Jin Haishu (1961-)
Rage Sharpness Getting close Hallucinating in the Dark One Afternoon’s Assorted Emotions The Old Furnishings Thingummyjigs Waiting At 4 a.m. 21 Maxims for my Girlfriend on Her Birthday
rage: at that instant, I was seething with rage, but rage was pointless I sat in the car, forced to participate I was tied up. everything that happened only tied me up tighter it hurt the way those ropes cut into me we’re really very soft, I thought to myself, we’re all just flesh and blood you can arm yourself with a hard outer shell, but that’s futile, too rage is futile. everything in the car mirrors looked distorted everything seemed so frustrating, so bizarre, but such thoughts didn’t make it any better, my friends, such thoughts didn’t make it any better three times I repeated this to myself and as the car zoomed off, things really started to get out of hand
knife-edges are not the only sharp things a knife-handle too can be razor sharp sometimes touch it and your hand will bleed straightaway there are times when we have to be cautious of all those blunt, undemonstrative agonies
we’re estranged by conversation: each little remark brings us that little bit further apart mutual retreat is our way of getting close we hold up our faces let them do the talking as we grow stranger
you’re only uncomplicated when you get talking about your hallucinations you tell me that LSD comes on fast and furious suddenly parting the waters of the dark it’s an ocean: its desolate vastness turns gentle, transparent when the distant hill comes over to us, it is soft—you chuckle laughing the whole night through, puzzling an old man selling cigarettes we wanted to sit down beneath the only light in this night on the steps of a hardware store we smoked ordinary cigarettes and talked about hallucinations—you know, it was a lot of fun you walked a long way through holes in the air in search of your scarf the coast was so long and so thin this small, skinny arm this hand of a malnourished child to tell you the truth, it got a little bit hard for us to bear but we kept on laughing anyhow, kept laughing the happiness helped us to be so much in love that when you turned around wanting to pull me over to you we would have hugged each another tightly— if only our arms had been long enough to reach.
One Afternoon’s Assorted Emotions
each and every event speeds away from us the room is cramped and we are confined within it all we can do is watch, like we were sitting on some unique planet that didn’t move and that made us sit still with it when an apple drops from your hand in an instant of carelessness we are both shocked, seeing it as an omen perhaps it’s the truth that we’ll both wind up like this: two people abandoned by everything there’s something special about this feeling of being shut in, of being under some kind of curse outside time and velocity our feet become things of no use this afternoon drags on—the one thing we are capable of doing is to wait as the world screams on its way with autumn once more outside our window
all these things are familiar to you you’ve described them in your notebooks and mentioned them in conversation now they stand here in this room without moving when you push open the door they turn to face you maintaining their silence like timber only recently felled and still smelling of their fresh wounds back in days gone by they kept you company, stayed true to you down to the cups and saucers this is the room that you are about to leave and the events that occurred here will remain in this place others will move in and share a common space and new things will happen but before you leave you suddenly get the feeling that they’re somehow part of you a part that will soon be snatched away by somebody else.
some thingummyjigs are miraculously preserved as if unwilling to be forgotten then one day, they reappear out of the blue, leaving you goggle-eyed with amazement we have forgotten so many things the older we get, the more we come to seem like a swamp there, the beautiful and the ugly alike live and breathe with an unthinkable life-force in the deep, dark depths of its lowest levels quite by chance you’ll hear a pop and a bubble will rock this bleak and desolate landscape for many years, this Zippo lighter had been missing now it’s there on the table as if merely to prove that it had never been lost suddenly and directly, with no thought for cause and effect I never went out of my way to search for it but now a string of days surrounding it come to life one by one I flicked a good many times to get it to flame: that way, I get a stronger sense that the existence we share is not really that of a swamp—well, not entirely anyway
there’s nothing ambiguous about the autumn winds now they clutch at my flesh a night for murder, moon high the sky incomparably clear in the remote past, men with a bit of fame would have sat down and written poems that made a bird or a rabbit pop up through the table and vanish into thin air with a whizz actually they would have been wearing lined silk jackets and sitting in warm houses as their concubines prepared stewed game for them in the adjoining kitchen me, I’ve never enjoyed such luck in my life to date I sit waiting by the river for someone who hasn’t shown up yet the various smells are already frozen solid there’s just a trace of cold, and that cold on the water as it approaches mid-autumn fills me with pity a towering poplar tree hangs down ever so slightly towards the night its head—the moon is just as small and thin as the edge of a knife a knife that could murder anyone, past or present
at 4 a.m. one by one the various sounds come to life in the faint dawn glow the dark goes leaving me with blackness in the light
21 Maxims for my Girlfriend on Her Birthday
1. Go on squandering your youth and your talent. Don’t be frightened off—doing so will make it into a mature force. 2. Go on Doing It, but give some thought to follow-up techniques to ensure that you’ll be able to keep on Doing It until you no longer want to. 3. Taking 100 as your starting point, you’re already 79 years old. 4. Don’t think you’ve missed out on the moon and the stars, on the sound of footsteps in a deserted valley—you’ll encounter these things of nature in your own good time. 5. Life’s no big deal, but dying’s no great shakes either. 6. By all means, take pleasure as your measure in everything you do. You should also make an appropriate appreciation of pain—a profounder form of pleasure. 7. Madness should not be a state of mind but a way of living. 8. True madness is solitary and secret—no one should know about it, and nor should you speak about it. 9. Your only rule of thumb for moderation is whether or not you’ve been annihilated. Anything else is superfluous. 10. Balance between men and women is not all that important. It is only a stairway to one’s self. 11. Take matter to heart, and put spirit beyond the flesh. This will bring you peace of mind. 12. Believe that there is truth on this earth and that no one has a monopoly on it—least of all other people. 13. Fight to think a little more simply, to live a little more simply—that way you’ll save yourself a lot of wear and tear. 14. Start making friendships that will last you a lifetime. 15. Keep on loving, keep on doubting, keep on with all your current moods because there is nothing else apart from these. 16. Take appropriate care of your genitals. They often herald changes in your life, so ensure their sensitivity and health. 17. Loneliness is insoluble—don’t kid yourself into thinking you can find a way to solve it. Loneliness is not a problem, and so for that reason— 18. Treat loneliness as if it were another person inside of you. 19. Nothing to do? Then clean up your room. 20. Be brave. Bravery means fighting to keep the truth before you in any situation and not to be scared off by it. 21. Move on gradually to your twenty-second year.