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.
1 comment:
You should be proud of able to read Chinese characters as many of chinese born in other countries do not even able to speak or read a proper Chinese and I am one of them. =(
Missing friends is always the hardest thing to deal with when you are alone oversea. It is not so easy to settle down this kind of feelings. Almost all the overseas students are facing the type of problems. Crying or pouring out your feeling will do the trick in short run but be sure meeting new friends and having new life will help you find a way out. Don't keep yourself suffocated.
Very good analogy about the recycling process. I agreed memory only goes in and out like filtering grains - the old memory will still be there. There will never be a way to replace the old one though.
God bless you. Jesus loves you.
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