Scene 17

Somehow I knew I was gonna have that dream. When I wake up this morning the sun was hiding and the chilly cover bites at my body. I saw a sense of sadness in every corner of the room showing its teeth at me. I wasn't hungry but I ate as common senses direct me. And I spent thirteen minutes pondering what music to play for my brunch. I don't want anything dark to add to this feeling of solitaire but any cheerful song would sound stupid and bland.

I ended up with Linda Ronstadt's "For Sentimental Reasons". A clear and powerful voice interpreting My Funny Valentine and I Get Along Without You Very Well. And I saw the shoes I was missing in my dream. Always the contrary in reality, thought I, you win some you lose some. My shadow and I, circling the kitchen passing on food and trash, chopsticks and dishes, stand aside finding no trace of dirt. And I looked outside the patio, at the piece of gray, contained sky.

The clouds are too heavy. The rain too shy, for May is not a good month for coming by. I would have bitten my pinky if not for people roaming down the streets, I would have cried. You can paint, you can wander, you can swallow miseries like oats and you can write. But I'll simply hide.

And so I did hide into my office wearing my headphones and stressing to keep estranged from the outside crowds. If you see me you'll notice the weirdness, if you hear me you will possibly cry too.

Scene 16

I have a portion of my life and I own a portion of the world. Pure synchronicity and yet very worthy of scrutinizing. Sometimes I forget that and I stay in a static state casting all worries away. It never occurred to me that those moments are actually the happiest in my entire life and that the minute I started to look back or forth or around, pains start to afflict me. Now I learn.

People are used to bragging about their big ideas. Plan or no plan, take life fast or slow, mono or multi sexual, wounded or healed in a war. And before I have any power to give solid proof of any of the above points by simply living through them, life has elusively finished one quarter for me. And all I can tell right now is a shot here or a line there, some old fashioned singers, and a bunch of CDs that get tired of more and more rapidly. There’s a bucket of things I’d like to do but don’t have time. There’s a hard drive of errands I got to run but don’t have the passion. I bounce in between pleasing people and pleasing myself (and you bet most of the time succeeding neither). And when Robin Williams asked Matt Damon what do you want I got dumb as everybody else watching that scene and knowing clearly that I don’t have a damn answer to that either.

Before night shuts before the music stops, let me fall asleep. It’s easier this way, as if the whole world is still operating while I’m not around. My life was packed with plans one after another up to this point. And I told people and myself casually before that I need this period to cleanse the pragmatism and start seeing life as it is. Now it sounds like a mere public-posed non-hurting reply. Life like this pleases, but doesn’t excite anybody. Even the one-and-a-half-hours making food (for thought hopefully) stands as a perfect division between a studious student and a lazy home-slacker, it ceases to provide me with any visions of the future. Taking it pessimistically, three years in the States amounting to nothing but making little money and spending it fast, how can I continue to be so sure of my theory of seeing life with no planning? It’s almost the same level of awkwardness as my jazz piano playing, where I try very hard to improvise and slide through as many keys as possible in a flash. And yet, no improvisation works without a deeper understanding and structuring –or planning- underneath. This being said, I don’t expect it to mean that every chord has to be well calibrated-which will definitely kill the attraction immediately…

So tomorrow, same car same route same location. Same schedules, questions and answers, same fascinated face painted. I’m happy that it’s half way through (at least so I hope). And just this three years is characterized by a steep line. Yes I am moving somewhere and I hold on to this little momentum. The smell of watermelon sweeps away all worries and brings back nostalgia, for sentimental reasons. That’s why I always pick more than three types of fruits in grocery shopping. One taste is too narrow and too big to bear. Just like…silence is so much more for the ear to take than any noise.

Scene 15

This week’s almost ended. 4AM Friday morning, sober as ever, after the big shock from “Carandiru”. I eventually changed my listening from Tori Amos, who whispers every morning in my ear, you think I’m a queer, I think you’re a queer, to Chen Guanqian’s “Speechless”, an album I’ll probably never forget. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been this yearning for the CD after 2 years. Not too much of a transformation was observed, as both play the piano and sing in a casual yet poignant voice. They write songs, maybe one less frequent than the other. Oh one writes good lyrics in Chinese.

The movies have been specifically selected to guarantee a dropped jaw and spinning brain. That speaks also for “Drugstore Cowboy” and “Kids”. “Elephant” got me really into Gus Van Sant and “My Own Private Idaho” and “To Die For” certainly shows his virtuosity. But 4 movies in 3 days revolving around drugs sex and kills, that does get my head a spasmodic crash. I won’t deny their necessities in nowadays film making but when either the director or the audience takes it seriously, the result will be horrifying. And for these past few films, it seemed like both parts are taking it so D seriously. Bingo. And just think about how all the Tori Amos songs add to them. Pure poetic images blended with violence and imperfection. What a piece of work.

I reclined. I simply don’t have that much more energy to spare when the rest of the worlds are manufacturing reasons for my spasm. In the cinema my breath was heavy, outside my voice really low. They heard it and they avoided the film. But how are you going to avoid life. And yet, how am I making life better after all these screenings, be it mine or others’. The answer comes to what I’m listening to right now. Speechless. Speechless. In Chinese it’s actually “I want to say but I stopped”. It has a momentum in that word, a passion quenched, a motif suppressed. In English it tuned into a static state, a picture finished, a page printed. That makes my writing harder to read, ‘cause I have all these pictures overlapping and voices dubbing but you don’t see a motion. That’s an F excuse he said. Just because you can’t write well. Don’t blame the language. How will I know.

Chen’s voice is getting dimmer. The night is turning brighter. The movies keep haunting, and I need to learn to cope with it. Suddenly I felt…I felt…as if no words could possibly convey this heavy emotion collapsing on my shoulder. Speechless. That’s it.

Scene 14

Saturday. Nothing came up. Designated voluptuous boredom. Things I can’t do, places I can’t go to, they all try to lynch me. And I choose to face my solitary moments with music, with food, with seasonal changes. And no regrets, they don’t work.

I finally got Diana’s new album on CD. I love this “Departure Bay”, even before I read somewhere that it’s about death. Of a very important person to her. The silence of piano, the calmness of her voice, and the unbearable suffocating sadness, forge such a great feeling inside of me. I kept the disc spinning in my player for almost a week, which is really rare. And each time this track comes up, (and of course, it’s the last track, which should deserve perfection on such a delicate album.) it’s the consummation, the climax, of a heartbreak.