cahier lukhnos, a blog

What followed in that afternoon, I still could not comprehend well till now. I walked all the way from Sumida-ku to Bunkyô-ku. It was not really a long walk, but I deliberately took a detour to walk for some more time, until midnight. Yet, even given such burning midnight, I could not stop. I walked and walked, until finally I felt my legs heavy, only then I went back to the dormitory. And that act alone had waken up Mrs. Yamamoto, and I thought I had been very impolite because of that.

S and I sat against each other. As I was having such thirst, I bottomed up the water S handed to me. I didn’t feel so beforehand, yet as I gulped the water, I sweated even harder. Persipration was now found in my forehead, and I had but to took out a hankie from my pocket to wipe it.

What follows is a re-account of the exchange between S and me. I tried as hard as I could to come to it. I remember that as I finished the water in a gulp and sweated, S said: “Such an appearance, Yen.” I could not understand why S suddenly commented. I only remember that I said, “It was a beautiful melody. To be able to hear such thing in a summer afternoon. What one needs for his life might be just that.”

Upon that S asked — Yen, ever thought why you are here?

I answered — I was invited here by S, wasn’t it?

S laughed — You are such a fool like you have always been, Yen. How could I not know that I invited you. That is not what I am going to ask you. For example, have you ever wondered, why you are studying here, in this city, not dead in a foreign country? Why you attend Chemistry Department instead of Law School? Questions like that, have you ever thought about?

So desu neh [Hmmm]… difficult questions. I would say it was arranged by my family, and that’s why I have come to Tokyo. As of chemistry, that’s what I am fond of and good at. Except I am still troubled by German, I am used to the life in a foreign country.

– Yen is always so frank and straightforward. You answer whatever question people ask you, and don’t read between the lines.

What, then, lies between the lines? For example… ?

– For example like what you just said. To be able to hear such music in a summer afternoon. An LP made in 1943, Debussy’s Das Mädchen mit blondeen Haar. What one needs for his life might be just that. You said “might just be that.” Do you really know what you are talking about?

It is a kind of feeling, no? The summer of Tokyo, the never-ceasing cicada drone, an afternoon where all finals are over, at a friend’s house, the music on the turntable stops, silence, the drone of cicada becomes louder because of the ensued silence: the Tokyo in summer.

– The summer of Tokyo. The Tokyo in summer. Yen, you have the potential of becoming a poet.

What potential of becoming poet. It is merely a feeling.

– Feeling, Yen, do you men Gefühl or Empfindung? In German these two are distinctively different. Empfindung, the ability to perceive the world. Some translate it into the term “able-to-perceive”; as for Gefühl, that is what you feel or perceive in you, or so-called “perceived.” Yen must be the one with both. Even though you don’t know what kind of Empfindung you have, you are gifted to, however, clearly express your own Gefühl. And that is the potential of becoming poet.

I am merely a Taiwanese who even finds Japanese unmasterable. I am not like you, keen to understand the world with philosophical approaches.

– Japanese, Taiwanese. Yen, is it really so? Must it really be so?

I don’t know how to put it. But all in all, I come from Taiwan. Coming from Taiwan: one is not in the place to change things like that.

– Then, Yen, you have never thought about the possibility to break it? Just like, although Yen comes from Taiwan, but he is well assimilated into the Japanese life.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

– Yen, I don’t know if I want to say you are hopelessly honest, or if I want to hit you in the cursed head, because you actually know it.

lukhnos :: Apr.27.2004 :: :: No Comments »