01.
I admire and aspire a writer’s life, a life of tranquility, purity and freedom. I’m sure that most people wouldn’t argue me with the first and second adjective, but when it comes to the third one, most would sniff. Nobody’s free, I suppose they’d say. Yes, no one can possess tarnish-proof freedom, but the relatively quotidian and square regimen make it possible for writers.
02.
You see the problem I’m having now? My passage still lacks of content and reasoning. It should a train of thoughts instead of a series of incoherent cars. The grids of my logic is still far away from being tight. More efforts are still in need to tackle this problem apparently. In light that there’s been, accurately, 12 days since the last time I wrote anything. I decide that I’d write 4,219 words today, both as an extensive writing exercise and a sweet punishment to myself. The time span is limited to the stretch of today. And plus, the reason why I picked up the number 4,219 is that it’d the lengthen of a whole marathon if you add a“5”and“kilometer”after it. Ergo, if I can accomplish this goal today, it’d be my first successful marathon, despite that it’s a writing marathon as a proof of my qualified writing stamina rather than a running one. But it would do the trick, another thing that I have never done in my life, a hallmark that can cheer me up before the last semester of college creeping silent near me and catching me off guard.
03.
I had a almost five-year long relationship with my ex-girlfriend, lasting from my second senior high school to my junior year in college by which most people would call them the youth.
Our knots were normal and average, dotted with a dearth of twisted plots, such as stalking and peeking at the other one’s phone, and the fact that me as a lesbian and her as a bisexual. Anyway, that’s beside the point.
Right now, I’m very confused that why I can hardly feel the desire and the need to dive into another relationship. Most time, I feel more than comfortable with simply spending time alone. Friends are needed sometimes, but only with sophisticated, considerate peers with insights and ideas. Otherwise, it’d be a really boring and insipid to spend time together, bearing no meaning at all, doing no good for anyone. At this point, I think that I might get the hang of this trait of mine. Taking such a rigid friend fun time candidate election standard into accounts, it’d be no surprise that the bar of a partner has been lifted too high to reach. Spending approximately 30 hours (one hour per day) a month with a unqualified girlfriend who is annoying, self-centered, and maybe the worst, needy, is devastating. If it does happens, I’d literally rather die, though I have to admit that most of my personalities, or to be more accurate, my characteristics could be also annoying, self-absorbed time often.
04.
Recently, I’ve been reading a book about women rights, or so-called feminism, a book written by Long Yingtai, a famous writer and politician in Taiwan who has being contributing consistently to the movements and rights of women for years. And I got another book of the same genre, written by a well-known writer, Luise Von Flotow. The book’s name is Translation and Gender, Translating in the‘Era of Feminism’. Both are great with the first one a non-fiction book unfolded in the form of letters written by the writer alone, though ostensibly seems to be from different people, and the latter one an academic milestone.
I just read the preface and historical background of the latter one, so I’ll just talk something about the first one.
If I have to point one thing that I find most valuable inside it, it’d be the definition and explanation of feminism. Feminism is not just a movement to pursue the righteous rights of women. Deep inside, its sole purpose is to fight for human rights, the rights that should be shared by every individual regardless of anything. And compared with the presumed 50:50 equality between male and female in the realm of gender, distribution according to one’s demand is a more promising and right way to go. Because not every woman love to be an alpha woman in the business, and by the same token, not every man resent the household work. Ergo, the right interpretation of feminism is not to make every woman take a job, but to render it a right for them to make their decisions of going to work or not, and to guarantee that no matter in the workplace or at home, they all enjoy the right to live a life in a way they want, no longer trapped in a web of sugarcoated housewife responsibilities.
05.
T-minus 2 hours and 34 minutes.
My plan is to take a running outside along the near-river park today. I have been keeping taking 10,000 steps of walking everyday for the last three days which is a good start. And now, it’s time to run. I am going to start with a 10- to 15-minute running and a 15-minute walking in the first place. With the aroma of spring and fresh spirit I’m holding up right now, I am sure that this would be a tasty jogging both for my eyes and my mood.
06.
How I wish I could live in a studio, or something else. I could care less how small the house is, as long as that I can live solo. Living with someone else, even with my beloved parents and dear girlfriend, nettles me in a consistent way, My ideal situation is that there’s only one soul, which is, my soul, in a house. I still remember a joke told by Sherlock in the British drama mini-series - Sherlock Holems. Sherlock told Waston to shut up when Waston was sitting quietly, because, he said, the noise of Waston’s thinking is very disturbing. This isn’t a joke to Sherlock apparently. And even I know that I am not great enough to be compared with Sherlock, a fictional character, but a beloved and admired one around the world, I still need to say that I’m serious about this whole no-soul-allowed-to-be-around-me-in-the-house thing. It’s obnoxious even if the soul holds harmless purpose.
07.
To be frank, I’m extremely anxious about this new semester. First, I haven’t even put my hands on my graduate paper. Second, the coming interpreting competition. I should have done about 30% of the paper by now. Nothing could pretext my failure because no matter what happened in the process. I am the only one to blame and hold accountable. Nobody is rigging me except my desire, regime, routine, and willpower.
The silver lining here is that I still have 3 months to right the ship and get things done. As for the second one, I have nothing more to say. It’s a competition, therefore, winning and losing would be of no alternative. Of course, you can stand on the middle ground here, being a second, or one of the thirds or fourths, but what’s the point of being on the middle ground anyway. That’s just the placebo for the losers. Some might argue that there’s no such a thing as a winning and losing in a game. Sure, we can play a game without setting a trophy for the winner, but that does not mean there isn’t one. There’s always a winner, or two winners (win-win). People would pick up their own hero on the one hand, and in most cases, the halo of the glory would just flare up flagrantly on the other hand, therefore, removing the winner title away from them could do nothing concrete. It’s as stupid as thinking that there’s no air around us because nobody can see it with their own eyes. What a great self-deceit.
Anyway, it seems like that I’m a little digressive here. My point is not about how badly I want to win the competition, and couldn’t find a way to face the possibility of losing it. My point is that all of these would put a lot of pressure on me, and it happens to be that I’m not that kind of person who enjoys those pushes that might make me a better person, instead, I find pressure from the outside world and people the most useless to myself. It is not the power that drives me, but the reason why I am sluggish. It may sound preposterous, however, remains true.
08.
The time is 16:34. I just got back from jogging and walking. I feel very refreshed right now, just like a silver goblet replenished with blood red wine. The air outside is full of vernal flavor, though the trail of buds can still be found nowhere yet. Basking in the sunshine is always the best option to kill the spring afternoon, and it would be even better to enjoy all of this with the companionship of families, or a loyal, fast-running, and frothy dog.
Although the yellow river is healthier and less yellowish those years, one can still smell the unpleasant scent of the run-offs of it. One of my friends told me that there were still a lot of people who don’t believe the climate change is real. I can only say that ignorance is a bliss, lucky for them not being the inhabitants of the islands, otherwise, they’d be live a really happy and prosperous life until the last moment, being drown to death...
09.
My favorite teacher once recommended an article to me. I can’t recall the title and the name of the author. But I could tell you that after boiling it down, it tells people to restrain their appetite and desire, only by this way can one truly savor the good flavor of food and take full advantage of what one gets. It just couldn’t be righter. Someone may think water is just a transparent and tasteless liquid, but his or her impression of water would totally turn around after finishing a marathon in July. Better news here is that he or she might not have to do it all, only 5 kilometers would do the trick.
In life, there’s too many lures and options. It’s just like shopping in the mall, too many options leaving people no choices, but to purchase and hoard too many useless and unworthy things up in the attic. Unfortunately, the more one gets, the more void one could be, and the harder one reach satisfied. So, most of time, I really aspire and admire writers’life, random, tranquil, like the surface of a lake with no waves at all. All things are in check, nothing can easily shake the foundation of their austere and simple life, yet, they can create a whole systematically imaginative lands where inhabit different kinds of ethnics, or creatures. Isn’t that fascinating? They successfully prove that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
10.
Have you ever wondered that what kinds of and how many thoughts that flow through your mind every day? I think writing constant entries like this can provide you some perspective. Honestly, Compared with this question, I find the way mind think more intriguing. This is also a subject that have been puzzling generations of linguistics. The focus of this problem is to figure out what kind of language the mind is using to think about stuffs, or if the mind is thinking via language. What’s exact tool of the consciousness? If the mind does use the language, then how those blind and deaf people learn and think? And if we do use language to think, then how bilinguals think? Will the different system of another foreign language partake the activity, and to what extent? To get the bottom of all those would require the joint efforts from expertise in different sectors, such as the neurologists, linguistics for sure, and biologists and so forth. Humans are no wonder the most sophisticated creatures of the nature.
11.
So far, I’ve accomplished half of the mission of today - finishing 4,219 words. It just occurred to me that this number is about the one required in my graduate paper. Maybe I should try to finish my paper next time when I want to do this all over again. It’s kind of fun, but I think it eludes most people the reason why it is fun. Take a lot of my classmates for example, from primary school to college, a lot of them think of writing as a sworn enemy. As a result, every summer and winter vacations, they would copy from books and the internet to finish their writing homework. Of course, I was one of them, not because that I found writing complete unnecessary, boring, and difficult at that time, but I found the purpose of some teachers making us to do it is unjustified. They are trying to rip the imagination and happiness part off the writing process, leaving a bad first impression of writing in most kids’little mind, making them loath the wholesome writing things from then on.
And right when I think it is the teachers’fault, I found myself taking a look at the root of the problem through a wrong lens. I asked myself that why those teachers would do it, leaving mountains of work to kids and setting words limitation and topic for every composition. The answer is that the world needs elites, all kinds of elites to do assorted things. And the best way to manufacture batches of elites it to do it in a well-set streamline which in this case is to cultivate them in schools. The more proficient teachers do their work, the more productive the Gross Domestic Product would be.
Someone might accuse me of setting a word limitation for myself right now. I’d like to defend myself here. Meeting the goals of mine is one of my traits and things, not a proof of me being a final product of the aforementioned system. Don’t be ridiculous, pals.
12.
Memories are very mysterious. Something that should leave a dent in your mind turns out to pale as time goes by, but sometimes, all those odds and ends in life can be on prowl in you mind for months. In addition, you might forget easily about those things or words you just do or say. For instance, at present, I can hardly recollect most of my entries above, their topics, their content.
13.
Most people believe in the power of self-reflection, however, I’m a strong supporter of nothingness which means that instead of reflecting in the process of medicating or something like that, one should do nothing. To some extent, it resembles the spirit and principle in the Chinese traditional school, Tao. Everything is within the nothingness and nothingness is the mother of anything. Our brain is a very complicated and delicate machine. Basically, everything we touch, we feel, we see stems from our brain. What we see and feel is just a result of our working brain. And in the light that our brain is tied tightly with our emotion and feelings, what we see just what we want to see and all we can get. Therefore, technically speaking, nothing in the world can change or intrude one’s way of living unless the one is willing to do this to him- or herself. In the same vein, no one in the world can make another person happy or sad if the one is reluctant to do so. But, no matter what, we are suffering from all different kinds of emotions led by other people and things around us all the time. People are hurt by the breakup with the other half. People are crying over spilled milk and couldn’t get over with it no matter what. People are stuck in their own mind, savoring sorrow, regret, and disappointment. To what end? It eludes me often.
I always believe that there’s a solution for every problem. Instead of sitting on ones hands, one should take initiatives and act on it. And even if there’s such a thing as unsolvable problem exist, there’s nothing to sweat about, because the solution of it would be even easier - if you can’t solve it, you leave it. Because it is unsolvable, so why even bother to try.
Happiness is the most crucial element in life. For every single day you keep breathing on earth, the fun you can get is diminishing. When the moment of your death keeps you in tight grip. There’s no more fun in the earthy world. That would be like bye bye fun, hello something I don’t know. So, why not take every second to enjoy the fugitive and worth-living-happily life of your own?
14.
Recently, I have being having assorted dreams at night, some of which are quite absurd. Among them, the most frequented place is Taiwan. If some of my friends are reading this log, they probably think that it’s just so pretentious and pompous of me to bring up this old Taiwan experience again and again. And that’s the reason why I try, as hard as possible, not to mention Taiwan a lot in the conversions with my friends. But as long as they go there once, they’d be more sympathetic with me. There’s an old saying goes around the cross-strait - Being in Taiwan for a day, a lifetime of dream hunting forever. To be candid, if I don’t have to take the TEM8 test, finish the paper, and participate the interpreting competition this semester, I’d be in Taiwan right now. I promised myself the day I left Taiwan that I’d go back some day soon. I just love everything there. The little town I had spent one of my college semester as an exchange student there, the fresh air and crystal sky, the natural kinship among even strangers there, the politeness and intellectual and physical equities there, all making it a dream place for someone like me, a tailorized cute place with ocean surrounding it.
I made two great friends when I was out there. One is Chris, another is Kevin. They are all Taiwaness. The reason why I refer them in English is that they are students of Applied English major where people call each, most time, in English name. It’s a bit like Hong Kong style. Anyway, Chris now is a paratrooper on service, and will be retired in December this year, as for Kevin, he is now a disciple of Ba Ji Boxing, learning it from a master and teaching it to the students of his own.
Chris told me a month ago via wechat that both of them plan to visit mainland this end of the year after his service and want to have a little reunion with me before they start their own careers. I was astonished and over the moon when I saw those words popped on my chatting window. There’s nothing better to be together with old friends who shared a stretch of very important memory with you. I almost spent the most part of my time in the last few weeks in Taiwan with them. We took a sea journey and spent two days and one night in a small island next to Taiwan. I visited both of their grandparents’place and received great hospitality there, having delectable and local cuisine, living like an indigene. Those are all once-in-a-life experience and cannot be duplicated, or taken by others.
In order to make them feel my most sincere and warm greetings and hospitality, I’ll meet them at the airport and let them live in my new house in the peripheral district of the town, and provide them the whole-package experience through Lanzhou which can be paralleled with the platinum service of the top travel agency. This is what people call bromance, bro.
15.
700 words to go. But, to be candid, I got nothing left to say. After dinner, I am a little drowsy right now. I have a tutoring in tomorrow’s schedule, but I haven’t done my preparation well. I know that there is a proverb goes like“once people start to think, God would be amused.”I think it proper to change it as“once people are lazy, God’s hands are tied.”to apply to my situation here.
16.
I know that every one is an independent soul in the world, so how to measure a person’s weight in another person’s heart? Take me for example, I am a soul who’s on a whim. Except for my families and most closed and culled friends, I care about almost no one. Tough I do give my hand to some people, even random people, in need, I could care less how they are doing with their lives because I deeply believe that everyone should be obligatory to his or her own life. For me, some people’s weight in my heart can be measures with two standard - there’s and there isn’t. The line between is clear, but with no data variation available.
17.
Okay, it’s time to wrap up here. I still want to have a shower and go to bed early tonight. If I’m lucky enough, I might have another good fancy dream about all the places and people I am in deep love with.
Generally speaking, the quality of this writing marathon is good. To be more specific, the middle part of is relatively better than the beginning and the ending because it contains more solid thoughts and information and shows better reasoning and wording by the warming up of the beginning. Frankly speaking, when it came to about the 2,000 words, I thought that I may not be able to do it any more. The train of thoughts start to honking woefully, passengers starting to complain about the noises made by each other, ticket inspector hardly maintaining the order, sitting and grumbling alone in the staff-only car. However, after two or three more stations, obnoxious passengers got off the train and disappeared in the outflux of crowds, things got better.
In the process of it, when I was thinking silently in my mind, it felt like that I can touch every single string of thought with my bare hands. They’re floating in the dark space of my mind, glowing and blinking, finding a place to cling on. So I collected them, holding them in hand, taking a good look at them with microscope, trying to get the clue of what they are and what I can deal with them. Some of them were well-informed, containing a lot of facts about myself, some of them are with hazy and vague mind, just like me in the wake of having a prolong and boring speech. I managed to analyze them in different angles and perspectives, trying to get something unusual out of them, but eventually failed in most cases. However, the remained dose can do the great work. Less is more.
Most Chinese books are of 20,000 words only which means that if I can keep doing this writing marathon thing 5 times in a row, I would make a book for myself. That’s a lovely and cool thing to do. Maybe instead of doing it with computer, I can do it by writing them down and do all the book jacket by hand. That is going to be something.
The fun journey reaches its end. Another one is just in order. Just as what I said before, there’s nothing you can’t do in the world, you just have to find the right attitude and method in the first place. I’ll end with quoting one of Churchill’s words:“This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Behold, irrelevant audience of mine, the chapters of my life continues unfolding.
:)