Forms

The furthest distance in the world
is not between life and death
but when i stand in front of you
yet you don't know that
I love you

The furthest distance in the world
is not when i stand in front of you
yet you can't see my love
but when undoubtedly knowing the love from both
yet cannot
be togehter

The furthest distance in the world
is not being apart while being in love
but when plainly can not resist the yearning
yet pretending
you have never been in my heart

The furthest distance in the world
is not
but using one's indifferent heart
to dig an uncrossable river
for the one who loves you

--Ranbindranath Tagore

I've been reading Norweigian Wood by Haruki Murakami in English recently. God knows how many times I've read it in Chinese. When I bump this poem tonight, I suddenly feel nothing is more able to express the feeling that is aimed to be described by Murakami. Love stories are alike. But they just take different forms. Sorry if my definition is too arbitrary.

observing

Watch the flow of your thoughts, your sadness, your emotions. Imagine them as green leaves, floating on a stream. Don't engage and interact. Just stand aside, observing it. You are no longer yourself now. You can see through yourself now. You become a container of emotions and feelings which are too fragile to be touched. Let them go and
be released.
- from my counselor Ann

ambiguity of words

How can we accurately convey our private experience to others - report accurately on what we feel or see?
How can you reduce the complex, ever changing flow of consciousness to a single word like "sadness" or "love"?
How is it that words can correspond to the world as it is?
- Traditions in Trouble

Comrade, Almost a Love Story

My yoga class is the section of "Yoga and Meditation". So in the end of the class, the teacher usually turns off the light, turns on a piece of contemplative ancient Indian music, and have us meditating for 5 minutes. I enjoy this moment of peace so much that everytime I finish the class and come out of the classroom, I am always hit by the strikingly contrasting strong white light and the loud masculine music in the gym. So dazzling. God, America again. It was the exact feeling when chen yuanyuan (how much I hope she is still around)and I came out of the little dark restaurant across the street of our school gate, finishing this movie "Comrade, Almost a Love Story", staring at the sunny sky on a Sunday afternoon in the May - God, it's real life again.

I don't hate the strong light. Nor do I dislike real life (well, maybe I do =)). What really disturbs is the short transition from the meditation, either on myself or on the movie, to the real life. I feel being arbitrarily interrupted. I feel unable to articulate my thoughts and to achieve meanings from my interactions with the movie or the contemplation.

Well, 5, 6 years has passed (God, again). A transition that is long enough. But I could only think of one sentence to say: a love story about how to arduously prevent from falling in love with each other. How self-controversial. This theme is similar to "In the Mood for Love" and "The Bridge of Madison County". A story between two rootless Chinese mainlanders in Hong Kong. All about supressing love.

Seems my version of great love story is always about unfulfilled love. Hopeless yet endles love.

Somehow today I've got this urge to watch it again. But both Amazon and Ebay are out of stock of the DVD.

Sentimental

It is always fun and adventurous to read something in Chinese in office. Maybe it's because I feel I am in U.S more than anywhere else that I have already internalized the subconsciousness - don't intrude the public space by carrying a Chinese hallmark. So when I opened er mao's long e-mail in Chinese, I felt displaced yet excited. She's gonna go to Germany for Ph.d. Great. 12:00 Wensday noon, Brian was saying something to me, but I stared back in a blank face. Across the hallway, Laura was talking loudly over the phone. I was daydreaming, desperately wanting to see, hug and talk to ermao right now, like we once were, in Nanjing, in China. Some unknown feelings crept up on me. How suffocating and annoying. But I could not figure it out.

I was doing Yoga this morning. The teacher asked us to sit still and meditate in the end of the class. Along with the mystic Indian melody, I thought about my friends all over the world. It seems we were once so close, believing our life would always be connected to each other somehow. But now we are parallels, perhaps never gonna have any intersection again. What sways between us is a fragile sentiment called memory. Through this glass window of memory, I could see and relive the past, but never able to touch it and possess it. Unconquerable distance. Why is it like that! If that's the way life it is, I wish I have the power to change it. But I don't. I am feeble. If there is a map of us - me and those who I love and care, and vice versa, then I'm just a little tiny spot in North America. We are essentially disconnected. But we think we are. I got incredibly sentimental in the end of the class, tearing a little.

Last night, me and Lindsey spent 1.5 strenuous hours, sorting out and categorizing those glass containers, paper boxes, plastic bottles that had been piling up in our kitchen. On our trip back from the recycling center, Lindsey and I both felt very relieved. She said: "At least there's something controllable in your life. At least we are able to choose to send things to recycling center instead of throwing them away." How great is that, now I feel. I wish I could choose which piece of memory to go to the recycling center. I wish I could always keep those moments fresh and new, like they are still happening and ongoing, just comming out of the recycling center.

江南忆

江南好，
风景旧曾谙。
日出江花红胜火，
春来江水绿如蓝，
能不忆江南.

江南好，
最忆是杭州.
山寺月中寻桂子,
郡亭枕上看潮头.
何日更重游.