Mrs. Margaret say I am still no good at verbs, particularly future tense. “Don’t worry,” she always says. “It’s an Asian thing. You’ll get over it.”
Is tense really an Asian problem? How is “time” so clear in the West? Is being defined by Science or by Buddha? Reincarnation, it is not past or future. Is endless loop. A circus, ending and starting is the same point.
At beginning I don’t have concept of tense when I speak English. But now I think I understand more than before, after all our battles.
Sun Tzu, the Chinese master who lived 2,500 years ago, says in the Art of War for Executives:
The ultimate warrior is one who wins the war by forcing the enemy to surrender without fighting any battle.
But neither of us wants to surrender to the other, and neither of us can win the battle. Neither of us is an ultimate warrior. So the battle carries on and on, as follows:
ME: “I want future with you. A home, a house in beautiful place with you, plant some bamboos, some lotus, some jasmines, some of your favourite snowdrops.” (When I describe this, the image so strong that it must be a will from my Last Life.)
YOU: “You can’t have the future now. That’s why it’s the future.”
ME: “I disagree. Future comes from your plan, your real action.”
YOU: “No, that’s not true. The future only comes when it comes. I don’t believe in promises. How can you know the future now? You can only know the future when you get to the future.”
ME: “Does that mean you don’t want future with me?” (I look in your eyes painfully.)
YOU: “You’re always worried about the future. How can we think about getting married when we keep fighting? You’re never happy with the way things are, you always want it to be different to how it is. We can’t be together if you don’t accept my lifestyle and realise you can’t change me. You can’t always want me to be different from how I am.”
You are right, I know. I can’t say anything.
Again I feel like I am the wisteria vine, and I can’t climb and rely on my tree, because that tree is falling.
“Live in the moment!” You impose this idea on me, again.
“Live in the moment,” I repeat. Why do I have to? “Live in the moment, or live for the moment? Maybe you only live for the moment. That is so hippy. I can’t do that as a humble foreigner,” I fight back.
“Well, to live in or to live for the moment, that’s the same kind of concept.”
“No. It is different,” I say, strongly and angrily. I recently learned what is the difference between in and for from Mrs. Margaret. It is definitely a different concept.
“Love,” this English word: like other English words it has tense. “Loved” or “will love” or “have loved.” All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is “
” (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.
If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.
possess
possess v. 1. to have as one’s property; 2. (of a feeling, belief, etc.) have complete control of, dominate.
You tell me my love to you is like a possession. But how could I possess you when your world is so big? Maybe it not about possession, it more about me trying to fit into your life. I am living in your life. I am living inside of your body, trying to understand every single movement from your command. Every night I inhale and outhale your breath. The smells from your hair and your skin cover my hair and my skin. I know nobody in my life is as close as you.
I just hope night carry on like this, go on for ever. Hope our bodies can be always close like this, and our souls always can be side by side. I don’t want the sun comes, the day comes. I know the light of day takes you away from me. Then you live in your own world, the world that has a big gap between us.
In the daytime, you stay with your sculptures, with your clay, your sand, your wax. You are making many moulds of human bodies. All the materials they lie there, quiet, with vague and unclear statements.
The conversation on the bed after we make love:
“Why you are always so interested in the body?”
“Because you will never get bored with the body.” You rub the sperms on my skin slowly, trying to dry it. “Eating, drinking, shitting…The body is key to everything.”
“But why your sculptures ugly and miserable?”
“I don’t think they are ugly. They are beautiful.”
“Maybe. Beautiful in ugly way. But they are always in pain.”
“That’s what life is like.”
I can’t agree, but I can’t deny either.
“My body always feels miserable, except for when I am making love,” you say.
Your voice becomes sleepy, and you close your eyes.
I turn off the light. I stare at the darkness. I have enough thoughts to talk to the long night, alone.
christmas
Christmas n. 1. an annual festival on December 25 commemorating the birth of Christ; 2. period around this time.
Tomorrow is Christmas. We wake up to noises from neighbours’ kitchen. They are probably arranging tables or chairs for their guests. You tell me we will stay in London until lunch, and then you will take me to see your family in the afternoon. I am curious, but also worried. Meeting your family is a big thing for me. That is again something to do with the future.
What happened to Jesus Christ at Christmas Eve? Was he hung on the cross? Did he almost reborn? We were taught when we were little that only the phoenix can be reborn. A beautiful huge bird, with the neck of a snake, the back of a tortoise, and the tail of fish. She eats dewdrops. She lives for a thousand years and, once that time is over, she burns herself in her own funeral pyre, and is born again from the ashes. Jesus must be something like a bird, the symbol of high virtue.
Winter is such a long season in England. Hackney Road is dim, dark, wet and obscure. But there is something extra which makes you and me nervous about this time. Neither you nor me kind of person likes celebrating festivals, plus I don’t have any family here. Outside, neon lights are twinkling, shining like the fragile happiness.
Almost a year has passed. In the beginning, we were so passionate about each other. Now everything grows older, and covered by the dust. Every morning you go to that corner shop to buy newspaper. You sit in a small café having a breakfast and reading. You would rather read the paper outside somewhere, because you say you can’t relax at home. Should I leave the house and give the space back to you?
Afternoon. We are in your white van. We are driving to the southwest of England, to Lower End Farm, the place where you grew up. The road towards the countryside is so quiet. Like a road nobody knows, as if nobody has driven through it before. It is getting darker. It is grey. The houses beside the road are all lighted. Ah, others are all happy, with their family. I hate Christmas.
I start to cry.
You look at me one moment, then look at the road. You know why I am crying. You keep quiet. Only the noise from the engine carries on.
“It will be all right,” you say.
But I don’t know what all right even means.
I stop crying. I calm down a bit. It’s only four in the afternoon, but the sky in countryside is already deep dark, and the rain comes with the chilly wind. The wind blows the pine trees, the grass, and the oaks in the fields. The leaves are shivering, and the branches are shaking. There must be too much wind in English’s blood.
Dim and muddy, it is the road leading to your childhood…
That evening, you show me around the farm with the flashlight. It is a big farm, extended to the horizon. Some sheeps or maybe cows in the distance, mooing.
There are four old womans in this house: your mother, your grandmother, your two sisters. Three cats live in this old farm house too. I wonder if these cats are all females? No man. Your two sisters, one is 42, another is 48. You told me they never get married. Maybe they get used to this old-girl-life, so they don’t need or want a man anymore. Your father died long time ago, and so did your grandfather. But all womans survive.
These womans, in your family, they are all farmers. They look like they have had a hard life. Their faces, reddish on the cheeks from the chilly wind. They are simple and a little tough. They are very straightforward, and have very strong impression towards every little thing. Their questions are like these:
“Zhuang? What kind of a name is that? How do you spell it?”
“Do you watch TV, Z?”
“Z, how many hours does it take to fly from China to England?”
“Bloody hell! One billion. Are there really so many people in your country?”
They talk loudly, and laugh loudly, and chop the meat loudly in the kitchen. They remind me of my family. They are very different from Londoners.
There are about twenty silver and golden badges on the wall of dining room. These badges are hung under the photos of sheep and cows, the winners of some farming competitions. Several local newspapers are pinned on the wall, with pictures of your sisters hugging her award-winning cow. And the cow has a big badge hung on its neck too. I don’t understand this competition between cow and cow.
In TV room is a huge poster about sheep. Every sheep has its different name, and they do look like very different. The one on the left is called Oxford Down, look like a big fat dog, but with burnt black nose and ears. The one on the right is called Dartmoor, with messy curly wool like a woman in hair salon having an electricity perm. The bottom one is called Exmoor Horn with curly horns and short body like a snow ball…There are no pictures of human beings. It is like a sheep museum.
I walk into the kitchen. Your mother is preparing Christmas Eve supper. I see the plates with drawing of sheep, and tea cups with the picture of cow, and the tea pot is the shape of a little goat.
Everything in the house looks aged, as old as your grandmother. Your grandmother is ninety-seven. She lives upstairs. You take me to say hello to her. She is skinny. She is too old to move around. Also she is too old to talk. She doesn’t seem to recognise who you are.
I try to understand these four womans, with their strong accent. I can’t tell if they are tough or friendly. There is a certain kind of brutal feel from your sister when she chops the meat that makes me timid. Is that one of the reasons you left your hometown, came to London, and didn’t want to be with any womans when you were young?
After the supper, everybody is tired and goes to bed. We sleep on a sofabed in the living room. It is midnight. The whole farm outside is covered by a big piece of silence. No neighbours, no pub, no shop, no car, no train. It is a place far away from civilisation. It is even worse than my hometown in China. So quiet, like it’s on the edge of the world. Occasionally, one or two fireworks blow in the distance. But rest of the world is as frozen as ice in the Arctic Ocean.
On Christmas morning, it starts snowing. The farm has a layer of light snow. I hope the farm is happy to receive the snow on a very special day. After a big brunch, we watch the Queen’s speech on TV, then we say goodbye to your family, and hit the road again. Your mother and your two sisters are waving their hands in front of the house. When I look at them from the van I feel sad. Maybe we should stay more time here, eat the Christmas turkey they prepare all day. But you say you can’t stay in there any longer. Not even one more afternoon, you say. We leave Lower End Farm behind. We leave the mud, the sheep, and the winter grass behind.
We drive all the way back to London. There is nobody in the street, not even a ghost. It is surreal. Almost too perfect.
The snow is like feathers gradually covers dirty London. The snow knows its own power. It understands how to make a city less bleak and more gentle.
We stop in a local café on Hackney Road, probably the only one open. The café owner is a foreigner, maybe from Middle East. I guess he prefers to work in café at Christmas rather than spend a lonely day on his own in his rented east London basement. There are beautiful red flowers on every table. It is a kind of green-leafs-turn-to-red-flowers. I am having fish and you are having chips. We look outside. The snow is falling from the sky. The café owner says “Merry Christmas” to us. He must be so happy to see eventually two customers visit him on such lonely day.