她微笑的憔悴
一瓣一瓣凋零
我注视她的身影
在我心中
缓缓下沉
她充满疑虑的眼神
好像桥洞里孤寂的天使
我在车中路过
车窗外雨夹雪、淅沥不停
留下往事
雨幕后的灰色汪洋
与晨雾中轻吟的诗句
别关起窗——她说
隔绝我的玫瑰色梦幻
于是你我在玫瑰园里追逐
一生也无法赶上彼此
Nous sommes condamnés à être libre
她微笑的憔悴
一瓣一瓣凋零
我注视她的身影
在我心中
缓缓下沉
她充满疑虑的眼神
好像桥洞里孤寂的天使
我在车中路过
车窗外雨夹雪、淅沥不停
留下往事
雨幕后的灰色汪洋
与晨雾中轻吟的诗句
别关起窗——她说
隔绝我的玫瑰色梦幻
于是你我在玫瑰园里追逐
一生也无法赶上彼此
They called me a hedonist
Only I knew,
It’s because I’ve left home for too long
Lost in my way, bruised,
And woke up to a dream I dreaded
Running down the nightly streets barefoot
My toes drenched in scarlet rainwater
Puddles of penumbra I stumbled upon
Splashing simulacrum all over
My body, needed not to know whether it was
Substantial. Indeed, someone was chanting about it,
Therein something brutal
But dying only made my indulgence worse
Her lips were enough though
Cajoling me all these years–
Our bodies fondled a bit
Souls already too far apart
Like this generation of ours
Dazed in a peculiarity
As though we’d know better
Than a conversation in silence
A parody still
Remembering how once
We sat and watched the river
And I wanted to tell the story
To those who knew
But refused to believe.
[一]
我送给自己的生日礼物是张单程机票,航班号AC6851。此刻飞机处于万米高空,我身旁石化般坐着个行将入木的老头儿,七个小时之内嘴中只冒出一个词:“咖喱鸡饭。”靠过道的座位上是位某三流大学的留学生,就是那种智商不济却觉得自己饱览群书的主儿,对世上的一切拥有自以为独特的见解。他一路都歪着脖子,和后排那个在多伦多读语言学校的小妞聊得火热。本指望邻座会是位寂寞的性感少妇,最好要赶着回国办理离婚手续,那样或许我也能加入“the Mile High Club”。
默默注视着机窗外,脚下的金色云海一望无垠,可其中仿佛
吃罢晚餐,想起清理屋子时发现的那本数年前的《纽约客》
反复读了这句话,心中有梗在喉般难受。这是什么意思?我
“我们就像蜉蝣一样。我们只活一个下午。”
难道这就是为什么卡米利娅与我彼此决定要在一起?因为一
虽然有时我也质疑自己与卡米利娅的关系是否过于依赖纯粹
下了飞机,转上南行的高速列车。车厢内宽敞明亮,豪华的
“你回国了?”她话中带有有一丝惊喜,我无法辨别其真实
让她帮我在她家附近的酒店订一间房间,几小时后在大堂等
我听起了手机中的Trance音乐,都是些过时的歌曲。
[二]
两年前,当生活中还没有卡米利娅时,我终日漂浮在某种强
从圣马修大街走出,左转走上拉方丹大街,以往彻夜不眠的
我气喘吁吁地跳上最后一班地铁。车厢内除我之外,只有另
沫沫见了我,笑靥如花。上来就给我个法式亲吻,左右脸各
“mon cheri, 怎么一个人回来了?”
“本是一群人,刚下飞机就走丢了”我调侃说。
她故意压低声音,似要跟我分享什么秘密:“其实是想我了
在名叫“托斯卡纳”的意大利餐厅吃晚餐。沫沫穿着一条米
“Mon cheri,我真的很喜欢法国的东西,Château Haut-Brion,听起来都这么haute classe。”
我咧嘴陪笑,什么这个堡那个堡的,20美元与200美元
我说是啊,最近还认识了一个越南裔,名叫让·巴普蒂斯特
她说,“一定是拥有法国血统的南越流亡贵族吧?”
我说不是,家里是卖越南米粉的。
“你真坏”沫沫伸手打我,那小手臂纤细的让人心悸。
我非常喜欢恰如其分地讽刺并被认为是良好的幽默,以至于
在酒店房间里,沫沫抱着酒瓶往杯中倒,暗红的液体随着她
沫沫冲我说,这可是国际漫游。喝醉了都比我会精打细算。
我打开电脑用网络电话回电,不耐烦地说自己正在餐厅吃早
挂了电话,沫沫笑得更凶了,黑色高跟鞋丢在地毯上,两只
“为你叫辆车吧,不早了”
“嗯?”沫沫从凌乱的头发中探出脸,仿佛没听清。
“我送你回去。”我站起身。
沫沫利索地站起来,理了理裙子。走到门口停下脚步,回头
我及时反应过来,用力拉住她的手,她吃惊地叫出声,在说
她激烈地迎上来,嘴中充满了红酒的芬芳,令我呼吸困难,
[三]
车随着一阵剧烈摇晃骤然停下,睡梦中的我差点将脸裱在车
我冲他喊:“C’est òu?” (这是哪里?)
他眯起眼端详我半天,然后讲出一大堆法语,还附带肢体语
头顶的广播还在像卡壳的唱片机一样不依不饶地重复着那段
我走出车厢,站台墙上写着橙色的大字:“布哈萨”。
顺着停滞的电梯台阶往上走,手机哀鸣三声,彻底没电了。
沫沫紧拽着我,我们一同目送人群匆匆踏上列车。不识他们
睡在我下铺的是个魁梧的男人,民警,笑声与呼声同样爽朗
“她活着的时候一直没有机会去外地,现在终于能走脱了。
我想起不久前与卡米利娅开始的无尽的争吵,吵闹声逐渐在
此后我常暗自悔恨,最初不该灌她那两杯朗姆酒兑可乐,更
火车到站后民警的战友来接。我搭上他们的北京吉普,去吃
战友大喊一声,“发啥子楞?!想你女朋友呢?”两人大笑
这样的夜晚,很好。我不再想起她了,我的心和肉体都如瓶
[四]
我不知奔跑了多久,黑夜延绵着黑夜,路牌都看不见。暴雪
几小时后,我终于碰到一辆收工回家的出租车。黑人司机说
开,去皇家山顶,不要停下。
我去金城肮脏喧闹的火车站接到了沫沫,她执意在那个上大
沫沫在我怀中慵懒地说,cheri,你说签证好办吗?听
手机响起。看到来电显示的人名后,我彻底僵滞。而电话并
沫沫不耐烦地推着我的手臂。你干嘛老是不接电话。我紧闭
那晚,我费尽力气,不知摔倒多少次,双手淌着鲜血,最终
All is well. Yet I do beseech you,I beg for your audience, for it’s not a question of morality, as the frivolities in our lives. As I’ve heard well enough. So asking myself, what of it? How significant must it be? Many times a day I ponder, If there’s wine, poetry, and souls mates, mustn’t life be well enough already? Do not disavow me of your frailty, for at times my weakness does not eschew me, nor do I deny it of its debilitating agony. Torn, burnt, but moving on nonetheless. What lessons have been learned? None other than being able to fall yet deeper, more gently. This shall not do…it cannot..such dramaturgy, such travesty. To travel further into darkness, before seeing the light of the day. Or perhaps, haven’t you considered, that day may never arrive, and there’s not ending of this except to learn to live in darkness. And sooner or later, all appears to be a lie; a grand scheme set for perpetual condemnation at this dooming masquerade, this carnival of indulgence that’s soon to call an end, whence I’m disconcerted, tempestuous like the day; kept up at nights, drowning ever more quickly. It wasn’t because nothing could be of help, but for I’ve shun my salvation. It angers me to say so, as if a choice could be made. If there wasn’t agency to begin with, how shall blame be laid upon me, fingers pointed sanctimoniously? But why, for I shall ask, really? Your being here, mumbling somewhat, ferreting for things unbeknownst to you, to us both. How I could’ve saved your soul! Did I not claiming with an effrontery already faltering. Least needed is my blandiloquence and my chivalrous endeavoring. And memories suffocates me, time’s been smithereening, carving pieces of it deep into the flesh of souls, mine included. I dare not to haste in my postulation lest I am once again bereft of hopes. Much misgivings it has been, much affectations too. Still nothing has been changed, until I’ve crossed my Rubicon…Or has it been so already? Such is another puzzlement yet. I could only dream again, of a nebular one lingering by, but never impetuously intimate–like that girl in the film who whispered, half playful half solemn, “Kill all my demons, and my angels might die too.”
She got up early, when the Prussian blue of daybreak had yet to wane. She shuffled around barefoot, waking him. He opened his eyes, his mind strangely clear. Yet as he looked around the room, the sight of their studio apartment startled him completely, as though he’d forgotten where he was. For maybe twenty seconds, or maybe much longer, as it seemed, he rewired his mind around the humming noise of the booming metropolis that permeated the window pane. The noise had been subtle but unsettling and incessant, like the electro music his college dorm room neighbor used to play all night long. He’d noticed it the moment he stepped off the airplane. As he walked under the endless jungle of cranes and steel beams, around the asphalt conglomeration choked in serpentine smog, he’d tried to reminisce, like right now, whether there’d been such noise in his childhood memories. He found no answer, as that part of his past had been sitting inside him like a foreign country where he’d been denied any access.
The room darkened as she went up to the window. Her naked shoulder tensed as her arm reached to pull the blind, the curl of her silhouette twisting like that of a rose petal. He thought of the Dance of Flying Apsara she’d been performing on stage—her body rose to the sky, the silk ribbons entwining her torso flicking, and the sapphire between her brows glistening.
He was going to see about his new job at a law firm later today. Mother’s old colleague was a partner there, and had agreed to do her a favor by hiring him as an interpreter. The thought made his head hurt. Yes, it was probably much better than tutoring English conversational classes at that third-tier high school, where the agony on the students’ faces depressed him. He’d felt as though he wasn’t teaching but was doing them a disservice, like partaking in a state-sponsored torture.
But he didn’t come back to be a nine-to-five cubicle creature. He’d returned from America to pursue his “artistic aspirations.” He was also concerned with losing connection to his own culture after years abroad, a feeling like he’d been transfixed by a giant, invisible syringe, and sucked dry of his substance, day by day.
Yet so far he’d proven to this society that he was good for nothing other than his fluent English. Such is life, full of irony, he thought, fucking ironies. At least it was a full time job, and he needed money to pay the bills. He’d been unexpectedly caught up in the travail of moneymaking, which irritated him above all things and made him feel helpless.
Yin’in never complained, though, and that was what’s disconcerting about her. She’d always been the one in the background, like those lone girls you’d see in a fading Polaroid photo. It made him unsure whether to take her usual obedience as acquiescence, or apathy.
She was naked on her way to the shower. She’d always been so at ease with her own body, half of which was wrapped underneath that long black hair of hers. The hair shone under the pale light like strands of obsidian beads.
Her beauty was daunting. Sometimes it unnerved him. He used to believe there was always some vanity in pretty girls, because in his college years he’d seen much indulgence and vanity in those unscrupulous young souls. Not in her.
The sound of splashing water caught his attention, and he thought of when they’d first met. He was schmoozing around in a suburban loft saturated with wanna-be Parisian décors and people who admired it. He wore a navy blue Lacoste tee and pair of Hugo Boss grey wash jeans, a bottle of wine in his left hand and a half-filled goblet in his right. She was standing in the corner, confabulating with one of the rich boys whom he’d marked as a philistine. She seemed rather amused—perhaps by his effort. Soon the guy gave up, and he approached. She’d been expecting him, and smiled as they shock hands cordially. Right away he thought—out of randomness—of a white poppy. He immediately found such thought ludicrous—the same way after he found himself secretly in love with the young wife at Sushi Shop off-campus. Yet there wasn’t a better way to describe her. She wore a rice-colored tunic and casual khaki-green flax pants, probably shopped from venues on Xiushui Street. These were two colors that no Chinese girls would wear together, but she did anyway because her skin was pale like that of an untanned Scandinavian girl. Her hair was coiled up and pinned with a cloisonné hairpin, her makeup plain like the colors she wore. At first he’d thought it was her way to catch eyeballs, but later he learned that she never wore makeup off-stage and never shown her hair loose in public. When she laughed her head lifted a little, exposing the fine clavicle.
When he’d first returned, he tried hard to get along with those artists who gathered around the 49th District—a place deluged with works that made travesties out of the Maoist Era. Soon he saw that these people were not only narrow-sighted and fame-thirsty, and their works piles of bromides perpetuating the Orientalist conceptions of Western collectors, but they’d lost all integrity and given hedonism a whole new definition. And the benefactors he’d had to deal with, whom he first thought, being more educated, were more agreeable, soon appeared to be a bunch of mere loaded riffraff. People he knew were conformists back in America, but at least there were some genuineness to be found. But here, these fair-skinned bon vivants…he couldn’t go on thinking, such realization was much too painful.
Yin’in came out of the bathroom dressed in t-shirts and jeans. Her hair, still dripping water, was tied back in a ponytail. She began searching for something on the bureau, which made him look up from the bed, the muscles on his neck tightened; he felt the artery on his neck popping.
“What are you looking for?” He asked.
“The door keys.”
“First drawer on the left.” He didn’t want her to see the airline booking information he’d brought home two days ago. Father had called last week, said enough with your illusions so now get your ass back to the States and get a job, while Mother sighed deeply on the side.
He was twenty-five, an age still imbued in ambitions, thinking you could take your dreams and go far and beyond, but meanwhile, already realized that some doors were shut to you, and that you’d have to go around with an incubus of reality on your shoulders. He’d been good at telling stories without particularly trying to impress, and she liked it. In fact, when he tried to impress he did it absentmindedly, casually adding flavors to the tales and claiming others’ deeds under his own belt. He’d always taken pride in his talented storytelling, yet he got nothing but rejections, coldhearted disinterest. A kind-hearted screenwriter eventually told him the truth: They wanted something American but in essence localized, like selling Chinese donuts at MacDonald’s, because people can’t accept anything more than a Western facade.
He’d whined to Yin’in, and she’d listened attentively without comments. He thought she’d never understood him fully. After all, she’d been a dancer all her life, didn’t speak English, and didn’t even get much schooling. The night they’d met, she didn’t give him her number, but her email. He’d gone on to find her blog online and read it. She wrote almost daily, in succinct, poetic lines that pertained to the bagatelles of her life:
You came along with Solitude, I loved you both
You left, but Solitude left his shoes here
No matter how I opened the window
Letting my fingers go
How many times
I couldn’t throw them away…
…Whatever guise you come up with in my world, it must be happy
This is my monomania…
He spent the entire night reading her blog. It was never talked about afterwards.
His parents found out about her soon as she came back to his hometown with him. They disapproved of their relationship: She didn’t have a decent college degree, and was six months older. Not to mention that she was from a modest family in Shanghai, and what had Mother been telling him? Never involve yourself with Shanghainese girls. But she’d given up her career in Beijing to come back with him, when he’d hit the lowest point of his life and needed support the most. Did she do it, like some had warned him, only because she knew he’d soon go back to America, and take her with him? Men had always fallen for women’s beauty. Was this his hamartia, too?
No! Of course not! He gasped at the thought. In the days with her he no longer felt distressed and insecure. He’d always felt that something was rotten in this state, but couldn’t tell in exact words, just like that noise he’d always heard. His beloved motherland had long become faithless, so was he. There was something soothing about her, not intimately, but kept in a fair distance, like she’d been watching him from afar all these time, and understood. He was unsure what drove him to this obsession with her, it kept him up at night. No, wasn’t her body, he’d had other beautiful girls, younger and better educated than Yin’in. So what was it? Was she really an opiate, like he’d jokingly thought of her in the very beginning?
He’d seen poppies once when he was seventeen. His uncle drove him to Blue Mountain Plantation, where the state-owned commune grew 600 acres of opium. He saw the flowers from miles away, behind the car window and a row of sand jujube trees. It was a vast expanse of white and red so much more vivid than any color he’d seen in his life that he felt a twinge in the eyes.
He remembered walking amidst the white poppies, whose beauty was no less soothing and addicting than the opiate they’d give birth to. The palm-sized flowers were blossoming in an audacious and reckless enchantment, bending their branches. When zephyr blew by, the ocean of bone-whiteness waved gently, calming and ominous.
She came up to him, bent down, and kissed him on the forehead. When Mother was still young she kissed him twice every day, before school and before bed. He disliked it when Yin’in kissed there, too. It seemed to unravel his shells of manhood, exposing that unfledged boy within.
He asked quietly, “where are you going?”
And before she could answer, he held her in his arms, kissing on her naked clavicle.
He closed his eyes and whispered,
“Not going anywhere, Yin’in. Not going anywhere.”
It was twenty-one years ago in the midst of a hazy day. The sun had just mounted high above the Gobi horizon, casting rings of murky halo that rendered the cityscape restless in a khaki glare. Mother was lying in a sickbed at Women and Children’s Hospital of J City. She’d arrived early in the morning, after months of battling with preeclampsia and the thought of getting an abortion for her career in the more prospective South. The bed on Mother’s left was vacant, and in a scarlet Red Cross sign splattered in the center of the clean white bedsheet like a pool of fresh blood.
She waited, tremulous in impatience. The air reeked of formalin, and the tacky viridescent of the wall paint that was ubiquitous in public buildings somehow bothered her more than usual. Grandma was sitting next to her in a military armchair; her hands sat on the worn-out armrest, holding on to a red “Double Happiness” thermos. She asked intermittently whether Mother wanted hot water, and Mother answered “No” each time.
The hospital was located on Beijing Avenue, then the only asphalt-paved street in town. Herds of industrial workers, unemployed farmers, and canny businessmen from the South (Southern Flatheads, as locals called them) flooded the streets, searching for their own share of fortune in this booming mining town. Everything was new, and makeshift. When Mother revisited the town years later, she saw a KFC restaurant swarmed with middle-class consumerists. The hospital had long been demolished, melted into the smelter of time together with the nickel ores. Trios of single-child families waited in queue. The children’s faces were filled with anticipation for a taste of American junk food. Amid the neon-lit venues and metropolitan ecstasies, Colonel Sanders chocked in the industrial smog, his smile ever unrelenting.
The subtle, spasmodic pain was becoming more palpable, Mother tried to remain still and supine. Outside, a bicycle reeled by, its bell tinkling loudly. It was followed by the sound of rushing footsteps from end of the aisle. The noise grew louder and more rapid, like water heating to boil in a kettle. Then the door smashed open, a group of middle-aged men and women escorted a pregnant woman inside onto the bed beside Mother’s. Their hands were all stretched out, almost lifting her up like a group of eunuchs lifting the Empress Dowager.
Soon the group began chattering in an indistinct southern dialect. Mother examined the woman: She was chubby and appeared almost twice Mother’s age. Exhausted by either her debilitating condition or by her boisterous family members, she laid quietly on her side, her lips dry and bloodless. Yet mother saw on the woman’s weathered face the once-striking beauty that’d become hardly discernible. She had eyes and nose resembling finely-carved porcelain—a typical Southern beauty. Her husband had a somewhat aversive complexion of a typical parsimonious merchant, his face distorted in vexation. The group seemed more anxious than the woman, whose pale face was covered with perspiration.
Two young nurses came in, dismissing the loquacious crowd, and whined to Grandma after they’d left.
Around noon, the woman gave birth to her child safely.
It was the most beautiful baby girl Mother had ever seen, with willow-leaf-shaped browns and her mother’s nose grown immaculately on her ruddy, cherubic face. She cried very little, as if afraid of this new world she’d just arrived in.
Her father dashed in with the others. He eagerly held the infant up. Then, suddenly, the fire in his eyes extinguished altogether. His body rocked tremendously in spite of himself. The relatives yelled out: “What is it!? A BOY?!” (The law had prohibited the disclosure of infants’ gender before their birth). He dropped his daughter back to the cradle, turned around without uttering a word and walked to a corner of the ward. The once loquacious cohort of siblings and in-laws fell completely taciturn. The man reached into his pockets for a cigarette. He made a great effort to put his trembling hand onto his lips. His void eyes stared into distance. Soon as he’d realized that no smocking was allowed, he held the cigarette in his mouth and walked out of the door. His family members, one by one, followed him out in reticence.
Mother looked at the women, she’d already passed out.
An hour and half later, Mother delivered a nine-pound boy. Grandma joyously ran out to make phone calls. Mother regretted a bit beneath her faint smile, because she’d always wished for a girl.
Later that day relatives came and took turns to scrutinize the chubby newborn. Behind them the older woman wept alone silently, the stretcher that carried her in was abandoned, leaning on the wall next to her sickbed. Grandma tried to sooth her and feed her food, but she kept on crying as if she’d not just had a child, but had lost one. The baby slept serenely beside her, rarely making a sound.
The man eventually came back and brought his wife some food. He looked as though he’d aged five years in an afternoon, his eyes bloodshot. His wife hurriedly ate and breastfed the baby girl. Then the guy sat by her feet while she stared at his hunched back.
To break the silence, Grandma spoke,
“You should be happy, look how beautiful your daughter is. Raise her like a piece of treasure.”
The man gave out a long sigh and spoke in heavily accented Mandarin, his voice low and hoarse, “Old Sister, you’ve no idea. I have three brothers; all four of us each had three daughters, which make it twelve girls, no boy. Now all the wives were ordered to get sterilization by the government. This one was our last hope.”
Mother said: “This girl is so pretty. She won’t be less than any boy.”
“Ein, back in our hometown, if you have no sons in your family, you couldn’t even build a new house. People will point at your back. With all these money we make, we can’t lift our heads up in the village.” The room fell back in silence.
Soon it was bedtime, the hospitals then endorsed the policy of letting babies staying in the same room with their mothers. So the two mothers and their two newborns stayed in the same ward.
Mother could not sleep. She saw the women’s envious gaze from the bed across, fixed onto the boy, as if the woman would make up her mind any moment and jump up to snatch Mother’s son away. The woman gazed on for hours without moving, she gazed with a desire like one desired her life.
Mother hoped she could see Father, who was then a college lecturer working 300 miles away and whose monthly salary came short to buy a last-minute bus ticket.
But she was there along in the dark, too scared that she might lose her only child. She tried to talk to the woman without a stop.
“You should really be happy, nowadays people love girls more. I’ve always loved girls…”
The woman gazed away, biting her lips hard. She asked abruptly:
“You wanted a daughter?”
Mother’s heart quivered. She cried out: “NO.” Her fragile body trembled, but her eyes filled with bravery.
The woman said nothing for the rest of the night. Early next morning her husband came and they checked out of the hospital.
A month later, when Mother took her son back for a physical checkup, the head nurse, an old lady in her 60’s, asked Mother if she remembered the woman in her delivery room.
Mother nodded, that night’s image was still hauntingly eidetic.
The head nurse shook her head and signed,
“Such a pity, you should have asked us to report your son and her daughter as twins.”
Mother was bewildered.
A young nurse said heartbreakingly,
“The couple, they’d given the girl away to a farmer.”
Mother gasped. She was in one of the most impoverished region on this land. A farmer to this day made 300 American dollars a year on average.
The head nurse kept on moaning,
”Ein, such a sin, such a sin…”
Mother held her son and walked down of the limestone stairs of the Soviet-style hospital building. She went out on the street; the wind was dry and dusty, cutting at her pallid face. Further away, Father was coming toward her, pushing their rusty “Forever” bicycle.
I cried, mewing and puking in Mother’s arms.
花儿是你的脆弱,
你是我的。
花瓣在夜色里经过
一场悲剧性巧合。
岁月是纯白色
夹竹桃的凋落
恣情幻想,
在寒冷中沉默,
在幽幽诉说。
将枝叶摘下
吞食,承诺
十指根茎般缠绕着
苏醒的痛楚掠过。
星辰和飞虫的闪烁中,
丢失白昼的轮廓。
夜里空荡荡,
而我也为你燃烧着,
至思念化作灰烬。
那一夜很好。
我们,
身体很近,
灵魂很远。
"Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing a meditation"
–Henri-Cartier Bresson
I was fifteen, driving through the tranquil mountains in northern Wyoming, and for days scenting the sulfurous air and that exquisite, unearthly beauty of Yellowstone. Seeing the world in a vague yet zealous vision, I wondered.
"What to do to last this very journey, to seize the moment!?"
Our friend’s 35-millimeter did well in reprinting Yellowstone’s colors (I recall to this day going through his portfolio years later in central Arkansas). It did, however, a less satisfying job capturing the moment.
The smell of sulfur was lost in his photos.
So later I began my own journey. At first photography served a less important role to me, I used it as an omnipotent tool for capturing the reality–perhaps the same way as I saw literature.
Then, one day, talking to a friend, I said, "photography is the art of deceiving eyes."
I wasn’t exactly wrong. I believed in the world with uncontested idealism and more naiveté than I do today. I yearned for a form of art that’s transcendental. Surrealism, l’avant-garde.
To Bresson, arguably the greatest photographer ever lived, the photos are "images à la sauvette"
–the decisive moment.
Doubtless, I’ve encountered such moment more than I could enumerate. I’ve felt that instant flash of inspiration. In my understanding the art of photography bears much resemblance as the art of confessing one’s love (neither of which I have learned well) –We’ve waited long and hard for that instant, which will be lost in the very next second, and what’s left will only be the shadows of our past and a mist of futures. The fortuitous does not wait.
It’s quite pathetic that I now resort on the digital maneuvers to create the ever more colorful shallowness. It seems that I have indulged myself in the chromatic kitsch for too long.
A photo, like a poem, should, in all its subtlety, convey a powerful message beyond its composition, not to say beyond its mere colors. Its power should transfix the context.
When we were first taught to use the language, we were asked to use it with conciseness and clarity, it wasn’t til much later we learned that the art of language more often than not lies within the ambiguity of our expressions.
The same holds for photography. I’ve spent the past 3 years learning to "master" the techniques of exposure, reading books on photographic aestheticism and compositions. Only recently have I realized, a photo can be blurred, overexposed, out of tone, and have no "proper" composition at all, yet can nonetheless be a masterpiece.
Humans, I believe, is the most worthy subject above all to photograph. The idea lies close to photojournalism, but with a completely different take. Earth would of course be a cleaner, perhaps even better place had humans not been created, but it would also have no meanings at all.
So the goal is, to take photos of people, especially those beloved ones, with a passion.
by Cassiopeium
Twenty-seven ladies came that night
We melted in tongue-tied delight
“Don’t do it!”
You whispered, little resolute
Guilty conscience kills you,
Tasting that salty sinister pleasure
On my ring finger
Where hundred-proof liquor spilt
If only I could peel you ‘part
Finding her inside
So I squeezed and licked a bit
No less apologetic than triumphant
Perhaps I smelled in you
a lady butterfly, lashes trembling
Like your pulverous wings and indulging
In the rose garden before you die.
But her name’s echoing, echoing
’round me like some terminal disease
“You are not going to have me tonight
Anyway.” No.
Anything I would do
To love her less
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