deep into the night in new york, or on the weekend, the subway picks up a catastrophic quality, and the stations, the day after. of course i know that the tracks are dirty, dilapidated, rusty, i just don't see it during the day when trains are running so often and the mice traumatized by the sonic bombs that we drop on them all day. during off hours, i see it all. i have nothing better to do. i count the abandoned plastic poland spring water bottles, the water puddles, and the little mice running across the track like squirrels crossing the street in the suburbs. people would wait with slight resignation and resentment, as if they don't really want to be here, among the crowd that i'm in. or that they know where they're supposed to be but are not sure about it. and the train would approach, with a hesitation suggestive of danger, and the doors would slowly open, or would decide that they want to be stuck right in the middle. a smelly homeless person would be stretched out on the bench, and half of the lights in the car would be off. the doors close, the train takes off with a squeak. suddenly the lights would all flip on for no reason, and the homeless person would groan, he must have just lost a good dream. and the train would suddenly turn violent, speeding up uncontrollably. the passengers would startle for one second and calm down the next, as if they've been primed for it. i can't help feeling like being in a disaster film set in the immediate future, michael haneke's time of the wolf for example. i wonder why all disaster films happen around trains.
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discombobulated
in chinese there is a very poetic and poignant translation of "new yorker" - nu yue ke - which means "guests of new york." in that sense, i am slowly getting into the state of being a new yorker.
so far, in my orbit, new york is everything i expected it to be, only more. that's the true frightening part of living in new york, that your fantasies, your dreams are actually concrete realities.
i still can't believe that i actually live in this conglomeration of dreams and desires and dramas. every now and then i can't shed a fear, as if the beautiful people i run into in restaurants and bars will dissolve into monsters and freaks, like they do in a nightmare. i want to touch them, i want to feel their heartbeats, the warmth on their hands.
it's getting late. i'm preparing a document for work and i'm running into a writer's block. i think i'm going downstairs to smoke a cigarette, a sampoerna to be precise, a souvenir from my previous life. i want to slowly inhale the smoke and the street into my system. yes, i'm going to lit it with some matches that i picked up from a restaurant a block away from here, a souvenir from a previous life of new york.
the floating world
i know of ukyo-e as "fu-shi hui," or paintings of the floating world. the floating world, it's a term that made intuitive sense to me, but i only knew through books and paintings. i was a child of the communist era, i only knew of a china made of earth and fire, not one of water and air. but it is here now. behind doors. served up discreetly like forbidden fruits. layered with anxiety and denial. already listless and bored. facing it, i recall words and images from ancient books.
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