Unfinished letter

I dug through the paper mess on my desk and found this—an undated note, scribbled in haste and addressed to you—which must have been early this August, as I was sitting in the plane waiting for the take-off to Singapore. I wonder what I had in mind to say to you and didn't go on to say. In all probability just restlessness.

Dear Jude,

The plane has yet to take off. I suddenly have this strong urge to write to you. A young lad is standing down there from my window, blond hair ruffled, face pink and lovely with the sunlight on it. I wonder what he's doing in here, working as an airport staff, here in Hong Kong, somewhere he doesn't belong. On this bright morning (too bright, and too many leaden clouds in the sky). I am unprepared to be moved by youth--shadowless youth that one can do anything in/with. I take out my crimson pashmina and wind it round my shoulders, feeling ancient and ageless, as if this warm, dark wool piece is the perfect shield to the piercing, luring beam of that pink robustness. Youth, whatever happened to mine? "When was that innocence-lost experience?" M asked, months ago. "I don’t know. Probably the time when the chickens I reared were ruthlessly beheaded to make the New Year feast. I was three or four."

(some spaces later..) 云朵的影子映在山丘上, 似水波般流动. 揉烂的天空棉花, 我正向你飞去..

donuts

nonsensical topic. since you said you were dropping by, i'll offer some donuts - gesture of hospitality.

i haven't been on MSN for some time. no urge to talk, exactly. just want to sort out my own mess. picked up a copy of Virginia Woolf's ' The Waves' yesterday. In fact I haven't read a single novel since summer but yesterday after class, i had this urge to touch them again. The 13th floor dedicated to good old novels isn't very popular for the general sicence orientated readers and when i was there, few people lingered around. It's almost impossible to navigate without the reference code ready at hand but anyway my trip was without purpose. Maybe i just missed the particular stale smell of ancient paper backs. To be embraced in calm serenity once more while outside late autumn rain trickled endlessly. It was soothing.

i bumped into virginia woolf and thought about what you said. There was a huge collection of her diaries. Now i think of it, I have no idea why I didn't borrow them. Maybe there're simply too many to choose from.

quotes of the day, from the introduction to 'the waves', written by Gilian Beer

While she was writing Mrs Dalloway Woolf copied a passage from Book VII of Wordsworth's The Prelude and added a comment:

The matter that detains us now may seem,
To many, neither dignified enough
Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them,
Who, looking inward, have observed the ties
That bind the perishable hours of life
Each to the other, & the curious props
By which the world of memory and thought
Exists & is sustained.

Good quotation for one of my books. - Virginia

Not like I understand it. Maybe I will one day.

Dropping by

Blogging industry is at a standstill, my own, I mean. And so is communication. Now and then saw you and a couple other friends online that I talked to often, and never seemed to have that urge to talk out these days. Busy life is so smothering. Clicked around and saw your revamped redro and attic rambles, whoa, loved those; that background picture of redro..and the perfect choices of pictures with words in rambles..beautiful.

Looking at the dates I realized there is almost a full month's lapse between your last entry and today. It's shocking, it's shocking, time zooms by so!!! The shock almost shook my sleepiness away...

Letter to Jude from Jady

Dear Jude,

Addicted to Jewel again, indeed. In little times like this, when doubts about self worth, truth and deception quietly awake and nibble away at the heart, I go to Jewel, Jewel the sensual yet innocent one, wise yet wild, still long before one day turning up posing sluttish on a neon colored album. (No, I still can't quite get over that.) if I sound as if I have been pensive and absorbed in thoughts for days, I wasn't—I had to axe away that pile of work little by little, everyday for a long while now, before it becomes a monster and squashes me. I threw myself out there to be consumed by those notes and texts, with a blank mind, little enthusiasm and a nasty sense of urgency. Not reading the eclectic way any more (just slowly reading a wonderfully written French novel, Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan..hope you are going on to take francais!) not writing, not meeting up with friends and acquaintances (I missed to meet tree, and feel most regretful…most inexcusable.) shutting myself off but again not so thoroughly—every night when I sign on online my sight would linger over a certain name for a while too long, wishing, not even subconsciously and knowing too well the improbability, that a message would pop up and clarify some things. I didn't know I'd care this much, about tucked-away truths, of a possibly purely impulsive phrase and an ultimately commonplace and trivial incident, and even if the moment has long expired; but then again, I can't say I don't know myself through and through—it was only that certain self-knowledge is harder to confront, so I did know I'd be caring this much. And the boy is blameless, for, what would anyone say or do after all that happened? (There's no need to contradict this because there are still stretches of the story omitted and untold...and probably should remain so.) And I keep my reticence. Long silences suck things far and away, like vacuum, intangible, boundless, and dreadful; that dread is excruciating in just that—for fear of saying the wrong things, one says nothing, and for fear of turning a small disaster into a crisis by trying to mend it, one ties oneself down and does nothing, and let silences fill out the endless stretch of hours; it's more like thin shelled snails than happily feathered and warm blooded chickens; and I don't know what to think about snails. Or about hiding, or being frail and guardless. (now strangely, Esther's face surfaces and sneers that Esther sneer, says, yeah, go wallow in self-pity!) (I say to her, but I don't pity myself, and she scorns in return.) (Bravo Es, hardly anyone I know of could take up that pitiless cynical insolent devil role as you could. So stay in my fantasy a while…) anyway, I was at Luo's place for a while today. What took place in that very room almost three weeks ago seemed at once dreamlike and immediately erase-and-rewindable. I imagined the boy walking into the room any moment, saying a nonchalant hi, and everything would be back on track. But that's too dramatic to be true, of course, and the real me would probably be a real bastard again, picking up my bag and running off in nameless rage and self-inflicted sadness again. And those aren't even important any more—as soon as the rush of emotions was past each would realize that there are too much at stake—independence, freedom, peace of mind, deep secrets, and happiness itself—to exchange for some uncertain, short-lived thing that vaguely resembles love. Was it out of loneliness? Was it out of boredom? And by just how much need I reduce human emotions to categories and abstractions and reason before I could finally deal with them? That question is going to stay with me for a while...I'll rest my fatigued fingers and mind here..and post this on ss, an arbitrary something that might as well be imagined, impersonal, fictional..

Jady.

SMR 3

I darted through the neighbourhood of Moonriver Lane and was greatly relieved when the road sign was far behind me. The mystic aura of the gigantic mansion, however, still lingered on like the endless summer rain. I stopped, composed myself for a second and turned around. Now a silhouette shrouded in a greying mist of dampness, its once looming presence seemed to be overtaken by an unspeakable air of melancholic calmess . Suddenly I heard someone calling out my name. The voice, distant and surreal, unmistakingly whispered a dreamy spell. 'Never answer the devil's call. They eat your heart away.' Grandma's story rushed to my head. As if seized by madness, I frantically pushed down the peddle and never ever looked back.


Chapter 2
The howling wind rudely shook the windows, their serpentine tongues slurping away at man's vulnerability, hissing at every possible hole, or a careless crevice.

'S - I - R - E ...'

The man slotted in the last letter and turned his head towards the sound.

It was just the wind.

He scowled, his stern face now a worrying look of age. He became very sensitive recently. Even the slightest sound, a bird's flapping wings, or a disturbed ripple in the pond, struck his nerves and threatened to echo in the haunted house of dead memories. A sudden chill escaped from the North wall. He tightened his collar and remembered her warm breath around his neck, tickling and damp.

There was no letter for him today.

He glanced at the amber coloured wooden mailbox, the only unnumbered one among a mirage of fanciful collections. He reserved it for himself. The golden warm colour reminded him of certain things, things he once loved. There was the copper-lidded squarish case with Roman number 'VIII' on it, and another funny-shaped box handmade with vine. Who did it belong to? Was it the old man with the trademark slanted mouth? He always had a pipe dangling between his yellowing teeth, which made his face all the more dispicably annoying.

He didn't know their names, just faces he could tag with a number, the mailbox number.

'Bonsoir, Mr. King. How's your day?' No. 17 came last night to retrieve a thick stack of letters which had accumulated for a month and as a result, almost went stale from the damp weather. They greeted politely and exchanged very few words. For them, he was Mr. King, no more a real person than a name spelt out in monotone. K, I, N, G. And them, imaginary numbers with faces he couldn't tell the real from the fake.

He almost forgot when or why he started this strange business. None of them asked and the reason soon hid itself in the coffin, together with other forgotten secrets. With hands stuck in the pocket, he strolled towards the door. The routine mail sorting was over. It was time to leave.

There he hesitated, moved four steps forward, only to retrieve ten steps back which brought him right in front of number 6. It had been months since the owner last cleared out the letters. Mr. King stared at the pile of papers which threatened to burst out of their confinement. Soon he'd have to move it to a bigger mailbox but what was the use? Mr. no. 6 never came. Yet another letter arrived this morning.

Mr. King kept it his golden rule never to invade his customers' privacy. It was clearly stated in the agreement never to open others' letters unless granted with special permission.

Still, this letter intrigued him.

Through the palm-sized translucent envelop, it didn't take too much effort to make out a tiny strip of paper. So it wasn't a written letter but a strip of paper? Probably a telegram or pure mischief. Or what could it be?


ps. I was depending on you for the title. You sure you want 'strange mail room'? It sounds funny to me though.

pps. Just now I went back to your continuation and checked again if the flow was natural, and there was paragraph two! Wasn't there this morning when I looked. Good one though. the postoffice boy of course played an important role. Now I think about it, just scrap that first paragraph I wrote since it clashed. Hope the parallel happenings at King's side wasn't too abrupt. I didn't bring out the dark nature in him though coz I'm not sure how to. There was a bit of shading on his past about a woman. I'll leave it to you to decide her possible role. Add in something if you will, coz the sudden lightening of tone sort of went a bit offtrack with the foreshadowing about his mysterious look and dark clothing.

not to be removed

no no no nothing, NOTHING, is ever gonna be removed, hear me? lol this isn't a published book, not even one to be published. this is a log that faithfully holds every little bits of conversations, however inconsequential they might seem..i'm now trying, again, to record thoughts, as many and frequently as possible, in the spirit of that Woolfian axiom--'nothing happened until you write it down.' oh yes. incidentally i'm reading Woolf now, not one of her fiction works--a volume of collected essays instead, and now i start to understand why she was upheld as a great great (possibly the greatest ever..this is by me though :P) literary critic by some of her brilliant contemporary men of letters, even greater than herself as a writer. (can't recall who and who said it, but they were big names..) read 'The Common Reader' I and II if you will..pure brilliance.