The night is special to me. It may be that in the darkness and solitude, we find ourselves facing an other us. Between me and a keyboard, a screen and a song. It isn't pass eleven yet but my other half has retired as usual. I'm an owl of sorts, with a smidgen of insomnia. Well, one thing's for sure, I never was a morning person. I'm plain grouchy and ugly in the morning, whilst as the evening draws close, I notice that the person in the mirror looks almost human.
Over the past few months I've anguished over secrets and unspoken thoughts. People whom I would have wished to be able to trust, I decided not to. Perhaps in a way, I had inadvertently driven them away. But keeping mum maybe the best way, as I did want to drive one out, beyond a line which defines the professional and personal, for you can never have both worlds with someone who uses your feelings against you in your work, emotional blackmail of sorts. Thus, I chose to bluntly, roughly sketch one by staying some thoughts. Yet at times, it got the better of me. I doubted and I believed. Mostly, I kept away and allowed myself to be pushed away. Despite it all, I'm at peace - I faced a tough year and survived albeit with scars.
I told Em, about a line I read in a book, something about people who run away from their circumstances - it will still be the same, no matter where you go, because wherever you go, you are still there. Is this pain you face of your own doing then? Because you deferred life too long? Because you were afraid? Because you were too skeptical, too hard, too distrustful, too self-fulfilling? Of course, I also came across a similar idea - that we are sometimes not only the victim, we are also perpetrator, one who is to be blamed as well as to blame. There are many facets to things - I can see yours, always, although I wonder if you will ever see mine. Someone told me - oh, you should listen. I do, but do you ever consider that I listen too to the unsaid and unwritten? You thirst with ambition yet you have qualms about stepping on your friend's toes, whilst I never side-step with my big feet because mere feelings should not blind us to the big picture.
As I write, I'm listening to Wanfang's Left Hand album. Her voice is really very soft and sad, but surprisingly, I learnt to sing by listening to her songs. Big sister used to laugh at my pronunciation until I started to pick her songs to sing. Each word is properly enunciated. I have forgotten lately, and discovered that my pronunciation and command of the language needs to more practice. So I pulled out Wanfang to practise. And it is at times like this that I remember how much I love the precision of the Chinese language. What you may need an entire sentence to express in another language, you may only need two or three well-placed, well composed characters.
Tonight, as I sit and wait for sleep or perhaps a dream, or a spark of an idea, I would like to share a song and a poem.
The song is called The Night Watchman, and she sings of the people who look out in the night, caring for those who travel or are out late; she sings of a traveller, on a boat, soon to capsize in a sea called Love. (composed by Guo-zi, words by Hsu Chang-de - two masters of their craft)
The poem is called The Night Watchman, and he writes of a man with a pen of a weapon, (not Percy's Riptide), late in the day and life; doubt trickles in, as he ponders over his craft and what drives him ahead and before. (by one of Formosa Island's most revered, Yu Kwang-chung, translated by himself, although trust me, the original Chinese version is even more beautiful)
'This side of the five thousand years a lamp still burns,
After forty a pen still erect.
Of all weapons this is the last.
Even if surrounded three times
At the center of blind darkness,
This I will never surrender.
In the forsaken cemetery of Time
Not a stone door ever answers my pounding,
But, hollow with horror, the haunting echoes
Down Time's hallway peal from end to end.
How much chaos will give way to a single lamp?
Does my pen at middle age suggest
A daring sword or a pitying crutch?
Am I the driver of the pen or the driven?
Am I the giver of the blood or the given?
Not a question can I answer. I only know
Icy is the air on the hair of my nape.
The last watchman by the last lamp
To prop a giant shadow awry,
Too preoccupied to dream
Or a sound sleep to claim.'
(The Night Watchman, Yu Kwang-chung 1973)
My sentiments exactly. I light my lamp, the flame flickers, licking the wick. I think a book calls.
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