Youth

7h10. One's youth was at its peak until last dawn, only to be passed with the sound of cicada singing to a harmonious tone, out there on a calm Sunday morning.

2012.7.13

I outlived myself.

One Thursday (2)

Thursday. Just as I was about to slip into a state of being totally oblivious to all the things that were weighing on my shoulders, "Return to Innocence" pulled me back to reality. Script to be written for the final presentation, readings about Kabuki to be finished before next Wednesday, one report to be submitted on Tuesday.


This morning when I went out of my room to do some laundry, I had a chance to look closely at what my balcony is like. I have lived here for more than a year, but have never cared to see what it is like. I noticed the gutter which was drying, the room doors lining very meekly and silently. Inside those doors lay many lives which encompass different aspects to mine - Japanese kids burning their time youth with club activities, frivolous girls' talk, making love, watching baseball, writing, reading. Sometimes I could hear the girls' giggling from the room next to my own balcony. When I was pondering over my balcony, a sweet-sour taste of lemonade crawled up inside me, twitching my every muscle and appealing my every senses. That sweet taste of summer hot. All of a sudden I realized this was what Happiness and Calm all boil down to - that serene feeling of going about your daily business, even though they are just paltry and hold virtually no meaning, no more than when the moon orbits the earth or when I tell somebody "I love you"; indeed, as paltry as the cosmic moving around in its eternal recurrence.


My stare smoothly travels over to the far-stretched sky above our building. Blocks of houses, concrete, banners, the newly paved road, all residing peacefully in their normal state, except this time they tend to exert a kind of stealthy, nonchalant yawn, tired from their morning sickness. The sky was not white, nor blue, but a little tainted grayish ash colour, the air is stagnant. I went about my laundry.

Episode 1: Drying clothes

Hanging one by one with the hangers. The stick was set in my balcony. And I didn't care whether someone from the opposite building, standing there on his balcony, was looking at me. I just went about my business. It was getting hot.

I became disturbed by some murmuring voice, seemingly coming from a girl, somewhere from the opposite building. I was totally indulged in my afternoon silence when something and someone was trying to break it.
Bullshit.

Episode 2: Know nothing, feel something

I knew nothing. I stared at my room, my eyes fixed on the white wall in front of me. Pieces of fabric - indeed it was sweaters and towels - hung loosely on the hangers, absorbing the smoke I was drawing from my nose, my mouth, the waves of white sulky smoke filled with menthol and stuff. This was so serene: I was amazed for the first time so far, at how this little 4.5 tatami apartment room could give someone such tranquility. The tranquility itself was not of an average kind: it was almost surreal, to the extent that my heart almost bursted in joy, in rapture, in revelation. I AM HERE, in this little space of mine (and is it mine?), feeling more content than ever.

Suddenly yet insipidly a kind of dizziness swallowed me up, the scene before my eyes turned awry, everything was swirling in a cosmic disharmony. Have I experienced hallucination or delirium? No, not yet, not any vision I could see so far. It was just a drunk feeling- I felt like I have emptied a bottle of Vodka. This little book on my right, this headphone on my left, The airconditioner going about tis daily business, the floor so lucid, the bottle of honey-lemonade standing in front of me, insolently and obstinately. I thought it was mocking me.

One Thursday

Black and White.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgi3PkouMxs

Essence

If ever is there a passing solace for me.

When I read through the pages, I encounter myself, my own vivid images and feelings, paraphrased in more concrete preciseness. Just like looking at a mirror for the first time after 50 years living on a deserted island.

In other words, it feeds my narcicism.
The page contains thousands of worlds, of nuances, sounds and colors.
The letters fling themselves up to me, trying to talk to me.

I know it, right from the beginning.
Books that are friendly and books that are not.

 Back to the house where I feel like a strangled man, his face pale-blue with suffocation, his little remaining engergy all focused on how to get his head out of the rope.
That tiny thread that connects me to the world has been cut off, one nanometer a second.

Let the breath that goes from my lung be joined with a world filled with warmth, with fresh colors.
Henceforth, let me sleep through this anguished hour with images and dreams.

Existentia preceeds essentia.

Violent Passion Surrogate

23 45 & Fivesta family's Ya budu is one of them.

Here I am sitting on the edge of my youth, of when all the roses should be at their blooming peak, when they are the redest; when all the birds are together singing their summer morning orchestra; when all colors in the world fade and zoom and blend and mingle into multi-layered multi-colored kaleidoscopic canvas pictures.

But the truth is, here I am sitting in front of the PC, my eyes fixed on the screen, and I'm increasingly lured into that pseudo experience of adventures, of love, of hatred, emotions, of the world changing and moving around me.

But since nothing has any value from the beginning, even change has no meaning at all.
So time is passing, but in a circle: and we are but marathon athletes running around and around in that circle, with no starting point as well as finishing line.

And so what we have to do, and must do, is to find meanings to them.
The marathon race we are all running.

And I need some Violent Passion now. With a glance of the eyes to a stranger in a public place, I smile wittily, knowingly. Then he looks at me, and during that single nano-second moment, something is born. That distance between us contracts into a breath: he suddenly stands in front of my eyes, his hair gently flutters in the wind, his eyes hungrily investigating my every singly cell and corner, and he whispers: "Kiss me, hug me"

And suddenly the world turns into a giant symphony orchestra....
Roses are red. So is my blood, and his, too.

His hair has a very gentle scent. I sniff it. Like i would the fresh pages of a new book, or something mysterious I happen to find in my drawer.

The time has come. I've to go now.

movies

I love those political revolutionary movies, as they offer me a kind of escape from my everydayism, channeling my unused mental energy into a form of pseudo unknown-of experience, my craving for liberation, anything that can act as an alternative to the hollowness felt inside me. Sometimes while I watch the scenes going on before my eyes, a vague feeling of frustration silently crawled up inside me; a devastating realization of my powerlessness in doing anything other than indulging in theoretical masturbation and banal self-pondering. I wish I was born in those days, when revolution was running everywhere in the world, in Europe, in America. People with hot hearts and burning passion to fight for a cause. Am I the only one who listens to “La Rage” and feels turned on?

“Dope chokes up young people’s revolutionary energy” (The Edukators)

Is it dope or is it the very process of development that halts my mental energy?

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe both.

Walking the rue d’Assas, dropping by a patisserie for a hot French toast, stopping at a sidewalf café for a hot morning mocha. Smoking, reading the morning papers, chatting with friends, bathing in summer sun light.

Other than that, on weekends I spend my days like a lazy cat cuddling up in its warm, furry blanket on a cold winter day. Weekends locked in my home, having a movie watching run, thinking. 

Real slow life. Beer everyday in a run. Scenes dancing before my eyes, people’s lives, tears, happiness, revolution, guns, bloodshed, everything that exists. Now I feel the very core of what is called “mobile privatization” learned in my media studies class. People rooted in one place watching thousands and millions of lives happening around the globe. The sky’s the limit. No time or space oppression.