The Land Between Dreams

Perhaps it was a dream, or perhaps it was one of those brief dazed interruptions in sleep, but there was that singular moment, there I lay, feeling nothing. Nothing at all. For that moment, the sea was still, the clouds froze, the heat of the sun passed over, and there was nothing to feel. It was beautiful. And then I drifted back into sleep, thinking no no, and everything returned.

The Last Spring

You should not do this, I told myself. It will come to no good end. You are advancing a moment of bliss which you will have to repay with misery for a long, long time (this was later the substance of an unspeakably amateurish sonnet—I had far too much time).

Don't do this.

But I could not resist. The flurry of snow and rain, almost as if I had wished them into being, spun in helices of gold in the cones of light from the street lamps.

I hugged my jacket tightly, absorbing the cold. To make up for the life I had spent not experiencing this wonderful, wonderful cold, to store enough for the remainder of my life.

Absorbing the moment. For safekeeping, for the remainder of my life.

Please let there be snow, I had wished, and there was snow.

Whenever I feel down or let down I would think of this singularly beautiful moment. One that can never be replicated. One that is so utterly perfect that it can never be matched. Which would make me feel even worse and let down, but that is what I gravitate towards.

When I had returned to my room I wrote something about cold down falling, the trees forming an arch, and words I wanted to say being caught in the mist of my breath.

I cannot find those three lines anymore (and I do not know where the sonnet is).

Statue

I squat by the toppled Statue and finger the pieces morosely. Did I build him too grand? Did I build him too immaculate? Perhaps I should not have built him at all. What did I do wrong? Now do I build a smaller, humbler Statue from the remains, or do I remake him in all his fullness? 

The landscape is littered with pieces of broken stone. In the distance the sun hovers, a circle of inscrutable, yawning blackness, both too near and too far at the same time. It draws nearer with every moment, imperceptible, until I get distracted, and when I turn back—it is frighteningly near. And at the same time too far, wretchedly far. 

The toppled Statue stands, or lays, by the Marble Ruins. I approach the Marble Ruins. I kneel down, and pick up a piece of marble. Until the sun arrives I toil away, repairing what I can, all the while hoar frost forms; maybe I can find some warmth tonight. Maybe the sun will finally arrive. I gaze longingly at it. But it does not respond, it will never respond. 

What about the Statue? I do not know. I do not know what I did wrong. I do not know what to do. 

Have Yourself Another Dream

It is 2 am, I am staring out the window, soft music, everyone else asleep.

In some ways, very little has changed. My room has remained more or less the same, my shelves still filled with the books from ten years ago, furniture unchanged. Perhaps I am actually dead, and my room has been left untouched for my memory. But I doubt it.

More and more I find the need to live. To care less, but to live more. To live boldly, cheerfully, recklessly, passionately. To be generous, to be selfish.

To dismantle the expectations I had, my old dreams, and put up new ones. Not dreams to be happy, not dreams of what I want, because those dreams will ultimately disappoint, but dreams that somewhere in the distance, the shore will meet the sea, by which these trappings are shed.

Meanwhile, with that thought, I can be cheerful. Against the distance between here and the horizon, I can measure all else by their true diminutiveness.

学会放好以前的渴望

Inevitably, they are eroded away. The once-pristine images constructed by the light, dancing fingers of naivete stilled upon the startling onset of awareness, and now they wear away, deadened figures standing in the deepening tide.

The dreams that carve the features, the happy reverie that furnish the details, the whims that colour and fill, the stars illuminated in eyes, the grand and the silly, such that they are perfect but attainable, improbable, but not beyond the limits of young hopefulness; these are the images that used to stand against the horizon, aglow in the belief in a benevolent fate.

But slowly, dim, darken, like grass shadows rise and sway and eddy about their feet. Gloom yawns and stretches, languid, soft, unthreatening, up to their knees, their waist.

Pieces break away, falling, vanishing, soundlessly. Cracks stab through them. The cold sets in, welling up in weaknesses, driving deep, wrenching apart, widening.

Their silhouettes blur, become indistinct, edges dissolve, the shade settling in, filling them; acceptance, resignation sinking, the ponderous eclipse, on the verge of completion. And now, now, all of a sudden now, they are no longer, not even the remnants of the images; no, they have fully inhaled the tide, becoming now the coagulated vapours of the night. But they remain in the horizon, perversions of our expectations, enshrouded in the severe authority of reality, brought into our hearts, welcome our masters.

It's Just One More Day

Today I read this very tragic story about this couple. It made me pensive for the rest of the day.

Now, night looms, I have to sleep soon.

And I chanced upon an article about a military veteran (and psychologist) who helped a lot of people but ultimately took his own life.

Which really puts things in perspective.

This world is horrible. Perhaps because we feel too much, because we invest too much meaning, too much of ourselves into things.

I realize that I am so afraid of pain, of loss, of uncertainty, of failure, that it cripples my ability to live.

Now, if I only I could stop feeling

So Maybe It's True

My aunt sent me shirts from the US for the New Year. The shirts were sealed in zipper bags. I opened the first one, a very nice Hollister shirt. I took a shirt I already owned to compare the size and see if it fit (I couldn't try it on because I had already showered for the night). Looked like it fit.

The second shirt was from A&F. I opened the zipper bag. The deep musk of the A&F Fierce fragrance issued forth. The shirt must have soaked in the vapours of the store for a very long time.

I froze in the middle of the hall, holding the shirt to my nose. As long as I held it there, I was back, it all came back, crashing down around me.

Right now it's a few metres away, on the couch, just laying there. My sense of smell feels dulled now, I must have sniffed it for a while.

Occasionally hints of the fragrance will float by (it's that strong). On these wisps ride memories, fainter and fainter each time, evaporating away when I try to hold on to them, dissipating irretrievably into the past.

I really left my soul back there.

That I Could Not Hold You

Alienation, but not in a bad way. Not totally. Alienation from people, withdrawal and dissolution into nature. Darkness and peace, peace in the darkness. But always lonely.

I am beginning to understand my gravitation towards sadness. I have accepted that my search for eternity has failed, and so I am trying to find a way to withstand the tread of life as it descends upon me, again, and again, and then be ripped away from me. I am hoping that when I have absorbed the shadow, I will be inured to life and loss.

When I was 14 by chance I caught a glimpse of the abyss, the inescapable abyss which consumes everything, the inevitable abyss which all things hurtle towards. It is always there on my mind, just out of sight, but always there, the dimming at the end of the tunnel. In my mind, everything has already turned into the dust it will become.

But I am obstinate (and that is why I struggle), a part of me hangs on to hope—not that the abyss can be avoided, but that I can be happy while I fall into it. Perhaps I can. But I don't want to take any chances, I don't want to be disappointed. If constancy (and to me, peace) can only be found in the darkness, then I will seek the darkness.

Epilogue

Later in the day I wondered if the direction I had set myself on was the right one. After further thought... Yes. Yes, it is.

Forever Never Comes Around

It is greedy, he thought, to search for eternity.

To him, the world was separated into that which was eternal, and that which was not. Like a scientist he picked things, events, people up, and inspected them, scrutinising their meaning. He devoted himself to them, engulfed himself in them, wondered about them, despised them, despised himself, and inevitably realised that they belonged to the category of the non-eternal.

Only that which was eternal had meaning and value. That which was not might as well not have existed. Such was the standard he exacted upon the world, including himself. His quest was for eternity, and he was destined to give up all that was ephemeral but good to the crushing, relentless onward tread of time. He would not realise what he had done until he was at the brink and had reason to turn around. But when that happened he would comfort himself, that he too was paltry, just like everything else he had destroyed. Then the blink of the cosmos would complete, and he would be gone.

It is greedy, he thought. Things cannot survive being stretched so thin across time.

There was a book he had been thinking about more and more recently, one that was very important to him. It was a gift from one of his best friends (because he knew he liked the book). But he lost that friend, only the book remained. It pained him to think of the book because it reminded him of the loss, but it was a book that he related to far too much, and he could never escape.

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book... What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other. 

He looked up from the web page he had googled on his phone; he had missed his stop.

Addendum

He took out the book, the gift; the cover was wrapped perfectly in plastic, so tightly it warped (he was always too much of a perfectionist for his own good), with little green tabs to mark out the pages with the parts he knew were special to him.

He sat down on his bed; he did not know what to do.

Even Though It Hurts I Can't Slow Down

A few days ago I caught me muttering to myself (reassuringly, no less), "It's okay, it's okay, it's just life, it will pass."

So this really has to stop.

I have a lot of regrets. There are a lot of changes I wish I could make. Sometimes I am so bogged down by all these regrets that all I can think of is how I want to start over. But there is no starting over, there is only shutting down.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of things for which I am thankful. Things which may not have been part of my life if there had been the slightest deviation from what I did.

And so I realized, perhaps I should stop with all this self-inflicted misery, appreciate what I have right now, and then try my hardest to live better.

Being Pathetic Is A Choice

I'm just going to use Merriam-Webster's definition of pathetic: marked by sorrow or melancholy, or pitifully inferior or inadequate. Maybe you have every reason to be sorrowful, maybe you really are inferior and inadequate.

But you don't have to be that way. You don't have to feel that way, and you can strive to be less sucky. I will choose to be less (baby steps) pathetic.

Life Will Invariably Suck

Life sucks, is gonna suck, will suck forever.

You can distract yourself from the sheer suckiness of it through various diversions. Like entertainment, recreation, substances (chemical and Marxian).

Yes, previous paragraph existed solely for that.

Anyway, the point is, life sucks. And being unhappy will not reduce any of that. So it's time to accept the inevitable and just be happy despite it all. In other words, sadness changes nothing, so be happy. It is all very logical.

There Is Always A Way Out

There is. Some ways require more effort, some more time, some require more sweat, or more blood, some more altitude, some more prescriptions. But there is always a solution. Or a gas, or certain solids, or a whole lot of hard, rapidly approaching solid.

So chill and enjoy the ride. There is nothing so bad that won't go away, or alternatively, there is nothing as bad that will ultimately come. Either way, now is okay.

It really is okay, okay? It's just life, it will pass.