伦敦

這是你的第一次來這兒嗎？
對啊.
He looked up at the drizzle of drops as it dabbed the window pane in a sudden, direct and light manner aided of course by gravity. Shifting his inner participation of space, attention, he toggled his vision between the overcast sky whose clouds tumbled along to their final destination and the spider's web that clung to the window in desolation. What is the final destination of a cloud? The earth? The roots? No, the cycle of precipitous materials is eternal. The webbing captured only the water that it needed, letting the rest grace the pane with its presence. This simple spider's silk can trap many things, providing a source of nourishment for the inhabitant. But there was no spider there. He wondered if he was the only one who wondered where it had gone.

Nature is the first instuctor of the language of life. A leaf, one main vein and multiple venules, green at the base, yellow in the middle slowly changing hue to red and then brown at the apex.  It was alive and dying at the same time.  It was Nature's way of of describing what happens to everything that lives on the planet. Beauty in the detail. Nature answered the question, "How should one live?" One should never be concerned with the characteristics that make you who you are, but, much like the leaves who float from their fixed place to provide food to its rooted counterpart until Spring, one should retain the characteristics that help you achieve the most growth and consider which ones you can leave behind. Must a part of you die then for your other, supposedly better self, to live? Not necessarily, as not all trees shed their leaves - an evergreen strives just as well. Similarly, people are different and can retain all characteristics and allow them all to feed into their experience.  This is what Nature described to him that he made feeble in his attempt to put into words, to classify as is apparent of human nature. Nature showed him its own inner participation of flow, its progression of the cycle of all creatures so he could in turn understand his own; all things that could directly photosynthesize or indirectly assimilate would progress unto death. It is the great inevitability of life.


倫敦 給我第一個印象是...

A city without a grid isn't synonymous with a city without purpose. On the contrary, it becomes even more alive, more complex in its intricacies and lends credence to the winding paths of thought through which a deeply reflective mind would dare venture. This city was alive and he lived through and with it.  Simultaneously, paradoxically even, he was invisible and one of the crowd of London folk. He smiled as he waited for the queue of cyclists to tumble and scatter across the Strand; it was an unfamiliar muscular arrangement of the face for him. Traditionally, the men in the family took severe photos, a stern, piercing gaze as a reminder to be disciplined.

He sat for a moment outside a patisserie and observed the movement of human beings in their particular Dynamo-sphere. Some dabbed, some thrusted, some slashed forward. All moved with some purpose. His own stillness was sustained - he was pressed in his chair and his inner participation of time, his decision-making self, shifted gears. I think I'd like hot chocolate with my sandwich.  The show starts in 21 minutes. I will walk over there in 15. I will cross my legs when I sit so my knees don't lock nor will my thighs cramp.

我有谁? There is a brashness to the questions he poses to himself. What was his inner participation of weight, his intention, of asking that question? The grammatical construct is rude and purposefully so; to ask it in English in a similar manner would pacify the statement and possibly make it less poignant. Maybe he thought it would scare him into blurting out an answer that he always knew existed but did not think possible. Were the characteristics that he chose for his opposite already some part of his natural self? Would he keep them?