The Lake of One's Being

28 February 2009

I live in my own world.
I like it.
I fill it up with all manners of beautiful imagery, songs, and imaginary dialogues.

But I also realize that the more comfortably I am ensconced in this space, the more reality starts to look really unappealing. Music videos like the one below shouldn't exist for the reason that they set impossibly high standards that no ordinary life scenario can ever hope to beat. Still, I know I'll watch it in the confines of my bedroom a dozen of times, and file it neatly into the mental folder labeled Dream Scenarios For Mate & Me.
Yeah, except said Mate does not exist. Sad, I know.

11:49 PM;

26 February 2009

Conrad Aitken on Virginia Woolf's characters -

They are the creatures of seclusion, the creatures of shelter; they are exquisite beings, so perfectly and elaborately adapted to their environment that they have taken on something of the roundness and perfection of works of art. Their life, in a sense, is a sea-pool life: unruffled and secret: almost, if we can share the cool illusion of the sea-pool's occupants, inviolable. They hear murmurs of the sea itself, that vast and terrifying force that lies somewhere beyond them, or around them; and if it does, at last, break in upon them with a cataclysmic force, a chaos of disorder and undisciplined violence, they can find no language for the disaster: they are simply bewildered.

The passage evoked some pretty powerful stirrings in my chest, as did this short film by Yi Zhou starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.

12:15 AM;

24 February 2009

And here you have it, the last in the series of pictures I've been sharing from the family vacation in China last December. These pictures are taken in Shanghai, our last stop, aboard a river cruise. The juxtaposition of architecture old and new on the opposite banks of the Huangpu River is really something to marvel at.

上海是我们在中国旅游的最后一站。搭上在黄埔河上下游行的观光船，能清楚目睹旧与新的交叉。河畔一边像部科幻片，另一边像十九世纪英国。落差是如此的大，也是如此的有趣。

1:12 PM;

16 February 2009

Photos taken in and around Wuxi.
We were there in such glorious weather, and I have to say the gardens and natural scenery in China take my breath away.

这些在无锡拍的照还不错吧？中国的公园与美景实在是令我叹为观止。也许是去的时辰对，在冰凉的温度中，总有迷蒙蒙的天色。正好是我最喜欢的。

6:49 PM;

02 February 2009

Visiting the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing massacre was a sombre and chilling event. The remains of the tortured bodies openly exhibited in dimly lit halls, and the haunting opera tracks in the background, made surfacing out into the open almost a relief. Walking the length of the reflective pool under the outstretched arm of a statue brandishing a soaring dove, I was silent.

参观南京大屠杀的纪念馆让人心情好沉重。恐怖的画面一一摆在眼前，但不久前发生的事，却对我们来说已成了一段不可思议的历史篇。活在事发后的人永远都不能真正的体会过去了的种种痛与冤。最后也只能安静的悼念，望着那提着白鸽的雕像默默感激如今拥有的安宁与和平。