noontide35@hotmail.com says:
爸爸，在不在？

吃饭拿钱 says:
在

noontide35@hotmail.com says:
媽媽呢

吃饭拿钱 says:
媽媽打拳，有什麼事

noontide35@hotmail.com says:
沒事，那我打電話？

吃饭拿钱 says:
何必

noontide35@hotmail.com says:
。。。


(30分鐘後...)

吃饭拿钱 says:
媽媽回來了，一身汗濕透，要馬上洗澡。

noontide35@hotmail.com says:
那等她洗完我打電話？

吃饭拿钱 says:
好

  So this is my last Wolverines game. 3 and 1/2 hours in freezing rain. 91 total yards, 3 points. Towards the end of the 3rd quarter, my mind started to drift, I crave for a cup of hot coffee more than I've ever craved for any woman. It's quite a scene after the game. It was starting to get dark, and a subdued crowd of more than 100 thousand fans walked in the rain in silence, drenched and miserable.

晚上有人在MSN上說中秋快樂，才有幡然醒悟的感覺。大二的秋天下晚自習騎自行車回宿舍，偶然注意到月亮出奇的大，在北京見到那樣清爽的夜很希奇。回去跟室友講，才知道那天是中秋節。十二年過去了，仍然不是應景的人。聽説有人買了太多月餅在發愁，有人則只帶了一瓶紅酒獨自開車去海邊。我在屋裏開着門坐了一晚。今年秋天住在一個老房子的二樓後面，開門就是一個露台，下面是幾近廢棄的後院，落滿了葉子也沒有人打掃。下午回家的時候踩着枯葉上臺階，想起“你是我最完整的廢墟”這句話。不過忘了是在哪裏看到的。下了一夜的雨。開着門，聼着雨滴打在露台木地板上的聲音，不時涼風穿過紗窗，感覺秋天點滴地滲進骨髓。后半夜雨停了，月亮出來。站在扶欄旁邊抽煙的時候仰着頭發了很久的呆。

4am I came home supressed but wide awake. Barhopping makes me massively depressed, always does. Beijing is the vast and empty city it always is, infested with nonchalance and desperation. In Beijing, deep into the wee hours, I look at ppl and I can't help wondering why they do things they do, and try NOT to imagine their pain they must feel doing it. I feel like I could weep for every single one of them, individually or collectively. It's almost like having a glimpse of how Jesus must have felt in his living days, walking the strange world amongst strangers with compassion the magnitude of an epic tragedy.

Amongst the pictures I like this one maybe the most. It's around 6pm in Mong Kok, I stood on the borderline of day and night, watching this couple walking out of the shadow into the setting sun. The girl closed her eyes to the momentary blinding light, putting her trust in the boyfriend's hand. The guy seemed peaceful yet assertive. I want to find this couple and send them this picture - at that moment they seem so much in love.

There goes my first paycheck.

Camera Model: Canon EOS 30D; Lens EF70-200mm F/4L USM

I can't believe this just happened. My friend Jared (who's a quintessential macho man btw) is staying with me for a few days until his sublease begins. I was watching six feet under, and right at the scene where David and Keith are having "hot man-on-man love action", Jared walked in and asked "what are you watching?" I must have turned lobster red. I was like, "Oh, this show, you know... it's a family show really..." He made some random comments and swiftly left the room.

  Opened my eyes to the familiar shades of gray on the bare ceilings. 8:28am. I was disturbed. A week into it I already start to turn robotic. I was counting on Saturday to make up some sleep time, yet I woke up only 23 mins after the regular time. Totally on my own initiative too. Outside my window the guy was sitting on the fire escape having a cigarette. He came out every hour to smoke, infallibly, like a clock.  The day is growing, lights sip through the window and creep up the wall, in a painstakingly slow but undeniably affirmative way. I lied in bed trying to figure out what I was to do with the extra time on hand - I wasn't planning to get up until 11am.  

  Watched another episode of Six Feet Under and it's barely 10am. This episode elaborates one point: we live in a world where half of the ppl are hopeless loners and the other half, going through heart-wrenching breakups, are on their way back to this first half.  Isn't true that we keep finding ourselves caught in impossible situations even though we haven't necessarily done anything to deserve it? I used to be a firm believer of the notion that whatever is natural can't be wrong. Then I was Q.E.D.ed of the ridicule of it. "But thus is life." JBW would say. I got another B+, in JBW's class. I wallow in mediocrity, even in a literature class. But thus is life.

Maybe I should really stop watching Six Feed Under in final time, it just messes with my mind, fucks me up, and twists me aroud like a worthless plaything. It's almost 1am, I'm sitting here with cigarette in one hand Jack Daniel in the other all messed up like a god damn cheap sentimental low-down. And I have to get up 7am tomorrow morning for the Legal Ethics exam. Some irony. Sometimes some random ppl see my writing and offer their sympathy for my "sadness". Robin Williams said to Matt Demon in Good Will Hunting, "Do you think I'd presume to know the first thing about your life just becasue I read fucking Oliver Twist?" I see myself as a relatively content person. Cause I don't really know what I want from life so I don't ask for anything. Yet I don't know why I am always so hopelessly drawn to morbid shit like this. But then again, You can only see the light mostly clearly when you are immersed in darkness and sheer silence, when it flashes across in those split seconds.

Some of the quotes from Episode 6:

Nathaniel (Father): "Now I'm like a fucking prophet. That's one of the perks of being dead, you finally know what happens after you die. And you know the meaning of life."
Nathan(Son): "that seems fairly useless."
Nathaniel: "Yeah I know, life is wasted on the living."

Mr. Jones: " That's my wife in the box. 56 years I've been sleeping in the same bed. 56 years listen to her talk about the same shit, day in... day out."
Nathan: "It's late now maybe I should drive you home."
Mr. Jones: "Shut the fuck up boy let the old man talk."
Nathan: "Ok."
Mr. Jones: "She ah... once chased me cross the front yard with a steak knife try to cut my ass. We spent close to a year apart. That time like a hole in me now."

Didn't get much sleep last night. I wouldn't say I'm a typical sore loser - when my friend was rambling about how the critical and dubious calls all went Colts' way (mostly just to accommodate me, being a good friend as he is), I didn't say a word and sunk comfortably into my depression and resignation. But I AM still trying hard to come to term with it, trying to rationalize my sinking feelings that is still sinking after a good 20 hours, in my usual, quiet but desperate way. 

I credit it to the innate cruelty of life's finality itself. What's done is done, that's how I approach my daily dose of defeat anyway. Asking "what if" is a dangerous game to play: if you indulge yourself to constantly look back, to think long and hard, the irreversibility of decisions will paralyze your ability to choose altogether. L. Cohen describe his father's death when he was 11 as something that "couldn't be disputed, or rejected, or even judged". But let's face it, when it is that close, we are doomed to look over our shoulders and relive that critical moment over and over, and over again. Each time, you replay that make-it-or-break-it split second in your mind and experience the breaking of it afresh. As Jackson slid to the ground with that interception, I didn't feel frustration, or agony, or pain - my mind just went BLANK. For a good half minute. But I knew that gap of conscience would be filled with every bit of frustration, agony, and pain in the days to come. Half a minute of numbness is as long as the protection mechanism will last me. So, the worse kind of living in denial is not that you refuse to believe the outcome that is now carved in stone, but it's the fact that you refuse to see that your reliving the moment, your suffering over it obsessively does nothing to change the result. What's done is DONE.

Asking "why" is equally dangerous. Being someone who wallow in the endless bombardment of "equity" and "justice" day in and day out, I curiously am never a believer of intrinsic fairness. It is a man-made concept that has no business in the court of nature. The vindication of being a hapless victim of maltreatment doesn't change the fact that you are FUCKED. But the forgoing of insistence on fairness has its own conceptual difficulties. Implicicated in the concept of fairness is the notion that the law of nature has its intrinsic power of balance after all. Like Alicia Keys said in her song "Karma": "What goes around comes around, what goes up must comes down." If that is not true, then why can't "I" be the one to have it all?

saw a curious little production called "Silver River" tonight. I didn't realize till very late that it's an adaptation of the Chinese folklore 牛郎织女. At the reception (well, sort of, pizza and soda instead of wine and cheese) the librettist gave a charming preview of what was to come. Although maybe Chinese by heritage, he confessed he'd never heard of the story until the composer approached him with the idea of the production. That being said he did a decent job staying true to the main story line, although he referred to the heroine as "Goddess Weaver the Pipa Player" (apparently she plays a Pipa in the show, don't ask me why), it sounded very awkward, if not down right ridiculous, to me at the first blush; but he kept repeating that phrase over and over again in his 15-minute narration - like a really bad commercial which keeps pounding its catchy phrase at u until it sticks with u like a gum, tasteless but mighty viscous - eventually it became completely comical to me and I had a sinking feeling that it would stay with me for a long long time after tonight.

5 mins into the show I was reasonably pleased, the visual was great. The heaven, so to speak, glowed with neon-like green, and the Peking Opera-style costume of the Jade Emperor (a name more fitting to a condom store or a lower east side pimp than to a bilingual Chinese God) shimmered with a corresponding cool shade of blue. And in contrast the Buffalo, who had recently changed his/her sexual identity (don't ask), donned an elegant bedsheet-like costume in low-key orange, the whole scene was really rather pleasant on the eyes. (For u ppl who claim to know me well, no, I am NOT being sarcastic here). But the rest of the show just did not work. The Cowherd was a mid-age white male, with self-importance and cheap flamboyance written all over his face; while Goddess Weaver the Pipa Player, a sort of painfully under-trained mime and a bit of gymnastic nutcase as well, did nothing but flapped her arms in the air desperately like a drowning chicken and looked like she didn't even want to be here at the first place. No words, no singing, arm-flapping is all there is, ALL day. I'm like seeing this bitch once a year is one time too many. And the God, oh my god (no pun intended), nearly knocked me out of the chair by suddenly switching from Chinese to English toward the end of show, in the middle of a song. His accent was so bad it took me a good 2 mins to realize he was singing in English all of a sudden, with no explanation and definitely no good reason. He was the only Chinese-speaking character in the show, which i thought was a nice touch, keeping the mysterious and austere feeling of an oriental God. And in the end, the Buffalo just won't stop bragging about what heavenly music the two lovers play when they meet. I'm like, heavenly it might be - while judging by the music that was actually being played it was the kind of heaven that would put sinners at ease: "thanks but no thanks" - if they meet once a year and all they do is playing music, then I'm sorry the Cowherd is gay.

commissioned by my friend:

childhood ambition: die young
fondest memory: anything i can remember after my Alzhimer kicks in
soundtrack: "Mad World" from Donnie Darko
retreat: No.1 Yemen Road, Yemen.
wildest dream: 0 balance on credit cards
proudest moment: Beat the DUI test with half-conscience
biggest challenge: putting pants on one leg at a time on a daily basis
alarm clock: "Wake up and smell the coffee"
perfect day: any given sunday
first job: landed me in juvenile
indulgence: Grande latte and chain smoking on a freezing morning
last purchase: one way ticket to Lalaland
favorite movie: Eternal Sunshine
inspiration: suicidal thoughts

My life: is in limbo.
My card: is maxed out.