Burning

The other day something quite stupid happened to me. After I filled my Zippo with cleaning naphtha, I lighted it up for a test and accidentally introduced the fire to the small tissue paper I used while filling the lighter. A disaster thus got its start. I was surprised by the burning tissue paper and dropped it on the ground of my research room which is paved with wooden floor. I almost panicked by the imagination that the floor would be set on fire. Then I calmed myself down to put out the fire which, to think of it retroactively, was in fact a pretty small one. Stepping on the fire on and on and being cautious to not getting fire on my slippers, I turned on the fan to ventilate the air in case the fire alarm might be triggered for the smoke thus caused. a few seconds later, the situation was well under control and I had my breath back again. A pretty stupid incident it is. Can't believe that I myself can be so careless and without caution. If the room gets on fire, it would be a total disaster and might even endanger other people's lives. What an imbecile I was that day!

A Challenge?

Today the head of department offered a chance of opening a course on Taiwan literature. Only one course for one semester in the following three years is in need from me. Not a real burden, to tell the truth. Yet the challenging part is that the course has to be taught in English as it is part of the program for international students in our graduate school. I know my spoken English is not so poor as being incapable of handling the situation. Yet my concern is that my expertise is never on the field of specifically Taiwan literature despite my being an avid reader of the literary works here for a long time.

Cannot help wandering in what way will be my thoughts on the literary texts written in Chinese conveyed in English to others? Yet I have to admit this is a chance for me to focus on, for example, a few poets whose works have for long been my favorite and a chance for me to start working on some poetic studies. From a perspective of vocational advancement, this may also be a chance to wade into a study that may grow into a promising field for international recognition. At the same time, my own ideas of and attunement to that which is literary pure and simple can be put into a test on works in Chinese, my own mother tongue.

I don't know. A challenge indeed, in terms not only of the demand for language skills, but also of a requirement of professional disciplinary training. Need time to think it over. Might take the challenge. Life needs to keep going, going over boundaries to break a new ground, to sail into terra incognita for self-test as well as self-transcendence. A self that needs and has to open to the immortal, the infinite.

The Ring

Changing the place I wear the ring from the index finger to the rope on my neck. The other day I slapped on the head of Tiger and the ring's metal hardness caused him quite a pain that should have been entirely unnecessary. I watched his painful expressions on face and felt terribly sorry for my doing so. He is so cute, tiny, and weak that one would only want to hold him tightly in bosom. From that day on, I decided to change the place of the ring. Now I wear it as part of my necklace and wish with all my heart that my little Tiger will never suffer from that pain, that stupid pain, again.

Dr. Koto

Finish watching the Japanese drama Dr. Koto's clinic. An elite doctor initially working in Tokyo comes as a (self-)exile to an off-land island to be a local physician, attempting a personal redemption making up to the wrong he has done that held responsible for an accidental death of one of his patients. In the island, he devotes himself whole-heartedly to taking care of both the body and the heart of the islanders.

Though a bit too much sentimental, the drama in general is quite heart-moving in many episodes where the meaning of life and the intimacy as well as mutual contact between human hearts is illustrated. After watching this drama, one cannot help feeling that one particular thing becomes more than clear. No matter how brilliant one's career or vocational skills are, and no matter how advanced a working environ one may find himself in, what deems the most important is none other than finding a place, a locus, however local, provincial, or even under-developed it may be, where one can have this abundant sense of belongingness, the sense that one is needed, that one's life is not trivial and expendable.

Everyone needs this place to feel his or her own life, his or her living practices, worthwhile. As one female character in the drama tells Dr. Koto, "you are the happiest (or the most felicitous) doctor in the world." Indeed. Yet have I found such a locus?

In Memoriam

Start to play the game in memoriam. Fabulous and fantastic. In a mystery-thriller scenario to solve the puzzle to track down a serial killer who is responsible for missing persons.

The feeling, however, upon playing the game, is about the intriguing and captivating character of knowledge. As the puzzle involves several branches of esotericism, the search for relevant knowledge and information on the net comes across several pages written in languages other than English. This experience only reinforces my eagerness to recapture my French study which has stopped for quite a long time.

Human knowledge is always appealing to my love. Yet one gets only to know that knowledge cannot be reached without certain skills in languages. Reading those arcane letters either of Greek, Latin, or of non-English languages, I cannot help feeling helpless in not being able to get down to the facts recorded there.

Got to give myself some time to learn a language other than English. Though I'm getting older and busier with mundane and career chores, I just can't ignore my love for knowing more of human pursuit after something in the yonder. Got to put myself together and work something out, thus making myself feel that my life is not entirely meaningless.

Regain

Almost a year from the time I created the blog, now I finally have time to get its template done and am ready to start writing my blog. Maybe this postponement is not entirely meaningless. I was at NDHU when creating my first blog account along with a course blog. My time then was all spent maintaining the course blog at the cost of my personal blog. Yet now I am transferred to NCTU and start a new teaching job and academic life at a new place. Here I start thinking of going back to my personal blog as my life here is for the most time in solitude which, interestingly, does not look repulsive to me. I almost welcome this new solitude of mine as my age is approaching to the mid-point of a general life span. It is at this time and in this solitude that I feel the urge to keep a record of my thinking and feeling that catch me by surprise from time to time. I would like to imagine that one or two decades after I can have a chance to look back at my life in this period. I am writing here, maybe, for a future unknown to me. And by this writing gesture I might want to render that unknowable-ness foreseeable at least a bit.