I have quite enjoyed typing English words.
Typing in Chinese is a painful process, I imagine how the words sound like and choose them from a list of kanji. It was redundant.
What is my life? A question remained unanswered and perhaps never will. The world is too backward to generate enough emptiness, but too advanced to embrace an old soul.
Sometimes, late in night. I just sit and do nothing. I imagined how my room would reflect my personality, but that is just an escape from the reality where my room is not the way I want it to be. I would probably have paper lanterns, art nouveau posters, and an incense holder on the top of an antique rosewood cabinet in the faithful style of Min. But honestly, these are just outside things in life.
I can’t take them away from this reality, don’t have them in this reality. Shit, I can’t even pass on my sense of aesthetics.
It is then I began to discover, for too long in my pathetic life I measured my success on the perspective of others. I lost some coolness in the pursuit of finer things.
Mental wealth is too cheap these days. People moan about mental health like Dostoyevsky once lamented roughly 200 years ago. I felt a stab of pain that dead people may have experienced their life more sharply than I. People gave away their life for honour like it was a breakfast on a Tuesday morning. Did we really progress at all since the age of dawn?
At least back when people were getting mowed down like grass, they learn to move on with a grim smile, write it into a heroic tragedy, or to learn to live a short life to the fullest.
I wander around my thoughts like a ghost knight in valhalla. I just want to make people around me happy. Classic appeasement in exchange of self respect. An act acceptable, perhaps even de minimis to even be argued about in modern wold, but deemed a life of worthlessness in the view of my ancestors.
I lived in a Daoist temple for two months, and I truly missed the minimalistic food they offered. Two veg one meat. I was sure I’m going to devote my life into becoming a monk if weren’t for the start of schooling season. It was about noticing the bland taste of veg. Suddenly they became fresh, with a taste of dew that reminds me of the morning mist where the sun was having a hard time piercing through. Existence really didn’t need much to sustain. What have I become?
The world didn’t mean much for me. It was a place to forget, heading to the inevitable conclusion. Some people enjoyed their ride, some never really understood why they were on the train. Some jumped the train for fresh air, some left on the train after people got off, wondering where the train is heading to after the final destination.
My regret came from the choices that could have been made. I constantly compare myself to a shadowed self that is ideal, a possibility lost because of the trivialities, an imaginary life where I lived it to the fullest. “I was going to Japan for high school and work my way up to raise money, have a fresh start”. “I wasn’t going to had that altercation with him before his death, I was an asshole”… I could easily count fifty moments like this
I know such life is no longer possible for me to attempt, but it is addictive to escape the world with the imageries at least. I could stop smoking or drinking if I wanted to, but it takes real courage to move on with possibilities that are lost.
I was a natural nihilist, but became lost in the world.
*lights a cig*
