Saturday’s Busy Void

Have you ever found that you are busy for an entire day, but in the end, around the midnight, you realize that you have achieved nothing. Busy for the sake of being busy. Rushing here and there just for the purpose of satisfying an inner demon of self torture or some other kind of inexplicable pathology. Now it is past midnight, but I really haven’t done anything today.

The laundry is undone; the shopping is incomplete. I went to the nearest store—99 Ranch Market—but only to pick up several random things. I’ve lost my joy in shopping ever since the pandemic started. Why? Is there a relation between Covid and human preferences? I wanted to write a bad poem, but even that is not done. I remember when I was young, I used to break up ancient poems and reconstruct them in different order. It is very enjoyable. However I don’t think such an activity is achievable in English. I wanted to write a story about my friend Feifei, who was my college classmate, and who had some daddy issues. I had never paid attention to father-daughter relationship until a friend alerted me to it. Now I have found at least four father-daughter relationships to analyze, in books and in real life.

I think I achieved something today. My steppe romance is advancing finally. I am more satisfied with this 8^th version than the previous 7 versions. I got a little inspiration from reading this:

And it really pointed out my problem. I mistakenly thought that the problem was my language, but it turned out it was not language, but rather it was the “longing”. I didn’t have the faith in my own “longing” and always thought other people’s “longing” was more valid and more interesting. By the way, this quote is from C. S. Lewis. Anyway, I am probably ashamed of my longing, or I try to censure my longing. Anyway, I didn’t give enough credit to my longing.

Anyway, language is a perpetual problem. Whenever something happens, I will blame the fact that English is my second language. I bet a lot of the times the problem has nothing to do with language, but for convenience sake, it is blamed. Since this is a fact and it can’t be helped, I am satisfied with getting an excuse so that I don’t need to look into the problem anymore.

I just finished Dionne Brand’s book “What We Are All Longing For”, and it is such a good book. I like her “Theory” even more, but this book is a close second. I really wonder how I can improve to be like her. She doesn’t care about plot, doesn’t avoid mundane content. Yet her lines just shine like no other. I don’t even think she cares about the writing techniques like details, like choosing more descriptive words, like having hooks, like avoiding passive voice etc. She doesn’t care. I guess if you are this good, you can break a lot of rules and it doesn’t matter. I want to re-read all her books this year so that I can soak up some of the beauty of her language.