抚琴

There is no English translation for this.

Several days ago, I received a catalog through mail from musiciansfriends.com; a review comparing several models of Cordoba guitars caught my attention. I had noticed Cordoba a long time ago, mainly because of their relatively low price on finely made classical guitars; this review reinforced my perception. For a moment, I felt the urge to order one right away. However, given the famous admonition "impulse is a devil", I allowed a certain cooling period, then chickened out.

抚琴 is the exact expression to describe the intimacy between the player and the instrument; it gives life to this interaction. Through smooth and fluent glides of fingers, life is infused into the instrument, which in turn emanates the vibration through the air, eliciting a zen like pleasure; the sound is not only heard by the ears, but also felt through the finger tips, all the ten of them; when a harmony of all the senses echoes inside the body, a transcending ecstacy overwhelms. Damn it I could only salivate at this heavenly experience without being able to reach it.

Near Death Experience, Ross Style

When I was walking into Penn Station in the evening, many people started running towards the exit, shouting "Get out, police said get out"; a pretty scary scene. I started sniffing around, but couldn't sense any smell of exploded explosives. Soon the hallway, usually quite crowded at this time of day, became empty. I was suspicious, because obviously some military person on duty was as confused as I was. As my train was already boarding, and I didn't have any time to spare, I headed towards the track ignoring those runners. Soon announcement came saying previously broadcasted warning was only a drill; I doubt it, could be some screw-up of our dear safe-guards again. But anyway, it seems no one died of a heart attack.

Tears

Tear is a weird stuff; people shed those when they are sad, happy, excited, surprised ...

Tear, as a word, is also a strange combination of seemingly unrelated things. The salty water drops we excrete, versus the action of ripping apart, those do not look too related in my eyes, although it might make a tiny bit of sense when you say ripping hearts apart invokes tears; but that is quite far fetched.

Although tears are not so enjoyable, people love them. There have been numerous songs containing "Don't Cry" or "Tears" in the title or the words, countless TV series and books counting on eliciting as much tear as possible in order to make big bucks. Even in classic works, tragedies seem to overwhelm comedies in the number.

Nevertheless, I have been infused with "man shed no tears" ever since I could understand the first word. Obviously it was partly because of my parents' selfishness, because me no cry would give them a much easier life; only I was not a man yet at that time, sorry for them.

Grown up, I can hardly remember when was the last time I shed a drop of tear. Most recent such incidents happened in dreams, always some eternal departure with closest family member, friend etc; not too many of those, so I guess shedding tears in dreams is only a way to let out the overflowing tear gland. Further back, there was a time when I first arrived in the US for a couple of weeks, and wife started weeping with homesickness; I felt exhausted and helpless and weak, then shed a few drops of tears. Before that it would be more than 10 years of absense of tears as far as I could remember. I would choke on something really touching, like Kevin's picture I posted the other day; but no damp eyes.

When I saw men openly crying for a new baby, a new house, or even a surprise party, I got stunned. Since when tears are so cheap? But slowly, it came to me that tears are cheap; what is not cheap is the real feelings behind that, and the heartily exchange of those with the closest. Tears are cheap so that it could be easily accessible to express yourself fully, no matter what occassion. Despite that, I would not follow that path; partly because after so many years of abstaining from crying, my tear glands are more or less dysfunctional.

In Brokeback Mountain, the cowboys would rather shed blood than tears; this alone has flooded Six Crawl's eyes and noses and the whole face. I was simply envious.

Tears and cheers are close.

Polite Kid

Polite Kid is Aunt Sun; and according to Six Crawl, she is a sterotype of "heavy color light friend" (willing to sacrifice friendship for lover).

As civilized people, we surely are all familiar with the social code of conduct; however, Polite Kid gives an extra run. //find a quote in chat log

It does sound funny that a polite friend could make me uncomfortable sometimes, but that is the fact. Not only me, Six Crawl, maybe the closest female friend of Polite Kid's, also complained about the same thing some time ago. When thanked for tiny petty thing, I often end up wordless. What to respond? "You're welcome"? That's a surely correct but idiotic answer between close friends. Searching for an appropriate answer would render me dumbfounded in appearance, thus turning me into an idiot; even a 3-year-old could respond without a thought, yet I am stuck. I hate to be perceived as an idiot even if I were.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to complain, or to admonish, or anything else; I just came to this nice and perfect nick name for her, so I decided to document it: Polite Kid, a.k.a. PK.

Refuse to be Sensitive

There are some limits of my artistic taste, and some poets are definitely beyond those limits; not that they are not good, they are too good that I intentionally refuse to appreciate them; I refuse to be sensitive.

Music is mostly fine though. Even if it evokes some subtle sensitivity, it is only implicitly eliciting the finer side of my soul; given most of the time I only listen to music half heartedly, I rarely feel the aroused uncontrollable passion; even when that happens, usually there is no one around so I could go into complete ecstacy.

Despite my occassion appreciation for the infatuation, I would rather clam up my finest feelings, and keep an indifferent eye towards the world. Not that this is cool, I could be dragged too deeply into the turmoil otherwise. I have always kept this(Kevin Carter)story in my mind. Kevin Carter walked away from the torturing scene after taking the picture, without giving a helping hand; I would probably do the same thing. Then what? One thing is certain, I would not like to end up like him; but as indifferent as I strive to be, would I ever be immune to such a suicide? I have no idea.


P.S.
The linked picture itself is so compelling that could bring tears to many seemingly indifferent people. I feel a pinch in my heart every time I see it, and it only get worse as I see it once and once again.

Hot Chocolate

Before wife left, I bought a huge box of Swiss Miss hot chocolate. I knew it is tasty, and never worried about its Costco packaging. With the mellow sound of guitar strings vibrating through the air, the misty steam hanging above the sweet cocoa surely confers something mysterious.

Despite my effort to stuff my stomach with every meal, and between meals, I still don't gain much weight. For the record, I kind of improved that from 62.5 kg to 63 kg, but that's hardly out of the range of instrumental error.

Flying Quail

Have been lazy for the weekend; actually, weekends are usually the busiest for me. I get around 3 hrs ever day on week days; while on weekends, I usually none. Not that I'm not enjoying that, on the contrary, being with friends is surely one of the most enjoyable things.

After almost 1 year's dormancy off ice, we did some skating on both Sat and Sun. It was the usual process of getting used to the slippery first, then gliding through it, and having some good falls. After just one fall on the side, a swolen pelvis would prevent me from hanging my laptop bag on this side for weeks; yet it's still devilishly enjoyable.

My Sunday adventure on ice was with Quail; he is a very smart guy. When picking up new skills, he takes a very systematic approach, or rather theoretical approach: looking for tutorials, feeling it on a solid ground, then venture on the real thing. That way he could make rapid progresses no matter what he is trying; and sure enough, he was like a flying quail on the ice soon enough.

On the contrary, my approach is much more brute force, it is traditionally called try-and-error. Even after being battered by reality so many times, it's still my favorite approach; I guess that is the difference between smart and dumb; and that should be the reason people call me Daizi (dumb headed) all the time. No matter what, experiencing the struggling and slowly stewing out the taste of fun looks wickedly fun to me despite the bruises suffered from it.