The Black Sun

Heated to extremity, the sun turns black. Turns that which looks directly into it blind.

Hit by the black sun, the building is going into spasm.

Rain Storm

A storm strikes.

A pool of water is in uproar of silence.

Droning

Hear insect non-stop droning from nowhere. A sign of weather change. Temperature going a bit higher. Sounds and smells like summer.

Is it now already leaving behind the winter and entering a warm spring? Almost not feel cold this winter.

I’m starting to miss the coldness, which seems able to make everything, physical and non-physical, coagulate to a solid matter. Solid coldness.

Wetware

Dawn.

Woke up from the middle of a dream. Couldn’t remember what it’s all about.

The rain starting at unknown hour was drumming. Drenching pines outside the window. To the skin.

Didn’t know why waking up at this moment, less than two hours of sleep.

Suddenly occurred to my mind the plot and characters of a movie watched long time ago. Neither a famous nor a popular one. Just couldn’t remember how it ends.

At last came to my mind I never watched it to its end in the first place.

Why?

Floating up and down in the rain my dampened head kept thinking of the question…

Fox

When the fox ran passing by

The whole mountain has lost its bearings

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.

Death

As for death, I personally doubt if anyone could ever be ready to die. Philosophically speaking, death is that which manifests the possibility of the impossible. In other words, it is our ultimate and final possibility that, once realized, annihilates all other possibilities we should have possessed. Because of the infinity of possibilities, we can be said free. Yet equally because we will never realize that infinity (like when confronting death that brings to all our unfolded possibilities an abrupt stop), we will always already die too early and too soon. Everyone, by nature, by the human nature as freedom, cannot but die with uttermost regret. No salvation, no redemption, only hard and cold revelation. Death, who can deny, is the deadly serious issue every young person should postpone to later days. Who knows, maybe the so-called peaceful death belongs only to those who deny, or choose to become ignorant of, the signifying effect death has already imposed upon human existence.

War

Why people always want to go to war as the final solution to all the problems, be they caused ignorantly or intentionally? Maybe human beings have been implanted in the very first place with a drive to a duel to death with one another. Isn't it one sign that humans, by nature, are always already a forsaken people by whatever god or gods high above or down below? What is worse, people like to justify the cause of wars by that very beyond where the godhead is supposed to be. I somehow believe that such a beyond does exist over there. Yet I too believe that humans are way off from ever meeting the requirement to get into or get at that beyond. As for what or who, if any, actually is present in that beyond--I firmly believe it is the question humans are neither allowed nor able to answer. To mistake ignorance as knowledge, frenziness as belief, and faith as justice--that is the very human problem that has been causing so much suffering, misery, and death in the not very long history of the pathetic beings (how can we not feel pathetic?) that assume a human form. Sometimes one cannot help holding a strong doubt that exactly because we never know what love or hope really is or even because we are born insulated from love or hope, we always treat them as the highest (read, the impossible) value worth pursuing. pursuing, yes, after shadows and illusions all the time. To believe in something or some being higher makes us pathetic, yet to discard the same belief makes us trivial. We are always at odds with ourselves. conflictual, confrontational, and antagonistic that is as we are (wo)men. Woe men.

Missing

Sexual drive (or simply desire as it is) will never be satisfied any more than love. That's the very point making desire desire and love love. Without that forever delayed, postponed, and missing encounter, there will be no love or desire. And simply for that, there will always be that strong nostalgic aura circling both. Yes, therefore we miss, miss all the time. Something or someone is always getting off our hold even without our knowing. Therefore we miss, always miss something or someone in some place and at some time. A missing person we all are. That's why memory is always sweet. Knowledge, yes, always comes too late. Because.....? Because we cannot but keep loving and desiring.....till the day we die.

SETI

The latest analyses of the S.E.T.I work-units by my computer center on the area around the constellation Boötes (the herdsman). For those who are a bit well versed in reading the night sky, Boötes is fascinating for at least two reasons. Its alpha star, Arcturus 大角, with the magnitude of -0.04 is the fourth brightest star in the sky (as u might already know, the brightest one is Sirius 天狼 whose magnitude is -1.46) and "only" 36 light-years away from earth in distance.

"Only" means "not very far from," if compared to the globular cluster NGC 5466 within the Boötes boundary which, well, is 47,000 ly in distance. The nearest star to earth is alpha centauri: 4 ly. Of course, this "only" is still far away because with our technology today, we can't even have manned travel to alpha centauri. Light travels in one year 9.46 x 1,000,000,000,000 km. Quite stupendous!

Another reason Boötes interests star-gazers is that, as its name and story suggests, the constellation leads hunting dogs (Canes Venatici) by its side, keeping the two bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) around the pole (north pole, of course). As u already know, the Great Dipper of Ursa Major is the famous Chinese 北斗七星 (天樞, 天璇, 天璣, 天權, 玉衡, 開陽, 瑤光), while the Little Dipper of Ursa Minor has Polaris rested on the very north point of the celestial body. Since the magnitude of Arcturus is much much brighter than all those stars above, this Herdsman becomes kind of a guide that easily directs star-gazers from Dubhe (天樞) to Polaris, that is, to north.

Arcuturus, by the way, is from the Greek arktourous, "guardian of the bear." Bear, in Greek, is Arktos. Since our Boötes is closely associated with the northerly constellation Ursa Major, arktos gradually came to bear the meaning "north" (as witnessed by the word "arctic").

Listening intently to the area deeply into the sky around Boötes is the radio telescope of Arecibo of the S.E.T.I project. Hissing monotonously in continuity in the silent deep night is my computer processor busy calculating the data chunk ripped from the telescope ear. Who knows, maybe there's really someone or something out there waiting for response. Yet the reality is no more than a technological materialization of people's belief in the "beyond." yes, only beyond. And never ask or attempt to know what the beyond is or is about. Never put into that beyond whatever we think we know should be its contents.

Just beyond......

The truth is we simply don't know. Of that beyond we never know how to think, and in that beyond we will never be able to think.

Sol

No sun today. Eager to see light, to feel warmth. Drifting like photons in the vast sea of data to the hotshots. Sunburn. Eye inflammation. PDF IT.

Library

Dear S:

Today I finally got the chance to visit our library. A very new building with spacious lawn outside and almost equally vast space inside. You can sense the newness everywhere. Some workers were busy installing arrays of book shelves, besides of which lining along the walls are numbers of cartons heavily loaded with books. On each carton is written large in red ink the specific location of shelf where the books will be seated in near future. Not many people were here, partly because the unsettled current state of the library cannot serve well its users who need some quiet corners to rest or read. But I still like the place for its not yet being fully populated.

Walking to and fro between different shelves with books, I felt comfortable and humble at once. Even with the not so voluminous a collection, the books there still bespeak the vast amount of human knowledge that overwhelms a single human mind. How can I not be awe-stricken by them? I leafed through lines of lines of books, with a list in my hand, checking each book’s relevance to my interests, reading a few pages to taste a bit what kind of world the book will unfold. Sometimes u cannot help thinking that one in fact does not need thousands of books to feel both humbled and excited. Only a few of them will do.

Of course there’s some labor involved. After I walked out of the library back to my office, I found my arms aching badly. Books’ burden caused that. Maybe the burden goes farther than that. In addition to the physical ache from carrying heavy books, the mental ache will soon ensue. Sitting on my chair staring at their temporary companionship, I know they demand that my mind start kicking at once.

For their stay here is short, and short too is mine in this world.

Brison Cafe

The shop is on the second floor. Looking through its window into the garage (a parking lot under the overpass) where taxis, sedans, and tow trucks as well as a few fork lifts are lined up in opposite. Don't know if this is where the towed cars are temporarily parked, waiting for their owners to claim. The space is bordered by green fences which block the view of people if they walk down the street. But the shop's second-floor height gives visual access to this rectangular space. I'm wondering how much space one would need to build a world of its own. Such a space, an enclosure, like an inland forgotten by the bustling city life, a space lost in the torrents of this busy city. For those who live or work in that space, they may only need be protected by the fences to perceive their world merely as thus, self-reliant, self-sufficient, as long as they don't walk outside. What will it look like if people live or work there? I cannot help wondering.

On the walls of the shop, shadows of the passing cars on the overpass are dancing to and fro from time to time. Clouds out there sit quietly on the upper brim of the window pane. Blue, white, no sound. The air in the shop is replete with heavy exhaled cigarette smoke. Almost can't breathe, causing certain headache. But there's something enticing and alluring in the smell. Something ruinous, yet ecstatic. Likely a smell of a disjointed life.

I'm waiting for a person whose absence in front of me will be discontinued and the empty seat, occupied shortly after. Can't imagine what will be happening between us a few minutes later. A troubling relation, somewhat dissuading me to go on. Many things remain vague and obscure to me. Feel like being cursed--by frivolities of life.