My Body

My headache kills me. Hard to imagine a new year would start like this. Caught in a flu. And my teeth obviously need some overhaul work which, to say the least, may stretch to a few weeks of treatment. Hope my body can stop betraying me and start being my faithful ally to confront the numerous challenges, both academic and familial, to come.

Proust and Sign

Pick up Deleuze's treatise on Proust and sign to read. Beautifully written. I really like the way Deleuze brings forth his musings on Proust. My order of Proust's monumental work arrived at my hand a few days ago. Really want to re-tackle the work and wish to have a better feel of it as my experience of life and literature has grown and expanded years by now. Literature always brings me consolation and food of thought which teaches me what may lie beyond the signs of human use and what use those signs can assign itself to for achieving a work in its proper sense. A way to rethink my will to creative writing.

Hyperion

Coming back from my trip with my family to Sabah, Malaysia. Aside from various precious memories, what struck my mind most is the reading experience of Dan Simmons's Hyperion, the first of his four-volume space opera. To be specifically, it's the Priest's Tale in its very beginning. Though the novel is structured like Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, his Priest Tale does leave a strong impression. I would say a certain sense of sublimity is successfully created in that tale. Yet the following two tales are not so attractive and fall into a clear category of sci-fi space novel. The written signs, so to speak, simply designate things to communicate in those two tales, while in the first one the signs signify something that is beyond simple things and transport the reader's mind to a place where communication is brought to a failure. The novel, at least up to now, has demonstrated before my eyes what kind of literature is appealing to me and, to my thinking, should be coming near the greatness that can stand firmly against temporary reading consumption and instant post-reading amnesia. There's a kind of literature that will never leave you in peace, but violently make an encounter with you, an unforgettable encounter that will keep disturbing you for years, or eons of years. That's the literature i am seeking and want to write about.

Tiger's Winter Vacation

Tiger is going to have his vacation starting the day after tomorrow. Again, I have to face the option if I want to hand his vacation to private school system or arrange it by myself. Though I do have a lot of school works as well as academic requirements to meet, I am prone to having his vacation arranged by myself. I want to share with him some of my joy in human knowledge. I also enjoy very much playing GO chess with him despite my constant losing the game.

Quake

Quake everywhere. Iran, Mexico, Taiwan. Some minor, some major ones. To live in this world is to face the danger, the natural disaster all the time. Maybe there will come a point at which time all human resources put together can not overcome the natural obstacles to the preservation of our species. It's likely the fact of human life.

New Year

Again, a new year starts. It's time to think back on the days of the past year. What have I done, what have I achieved, what have I not reached as the set goal? Always a pressing question surfaces up when this very first day of a new year arrives.

Last night, as usual, I and my family--my two lovers, wife and son--went out to take a walk in the cold night to spend the last few hours of 2003. Though I had a bad headache and backache, I still had a good time getting along with them. We didn't go to the bookstore to buy each of us a new book due to a shortage of enough time. Yet we did visit a restaurant to enjoy a good meal at midnight, at the border between 2003 and 2004.

People, crowded people, swarming here and there all over the city. It's hard to imagine how come so many people, including young and old, would be sleepless late at night and seem to catch the last moment of joy of the last year, to forget all the unhappy memories in the past in that joy which is no less than a hope, however faint it may look, for a better future whose first day will come to meet them soon.

The night was cold, yet expressions on people's faces were joyful and happy. Why not feel happy for all this. It's a sign of life, of being alive, no matter how many obstacles to lie ahead that, to be sure, will one time or another have to come.

I like this moment. This last night of the past year and before a new one. And this precious moment to be together with my beloved family.