时间空间还有
质量
灰尘
温暖窄小的丛林
向下生长
想象，滴下平面的血
土壤煮成冰
植物冬眠
永动的摇篮
呓语的时钟
压出笔直的车辙
- 2014年8月24日，博卡
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
On becoming 25
(This can be read as a casual poem where words do not have meaning. This is a valley where your thoughts may or may not flow through.)
Is 25, 25 years?
It is not like when I was much younger. Since a while ago maybe, this has been the case, about the turnover of years.
The feeling of a year has been progressively disjoining from the numbers.
1997 was a year. 1998 was one too. The definition seemed to be clear at that age.
A year should be how a year feels like. There should be things happening in it. A few things for each day or each week. The length of a week is stretched out by the filling of things.
The progression of each month thus becomes memorable, as if it is a person with a story. A story that is anchored at an abstract sequence of the so-called weeks, whose tempo was made salient by the turnover of things. It is through the deflection of month, a sequence gains its simultaneity.
2014 is not a year, neither was 2013, 2012, 2011 - if the feeling of year is part of its definition that has been held constant since I was 8.
I'm reluctant to call them years since there was not one thing that happened in them.
The recent turning of numbers, not years - like the rising turbulence from the heated deposits of memory, is not yet, if it is ever going to be, one complete movement.
What is a thing? What slows down or speeds up the progression of numbers as time contemplated backwards. What made them distinguishable from each other.
Maybe it is my definition of "thing" has changed. A younger me would take events in a smaller time scale as a thing. And the scale becomes larger as I becomes older.
Then I recalled how I named a number a year. It is not that I can remember, describe, identity what the things in it were like. There is nothing that I can say about them except the feeling of a year, justified by the feeling of things and the tense in between, when they are all projected into the past.
If the feeling is always a part of, if not all of, its definition.
A thing should be what a thing feels like. What holds constant since I was much younger.
Then it is not that I have changed my definition of a thing, but the numbers that were not in the thing had changed their tempo - the swarm of numbers agitated by the pacing up of the stars, the sun, the moon, the flowing of temperature and colors.
What is it to be 25? If I say it's eventually going to 50, it is as if there is time lying ahead equally spaced as what there was before.
But if the turnover of this life is also with the speeding up of the stars, the sun, the moon, temperature and colors. The next 25 is not the same amount of years as the 25 before, if a year should be what it feels like. Then I have lived the majority of my life.
I have always had lived the majority of my life.
But are the stars, the sun, the moon, temperature and colors turning faster? Or when they are projected backwards in time, there will be a point where their slowing down is justified by the salience of a year.
Isn't it more like - whenever I try to grasp the so-called past, the so-called "thing" shrinks in time and multiplied in number, while the rest is elongated in time and reduced in number. As the world projects backwards in time, two parts of the world have distinct trajectories of distortion and drift apart. There is only a regime where the feeling of a year lives. It gives simultaneity to what it lives on.
What is, then, becoming 25? If I am the person who is becoming 25, who has also had the 24, 23, 22, and if a person lives on things as a year does, I have been being born and killed at every moment. A previous me is always severed by the dislocation between the size of things and the size of the rest.
But wait. Maybe being me is just how being me feels like. The feeling is part of, if not all of its definition, and is held constant. As that of a year. As that of a thing.
Then when I am projected backwards in time, I was not a person. I was fragments scattered in the distorted things as they syncopate and interfere with the rest - familiar but not intimate.
I becomes 25 as if have just woken up from a dream, as if there is more reality lying ahead, compared to what is scattered before.
I have always had just woken up from a dream, if, at the end, a dream is the scattering made by the waking.
If the past should just be how the past feels like, 25 is just a fine gradient of scattering. Becoming 25 is the making of 24.
The numbering of years is to overcome the sharp sense of being born, as the numbering of age is to overcome the sharp sense of waking up.
Is 25, 25 years?
It is not like when I was much younger. Since a while ago maybe, this has been the case, about the turnover of years.
The feeling of a year has been progressively disjoining from the numbers.
1997 was a year. 1998 was one too. The definition seemed to be clear at that age.
A year should be how a year feels like. There should be things happening in it. A few things for each day or each week. The length of a week is stretched out by the filling of things.
The progression of each month thus becomes memorable, as if it is a person with a story. A story that is anchored at an abstract sequence of the so-called weeks, whose tempo was made salient by the turnover of things. It is through the deflection of month, a sequence gains its simultaneity.
2014 is not a year, neither was 2013, 2012, 2011 - if the feeling of year is part of its definition that has been held constant since I was 8.
I'm reluctant to call them years since there was not one thing that happened in them.
The recent turning of numbers, not years - like the rising turbulence from the heated deposits of memory, is not yet, if it is ever going to be, one complete movement.
What is a thing? What slows down or speeds up the progression of numbers as time contemplated backwards. What made them distinguishable from each other.
Maybe it is my definition of "thing" has changed. A younger me would take events in a smaller time scale as a thing. And the scale becomes larger as I becomes older.
Then I recalled how I named a number a year. It is not that I can remember, describe, identity what the things in it were like. There is nothing that I can say about them except the feeling of a year, justified by the feeling of things and the tense in between, when they are all projected into the past.
If the feeling is always a part of, if not all of, its definition.
A thing should be what a thing feels like. What holds constant since I was much younger.
Then it is not that I have changed my definition of a thing, but the numbers that were not in the thing had changed their tempo - the swarm of numbers agitated by the pacing up of the stars, the sun, the moon, the flowing of temperature and colors.
What is it to be 25? If I say it's eventually going to 50, it is as if there is time lying ahead equally spaced as what there was before.
But if the turnover of this life is also with the speeding up of the stars, the sun, the moon, temperature and colors. The next 25 is not the same amount of years as the 25 before, if a year should be what it feels like. Then I have lived the majority of my life.
I have always had lived the majority of my life.
But are the stars, the sun, the moon, temperature and colors turning faster? Or when they are projected backwards in time, there will be a point where their slowing down is justified by the salience of a year.
Isn't it more like - whenever I try to grasp the so-called past, the so-called "thing" shrinks in time and multiplied in number, while the rest is elongated in time and reduced in number. As the world projects backwards in time, two parts of the world have distinct trajectories of distortion and drift apart. There is only a regime where the feeling of a year lives. It gives simultaneity to what it lives on.
What is, then, becoming 25? If I am the person who is becoming 25, who has also had the 24, 23, 22, and if a person lives on things as a year does, I have been being born and killed at every moment. A previous me is always severed by the dislocation between the size of things and the size of the rest.
But wait. Maybe being me is just how being me feels like. The feeling is part of, if not all of its definition, and is held constant. As that of a year. As that of a thing.
Then when I am projected backwards in time, I was not a person. I was fragments scattered in the distorted things as they syncopate and interfere with the rest - familiar but not intimate.
I becomes 25 as if have just woken up from a dream, as if there is more reality lying ahead, compared to what is scattered before.
I have always had just woken up from a dream, if, at the end, a dream is the scattering made by the waking.
If the past should just be how the past feels like, 25 is just a fine gradient of scattering. Becoming 25 is the making of 24.
The numbering of years is to overcome the sharp sense of being born, as the numbering of age is to overcome the sharp sense of waking up.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Migrating Birds (Translation of an old poem of mine, 迁徙的鸟, 2006)
black colored silk
tangled at the waist of dirt
the residual nightmare of dawn
a tamed sun
under a few persuasive words
was willingly fooled
black colored turbulence
confused the procession of hunger and cold
It is the blindspot of high and low
of far and near
men with drooping eyelid
with cherished fatigue
black colored north
lost its color
blinded by the gloom
the timeless birds
flying towards an unjustified end
truncated air flow
diseased glance back
- 2006 Beijing, China
tangled at the waist of dirt
the residual nightmare of dawn
a tamed sun
under a few persuasive words
was willingly fooled
black colored turbulence
confused the procession of hunger and cold
It is the blindspot of high and low
of far and near
men with drooping eyelid
with cherished fatigue
black colored north
lost its color
blinded by the gloom
the timeless birds
flying towards an unjustified end
truncated air flow
diseased glance back
- 2006 Beijing, China
Monday, February 10, 2014
Old friends
it's been carried across the street
carefully
she was young
she was quite alive
it has the image
its charm
the same as remembered
as old friends' list
it is the feast for all the dead
the body is warm
the mouth is filled
a look through the face
the laugh
the thought
fall on the backdrop
the wandering graves
carefully
she was young
she was quite alive
it has the image
its charm
the same as remembered
as old friends' list
it is the feast for all the dead
the body is warm
the mouth is filled
a look through the face
the laugh
the thought
fall on the backdrop
the wandering graves
Friday, January 31, 2014
Heart Sūtra -- my semi-literal translation
(Notes are at the end, but please proceed with the translation first with a naive mind.)
Heart Sūtra
When the Bodhisattva of self-listening was in the deep resonance with the Truth,
He reflected to see that all the five convergences are void,
then transcended all confusion.
Śāriputra,
Color is not different from the Void
The Void is not different from Color
Color is the Void
The Void is Color
So is Feeling, Thought, Movement and Recognition;
Śāriputra，
All forms are the image of the Void
-- neither appears, nor vanishes,
-- neither contaminated, nor purified
-- neither adds, nor subtracts
Then in the Void,
There is no Color
no Feeling
no Thought
no Movement
no Recognition
There is no Eye
no Ear
no Nose
no Tongue
no Body
no Mind
There is no Color
no Sound
no Smell
no Taste
no Touch
no Form
There is neither the domain of Eye,
nor the domain of Mind
There is neither Chaos,
nor the termination of Chaos
There is neither the Progression towards Death,
nor the termination of it
There is no confusion,
its aggregation
its extinction
or the lead to its extinction
There is neither wisdom, nor knowing,
Since there is nothing to be known.
Since the Bodhisattva is in resonance with the Truth
The heart is not obscured;
Since the heart is not obscured
There is no fear;
It is away from the confusion of dreaming and thinking
and eventually comes to Nirvana
Heart Sūtra
When the Bodhisattva of self-listening was in the deep resonance with the Truth,
He reflected to see that all the five convergences are void,
then transcended all confusion.
Śāriputra,
Color is not different from the Void
The Void is not different from Color
Color is the Void
The Void is Color
So is Feeling, Thought, Movement and Recognition;
Śāriputra，
All forms are the image of the Void
-- neither appears, nor vanishes,
-- neither contaminated, nor purified
-- neither adds, nor subtracts
Then in the Void,
There is no Color
no Feeling
no Thought
no Movement
no Recognition
There is no Eye
no Ear
no Nose
no Tongue
no Body
no Mind
There is no Color
no Sound
no Smell
no Taste
no Touch
no Form
There is neither the domain of Eye,
nor the domain of Mind
There is neither Chaos,
nor the termination of Chaos
There is neither the Progression towards Death,
nor the termination of it
There is no confusion,
its aggregation
its extinction
or the lead to its extinction
There is neither wisdom, nor knowing,
Since there is nothing to be known.
Since the Bodhisattva is in resonance with the Truth
The heart is not obscured;
Since the heart is not obscured
There is no fear;
It is away from the confusion of dreaming and thinking
and eventually comes to Nirvana
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- First, this is not a translation from the original text. Rather, it is from the Chinese version. So use your discretion with second-handed translation.
- Semi-literal -- in contrast to more popular or scholarly translations, I do not seek to map the use of words corresponding to an conventional western interpretation or practice of Buddhism Religion or Buddhism Philosophy. I choose words that resonate my understanding of the text, also my feeling towards the rhythm and landscape of the verse. For example, 'Color' is a complete literal translation, for its the simplest way to represent sufficiently both the abstract concept and the feeling of it. In other occasions, e.g. in the translation of the four noble truth , I used 'confusion' rather than 'suffering', because I found the word 'suffering' is too sensational to fit in my understanding of its role in the whole text. Perhaps more drastically is the translation of the Perfection of Wisdom into 'the resonance with Truth'-- as I regard the word Truth resonant better with my reading of presocratic philosophy.
- You might have notice I didn't translate the last part of the Sutra. The reason is that I didn't manage to find a way to translate it in a way that makes sense. So please forgive me.
- I attempt to map the Chinese version as a whole (that is, all the relationship among the words) onto the verse above. So I do not wish to compromise the integrity of the whole with local scrutiny.
- I do not profess in the study of religion or the study of philosophy.
- I am at most a poet. I read as I am; I translate as I am. Not as it is.
- Please excuse my grammar as I haven't spoken English for very long.
- Thanks.
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