Literature has been my retreat. Not retreat from school, the world, friends, or the weather - for if those would bother me, I could always play a few games and read a couple of books. In fact, as dull and anxious as the weather in Bremen is, on YouTube and many other places a blue sky is always within reach. Literature has been my retreat only in the strangest and the most timid of moments - when surrounding this apartment are only sound-activated lights and an endless stretch of not many streets of Northern Bremen, on the internet is a New Year joyfulness that has begun to subside, and on the bed is myself leaning vertically against the pillows. During these moments the combat for a continued and bettered existence calms somewhat, and everything, the computer, the bowls, the papers and books and magazines, and my old jeans, is tucked in place like a warm kitten sitting by the fireplace. My times in Munich, even my times in yesterday recede to become a sort of fond narration - the red railway light by the 7th S-Bahn line, the pink soy milk carton, team lunch on the third floor of the twisted brutalist corporatist cafeteria building, my red-and-black mountain bike parked near Preysingstrasse, and the riverscape of Isar - I am folded away in these metaphors of impression, vaguely real but never real again, like the smiles and clamor on an old marriage certificate.
I dot this white page with the words to allay the weight of these impressions, just as after watching a good movie, I listen to the sounds of vendors and taxis and bakeries to distinguish the realty of this world with another, and consciously or unconsciously reminisce I don't know what scene from what movie, and I don't know what snapshot of emotion from walking down what street.
An image of my childhood rises up from nowhere. In this image, there aren't any objective things - in it are only my grandfather whose face I don't remember, me whose thoughts I don't think, and a backyard on the back of my grandparents' home, colored in varying shades of sweet grayness. I retreat into this image with both of these figures unperturbed. Like a Japanese tourist taking picture of a tree and examine the liveliness of the photo, I take a picture of the backyard with words and proceed to relive its meaning - the content gladness of the grandfather, the innocent naivety of the child, and the bare timelessness of the backyard seem almost artistic.
I half-emptily gaze in front of the virtual touchscreen keyboard, and proceed to recline a bit further into the pillow. Nothing quite compels me in this winter and in this room. The occasional cracks of firework outside stir up the night sky like a pinch of sugar in a steaming coffee mug, registering its strange, exuberant existence only so long as to pique a notion of its presence before dissipating. This morning I saw white fluffy clouds in place of the fireworks; they were drifting eastward with the steady amorphousness that clouds have; the same blue sky mingled in-between them, like some sort of daytime lullaby for the unoccupied man. I don't know whether it's still cloudy right now. The pure darkness of the Bremen sky hasn't the usual halo of light pollution I'd used to see, all I see is a depthless veil shrouding my window with its tamed, but perhaps still bitterly chill. The bed lamp is the only source of light in this room beside the eerie yellow glow of my "TrueTone" display. In these scarce moments when I am not consumed by the inanities of consumable contents on the web, I am instead consumed by the inattention of my own consciousness. While I know that judging from the perspective of someone standing in the corridor, I am but one of the tenants behind one of the closed doors, the sense of distance between me and everything else always hinges on what I presently see and feel and irradiates outward in my decreasing knowledge and concern. In my room in my apartment is silence, therefore however fresh and heartfelt and restless the faraway people playing fireworks are; their smile, their excitement, their sparkling eyes are but formless pieces of my mind, arranged in a twist of slipshod abstraction, in the leftovers of imagination.
I'm mildly a bit drowsy after only 12 hours of waking up. Like a battery mostly drained, I lose the confidence in a reality that was once firmly grasped only a couple of hours after dinner, and continue to live in the aftertaste of an increasingly unrecognizable world. If in the morning I see the objects of a blue sky, clouds, people walking everywhere in different directions, and my own clothes draping down from around my shoulders, now I see only flimsy little metaphors of them - the pungent green of the lawn no longer is pungent, but is only colorful; the poignant pronouncement of the NPR Morning Editions no longer is poignant, but is only audible; in the morning I said: happy new year, in the evening I say nothing. The vestige of the this day seems not so much different from the vestige of last year - an endless stream of colorful things flows past me like a river flows past its bank; while my mind rests on my factless body on a factless bed.
Though I do have some raisins on my desk. Those I would still like to eat tomorrow morning.
