Walking towards the sea.
2017.06
The Chinese opens with a line from Bibi Zhou's song "Numbers" (号码), about looking for one person in a crowd. It is on the Chinese version of this page and is not translated here.
December, and nearly its last week. Eating, revising, staying up all night on a competition, watching all sorts of films. But my feelings have no way out.
In fact, reading other people's writing and watching other people's stories doesn't release what's knotted up inside me; it only piles more tangled feelings on top.
The street lamps don't seem to be on much. The night is a bit dark, the wind a bit strong; whatever skin is exposed stings a little with cold. I walk on alone, in silence.
My inner feelings plainly have no way to be expressed, yet people say: look at you, making waves online every day, clearly doing very well, very happy; the odd troubled sentence that shows up is replaced a few minutes later by the next lively thought.
In all kinds of books and films, when someone suddenly finds themselves standing in an empty, silent house, they always open their mouth and call out, "Is anyone there?" But if someone lives alone in it for a long time, the strangeness wears off, and they start talking to themselves, or chattering away to lifeless objects. The smallest new thing becomes the best topic of conversation, only the person they are talking to is themselves. Even if other people are not far away, for this person they might as well not exist.
On the way, my MP3 player shuffled to "Numbers". A song that once felt new has turned out to be so old.
Numbers probably have something to do with loneliness. To the left and to the right there are countless numbers, very much alike. But a number is a string of digits, absolutely different from every other. Even if it is related to other numbers, the relation is strictly logical or physical, with nothing else mixed in, because a thin little number cannot carry anything else. That's why characters in stories who have only a code name are often so lonely: such a person can be written down with a scrap of paper and a pen, and to erase them, to wipe them out, so that from then on it is as if they never existed, is as easy as turning your hand.
So many people in the world, adding up to a number so large you might not count to it in a lifetime, and each person is just one tiny point in it. To prove who you are, all it takes is an ID card number; to be enrolled at school, a student number; online, a user ID. In how many people's minds am I only a serial number, passer-by A, B, C, ABC123?
There's a line in Kara no Kyoukai (The Garden of Sinners):
We live in a world so vast and so rich, yet have no real sense of being in it.
Standing on a rooftop looking down on the bustle of the whole world, I am plainly standing right here, and yet it's as if I'm floating in the air. Between the all and the one, between the world and myself, what is it that separates us, transparent and yet unbreakable?
Having tasted the loneliness inside all this noise, I understand even better how hard it is to find someone. In Turn Left, Turn Right, a single sudden shower almost blurs a happy future, and one small habit almost keeps two people living on either side of one wall from ever meeting. The song's refrain makes everyone a number, brushed past and forgotten. Yet in the roar of this great torrent, I could feel the breathing of two or three people, and sense each other's heartbeats. So whether or not we are now at opposite ends of the earth, whether these relationships go sour or grow into something higher over the long time to come, I already have nothing to regret.
The world uses the cruellest methods to put me to the test and teach me to cherish.
Leaving behind all of time's tricks and slanders, I believe that if I keep walking forward, what I leave at the end will be more than a number.
2011.12