Wake Me Up When September Ends (HQ! Official Video)

Everything you can imagine is real

Las Meninas After Velasquez, Picasso.

Pablo Picasso backed me up by saying this - "Everything you can imagine is real."

Dream no.8

I and My Village, Marc Chagall

6am.

The instant my alarm clock went off the dream had just faded into daylight.

I dismissed the buzzing and decided to stay in bed for five more harmless minutes. As I got up and dragged myself to the washroom, my mother told me T8 is on. I was in such a hazy trance that I was for a moment lost and wasn't sure what to feel and what to do next. I turned on the television to make sure, and it was sure. Surprised - I was asleep even more peacefully despite the howling of the winds, so it didn't occur to me that the tropical cyclone is one with such intensity. The next thing I did was to text one of my friends at school and inform her of the news so that she wouldn't have left home without knowing.

Then I went straight to bed in the hope of going back to the dream, which has already been the third  of the same kind in September. As I rested my head on the pillow, I began to rummage through the details. They kept reaching out for me with such immediate vividness in spite of the disruption in between. 

I remembered there was rain. Quiet, untroubled rain. Holding a black umbrella, I was setting foot in a strange, elaborate landscape vastly mapped out in front of me.  I wasn't afraid and I  vaguely believed it's going to lead me somewhere. The raindrops were clear and transparent as they dripped from the eaves; leaves of the potted plants swayed gently in the breeze. I saw my reflection in the mirror-like water in the pond. Every creature looked so real as if they had a life of their own, and they'd been living in a world of their own undisturbed until I came.

I travelled through the corridors and halls and at last I found you awaiting me. It's now your room I found myself in. It didn't look quite the same as the one you really have, but that's how it manifested itself to be. And you're not quite the same person as you really are, but that's how the dream had you to be. I didn't find it strange though, instead I found it perfectly natural and comfortable as if we're meant to be there, together with each other. You talked to me with your usual countenance, and made a joke about hiding me here away from the rest of the world. You said this with an easy manner, and I laughed at it, with a swell of warmth inside, a feeling pressed into my heart. We stayed this way for a length of time. From the walls there were eyes watching, but non of us cared.

That's all of the remains I could recall. With my head still rolling sideways on the pillow, I could not find my way back to sleep. Somehow I knew that when it's over, it's over.  But I reviewed at the dream and was bewildered more than ever. I couldn't help believing that everything was real. It's the texture of the dream.  It's not only vision, but even the temperature, the people around, the layout of the surroundings, the way you speak, my way of thinking, it's like they are alive with sophistication, and have altogether built a world out there, where they'd let you in if they like, but  would shut you out for most of the time.

Sometimes it feels so real that it's leaking into my consciousness, that when I wake up at day, I would think that things did happen, and it would take me a while to finally realize that no, it didn't. But it isn't imaginary either. It's just dreams that have come uninvited, unintended.

On such a day with such weather outside, I am pleased to find myself feeling calm and serene, reminiscing about such a dream.

Ashes in Time.

You never talk about her.

But from bits of clues and traces I somewhat get the feel of the kind of person, the kind of girl she might be. I was browsing through her colourful recipes and I thought, what a passion, what a sweet heart she possesses. And it's so delightful, knowing after all it's your idea, it's you who have seen her enthusiasm and encouraged her pursuit. She's nice, very nice indeed. So nice that I begin to feel jealous and inferior, but some part of me couldn't help feeling happy for you. I imagined you two being together. I've seen that in dream already. She deserves everything, most of all, you.

All of a sudden I feel like all these times I was just talking to myself on the stage with no one but an imaginary figure that I've been creating out of my memory for my own amusement, in your expense. There was a time when we sat side by side and could exchange little secrets which sounded like silly jokes; a time when I used to brush through your hair with my fingers and it seemed the most natural thing to do; a time when you'd still call me on the phone and we'd talk about whatever that comes to our mind. There was a time when everything was simple, but possible.

Now it's almost nothing but a melancholic monologue which turns to ashes in time. And in the ashes I'd have to pick up the pieces of myself.

Never Let Me Go.

I'm reading this book called Never Let Me Go. It's the name of the book that caught my eyes first - straightforward and to-the-point, exactly what I'd say to someone I love.

I crawled through the beginning of the story - not that it's unimpressive, I knew it's leading to something but its air of ambiguity just left me confused. But in general I like the narrative being a first-person remembrance, with bits and pieces of details being brought up disorderly. It might be a bit of a jumble but it's how memory works, isn't it? I mean, we do experience things chronologically, but in recollection, we still have to pick up and put together the grains of the past here and there.

Then you'd perhaps find it contrary to your intention - what once seemed trivial stays the longest in time, and what once mattered like the whole world, when looking back, can be less than nothing at all. Sometimes we can't really decide what's important and what's negligible, for Time has its own judgment, and we're just not wise or old enough to decipher a certain meaning, and its place in the grand scheme of Life.

I got the book from Flow, a secondhand book store in Central. I asked the shopkeeper about the book and it amazed me how he seemed to remember the exact location of the book in the shop which was still in a mess (they just moved to Hollywood Road). I like books to be old and weary so I don't mind secondhand and lending them to others at all, as long as they'd return to me. It isn't easy for secondhand bookstores to survive in this city, so I feel better to have contributed a bit in keeping them in business, as I wish them to always be.

end of the world.

A: I'm not going to school anymore.
B: Why?
A: They say the end of the world is coming soon, very soon.
B: How soon?
A: Next year.
B: Are we going to die?
A: Yes.
B: But all of us will die, some day. Maybe you'll die tomorrow. Who knows?
A: But the end of the world means we'll all die together.
B: That's quite fair, isn't it? I mean, dying together.
A: Do you think someone's gonna come and save us?
B: Who? The aliens?
A: No... I mean God.
B: God?
A: Yes. You believe in God, don't you?
B: No, I don't.
A: You don't? Then why do you say 'Oh my God' all the time?
B: You say 'shit' all the time. Does that mean you believe in shit?
A: Okay, fine. Then what do you believe?
B: I believe in Santa Claus.
A: Santa Claus? Have you ever seen him in person?
B: No. Never.
A: Then why do you believe in that.
B: You don't need to see something to believe in it.
A: But that's stupid.
B: You haven't seen the end of the world, but you believe in it.
A: You don't need to see something to believe in it.
B: But that's stupid.

The Dream.

The Dream, Henri Rousseau (1910)

Before I had time to decipher the last dream, another came to me last night.

Just like literature, in dreams sometimes recur familiar symbols; sometimes the same protagonist revisits over and over again. Something might have been out of my mind for some time already, then I thought perhaps it's time for it to fade out and vanish into the whitewash of time. But it's in dreams where it's brought up again as a constant reminder, as if a forced reminiscence of a distant past.

Most of my dreams have set out usual plots, with unlikely people in some unlikely setting absurdly put together. Last night I had two dreams. In the first one, I dreamt I was with him again. As in the second one, I dreamt that I had recently moved into a new apartment with my family. It was doubtfully spacious, too spacious for anyone to live in indeed; and its ceiling was so high that I thought it's too lofty to behold. Apparently it's one of those fancy apartments because at night we could see the Victoria Harbour from the glassy walls around, and the view was stunning as always. I was more agitated than overjoyed though, and cross and upset to see my belongings scattered around in my new, roomy bedroom. I even saw strangers at home. The next thing I remember I did was to find a way out. Running into a vast, cold mall, one of those with reflective floors and neatly lined shops, I met a lady who was kind enough to help me when I got lost. She was attractive and graceful. I could not take my eyes off her and I started talking to her. She's carrying an infant in a baby trolley and told me she used to be a dancer.

This is how the dream has ended without an ending. Like a story but unlike a story. And if the objects and characters and the like are just metaphors, they're much more obscure than a poem. I wish Sigmund Freud could do something about this.

時間

一個人可以給另一個人最寶貴的就是時間。

- 林一峰

parallel universe

The Sleeping Gypsy, Henry Rousseau

As night lengthens dreams start to find their way back at sleep. They slip through the linen, creep into the blanket, and loiter about my pillow.

Last night I dreamt of a parallel universe.

I had no idea I was dreaming, but I was sober, living in a day as it should be lived with the rationale of a dream. I can't really recall the details, except one scenario when I was staring at the russet sky overcast with clouds and suddenly came to the realization that there's another dimension of life in which I also exist, though perhaps in a different way, in a reality not quite the same with the one that dominates my perspective. The two worlds are going on at the same time, not with one being the present but the other the past or future. They just co-exist. Then I felt consoled, my troubled mind at peace because of the hope of an alternative.

This is the point when I opened my eyes and found myself on my bed. The sun had not risen.

There is no telling where time is.

It's time for bed. Time to sink into secret thoughts until my consciousness surrenders to the darkness. Let me put an end to Tuesday night with a part of Ted Hughes' poem 'September'.

"We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
When kisses are repeated and the arms hold
There is no telling where time is.

It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere."

You can see more of September in poetry here.

When the last hour of the day ends.

My birthdays in recent years have gone by without much significance.

I even forgot to think of any wish to make until the very moment when I had to confront the candle that was in a hurry to burn out. Then I realized I didn't really have much to wish for. I mean yes I did, but those are the things that I was fairly confident I could accomplish without relying on the supernatural power of my birthday luck. And for those I consider impossible, I didn't bother to recall at all. I used to dedicate such annual opportunity to the hope of 'world peace'. But the reality turned against my wish and I thought it's stupid of me to have totally wasted it.

I'm now twenty-four. Someone once said it's poetic like the hours of the day. And when the last hour of the day ends? It proceeds to a quarter of the century. A quarter of one hundred years. What should I expect? A quarter of solitude?

Three months from today it'll be my birthday (again). I want to do something I've never ever done before. And it's easier to get people involved because it's my birthday and it makes them guilty if they refuse (hehe). It's nothing big actually. I'm just contemplating camping in a place where the stars would make me breathless again. It'd be my biggest birthday wish and present. And please, I'm literally praying for it.

Dreams were kept beside my pillow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.

The rain outweighed my tears.

On my way back home I've been overwhelmed by an insurmountable urge to cry. A force was rumbling inside. My blood was boiling, about to burst through my breath. The agony might have been psychological but it's so strong and powerful that every inch of my skin ached, my chest the most severely.

When the bus came out of the tunnel, the sky has already changed its face in less than two minutes. The passengers were silent but their shock was apparent. The rain poured so hard I guess everything hit by the water must be in great pain. I felt like my heart was not here with me anymore. It's in the rain outside, somewhere invisible from me, as it chose to endure the torment alone. And I was to go home without my heart.

Eventually I did not cry. The rain outweighed my tears.

My life is very much on track but my mind is, all over again, distracted by the same thought.

Love is everything worth waiting for.

Not everything happens at a go. Some things take place not until years later, when time has changed into another time, when the world has changed into another world, and perhaps when we have changed into another us.

It' sadly true that we have to surrender to reality, to the many impediments that befall us; but reality is not a static, permanent fate. If it's unfavorable to us now, may be it will be the reverse some day. So we have to stay healthy, be patient, and live well enough for the long-awaited golden day to come.

I used to doubt the possibility of it but I became increasingly convinced. And I'm not the only one who have faith in it. Years of waiting is dreadful, but patience is an act of beauty.

In Love in the Time of Cholera, Florentino has waited for Fermina for fifty-one years, nine months and four days; Jane Austen's Persuasion is a story about waiting; and in One Day, it takes more than a decade's time for the two of them to finally come together as one. It's more than I can say.

Love is everything worth waiting for.

Roof.

Roof of my school, where I have lunch every day with one of my colleagues. I like it a lot when the furniture and the room shine in the sunlight that comes through the glasses above. And it always does.

那些年

為甚麼呢，聽的時候，眼涙就流下來了。

Confidence.

All of the teachers stayed behind after school and attended a fire-safety talk held by the fire-station head of the district. The content was (in my opinion) a bit unimportant but the speaker was interesting enough to alert us.

He is tall (some 6 feet) and extremely well-built; not exactly handsome but good-looking in his tanned skin and dark blue uniform; confident and self-assured. Above all he is incredibly young - apparently still in his late twenties - but admiration must have taken place instead of sneer because the confidence and experience he displayed is beyond age. Everything added together is adequate to sustain our attention even after the fatal post-lunchtime.

Confidence is indispensable. It puts things together. It puts our self together. But mind you, confidence is a virtue, but arrogance is a flaw.

A fine Thursday.

Today was a nice day. Although I started it off with a pair of sleepy eyes, and without an umbrella on a rainy morning, the day turned out just fine. I did not have lessons until the fourth period so I had time to wake up and get ready to meet my girls.

The classes went well. The students and I are both getting more and more comfortable with the presence of each other. I love it when I look right into their bright, curious, smiling eyes which look back into mine. Warmth swells inside of me and I know it's a kind of affection that goes mutual. It's a feeling that I'd call 'fulfilling'. And I guess it's the motivation that keeps me going.

The day is also remarkable as got to talk to a colleague that I like. It's important to have colleagues that you find adorable and also find you adorable, especially when you're trying to mingle. Otherwise it'd be like digging an impossible well in a desert with only useless camels around you. The chance is rare because it isn't always easy to start a conversation with someone you barely know.

Despite the fact that it's now the 21st century but somehow we're still living the 19th-century-social-conventions and proprieties. First comes the barriers between opposite sexes, second the secret interpretation of intentions, next the judgment of whether it's appropriate to talk so much and then the unbearable consciousness of constantly being watched.

After school I was dozing off and eating a peach and it left me in horror. It's hard to describe the thrill when you are biting a peach and right in front of your eyes and lips you see a big, juicy worm digging around most energetically IN THE PEACH! Now my favourite fruit has become a trauma. And I thought of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. Now it's Ivy and the Giant Worm in the Peach.

Then I left school and headed to the post office for the centenary stamps of HKU. The envelops were already sold out, but I could still get the stamps and a nice booklet. After that I got my watch back from the mall. There was water inside so I had to get it fixed. I am genuinely happy to have it come back to me. Some people call it 'fetish' but objects are not dead. They're alive with memory and history.

Okay it's time for bed. I've been really diligent today and now I deserve a good rest and a sweet dream.

A Maths question

Why do Maths teachers always wear the same / similiar clothes every day? Can't they have a bit of change for a difference?

Mid-Autumn Festival

Spent Mid-Autumn Festival with an old friend who lives nearby. It's nice having a neighbor. It makes you feel less solitary living in a suburban home.

We walked to the central park. It was overcrowded with families, friend circles and couples. I was very much impressed especially when I thought about the last time I went to a park and celebrated the festival with candles and paper lanterns, and I could not remember at all. I can't even remember what I did last year. Festivals started to lose its meanings for me since I-don't-know-when and instead of anticipation I felt dreary.

But last night was different. It was delightful to see what the people were doing just for the night, and the energy around was more than enough to excite you inside. They were all well-prepared, very much so. They sat on newspapers or bamboo mats spread on the lawn; some even had tents or shelters to settle in (!). There was a sea of candles and it was quite a sight to behold.

We were both pretty tired so we didn't talk that much but that's alright. Forced conversations are lousy. I'd rather nothing is said. And I like it when someone walks me home.

Homecoming.

So it's been some three months since I've last written anything. I'll forgive myself for being lazy and from today onward I'm gonna put everything patchy together in words.

The autumn breeze is leaking in from the window and I'm going to bed and rest for a good new day tomorrow.