Almost half a month after I have traveled back from Germany, I haven't any idea about what I had set out to achieve. In turn, I have simply become a more susceptible, or to put it figuratively, a more walkable person, guided by a set of believes that are now rather malleable and infirm compared with, say, when I first embarked on this journey earlier this month. I realize, that however I adorn and defend my follies with rousing appeals, seeming arguments and wishful thoughts, I remain largely helpless when it comes to confronting how things would actually work in this reality - which is always kind of rash, devoid of the bittersweetness, the caprice, and determinism that I have had the habit of ascribing to it. I have not been disappointed as much as I have been taught, of what I do not know - I just have this vague sense of being shown, like at the end of one of those interviews with the vibe of engagement a door is politely shown which is then promptly shut closed.
I used to lament when I have to sit alone in a curtained room, lit only by the solitary glow of an artificial light - sitting in it feels demeaning to me because of the deafening silence. In such a room there are no facts, only hypotheses, rootless fantasies, and half dreams that extend wildly and unrealistically outward. But now I savor it because it is more comforting for me to have the certainty of what isn't real than that of what is.
Hence I sit on this wooden chair where I have sat nearly five years ago, with my elbows and wrists drooping forward onto the desk. Through the window I see that the sky is getting darker. In the past I could see all the way to the road on the far side; I could see the street lights slowly turning themselves on, and the cars coming and going about their own businesses. But now the view has been blocked by a towering yellow mall with furniture stores and supermarkets in it - massive billboards of varied artistic designs and messages are stuck onto the side, ready to blast their lights on my face when the night falls. Familiar traffic noises, sometimes even loose vestiges of voices talking to other voices, will shine through the window with all the liveliness of this city that is my hometown. At the same time, on the streets and in the rooms the uncomforted people are still uncomforted.
It was on this chair that I posed the many questions, drew the many conclusions, and decided on the many actions which have led me to this point in life. The ideas I had at the time were not necessarily accurate, but were nevertheless temporarily inspiring - some of these ideas were, from the get-go, logically untenable, like the belief in the power of a man triumphing over his reality, or the belief that the future will be better when a deplorable past is renounced. I recognize now that these ideas are only convincing when left unpursued, since a reality, by definition, is merely an objective state of being that cannot be triumphed over, and the past, however deplorable it is considered, can never be altered, not to mention renounced. But at least back then I had these ideas and could seek solace from them. Now I have become more sheepish - having learned the extent to which many of my insistences were ungrounded, I'm no longer capable of being the idealist I once was with the same fervency. However, neither am I a realist, for to me, a realist is just an unknowing nihilist. Five years ago on this chair was a reckless young man setting out for his shiny dreams; five years later the same man sat on the same chair, looked out of the window, and did not say a word. The chair is the same chair but it has also somehow started to feel awkwardly anachronistic - the meanings once assigned to it are no longer so heartily needed and appreciated - the sparkles, the fists, the countless remembered or forgotten nights, yes they once exist - but only like the old wounds from the days past that are never quite healed but are nonetheless increasingly unseen.
Emptily I sit on the chair. The dim gray sky hovers above the buildings, and all of the nearby or faraway people walk by.
