res ipsa loquitur

Pursuing me through the days of July,
That April wee hour
I failed to assassinate.
Silently stepped on
The last raindrops of Monsoon,
On my trail it came.

To its fiery wings I raised the Shield of Ennui,
But no defense there is
To the fateful dagger
Known as Insomnia,
Swiftly like a shaft of black light,
Black flame burning all night.

May brings Monsoon season. Every evening I hike up the mountain in light rain, ramp upon ramp along the cable car rail, to the tiny apartment at Mid Level. After a whole day alone in a glass box I long for a sound, a word. But how do you talk to the Island lying in repose, in silent rain? You can only listen to her pulse and breath - in the rhythm of raindrops beating against the umbrella, in the wave of tires gliding across the wet road surface, in the tide of winds sweeping across the rain-drenched leaves. But most of all, in the silence that flows underneath all these, in the promise of a night of moist and tranquility, as the day finally recedes into the far side of the sea.

There is this narrow alley, perched on the back of the mountain and no more than 50 feet long, that always smells like gardenia in the evening. The evanescent fragrance becomes more enduring after mixing with the smell of late rain, swaying back and forth with the evening breeze like a piece of silk hanging high in the air. The stone steps are covered with moss on the edge. One evening I saw a girl walking down the steps, an umbrella in one hand and the other raising in mid air as if pressing against an invisible wall. She stared down the tip of her open-toe shoes with devotion, balanced her delicate figure before sticking out her left foot down the step gingerly, her lips slightly apart and a lock of wet hair pasting on her forehead. I wondered if she noticed the smell of gardenia too.

Upon turning the last corner and coming out of the alley you will find yourself at the waist of the mountain looking out on the Victoria Bay. A massive web of light sprawls down the mountain slope, across the water face, into the depth of the infant night. I used to wonder what words are adequate to describe this magnificent view, but upon reading this I gave up my meager attempt: "The rain has drawn off; and amid the moving vapours from point to point of light the city was spinning about herself a soft cocoon of yellowish haze."

So this hermit life is my way of mourning - living in silence. In the day I slave away in front of a wall of glass window. I can see ships coming in and out of the harbor in an endless stream and at the same time the narrow streets wind their ways through the skyscrapers, where neon lights are flashing 24/7. Perching on top of the mountain there are these luxurious apartment buildings that are wrapped in low-cast clouds and mist as if in expensive fairy tales. At night I read feverishly. I don't know what spurs this sudden zeal this time but I'm riding it to the end. I'm reading Thoreau too but it's more like a chore than anything else. I wonder why anyone would call this narcissistic self-righteous rant philosophy.

More than once I wanted to write something, but bulked at the idea just as quickly. Whatever I have to say seems to be of no significance. none whatsoever. I remember how much I despise the novel 倾城之恋 when I read it in college. The whole country was occupied, raped and slaved, yet this woman went on and on about this love affair which I can't honestly bring myself to give a tiny rat ass about. And it disgusted me when she lamented the misfortune of her heroine cause she couldn't have her afternoon tea as she pleased. Every now and then when I watch the news I shed tears too, but the rest of time I move on with life in silent, biding my time for the next thing unknown.

  He wonders if it's not inappropriate to feel the deep indifference he so feels in the midst of it all. When being asked, he covers it up with vague neutrality. But when he heard the freshman at Duke being called a "shameless traitor" he started to have an inevitable aversion. Such zeal. "There's a man going around taking names." But he wonders if the girl herself really knows  what she is doing. But no matter.

  He woke up to a heavy mist outside the window. It's gonna rain all day, he thought to himself, with vague comfort. Raining days remind him of home, always. He wollows in selfish uneasiness, worrying about having nothing to do in weekdays and lamenting over unexpected work on weekends. And so it goes on. Dedalus detached himself for "Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes", but he's just detached. "For I'm positively bored." He reached for the yellow highlighter underneath the pillow and marked that line.

  In the middle of it he started to sweat uncontrollably. Afterwards when he recalled vividly how his heart skipped upon hearing the dreaded question, he thought that was a sure omen.

  He has all but given up quiting. Standing outside the building, puffing smoke slowly and staring into the rain-drenched street in a blissful trance is too much of a temptation for him. An endless stream of taxi flowed in front of him. When the door opened, a leg always stuck out first. In that split second before the person appeared he tried to fancy her face, if it's a leg of a girl who wore skirt without stockings on a rainy April afternoon. A guy in suit and tie (on a Sunday) walked by, shooting an absent-minded glance at him. Without slowing down his pace the guy scanned him quickly again with a second look as if suddenly reminded of something. Then after a few more steps the guy unmistakably turned around and looked at him with a short but deliberate stare. There's something in that stare he couldn't reckon with, but he fixed his sight on the girl in the ice cream shop across the street as if not noticing anything. The guy walked away. The girl was standing behind a glass window looking out on the street, wearing a curious uniform that made her look like a flight stewardess from some discount airline. She looked around as if not noticing his gaze at first, then she returned his attention with an equal expressionless stare, unfazed. The street in the middle made both of them bold. The she looked away, relapsed into her usual boredom. He put out his cigarette and went back into the building.

  Nonetheless he's grateful now that there's work to occupy his mind. Lying in bed all day yesterday he thought to himself, not without sarcasm that he now has a real glimpse of what Raskolnikov must have felt. Uncertainty excites an inexperienced mind, the finality afterwards unhinges it and sedates it, hopefully.

  Finished "Crime and Punishment". After an onerous journey through the 400+ pages, the last few chapters are vindictively powerful. But upon turning the last page at 2am last night my mind was laden with fatigue. The intellectual exuberance usually aroused in me by the powerful finale of a masterpiece was just not there. I still remember vividly the sensation 5 years ago when I finished Lolita on a winter night, how I shivered through the ending uncontrollably; how I got up from the bed upon closing the book and started typing frantically yet still barely able to keep up with the thousand threads of thoughts racing through my mind; and when the day finally broke how I sprinkled my face with cold water and went straight to work, walking in such a haste with an almost religious ecstasy aroused by fresh pain and suffering. But laying down the book with exhaustion last night I came to the realization, for the first time in my life and with some sort of vague horror, that reading is probably not the Omnipotent Savior I always thought it was, to which I can always turn for justification of existence.

  I did feel "a pang in the heart", so to speak, in the final scene with Dounia and Svidrigailov. Come to think of it, it has not just a passing resemblance to the final scene in Lolita, when Humbert, after committing the murder, drove away slowly on the highway in the opposite lane. "I'll wait", Svidrigailov said, twice. I can almost see the expression on his face, the sort of calmness and sense of relief a man feels at the moment when he knows with absolute certainty that there is no reason for life to go on, when he makes up his mind to die.

2:03am @ Mix, start to relapsed in and out of trances in perfect sync with the insisting beats. It is so intrusive,  and so scandalously loud, it's like being violated - at first it hurts you, physically, but after being pound repeatedly, indisputably, you kind of just give up and lay back and take whatever it's coming to you, in utter resignation. Look at these ambiguous faces: with stupor and mechanic, idiotic expressions that have a remote resemblance to smiles, you can't help but wondering what proportion of these posers here is really happy. It's a chore, nonetheless an absolute duty, to shake their bodies in whichever awkward way it occurs to them at any given moment, "rhythm is gonna get you," and so it goes. You stand in a discrete distance, move your body gingerly, meanwhile trying to maintain a laughable air of aloofness, but all the while at the back of your mind you have a vague realization that something is not quite right. No, awfully wrong actually. But you are perfectly comfortable with that comprehension. The last trace of sanity or hope of atonement, you let it flow idly in the depth of thoughts, like a piece of log on the surface of a menacing sea, knowing that it would be your last straw to hold on to when you start to feel like drowning. 

在被静电杂音淹没之前，女人隐约听到男人在另一端说，明天是周末。。。乘七号线地铁去海边。

清晨女人站在地铁站硕大的地图面前，看了很久。地铁线路图错综复杂，宛如一只巨大的蜘蛛匍匐在城市表面。并没有七号这一条线。女人正感到惶惑，地图右边突然浮现出一个巨大的按钮，"zoom out"。她伸出手去，地图开始缩进，女人瞬间仿佛在飞船上升空离开地面，城市的街道象被吸进黑洞的中心，以光速倒退消失。起伏的地貌紧接着开始隐约浮现。女人觉得晕眩，她抬起手，地图瞬间静止。所有的细节已经消失，一片黄色的沙漠中间有一个红色的五角星，"You are here"。然而地铁线的构架并没有改变，仍然从五角星的中心往四面八方伸出触角。女人再次将手伸出，四周地貌又迅速地被吸入五角星。然而地貌良久不再变化，蔓延的只是更广漠的黄色。没有蓝色海岸的踪迹。女人开始怀疑记忆的可靠性。她闭上眼睛，电话的电流声潮水一般的涨起，男人的声音象从水面传来，遥远而不真切。可是她几乎能想象出男人说话时揶揄的神情，嘴角一个毫无诚意的笑容，似乎发出的不是邀请而是挑衅。女人无声地掏出蓝色的指甲油，在地图底端涂出一片不规则的形状。然后用红色的唇膏在五角星和蓝色色块之间划出一条线。一个黑色的小圆形在线条上浮出，女人用唇膏在圆形中心写上一个“七”字。

女人走下地铁，立刻踏上了海边的沙滩。她看到男人的背影，正一步一步往海中走去。她迈出脚步，后跟陷入沙粒中无法前行。她于是站在沙滩中央一块突起的石头上，全神贯注地将思想聚焦在男人的肩膀。男人并没有回头，只是以一种接近圣人的耐心和缓慢但坚定的速度继续往海中行进。女人终于意识到男人到海边的目的。她并且突然明白此刻实际上男人的心神已经全然的离开了这个世界，只是他的身体还滞留在视线中。象在飞往另一个城市的飞机上等待起飞，虽然身体还在出发地，但是整个离去已不可逆转。一瞬间女人开始怀疑是否跟这个男人相识，也许她只是在电话串线的瞬间偶然听到一个陌生人的独白，就这样唐突地出现在这个应该是很私密的现场。但是男人对她的辗转到来似乎无动于衷，女人于是从焦躁化为平静，象一个巫师目击自己的预言不可避免的展开，她目送男人的身体逐渐融入海水之中。 一个浪头突然涌起，将泛着唾液般泡沫的海水送到女人脚下。女人的脚趾触到了海水的冰凉，但是一瞬间她感到了从海水中传来男人迅速涣散的体温。那种温度顺着她的身体蔓延，穿过她战栗的小腿烧到小腹。海水退去，男人的身影已经完全从视线中消失。女人意识她那短暂的所谓平静其实不堪一击，恐惧象海水一样涨起将她淹没。

地图上的蓝色指甲油开始干涸，衬在黄色的背景上象一团嚼过的肮脏的口香糖。

陪爸媽喝下午茶。

Something occurred to me today, as I was having my daily dose of nicotine on the rooftop garden this morning.  After the dust settles, the only persisting benefit I'll derive from this one month and half excruciating experience is that I finally found out the One best legal doctrine: the Fertile Octogenarian Rule. The intended constituents of this rule are women of course, but I dare anyone to challenge my entitlement to it under the Intermediate Scrutiny applied to sexual discrimination. Yeah, as things stand right now, there's a reasonable expectation that I'll need it.