2004-01-20
The moon's silver cloak
"During the winter, the Forbidden City looked like glass, the frosty wind was a ghost flying through the silk curtains and getting lost in the mystic clouds of opium. The rust-stained grass and dead twigs gave comfort to the concubines whose stories were lost with their youth..."
Whatever I was trying to convey when I wrote this in my book, certainly does please me. What I don't understand sometimes is how the strangest instances and objects in life are able to convey what I feel, but I suppose that that is the beauty of inspiration.
Every night, as I lay down, I constantly want to hear the deep tune of a cello playing in my head, and that's mainly why I usually play Vivaldi and settle for the violins. There's this pain in my heart that I absolutely cannot ignore. Perhaps it's not a pain, but rather it's that apprehension that I was talking about. My hand shakes, because I don't know why I am so afraid, after all, what is there to be afraid of?
Everything changes so quickly, and I envy Thoreau for his golden journey on the Concord and Merrimack. I shake my fist at him for having done away with these damned complexities that will forever plague me because I am much too weak to fight them myself. Yet, I love him, because he is me and I have deep reverence for him. I want for time to keep still, yet I want it to progress. How ideal it would be if life's instances were my own quaint concoctions--fruits of the labors of my imagination (I have never been too fond of that phrase). My favorite instances would perpetuate themselves for all eternity, and while I would be living in a world of crystal and lies, my heart would sing.
Remember Moonlight Sonata? What about that summer afternoon when the world seemed like the one described by Asher Lev? I do remember, and I continue to ask myself why, in all of that bliss, and in all of that softness and purity there could be agony and darkness. I ask myself now whether or not it really happened--it did, and I suffered dearly.
Sweet torment, I have been bound to you, and you will continue to take your pleasure from me as an emperor does his concubine. I don't understand, I truly don't, and there are no words to give life to this newfound sentiment that boils in my heart's couldron.
I only want a fall afternoon, and for the blood to rush to my cheeks and my fingertips. Damn it, I need something to feel noble about. I want to view the world through tired eyes surrounded by indigo, but shining with new life. Never before have I felt so weak and powerless, and there's absolutely nothing that I can do to stop this, because ultimately, I am my own enemy. The moon can cloak me with its silver and sing me to sleep. It's not the forbidden city that looks like glass, it's my world which looks life glass. I fear that it will shatter.