在寫作之前，我不能和世界碰撞

- 鍾文音

Leo Tolstoy

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy

I’ve been chewing on this Tolstoy quote for days- it is the very first line in Anna Karenina, a book that I could never get passed the first fifty pages. Like what I said to J in our email correspondence, the quote sums up the story of my life in one telling. It is absurdly true and heartbreaking. The story of my family isn’t probably stranger than fiction. It is more realistic and in your face than you would have preferred.

Unfortunately it is again that time of the year. The time when families gather, family dinners shared and enjoyed. The time that gives me unspeakable anxiety and a heart ache that I find it impossibly difficult to transcribe to friends. I am not yet sick of answering those questions and giving people the response they were hoping for. Most of the time I only wish avoiding the question could be easier.

It amazes me how much I psychoanalyze myself and every word I utter, every gesture I make. It can’t be good. So I tell myself.

I am imagining the perfect picture of familial bliss...

Thank you

You have so much faith in me, in what I have always been, in what I will eventually become. You tell me you have been seeing certain things about me that I have long failed to see, to feel, to believe in.

The whole world believes in you, in me. Why don’t you?

親愛的你，
到底過了多久 又到底需要多久的時間你才會學會愛與珍惜自己
到底積累的傷害 過去的陰影 需要多久的時間 什麼樣的方式 哪一個合適的時機 才能完全擺脫
親帶的 你不是她
親愛的 也許是該離開的時候了
我需要你 需要你找回自己 需要你發現自己 需要你好好愛 需要你肯定自己 需要你相信
需要你真心相信 需要你擺脫那些不應該的人事物 需要你看到
親愛的 該是開口說話的時候了 你可以選擇克服 你可以證明 你可以你可以

Questions about time

Does time make one bolder?
Does time make us a better person?
Does time eventually make things right? or perhaps better?
Does time take away the heartache? Does time obliterate the heartfelt memory?
Does time take you back to where we began?
Does time give you the chance to become good again?
Does time give you the answers?
Does time love you the same way?

A story about you

I wanted to write about you, or us, whatever that had happened to us, whichever that came to mind first. I wanted to write about how we had loved, or how we had lost each other, how we had not learned to care for one another better than we should have. I wanted you to be there when I tried to write about you, I wanted you to feel the pain, the heartbeat when a story about you, on you, for you was being shaped, formulated, given a life into this world, a world so ugly that neither of us could possibly have continued to love and live.

So I have been writing about you, on the day that you turned your back on me, the day I was left alone in the wind, and the day our world was overturned. I continued to write about you, or us, whoever that deserved a carefully crafted story more. You were given a life to live well, to its fullest, and so was I. But here I was, in the middle of the day, doing not a thing but drafting a story about you, on you, for you.

So the love of my life, how have you been? in the time that we have been apart, that you have grown into someone completely strange to me, journeyed through this life on your own, without a hand to guide you in the darkest nights. How have you been?

I imagine you, the very special individual, traveling in the air, wandering all by yourself, with no one to talk to, no one to look after, no one to care enough for. Would I want that for you? so much was lost, so much pain. Would I want that for you, the love of my life? So I wonder if the pain, the heartache deserved a voice, too.

And my love, you didn’t have to be a novelist to be writing a story about yourself, or us, whichever that deserved a few pages, a few passionate words, paragraphs, a couple carefully crafted stories.

C (June 2008, Shanghai)

The first few paragraghs of the story I am currently working on.

C's Story

I’ve been meaning to write down C’s story, a story that took C months to disclose. The story about the little boy, whom brings soaring joy to C’s mother, yet causes C many agonized nights and unspeakable pain at the very sight.

It is a story about a unified yet broken family, an all too familiar scenario to me. C preluded the telling of the story with “I don’t tell this to a lot of people…,” the very line that I’ve whispered a number of times before I began setting the stage for my story to come.

To C, the little boy meant too little and too much. To the mother, the boy may have meant the world, a whole new world, one in which for years C’s mother denied the very existence.

I wanted to raise my hand and probe. Questions needed answers. How could I get going not understanding the very important basics to the development of the story?
How could I not hear the voice of the mother, sensing the urgency and helplessness in the fabricated version of the story that she would choose to defend herself with?

But I never got to where we began. C simply shook her head and confessed the lack of knowledge on any of the questions that I had raised. “She wouldn’t tell. She just wouldn’t,” C let go of the words matter-of-factly.

It all goes back to the fact that C’s mother never bored any son. Only daughters. Two very beautiful angels yet a daughter too many in a traditional Taiwanese family. For years after C’s sister was born, C’s mother would always say “daughters are just like boys, but better” whenever the conversation involving the apparent lack of sons in the family arose.

Growing up, C never felt any mistreatment from the parents or anyone in the family. Life went on as it was, son or not. The family, the parents and the two girls, lived happily ever after until C’s mother found the calling of her life and became a devoted Buddhist.

Freedom of speech for the day!

I am posting pieces of writings that I worked on in the last few months (not all, only a selected few) in Shanghai. China has decided to be kind and uncensoring Blogspot today. For all I know, it could all very well be gone tomorrow.