蟑螂和低血糖

见到第一只蟑螂是在卫生间的地板上，仰面朝天，不动，我想，这香的效果还是不错的。


我打开水龙头的时候另一只从不知什么地方掉了下来，可能是被这一下摔醒了，它开始不断地挣扎。我知道我必须把它踩死，而且它也是底朝上，不是一件很难的事情。但是我下不了脚，但是有时候我们不得不逼自己做一些事情，我不是东郭先生。于是……本来一脚就可以了，可是我却来了一阵抽搐式的乱踩，目的其实是为了不要踩到它。但是最后我还是到了不得不做决定的时候——踩死了就没事了，我还要吃饭呢——我闭上眼睛，解决了它。


出了厕所，想把这两个扫了，结果看到了第三只和第四只，其中一只还是棕色的小小强，全都在动，回头一看，那第一只也醒了。此时我已经无语。我回到自己的桌前，寻找一样合适的东西，我的眼睛扫过茶杯、洗发水、书和手机，没有一个可以用的，我该怎么办，我该怎么办。


我觉得直接用自己的脚去结束一个乱动的的恶心生命是一件极其恐怖的事情，用自己的鞋子来打效果也是一样的。也许用别人的东西会好一点。于是我就地取材，操起Y的拖鞋一记重击——汁液四溅。趁着这个势头，我解决了周围的。


于是我开始扫地。在L的桌下我看到了第5个。不用说还活着。我拿起L的凉鞋看了看，鞋底比较白。因为怕弄脏，我下手很轻，又是抽搐式的一阵乱打，在慌乱中我翻过鞋底看了看却见它已经粘在上面，我跳了起来。


我发现用什么样的东西打都是一样恐怖的，任何一种东西都会变成我肢体的延伸，有一种可怕的亲密感。如果要消除这种感觉，我得站在月球上，用激光瞄准，然后转过身体。



……然后继续。Y的桌下也一个，我不能说我已经麻木了，我只是开始不再惊异于自己的这种抽搐了。打死，扫掉。


我忘了我自己的桌下还没扫。于是——第7个。Don't make me do this again. Don't ever make me do this again. 还好这个中毒比较深，只小动了一下。我把它扫进簸箕，把蚊香的灰烬倒在这群尸体的上面。


终于完成了！不知道是因为余悸还是低血糖，我手脚不断地发抖。可能是还没有吃饭的缘故吧，人在饥饿的时候容易对外界刺激产生比平常更大的反应。


我拿出调羹，到阳台上去洗。当第8只蟑螂出现在水槽里的时候，我往后退了一步，我再也没有力气了。

World-wary? Nah...

"To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course.
This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable--bewildering, even enigmatic.  Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child. 

So now you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so?"

I have loathed people who pretend to be, or in a worse case, truly are world-weary, in order to suggest how sophisticated they are. (The picture conceived itself that when Guojing was wondering at the special ceremony of Gaibang, someone casting him a contemptuous look and saying “少见多怪！”)I hated them quietly and apologetically, because I was afraid that was out of low self-esteem or jealousy.

Now I can denounce them as contemptuous. Let me recount the occasions where my curious nature was discouraged...

In primary school, we would often go climb the hills together. Each time I saw a beautiful flower, i would tell my friends happily. But Y told me how childish it was to wonder at common flowers as such. 

In high school, one day i was talking with J and playing with my bottle. Suddenly I thought of something, I told her the one who invented the spiral bottle cap must be a genius! And she immediately called me insane. 

Last year, i hold out my newspaper for my roommate to see an African child who was near death. The other roommate C replied without even take a look at it,"what's curious about that? We've seen enough during high school." 

......I hope these things does not succeed in undermining me, or reducing me to some human hardware for the society.

Small-Town News

今天（2009.5.30）出现在《小新说事》中的一个故事：


      本地一渔民在河里捕鱼的时候，发现有一长约一米的动物咬住他的渔网不放，为了保卫他的劳动成果，他一桨打去，结果……就打死了。


     记者对围观的群众进行了采访。
     记者：“你觉得这是什么？”
     一村民：“这个东西头也像老鼠，尾巴也像老鼠，所以应该就是个老鼠。”
     记者：“那老鼠好像没有这么大的么？”
     该村民：“那就是个老鼠王。”


     记者采访了更多的群众，基本上得出的结论就是这是一只基因变异导致体型变大的老鼠（可是，他们不像是《他的国》的读者啊！啊，肯定不是，要不然他们就管它叫龙猫了）。


     此时，围观群众中出现了不同的声音。一个说可能是水獭。另一个很肯定地说，这是一个“獭狸猫 ”——Damn it, it's SO CLOSE! He was ALMOST right! （——因为在节目最后记者终于结束装傻，揭晓谜底的时候，我们得知它的名字是——“獭狸鼠 ”。）


     当这个investigative reporting进行得正酣，当我的胃口都被吊到半空，觉得这不逊于一期走近科学节目的时候——村民们开始架起煤炉，煮起开水，开始给这个X褪毛了。由 于充分展现了当地人民饮食风俗，节目笔锋一转，变成了一期民俗文化秀。我开始想X都被扒了皮，现在记者们只能拿着照片和录像去找专家了，而就这一会儿的功 夫，X已经出炉了。这时又变成了一个美食节目——体验者从浓厚的卤汁中夹起一块肥而不腻的X爪，仔细地品位一番，"Mmmmmn——不错。”

The Siren Went On

Room 328, Academic Building 2B. First time meeting our Lexicology teacher. Turned out she was a pain in the neck. I wanted to sleep but there was blood running through my head. I couldn't stand her any longer but her asserting voice was everywhere. With each sentence she uttered I was trying to rebuttal her. And then, I gave up. Whatever, this was just the first lesson, sooner or later I would be worn out. I looked out of the window.

At 3 o'clock sharp Air Raid Siren went on: it was September 18th.

The siren was vibrating with something suppressed in my heart, it seemed to me, for at some point i felt like crying. If there was any patriotism left in me this was the last bit, persistent and deep. 

The storm of injustice used to batter this vast land and its people - my ancestors, who silently buried their sons and daughters, and lived through a lifetime of confusion without understanding why. Only one or two stories of woe left, told generation by generation in the most impersonal manner.

Though these were only my reveries, they still sent a warm current through my eyes. Quit it, that was too far away...I thought, beginning to picturing myself. I saw me like the protagonist of a movie, gnawing the last bit of a steamed bun as hard as a rock, standing in the gusty winds of a snowing street. Scorching tears were rolling down my face, while the rest was boiling at the back of my nose, and like a fountainhead of power it was sending strength to all my limbs.

Nothing, nothing stirs a human being as much as shame and a sense of being treated unjustly. That moment I have the power only a mad man can summon, and I have to desire to slit of throat of any one walking toward me. The quickness of the knife thrilled me, and the gushing of blood entertained me, and the slaughter went on and on...

But I was prisoned, inside my facade which is more normal and conformed than anybody. The only thing I could do was suicide, but by doing that i contradicted myself: when the self which was deriving pleasure from slaughter was eliminated, the act became a fallacy.

Fate...There is no such thing as fate, otherwise i could just give up any struggle and flow with the tide of it, and between the time when i was wake from my reveries take a look at where it had carried me. Even if i am carried to a world of darkness i would not be sad, because there was no sorrow or remorse when there is no choice to begin with. One never regret some choice made totally by others. Fate is too good to be true.

Rather, as the existentialists suggested, we are created and then abandoned in the world, left alone to working out all the rest. And now I am feeling the huge of burden of it growing heavier and heavier on my shoulder, and I am alone. No one in the world is looking out for me, no one is out there making sure anything be fair to me. Anything can happen. I might have just missed the chance of my life, by simply bending down to tie my shoe.

The pressure of the world is on my shoulder and yet i am still green. What can i do? Now I can only pray, that all that I've done was not in vein.

Fed up of Tutoring...

I decided to open Renren for the last time between now and the foreseeable future. And that was when I saw C's talks with her friends, one of which suggesting that she was earning a thousand a month by teaching English in a Tutoring Institute. That was how much my parents are earning! I was stupefied and deeply stirred inside.

Yesterday I was kind of happy after came back from KY's place, because I sensed her satisfaction with me - through her reiteration of her "overlord items" that I was to teach her son until the end of first semester of my senior year! That was like an eternity. And if H wants me to continue, I will be under even heavier exploitation for at least one and a half years. I never take their asking my state of study seriously, all these are crap - they don't give a damn about what happens to me. Even if i die, they would give a sigh about how delicate life is, and go to WP to find another best student in the English Dept. I was at most a tool. And a very very cheap one.

I closed the window in a fit of rage and self-pity. And opened Lolita, not really in the mood of reading anything. And I saw the first sentence read: "I found a job - teaching English to a group of adults in Autenuil..."

I don't want to be a teacher! I was on the verge of bursting. Even though anything I am doing now suggest I would be a good teacher and there seems nothing else I can do (I indeed have a very bleak outlook), I don't want to be a teacher. I would die before I would be a teacher.

TO HELL WITH IT!

TO HELL WITH IT ALL!

Free, but Alone

Knock, knock.

I ran to open the door, as I always do. Nothing, it was just my roommate C. She came back to fetch something but had forgotten the key. The moment I open the door, I saw her there, her face transparent and glistening as the fantastic effect of the freckle-removing surgery last semester, eyes fixing on the ground where her left foot was located. She was not looking - it was merely vacant. And then without pause - though my account made it seem like there was one - I gave way and she came in. Not a word was exchanged, not even a look.

"Ha, she did not look at me. "I was kind of entertained at this queer realization. And then I quickly decided to step into the washroom right beside the door, and began to wash my hands longer than it usually takes. As the water was running fiercely through the tap, the picture jumped back and asserted itself, the face now dazzling and the pupils jet black, dark as hell. The feeling surfaced from the din of the running water and asserted itself in words: I hate it... I do, I really hate it! Yes, that was why I was washing my hands so strenuously! - Because I hate the fact that I had to open the door to such a look, and nothing else!

Two years have I been living with these people, and I still feel out of place in this dorm. I can more easily identify with the desk than with the various groups I find myself in. But it is rarely something new to me. I have never had the sense of belonging, that's why i don't go to those class gatherings that happen every year. I am afraid I will be cast aside in a corner, out, of place.

Once in our afternoon talks, Tao asked me what would I do if I was invisible, I said I was invisible. I walked and washed and slept in our dorm room like a ghost. I made little noise, and no one seemed to realize my existence.

I shouldn't have complained though- all I wanted was to be free.


-----------------------------------------

• Two days after I wrote this entry, I ran across this sentence in Nausea:

I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.

书摘: Live or Tell (Nausea by Sartre)

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is
enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives
surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him
through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.

But you have to choose: live or tell. For example, when I was in Hamburg, with that Erna girl I
didn’t trust and who was afraid of me, I led a funny sort of life. But I was in the middle of it, I
didn’t think about it. And then one evening, in a little café in San Pauli, she left me to go to the
ladies’ room. I stayed alone, there was a phonograph playing “Blue Skies.” I began to tell myself
what had happened since I landed. I told myself, “The third evening, as I was going into a dance
hall called ha Grotte Bleue, I noticed a large woman, half seas over. And that woman is the one
I am waiting for now, listening to ‘Blue Skies,’ the woman who is going to come back and sit
down at my right and put her arms around my neck.” Then I felt violently that I was having an
adventure. But Erna came back and sat down beside me, she wound her arms around my neck
and I hated her without knowing why. I understand now: one had to begin living again and the
adventure was fading out.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all.
There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable,
monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I’ve been travelling for
three years, I’ve been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a
woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers,
everything is the same after two weeks. There are moments—rarely—when you make a
landmark, you realize that you’re going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a
flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926.

That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: the
proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things
happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You seem to start at the
beginning: “It was a fine autumn eveningin 1922. I was a notary’s clerk in Marommes.” And in
reality you have started at the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one which gives
to words the pomp and value of a beginning. “I was out walking, I had left the town without
realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles.” This sentence, taken simply for what it
is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly
in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming
everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money


troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions.
And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted
way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and
each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: “It was night, the street was
deserted.” The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves
be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently
appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations,
promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not
herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night
without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make
his choice.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered.
You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

“非常新概念”

跨文化交际老师在课上，自豪的告诉我们，他的女儿从小背诵模仿新概念英语，现在初中二年级，那个英语啊是——“非常新概念”！

我一点都不怀疑，因为他自己的英语，讲课也好，讲话也好，就非常非常的“新概念”。那样的英语非常非常适合……给课文录音。听力老师估计也是新概念一族的，因为期末考试的题目引言部分是她读的，字正腔圆，已经达到了鱼目混珠蒙混过关的程度，但是修炼不够，平常上课的时候就自然而然地流回Chinglish了。

为什么他们追求的不是“动听”，“地道”，“清晰”，“流利”，“雄辩”，而是“新概念”呢？读得非常“新概念”那又怎么样呢？从“新概念”这个过渡性目标到更高目标之间是怎样的联系呢？这让我想起K老师, 算了不说了。这些人的共同特点就是实际，目标明确，有很明确的实现这个目标的方法，但是很明显都欠自己一个理由。但是像“很新概念那又怎么样呢，然后呢？”“考出了剑桥英语3级那又怎么样呢？然后呢？”这样的问题会让他们怒发冲冠，或者认为你不够“脚踏实地”，或者直接精神有问题。然后他们照着那个样子活下去，以为只要自己不提出类似问题，这个问题就永远不存在。

他们相信世界是由阿特拉斯背着，阿特拉斯由一只大象驮着，大象站在一只乌龟上面，但是……乌龟站在什么上面呢？在他们皮蛋瘦肉粥一样的意识世界里，弥漫着这样一个斩钉截铁的答案：不 存 在 这 样 一 个 问 题。这是他们赖以生存的防腐剂。

A Spectacular Piece of Human Failure

As a failure I am spectacular. I console myself.

Walking out the classroom, down the stairs, through the crowd flooding to cafeterias, and even sitting down with myself at the lunch table, I feel so out of place, so inferior, so awkward. I am one spectacular piece of human failure, at least physically. The only thing i can rely on is the coming of the cool weather, by then i can put on some thick layers of clothes so that I no longer suffer from the curious gaze of others. But they are really my own gaze. Whenever others are around, I grow extremely sensitive, one unconscious stay of sight would mean a thousand words' despise. Once the water gate is opened, the flood of self-pity will flood forth without means of stopping.

This negative self-consciousness is a cancer eating my total consciousness away. When i am passing the streets, the lanes in school I should have been observing the people around and thinking and reducing them to mere mockery! - instead of busy pitying myself. What is worse, I can think about this problem for a thousand years, and as long as human genetic is not profoundly changed in between there will never be a solution coming up. If Sartre's question which he have thought for a life-time is "being in the world" and "being in the midst of world", then mine would be...this.

The only thing I can do, is to wait for the cool weather. If I ever become a global warming interventionist it is also because of this.

Stuck in a Moment in a Classroom

I was sitting in Classroom A424, Academic Building No. 2, and having the very first lesson of the semester.

The new teacher, with the new course of Interpretation, bored me to tears. His shabby English recalled Xie Guoliang, and that moment, I wanted to laugh. Laugh till my essence and I were one, the kind of laugh that would have cured any disease on calender... Oh Henry Miller.

I was elevated to another level during the summer, with all the books, e-books news and blogs that I read, all the afternoon talks with Tao Yong, and all the blog posts I put up on my blog. Now that I was transferred back to this campus again, I could see how much I have progressed, compared to who I was two months ago.

Ever since last year I have entered this infinite upward spiral. In fact I can't mark any point in my life that I have move up a step, no. Does it even exist? I don't think so. I am actually so enthralled in the whole process that only when I have to stop my work and change environment (from home to school, school to home, what else can it be?) that I have time to realize that I have actually improved. And as it always seems to me, what an improvement!

Each summer or winter holiday I come to school, with the realization that the reading has not been in vein. And each time I get back home, I have the confidence that I will go back with a different person who left home last time.

I was so happy in this mood of realization that the teacher was no matter who, his talking no matter what.

Ugly Mug

It was the first night of the new semester, but i was already in the midst of a deep depression. I guess it was quite a wretched personality to feel pissed off because my roommates didn't go wash themselves when they have taken out their clothes, thus suspending me in a state of indecision, and that they kept asking whether the water was warm enough as if the water heater were their possession and I didn't pay for it anyway, and so on. I felt not free, I feel I was imprisoned by these human shackles.

And what depressed me even more was that I realized the problem might lied in just me. What my mind was not free I cared a lot about those external stuff like whether I can wash myself when I want, instead of being suspended until the whole world went to sleep.

In my extreme distress I turned to my new mug, but it was no help. As a porcelain mug it was a total failure. I bought it because it was on sale in the supermarket and what was more important, it was porcelain. I had always wanted to have a porcelain mug of my own. Anyway, it was the typical product made in china - with childish Chinglish like "we are happy men" and "happy wildness" which you never knew what they were from. If anyone asked, I would say these words does not represent anything about me. And the handle, the handle was a disaster, it was the traditional type upside down! I was suggesting that it was a defective product, but it was deformed. A handle which was big up and small down was chosen as the typical mode because it saved effort, and natural, and beautiful. This was the kind of thing that would get itself deformed in order to be different. Different so that others will notice, so that they could live in the world of reflections.

集合——

最后一次机会了，大家聚一聚，明天就要各奔东西啦~~~

时间有限（2009年9月12日14:22:46），爷爷正在田里采棉花，不一会就会回来，晚上要和妈妈去超市 last-minute shopping, 明天早上去学校，而我的比赛稿子还没有搞定，头还没洗，水还没烧，东西还没整理……时间有限，我只能做一个很简短的回顾。

1.从左到右，第一本是我旧的笔记，已经写满了（相当于一架子书的精华哦）。

2. Mapping the Social Landscape （Sociology textbook），如果说暑假借书回家是我曾经（两个月前）年少无知的表现，那么决定借这本书就是登峰造极的愚蠢行为——纸张太好，太重了。里面有很多对演讲赛比较有用的字词句及观念，都一一做了标记，而且基本上与我现实生活的时间与空间有直接联系的文章都粗略地看过了，但是始终没有下笔记录，可能觉得这是一个比较庞大的工程吧。所以看过的将慢慢被遗忘，gone with the wind...

3. The Barry Diller Story, very helpful, informative, inspiring... Thick but not heavy. Many things learned from this book are still lying dormant, but I am confident that they will come in handy someday. And its power has yet to be dug.

4. Republic. Honestly, I didn't read it.

5. The Castle. Kafka is great.

6. The Prophet. It will be perfect if it excluded all the Chinese translations and illustrations.

7. Brave New World Revisited. This is a real book! 117 pages, smells all paper and ink, and not a word wasted!

8. Guiliver's Travels. I still don't see any reason reading something like that...

9. The Pictures of Dorian Gray. Except for the Chinese translation in the footnotes, I like the book as a whole.

10. The Fall. Another REAL book.

11. The Essential O Henry. I didn't read it thoroughly.

12. 古汉语常用字典。天气凉了，收起来，来年继续给电风扇垫脚。

13. 日记本（后改名写作手稿）（hard cover）。下次假期继续写。

14. 新笔记本。TURN A NEW LEAF!

集合完毕，解散！

一字师

“妈，我要去睡了。”

“……”

“妈，晚安。”

“……”

“妈，嗯……”

“滚。”

做人何必啰里八嗦，互道晚安也不用拖泥带水。

身未动，心已远

Any responsibility and pressure aside, this is going to a free trip. Wherever we will go, one thing is sure - I am going to have a good time as a traveler.

Though I was never conscious of it, I seemed to be good at remembering directions or, more precisely, at new routes. This time, I am going to test my my ability against some bigger place. Forestry University has a veritably vast campus, but after all it is loosely laid out. It is much easier to get lost in a place which is intensively built.

What is important is to forget my body, to dissolve into the backdrop of the atmosphere, leaving only the function of my eyes, ears and nose. Nothing is left of me expect the eyes, ears and nose.

"I heard everything magnified a thousand times, like a homunculus imprisoned in the belly organ. I caught the muffled breathing of the world, as if fixed in the very crossroads of sound."(Henry Miller - Tropic of Capricorn)

In the process I am to think out anything theory of art and science I know against the new things that I come across in this brand new environment. If I ache with apprehension and pity of myself, I sink into it, I become the aching itself. I want to possess that time and space totally, and once possessed, it will be mine to keep for the rest of my life...

* * *

I know full well how the atmosphere is of a speech competition is going to deter a young heart like mine, an intense, competitive and overwhelming atmosphere conspired by serious judges, mature hosts, fancy suits of the contestants, which is determined to bend the mind of the young. But really I am intimidated by nothing more than the herd poison. If I can only meet with them one by one, and hold a conversation long enough for me to have a small round-trip to their consciousness, I guess I will just find the majority of them boring and simple-minded, as the ones I meet back in my own school.

Even if they are people more capable, out-going and learned than I am(after all, what do i know - I am ignorant), what are they as an individual? Student body president elections, prestige among his admirers, first-rate scholarship, translation volunteers, running from one building to another, all kinds of formula that are not transferable to real life wisdom, basketball, special love for digital camera just because his parents are rich enough for him to fancy that, basketball... It all amounts to rubbish heap of memory with a golden crown called "out-standing" in a prestigious university.
"As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too."(Dostoevski - Brothers Karamazov)
They might have more experience, their experience much more fancy than mine, but at our age, no one is wisdom personified. Thus I shall not be afraid of anyone.

If I shall be deterred by their mere appearance or outside show, I am a coward and idiot, thus does not deserve anything.

If I am beat by someone who is truly strong at the core, I accept my failure.

Even if I died, I would demand to know how. I would transact with the devil to know the truth. And that, even if i turned out to be a spectacular failure, will be my ultimate pride, my last consolation.

Frist-hand Experience

"When he was writing about such vast abstractions as Race and History and Providence, Hitler is strictly unreadable. In his philosophical lucubration Hitler was either cloudily daydreaming or reproducing other people's half-baked notions. In his comments on crowds and propaganda he was writing of something he knew by first-hand experience. " (Aldous Huxley - Brave New World Revisited)

"Cloudily daydreaming and reproducing other people's half-baked notions," isn't this what everybody has been doing in speech contests, together with anything but "personal" opinions, theorizing and moral posturing? In a word, that's a whole lot of crap. And even though I am conscious of this problem, I cannot avoid stepping into the same muddle if I try to grab a vast and abstract topic and just start talking nonsense, which however grand and formal it sounds, will never affect my life in any way whatsoever.

What really makes sense, not only in a speech contest, but also all the time before and after that, is "logical analysis of the discernible facts drawn from careful observation."

So it all begins with first-hand experience. Even if my life is barren, i can make it up by careful observation (于无声处听惊雷). I doubt whether all these people who has so much titles and experience have enough time to stop and ponder over the meaning of the things that pass so quickly in front of their eyes. They just rush from one spot to another, twist themselves in order to fit in everything else and become as busy as they can get, never question anything, least of all themselves, and at the end of the day, they call that colorful.

Now that the summer holiday is almost over, I have to step out of my comfort zone, meet new teachers and schoolmates, make new friends and develop old friendship, take part in some inevitable activities, have new classes, continue with my tutor jobs, and meet a whole lot of people and things in the journey to Hangzhou, or whatever it is... I need only to open my eyes and ears to hoard first-hand experience when the flood begins to pour in. Then the night time, before i fall asleep, I need to ponder on these issues that i see and hear and experience, and try my best to impose upon them logical analysis, and make them part of my wisdom.

Always stick to the essence of things. This is what I am going to do.

In Rememberance of May, 2009

Bleed it Out

It was September 1st. I woke up in the morning with the too familiar anguish eating at my heart.

That day was "psychologically important", for it was the first day of primary and middle schools. And as "autumn tiger"(or Indian summer) had just deserted the morning air, the thick and sad autumn atmosphere seeped through my lungs and saturated my blood when I was waking up.

I felt the anguish looming inside myself. I couldn't tell where exactly it was, maybe it was everywhere, in and outside my body. But if it was at the back of my mind, I would like to turn around and face it in the front and pierce through its eyes. If it was a swell on the surface of my skin, I would love to scratch it to my heart's content, until all my fluids bled out, until the white bones can be seen. Then I would look at it with my utmost curiosity and laugh until not a calorie was left.

But as I said, it was everywhere, inside and out, from head to toe. The whole northern hemisphere was saturated with the invisible monster. Everywhere I went it dogged, everywhere I sat it nibbled at my toes. Can't you feel it? Why don't you face it? How can you appear so normal? Or am I the one who is insane!

"Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But uniformity and freedom are incompatible."(Aldous Huxley)

"I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away!" Why not set a fire on this melancholy autumn air, that is pulling you all the way down.

Set it on fire, let the sky burn with your deepest shame and unrest, let the straws of rye explode with the most contemptuous laugh, let me take in the last bit of air as if there is no tomorrow, not even the next minute.

"Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friends; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting..."

I am still fighting.

Beginning of the Preparation

For the past two months at home, what has been preventing me from the actual preparation of the English Speech Competition is that all of them seem so ridiculous. Most of the debates and discussions that we put forward during the summer school together with our tutors were so unrealistic, so devoid of meaning and content that they were like plants uprooted from the soil that is so vital to its existence.

Even if these preparations are going to raise me to the height of the competition, what sense are they going to make after all that? And if not, which is more likely, why waste my time and youth like that? I would prefer reading some Henry Miller and giving a thorough thought about life and future.

Then I just deserted the much beaten path, and rejected Prof. W's philosophy from head to toe. My consolations are Confucius' words that "君子务本，本立而道生"-"The superior man bends his attention to the radical. That being established, all practical courses naturally grow up", and even if I might fail to live up to W's expectation, I will not regret the days spent following my own heart after having lived happily and fulfilled for a whole summer.

Now that there is only 3 days left before the new semester, and a month before we take off to Hangzhou, or wherever it is, I have to come to critical point of making a decision. I can no longer hold out with my detachment. After all, this is a practical world.

So here we go again, last minute preparation.

In the process, I will keep asking myself the following questions:

1. Is this important to me? Why would I care about that?
2. Where do I stand? For whom I speak?
3. Isn't this what everybody is saying?
4. Do I believe what I just said?
5. Is this the actual truth or just what I think, or conjure up?
6. Is this my wishful thinking?
7. Does this have significance to me? Is it going to change the way I think?
8. Am I going to be approved after I figure out this question?
9. Will I give the same answer if asked by my own conscience?
10. Am I lying? Do I have to lie in this one?
11. What is the truth? What will not change, what is unalterable?
12. Is this universally true, or just for China? Is this an eternal truth, or just a temporary one?

Confusion...

"Confusion is a word we invented for an order which is not understood. I like to dwell on this period when things were taking shape because the order, if it were understood, must have been dazzling."
(Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn)

Right now I am in the middle of huge confusion-taking part in the CCTV Cup English Speaking Contest, which is going to begin in a month's time. This is a very short time to prepare because the coming semester is a busy one, with 33 lessons per week, plus two tutoring jobs.

Actually I participated in it last year, but since I didn't get a good result I couldn't say I figured it out. It takes a winner of a competition to instruct us the methods of winning, though not every winner knows consciously what it is that makes him win out. All through these years, English competitions all around China have churned out numerous winners every year, some of them are really good, but most of them are too far to reach. You can find their interviews from some news websites or forums, but useful information are limited. The essence is always easy to convey, like "read more, speak more", but the rest of the specifics we are supposed to figure out for our own. And what a confusion it is when it comes to the everyday details!

But Henry Miller gives me a good perspective, instead of evading or toiling for this situation as a despot, I can now enjoy the process of staying in this confusion and trying to muscle my way out, looking forward to the day when I finally disentangle myself from this mess and get out from the best exit.

That day, when I look back, I will see the order which I was not manage to see in the process. The experience will be ever more illuminating because it gives me a sense of order, which leave me tremendous courage to go further on the chosen path and also to start something new.

书摘: Henry Miller on Friendship

He was a teacher and an exemplar: he had only to open his mouth for me to realize that I was listening to a wisdom which was utterly different from anything which I had heretofore associated with that word.

He was continually talking about himself and his relation to the world about, a quality which created the unfortunate impression that he was simply a blatant egotist.

By comparison I was very bookish, intellectual, and worldly in a wrong way. But almost immediately I discarded this side of my nature and allowed myself to bask in the warm, immediate light which is profound and natural intuition of things created. To come into his presence gave me the sensation of being undressed, or rather peeled, for it was much more than mere nakedness which he demanded of the person he was talking to. In talking to me he addressed himself to a me whose existence I had only dimly suspected, the me, for example, which emerged when, suddenly, reading a book I realized that I had been dreaming. Few books had this faculty of putting me into a trance, this trance of utter lucidity in which, unknown to oneself, one makes the deepest resolutions. Roy Hamilton's conversation partook of this quality. It made me more than ever alert, preternaturally alert, without at the same time crumbling the fabric of dream. He was appealing, in other words, to the germ of the self, to the being who would eventually outgrow the naked personality, the synthetic individuality, and leave me truly alone and solitary in order to work out my own proper destiny.

Our talk was like a secret language in the midst of which the others went to sleep or faded away like ghosts. For my friend MacGregor it was baffling and irritating: he knew me more intimately than any of the other fellows but he had never found anything in me to correspond to the character which I now presented him with. He spoke of Roy Hamilton as a bad influence, which again was deeply true since this unexpected meeting with his half-brother served more than anything else to alienate us. Hamilton opened my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was to lose the vision which he had bequeathed me, nevertheless I could never again see the world, or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming.

Hamilton altered me profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to experience a vital friendship and yet not to feel enslaved or attached because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of his actual presence: he had given himself completely and I possessed him without being possessed. It was the first dean, whole experience of friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. Hamilton was friendship itself, rather than a friend. He was the symbol personified and consequently entirely satisfactory hence no longer necessary to me. He himself understood this thoroughly.

Perhaps it was the fact of having no father that pushed him along the road towards the discovery of the self, which is the final process of identification with the world and the realization consequently of the useless-ness of ties. Certainly, as he stood then, in the full plenitude of self-realization, no one was necessary to him, least of all the father of flesh and blood whom he vainly sought in Mr. MacGregor. It must have been in the nature of a last test for him, his coming East and seeking out his real father, for when he said good-bye, when he renounced Air. MacGregor and Mr. Hamilton also, he was like a man who had purified himself of all dross. Never have I seen a man look so single, so utterly alone and alive and confident of the future as Roy Hamilton looked when he said good-bye.

Is it really me that is rotting in this bright California sunshine? Is there nothing left of me, of all that I was up to this moment? Let me think a bit... There was Arizona. I remember now that it was already night when I first set foot on Arizona soil. Just light enough to catch the last glimpse of a fading mesa. I am walking through the main street of a little town whose name is lost. What am I doing here on this street, in this town? Why, I am in love with Arizona, an Arizona of the mind which I search for in vain with my two good eyes. In the train there was still with me the Arizona which I had brought from New York - even after we had crossed the state line. Was there not a bridge over a canyon which had startled me out of my reverie? A bridge such as I had never seen before, a natural bridge created by a cataclysmic eruption thousands of years ago? And over this bridge I had seen a man crossing, a man who looked like an Indian, and he was riding a horse and there was a long saddle-bag hanging beside the stirrup. A natural millenary bridge which in the dying sun with air so clear looked like the youngest, newest bridge imaginable. And over that bridge so strong, so durable, there passed, praise be to God, just a man and a horse, nothing more. This then was Arizona, and Arizona was not a figment of the imagination but the imagination itself dressed as a horse and rider. And this was even more than the imagination itself because there was no aura of ambiguity but only sharply and dead isolate the thing itself which was the dream and the dreamer himself seated on horseback. And as the train stops I put my foot down and my foot has put a deep hole in the dream: I am in the Arizona town which is listed in the timetable and it is only the geographical Arizona which anybody can visit who has the money. I am walking along the main street with a valise and I see hamburger sandwiches and real estate offices. I feel so terribly deceived and I begin to weep. It is dark now and I stand at the end of a street, where the desert begins, and I weep like a fool. Which me is this weeping? Why it is the new little me which had begun to germinate back in Brooklyn and which is now in the midst of a vast desert and doomed to perish. Now, Roy Hamilton, I need you! I need you for one moment, just one little moment, while I am falling apart. I need you because I was not quite ready to do what I have done. And do I not remember your telling me that it was unnecessary to make the trip, but to do it if I must? Why didn't you persuade me not to go? Ah, to persuade was never his way. And to ask advice was never my way. So here I am, bankrupt in the desert, and the bridge which was real is behind me and what is unreal is before me and Christ only knows I am so puzzled and bewildered that if I could sink into the earth and disappear I would do so.

Voracious as a Black Hole

Closing the connection window with Tao on QQ, I suddenly felt that I wanted to be a better person, I wanted to learn more in a short period of time, like 24 hours, so that I would have more ideas and feelings to communicate to him tomorrow.

Left with a skull hollowed out from searching and squeezing, I felt left impotent as a jellyfish with my dry thoughts and feelings.

I felt connected.

Some part of myself was expressed, away from me. Thus some burden can be unloaded from my shoulder, and new space was left for new ideas and feelings.

That moment I felt as voracious as a black hole.

Tao taught me a lot of things. Among others, I came to a better understanding about something I agreed to a long time ago (namely, "只有同一高度的云才能相遇成雨" and "他能说各种语言，也就能和一切心灵打成一片"), and had a chance to put them into practice. By talking to him, and in constantly came to a blank mind when he asked my opinion about something he was thinking about, I felt the urgent need to learn and think about more things, so that I can be at the same plane with his mind when he is talking about something, thus understanding him more easily; better, to have some vibrations and some materials in my mind to discuss with him; and better still, if i have a much more thorough observation and clearer understanding than him.

Voracious as a black hole.