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.

Trap

S talked me out of my long-time self-trap. She was right. I have to escape from the very moment that has trapped my soul in the earthquake that night.

I seemed to see myself who keep sitting alone helplessly in the dark.

From this day on, I swear to myself I have to escape from that I at that moment, nay, not only so, but also to transform and transcend the former self to become tougher and stronger in soul and body.

Learn to be a man and a father. Only thus can I fight against the destiny to protect and support those whom I love most.

May I be given and granted the strength needed, to love S for the rest of my life because she’s always by my side whenever I need her.

921

In a few seconds , for the first time, I seemed to meet death face to face. Sheer fear, pure shivering. holding S’s hands, feeling her heart pondering as mine, I thought we might never make it.

For a moment, I imagined ceiling falling down on us and the ground sinking far away under our feet. I knew this might be our last chance to feel so close and intimate to each other. quite tragic. I should have had spent more time with the one i love most, instead of squandering life on those trivialities.

The only thing that brought me consolation was the fact that at least we can die together without the need of suffering that unbearable loss of the one you love most for the rest of a pale and painful life.

But the sheer, pure, and inexplicable fear shattered this last tiny piece of relief and turned all the possible abstract thoughts or feelings into the most concrete and the most animal-like level of bodily movement: shivering, unstoppable shivering.