquestioning and glad - since, though not entirely certain, after the movie he could always come down one stair with me and enter the room opposite of mine that was, after all, legitimately his.
And all of sudden I felt concerned, almost apprehended - like how watchfully I would listen to a piece of music as the melody tapered - so scraggy was the sound that it could fall and break. Though why did it matter if after several sonatas either I got bored by its repetition or it eventually came to an end not fully expressed but nonetheless conclusive I didn't know. Just that, while I was thinking about it, I intuitively pressed every button on my touchscreen keyboard stronger, so the characters manufactured seemed more convincing:
"Do remember to take care; always ask for a blanket before the cabin gets cold."
I viewed these letters individually as they piecemeal formed, making sure that the font was well-spoken and that I did use the correct punctuation. I always had a standpoint that by having a flawless style in one's writing, things will somehow become smoother - such that I mawkishly persevered in the road I had chosen to destine.
It was, if I had remembered correctly, around noon. I was sleep-deprived and unusually thrilled - the familiarity of it all, the clean awareness of where exactly I was, the conviction that when strolling here I was dispensed with the need to defend, the cheer and terror I keepsake for its possible loss, felt startlingly alien. I was like an upcoming whoremaster who for some unkempt reason became attached to the brothel he never felt the need to visit, let alone to stay, and of which, he had gradually realized and regretted.
Fine. Anyways, I was about to finish up. I had already bought the ticket, folded my outfit into the suitcase, and sprayed deodorant. I could've waited a bit longer but there was no need - the blazing sun was high in the sky; the fast food restaurant was there one last time for a box of beef rice with noodles - a little reluctance was normal and appreciated.
So I packed up, chewed the last wad of Dextro from the servery, wiped my hand, wreathed a smile, and turned away.
-
Sometimes being a human means to deceive oneself, especially for those who haven't had the privilege to lead a life that isn't entirely fulfilling. I, however, am among those people who are supposed to cheat and forget yet who couldn't take the courage to really do so. I reason, while unfortunate and vulgar, my life isn't without commendable moments to remember, and profound changes to rethink, and therefore, it is not proper to discard all of them indiscriminately, though it might be quite easy and reassuring.
Wednesday, September 30
9/30
My index fingers are like a pair of pincers caught on the edges of my phone. Sometimes one of them bends a little bit, adjusting the angle of the screen in a blunt white. My eyes, fixated by the words shown and deleted there, move as my thumbs type on a projected keyboard. Everything that is not the screen is dark and peripheral, even my fingers and hands appear only as silhouettes. On the thousandth night nothing still interests me on the screen. There are just a bunch of letters on a yellowish background and chronically cute lumps of colors. At 12:00 AM instead of sleeping I am looking at my phone and my tireless obsession with it. This is the sixth iPhone 6 Plus for me and the tenth phone in general, yet the urgency to immerse is so painstakingly fresh - what clever cursors, images and gestures, and the way they are subordinated - a feeling nowhere else to be felt - no more card drawings and running-out-of-tissue-in-a-public-toilet-in-the-middle-of-the-night moments, it ensures to kindly remind you of low battery and that the apps will function optimally. 100% satisfaction guaranteed with refund, no one says no to anyone anymore.
The mattress cover was a bit wet; the dryer downstairs mustn't have handled it well. I wrap my legs with a corner of the quill, dried, and continue to look at my phone - Google Plus, hmm, too beautiful; LinkedIn, just Facebook in suit; Reddit, too niddering in taste; WeChat and Quora and Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, all of them are confined in tiny, rounded squares for my ultimate pick. And I, pampered by their butt-shaking eagerness, suddenly decide all of them disgusting and instead open the Notes app to jot down a few thoughts, non-thoughts to be precise, words and lines to make up space rather than content and which I quickly delete.
Two days after Mid-Autumn Festival the kitchen behind the wall to the right of me still lingers the buzzing noises and the bursting laughters of a group of my compatriots that I unexpectedly come to despise. Their leftover dishes in the sink contrast ever greatly with their domineering heads flinched behind pairs of glasses, coddled in a persistently mild smile - concubines made of palace. But I ain't got anything to do with them anymore. Perhaps in them there was certain sensitivity that I failed to foresee - albeit their produce is neither ingenious nor outlandish they do, however, retain a particular finesse to cast the superficial as the supercilious - going to singsongs and buying Coca-Cola - dreams come true when they are not even looking. You play, you pay, you bastard.
Even if I sleep now, since I am already quite sleepy, waking up tomorrow will be a hard reset of the insights that I have garnered today. The bitter nostalgia that I taste in dream is my heroin. My rationality denies it; my reality refutes it; and I keep going back to it, because my subconscious mind keeps going back to it, and I keep going back to sleep. Thus I would rather stay somnolent here on this seat that hardly bristles me than to become lucid in dream - I would prefer to keep the pieces together than to scatter them in wind; I keep remembering for it once was. But such foolhardy nonsense! Such foolhardy nonsense indeed!
Intending to preserve, I have reduced myself. If two months ago I strived, now I merely endeavor; if two months ago I loved, now I like; if two months ago I had faith not to be sought from religion but from real world, now I see faith as lordly as to be nearly a contrivance. With such reduction I am much more anchored. Instead of fluctuating from ecstasy to despair, I hover around delight to dismay. I used to see obstinacy as something to be upheld. I now doubt it - solipsism dragged me out of turbidity, but it can only go so far. The rest to me is only vacancy, resembling what I thought was life's monotony, which I had smashed, for then I was a gambler, a daredevil and a pagan.
I no longer am.
The mattress cover was a bit wet; the dryer downstairs mustn't have handled it well. I wrap my legs with a corner of the quill, dried, and continue to look at my phone - Google Plus, hmm, too beautiful; LinkedIn, just Facebook in suit; Reddit, too niddering in taste; WeChat and Quora and Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, all of them are confined in tiny, rounded squares for my ultimate pick. And I, pampered by their butt-shaking eagerness, suddenly decide all of them disgusting and instead open the Notes app to jot down a few thoughts, non-thoughts to be precise, words and lines to make up space rather than content and which I quickly delete.
Two days after Mid-Autumn Festival the kitchen behind the wall to the right of me still lingers the buzzing noises and the bursting laughters of a group of my compatriots that I unexpectedly come to despise. Their leftover dishes in the sink contrast ever greatly with their domineering heads flinched behind pairs of glasses, coddled in a persistently mild smile - concubines made of palace. But I ain't got anything to do with them anymore. Perhaps in them there was certain sensitivity that I failed to foresee - albeit their produce is neither ingenious nor outlandish they do, however, retain a particular finesse to cast the superficial as the supercilious - going to singsongs and buying Coca-Cola - dreams come true when they are not even looking. You play, you pay, you bastard.
Even if I sleep now, since I am already quite sleepy, waking up tomorrow will be a hard reset of the insights that I have garnered today. The bitter nostalgia that I taste in dream is my heroin. My rationality denies it; my reality refutes it; and I keep going back to it, because my subconscious mind keeps going back to it, and I keep going back to sleep. Thus I would rather stay somnolent here on this seat that hardly bristles me than to become lucid in dream - I would prefer to keep the pieces together than to scatter them in wind; I keep remembering for it once was. But such foolhardy nonsense! Such foolhardy nonsense indeed!
Intending to preserve, I have reduced myself. If two months ago I strived, now I merely endeavor; if two months ago I loved, now I like; if two months ago I had faith not to be sought from religion but from real world, now I see faith as lordly as to be nearly a contrivance. With such reduction I am much more anchored. Instead of fluctuating from ecstasy to despair, I hover around delight to dismay. I used to see obstinacy as something to be upheld. I now doubt it - solipsism dragged me out of turbidity, but it can only go so far. The rest to me is only vacancy, resembling what I thought was life's monotony, which I had smashed, for then I was a gambler, a daredevil and a pagan.
I no longer am.
Monday, September 21
9/21
Tumbling out of bed as if fleeing, I calmed as soon as my feet are set on the road outside of Nordmetall - at 5 AM in the morning the gravel was appeasing - rustle, rustle as I moved along. At this time of the day barely anyone had woken up. The lights seemed dimmer, and cars were marveled at like an arrow piercing through the dark. And I took them, and I took it literally - the driver was never seen - on the car and in the window the only things visible were pairs of headlights, and even they would disappear swiftly.
Thoughts were as useless as language. Intuition ruled. I commanded myself to walk, to gaze, to bust out cobwebs, and to snap pictures of faintly lit trees and buildings that were unpopulated, but I didn't talk, think or even enjoy. It was all there to be felt, to be merged, and to be stopped. I moved; beneath my penis the legs oscillated, grasstips swang and mud churned. And that was it. The stroll was brief and containing - I saw myself as infinitesimal and almost irrelevant. The oversized green t-shirt and the body it covered were mere anomalies, heated up and vital, contrast to everything that surrounded. And I couldn't help but wonder, how much more distance would they travel? How much more time would they shine? At least it all appeared static, and thus it all appeared eternal.
Soon it was the end; behind the church I waited for salvation - Owen, a chunky figure, oh there he was to greet me, "good morning, let's jog", and at once we started to jog. 4 laps were not an easy task and I had to adjust the breath; a lump-sum of energy was pumped into my body or squeezed out of it. And as I jogged more attentively the world faded; the dark and the quiet retracted; a tinge of my sense of familiarity steadily revealed. Owen had been jogging for years in streak - his unaffected, concluded posture intrigued me, and my ego strained to keep up. It was still night, and there was no distinction between the sky and anything beyond campus. But suddenly I smelled evening - as if the two of us were jogging around the Campus Green several hours after dinner and into the night, when life had just started to be fun. Beginning to sweat mildly, I took off my overcoat, the one I bought from Marktkauf last winter, and threw it to the side. It was the same place where she and I first talked. But it neither aroused nor discouraged me. I had excised the part of my own from reality, and turned it into something remote and absurd and comically admirable.
Never mind the past, I had taken photos and written poems, those shall suffice. My pursuit had become grander than just these human tomfooleries, even the grass and breeze and star and tree - magnificent and exquisite they were but stale and diminutive. Having nothing to report to the police and living in a peaceful country, I was content. When I walked out, I was escaping dream; when I walked back I had yet again convinced myself that it was not true. I was happy, even light-headed. What a wonderful morning! Just as people braced for another day of routine I had already finished it, falling back to sleep!
And by the end of the day, as I lay down to fiddle aimlessly for a few moments to prepare myself for another round of sleep, all that had remained was an impenetrable line in the Notes app of my iPhone:
"Dream: remnant of noodles and cute letters to someone else."
Thoughts were as useless as language. Intuition ruled. I commanded myself to walk, to gaze, to bust out cobwebs, and to snap pictures of faintly lit trees and buildings that were unpopulated, but I didn't talk, think or even enjoy. It was all there to be felt, to be merged, and to be stopped. I moved; beneath my penis the legs oscillated, grasstips swang and mud churned. And that was it. The stroll was brief and containing - I saw myself as infinitesimal and almost irrelevant. The oversized green t-shirt and the body it covered were mere anomalies, heated up and vital, contrast to everything that surrounded. And I couldn't help but wonder, how much more distance would they travel? How much more time would they shine? At least it all appeared static, and thus it all appeared eternal.
Soon it was the end; behind the church I waited for salvation - Owen, a chunky figure, oh there he was to greet me, "good morning, let's jog", and at once we started to jog. 4 laps were not an easy task and I had to adjust the breath; a lump-sum of energy was pumped into my body or squeezed out of it. And as I jogged more attentively the world faded; the dark and the quiet retracted; a tinge of my sense of familiarity steadily revealed. Owen had been jogging for years in streak - his unaffected, concluded posture intrigued me, and my ego strained to keep up. It was still night, and there was no distinction between the sky and anything beyond campus. But suddenly I smelled evening - as if the two of us were jogging around the Campus Green several hours after dinner and into the night, when life had just started to be fun. Beginning to sweat mildly, I took off my overcoat, the one I bought from Marktkauf last winter, and threw it to the side. It was the same place where she and I first talked. But it neither aroused nor discouraged me. I had excised the part of my own from reality, and turned it into something remote and absurd and comically admirable.
Never mind the past, I had taken photos and written poems, those shall suffice. My pursuit had become grander than just these human tomfooleries, even the grass and breeze and star and tree - magnificent and exquisite they were but stale and diminutive. Having nothing to report to the police and living in a peaceful country, I was content. When I walked out, I was escaping dream; when I walked back I had yet again convinced myself that it was not true. I was happy, even light-headed. What a wonderful morning! Just as people braced for another day of routine I had already finished it, falling back to sleep!
And by the end of the day, as I lay down to fiddle aimlessly for a few moments to prepare myself for another round of sleep, all that had remained was an impenetrable line in the Notes app of my iPhone:
"Dream: remnant of noodles and cute letters to someone else."
Wednesday, September 9
9/9
Sitting on my bouncy office chair, as usual, I find myself at a complete loss at what to do. My recent days has become the most peculiar of what I have seen - peculiar in what regard I don't know, but it is such that the person I am now, a person from whom I seek and derive most of the joy seems exceedingly a stranger - as soon as I start doing things, like waking up in the morning at seven every day to train students, or showering and trimming before classes, each of these things will incarnate as a different person, a person who is in front of me but nevertheless oblivious and indifferent to my being, and a person who is not me. And I observe, with penetrating consistency and awe, him doing things with an increased elegance and esteem - speeches are uttered clearly without hesitation, goals are undoubted, and he appears to not take pride in what he is doing but to accept it as a kind of flawless and unbreakable routine.
"This is quite irregular, I know him. He is not like that." Yet I can't help but feeling a bit ecstatic: he is indeed too good; he is indeed the embodiment of perfection; he doesn't even have to pee, and other disorderly conducts like eating in the servery and jogging before dinner he does but out of etiquette and respect for norm. I suspect, if given the chance, he will just exist with his buttoned shirts and buckled jeans, and smoothly and smilingly glide. The weather is awesome this afternoon, but for him there's neither shadow beneath his hands nor fluffs floating in the air, not even tables and chairs, windows and curtain, only a sky whose blue is meticulously hued and several deliberate clouds as decoration. Even the sun isn't there; there's only sunshine in a sublime tranquility. Almost religious!
Beyond his upright stance, I sense no love or hatred or the secrets and flamboyancy of souls, but an evenning-out of all of them, a process of manufacturing so intricate and deep that upon its surface is a sinuous banality - tiresome and unflattering - a screen entirely scratched yet functionally robust in every conceivable way; a black body recklessly extreme in magnitude but dull and changeless however one is seeing it. I have admired him fondly; and although I have wanted to talk with him, and to ask him some questions, I always refrain because I am too unclean, like a clown in the pool, whose strokes are awkward enough yet who still hopes that nobody notices him.
Sometimes he'd exude some sadness though. But those occasions are getting rarer and rarer; for firstly, he isn't entirely sure why he is feeling sad, and secondly, like a tropical tree in the middle of the desert - there might have been a forest, whose destruction no one foresees and whose history no one relates, the only determinable fate about the sadness, is of at least a concealment and at most an erasure. He hardly feels it now, which is good; only then his mission is complete.
I don't agree with him though. And I presume all the accusations of my naivete come from this. There is too much weight for my world to become as ethereal as his - nearly everything that tries to escape will be caught with more attention, and the result is unsurprisingly a corpulent mess. I know the right choice to make and the correct course of actions to take; yet due to indolence or nostalgia or an inexplicable yearning I don't feel ready to do it, and perhaps will never be able to.
That is how I differ from him. I always carry forward with me my own history. Stale and sleazy the occurrences in it are, I treasure them like a newborn baby simply because they were mine; they were me.
-
iPhone 6s was released with the new rosy gold color. I would have made enough by the end of September to afford two. Yet I will not spend an extra - there's no need, and now my interest in these appliances is so overshadowed by a disdain of how superficial and innocuous the joy they provide is that I actually am not going to afford even one. And it is with this disdain that I preserve myself.
-
You're a greedy greedy man.
You want everything,
Now you know you can't.
Tuesday, September 1
9/1
In this aircraft cabin nothing compels me more than the will to write, even more so than the need to sleep. However, after wolfing down an entire glass of whisky and taking a sip on a second glass of wine, the only noticeable change seems the return of slowness - on all four of my limbs there exerts a weight, hindering my motion in such a way that although I wave my arms as agilely as before, the actual command of them takes on a genuine challenge.
I remember, on the returning flight from Munich, I felt exactly the same - I was as intoxicated and as quizzical as right now. What differs is my attitude towards the act of writing itself. Undoubted is the fact that I have so far written quite a lot, and that among these of my written works several merit at least some literary value - but what end, I question myself, does it serve if by writing nothing vaguely of reality is altered, and nothing remotely of my quest is accomplished? I try to capture my life at its utmost clarity - I exaggerate every bits of it I consider memorable; yet, there is always more to be missing; and there is always this helpless fate that by venting my anguish I barely change it, and often I will be faced with an outcome that is worsened by when I contemplate and conclude than by when I devoid myself of thoughts and instead pursue literal happiness that tends to fulfill in the immediate moments.
Nothing appears to present itself more clearly than the depressing pain of attempting to understand life! For to the end, it consists of only fragments - the heated tin foil that wrapped my dinner from Lufthansa, the moaning in bed, the shirt my mom washed for me a few hours back, the decade of my education, and the more decades to come that will become my work, my retirement, and my death, carried forward by a distinctness in which I'm either happy or sad, either hopeful or despondent, either married or widowed, causal but never continuous; and in it the past is merely negotiable; and the future aspired but never attained. My desire, bears too little to signify. I utilize no resource, persuade no peer, and upkeep no promise - I move laterally like everyone else nonetheless and writing is a consolation, an entitlement with which I falsely elevate myself, "hey you vagabond infidel", "hey you heartless peasant", and "hey you who drunken yourself not with alcoholic drinks but with milkshake and cinema and vacation and whatever pedestrian". Yes, that is me; that is, upon retrospect, what emerges as the goal of my writing. And what could possibly be more depressing?
Waking up from the dream which I have dreamed repetitively, I proceed to say something, but I stutter - I have already said everything I should, and therefore am left with nothing else to say. My nose is stuffed up and my throat is a bit sore. I have forgotten to put on long-sleeve shirts, mistaking this flight for a regular flight to Chengdu or to Shanghai. While the person I am now might be an abridged version of my previous self, I intend to bring normality back to my days. I don't miss any meal; I drink plenty of water; I sleep sound; I go occasionally to see some relatives and talk with students regarding the manner in which their training should continue. And I realize these things, hassle-free as they are, I deal with the same severity as if I am preparing for a major project - and beyond I hardly shed any thought - not that I don't want to, it's just that, when seen objectively, my recent affair is so rife with unflattering occurrences and regrets that the only option to keep my health and sanity intact is to be as artless and as superficial as is allowed by my conscience. I am not, however, incapacitated. Because I too, am wholly aware of the peril of dwelling in the past; the future for me is supposed to be about different possibilities, and in no way may I assert that any of those possibilities is inferior to the one I have envisioned. Although, I am sincerely scarred, and will hence become a more callous and knowing person than the one I want to be. And reluctantly and devotedly I accept.
I have yet managed to live an unbroken fairy tale; and my jealousy for those who incidentally do shall be eternal.
I remember, on the returning flight from Munich, I felt exactly the same - I was as intoxicated and as quizzical as right now. What differs is my attitude towards the act of writing itself. Undoubted is the fact that I have so far written quite a lot, and that among these of my written works several merit at least some literary value - but what end, I question myself, does it serve if by writing nothing vaguely of reality is altered, and nothing remotely of my quest is accomplished? I try to capture my life at its utmost clarity - I exaggerate every bits of it I consider memorable; yet, there is always more to be missing; and there is always this helpless fate that by venting my anguish I barely change it, and often I will be faced with an outcome that is worsened by when I contemplate and conclude than by when I devoid myself of thoughts and instead pursue literal happiness that tends to fulfill in the immediate moments.
Nothing appears to present itself more clearly than the depressing pain of attempting to understand life! For to the end, it consists of only fragments - the heated tin foil that wrapped my dinner from Lufthansa, the moaning in bed, the shirt my mom washed for me a few hours back, the decade of my education, and the more decades to come that will become my work, my retirement, and my death, carried forward by a distinctness in which I'm either happy or sad, either hopeful or despondent, either married or widowed, causal but never continuous; and in it the past is merely negotiable; and the future aspired but never attained. My desire, bears too little to signify. I utilize no resource, persuade no peer, and upkeep no promise - I move laterally like everyone else nonetheless and writing is a consolation, an entitlement with which I falsely elevate myself, "hey you vagabond infidel", "hey you heartless peasant", and "hey you who drunken yourself not with alcoholic drinks but with milkshake and cinema and vacation and whatever pedestrian". Yes, that is me; that is, upon retrospect, what emerges as the goal of my writing. And what could possibly be more depressing?
Waking up from the dream which I have dreamed repetitively, I proceed to say something, but I stutter - I have already said everything I should, and therefore am left with nothing else to say. My nose is stuffed up and my throat is a bit sore. I have forgotten to put on long-sleeve shirts, mistaking this flight for a regular flight to Chengdu or to Shanghai. While the person I am now might be an abridged version of my previous self, I intend to bring normality back to my days. I don't miss any meal; I drink plenty of water; I sleep sound; I go occasionally to see some relatives and talk with students regarding the manner in which their training should continue. And I realize these things, hassle-free as they are, I deal with the same severity as if I am preparing for a major project - and beyond I hardly shed any thought - not that I don't want to, it's just that, when seen objectively, my recent affair is so rife with unflattering occurrences and regrets that the only option to keep my health and sanity intact is to be as artless and as superficial as is allowed by my conscience. I am not, however, incapacitated. Because I too, am wholly aware of the peril of dwelling in the past; the future for me is supposed to be about different possibilities, and in no way may I assert that any of those possibilities is inferior to the one I have envisioned. Although, I am sincerely scarred, and will hence become a more callous and knowing person than the one I want to be. And reluctantly and devotedly I accept.
I have yet managed to live an unbroken fairy tale; and my jealousy for those who incidentally do shall be eternal.
Sunday, August 23
8/24
Flossing has been of an odd satisfaction to me, but it is only today that I have learned the hazard of overdoing things - one of my front teeth is missing a corner because I was too carried away indulging myself in such a rare joy. Although, beside some moderate discomfort when my tongue accidentally reaches the front, there's nothing deserving of a cogent concern. The notion of living with it disgruntles me. Yet I know in a mere few years of time, this broken tooth will constitute the new norm of how I view myself, and even become an inseparable part of my body.
I don't know when I have incurred such a scar; obviously flossing alone will never bear a power so destructive. I postulate it must have come from a long time ago; for vaguely I remember getting hurt, and have forgotten when and why. It does not, and will never bar me from eating though. In fact, I just ate a box of rice - I need to gain a little weight and at the same time, eating seems a fairly convenient way of being oblivious. The haunting noise of that mishap will alleviate when I commit myself to the act of chewing, not that its volume or degree will lessen, just that it will associate with me in a different form - since the front of my mind is occupied with the enjoyment of food, it hence becomes unlikely for me to harp on something less tangible. Similar to when I am drinking at the barbecue stand or hastening for a subway door that is about to be closed - the door did close before I set foot in the cabin, but the operator was kind enough to reopen it for me, the affliction will always be tuned down, implausibly as it would feel like to me in these other moments. And so I ponder, how will it play out, if finally the clingy emotions slacken and wounds cure, and I am occupied externally by everything that cheers me up, and the memory ends up wandering in the dusty shelf less used, when I know that the past is still quite there and would, however, retain my dispassion in the face of it? The answer eludes my brain, in spite of the fact that I, most certainly, will not care. Ultimately, just like the same many pinkie-swears I made during the years of my elementary school, these promises I made so resolutely merely a month ago, will inevitably shatter; so will each of them. At the beginning, I dare to imagine, it is going to feel like a slap on the face; but in the end I will lose either the interest or the incentive to actually chastise myself. Dubbing it an ineluctable phase of growth, I will walk away entirely intact. This is, at least according to me, a less-than-honorable ending. Yet the irony is, I am unbacked at every level, and the only sane option appears an eventual concession - a very caustic and profound lesson indeed.
The torment I have felt so deeply up until this moment, the clenching of teeth, the punching of pillow, the smashing of phone, the reluctance to eat, so many goofy tears and saliva and a horrendous peek at the suicide, these will perhaps become my upbringings - that in the future I should always take care of myself no matter how indignant I feel, and never allow another person, intimate and caring as she may be, to steer my own happiness. But these realizations, come off a price whose payment drains me, and a loss whose sincerity decapitates me. And I, numb and weary, glance at the pair of rooms where I once dwelled, at the black kettle with apple juice, at the video in which I shake my butt, at the rain and snow and sun outside of that glass window, at the stickers on it, at the drawing of me with toothbrush, at the two campus cards I carry simultaneously, at the bag of condoms, at the cinema, at the hotel room, at the toilet in which she is taking a D, at the hairdryer I used to dry her shoes, at the gentle whisper, at the screeching groan, at the Big's 1995 cap, at the riverside bench, and at the seashore of Lisbon, only to find a simple truth, that is, for this male earthling of twenty years old, in his limited lifespan, the spot that is the most unadorned and tender, has already been taken by a person who has loved and hurt him, and whom he has hurt and loves.
-
There's only one bottle of beer left, and I don't plan to drink it - one bottle will never make a difference to me and as a matter of fact it even helps me recall things more lucidly. I'm casting my eyes for wine now, a little hesitantly for I don't want to change my name to Dimitri and move to Russia upon graduation. But I digress. I won't change my name and I won't move to Russia. I will still allow myself a week-long window to be pensive about the past, and occasionally to relive it - though the images are often blurry and I am hopelessly alone in there, it serves as a tribute to those good-old days which I now think I'm entitled to call.
One thing that is still with me, perhaps one of the few things that still braces me, is my finesse in objectifying my own life, so no matter how dark and deserted it feels and how latched I am to such grandeur of misery, I can laugh it off as I would to that of the other's. I make fun of it, I depict it with clarity, and I sympathize with what has happened, watching my own soul crumbling while patting the back of that orphan down the street - o' so unbearably sad, someone else's suffering.
-
A timely epiphany has been captured amidst the meager soil of my thoughts, that rather than dwelling on the deteriorating emotions that will surely drag me down to the unthinkable, imposed on my reality are worldly issues whose direness is beyond estimation by my current state of mind, that in the coming years I would have no means of support aside from the payment of university fees, that I will be living entirely off a campus card, which alone, convincingly is not even going to cater to the necessity. And if the students ask for further rebate, and it is entirely in their reason to do so, I will have been deprived with all the alternatives but the bleak mire of debt. My health, bad as it is, still underscores a likelihood for a possible strife. However, alcohol makes me functionally inapt at addressing even the most trivial of problems and depression is snuffing out the last few glimmers of brilliancy for which I so ardently vied. I'm fully fledged at telling myself not to panic; I am not at my liberty, for that would cripple the already tarrying faith my entire family has placed on me. Sardonically, it is during these times that God will lead me away from the notion that I shall carry all the weight in my solitude, and that all the steps I have taken thus far will end up unrequited. Yet I no longer feel certain about a thing. I don't feel certain about anything. All I sense is a sort of dreadfulness not as an emotional contrivance but as a result of meticulous calculation. It is all wickedly dreadful, dreadful and dreadful. Van Gogh left this world saying "the sadness will last forever", and I am terminally scared.
-
I can barely recognize myself. Even my endeavor to write is failing me - I have lost all the elegance of prose and indifference of mind; I have lost my words. What I see formerly as a capable person is gone; what's left is a moving lump of patchwork. I wreck myself to the last of all pieces, hoping to smash the stubbornly limerent core; I keep beating it, keep beating myself of no avail. It won't fucking die off - it just won't no matter how hard I fantasize and hoarsely I scream. Seeing in the mirror is a vacant corpse rid of soul, I have tried and corrupted every single trick; but it is still there.It's still fucking there! Just one fucking summer, just ten fucking days! I'm tossed and burned and disposed of like rubbish; and then I re-tossed, re-burned and re-disposed of myself! What's towards the end of it? I'm fucking penniless, bereft, and defamed! And she fucking hates me now! I fucking hate myself now! Why the fuck can't I just stop!? Why the fuck am I writing this bullshit instead of pissing off!? Why the fuck with every single of my belittled aspiration utterly ruined am I still not hating her and moving on!? Why the fuck!!! (Life is too short for any such bullshit.)
Oh dear Lord please grant mercy to this struggling youth; please point for directions and escort me out of this mist, fainted and agonal and with the last reserve of strength I pray.
I don't know when I have incurred such a scar; obviously flossing alone will never bear a power so destructive. I postulate it must have come from a long time ago; for vaguely I remember getting hurt, and have forgotten when and why. It does not, and will never bar me from eating though. In fact, I just ate a box of rice - I need to gain a little weight and at the same time, eating seems a fairly convenient way of being oblivious. The haunting noise of that mishap will alleviate when I commit myself to the act of chewing, not that its volume or degree will lessen, just that it will associate with me in a different form - since the front of my mind is occupied with the enjoyment of food, it hence becomes unlikely for me to harp on something less tangible. Similar to when I am drinking at the barbecue stand or hastening for a subway door that is about to be closed - the door did close before I set foot in the cabin, but the operator was kind enough to reopen it for me, the affliction will always be tuned down, implausibly as it would feel like to me in these other moments. And so I ponder, how will it play out, if finally the clingy emotions slacken and wounds cure, and I am occupied externally by everything that cheers me up, and the memory ends up wandering in the dusty shelf less used, when I know that the past is still quite there and would, however, retain my dispassion in the face of it? The answer eludes my brain, in spite of the fact that I, most certainly, will not care. Ultimately, just like the same many pinkie-swears I made during the years of my elementary school, these promises I made so resolutely merely a month ago, will inevitably shatter; so will each of them. At the beginning, I dare to imagine, it is going to feel like a slap on the face; but in the end I will lose either the interest or the incentive to actually chastise myself. Dubbing it an ineluctable phase of growth, I will walk away entirely intact. This is, at least according to me, a less-than-honorable ending. Yet the irony is, I am unbacked at every level, and the only sane option appears an eventual concession - a very caustic and profound lesson indeed.
The torment I have felt so deeply up until this moment, the clenching of teeth, the punching of pillow, the smashing of phone, the reluctance to eat, so many goofy tears and saliva and a horrendous peek at the suicide, these will perhaps become my upbringings - that in the future I should always take care of myself no matter how indignant I feel, and never allow another person, intimate and caring as she may be, to steer my own happiness. But these realizations, come off a price whose payment drains me, and a loss whose sincerity decapitates me. And I, numb and weary, glance at the pair of rooms where I once dwelled, at the black kettle with apple juice, at the video in which I shake my butt, at the rain and snow and sun outside of that glass window, at the stickers on it, at the drawing of me with toothbrush, at the two campus cards I carry simultaneously, at the bag of condoms, at the cinema, at the hotel room, at the toilet in which she is taking a D, at the hairdryer I used to dry her shoes, at the gentle whisper, at the screeching groan, at the Big's 1995 cap, at the riverside bench, and at the seashore of Lisbon, only to find a simple truth, that is, for this male earthling of twenty years old, in his limited lifespan, the spot that is the most unadorned and tender, has already been taken by a person who has loved and hurt him, and whom he has hurt and loves.
-
There's only one bottle of beer left, and I don't plan to drink it - one bottle will never make a difference to me and as a matter of fact it even helps me recall things more lucidly. I'm casting my eyes for wine now, a little hesitantly for I don't want to change my name to Dimitri and move to Russia upon graduation. But I digress. I won't change my name and I won't move to Russia. I will still allow myself a week-long window to be pensive about the past, and occasionally to relive it - though the images are often blurry and I am hopelessly alone in there, it serves as a tribute to those good-old days which I now think I'm entitled to call.
One thing that is still with me, perhaps one of the few things that still braces me, is my finesse in objectifying my own life, so no matter how dark and deserted it feels and how latched I am to such grandeur of misery, I can laugh it off as I would to that of the other's. I make fun of it, I depict it with clarity, and I sympathize with what has happened, watching my own soul crumbling while patting the back of that orphan down the street - o' so unbearably sad, someone else's suffering.
-
A timely epiphany has been captured amidst the meager soil of my thoughts, that rather than dwelling on the deteriorating emotions that will surely drag me down to the unthinkable, imposed on my reality are worldly issues whose direness is beyond estimation by my current state of mind, that in the coming years I would have no means of support aside from the payment of university fees, that I will be living entirely off a campus card, which alone, convincingly is not even going to cater to the necessity. And if the students ask for further rebate, and it is entirely in their reason to do so, I will have been deprived with all the alternatives but the bleak mire of debt. My health, bad as it is, still underscores a likelihood for a possible strife. However, alcohol makes me functionally inapt at addressing even the most trivial of problems and depression is snuffing out the last few glimmers of brilliancy for which I so ardently vied. I'm fully fledged at telling myself not to panic; I am not at my liberty, for that would cripple the already tarrying faith my entire family has placed on me. Sardonically, it is during these times that God will lead me away from the notion that I shall carry all the weight in my solitude, and that all the steps I have taken thus far will end up unrequited. Yet I no longer feel certain about a thing. I don't feel certain about anything. All I sense is a sort of dreadfulness not as an emotional contrivance but as a result of meticulous calculation. It is all wickedly dreadful, dreadful and dreadful. Van Gogh left this world saying "the sadness will last forever", and I am terminally scared.
-
I can barely recognize myself. Even my endeavor to write is failing me - I have lost all the elegance of prose and indifference of mind; I have lost my words. What I see formerly as a capable person is gone; what's left is a moving lump of patchwork. I wreck myself to the last of all pieces, hoping to smash the stubbornly limerent core; I keep beating it, keep beating myself of no avail. It won't fucking die off - it just won't no matter how hard I fantasize and hoarsely I scream. Seeing in the mirror is a vacant corpse rid of soul, I have tried and corrupted every single trick; but it is still there.
Oh dear Lord please grant mercy to this struggling youth; please point for directions and escort me out of this mist, fainted and agonal and with the last reserve of strength I pray.
Saturday, August 22
8/23
It appears that beers, no matter how plentiful they are and how prolonged is the time I spend drinking them, have lost their effects on me. This urine-like, bubbly liquid, loathsome as it may be, is what sustains me in these of my gloomiest days. I have even inadvertently become a master of beer-pouring. With this glass of around fifteen centimeters in height, I can keep the foam for as long as half an hour. What is worrisome though, is that in the aftermath I usually feel much worse; there would be an inundation of emotions - an enormous infatuation of what has long ceased existing, and an unanchored, perhaps irrational guilt that arises from how firm I once was in a commitment, and from how equally firm I now am required to be in breaking it off. I still find it improbable, at the moment, to wholly imagine myself without those preserved in the vividness of my memory; but I reckon, one day when I eventually do, it is going to be the same ecstasy, as overwhelming as the day in summer when I first met her. And unutterably, it begets a pity - my life from now on will never be as complete - it will, of course, continue to fulfill in the days coming ahead, but inescapably the past will have always been bruised.
The couple at the Hong Kong Express restaurant in Marktkauf will be taking a day off tomorrow. Before my departure for China, I promised them that I'll bring a carton of cigarettes along - at first I proposed ChungHwa, but they thought that it is too expensive, as a carton of twenty or thirty euro will definitely do. I haven't bought any yet. For I considered doing start-ups and making money a more pertinent pursuit, and indeed I made quite a lot, albeit before long I squandered all of it. Shame to admit that only now do I think of buying cigarettes for that couple, of hanging out with friends back in middle school, and of inviting my favorite cousin over for a treat which he himself could seldom afford. Happiness might be of standing abundance to some, but so far it has not been for me. A smile out of her weren't meant to carry forward as much as a smile out of me, and hopefully it is not too late an insight to be gained.
I just went to the kitchen for a usual box of microwaveable rice. And like the hundreds of times before, I touched for the switch that would turn on that particular light - it did not work. The light was already broken when I came back from Shanghai; I managed to make it work for a brief moment, circa one or two days until it completely shuts down. Yet, immediately after, I felt an insurmountable grief - it was this light that illuminated the darkness during those countless nights when I studied alone and would creep out for something to stuff myself. But I kept calm and opened the fridge. In it there were several boxes of the type of rice I'd like to eat - both my mom and papa had bought some, half of a watermelon with the other half turned into serviceable slices in my plate this afternoon and a glass of juice, and many more vegetables. I closed the fridge, turned on the other light from the dining room, and put the box into the microwave - the other three lights would work just fine, and I barely noticed that deep inside the fridge, there were two bottles of chili sauce that came from Sichuan.
In the movie Spirited Away, there's a line I vaguely remember - life is a train heading towards the tomb; there are many stops and not everyone will accompany you till the last one. When they have to get off, don't trouble them, just be grateful and wave goodbye.
The rain suddenly comes as it patters crisply on the window. From a distance the swishing sound of car wheels running over water can be heard. In this empty room on my empty desk are empty beer bottles and a sinking soul - I recount with voices subdued and expressions soothed, yet not a word is said; thumping on the floor between the pair of slippers, tears are gushing all over my face; yet not a word is said.
The couple at the Hong Kong Express restaurant in Marktkauf will be taking a day off tomorrow. Before my departure for China, I promised them that I'll bring a carton of cigarettes along - at first I proposed ChungHwa, but they thought that it is too expensive, as a carton of twenty or thirty euro will definitely do. I haven't bought any yet. For I considered doing start-ups and making money a more pertinent pursuit, and indeed I made quite a lot, albeit before long I squandered all of it. Shame to admit that only now do I think of buying cigarettes for that couple, of hanging out with friends back in middle school, and of inviting my favorite cousin over for a treat which he himself could seldom afford. Happiness might be of standing abundance to some, but so far it has not been for me. A smile out of her weren't meant to carry forward as much as a smile out of me, and hopefully it is not too late an insight to be gained.
I just went to the kitchen for a usual box of microwaveable rice. And like the hundreds of times before, I touched for the switch that would turn on that particular light - it did not work. The light was already broken when I came back from Shanghai; I managed to make it work for a brief moment, circa one or two days until it completely shuts down. Yet, immediately after, I felt an insurmountable grief - it was this light that illuminated the darkness during those countless nights when I studied alone and would creep out for something to stuff myself. But I kept calm and opened the fridge. In it there were several boxes of the type of rice I'd like to eat - both my mom and papa had bought some, half of a watermelon with the other half turned into serviceable slices in my plate this afternoon and a glass of juice, and many more vegetables. I closed the fridge, turned on the other light from the dining room, and put the box into the microwave - the other three lights would work just fine, and I barely noticed that deep inside the fridge, there were two bottles of chili sauce that came from Sichuan.
In the movie Spirited Away, there's a line I vaguely remember - life is a train heading towards the tomb; there are many stops and not everyone will accompany you till the last one. When they have to get off, don't trouble them, just be grateful and wave goodbye.
The rain suddenly comes as it patters crisply on the window. From a distance the swishing sound of car wheels running over water can be heard. In this empty room on my empty desk are empty beer bottles and a sinking soul - I recount with voices subdued and expressions soothed, yet not a word is said; thumping on the floor between the pair of slippers, tears are gushing all over my face; yet not a word is said.
Tuesday, August 18
8/18
According to Dylan Thomas, a writer who writes his books on, rather than between, whisky is a lousy writer, and he is probably American. I don't write either on or between whisky; I start writing before opening any bottle, and what I drink, is not whisky but a particular type of beer that is local to my city - very plain beer but alcoholic nonetheless. It perhaps does clarify that I am not an American and assure that I am not lousy. After all, he who drinks and gets drunk and spews on his own at the corner is not lousy; it is, at best, unfortunate, and at worst, miserable. But ultimately, it does not matter either way.
Originally I aimed for barbecue with beer. Yet sitting at the table were at least two people, and at one particular table there were six of them, only on the steps sat those who are single. Since I am only one person, and I do not want to sit on the steps, I choose beer only - three bottles of them, not more lest I confide something against my wish, and not fewer so they do intoxicate. Carrying these bottles is a task unto itself, and the weight on my left hand seems to convince me that I am already drunk - I naturally feel a tad dizzy and walk more strenuously. "Look, there is a cat hiding beneath the car, now what you coward! But ugh, if I want to kill it, I will kill it. The problem is, would I?" Inebriation makes everything philosophical, so I repeat inward, would I, and laugh and walk back upstairs; this time with three beer bottles.
My ghastly demeanor unsettled my mom. She came in once to offer me a cup of lemon tea with honey, and she just knocked again with a bottle opener, asking if I'd want to have some toasted cauliflowers - no, of course, for she can in no way comfort me and I do not even want to be comforted. I keep typing, occasionally gazing around for thoughts on how to continue, and keep typing. To the least, I mutter thusly, I still have the composure to bring back beers, and to drink them while typing, rather than to shout "it is all ruined and I'm ruined" and collapse into total despair. Huh? It's a good thing.
And ahoy mate, it feels great. No resentment, no bittersweet, no regret, nothing. As I slide slowly back from the bathroom with a freshly emptied bladder, I saw my mom crouching on the floor in her bedroom, watching TV - she ain't remembering a thing from that damned screen I bet, and she just keeps watching because somehow it relives her. Oh this shitty place that smells like how gazillions of those so-called ordinary have lived and died, I flounder with my hands waving mid-air, laughably useless as I try. "Man, you have lost all of your dignity and respect, who are you but a cynic, a loser and a freak? Your aspiration is destined for doom and your pretense is seen right through. Get lost and go eff yourself, lad!" Sure, sure, I answer intuitively, and I do nothing because for some reason I think I'd still linger around.
After several cups of water, miraculously I found myself sober. I turn off the green fan to the back of which I used to pour peppermint to make the room smell better; it is facing me at a direct angle, looking at me with its stern front - one year ago the cover went loose and I fixed it. The air conditioner whose age is larger than mine, is still functioning in the background. Its remote is now placed under my Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, shiny like new because my mom has always taken great care of it. The room temperature is set at 27°C. I feel cozy and warm. I am reminded not of those hours I spent waiting for a girl in vain; I am reminded of how many more months of solitude and struggle with which that tragic romance can happen, for myself. In the end, it is about me; it is about my own naivety; it is about my own past.
Thanks though; if the God in my dictionary has taught me anything, it is always to be thankful. Therefore, thanks.
Originally I aimed for barbecue with beer. Yet sitting at the table were at least two people, and at one particular table there were six of them, only on the steps sat those who are single. Since I am only one person, and I do not want to sit on the steps, I choose beer only - three bottles of them, not more lest I confide something against my wish, and not fewer so they do intoxicate. Carrying these bottles is a task unto itself, and the weight on my left hand seems to convince me that I am already drunk - I naturally feel a tad dizzy and walk more strenuously. "Look, there is a cat hiding beneath the car, now what you coward! But ugh, if I want to kill it, I will kill it. The problem is, would I?" Inebriation makes everything philosophical, so I repeat inward, would I, and laugh and walk back upstairs; this time with three beer bottles.
My ghastly demeanor unsettled my mom. She came in once to offer me a cup of lemon tea with honey, and she just knocked again with a bottle opener, asking if I'd want to have some toasted cauliflowers - no, of course, for she can in no way comfort me and I do not even want to be comforted. I keep typing, occasionally gazing around for thoughts on how to continue, and keep typing. To the least, I mutter thusly, I still have the composure to bring back beers, and to drink them while typing, rather than to shout "it is all ruined and I'm ruined" and collapse into total despair. Huh? It's a good thing.
And ahoy mate, it feels great. No resentment, no bittersweet, no regret, nothing. As I slide slowly back from the bathroom with a freshly emptied bladder, I saw my mom crouching on the floor in her bedroom, watching TV - she ain't remembering a thing from that damned screen I bet, and she just keeps watching because somehow it relives her. Oh this shitty place that smells like how gazillions of those so-called ordinary have lived and died, I flounder with my hands waving mid-air, laughably useless as I try. "Man, you have lost all of your dignity and respect, who are you but a cynic, a loser and a freak? Your aspiration is destined for doom and your pretense is seen right through. Get lost and go eff yourself, lad!" Sure, sure, I answer intuitively, and I do nothing because for some reason I think I'd still linger around.
After several cups of water, miraculously I found myself sober. I turn off the green fan to the back of which I used to pour peppermint to make the room smell better; it is facing me at a direct angle, looking at me with its stern front - one year ago the cover went loose and I fixed it. The air conditioner whose age is larger than mine, is still functioning in the background. Its remote is now placed under my Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, shiny like new because my mom has always taken great care of it. The room temperature is set at 27°C. I feel cozy and warm. I am reminded not of those hours I spent waiting for a girl in vain; I am reminded of how many more months of solitude and struggle with which that tragic romance can happen, for myself. In the end, it is about me; it is about my own naivety; it is about my own past.
Thanks though; if the God in my dictionary has taught me anything, it is always to be thankful. Therefore, thanks.
Sunday, August 16
8/16
Now I sit on my routine wooden chair in front of the desk that faces the window; different objects are scattered around the desk with the same randomness as one year ago - only now the curtain is closed and I'm not interested in reopening it, for such an act requires me seeing it as worthwhile, and no, it is not worthwhile. A new shopping mall was erected in front of my apartment building where I lashed myself to move forward, and the road and the street lamps and the cars are all veiled visually, with occasional bursts of sound reminding me of their past, and putting me into reminiscence.
Only recently, have I realized that the depression I once pridefully thought I have is not depression at all, it is mere discomfort, a mild ailment that is not debilitating, upon which no one genuinely suffers, and about which no one eventually cares. Now my thoughts are plastered, my body congealed, I type on the keyboard - the plate of grapefruit and pear slices to the left of my laptop does not arouse me, and nothing arouses me to the extent that typing the act itself is the straw I agonize myself to grasp. More than that, the start-up that I will set up next semester, the unfulfilled duty to my students, and the pills which I take to make myself cosmetically tolerable, I do these things no longer out of a diminutive but nevertheless operant aspiration, but out of an automation, out of them as prerequisites of my continued existence - this is depression, a depression so bizarre that I'm willing - I still have the SSRIs and benzodiazepines, and they are readily in the drawer within the reach of my right arm, and I do not want to take them, even the temptation of doing so is avoided like a plague. For it is in reality that I corporally pass by, and it is in dream that I dwell in the past.
What is still agreeable though, is that the world is still revolving around me. The young man from Jiangxi is still working at his barbecue stand, from 11 PM to 4 or 5 AM in the morning, depending on whether there are customers, not knowing that I will not be one of them; the Shanghainese old lady is still washing her dishes in her windowless apartment, and her husband is still watching television - they know that the crying baby living next door will never return, and they offer a hug and proceed with their own mundane matter. Everyone is still having their lives, happy or bitter, sometimes either, sometimes both. None seems affected, in the same way that none will seem affected if I die instantly - they might try to talk you out of it, they might hug you, they might grieve for a moment, and they walk on. Why the hell can't I do it? I indeed can. Indeed there is nothing in this world that cannot be foregone, the sole distinguisher being its value - the happiness in the past one year, or the happiness in the future, just that I ain't so sure; and I refuse to be.
Henry Miller once said, the best way to forget about a woman is to turn her into literature. But for me, she is always quite the opposite of literature, and if anything, what that literature requires is a form of detachment that I could never attain, for in it there inevitably shall be traces of her. My usual contempt for things loses its potency. And if, in the future I managed to get over it, no matter how earnest I will have become, and how righteous the reasons I will have used, that future, will seem to me, at this precise moment, on this precise day, an utter deviation of my worth that I consider to be the most applaudable, a vicious and ever sickening betrayal. (P: June 29, 2017 - I felt neither righteous nor earnest, only a sort of inevitable oblivion, inkstain washed away; Mar 27, 2021 - no, she has never been washed away.)
-
It is with the greatest self-constraint that I did not delete any blog post from the past one year. Whenever I read them, I watch what was once part of me turning into a folly satire, a satire so close to being a real-life romance that every time I think of it, I chuckle with regret and weep with delight.
Only recently, have I realized that the depression I once pridefully thought I have is not depression at all, it is mere discomfort, a mild ailment that is not debilitating, upon which no one genuinely suffers, and about which no one eventually cares. Now my thoughts are plastered, my body congealed, I type on the keyboard - the plate of grapefruit and pear slices to the left of my laptop does not arouse me, and nothing arouses me to the extent that typing the act itself is the straw I agonize myself to grasp. More than that, the start-up that I will set up next semester, the unfulfilled duty to my students, and the pills which I take to make myself cosmetically tolerable, I do these things no longer out of a diminutive but nevertheless operant aspiration, but out of an automation, out of them as prerequisites of my continued existence - this is depression, a depression so bizarre that I'm willing - I still have the SSRIs and benzodiazepines, and they are readily in the drawer within the reach of my right arm, and I do not want to take them, even the temptation of doing so is avoided like a plague. For it is in reality that I corporally pass by, and it is in dream that I dwell in the past.
What is still agreeable though, is that the world is still revolving around me. The young man from Jiangxi is still working at his barbecue stand, from 11 PM to 4 or 5 AM in the morning, depending on whether there are customers, not knowing that I will not be one of them; the Shanghainese old lady is still washing her dishes in her windowless apartment, and her husband is still watching television - they know that the crying baby living next door will never return, and they offer a hug and proceed with their own mundane matter. Everyone is still having their lives, happy or bitter, sometimes either, sometimes both. None seems affected, in the same way that none will seem affected if I die instantly - they might try to talk you out of it, they might hug you, they might grieve for a moment, and they walk on. Why the hell can't I do it? I indeed can. Indeed there is nothing in this world that cannot be foregone, the sole distinguisher being its value - the happiness in the past one year, or the happiness in the future, just that I ain't so sure; and I refuse to be.
Henry Miller once said, the best way to forget about a woman is to turn her into literature. But for me, she is always quite the opposite of literature, and if anything, what that literature requires is a form of detachment that I could never attain, for in it there inevitably shall be traces of her. My usual contempt for things loses its potency. And if, in the future I managed to get over it, no matter how earnest I will have become, and how righteous the reasons I will have used, that future, will seem to me, at this precise moment, on this precise day, an utter deviation of my worth that I consider to be the most applaudable, a vicious and ever sickening betrayal. (P: June 29, 2017 - I felt neither righteous nor earnest, only a sort of inevitable oblivion, inkstain washed away; Mar 27, 2021 - no, she has never been washed away.)
-
It is with the greatest self-constraint that I did not delete any blog post from the past one year. Whenever I read them, I watch what was once part of me turning into a folly satire, a satire so close to being a real-life romance that every time I think of it, I chuckle with regret and weep with delight.
Saturday, June 20
6/20
Bursting with money and a whimsical longing for love, the cabin in which I will be inhabiting for the next two hours and fifty minutes reeks a granulated, warmed-over smell of vegetables boiled with flavor enhancers. Because she comes from the West. You know, she has a real western manner and I am an Eastern guy; we need these inconveniences, they're undeniably cute - the sebaceous disgust of spending too much time, and the sour anguish of spending too little. A woeful swashbuckler and a softheaded girl, we are just trying to get this thing up and running, with patches after patches and a fardel of sunken cost, smiling and grudging while being semi-conscious of what's actually going on.
I don't always contemplate though; sometimes I would cease remedying it and sit back to watch the whole thing falling apart, and admittedly there's certain enjoyment that comes with it, the blissful liberation of no longer having to think, of letting loose the emotions long constrained, but I'd budge after a minute or two - not that it's too indispensable to forgo; it's just that, like virginity and human life, one can only wholeheartedly cherish it once, and the notion that such cherishment becoming an irreversible past disheartens me, and drains the would-be duplicitous sincerity of my soul. Never mind, I approach myself, it ain't that hard, these human affairs and what not, don't worry a thing, don't worry a thing, and don't worry.
My dinner is ready and I soon finish it, a set of beef rice with a single raw small tomato and a plastic glass of Coca-Cola with ice, not particularly delicious yet it spares me the trouble of finding a restaurant near the middle of the night, in a city alien to my knowledge and familiar to my imagination. Countless clouds, cast mostly golden and in the usual blue where they are scant, move backwards with a rapidity elusive to my understanding. On my bouncy aircraft seat hardly any speed can be felt - I only know I'm moving westward because of the sun; and to me the day is longer than hers.
Yet the excitement, and the scoff of it, thin out pretty soon. A little hotel on the fourth floor of a building by the viaduct, on it are rapid transit buses with 30 km/h speed limit, and an odorous elevator, they constitute of who I am here, piteous and disregarding. Now she's gone, and I get to truly sit down. She's both ailed and hundreds of kilometers away - a hapless state, which neither I nor she seems to confront. The Green Day punk music is still playing in the background, out of a different pair of speakers, from those of an iPhone 5s to those of an iPhone 6 Plus, and into a different pair of ears, from those of when I was 18 to those of when I am 20. Sometimes I'd still sing along, putting forward a face of the retard for I consider it representative of the genuine punk spirit, and the emotions I once felt in between the lines are still there, completely identical in flavor and composition, only less pungent in expression and less sensible in taste. Now I prefer not to wag my head to the rhythm, as an expensive laptop is sitting on my laps and more than often, the music has stepped back to become a sort of background noise that's only to be welcomed during a concert or a special event rather than as a theme of life. Haha, you're dead; the joke is over; you were an asshole, in the loving memory, of your demise.
I have begun to use WeChat a month ago; yesterday I even followed up multiple promotional barcodes in the shopping mall to print out photos from my iPhone Photo Library for free; it was four copies of the photo I took with Winnie at a subway station in Lisbon, Portugal; the print-outs still have the promotional barcodes on them, yet I keep them in the snug protection of my pocket, hoping when she comes back after three days, she will have her unwrinkled 2-copy share.
I don't always contemplate though; sometimes I would cease remedying it and sit back to watch the whole thing falling apart, and admittedly there's certain enjoyment that comes with it, the blissful liberation of no longer having to think, of letting loose the emotions long constrained, but I'd budge after a minute or two - not that it's too indispensable to forgo; it's just that, like virginity and human life, one can only wholeheartedly cherish it once, and the notion that such cherishment becoming an irreversible past disheartens me, and drains the would-be duplicitous sincerity of my soul. Never mind, I approach myself, it ain't that hard, these human affairs and what not, don't worry a thing, don't worry a thing, and don't worry.
My dinner is ready and I soon finish it, a set of beef rice with a single raw small tomato and a plastic glass of Coca-Cola with ice, not particularly delicious yet it spares me the trouble of finding a restaurant near the middle of the night, in a city alien to my knowledge and familiar to my imagination. Countless clouds, cast mostly golden and in the usual blue where they are scant, move backwards with a rapidity elusive to my understanding. On my bouncy aircraft seat hardly any speed can be felt - I only know I'm moving westward because of the sun; and to me the day is longer than hers.
Yet the excitement, and the scoff of it, thin out pretty soon. A little hotel on the fourth floor of a building by the viaduct, on it are rapid transit buses with 30 km/h speed limit, and an odorous elevator, they constitute of who I am here, piteous and disregarding. Now she's gone, and I get to truly sit down. She's both ailed and hundreds of kilometers away - a hapless state, which neither I nor she seems to confront. The Green Day punk music is still playing in the background, out of a different pair of speakers, from those of an iPhone 5s to those of an iPhone 6 Plus, and into a different pair of ears, from those of when I was 18 to those of when I am 20. Sometimes I'd still sing along, putting forward a face of the retard for I consider it representative of the genuine punk spirit, and the emotions I once felt in between the lines are still there, completely identical in flavor and composition, only less pungent in expression and less sensible in taste. Now I prefer not to wag my head to the rhythm, as an expensive laptop is sitting on my laps and more than often, the music has stepped back to become a sort of background noise that's only to be welcomed during a concert or a special event rather than as a theme of life. Haha, you're dead; the joke is over; you were an asshole, in the loving memory, of your demise.
I have begun to use WeChat a month ago; yesterday I even followed up multiple promotional barcodes in the shopping mall to print out photos from my iPhone Photo Library for free; it was four copies of the photo I took with Winnie at a subway station in Lisbon, Portugal; the print-outs still have the promotional barcodes on them, yet I keep them in the snug protection of my pocket, hoping when she comes back after three days, she will have her unwrinkled 2-copy share.
Wednesday, June 3
6/3
"Your heart will stop pumping, Aris, won't you fret by your scruffy bed at night or morning or whatever suits you?"
"No, you underestimate me, Sino. I will never niggle over those loathsome pets. A puny piece of rusk and some beamish light during the middle of the night, who needs more?" Yet, passingly, Aris leaned towards the credenza, posing his topful arms onto the slag from yesterday, and mumbled, "Very well, Sino," and laughed, "Sorry to wound you, I promise next time it would be better." Dove-eyed and dismissive, he grabbed the green bottle from to his left, and knocked over it, only a sip, for a horn would have depraved him, and proceeded to toast. "Cheers," he muttered to his own incredulity, and dragged his waist across for a pitiful crash - what an enchanting weather outside - the balloons stuckhung on the wall from way back were still inflatable; though no one blows into them any more - balloons seem always transient figures. Beset in his own history, Aris smiled, his voice saccharine and gesture pleased - in the hamlet, he was intrepid, slashing down peers and Hitlers as if weed. Back, he did the same, equally adamant, and equally sane. Sino was slightly riled. From his face there was no bile, only an insidious friendliness - he trotted to open the freezer laying slovenly beside the glass wall, and opened it more to retrieve the unrecyclable juice bottles from which he would drink throughout the night, and excused to leave - lover was stranded abroad and demanded help, when hardly anyone was willing to qualify at all. He stomped slackly the corridor, beeped open the door, and swiftly shut it, in the same way characters in melodramas would to fend off the ensuing zombies.
Have mercy, Sino preached to himself. Unspeakable was the agony of having to depart. Now it was his own turn - big lesson indeed, the darn karma of cleaning the same comb thrice. How many rolls to take with then? Three? Four? Unpropitious number but certainly would suffice. Yet no, not yet, better grab five, just to medicate his nostalgic, uncomprehending sore with a slightly larger number, and an odd one, ample for the amount of days ahead; plenty for another tower for the agnostic. Then he stationed himself firmly in front of the door for a moment, reminiscing and eventually packing in - Aris had been gone, leaving behind not a trail and utterly light-weight - the bills were finally clear for God's sake and the ticket had been scrounged in as well, same-old story, innocent people pay, spinners trifle and pinch and drink it away. Was it two and a half or three months? Anyways more than what he could afford but less than what he would expect; aw, a laughable couple made up with a cheeky man and a chunk of currish disciples, spitting and gulping feces up on the third floor. Enough! Sino vacillated and shouted inward, "Don't you say anything, you deserter. Just wipe up your arse and move out of the cottage."
Two bottles of the purportedly German fifty-percent cherry juice with glucose syrup in them, ranked right next to the six-pack Beck's beers, were still left unopened. It was interesting as all six bottles of orange juice had ran out, with their cadavers inserted upright into the yellow dustbin for plastic dumps which nobody had given a bloody damn past the inception of the first semester. The wrestled spoons, along with wet tissue scraps slipshodly strewed all over the floor and a broken promise, lay historically over the floor - expect no one to clean it up and be convinced that in the end it's going to turn out right. Sorry about the inconvenience caused for whomever, and he was just too high in altitude and vitality to take care of those. But there's noise, a constant buzzing sound, troubling at first but since then quelled, reverberated in his ears. Was it the sound of the air or the sound of the motor he couldn't ascertain - in it his spirit was deranged and calmed, his feet were swollen and his hands were incapacitated. He could only move his fingers and wrists, not anything above them. There was a glowering inertia, a state of confusion and some blissful dispersion in between. Softened and even deafened, the strokes and locomotion, gradually diluted - his paradise loomed in a piecemeal encroachment. His dearly beloved and his belief, suddenly became inconsequential - he lived a life; he has lived it now - and he's about to be back to his own.
"No, you underestimate me, Sino. I will never niggle over those loathsome pets. A puny piece of rusk and some beamish light during the middle of the night, who needs more?" Yet, passingly, Aris leaned towards the credenza, posing his topful arms onto the slag from yesterday, and mumbled, "Very well, Sino," and laughed, "Sorry to wound you, I promise next time it would be better." Dove-eyed and dismissive, he grabbed the green bottle from to his left, and knocked over it, only a sip, for a horn would have depraved him, and proceeded to toast. "Cheers," he muttered to his own incredulity, and dragged his waist across for a pitiful crash - what an enchanting weather outside - the balloons stuckhung on the wall from way back were still inflatable; though no one blows into them any more - balloons seem always transient figures. Beset in his own history, Aris smiled, his voice saccharine and gesture pleased - in the hamlet, he was intrepid, slashing down peers and Hitlers as if weed. Back, he did the same, equally adamant, and equally sane. Sino was slightly riled. From his face there was no bile, only an insidious friendliness - he trotted to open the freezer laying slovenly beside the glass wall, and opened it more to retrieve the unrecyclable juice bottles from which he would drink throughout the night, and excused to leave - lover was stranded abroad and demanded help, when hardly anyone was willing to qualify at all. He stomped slackly the corridor, beeped open the door, and swiftly shut it, in the same way characters in melodramas would to fend off the ensuing zombies.
Have mercy, Sino preached to himself. Unspeakable was the agony of having to depart. Now it was his own turn - big lesson indeed, the darn karma of cleaning the same comb thrice. How many rolls to take with then? Three? Four? Unpropitious number but certainly would suffice. Yet no, not yet, better grab five, just to medicate his nostalgic, uncomprehending sore with a slightly larger number, and an odd one, ample for the amount of days ahead; plenty for another tower for the agnostic. Then he stationed himself firmly in front of the door for a moment, reminiscing and eventually packing in - Aris had been gone, leaving behind not a trail and utterly light-weight - the bills were finally clear for God's sake and the ticket had been scrounged in as well, same-old story, innocent people pay, spinners trifle and pinch and drink it away. Was it two and a half or three months? Anyways more than what he could afford but less than what he would expect; aw, a laughable couple made up with a cheeky man and a chunk of currish disciples, spitting and gulping feces up on the third floor. Enough! Sino vacillated and shouted inward, "Don't you say anything, you deserter. Just wipe up your arse and move out of the cottage."
Two bottles of the purportedly German fifty-percent cherry juice with glucose syrup in them, ranked right next to the six-pack Beck's beers, were still left unopened. It was interesting as all six bottles of orange juice had ran out, with their cadavers inserted upright into the yellow dustbin for plastic dumps which nobody had given a bloody damn past the inception of the first semester. The wrestled spoons, along with wet tissue scraps slipshodly strewed all over the floor and a broken promise, lay historically over the floor - expect no one to clean it up and be convinced that in the end it's going to turn out right. Sorry about the inconvenience caused for whomever, and he was just too high in altitude and vitality to take care of those. But there's noise, a constant buzzing sound, troubling at first but since then quelled, reverberated in his ears. Was it the sound of the air or the sound of the motor he couldn't ascertain - in it his spirit was deranged and calmed, his feet were swollen and his hands were incapacitated. He could only move his fingers and wrists, not anything above them. There was a glowering inertia, a state of confusion and some blissful dispersion in between. Softened and even deafened, the strokes and locomotion, gradually diluted - his paradise loomed in a piecemeal encroachment. His dearly beloved and his belief, suddenly became inconsequential - he lived a life; he has lived it now - and he's about to be back to his own.
Sunday, May 10
5/10
There was a crucified wheeze. I stood at attention, solemn and quiet and did not do anything. My eyes were a palpitant white, and my nose was stifled. And then I awaken myself, and sluggishly braced my stature towards the pair of slippers, as if whisking off the attle from an effigy merely finished - the joviality was sobered, and I'm back into the grotto.
A voice exclaimed loudly, what an impossible person, what an impossible post, and halted for a second, ruminating, don't sweep it yet, yesterday's remains, those are unimportant. All the wings waving mid-air, and their noises, flicker like water butchering the flames, and the lights and shades of a pair dozen, cover lightly the smog and haze, and wholly. While farther out, pugs rub and odors drift. Woodperfumed sneer, from the seaside of the South, digging through the rags and wools, leans its tassel and itches. And fine motes, spur my nose, shed beyond my grasp, and beset my brain, tinkling, tinkling, till the last of drab.
Breeze, pulls a swollen carcass along the road. It bloats, backwards, with legs torsioning and tugged in sand. Leaves, from on the veranda, tremble and flutter to their bore - a brooding child, hasted towards the lucency. His neck was stiffed, his hair was unmoving, and he ran, ran, ran, merrily alive and impetuous and gradually dismembered, like decayed strings on the lyre, accompanying tenaciously after the fest has long dimmed. Little roll of dung, hangs over upon the edges, improbable and unnoticed. The fingers, unhealed from the bruise of the oils alight, frizzled and straightened, reviewing their nails in a shiny pink dulled in dusk. Fascination and spring and dried salt grain from tears, startled and drunk, caper in the louver, vaguely graceful in their final consonant to tell - in soul's repose, there will be mourning prayers and sorrowful heaves.
Astutely I stepped aside, without budging the birds perched on the tree, and squatted by the grave, a daisychain and bits of dandelion fluffs on the top. I bowed, factitiously for I was sitting, and glanced at the lofty sky hidden behind the deadwoods and poplar twigs in a clinical blue, pitiless and reassuring, like a scrape of tender skin behind the callus of scars. I know its face! Because I have seen it before in dream! And I jeer at it, and chuckle with ungirdled delight.
The night befalls abruptly. All the sounds and shapes come down to the same thing, a storied yellow-green, identical to the pastures and coastlines in imagination. Jarlessly I rise from beneath, and hum softly, a gentle song:
An old pelter / drenches my weary heart / and rinses my smelly feet / your tiny hand and an exquisite smile / in the somber attic / murmured for the parting / peace, honey / you say / let the time be / sweet and easy
A voice exclaimed loudly, what an impossible person, what an impossible post, and halted for a second, ruminating, don't sweep it yet, yesterday's remains, those are unimportant. All the wings waving mid-air, and their noises, flicker like water butchering the flames, and the lights and shades of a pair dozen, cover lightly the smog and haze, and wholly. While farther out, pugs rub and odors drift. Woodperfumed sneer, from the seaside of the South, digging through the rags and wools, leans its tassel and itches. And fine motes, spur my nose, shed beyond my grasp, and beset my brain, tinkling, tinkling, till the last of drab.
Breeze, pulls a swollen carcass along the road. It bloats, backwards, with legs torsioning and tugged in sand. Leaves, from on the veranda, tremble and flutter to their bore - a brooding child, hasted towards the lucency. His neck was stiffed, his hair was unmoving, and he ran, ran, ran, merrily alive and impetuous and gradually dismembered, like decayed strings on the lyre, accompanying tenaciously after the fest has long dimmed. Little roll of dung, hangs over upon the edges, improbable and unnoticed. The fingers, unhealed from the bruise of the oils alight, frizzled and straightened, reviewing their nails in a shiny pink dulled in dusk. Fascination and spring and dried salt grain from tears, startled and drunk, caper in the louver, vaguely graceful in their final consonant to tell - in soul's repose, there will be mourning prayers and sorrowful heaves.
Astutely I stepped aside, without budging the birds perched on the tree, and squatted by the grave, a daisychain and bits of dandelion fluffs on the top. I bowed, factitiously for I was sitting, and glanced at the lofty sky hidden behind the deadwoods and poplar twigs in a clinical blue, pitiless and reassuring, like a scrape of tender skin behind the callus of scars. I know its face! Because I have seen it before in dream! And I jeer at it, and chuckle with ungirdled delight.
The night befalls abruptly. All the sounds and shapes come down to the same thing, a storied yellow-green, identical to the pastures and coastlines in imagination. Jarlessly I rise from beneath, and hum softly, a gentle song:
An old pelter / drenches my weary heart / and rinses my smelly feet / your tiny hand and an exquisite smile / in the somber attic / murmured for the parting / peace, honey / you say / let the time be / sweet and easy
Wednesday, May 6
5/6
Thinking now decapitates me. I have never been so reluctant to think, since I tend to brand myself as a thinker, rife with originality of thoughts and uniqueness of expression. Yet not only am I no longer thinking, I am actively avoiding to do so. It is not due to the fact that I have nothing to write about; it is all the wrangling apathies of being eternally polite, and politely scornful when reasons surface. I cannot think of another cause other than the fact that I have already written thus much for me to be sitting here and writing.
I dined in C3 servery with a multitude of Pakistanis who are going to celebrate Ali's birthday. They planned, for a hundred-euro budget of a watch, as a gift for him. The brand and the design have not been determined, and the group of us has already agreed to travel to downtown together for the watch. I am, curiously, automatically included into the coup simply because I cared, after the German A1.2 class has ended, to wait in the corridor for a little longer for Atabak. There's nothing indecent of their deed. And as a matter of fact, it is in every way applaudable. Tomorrow at 10:00 AM, as they have posted on the Facebook group chat, we're going to purchase things to surprise Ali. The number of people in this group has barely changed from that of the last group, approximately twenty people, and with all of whom I have vaguely acquainted but couldn't really tell. The difference lies in their components - I, together with a couple of other lucky few, am included in both of the groups; and the majority of the members, approximately half but possibly more, have changed. People who were invited last time aren't this time; and people who weren't are in fact invited. Nobody has mentioned of this little fact - it would be of quite a killjoy if they opt to do so. However, I believe, every of us, feels that the group chat windows have popped up a little too haphazardly; and the event, though jubilant, has occurred too abruptly. After all, there is no need for two chat windows if the target population remains static. And there's something dumbfounding to me in such a fatiguing migration. We posted, warm sentences and emoticons, spicy teases and crisp humors. We typed, on the phone screens and on the laptop keyboards that are otherwise used for academic writing, things that we deem interesting for ourselves, and more importantly, entertaining for the others. And we need to make new friends, to get to know more people, to engage in jovial conversations that shield ourselves from the monotony of staying in the room and doing homework - we are thoughtful in the making of those relationships. Yet, we are never thoughtful in their losing:
"Hey, Maria, how's it going?" "…" "Hey, Jimmy, nice to see you!" "…" "Hey, the anonymous girl who always stands by the Chinese Computer Science PhD student, good morning!" "…" For sure, I am an asshole for being untruthful, and you and you and you and you, you are an asshole as well.
A huge chunk of negativity carries his negativity bible around in the campus. He wears, a dearly smile on his face, saying hi to everyone who passes him by. On the Campus Green he picks up a discarded yogurt carton and puts it into the dustbin. And he keeps on walking, with the pair of leather shoes he has bought but has never cleaned, into the gym. This place smells like saliva to him - all the muscular people are cultivating their body, and their sweat drips down on the ground. He doesn't have a proper pair of basketball shoes. O' he lies again and enters, and finds himself sitting in the bathroom. A millennial later, he takes a look at his phone, 9:05 PM - it's about time to go. He exits and curses, turds, and heads back to his room.
I dined in C3 servery with a multitude of Pakistanis who are going to celebrate Ali's birthday. They planned, for a hundred-euro budget of a watch, as a gift for him. The brand and the design have not been determined, and the group of us has already agreed to travel to downtown together for the watch. I am, curiously, automatically included into the coup simply because I cared, after the German A1.2 class has ended, to wait in the corridor for a little longer for Atabak. There's nothing indecent of their deed. And as a matter of fact, it is in every way applaudable. Tomorrow at 10:00 AM, as they have posted on the Facebook group chat, we're going to purchase things to surprise Ali. The number of people in this group has barely changed from that of the last group, approximately twenty people, and with all of whom I have vaguely acquainted but couldn't really tell. The difference lies in their components - I, together with a couple of other lucky few, am included in both of the groups; and the majority of the members, approximately half but possibly more, have changed. People who were invited last time aren't this time; and people who weren't are in fact invited. Nobody has mentioned of this little fact - it would be of quite a killjoy if they opt to do so. However, I believe, every of us, feels that the group chat windows have popped up a little too haphazardly; and the event, though jubilant, has occurred too abruptly. After all, there is no need for two chat windows if the target population remains static. And there's something dumbfounding to me in such a fatiguing migration. We posted, warm sentences and emoticons, spicy teases and crisp humors. We typed, on the phone screens and on the laptop keyboards that are otherwise used for academic writing, things that we deem interesting for ourselves, and more importantly, entertaining for the others. And we need to make new friends, to get to know more people, to engage in jovial conversations that shield ourselves from the monotony of staying in the room and doing homework - we are thoughtful in the making of those relationships. Yet, we are never thoughtful in their losing:
"Hey, Maria, how's it going?" "…" "Hey, Jimmy, nice to see you!" "…" "Hey, the anonymous girl who always stands by the Chinese Computer Science PhD student, good morning!" "…" For sure, I am an asshole for being untruthful, and you and you and you and you, you are an asshole as well.
A huge chunk of negativity carries his negativity bible around in the campus. He wears, a dearly smile on his face, saying hi to everyone who passes him by. On the Campus Green he picks up a discarded yogurt carton and puts it into the dustbin. And he keeps on walking, with the pair of leather shoes he has bought but has never cleaned, into the gym. This place smells like saliva to him - all the muscular people are cultivating their body, and their sweat drips down on the ground. He doesn't have a proper pair of basketball shoes. O' he lies again and enters, and finds himself sitting in the bathroom. A millennial later, he takes a look at his phone, 9:05 PM - it's about time to go. He exits and curses, turds, and heads back to his room.
Sunday, May 3
5/2
This is the first time I've thought of writing a page full of rant. My peculiar sensitivity of the English vocabulary proves to be quite conducive to the fulfillment of such a will. However, I do not plan to materialize it, since such an act is that of a coward, and if there's anything I have learned from my former girlfriend, it is the imperativeness of being haematocryal when the situation has fit.
I planned, before being invited for an unexpected chai session, to go out and take a walk alone. It is evident that nothing is out there. The campus filled with occasional people in the morning will be deserted by now - everyone is indoor, either reading from their computer screen whatever interests them under the light, warm and serene, or sleeping on their bed, rolling over from time to time because in dream their journey takes a different turn. Yet I felt like going out, taking a stroll that is not habitual but nonetheless somewhat mandated. Since on my computer screen hardly anything rejoices; and on my bed there's no bed sheet, nor is there quill cover, or pillow cover - it is an arid blue mattress with white beddings whose whiteness has only recently begun to dilute, resembling a Microsoft Excel worksheet in its crude form that even the most vulgar of the slide makers is conscious enough to alter. I got almost dressed up, except for zipping up my usual jacket bought from the Marktkauf. I carefully adjusted the sides of my coat so they appear symmetric, and even took a close look at my beard to determine that its length is just about appropriate.
And then I walked out, expediting the riddance with my room, turning left towards the elevator shaft, pressing the button gently with my point finger, waiting for the elevator with a consistent patience, and using the automatic switch to open the door and get out of the building. I went along a perfect diagonal, maximizing the distance I'm able to traverse under a constraint of movement energy of my own allowance. I even have the affection of planning my stroll as a romantic trip - I shall first go to the Reimar Lüst Hall, and then I shall visit the porters at the main gate before starting a trek to the right; at this point I shall savor my time of being close to nature, and turn right at the first intersection to the side gate, which I exited and entered fairly often when I needed to catch a train or return from the train station, and there it should be, finally, the upsurge of my hike - I shall stand in front of it, quiescing to contemplate, standing to lament, and packing to depart. The signal transmitter on my key might not be able to activate the sensor on the door as it's sometimes defunct. And I'll try again, pressing the button deeper and at an elevated frequency, until it finally works and opens the door for me.
And then I walked out, expediting the riddance with my room, and turning right towards the kitchen for chai. I was very impatient - my footsteps were stealthy and pieced into small, dense intervals, just like how thieves in a medieval fantasy movie would walk. And indeed it was a very surreal experience, as I have to truthfully confess that I bumped into creatures that I have not known previously - they appear human-like, ergometrically designed and emotionless. And in no way can one detect if his presence has been acknowledged. Yet, when one passes by, there would be molesting tentacles reaching out from their body, suggesting a certain belligerence, though unsolicited, has been triggered. The creatures appear in pair, and only one of them demonstrates aggressive behavior. Therefore it cannot be ascertained if such conduct is common amongst their sort. Their communication device is a particular variation of an oriental language, and they also possess culinary capabilities that may not have been well developed. Since it has been postulated that they have a predilection for the semi-cooked food, and it turns out what they are cooking is nearly toasted. Their existence also seems to have minor sedative effect, stifling table-side conversation whilst not entirely hindering it. And just like the way they show up, they would be gone without signs of social etiquette. They spooked me when I was there, leaving me prostrated and marveling at the power of the creator.
And a page full of rant it is.
Saturday, May 2
5/1
The sun shines on my face like it shines on the faces of myriad men who came before and will come after me, grilling with the sweetness of a banquet and identical, except for that there is no sun - it's midnight, or to be precise, 2:52 AM in the morning, and I got up to write simply because I cannot fall asleep. My body is constantly shivering with having jogged with Atabak several hours earlier, and I'm pretty sure that the subcontinental spices in the Pakistan food I ate for dinner agitate me.
To my surprise, the heater is still functional. In fear of cold, I turned it on. The buzzing sound was quite reassuring. I immediately felt warm. And after several minutes, I went out to find myself a shirt - I assumed, it might take a few minutes for the room temperature to rise. On the upper half, I'm wearing a striped Jeep shirt my father bought me several years back. From where did he buy the shirt I haven’t asked and do not plan to, however since then I have acquired a penchant for shirts - not only did I wear them extensively, but also they constitute the majority of what's in my chest. It brought with me a sense of maturity I had adored when I was a bit younger. Though now, passing my 20th birthday, I have become reluctant to wear them for I would like to appear more energetic and unripe. On the lower half, apart from a pair of red-and-black flip-flops and underpants, I'm wearing nothing. I have my left leg rolled up on the chair, and the right one posited downwards - a classical posture for cardiovascular-disease patients and middle-aged women. My eyes are gazing towards the laptop screen, which, on its minimum brightness level feels a tinge yellowish, at the words I have on the pages so far. Those are indeed shallows words, and the things I try to describe are indeed trivial matters. Yet they're the history I'm trying to document, in the form supposedly superior to social media posts and Facebook pictures - in here I have virtually nothing to say, but I must say something, if not I would be no different from those who party and those who digitally like each other.
Tonight there's no kettle on the table, nor is there the spray bottle to contain Winnie's skincare cream; the pile of paper is gone as well - I have broken up with my girlfriend, or "ex", a term I consider to be more appropriate than "girlfriend". Our attachment ended the moment we parted ways, and the act of continuing to call her my girlfriend would equate to calling any girl my girlfriend, and therefore is unfeasible and morally dubious - I use that term to refer to her more out of an old reality that has only recently become memory than out of a genuine dismay. In fact I'm happy, albeit not for the right reason. I take ten milligrams of citalopram (SSRI-class) every morning, and I have an unopened box of lorazepam (benzodiazepine-class) for moments when I'm particularly despondent - I have all the surgical preparations to combat my emotions. And yes indeed, with the aid of modern medicine, who the fuck needs emotions.
I have been here for almost 40 minutes. And for the latest 5 minutes I failed to continue. Forsaking sleep in favor of a journal is a capricious deed, and it becomes even more so if I completely squander the time. I dig into my brain - there's an urge to sleep, an equally strong urge to stay awake, hatred for the now-dead wasp that has stung me in the finger this morning, and sex, sex, sex, sex, sex - apart from being bitten by a bee in the morning, there's nothing at all original of a man. The weekend is lying in front of me. And I'm entirely confident that my fellow college students will all seem to have a lot of things to do, leaving out me as the only one to wonder and ask around. Hence, I decide, I will have a lot of things to do as well - I'm going to eat the breakfast, play either video games or basketball, maybe take a train downtown to purchase another batch of instant noodles for times I use up all the meal-plan money or miss the servery opening time, and for sure, sleep.
And lastly, to myself: have a good night!
To my surprise, the heater is still functional. In fear of cold, I turned it on. The buzzing sound was quite reassuring. I immediately felt warm. And after several minutes, I went out to find myself a shirt - I assumed, it might take a few minutes for the room temperature to rise. On the upper half, I'm wearing a striped Jeep shirt my father bought me several years back. From where did he buy the shirt I haven’t asked and do not plan to, however since then I have acquired a penchant for shirts - not only did I wear them extensively, but also they constitute the majority of what's in my chest. It brought with me a sense of maturity I had adored when I was a bit younger. Though now, passing my 20th birthday, I have become reluctant to wear them for I would like to appear more energetic and unripe. On the lower half, apart from a pair of red-and-black flip-flops and underpants, I'm wearing nothing. I have my left leg rolled up on the chair, and the right one posited downwards - a classical posture for cardiovascular-disease patients and middle-aged women. My eyes are gazing towards the laptop screen, which, on its minimum brightness level feels a tinge yellowish, at the words I have on the pages so far. Those are indeed shallows words, and the things I try to describe are indeed trivial matters. Yet they're the history I'm trying to document, in the form supposedly superior to social media posts and Facebook pictures - in here I have virtually nothing to say, but I must say something, if not I would be no different from those who party and those who digitally like each other.
Tonight there's no kettle on the table, nor is there the spray bottle to contain Winnie's skincare cream; the pile of paper is gone as well - I have broken up with my girlfriend, or "ex", a term I consider to be more appropriate than "girlfriend". Our attachment ended the moment we parted ways, and the act of continuing to call her my girlfriend would equate to calling any girl my girlfriend, and therefore is unfeasible and morally dubious - I use that term to refer to her more out of an old reality that has only recently become memory than out of a genuine dismay. In fact I'm happy, albeit not for the right reason. I take ten milligrams of citalopram (SSRI-class) every morning, and I have an unopened box of lorazepam (benzodiazepine-class) for moments when I'm particularly despondent - I have all the surgical preparations to combat my emotions. And yes indeed, with the aid of modern medicine, who the fuck needs emotions.
I have been here for almost 40 minutes. And for the latest 5 minutes I failed to continue. Forsaking sleep in favor of a journal is a capricious deed, and it becomes even more so if I completely squander the time. I dig into my brain - there's an urge to sleep, an equally strong urge to stay awake, hatred for the now-dead wasp that has stung me in the finger this morning, and sex, sex, sex, sex, sex - apart from being bitten by a bee in the morning, there's nothing at all original of a man. The weekend is lying in front of me. And I'm entirely confident that my fellow college students will all seem to have a lot of things to do, leaving out me as the only one to wonder and ask around. Hence, I decide, I will have a lot of things to do as well - I'm going to eat the breakfast, play either video games or basketball, maybe take a train downtown to purchase another batch of instant noodles for times I use up all the meal-plan money or miss the servery opening time, and for sure, sleep.
And lastly, to myself: have a good night!
Saturday, April 25
4/26
Ponderously I raise my right arm towards the light and sniffed at it - it's the smell of a roasted chicken that is raw inside but overcooked on the surface. The bumpiness of my percutaneous layer signifies a minor imperfection of the automation of metabolism. I saw, through a pair of myopically astigmatic eyes, cracks and scurfs, vitiligos and spots, and the relics of my densely printed palm, mostly ridges, and occasionally veins that lurk in the shadow of my gesture of holding a hand. The artificiality of light, profoundly uniform and mild, irradiates through the half-closed curtain, and kindles a yet small spider that dares to traverse the transversal surface plagued by what appears to be a morphological glitch in the antepenultimate deck. The roar of the heater, though almost inaudible to my wonted ears, still persists at the back end of my nerve - amongst the thermal slugs, countless spider webs ligate the openings, making the noise a tad wriggling instead of a tranquil flat. It sometimes would also function as my armrest. Whenever I'm tired of navigating the decimation in a game or simply prefer the mental break that is always enshrined by a delightful anguish of my rasterized elbow. Such an imprint is never too deep as I lack flesh of a considerable thickness - it would stop at the bone, compress the meat to the extent of a foil, yet not too leafing to cause a tangible hurt. And right upon it, the cord of my Beats by Dr. Dre headphone dangles, drooping onto the ground with its standardized 3.5-millimeter connector facing upward, peering at the ceiling with an exact perpendicularity - what it is seeing on the ceiling I cannot discern, the wall coating of the latest university apartment is untainted with the smog of bongs and the smoke of weed. The only discordancy, originally a colossal mosquito splattered onto the wall by my pitiless brandish, is mysteriously gone, leaving behind a dim gray dot on the wall that might or might not be its mutilation. The remains is probably still atop the floating bookcase, however my own sanitary standard is superficial enough to allow for a principle neglect. On the platform of my desk, a spray bottle in alignment with the black kettle has the nozzle pointing at the direction of the plastic ink lines that mark the water stages with an equipotent interval, with the exception of the max level, which terminates at "1.7L" instead of 2.0L (I had previously postulated that such a reduction prevents the galloping seethe - it turned out, the efficacy is merely nominal). And it unwittingly reminds me of a white supremacist commanding the gaily starkness of a black underling. The cream contained therein which Winnie used at the beginning of her college loses its white to the yellowishness from the photochemistry of the reading lamp - its color is even more despotically dark compared to the printing paper from the German course - which reads "Abend das Konzert Hören?" on the first line with the former half of the sentence veiled by a rambling pile of COMMERZBANK booklets and a stapled collection of case study from today's Academic and Professional Skills class. The doodles on the paper are either blue or black in color, short of youthful panache yet rife with a professional indifference from having already bullshitted a lot. On the northwest of where I am sitting, is a last-year-model iPad with a cardboard roll, bereft of tissue, on its screen. The roll used to be circular but was somehow battered into an ellipse, leisurely seated while girdled by the line of my Microsoft office mouse that I use for gaming. Ritually and aslant, the cardboard roll is the veteran to be vetted for its own gloriousness. And just when all of my attention is diverted externally, my stomach sounds, with a particular type of drippiness to indicate that I am, indeed a gobbet of organics instead of a heap of mineral. Yet the vitality of it, all the writhing and twitching, bizarrely, would condescend me into the spiral of a fluorescent panic attack, indistinct, residual, but flocked.
The vesperality of night, enchanting and spacious, brews outside of the window of my immobile carriage. And the halos of lights are fainter than last time I have depicted of them. The pedestrians stroll beneath its pliant head, swift and unheeding, towards the home of their familiarity. Varied sprouted trees, the once carking, now dormant swarm, and the wooden German lodges with their respective bathrooms and a tonsured, shaven lawn, compose the concert of an impeccable stillness - by day they are vivid, by night they are equally vivid but contracted. The College Nordmetall building appears the pillar of my pursuing soul that is full of witty remarks and kittle satires and which capitulates whenever its housing demands to pee or poo - such as that, like what has happened the umpteenth of times, I would grab several pieces of toilet paper and march towards the restroom, where my arse festively emits, and where the pond festively splashes. Sitting to the front and sitting to the behind are both fruitlessly unavailing, as if the water, when I am not snooping, would move in accordance to my arse.
Girgle, girgle, the water inside the kettle is drunk. And abruptly I feel thirst. And my literariness concedes as I storm to pour myself two glasses of tap water. While drinking, I saw a dead insect climbing the wall, wielding the slender tentacles and dowsing for its desirous flee. Tugging my pants, I survey myself in the mirror, a basebred turd with no blood but ouns, no suffering but scars, and utterly exanimate - I slept for four hours the preceding night and had a class of nine hours. Fuck! Cunt! Shithead! "Sun" of a bitch! It just shouldn't be; and it just shouldn't be, thou dainty fambler!
A sordid shriek, hoarse and whisht, valorous and timid, screeches, clangs, and bawls from afar, and it blisters, blisters, and blisters while being perfectly noiseless, sober, and benign. I'm throbbed, capped out, and pushed away from a dump of anonymous, smoldering wreck which I cordially disliked yet nonetheless fervently revered. It's all ostensible and futile and ungainly and stochastic, as I sit, dumbfounded and weary, and undress to be fallaciously dethroned - for now the arrearage is amounted, and the deal has been summed. Good day!
The vesperality of night, enchanting and spacious, brews outside of the window of my immobile carriage. And the halos of lights are fainter than last time I have depicted of them. The pedestrians stroll beneath its pliant head, swift and unheeding, towards the home of their familiarity. Varied sprouted trees, the once carking, now dormant swarm, and the wooden German lodges with their respective bathrooms and a tonsured, shaven lawn, compose the concert of an impeccable stillness - by day they are vivid, by night they are equally vivid but contracted. The College Nordmetall building appears the pillar of my pursuing soul that is full of witty remarks and kittle satires and which capitulates whenever its housing demands to pee or poo - such as that, like what has happened the umpteenth of times, I would grab several pieces of toilet paper and march towards the restroom, where my arse festively emits, and where the pond festively splashes. Sitting to the front and sitting to the behind are both fruitlessly unavailing, as if the water, when I am not snooping, would move in accordance to my arse.
Girgle, girgle, the water inside the kettle is drunk. And abruptly I feel thirst. And my literariness concedes as I storm to pour myself two glasses of tap water. While drinking, I saw a dead insect climbing the wall, wielding the slender tentacles and dowsing for its desirous flee. Tugging my pants, I survey myself in the mirror, a basebred turd with no blood but ouns, no suffering but scars, and utterly exanimate - I slept for four hours the preceding night and had a class of nine hours. Fuck! Cunt! Shithead! "Sun" of a bitch! It just shouldn't be; and it just shouldn't be, thou dainty fambler!
A sordid shriek, hoarse and whisht, valorous and timid, screeches, clangs, and bawls from afar, and it blisters, blisters, and blisters while being perfectly noiseless, sober, and benign. I'm throbbed, capped out, and pushed away from a dump of anonymous, smoldering wreck which I cordially disliked yet nonetheless fervently revered. It's all ostensible and futile and ungainly and stochastic, as I sit, dumbfounded and weary, and undress to be fallaciously dethroned - for now the arrearage is amounted, and the deal has been summed. Good day!
Friday, April 24
4/25
I put on my Nike+ Fuelband again. On my wrist it feels identical to from one year ago - the black rubber finish I chose deliberately when I first bought it on Taobao lying on the bed of my uncle's countryside shack, and the flashy LED light in the front that serves as a timer, a calorimeter and a pedometer. Every time I boot it up from the long oblivion of my lack of usage, it would show a welcome message in a pixelated white - I have never read the message in its entirety, for the screen only shows a partial text and I would often be distracted by the yellow, green and red lights shining from the top and the bottom. I wore it extensively when I bought it. Even when the weather began to cool, I would keep my short-sleeve on, so the band could always be visible to others. At that time my favorite clothes for it is a red T-shirt with random alphabetical doodles in the front, which was then used by my mom as a rag in the kitchen, for wiping clean the oil on the gas cooker every time she cooks meal for me. Yet I didn't not actually use the Fuelband - after the button click to activate, the phrases shown there are in a dazzlingly large font that reveals the desolated functionalities to any prying eyes. I took more buses with the Fuelband on. There was an afternoon, what date and day of the week it was I cannot remember, when I went downstairs, and eventually took a bus trip to the city center because I felt like wearing a Fuelband would make me more attractive to girls. With my face stern and body straight, I gazed around as if I'm an upper-class guy who has to take the bus and who would definitively not choose to if any other option was present, and occasionally pulled out my not so brand new but exquisitely maintained 64GB iPhone 5s that was sold in Hong Kong and then doubtfully resold in a semi-gray online electronic appliance store in a mainland province - it was the second iPhone 5s I bought, because the first one has a dead pixel I failed to overcome and was stolen as I had chosen the without-insurance option when sending it back to the vendor. The police promised to investigate, and did not reply, and the owner of the package delivery service branch, who had went bankrupt promptly after I sent back the phone, offered me privately, 800 RMB as compensation. And I vowed not to buy any more smartphones until I bought the iPhone 6 Plus in Germany.
The spring has made me more willing to go out. And I started playing basketball again. I played for an hour this afternoon with a Turkish foundation year student named Burk, practicing shooting, complementing of his skill, getting complemented of mine, and went back to go to the Social Entrepreneurship class.
-
Stately, I emerge from the shower room, drying myself with the towel on the chair. I was going to restart my laptop and finish the draft of today's non-journal, and non-narration. However instead I find myself standing on the scale - it was a bitterly 56 kilogram - I was once 60 kilogram back in high school, and turned around to lie about the weight. I intoned to my girlfriend, floundering in voice and gesture, that it was a bitterly 57 kilogram, and all of sudden it becomes an acceptable number.
Monday, April 20
4/20
I need to do more exercises, to laugh more, and to be not so fearful of death - I have told myself of it one year ago, and what I am supposed to do now isn't that - I should be looking at the Stats homework that is so far solely done by Bela to prepare myself for the assessed lab two days later. I planned to sit in for an entire Sunday for the assessed lab but I did not do anything, just like right now I am doing nothing. For sure, by nothing I do not mean the vacancy of thoughts and movements, even the direst and the emptiest moments of my life are filled with the firings of neurons, the beating of heart and the shivering of leg. I just stared onto the wall where my girlfriend's to-do schedule, long expired from weeks ago, written on memo pieces topped by colorful snippet to imitate the reminder app of a smartphone, is stuck, emptied the snot I picked from my nostril to the ground I vacuumed several days ago, logged into my TP-LINK router management page, tried to resolve the network outage issue and failed. I also can hear from my girlfriend's laptop the voice of Chibi Maruko Chan I have acquainted purely thanks to the frequency of it being played - although it's a dubbed Taiwanese Mandarin version that is slightly altered from what the Japanese anime maker had intended, she doesn't like the original one because it sounds alien to her, and such that it becomes emotionless and unrelatable. Also I drank all two tubes of multivitamin effervescent tablets I bought together with the first batch of female hygiene product in Marktkauf in last semester. Both she and I had thought that it is impossible for me to finish them up, because those tablets have a taste not flattering to me who's used to drinking orange juice in bulk. But I finished, miraculously, and it really showcases how much I value my own health, apart from the usual slumber of staying indoor, sleeping extremely late and more than ten hours a day. I still have other multivitamin sources, of course, as blue pills contained in the white plastic medicine bottle, from Apotheke, a small German pharmacy from which I bought vitamin pills for myself and cold medicine for my girlfriend.
I read, just now on the internet, one of my favorite author and proudly unknown, wrote in his diary that he disapproves of fantasy novels - his cousin came into his room filled with trunks of books and inquired if he has any fantasy novel. He said no. And I must confess that I read tons of fantasy novels, usually not in English since western authors, while approachable and modern, still possess a trait that seems too often to remind me of a certain revered literariness, that the act of reading is a noble business regardless of what is being read. Chinese authors, internet authors, on the other hand with their wretched taste and insipid style, attract me with a very sense of being intellectually base and emotionally simplistic. And yes, I read pirated versions of Chinese internet fantasy novels. Moreover I am a frequent patron of the pirate game site 3DMGAME, with countless dubious pictures and borderline jokes for my niddering amusement, and porn sites from which I accidentally reused a hyperlink in my clipboard for group-writing the academic essay of the course Environmental and Resource Economics. None of people in that group believes it's an inadvertent act. I'm known as a serious person who entertains others via pretense. And I'm not too eager to debunk their belief.
There is one unread in each of my three inboxes, the first one is from LinkedIn that shows Paul Ladwig has accepted my invitation; the second one is sent from Microsoft Insider Program, Gabe Aul whose email address has the word "email" hyphenated; and the last one from Turnitin that reads "You have successfully submitted the file "HW9 - Bela, Lijiao, Kaiyu" to the assignment "Homework 9" in the class "Statistical Concepts and Data Analysis 2015" on 20-Apr-2015 09:20PM. Your submission id is 531158043. Your full digital receipt can be downloaded from the download button in your class assignment list in Turnitin or from the print/download button in the document viewer." I carefully checked through all three emails, have Outlook mark them as read, and minimize the window to resume my writing. At this point I am compelled to admit, the reason of such persistence, wondered by myself every time I would think about it, is that I not only consider myself entirely normal, but also have realized it - I'm on par with the male cashier at the Apetito servery (he's one of the many cashiers politely disregarded by the lordly university students, and I'm amongst the only ones to say hi to him whenever I pass by), and the porter (clumsy, tall, and nice), the fool living in a garage near the apartment set where my grandmother used to live (the last time I went by his domicile, I was befuddled that he is still out there and alive), the wanton shop lady, and the imaginary Sichuan Restaurant Owner who I know very well under a fictional apartment building I lived in Wuxi. The only difference that sets me apart from them is the fact that I write.
-
Before I went to the shower, I had already set an expectation of not having a fresh pair of spare underpants to wear tomorrow. It turned out that in the brown carton box what had been thought of as a pair of my girlfriend's textile pants are my underpants. I was exhilarated. This is the most delightful moment of the day!
-
Today I have waken up solely for the Resource Economics class, and I have attended both of the sessions - a tremendous feat for me. I did not know why I had gone there, I did not know even after I went there - the first session was filled with jargons whose technicality is not completely necessary; the second session were the usual student presentations in which Bela and the missish German (Turkish - updated on April 26) girl talked about confusions, exactly what kind of confusion has eluded me (perhaps that is the reason they talked about it), and for which I have complied a tediously lengthy synopsis on the polycentric approach for sustainability policy making. I did not get the opportunity to actually present because the professor ended up talking about an interesting topic that involves the applicability of property rights in space. He was nice enough to turn back and question if we have understood, while pausing briefly to add, everything - I nodded and laughed viciously, looking straight into his eyes to see a theatrical amusement similar to that of mine.
After dinner I borrowed the campus card from Husain to do the laundry amassed from the past week, and went to the presentation meeting for the Public Policy and Management course on Friday morning. When I showed up in the C3 Quiet Study Area (QSA), everyone seemed suspiciously familiar to me. The group was an unfortunate blend of German and American girls whose English is so perfect that they are able to convey every single idea with a verbosity unparalleled by that of my own - though the idea itself is utterly dubious. I had to sit there for roughly an hour only to have myself dismissed from the meeting.
I then sat at the bench in front of Krupp for some period. Because most of the shutters in Krupp are closed, I was somehow struck by a usual urge to put down something onto the pages - I complained that, I came here with a mind of perfect clarity, and that clarity has been lost in me gradually for a reason yet evasive to my understanding, until I conclude that university is not a place for writing. And then I headed back to College Nordmetall, retrieved the laundry from the drier, and then took the elevator up to my room to sleep - no expounding of my nighttime stroll and without a dirge for my lost youth, only sleep. (4/21)
I read, just now on the internet, one of my favorite author and proudly unknown, wrote in his diary that he disapproves of fantasy novels - his cousin came into his room filled with trunks of books and inquired if he has any fantasy novel. He said no. And I must confess that I read tons of fantasy novels, usually not in English since western authors, while approachable and modern, still possess a trait that seems too often to remind me of a certain revered literariness, that the act of reading is a noble business regardless of what is being read. Chinese authors, internet authors, on the other hand with their wretched taste and insipid style, attract me with a very sense of being intellectually base and emotionally simplistic. And yes, I read pirated versions of Chinese internet fantasy novels. Moreover I am a frequent patron of the pirate game site 3DMGAME, with countless dubious pictures and borderline jokes for my niddering amusement, and porn sites from which I accidentally reused a hyperlink in my clipboard for group-writing the academic essay of the course Environmental and Resource Economics. None of people in that group believes it's an inadvertent act. I'm known as a serious person who entertains others via pretense. And I'm not too eager to debunk their belief.
There is one unread in each of my three inboxes, the first one is from LinkedIn that shows Paul Ladwig has accepted my invitation; the second one is sent from Microsoft Insider Program, Gabe Aul whose email address has the word "email" hyphenated; and the last one from Turnitin that reads "You have successfully submitted the file "HW9 - Bela, Lijiao, Kaiyu" to the assignment "Homework 9" in the class "Statistical Concepts and Data Analysis 2015" on 20-Apr-2015 09:20PM. Your submission id is 531158043. Your full digital receipt can be downloaded from the download button in your class assignment list in Turnitin or from the print/download button in the document viewer." I carefully checked through all three emails, have Outlook mark them as read, and minimize the window to resume my writing. At this point I am compelled to admit, the reason of such persistence, wondered by myself every time I would think about it, is that I not only consider myself entirely normal, but also have realized it - I'm on par with the male cashier at the Apetito servery (he's one of the many cashiers politely disregarded by the lordly university students, and I'm amongst the only ones to say hi to him whenever I pass by), and the porter (clumsy, tall, and nice), the fool living in a garage near the apartment set where my grandmother used to live (the last time I went by his domicile, I was befuddled that he is still out there and alive), the wanton shop lady, and the imaginary Sichuan Restaurant Owner who I know very well under a fictional apartment building I lived in Wuxi. The only difference that sets me apart from them is the fact that I write.
-
Before I went to the shower, I had already set an expectation of not having a fresh pair of spare underpants to wear tomorrow. It turned out that in the brown carton box what had been thought of as a pair of my girlfriend's textile pants are my underpants. I was exhilarated. This is the most delightful moment of the day!
-
Today I have waken up solely for the Resource Economics class, and I have attended both of the sessions - a tremendous feat for me. I did not know why I had gone there, I did not know even after I went there - the first session was filled with jargons whose technicality is not completely necessary; the second session were the usual student presentations in which Bela and the missish German (Turkish - updated on April 26) girl talked about confusions, exactly what kind of confusion has eluded me (perhaps that is the reason they talked about it), and for which I have complied a tediously lengthy synopsis on the polycentric approach for sustainability policy making. I did not get the opportunity to actually present because the professor ended up talking about an interesting topic that involves the applicability of property rights in space. He was nice enough to turn back and question if we have understood, while pausing briefly to add, everything - I nodded and laughed viciously, looking straight into his eyes to see a theatrical amusement similar to that of mine.
After dinner I borrowed the campus card from Husain to do the laundry amassed from the past week, and went to the presentation meeting for the Public Policy and Management course on Friday morning. When I showed up in the C3 Quiet Study Area (QSA), everyone seemed suspiciously familiar to me. The group was an unfortunate blend of German and American girls whose English is so perfect that they are able to convey every single idea with a verbosity unparalleled by that of my own - though the idea itself is utterly dubious. I had to sit there for roughly an hour only to have myself dismissed from the meeting.
I then sat at the bench in front of Krupp for some period. Because most of the shutters in Krupp are closed, I was somehow struck by a usual urge to put down something onto the pages - I complained that, I came here with a mind of perfect clarity, and that clarity has been lost in me gradually for a reason yet evasive to my understanding, until I conclude that university is not a place for writing. And then I headed back to College Nordmetall, retrieved the laundry from the drier, and then took the elevator up to my room to sleep - no expounding of my nighttime stroll and without a dirge for my lost youth, only sleep. (4/21)
Sunday, April 19
4/19
Now I look much better. I just washed my hair in the sink with the Nivea Classic Care shampoo, which I have only seen here in Germany. My hair has been transformed from greasy and untonsured to refreshed and upright - that brings about an image change. Although I'm the same person wearing the same USG t-shirt and the pair of jeans my father bought with less than 20 RMB back in China and of which the zip is broken (I can no longer seal it, and people keep reminding me that the flight is open, therefore I had developed a proclivity towards wearing larger tops that can cover the zip), I no longer appear the same - the clean hair entitles me to the Apple-Store-style shirt with jeans instead of a third-world country resident who wears the above-mentioned combination simply because it is inexpensive to do so. There are still acne-like bumps in my hair that I need to make an appointment to a dermatologist to figure out, but that is not visible to anyone, and hence it is entirely fine with me.
I have been thinking, ever since I woke up, and while I was watching Winnie eating in the kitchen and playing Operation Metro after she finished, should I write today? What can I write and if I do write, would it be tolerable? I had no answer to any of those questions. The trees are already putting forth new leaves, in a kind of yellow green that only pertains to spring. The leaves near the treetops are, curiously, still in a lightly brown, resembling burnt crumbs of fried chicken with its color more subdued. Tailored in the entirely blue sky, the lazing-around of the scenery contrasts greatly with what I had assumed of a university, which is connecting, studying, and sometimes having fun with friends in a decreasing self-righteousness. Also birds, mostly pigeons, would just perch on random branches, preening and flying away when it occurs to them. However, what do I have to write about it? I would be the one least qualified - I have long been unable to admire the nature profoundly, and am wholly possessed by its literal, deeming all portrayals vulgar and all metaphors supercilious.
And it pretty much leaves me with nothing to write. I won't write about nature - this is the place for lamenting my humanity and my artificiality, which is not at all dissimilar with the religious cults of an animal's head or a plant's rhizome; I won't write about myself - apart from going to the jaw specialist, the dermatologist, Dr. Schmidtmann and a lawyer who's willing to handle my case, I have depleted the possibility of iterating what's inside of me. I was, from the beginning, a man without much of a story; and I still am, albeit I wrap myself in the beautiful coatings of being a struggling soul, an aspiring college student and a dedicated writer of his own history, I offer nothing genuinely new, nothing that would challenge the norm or alter the laws of physics, not even my own deplorable trajectory of being ultimately unimportant. From the outside, I have written, already more than five times about the bathroom and the tissue towers in it, and about Husain and his departure, about Alin and Alinism, and about Winnie and her entertainment show. I don't go out of the campus most of the time because I don't know where I can go, and I don't know who else I can go with. I don't go to parties because it seems a superficial way of spending one's time. Bushra did invite me, when we were chatting with other in the waiting room at Dr. Schmidtmann's, to go to C3 and make some chai with her, but she did not send me anything on Facebook, and I was too indolent to actively solicit one, so the chai eventually doesn't happen. I obviously do not know if it would happen in the future - I still reserve the right for it to happen.
It's 6:05 PM. And I'm usually a 6:00 PM guy and I'm hungry. And I have truly nothing to write. And I'll just walk away from the laptop, pull my girlfriend from the bed, knock on the door of Husain, and go for dinner.
I have been thinking, ever since I woke up, and while I was watching Winnie eating in the kitchen and playing Operation Metro after she finished, should I write today? What can I write and if I do write, would it be tolerable? I had no answer to any of those questions. The trees are already putting forth new leaves, in a kind of yellow green that only pertains to spring. The leaves near the treetops are, curiously, still in a lightly brown, resembling burnt crumbs of fried chicken with its color more subdued. Tailored in the entirely blue sky, the lazing-around of the scenery contrasts greatly with what I had assumed of a university, which is connecting, studying, and sometimes having fun with friends in a decreasing self-righteousness. Also birds, mostly pigeons, would just perch on random branches, preening and flying away when it occurs to them. However, what do I have to write about it? I would be the one least qualified - I have long been unable to admire the nature profoundly, and am wholly possessed by its literal, deeming all portrayals vulgar and all metaphors supercilious.
And it pretty much leaves me with nothing to write. I won't write about nature - this is the place for lamenting my humanity and my artificiality, which is not at all dissimilar with the religious cults of an animal's head or a plant's rhizome; I won't write about myself - apart from going to the jaw specialist, the dermatologist, Dr. Schmidtmann and a lawyer who's willing to handle my case, I have depleted the possibility of iterating what's inside of me. I was, from the beginning, a man without much of a story; and I still am, albeit I wrap myself in the beautiful coatings of being a struggling soul, an aspiring college student and a dedicated writer of his own history, I offer nothing genuinely new, nothing that would challenge the norm or alter the laws of physics, not even my own deplorable trajectory of being ultimately unimportant. From the outside, I have written, already more than five times about the bathroom and the tissue towers in it, and about Husain and his departure, about Alin and Alinism, and about Winnie and her entertainment show. I don't go out of the campus most of the time because I don't know where I can go, and I don't know who else I can go with. I don't go to parties because it seems a superficial way of spending one's time. Bushra did invite me, when we were chatting with other in the waiting room at Dr. Schmidtmann's, to go to C3 and make some chai with her, but she did not send me anything on Facebook, and I was too indolent to actively solicit one, so the chai eventually doesn't happen. I obviously do not know if it would happen in the future - I still reserve the right for it to happen.
It's 6:05 PM. And I'm usually a 6:00 PM guy and I'm hungry. And I have truly nothing to write. And I'll just walk away from the laptop, pull my girlfriend from the bed, knock on the door of Husain, and go for dinner.
-
I just realized that I'm already more than twenty years old. Since I was born in Wuxi No. 5 Hospital near my aunt's old apartment, an innumerable lot has gone by – I have been to Wuxi No. 3 High School, eaten a fair amount of meals and excreted a slightly lesser portion of them, and what's lost has become me.
-
Me and Winnie have been constrained to a single bed from last September. Although the two of us are sufficiently Asian to fit in, sometimes it still feels a tad uncomfortable, such as that when I try to stretch my leg I would almost always fear the movement would cause her to wake up, and that when she falls asleep ahead of me, it becomes nearly impossible for me to follow – since I would envy her and demand my own body to sleep faster, which usually causes adverse consequences that are the opposite of what I expect. I ignored this situation earlier, and have chosen to sleep at the other side of the bed when I became unable to ignore it – like right now: my head is facing the east, and my feet are on the chair I moved from her bedroom – she uses it as extra space and apparently I cannot do so – the skin of my feet is so rough that whenever I stir, they would hook up with the fabric of the chair, creating a noise not particularly annoying, but nonetheless efficacious in reminding me of what a pair of rustic feet I have.
Saturday, April 18
4/18
My desk is now underused. I sit more often by the cabinet at the end of the bed. With the chair however premium and cozy, the nature of a cabinet does not allow for a spacious leg room. So in order to sit comfortably, I'd have to sit tight. However, today, I moved my laptop back onto the desk, simply because I wanted to write, and the sounds of my girlfriend's reality show and Chinese poker game somehow hindered my will. I had, tentatively, crawled to the left of where she was sitting, and told her to use the headphones - she was then mildly incensed, but quickly told me that she's going to turn off her show to make room for my writing. To me, it's a sort of understanding that I'm grateful about but couldn't completely agree to, for it relies upon an effort from me to be understood, and an effort from her to understand. As much as I love to write, and as much as I write blandly, I am, as I actually sit in front of the computer and begin staring at the blank page of my would-be conception of the belittled mind, readily willing to call if off should there be a Turnitin deadline an hour later, or a midterm or final of any sorts tomorrow. Gladly seeing that there weren't any, or there were, just not in the name of either midterm or final, I gradually and hesitantly proceed.
The yellowish light, part of the free utility that the university generously offered me, seems a bit too glaring for a mind that strives to wander. And whenever I peek at somewhere not illuminated by it, I see a bulk and opaquely exact reflection of what is visible, embellished with occasional dots of other light sources which don't look like dots because of my astigmatism - I can neither see the forest that was a part of the landscape that I appreciated during the day, nor the lanes where local Germans walked their dogs. What I can see, however, is a frame I see almost every day since I would always close the curtains before sleep, an indistinct, normative frame that resembles the landscape of a night train, perceived but not comprehended by an awakened or sleepless insomniac, as he rests his chin on the hand, on the table beside the windowsill lit up by the dim moonlight outside, except that it isn't moving. There's no sound of the wheel pressing on the rail, no replenishment of the lights passing by, only a frictionless inertia, unperturbed, unchanging, and vastly egocentric. I got up and turned off the light, the one facing downward, and left the other, facing upwards, open - because my girlfriend had always demanded that at least some lights should be on, and otherwise it spooks her. I still cannot see anything in that darkness. It has simply no weather, no content, and no space.
This side of the College Nordmetall building, and the side I preferred, since it faces the woods beyond the barbed wire that marks the boundary of what is my college, instead of south hall, or graveyard, or worse, the other part of college building, where my fellow students not only dwelled, but also are visible. And I do not like it - though there are people living on the same side of the college as I do, with their varied appliances on, leading lives of their own unique exclusivity, I remain nonchalant because I do not see them, and they do not see me, and that suits me.
The last time, and also amongst the few times that I got to walk out of the residential building during the night was three days ago, the night before Alin's birthday. I had a panic attack when I was lying on the bed, waiting to fall asleep. I was lost, or rather, not lost at all but too certain about my own conjectures that I did not expect it to come, and did not know how to cope with it. My girlfriend, wearied and on the tinge of falling asleep, woke up momentarily to read the Wikipedia entry I showed her about panic attacks, and said nothing to comfort me because she didn't know what to say and I didn't know what to listen. I went out, alone, to the bench in front of Krupp College and to the south-western end of the small-scale football field where I used to sit on and have ceased since I've got a girlfriend. I got out on slippers and jeans with the dark blue jacket I always wear, stopping at Krupp to take a sip at the Apetito juice machine - that didn't work out - there's a line of German on the machine that I don't know but means the machine has been turned off and is not available for free juice. I exited the building to the bench. Nobody was there, of course. I sat for a brief moment on the chair gazing at the football field, totally inactive as it was active during the day, the Krupp building with a lot of lights on, and the C3 building with less. I didn't see Mercator College though, it was invisible from where I sat, and in fact it has always been somewhat shady since I ever came here. The people I know who are from Mercator are scarce, and the lack of their presence makes everyone there almost ethereal to me - the dude who was helpful enough to open the door of Krupp for me several weeks ago, was he still smoking in front of the building? Probably no. Had he and will he? Probably yes. Aside from this, my knowledge is scant.
That night was supposedly in spring, already a dozen days into the Daylight Saving Time, and I have seen a lot of people with short sleeves and jeans around in the campus. But the temperature was still cold enough to thwart me from continuing to sit on the bench. On my way there I had pictured myself picturing the time when Marco and I were sitting there talking about philosophy, and when I was there alone, pretending to be homesick so people can start noticing me, but before half a minute, I had wiped my ass and moved back into the depressing but warm College Nordmetall Building. I'm still fervently youthful, however, I'm no longer deranged enough to take it as life's norm, which, is now an instructional manual on how to be unconventional, printed in serif font on the hardcover, with pages meticulously preserved and well-worn.
Today was Alin's birthday party. He meant to invite other people, but only one of them showed up. The rest complained that the college is too remote from where they are and they wouldn't bother the trip. There were birthday cakes, sliced ham, juice I brought up from the servery and tonic water on the table. And I walked to the freezer, retrieved the bowl containing yesterday's leftover food - a blend of Persian rice with Tibetan fried potato and Chinese fried celery and broccoli with chili, and reheated it in the microwave for two minutes under 360 watts and five minutes under 600 watts, and finished it up. Winnie fried some ham, but Atabak almost fled because of the smell of the pork. We already have more than enough than we can eat, and Alin still has ten kilograms of flower powder sent by his mom. He told her not to send it anymore when he was back in Romania during the spring break. And his mom just keeps sending.
This side of the College Nordmetall building, and the side I preferred, since it faces the woods beyond the barbed wire that marks the boundary of what is my college, instead of south hall, or graveyard, or worse, the other part of college building, where my fellow students not only dwelled, but also are visible. And I do not like it - though there are people living on the same side of the college as I do, with their varied appliances on, leading lives of their own unique exclusivity, I remain nonchalant because I do not see them, and they do not see me, and that suits me.
The last time, and also amongst the few times that I got to walk out of the residential building during the night was three days ago, the night before Alin's birthday. I had a panic attack when I was lying on the bed, waiting to fall asleep. I was lost, or rather, not lost at all but too certain about my own conjectures that I did not expect it to come, and did not know how to cope with it. My girlfriend, wearied and on the tinge of falling asleep, woke up momentarily to read the Wikipedia entry I showed her about panic attacks, and said nothing to comfort me because she didn't know what to say and I didn't know what to listen. I went out, alone, to the bench in front of Krupp College and to the south-western end of the small-scale football field where I used to sit on and have ceased since I've got a girlfriend. I got out on slippers and jeans with the dark blue jacket I always wear, stopping at Krupp to take a sip at the Apetito juice machine - that didn't work out - there's a line of German on the machine that I don't know but means the machine has been turned off and is not available for free juice. I exited the building to the bench. Nobody was there, of course. I sat for a brief moment on the chair gazing at the football field, totally inactive as it was active during the day, the Krupp building with a lot of lights on, and the C3 building with less. I didn't see Mercator College though, it was invisible from where I sat, and in fact it has always been somewhat shady since I ever came here. The people I know who are from Mercator are scarce, and the lack of their presence makes everyone there almost ethereal to me - the dude who was helpful enough to open the door of Krupp for me several weeks ago, was he still smoking in front of the building? Probably no. Had he and will he? Probably yes. Aside from this, my knowledge is scant.
That night was supposedly in spring, already a dozen days into the Daylight Saving Time, and I have seen a lot of people with short sleeves and jeans around in the campus. But the temperature was still cold enough to thwart me from continuing to sit on the bench. On my way there I had pictured myself picturing the time when Marco and I were sitting there talking about philosophy, and when I was there alone, pretending to be homesick so people can start noticing me, but before half a minute, I had wiped my ass and moved back into the depressing but warm College Nordmetall Building. I'm still fervently youthful, however, I'm no longer deranged enough to take it as life's norm, which, is now an instructional manual on how to be unconventional, printed in serif font on the hardcover, with pages meticulously preserved and well-worn.
Today was Alin's birthday party. He meant to invite other people, but only one of them showed up. The rest complained that the college is too remote from where they are and they wouldn't bother the trip. There were birthday cakes, sliced ham, juice I brought up from the servery and tonic water on the table. And I walked to the freezer, retrieved the bowl containing yesterday's leftover food - a blend of Persian rice with Tibetan fried potato and Chinese fried celery and broccoli with chili, and reheated it in the microwave for two minutes under 360 watts and five minutes under 600 watts, and finished it up. Winnie fried some ham, but Atabak almost fled because of the smell of the pork. We already have more than enough than we can eat, and Alin still has ten kilograms of flower powder sent by his mom. He told her not to send it anymore when he was back in Romania during the spring break. And his mom just keeps sending.