After a long enough period of time nothing I write appears to me to make much sense. What was I thinking then? Or, if I remember well enough the idea, why did I frame it this way? The wrong words, the wrong atmosphere - some chain of thought that seemed solid then, but in retrospect has not been welded together at all.
Juvenilia. (Of course I'm not *that* old, but age is still relative. Youth is a time of swift aging.)
But I don't discard the pieces from three or five years back when I clear my store of documents. The things that do go are those from three days back, which have already lost their apparent coherence or rightness after half a weeks' revisions and redecisions. This habit of clearing things out is an old one, from my high school years.
Therefore the conclusion - whoever I was at the time of writing my oldest crap, I must have thought it truly worthy then. Errors of judgement aside (also, I don't do drugs) I must have loved then the same thing that makes me gape in embarrassment now. Why did I love them then? And why do I keep them now?
I suspect the latter is to convince me that I am making some sort of progress, that what was 'good' then is indeed egregious by now, which must mean that my constant process of maturation has brought (is bringing, hopefully) my skills in creative writing to new heights. Onward and upward. But now even that seems a misconception. I think I have a better answer now - that I am simply a different person than I was before, and that my self-righteousness, whether deserved or not, requires as fuel the writing of another person to mock and be ashamed at - someone who was young, and has since failed to grow up while remaining the same person.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
乌节路
(This piece came to me in Chinese, and I cannot see how to put it in another language, so there we are...)
I.
圣诞节到朋友家
就在乌节路后边
自从初院时代就是我们聚集玩耍的老地方，
我也是第三次来这里过圣诞了。
新加坡真的是个小地方
乌节路这条名街真的只是一条街，
后街宁静的私人住宅，
离购物中心也就五十步而已。
我很喜欢这种反差
当然也很羡慕他
“楼下” 是个带有些许谦卑的地点名词，
可他的“楼下” ，
就是我得长途跋涉才来到的市区。
据说他父母买下这公寓时，
这里还只是一条普通的购物街，
没有现在这近乎神圣的地位。
所以算是赚到了。
然而时代的改变
最终也赶上他们，
整栋公寓大楼即将被“重建” ，
外来的计划有时让人身不由己，
这就是市区的善变，
可能也是我们留恋它的理由之一
这次的派对被一箱一箱收拾好的各种东西环绕
又一个藏有回忆的地方
即将消逝
II.
傍晚
期待狂欢的乌节路被封锁
只有巴士没有车
凌晨
过了德士特别收费的时候
德士司机们也已败兴而归
晚上的狂欢，拥挤，一切一切
我都错过了。
难得一见的，空荡荡的乌节路
我竟然一夜间看到两次。
这是生平第一次
独自拥有这一整片
就要被拆下的圣诞灯饰
我很想睡
很想把景象拍下
改次再看
可是拍得很朦胧
清晨离开派对踏入沉睡的闹市的机会了
所以只好睁大眼睛
努力看
努力记
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Second winter
All of a sudden, the winds piped up. Leaves began to shift in unease, like many birds. The blinds of my window began to converse together, all at once. Someone’s alarm went off.
Then, alarm stopped. The leaves settled back into the night’s silence. Downstairs, my housemates were laughing, the way they usually laugh.
But I knew, the way one simply knows. One knows when he steps outside and witness the loss of green in the smell of the air. The days were getting shorter. Winter’s shoes were outside my door. One morning he would knock, at I would open it, as though embracing a long lost friend.
Then, alarm stopped. The leaves settled back into the night’s silence. Downstairs, my housemates were laughing, the way they usually laugh.
But I knew, the way one simply knows. One knows when he steps outside and witness the loss of green in the smell of the air. The days were getting shorter. Winter’s shoes were outside my door. One morning he would knock, at I would open it, as though embracing a long lost friend.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The view from outside the house
On the day of the sunset,
you sat on the roof of your house
watching the night lights of Shanghai
rising to a sob.
On early mornings in Ithaca, the deer calling,
call me to the window.
I meet the view from my house like a girl in love all over again.
In search of kites,
we walked down the boulevard,
and found none. Left
a square filled with the overwhelming presence
of unflown kites.
In search of the creek behind my house,
I step outside.
The trees gather to hold me in their presence.
In the view from my house, the wrestlers who live next door
are playing football with beercans again.
I wash my feet in the creek behind my house.
I live here now.
In the view from your house, there are fewer leaves.
There will be none when the days grow colder.
Then, perhaps, you,
meeting your city of black, wet snow,
will abandon the view
from a balcony overgrown with cigarette butts
to look out from other windows.
you sat on the roof of your house
watching the night lights of Shanghai
rising to a sob.
On early mornings in Ithaca, the deer calling,
call me to the window.
I meet the view from my house like a girl in love all over again.
In search of kites,
we walked down the boulevard,
and found none. Left
a square filled with the overwhelming presence
of unflown kites.
In search of the creek behind my house,
I step outside.
The trees gather to hold me in their presence.
In the view from my house, the wrestlers who live next door
are playing football with beercans again.
I wash my feet in the creek behind my house.
I live here now.
In the view from your house, there are fewer leaves.
There will be none when the days grow colder.
Then, perhaps, you,
meeting your city of black, wet snow,
will abandon the view
from a balcony overgrown with cigarette butts
to look out from other windows.
The Jester and The Queen
After we fucked,
he took out his tennis balls
and began to juggle.
His balls and tennis
balls, balls and tennis balls, spun
and shook like spinning tops
till I puked.
How dare you, he taunted
The next day, I left this poem
to sit like bread, quietly.
till it started to rise and breathe.
Months after I left
New York, I would rewrite, and write,
and write it again. Till in the poem,
I would be able to walk down
the staircase, undo the lock
and step
out into the outer air. The poem
would end like this: with a door
clicking shut, and then the song
of a woman singing with a voice like dusk.
he took out his tennis balls
and began to juggle.
His balls and tennis
balls, balls and tennis balls, spun
and shook like spinning tops
till I puked.
How dare you, he taunted
The next day, I left this poem
to sit like bread, quietly.
till it started to rise and breathe.
Months after I left
New York, I would rewrite, and write,
and write it again. Till in the poem,
I would be able to walk down
the staircase, undo the lock
and step
out into the outer air. The poem
would end like this: with a door
clicking shut, and then the song
of a woman singing with a voice like dusk.
Friday, August 31, 2007
(Something needs to be placed here before August ends.)
On days when the wind is blowing the right (or wrong) direction the veil comes over all the city. If it is particularly bad, the haze, the news stations go into alarm mode, informing us helpfully of how visibility has dropped to 3 km, 2 km, 500 m.
(How long is all this anyway? The length of the slightly curved road that is between your apartment and your lover's, is that a full kilometre? Does it strain you to run the distance, or any equivalent distance?)
For those of us who walk the city is so dense that visibility tends to be one street anyway, except upwards. This is how you know the haze to be serious - you can look into the sun without strain in your eyes and the sun itself seems swollen, leaking into the space around it.
How far are we from outside places?
We are walking, in the western portion of the city, when you sniff and look around. 'Is it burning paper, or am I smelling haze?'
'It's probably the haze, yes.' Almost without effort the wind is bringing us bits of other islands where the fire is not just in the sunset - the smallest, lightest bits that we can discern.
On days when the wind is blowing the right (or wrong) direction the veil comes over all the city. If it is particularly bad, the haze, the news stations go into alarm mode, informing us helpfully of how visibility has dropped to 3 km, 2 km, 500 m.
(How long is all this anyway? The length of the slightly curved road that is between your apartment and your lover's, is that a full kilometre? Does it strain you to run the distance, or any equivalent distance?)
For those of us who walk the city is so dense that visibility tends to be one street anyway, except upwards. This is how you know the haze to be serious - you can look into the sun without strain in your eyes and the sun itself seems swollen, leaking into the space around it.
How far are we from outside places?
We are walking, in the western portion of the city, when you sniff and look around. 'Is it burning paper, or am I smelling haze?'
'It's probably the haze, yes.' Almost without effort the wind is bringing us bits of other islands where the fire is not just in the sunset - the smallest, lightest bits that we can discern.
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