Things have their weight.
2017.06
Nanjing's wind has started running wild again.
The magnolias have barely opened and already the ground is covered in white sails, yet look up and they're still in full bloom. It's as if the flowers bloomed too lavishly, too saturated, and couldn't hold on, and so dropped from the branches. The sun is brilliant, and the gap between day and night temperatures has grown, but it all stays within a comfortable range, slightly on the cool side. This is probably what counts as spring in Nanjing. I ought to treasure it.
My mood has had few ups and downs lately; compared with last year I'm much calmer, with more certainty and composure, it seems. Every day goes by step by step; even though there are still plenty of annoying things, on the whole I'm warm and at ease. Thinking of past twists and turns, and of the disaster happening not far away, I should be glad to have such plain, quiet days.
Today before my C programming class I found I'd used up my notebook, and pulled out the last notebook I'd bought in my final year of high school, one I really like. It was empty, not a word in it, because I couldn't bear to use it, because it was a keepsake of that time and of those three people. When class started I sat holding it, lost in thought for a long while, telling myself over and over that old things can carry new things, and that would make it fuller, more worth treasuring. I even considered what name to give it, and what words of remembrance to write on the first page. But in the end I still couldn't bring myself to write in it, because I wanted it to stay pure and unchanged; fuller would be good, of course, but in the end it would also become a jumble. So I took out my old notebook and made do with taking notes on its cover.
But the world is always strange: C, again, was what almost cost me that notebook entirely. After this afternoon's C class came the lab session straight after, from four to eight. So as usual I'd packed some food in my bag to get me through dinner, including the cup of yellow-peach yogurt I order for every day. Programming is brain work, but sometimes it feels just like a detective game, and as you go you get absorbed. So in the breaks I ate only a packet of biscuits and a few pieces of white honey cake, and forgot about the yogurt.
Leaving the computer lab, I went to a get-together of the team we'd recently formed, and we talked about plans for later; the few of us really got going. In high spirits and fully absorbed, I naturally had no idea tragedy had already struck. When we finished and I got up, I found the yogurt in my bag had been squashed out, and naturally nothing inside escaped. I'd always thought this yogurt was so thick it was practically a paste, of excellent quality; you could really use it as a face mask. I never imagined its first trial would be on my advanced maths and information management textbooks, a book of English poetry borrowed from the library and the rest, and of course two notebooks, one new, one old.
On the way back to the dorm, I did some "emergency treatment" with the little tissue I had on me. Things weren't too bad; the new notebook got off fairly lightly as "disaster areas" go. I couldn't help feeling a bit glum, but a moment later my thoughts turned another way, and it struck me as ironic that something I treasured so much had nearly been ruined by my own carelessness, just like that. Cause and effect go round and round, always leaving you moved and helpless. Then I suddenly remembered a passage I'd read not long before. The gist was: you keep many treasured things at home and can't bear to part with them, and over the years they pile up; then one day a fire burns them all to nothing, and after a brief sadness you find that no longer having them makes you feel lighter and freer than having them did.
Just as when I took the books out of my bag, braced for the worst, I found it wasn't nearly as agonizing and torn as I'd been that afternoon. Isn't it often the case that letting go is the more perfect ending?
So I wanted to write this down, as a small insight in life. Perhaps because of the recent magnitude 9.0 earthquake (a disaster is humanity's disaster, not any one country's), when thinking of a title I remembered that I had once meant to write something about '08 (the title I'd settled on then was "Love and Letting Go") but in the end never put it on paper. It came to mind by coincidence, and on reflection it fits what I feel today rather well, so I've simply taken it, which I suppose finally fulfils the idea of putting old things to new use. As for why I chose that title in the first place, time has passed and things have changed, and I've forgotten it entirely. If I remember one day, I can always add a line.
That night,
first drafted to the melody of KOKIA's "Hoshikuzu no Vocalise" (Stardust Vocalise)
2011.03