So I’m back to Javier Marías. Your Face Tomorrow Volume III: Poison, Shadow and Farewell. At the point where he gave lengthy description and reflection on ge-bryd-guma after accidentally or premeditatedly sleeping with a young female colleague, an enlarging hole on whose stockings warranted numerous mentions as if that was the sole driving force of an eventful or tranquil rainy night. But now in Volume III, I’m finally starting to get what the title means or implies or insinuates. Time passes slowly in this book (one night in 50 pages or more? I’m losing count or sense of pages ever since I got used to reading on Kindle), while in reality, it might take years or decades to turn just one page. How do we know how our faces will be like tomorrow, tomorrow meaning an arbitrary amount of time later, be it a day, a month, a year or say, 5 years, 10 years, until one forgets when the initial counting point was? If I see your face tomorrow, would I be able to recognize it? Out of a crowd in a Sunday afternoon art museum, in a waiting line at an airport gate, or in a corridor inside of a gold-decorated concert hall? Does it make a difference if I do? How much time has to pass before a past has become a past and can no longer be disturbed or altered or continued? Will there eventually be a tomorrow where I will fail to recognize your face and you mine? The logical answer is yes, of course, a tomorrow far enough from a yesterday.
Maybe Marías was talking about trust. I was never sure what exactly he was talking about, as he never narrowed his adjectives or adverbs or verbs or nouns down to one definitive term. Maybe he was not able to make a decision. Maybe he did not see the necessity to make a decision. Maybe it’s just more practical to leave more options open, so that later on you can always say, but that’s not what I meant, or but that’s exactly what I meant. The other day I took out the music sheets of Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 to play again after a few years, just a day before the concert where a variety of his pieces, including this one, were performed by the Wiener Symphoniker with a young gleeful Austrian conductor. I watched attentively at his movements and gestures that, as I recall vividly and confidently expounded by Cate Blanchett in Tár, define and dictate time. Time can go faster or slower or stop altogether. Time is not the same when confronted by music; it’s only the backdrop that is steady, perpetual, but colorless, irrelevant. She didn’t receive the Best Actress Award, but to me the part where she gave the lecture at Julliard and played Bach’s Prelude in Major C while interpreting each bar with a meticulously planned tone of voice was brilliant and a classic, for which she deserves all the awards in the world (but congrats to Michelle Yeoh). As my piano teacher repeatedly tells me, in the end it’s all about time and dynamic. But the most important thing is intention. Why do I want to see your face tomorrow? A school friend that I haven’t seen since university suddenly wrote me today, let’s arrange to meet if you’re coming back. Life is short, and we probably won’t meet many more times. I replied with a sad face. Maybe that’s why. I want to see your face tomorrow because if not, I won’t recognize you the day after tomorrow because the changes bestowed on you by time will be too drastic. Does it make a difference if I don’t? “The one charm of the past is that it is the past.” wrote Oscar Wilde (but of course, if you know the characters well from The Picture of Dorian Grey, this one came from Lord Henry). How can you start playing a piece without intention, without emotion, without expression.
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It always takes me quite some time to get what they exactly mean. I wonder if it’s a matter of habit of resistance to what historically warrants resistance, or subjective perception of the objective world, which is persistently and consistently reinforced through self-affirmation and the proneness to attribute all that’s not immediately comprehensible to the lack of intelligence or consideration on the part of others. The wrinkles around his eyes and basically all over his fatigued yet confident face caught my eyes and prevent me from making more eye contact than strictly necessary. I stare into the computer screen instead, knowing for a fact that eye contact in this particular case makes next to zero difference. What am I doing here. Where have the years gone. These are the two questions, to which the answers evade me at any given point in time, on both literal and figurative levels. I try to squeeze out a smile that can be loosely interpreted as an indication of respect, which he may or may not have earned based on the years that marked his life as half lived. How should I know. The loudness of his voice and the complacency that it carries gives me a sense of physical disgust mixed with indifference. My brain involuntarily and falsely stores the heuristic that this individual is the stereotypical man of the very country to which I don’t and won’t ever belong.
Speaking softly and tentatively of a lack of the sense of belonging, I look up from the piece of paper which contains an exhaustive list of over fifty human needs, some more fundamental than others. How can it be that they keep talking about it or at least keep showcasing how much they talk about it but still are incapable of empathizing or at least appearing to empathize when people are caught in moments of vulnerability and sentimentality. They nod agreeingly and absent-mindedly, as if I was simply recounting a not well remembered idle holiday in an uncharacteristic countryside. Over the years I naturally developed the tendency to have very low expectations from people, because people might disappoint you and hurt you if you let them. I watch them as we continue to discuss or make fun of other topics suggested to us by people that may or may not have a more profound understanding of human interaction. At least they try. And trying itself is commendable. Maybe if we avoid feelings altogether the world would be an easier place. I think reading Sally Rooney’s books kind of brought me back to a time when I was young enough to give my own random thoughts so much importance that I rambled on and on, regardless of the prospect of getting a considerable readership base. I cannot really say whether it’s a good or bad thing (especially since I’m starting to lose my ability to form a reasonably eloquent sentence in English without first resorting to a few words in German that sometimes appear superior in terms of precision of expression, but not to say that I’m capable of forming any eloquent sentence in German itself). I’m not even recommending her books, simply mentioning them. There’re more useful books to read or spend your time on. I guess I’m just grateful that the way she writes reminded me of the way I used to write, not that these two ways necessarily overlap – that’s beside the point. The florescent lamps are shining equally over me and others, just like the sun, I wonder why we don’t all feel the same. Recently I’ve been thinking about my grandmother, mother of my father. Only sometimes, that is. She was a very short peasant woman of few words. As a matter of fact, she was illiterate and lived a rather isolated life in the countryside. Apart from cooking food (even the extent of that is very limited - the ingredients available to a poor peasant woman were scarce in those years), doing domestic chores, and maybe cultivating crops or keeping poultry (I do not have clear memory of my childhood visits to their house in the village but I do vaguely remember a pig), she didn’t do much. Especially after my parents moved them to the city, away from the people that spoke their language. I was raised to speak standard Mandarin, and my grandparents only spoke dialect (and a very rural version of that). I never had any conversation with them that’s beyond food, weather and how is everyone doing. And I never considered that strange.
My grandfather, father of my father, was a tall and you could even say handsome man. He naturally assumed the role of the head of the family, even if his two adult children had clearly outgrown him. It was a custom in China, more then than now, more in the rural areas than in big cities, to respect, obey, and even worship your parents (or father). He couldn’t read, but he had authority within the walls of the family. He had authority over my grandmother. She did whatever he asked, without exception and without complaint. Outside the family he became vulnerable, because who would listen to you if you haven’t earned it somehow. After my grandfather died, my grandmother was alone. She lived alone in our previous apartment, closer to the city center, closer to us. My mother seldom went to visit her, and I never considered that strange. My father and I went to have lunch with her a few times a week. She would cook lunch (mostly noodle soup), and we would eat lunch. Maybe a few words would be exchanged, but she never managed a follow-up question beyond “how’s school”. Everything is fine, I would say. I never bothered to elaborate, maybe I thought she didn’t deserve an elaboration. Sometimes we invited her to have dinner with us, and she would walk fifteen minutes each way. Taking the bus was a waste of money for her, as everything else. She never asked for anything. She just quietly existed. I never knew what she did in all those years that she lived alone in that old apartment. She didn’t read, didn’t watch much TV (she couldn’t follow everything in the news or TV series), didn’t have friends to hang out with, didn’t have any pastimes, didn’t have a religion. Every time I went there, after we finished lunch, after the usual brief exchange had been made, we just sat there, quietly, so quietly that the passing of time became evident and then unbearable. Then we said, we gotta go. She always kept a mild smile on her face, enough for me to presume that she was not unhappy. I also never knew her name. I think her full name was only mentioned once in my entire life and it was never given any significance. In those times in some parts of China, the name of a married woman was insignificant, almost irrelevant. I only knew her family name was Wang. My other grandmother was a respected doctor, educated and authoritative. Her name carried so much weight because it was remembered by every person she helped and every prescription she wrote. But Ms. Wang had no name, and that was fine by everyone. Nobody gave it a second thought. Nobody thought it mattered, what the short peasant woman with a rural dialect wanted. I took the plane for the first time to fly from Beijing to Tianshui for the funeral of my grandmother. There was a parade in the far countryside close to where they used to live. It was not a proper cemetery, but my grandmother was buried beside my grandfather. On the way to the grave, according to the village custom, the relatives must cry as loudly as possible for as long as possible. My father and my aunt were walking behind the coffin, followed by other distant relatives I didn’t know. I remember my aunt and another woman crying extremely loudly, almost grotesquely, until their tears were dried up or maybe there were no tears to begin with. I couldn’t bring myself to cry, not for display’s sake anyway. But I was sad all the same. Losing someone is not easy, no matter how quietly they existed. Exactly how much love does one have to have to be able to respect everyone equally? 2020 is almost over. In a blink of an eye, that is. One might ask, what happened to this blog that I neglected or omitted to update for an entire year. It’s funny how long or short one year could seem, depending on one’s point of view. A year befitting for self-reflection, for soul searching (albeit minus the customary physical escape to a less familiar destination), for looking inwardly during quarantines, lockdowns, grey winter days, video conferences, temporary internet connection breakdowns, walks near the neighborhood or in suburban parks or mountains. During the silences after the night has fallen, the unprecedented has happened, the living has turned into the dead, gunshots have been fired, questions have been asked and answers have been attempted but not yet provided.
I remember the day I had lunch with three of my best friends from school time in a restaurant on the fifth floor of a shopping mall in Xi’an. One friend sent a dish back because it was too salty, and strangely I didn’t remember her as sensitive to salty food. They invited me to taste the milk tea from a popular tea chain shop, or was it a fruit tea that I tasted. I had to go to the airport to catch a flight to go back to Beijing and eventually back to Vienna. They dragged my big suitcase and accompanied me to the Didi taxi. The driver commented, you’re lucky to have so many people see you off. It was not a particularly clear day, I believe. The air quality in Xi’an is still suboptimal. I was indeed lucky to have been home in January, because after that, international travel, something to which we’ve grown entitled in the recent years, has become a luxury, and not only in the monetary terms. I’ve spent countless hours on airports and in planes leafing through newspapers that did not interest me much and reading books that couldn’t keep my very divided attention. Being amongst the tireless business travelers for long enough, I might have lost the curiosity I had when I was a mere traveler, maintaining a reasonable amount of excitement and looking forward to a destination that was actually chosen by me. The only travel outside of Austria I managed to have this year, of course apart from the one in January because that was to China and work-related, was to Italy. It also hardly counts as travel, because well, it’s Italy, if you know me. It was not my first time in Puglia, but we visited different towns and beautiful beaches. Italy never ceased to amaze me with its beauty. Just like Brazilians never ceased to amaze me with their positivity (the inconsiderable sample size should not overweigh the accuracy of the observation). Or maybe it’s just my cognitive filter that determines all these perceptions. Certain things reinforce themselves in our minds whereas others fade and disappear. Sometimes I’m shocked not only by how much I forget, but also by how much of that is what I once perceived as life-altering occurrences. You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. I guess as long as you can still remember a dot, you’re guaranteed to connect it someday somehow. Remembering it, however, can never be guaranteed. In Your Face Tomorrow Volume I: Fever and Spear, Wheeler talks lengthily about the campaign against “careless talk” supposedly in UK in the 1940s. “They were asked to give up the one thing they most love, that is most indispensable to them, the thing we all live for and which everyone, without exception, can enjoy and make use of, both poor and rich, uneducated and educated, old and young, the sick and the healthy, soldiers and civilians… Grammatical, syntactical and lexical skills matter little, oratorial gifts still less, and pronunciation, diction, accent, euphony, rhythm even less…” He was talking about talking. The thing we all live for. I took it out of the context and hence cannot assert its veracity. My intention might be rather to recommend this author, should anyone happen to be in need of a book recommendation. Or maybe I wanted to talk about something closely related to talking. Words. Written words. Another thing we all live for. We’ve already established that memory is unreliable, fickle. While I was on it, I discovered a nice quote. Memory is a fickle thing, a flickering light in a darkroom of possibilities. So what evidence do we have to corroborate our past, at least to convince ourselves, if not others, that it was not a mere invention, imagination, rendering? Nowadays we rely on photos and videos to remember facts: where I was in October 2015, what I had for dinner three weeks ago, who was present and wearing what on such and such occasions. Sometimes emotions can be recorded, though just peripherally and superficially. Who was smiling and who was not. There is a saying to this effect: I don’t remember you, but I remember how you made me feel. I think that’s when words come into play. Words transmit, convey, retain, preserve, precipitate and revitalize feelings. They do not waver. They do not wither. They can be a century old and suddenly bring tears to your eye. Without fading colors and without adapting diction. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, putting something in writing is in itself an act of commitment, even if the words state otherwise. An unconscious classification of importance. A determination for something not to disappear, even if the words say end, closure, farewell. That’s a contradiction between form and content. Who is to decide which one shall prevail. And the loss of written words is most devastating. A past without evidence. A memory without witnesses. Same as dancing without spectators. Then you’re free to remember whatever you want. How fortunate and unfortunately at the same time. I think I learned what love is yesterday.
I’ve read a peculiar set of books this year up till now. A range from You Are a Badass at Making Money (cliché commercial self-help book with a very green eye-catching cover; honestly, I picked it up from a store and paid the full price for it - what we in Chinese refer to as “tax for low IQ”, meaning you pay for something completely unworthy because you are stupid enough to fall for it - because I saw it on some list of recommended finance books; you can only imagine how I felt while reading it, especially having to painfully go through the language its author opted to use) to Shooting an Elephant (well, written by George Orwell, who like many distinguished writers in different times, gained his sophistication and ability to look at issues dialectically from copious amount of traveling and seeing how other people live and speak). From The Geography of Thought (lots of it is common sense to me but a person should really have some idea of what’s covered in this book to claim to be an expert in the other culture; cultural difference is beyond what translated language can convey, and language is the product and representation of how a cultural group thinks) to Becoming (a surprisingly touching read - there is something very compelling and relatable in the stories Michelle tells and she makes you believe a little bit more that changes towards the better are possible in this world). From The Fire Next Time (I need to understand the American history more to be able to fully comprehend this book; it’s a direct and honest account of the race problems in America and offers solutions that might still be relevant today) to A Heart So White (written in a stream of consciousness style that I happen to be able to follow well; the main plot revolves around marriage and relationship but it travels through time and invites readers to contemplate on right and wrong and the fine line in between and the intertwining of our imagination and reality). And some more. Then a few days ago I started reading Reckless Daughter by David Yaffe, a portrait of Joni Mitchell. I’m still in the first few chapters and so far I enjoy it a lot. She is one of the most talented and poetic folk musicians, and she actually started out as a painter. She said, I sing my sorrow and paint my joy. Believe it or not, I can relate to that. In the middle of the book, there are some photos from different times of her life with the presence of different people. She has had many lovers. One pictures was a close shot of Joni and Graham Nash, only their faces are showing but they appear to be very intimate. I haven’t reached this part yet, so I don’t know what exactly happened. I just finished the part with Leonard Cohen. In the caption of this photo it writes: “I loved the man, so I can’t say anything bad about him.” Love is not being able to say anything bad about that person. So here we were, at this little club (or a juke joint, as one might refer to it) called Red’s Lounge, on the corner of Sunflower Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Clarksdale. I entered it quite reluctantly, not knowing what to expect given the kinda sketchy people hanging out outside. As a matter of fact, I had no idea what to call sketchy in this part of the world. The sun had set not long ago and we came down with our rented pick-up truck, a white Chevrolet Colorado, which blended in quite well in the southern States. Andrew, the owner of the guesthouse where we stayed in Vicksburg, drove a Chevrolet Silverado. He said when he saw our car, he was really unsure whether we were the guests of the night or simply locals passing through.
The “hotel” where we were staying in Clarksdale was only a few minutes’ drive away. It was a historical shotgun shack (might be around 100 years old?) at Shack Up Inn, a nowadays quite popular place to stay in Clarksdale, ranked high on a Google search. In our shack Fullilove, there is an out-of-tune piano and some out-of-place pictures and decorations that reminded us of a time we didn’t know. It’s not very sane to visit the South without the sea at this time of the year. The sun started dancing around long before our waking hour. Yet the striking contrast between nature's temperature and the manmade (excessive) coldness made the sultriness seem more bearable. The staffer at the reception table light-heartedly informed us at check-in that we were allowed to loan a guitar from the collection on display. I didn’t take one, for I don’t play any blues tunes. But I fancied the idea that some man or woman had played one of those guitars on one of those porches many years ago, and the same songs are still being played today, with alterations and improvisations and all but they never went missing. They were never lost and hence the people who created them were never gone. The person singing the song is, at the moment of singing, the sum of everyone that has ever sung the same song in the history of the existence of the song. How miraculous is that. I don’t even know why I had the idea to do a blues road trip; some do it as a pilgrimage but for me it was just another tour of discovering what I knew too little. Doesn’t mean that I ended up knowing much - just knowing one more thing or word or name or song or place would render it meaningful enough. Learning gives you the ephemeral burst of satisfaction that for a brief moment you could say you know, as if that would count for eternity. We entered Red’s Lounge and were surprised by how red it actually looked (because of the lights, that is). It was smaller than I expected; smaller than most of the bars I’ve been to. We were asked to pay seven dollars’ cover each, and then we sat ourselves at the far end of the room at a long table against the wall, which was still within 5 meters’ distance from the stage. There were a few tables and other seats closer to the stage, and most of them were already taken. The red lights might have induced me to look at the same people in a different light; they all seemed mellow and at home. Maybe they were literally at home. Different people in the room took turns to take the stage and each sang a few songs. They changed roles and many of them played harmonica (and so heartbreakingly well). The bassist, a black man with a narrow white beard and wearing a hat that concealed the upper part of his face, seemed to have a physical condition that hindered his ability to keep his neck up straight. It was hard to guess his age. Initially I thought him to be really old. Then at some point he took on the role of singing too and he looked up a few times in spite of his physical condition and revealed his eyes. There was a certain sparkle in his eyes, kind of a combination of self-assuredness and perspicaciousness and high-spiritedness and playfulness. I don’t know what he sang but he sang the best blues I’ve ever heard. I guess most of the patrons there are either musicians themselves or regulars so it was extremely easy to identify strange faces. Two of the many musicians, one old and one young (certainly too young to sing among the others), came to us at different times and asked each of us how we were doing and where we came from while heartily holding both of our hands. It was hard to be there and not feel content. Maybe it was the singing and dancing of neatly-dressed old-aged people full of youth. Maybe it was the white and black men joking about and with each other. Maybe it was the harmonica. Who knows. I always say, a large part of understanding a language is understanding the culture. It was so true. Many times I couldn’t understand a simple “how y'all doing” not because I didn’t know the language, but because I’m used to a culture where people I know don’t even ask me how I am doing, not to mention people I don’t know. One unthinkable thing happened when I was standing in front of the Business & Money section at the Amazon Bookstore in New York near the corner of 5th Avenue and West 34th Street - a young man standing beside me asked casually, you read any of these books? I was a bit taken aback and then took a few seconds to browse through all the books in my sight again to evaluate exactly how many I have indeed read. Uhm.. a few, I answered reluctantly, have you read lots of them? Yeah, I just like to come here sometimes and try to stay at the forefront (or something to this effect). Right, I said. Then without making any further remark he vanished, perhaps because I wasn’t being such an excellent conversation partner under the circumstances. I stood there for another long minute, stunned by how simple it could all be. A big black man with sunglasses and a cane walked to and fro inside the bar a few times. I guess he was not entirely blind but couldn’t see well. He knew almost everyone and was ready to laugh at every joke that was told on stage. We were under the impression that he was actually the legendary Red (now that we know about this place). He wore a T-shirt that wrote on the back: backed by the river and fronted by the grave -- Red’s What does that mean? We tried to decipher this piece of code for some time. The river must be the Mississippi River, very obvious. I was quite certain that it meant we, as mortal human beings, are all going to die sooner or later. The grave (death) is in front of all of us, whether we like it or not. But we are nurtured by the mother nature, embodied by the Mississippi River, long and winding and passing through ten states and bearing witness to the history. So before we die we have to appreciate what we have and live fully. It seemed like a sound theory. Later another musician solved the puzzle. It was simply describing the location of Red’s Lounge. Behind the bar there is a small river that’s definitely not the Mississippi River. Its name might be Sunflower River. Right across the street which Red’s is facing, there is a cemetery - Heavenly Rest Cemetery. As simple as that. Last night we went to an English stand-up comedy show in Vienna. In a small, packed, overly-air-conditioned and unevenly-lit room at the back of a bar at the Gürtel, we were sitting fairly close to stage, which might be the only advantage of such a so-called intimate setting. The light in the center back of the stage aimed directly and glaringly at the center of the audience, which was approximately where I was sitting. I was lit and the woman on the right side of me remained in the darkness, safe and protected from an embarrassing joke that might find its way to one of us. Under this unexpected spotlight, I tried to maintain a respectful and self-assured facial expression throughout the show while smiling politely even if what was being said was not particularly amusing.
The comedians took turns to make fun of the lack of humor of Austrians, even the comedians who themselves were actually Austrian. Some of the non-white Americans inevitably told some race-related jokes; all of them inevitably told sexual jokes. Ever since Netflix decided to push stand-up comedy shows into my life, I’ve watched quite a lot of them. I don’t find the excessive use of curse words or extensively detailed and graphic account of sex stories very funny. Sometimes they verge on being unnecessarily vulgar and yet as a comedy spectator you are expected to have an accommodating sense of humor and laugh when it’s meant to be funny. At some point one American comedian said something about meeting her wife on Tinder ten years ago and having an open relationship or something. I was trying to process this piece of information so for a second I forgot to smile. The guy looked at me and said, this ma’am seems to be shocked. I was confused for a second whether he was talking to me or some ma’am equally conspicuously lit by the stage light behind me. The comedian reacted quickly and said, and she doesn’t even understand English. A few people laughed, for reasons they didn’t quite know. I felt bad for the comedian for having a non-interactive spectator like me. Maybe I really didn’t understand English. I used to think the funny must be the unexpected. But then I listen to the Trevor Noah show on Spotify every day and the joke about Trump’s hair never gets old. Maybe it’s not so much about the joke itself but the person that tells it. Some are funny, and the others try to be funny. It’s the trying that takes the fun out of it. Recently I have been to China quite often. That is, on the 1st of March, I am flying from Beijing back to Vienna for the third time in 2019 already. It has been relatively warm this time around in Beijing. Two weeks ago I was visiting the Forbidden City on a rare snowy day - the grandeur and grace of the magnificent ancient buildings shone in a different light as I hurried through them following the incredibly large crowd. I did not take much time to appreciate it. As a matter of fact, I did not take much time to appreciate anything. I am simply chased around by some ghostlike pressure without a particularly convincing reason and a specification of a destination.
Last night, I went to the well-frequented Mei Bar in the center of the CBD district with two colleagues as a ritual to conclude a long business trip. It happened to be Ladies’ Night on Thursday. There were lots of ladies and gentlemen alike. People of all ages and nationalities, some dressed up and some in T-shirt and sweatpants, some in groups and some circling the bar alone, some innocently having fun and some discreetly searching for something else, some drinking without dancing and some dancing without drinking, some filled with joy and some with boredom. The playlist seems to always be the same - even the live band performance is exactly the same every time (this was my third time there). I was standing there, immersed in the music too loud for one simple exchange of words, holding my old-fashioned and watching the group of tall pretty Russian-looking girls in front of me, and strangely felt nothing but peace. I guess living is a process of making peace, with the world but mostly with oneself. My colleagues pointed to a lady and whispered (or shouted, in this case there is no difference) to me that she is a prostitute named Mandy. Mandy is always in this bar and chats up with men about potential business opportunities. When I looked at her, she just started talking to a man in his late fifties or early sixties, casually-dressed and alone, and I possibly saw some loneliness in his eyes earlier. She had her back towards me so I could not see how she looked. I was curious so I kept looking. About five minutes later, Mandy turned around, went in a certain direction and disappeared into the depth of the bar. I had a quick glimpse of her. She looked absolutely normal. Normal dress and normal makeup. Nothing out of ordinary. Nothing can tell you that she is a prostitute, except for the cards she gives out to men that says, if you want to have sex, call me. The man also went in a certain direction some minutes later. I could not tell if that was the same direction. My colleague asserted that there were many prostitutes like Mandy there. I wonder if the Mandys are living a particularly fulfilling life. Sometimes the bustling of a city gives you the illusion that you are caught up in something important, something larger than yourself. You’re compelled to do something about it. The highest skyscrapers, glamorous and glittering, make everything seem out of proportion. In a big city, you ought to do something out of ordinary just to prove that you are not less than ordinary. Hope we all find a place in this world. It’s been a while since I really sat myself down to write something. It’s been a while since I was really touched or amazed or surprised by something, someone. Everything seems to be just a matter of course, regular and predictable, which is fine, and depending on the point of view could even be considered as a rather positive circumstance. Summer passed and winter sneaked back in with its typical bleak sunshine, leaving us not much space for dreaming about warm smiles from good-tempered and good-hearted strangers. Some nights I woke up from dreams that I couldn’t recall, not even for a second after waking up. It must be for the best.
There have been many well-articulated and well-marketed ideas or ideologies that we as human beings living in so-called modern and civilized societies feel inevitably compelled to accept, especially when confronted by fellow civilized human beings, as the ultimate and only truth. Democracy. Equality. Diversity. Inclusion. Freedom of speech, which in itself lies a paradox. Maybe I am too much influenced by the West. Many of my Chinese friends might not care too much for them. The first question is, if they are at all, as advertised, the best ways. The second question is, whether they are at all achievable goals. Of course, I suppose everything is possible when put into the timeframe of eternity. I suppose all those heroes in history somehow saw beyond their lifetime and into eternity. The other night we went into a bar in Cape Town. The poster outside indicated that there was a show that night. It turned out to be a stand-up comedy with a certain Nik, possibly a known comedian in South Africa. Before he started there was a short opening show from a big black girl. I am merely trying to state the fact. She gave a rather funny performance and showcased a vivid personality with rich body language. At some point, she made a joke about how she preferred to have sex with a fat guy. I looked around the bar. There were well over 30 people, all white (excluding me). Then all the bartenders and waiters were black. On the stage a fat young black girl was telling sexual jokes about being black, female and fat. There must be something wrong about it, right? But then if a joke can be told about an average-weight white male, why not a fat black female? What does equality mean? A very thin woman stopped us on the street one night after a failed attempt with two other girls. She said, I don’t want your money. I haven’t eaten for two days and I’m hungry. Can you please buy me something to eat? If this would be in Europe or China, I would not give her a second look. But she seemed genuinely hungry. We agreed to her proposal and followed her into a small grocery shop that was conveniently located beside us. It took her a few seconds to find all the stuff she wanted, and they cost 30 euros. We were surprised and said that’s too much. She reduced her items very skilfully until it magically reached the exact amount we said we were ready to pay. When we walked out of the shop, we had a discussion whether the shop owner and the woman had some kind of a cooperation deal. Still I couldn’t get indignant or anything about the obvious scam. I myself have almost forgotten how it feels to be hungry. Who am I to judge that poor thin woman? In the gorgeously decorated guest house where we stayed for five nights in Cape Town, every morning some black women served us breakfast. All of them were extremely friendly but only one of them did not shy away from having prolonged conversations with us. She said she’s been working there for fourteen years. She said she wants to go to Germany and have a better life. She said she will take her teenage boy and never come back. She laughed heartily with a peculiar facial expression, a mixture of desperation and resolution, despair and hope. The morning we left, we bade each other goodbye on the porch in front of the impressive house. The sun was brutal for a spring day. We often say, it’s gonna be okay. “Okay” is really just a subjective perception. With a certain amount of getting-used-to, everything is indeed okay. Around my turning 30, my girlfriend group has been talking extensively about skincare on WeChat. They were sharing experience about Japanese gadgets and products that cost thousands of euros (next time you say Asians look young, think twice about how much time and money they invest in such a cause). As the laggard consumer living in Europe, I learned a great deal and was ready to buy everything my girlfriends recommended (some kind of crisis for sure). Then we were sitting in an Uber talking with the Zimbabwean driver that has to save money to take a bus to go back home once a year. Another driver told us since Uber came to threaten the taxi business, their salary was cut in half or even less. And I was watching all those black workers (not a single white one) lying by the street side to take a nap under the scorching sun. How much can you see as a passing tourist? How much can you see as a tiny person living in a tiny bubble of your own upbringing and surroundings? Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse? May all our dreams come true in this lifetime. I recently picked up a book from Maugham again. It is a collection of five short stories and three novels, including The Moon and Sixpence. The reason was simple: I wanted to enjoy a pleasant read. Many times I waded arduously through an abstruse vocabulary without reaching anywhere proportionally meaningful. Of course, it might have been my own lack of understanding. In any case, Maugham rarely disappoints me. In the morning flight a few days ago, I opened the unusually heavy book and finished the story The Pool.
The story is quite straightforward. Lawson, a well-educated white Scottish man with a decent job in a bank, fell in love with a beautiful "half-caste" girl Ethel on one of the colonial Samoan islands and married her. He took them back to Scottland, partly because he wanted to give them a more comfortable life and a better future for their dark-skinned son, and partly because he could not bare the island life anymore. However, Ethel grew increasingly homesick and dissatisfied and one day, she left with their son without warning. Lawson, madly in love and not being able to imagine a life without Ethel, went after her, while knowing he would detest his life there. But it was inevitable that he lost his love, his job, his dignity, his home, his health, his social status, his everything. He succumbed to alcoholism. He was despised by people around him, including Ethel. He drowned himself in the pool where he first fell in love with Ethel. Now I forgot why I thought it necessary to re-tell the story. Beside the moral of the story, I wonder, will we all be sensing that calling from home sooner or later? Will there always be a part of me that yearns to go back? The Pool was written in 1921, almost a century ago, but aren't we today still struggling for more or less the same fundamental reasons? Sometimes it feels like, the evolution of humanity resembles the growing-up of one single person - the very core of who you are was determined in the very early years of your life; later on you just change and adapt on a superficial level. What held true hundreds of years ago still holds true today. Well it's just a thought. |
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