c*g
发帖数: 1980 | 1 Olemiss
(To Chang Maomao, incarnated March, 1997; quit the earth December, 2010. He
was one of a cat.)
* The dark side of the night *
I thought I was very tired. But when I walked out of the Inn and into the
warm September night, I was healed. It had rained in the afternoon, the
Alumni Drive was wet reflecting the bright street lights. I walked towards
the dark.
I followed a runner wearing a white T-shirt for half-of-a-minute. He was
young and energetic; soon he disappeared from my sight. A while later, I
reached the end of a driveway. A statue stood quietly on top of an obelisk
at the center of a traffic circle. Beyond this point, a few pedestrian
paths
meandered around red-bricked buildings, forming the entrance of a labyrinth.
I was pleased.
The statue was small but stood tall, looking into an ambiguous distance. I
challenged him by trying to stand still, with my blood, flesh, and a
restless mind. I lost. It was frustrating. I avenged by breathing deep into
the fresh moist air. I fled and left him whereby he continued dreaming.
Twenty years ago, when I was a half-fledged bird ready to flap out of the
nest-of-a-town where I grew up, I liked roaming the streets at night. It
was an exciting time in China. The nation just departed the old-stone age
and entered a new one – merely a few years earlier the asphalt face of the
Liberation Blvd was lifted and replaced with grand cement slabs. The plane-
tree shaded boulevard was so long, that it extended a good fifteen minutes
by walk to both the northern and southern ends of the city. Beyond those
points there were more trees, frogs, snakes and endless farm lands, mountains
and koala bears, the snowman and the United States of America. At night,
every street lamp shed light like a full moon. Every shed of moonlight
penetrated the air, traveled through my cornea, iris, lens, vitreous humor,
retina, through the optical nerves into the brain, where it took a sharp
down-turn to reach the heart. The night was more luminous than the day, and
I was more invisible than water.
I held a dried twig I picked up on the sidewalk. I touched the objects on
my path, so they turned into bats and ninjas. I waved it in the air, air
rippled. The stick also occasionally hit my own head, to which I let out a
silent chuckle. I roamed the earth. I heard loud music from a dance hall
which used to be an auditorium for the party members to chant revolutionary
slogans and to denounce capitalism. Trumpets blew at a full volume and the
drummers sounded very angry. They announced that China would never be quiet.
Inside, I envisioned men and women holding each other in arms and jumping up
and down like monkeys, a sight that was very unappetizing. On another
street, the noise took on a nicer tone. I heard people singing Karaoke at
the top of their lungs. Screaming was a fashion easy to follow for the
Chinese. I walked by a small alley of arcade video games. I was just kicked
out the night before, because I had been playing for too long with a single
token that I did not even pay for. I watched people. They were so beautiful
and clueless. They did not know I was there, and that there were so many
dreams in the dark, in the trees and on the curbs, in the air and beyond the
winds.
One night I crossed a quiet, pitch-dark path connecting the bright
Liberation and East Wind Blvds. There was no moon. In the ponds lying on
both sides,the turtles were turning and snoring loudly under the lotus
flowers. I saw a person. His white shirt was a faint aura drifting towards
me. I was instantly excited – he was shorter and skinnier. His shoulder
bumped against mine in the passing, and I said:
“I own this road and planted the trees. Don’t you, my brother, owe me an
apology for hitting my shoulder, and ignoring my presence?”
He replied:
“What?”
I said:
“I demand an apology from you, or thou shall not pass.”
He replied:
“Ni ge xiao jiba ridi jintian chi duo le?”
I said:
“Now you also have to apologize for insulting my father.”
He replied:
“MLGB!”
Before I could prepare my kung-fu stance which I practiced a thousand times
for this moment, I smelled his stinking foot and found my glasses flying
away from my face. Then I felt a punch in my stomach. I lost. It was
frustrating. Days later I came to realize that the person was the second
cousin of my uncle’s wife’s nephew. I cursed sincerely, and fled like I
always did for battles happening in the dark, because the dark made it easy.
I avenged by looking up at the sky with my blurry eyes: the Milky Way was a
gorgeous band embracing the earth like a cradle.
* The moment of glory *
These are the things I did after I walked into the labyrinth. I opened the
front door of the student center. The place was empty. All chairs sit face-
down on top of the tables, like good kids waiting for something to happen.
A black gal fell asleep on a desk at a far corner; she looked just like my
younger sister. I walked out of the backdoor. The paths diverged to a few
different directions. The night was ripening, the air had a fresh, dark-blue
taste like that in Super Mario, the game I was obsessed with. I touched my
imaginary cap, and my imaginary beard. I jumped up and down squashing the
turtles and bugs underneath, and walked towards a direction I defined as
away. After passing a few small buildings that belonged to various academic
departments, I reached the main library. I invited myself in. I was
wearing shorts and a T-shirt, that worked well. The place was illuminated
like day-time by a thousand long white fluorescent tubes, with young people
flying up and down the stairs like butterflies. They looked at me, but did
not know where I was from. They did not know that they were in a labyrinth,
cozy, mysterious, and infinite.
Later, a short and arched walkway appeared on my left, inviting me to drift
over. Many lights embedded the edge of the top, painting the enclave with a
bright yet warm, yellowish tone. It was connected to the front of a
building with tall, transparent glass doors. From the signs and the layout,
I reckoned it was a sort of media center. I did not go in. Through the door,
I saw a few students, wearing headphones, and speaking into the microphones
in front of them. I waved at them; a couple of them saw me and waved back.
They were late-teens or in their early twenties. They had beautiful smiles,
bright eyes, thick hair, and some pimples. They were talking about very
important things. I leaned on a pillar of the arch, with my arms crossed in
front, and listened to the things I could not hear. Slowly, I slipped down
and sit. My sleep caught me from one and half miles behind. I submitted and
dreamt.
A cat appeared. He was a yellow tabby, quite skinny, but elegant. He looked
at me for a while, as if waiting. I did not say a word; the silence was
forever. He then spoke: Mario, if you treat me with 10 shekels’ worth of
Temptations® Cat Treats, tuna flavor with mercury boosts, I will take
you where you want to be. I replied, I don’t have it right now, but here is
my PETCO PALS card, with unlimited mercury access. I took a small punctured
tag off my key chain, and put it in front of him. He let off a loud purrrrr.
He picked up the card in between his teeth, turned around, and began to walk.
We left the arched walkway, and went back toward where I came. We went
through the library; the young butterflies were still busy flying and
attacting each other. They did not see us. When we reached the student
center. I jogged ahead and opened the door for the cat. A mysteriouswind
followed us inside. All chairs were now on the floor, perfectly-arranged
around the tables, like good kids ready for a big event. But the black gal
was gone. When we arrived at the base of the statue, the cat tapped on a
cornerstone with his right front paw, and meowed: !ngo-buchii-!ngo-dan-!ngo-
bu-bian-!ngo. A small door creaked opened inward, and we went in.
The dark walkway went on for a long time, but I was comfortable and very,
very calm. I knew I was safe. The tunnel had no lights, but we could see
ahead because my PETCO card, held in between the cat’s teeth, gave out a
faint cozy glow. In fifteen seconds, or perhaps fifty years, we reached the
end, where another door opened into an expansive, empty room. An unknown
source of illumination filled the room with soft creamy hues . I immediately
noticed that on the long wall facing us was an enormous postcard, occupying
the entire field of view. I turned toward the left, there were a few lines
of scribbles. Without reading I knew it was sent to myself, Mario the
wanderer , and from myself, Mario the dreamer. I turned to the right, it
was a picture of an unpaved dirt path, escorted by two rows of ginko trees
with vibrant golden leaves. The path ran straight ahead and disappeared in
the far distance. A breeze passed, the leaves whispered and some fell, onto
earth and into the room, carrying unspeakable notes. The cat walked in, and I
followed. He stood at the head of the trail and yawned. My PETPAL card
dropped but he did not care; his mouth was so widely open that his upper jaw
covered his eyes. He said: Mario, you are here.
I suddenly woke up. It took me a while to gathered my senses. I saw that
the sky opened, rain began to fall. It was first silent, a mere taste of
moisture, a suggestion. Then, from outside the labyrinth arrived a flash of
light, followed by a muffled, snoring rumble. Cats and dogs fell from the
sky! They bounced all around me. I had to move to the center of the arch to
avoid getting soaking wet. The rain produced sounds like the statics from
a radio, amplified through the most expensive DTS® surround sound systems
, in a grand theatre where I was the only audience. I could not resist
closing my eyes. This is where I wanted to be. I challenged myself by trying
to stand still, with my blood, flesh, and a restless mind. When I had again
lost, I opened my eyes, and look at all the raindrops falling from the sky.
On their way, when they came into the arch, the bright lights lining up the
top edges turned them into hundreds of thousands of shiny trinkets. I did not
remember where I was. I could not resist a sigh.
* Tomorrow never dies *
I left the arch soon after the rain stopped, and roamed the land of Olemiss
for another fifty minutes, nine hundred seconds, and many blinks. The sky
was clear, and a blue wind blew gently. I kept on walking forward, until I
saw a well-trimmed road leading to a grand, well-lit white building in the
far end. It seemed to be the end of the world. Beyond the point there lied
ponds and Indians, Faulkner and Raven Oaks, the Mississippi river, Paris,
Rome, Jerusalem, and Tehran. And the People’s Republic of China, that is
incessantly destroyed and rebuilt, simultaneously gravitating and estranging
. So I turned around and began to walk back.
On my way back to the Alumni drive, I passed by an area of dormitories. The
night was a cradle, and Olemiss was in a burst of energy before going to
sleep, as the students were returning for the night. Occasionally, a car or
two passed by, I decided they just returned from a long inter-glactic trip;
or I couldn’t explained the strange extraterrestrial music and biosterous
laughs. Once again I was a voyeur in the dark, imagining lives of others.
Olemiss was such a young place, so I began to plan about things to do when I
would one day became younger again. I would come to Olemiss and dream. I
would grow many pimples and pop them one by one. I would pick my nose,
accompanied by extraterrestrial music, in an old hoopty across the town of
Oxford, all the while thinking I was William Faulkner. These thoughts made
me very happy, until my worn and torn left knee cap caught up from five
miles behind, and a dull pain hit my cerebellum and dispelled the euphoria.
I had to stop and take a break.
A pretty, wholesomely southern girl was talking energetically on the
cellphone on the second-floor balcony of the sorority house I was in front
of. The building was of equal beauty, old but exquisitely maintained, with a
few large mahogany wood panels standing like shields in the front,
protecting the secrets of its residence. The girl was pacing back and forth,
waving arms, and completely emerged in the conversation. Of the acoustic
waves emitting into the gorgeous night of Olemiss, and of the electromagnetic
signals traveling through the moist air after the rainfall, my ear only
caught a word with the semantic meaning of “tomorrow”. It would be so nice
to spend tomorrow in Olemiss, I thought, but I had to go back to New Jersey. | j******n
发帖数: 21641 | 2 nice.
He
towards
【在 c*g 的大作中提到】
: Olemiss
: (To Chang Maomao, incarnated March, 1997; quit the earth December, 2010. He
: was one of a cat.)
: * The dark side of the night *
: I thought I was very tired. But when I walked out of the Inn and into the
: warm September night, I was healed. It had rained in the afternoon, the
: Alumni Drive was wet reflecting the bright street lights. I walked towards
: the dark.
: I followed a runner wearing a white T-shirt for half-of-a-minute. He was
: young and energetic; soon he disappeared from my sight. A while later, I
|
|
