Penultimate

Writing, especially writing about one’s own life, has a magic effect: it simultaneously immerses one IN and distances one from whatever one is experiencing.  It amplifies the granularity of experience, as writing is an endeavor to rebuild an alternative history, which would be nothing but repetitive cliché or empty idealism absent details.  To obtain the details, one really has to maximally utilize all the perceptive faculties in order to capture the ephemerals.  Cognitive efficiency calls for ignoring the “inconsequential” so that we could efficiently function in our lives.  For instance, sensations are downplayed when we need to concentrate on intellectual problem solving. Memory is another example. Details are later filled in rather than “remembered” when we are talking about “remembering”. (In a sense, memory itself is writing, constructing a reality, but not necessarily in words.)  But a good writer has to defy, or at least tries to defy these established cognitive principles to become an obsessive compulsive hoarder of the inconsequential.

However, too much immersion in one's current being would easily lead one to lose sight of the transcendental nature of writing.  A writer has the fortune of existing in multiple beings, simultaneously existing at now, in the future, and in the past. It strips away the experiential existence at the present.  Paradoxical of the compulsive hoarder. Life is ridden with hardship. When one is immersed in pain, one queries the meaning of it. The construction of an alternative history through writing may give meaning to it. Actually, Inactivity and pauses are counter-productive in every other professions but writing. Everything is nourishment a writer could take.

An Alternative History

May 16 DC 10:25 PM. Dulles is huge and empty at this hour.  Ticket counter was packed as the flight was delayed and pissed-off passengers were trying to figure out their connecting flights. She was listening to an audio book about Kafka, waiting for the earliest train to go to NY. A Chinese woman sitting near her is video chatting (more like chattering) with her friend on Wechat, exclaiming her excitement of being in the States: “I fell asleep instantly after the plane took off. No jet lag for me. I couldn’t be more used to American time. I am now in the States! I couldn’t be happier!” She had to turn up the volume so that Kafka doesn’t have to mingle with this over-excited woman. 


May 17 5:38 AM. The train passed by a huge spread of woods, with intermittent small pockets of flat lands and ponds.  Mystically, the flat lands had white fog hovering above the ground. Fairy Land.

May 17 6:48 AM. As she emerged from the underground of Penn Station, the city was waking up. She thought, finally, first day of work in two days.

May 17 7:30 AM She wondered whether Lacuna, Inc only existed fictionally. She started to think maybe it actually exists in a mythical dungeon in this city.  How she wishes there is a fast train to the clinic.
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
Causality? She thought maybe it's all randomness.

May 18 1:13 AM. She decided to walk in heels this summer. It is only 1.75 inch high, and the promotion slogan for the heels is “New Heights”.  As she was looking at girls’ cliff-like-heels in the street, she thought to herself: “withering heights”.  Pavements never experientially existed to her before she started making footprints resembling strings of big-bellied exclamation marks.  She never noticed the different surface materials used for building pavements before this.  But now, as she was walking on the 2^nd Ave., she can tell the difference: Beijing uses small stones or even pebbles, but NYC uses concrete pavements. She thought to herself so NYC is more heel-friendly. But the rolling suitcase kept crushing into her heels every step she took.  She wonder whether this city is heal-friendly as well.

May 18 3:30 AM The old guy sitting by her at the dive bar was apparently drunk. He wanted to strike up a conversation with her, who was apparently absent minded. “Do you go to Columbia?” “No.” “Do you want to go to Columbia?” “No.” “I have the key to the gate of Columbia.” “Please don’t talk to me.” Last call, it was Bob Dylan played in the background.

May 18 4:20 AM She never realized there are so many people pissing in the street at this hour. She counted: on average, 2 per every block. She was walking past a pizza joint, and cars were parked along the street. A guy was standing between two cars, doing his business facing the front of one car. All of a sudden, the car lighted up its head lights. The guy was all exposed. She couldn’t help but laugh out loud even if the guy was only 5 steps away from her, looking in awe.

May 18 5:33 AM The sun duly rose, but it didn’t feel warm yet.

May 18 7:30 AM The rolling suitcase kept pressing on her heels. Finally, one of her shoes fell off. As she hopped back to get the shoe, a guy walked to her with his thumb sticking up. She felt a bit embarrassed, but quickly realized that the sticking-up thumb is his only finger.

May 18 10:02 AM The doorman of the hotel spoke English with heavy polish accent, and the lobby is in dark velvet green. The check-in counter has a huge of wall of small key boxes, with room number in white under each box. She found it familiar, trying to figure out whether it’s a scene in one of Borges’s short stories or Cohen’s songs.

May19 11:00 AM “If you have to remember one thing from this training, that is always record your time! Learn to love TimeKM. Do it on a daily basis. The average of this office is recording every two days.” The system records time in 6 minute incremental. She wonders whether Lacuna, Inc. uses the same time keeping system.