by A S, cf w, Ditto.
12:43AM, March 5th, 2023
A S:
It was a Saturday early morning, or a Friday midnight when I encountered K after many years of search. I was on my way walking out a labyrinth like underground in south London, or east New York. I gazed at his distant receding figure into the halo outside the underground exit. The halo was unrealistically bright that I c barely recognize his figure but I inexorably believe the sun has not risen. It was either a Saturday early morning, or a Friday midnight.
3:40AM, March 5th, 2023
Ditto:
I was not sure about how soon he had been receding, or how long I had been gazing. In the tunnel, of which one end was where I almost passed by and the other was where the light of that halo would have never reached, there was a person playing keyboard music, slowly and stately. “Intermezzo of B, W, V, Five, Six, Four”, the person proactively said, “Like Saturday, after Friday, before Sunday, how nice it is. Good …” I couldn’t remember, it was a “night” or a “morning”. However, thankfully, those voices, letters and digits skillfully touched the figure of K at the boundary of halo, as a kitty aligned a cup of my favorite cocoa at the edge of the desk, a cooled down cocoa.
6:50PM, March 5th, 2023
cf w:
It turns out that hours have passed since i started to drink and stare at the now cold cup of cocoa. just how many hours have passed im not sure. in fact im not even sure if days have passed during my journey into the light. i dont recall tasting the cocoa at all although i know it is my favorite. it’s as though the flavor has moved on while i lingered in that moment of in between days. the music…. ah the music, it seems, have also left me. whatever is playing now is no longer something i recognize but remains in the background, comfortably familiar yet quietly unintrusive, unlike those engaging masterpieces that demand and command your attention upon hearing. but what is it? shall i sink back into the crevices of time and sift through entangled memories in search of a recognizable tone? perhaps it will sharpen K’s gait and perhaps it will allow me to remember the lone first oscillating notes of the cello the first time he played it, or perhaps it will soften his figure into silent passings.
3:23PM, March 12th, 2023
A S:
I wanted to catch the moment, so as to catch him. The speed of escalators always scares me like the undercurrent when my grandfather first taught me to swim. All light reached to me through depth upon depth of blue waters, through the uttermost sensation of life in all its power. It was a competition with time, which by all manner of means, I will lose. It was not the first I feel so defeated. When was it? The time I had to rush into the drizzling forest to hunt mushrooms before the light reached them; the time I also had to pray for the plains in summer waiting, longing for a little rain. I never understood why I couldn’t have the rain and sunlight together, and I have searched long. It was K who told me that in order to see sunlight with rain, I should forget all the knowledge learned from books in the City Library, and all the notes of different instruments I listened to in the Music Hall; they would forever enslave me.
1:17AM, March 17th, 2023
Ditto:
I tried to apply what K said, but I always failed. As my brain got more and more empty, everything got stuck in my throat, my heart beats were so strong and silent, all I forgot was to breathe. I gave up, to be honest, even worse, what I tried turned out to be retrieval. Once I heard, during the age of sail, a navigator was able to go in and out the whirlpools freely because he knew which flow to follow. What if it was their romance? If I could whisper properly, would you tell me whether the light was as straightforward as I, or whether the rain was as gentle as I? Perhaps I was too unresponsive, you were intentionally, aren’t you? Dark and damp early morning, dull and droughty in summer, I should have grasped your temper early, as that navigator did. I wish K could tell me a little bit more. Am I still rushing? Am I unfortunately praying once again?
11:13AM, April 10th, 2023
cf w:
a loud crackle arrived in the depth of my skull awakening me from my apparent other reality. i was not prepared to be where i found myself and the winds and the moisture i was bathed in just a moment ago could not possibly have been unreal. it was warm, it felt warm, and humid, like summer should be.
as i realized that the combined grains of my breath was clearly visible in front of me when i exhaled, i understood that the current season is certainly not summer. while attempting to ascertain a more precise location of time i am currently in i also realized that i am in the middle of running. am i running to something? am i running from something? where am i running to? why am i running?
all of these questions occurred simultaneously putting my current action into question but i dare not stop for i dont yet know the consequences of stopping.
10:57PM, April 10th, 2023
A S:
Why do I fear the potential consequences of stopping? From distant and not trustworthy memories of mine, I was told there is always something in the present reality that we can never stop. In the reality where I encountered K, that non-stopping thing was called time. Time, especially the time I spent with K, was never abstract. It was material, it was a distinguished companion of my body- I feel it engraves into my skin and overwrites my memories all the time. But now, my body doesn’t feel it anymore. I have hands but the skin touches nothing; I have a clearer than ever mind but I recall nothing. I’m running faster and faster and trying to seek a little trace of that non-stopping thing - time. I can’t stop. I realize in this reality I am that nonstopping thing. I am time.
12:23AM, April 13th, 2023
Ditto:
Which is faster, the one awake or the one in so-called sleep? What if you are not alone, shall we announce “We are time” or “We are times”? What kind of landscape have they seen, a mainstream with uncountable forks or infinite streams with no cross? Where would be the leftover time if we delete ourselves from the present reality, suppose we have such ability? Did I give name to time, or myself was entitled by time? Why did Crusoe count time on Mas a Tierra, as if he did not enjoy it? I used to have tons of such questions which I no longer ask at present. I felt a sort of redundancy, not about those questions, but about myself. I gradually stopped to ask and started to be. Once I said I am God, I was serious. It was when someone asked me whether atheists exist and I gave a no. Another day I wished myself to be a self-taught man, and stay in the Library of Babel for a while to see if I can read a book authored by a “AB”-initialized name. Now I am standing where I have been standing, the exit of my labyrinth. My? Weird, such a weird combination. Without any notice, how come a day is coming.
2:16PM, April 14th, 2023
cf w:
mired in the thought that i may in fact be plural, and that i, we, may pursue divergent threads of accumulated consequences which can be called time, it occured to me that i can find refuge in the crevices between these diverging and forking paths…. i can find refuge from time.
with this revelation i am suddenly given the ability to step out of the normal stream of events and sensations and simply observe what seems like unending flows of occurrences without being obligated to participate or being dragged in. everything slips by me in myriad directions and i hide, in the center of it all, looking, judging, and gesturing, from the panopticon that i found myself in. i am located in the crossing of events, i am in the stream of crossing times…. i am the crossing of events and times…. i am time.
4:53PM, April 16th, 2023
A S:
The endless, fluid, homogeneous, and formless time, almost feels like water smoothly flowing in other water.
But I’m not like that. I sometimes trip myself. Now I think I have found the reason - the time dwells in my legs is more rebellious. They refuse to surrender to the endlessness of time.
The growing discordance between my head and hands reveals the revolt of the homogeneous fluidity of time. My knuckles just bent a little while my head had witnessed two hundred years of Crusades.
12:53AM, April 25, 2023
Ditto:
It is hard to tell when I started to feel so, and why I still feel it true. Too many moments count, my little scattered moments. I have always been blamed for taking so long to grasp such moments, though I didn’t even blink.
I remember a story: somewhere exists a granite mountain, against which a bird grinds its beak once a year, and flies away, until the mountain becomes the plain, eternity would finish its single day.
I ask what you prefer to be, the mountain, the bird or the one who knows eternity well. I should have bracketed these questions out and let you… I failed because all my tears and goosebumps are gone. I am calmful in vain.