2022/07/06 21:33
Upon hearing 「彼は醜さに苛まれて、水色裝う君を呪った、互いに穢れたままで」, my eyes went suddenly dark, my wrists withering like oleander. The fatigue that washed over me clouded my consciousness; my body swayed with the movement of the car. Artificial light was no longer in my world — what remained above my consciousness was darkness and indistinct human voices.
2022/07/08 00:21
The helplessness I felt facing the assignment stabbed like a needle into the cracks of my consciousness; sleep coming at the wrong hour erased the gaps between units of time. Exhaustion has finally sprouted. I have to face again the virus that gnaws at my soul — the one that had seemed absent for so long. By the time the pain in my eyes eases a little at midnight, tomorrow will arrive, and I can only fall into chaos once more.
2022/07/08 00:35
A strange dream. In a hotel on a coastline of ambiguous weather, the teachers from Xinghewan were holding a meeting with students. At some point I left the meeting room and ended up somewhere I didn’t recognize, facing the sea breeze, my mind in turmoil. It was a space with only me in it; I could turn to look at the glass shell of the hotel and the vigorously transforming brilliance of the sun it reflected, and I could look down at the white sand flowing underfoot, the water gently rippling.
Rain and sun seemed to have lost their distinction; I could no longer remember whether the clouds at that point covered the sun or not. At that moment a figure with glasses was coming toward me; I thought it was Hu Zizhen and made a cutting remark, but looking more carefully I realized it was Chen Ce. He tried to persuade me to return to the meeting room, but the meeting room had already been entirely washed from my memory.
Then I was elsewhere in the dream: beside a landscape-garden-like arrangement of scenery, a theatrical stage lit up brightly. It was apparently another meeting room. I was backstage, unable to see the audience. I retreated into a space filled with seats, every seat taken, with elderly-looking administrators in the front row. Tang Shengchang was probably somewhere in the crowd — I don’t remember — but I bolted from that place, bright as it was, for it left me numb inside. Then I found myself in my imagined version of the University of Rochester. I met some college students there. Since I didn’t know anyone, I ran up to the top floor to read in what was like an inflatable pool. Before long a student warned me this was against the rules, and I followed them down from the roof. This student very generously took me on a tour of the campus library, the exterior, and the athletic field; we parted ways in the stands.
I don’t remember his name, don’t remember when I woke up, don’t remember whether I went back to that strange meeting room, don’t even remember if this was a night dream or an afternoon dream. But I remember that when I woke and saw the time was five o’clock, I was submerged in a murmuring terror.
2022/07/08 00:56
While I was pondering whether I craved or feared being seen, I noticed a silent blue plastic chair in the bathroom, hunching its backrest beneath a half-damaged orange light. The lamp had traced a few faint halos on the wall, but the chair’s shadow was completely opaque. I couldn’t tell whether the water stains on the glass were narrating a grand rebirth on a personal scale or simply daily life. Standing in the narrow bathroom, before me was the night tinged yellow by a thread of dim light; I saw my own shadow and the shadow of the water cup appearing on the sink, sharing space for a performance with the water droplets. The play of light and shadow, precise in its contrasts, was beautiful enough to shake me. Narrative seemed to come into being right then — my life was playing like a film, and I was the only audience. I washed my red, swollen, parched eyes with water, wanting to make this film more vivid before me, but its anguish made me struggle once again. I existed in the imbalance between wanting to be watched and wanting to be invisible; I shared my loneliness with the plastic chair and listened to the voices of those who were not lonely. I coexist with the millions of water droplets in the sink — perhaps I too will eventually flow into a pitch-black round hole, destination unknown. Then I cut the electricity, and the bathroom was left with nothing but the moon’s strangely faint light scattered across the window.
2022/07/08 01:09
I finally understand why every time I listen to Wednesday Campanella’s “Oshichi”, a string inside me is plucked. Its loneliness and mine resonate at the same frequency; an Edo-style story of human sentiment plays out on streets lined with utility poles, and this small town is revolving around me, with countless camera angles filming my endless seventeenth year. I want to leave myself some space for self-interpretation… My words are stalled in the spaces between houses; my story is stalled on stretches of thirty-minute roads; I am stalled in doubt and self-examination.