This is our lives. This is my life. 不管是中文英文还是鸟语。I believe language is language, and the language of sense and sentiment is here inside my head. I have two actors and I will make the best of it as I can. I will make them talk, converse, debate, discuss, argue, fight, make love, make hate, they will meld to one form and I will control them as my own ligaments. And so will you, my nouns, my verbs, my adjectives and adverbs, follow me on this grand adventure. Will you be patient when neglected and scream when called? Will you not be lost? Most of all, will you not be lost? Will you heed and tend and be?
Here it is, an exercise in English to regain lost dreams.
The world is full of strange peoples and people strangers. I am no more than a pawn at the foot of your greatness, but I aim to conquer your reign. Grandiose words are diluted thoughts. Tell me if I fail. Tell me if I fail. Am I different in this alphabetical realm? Do I regain the muscle of vocabulary of this great foreign tongue? I am smarter, braver, more worthy? Or are my words full of shit? Are my words bloated and unscathed, or have they grown with the likes of Chinese literature? Are my words renewed?
The truth is, I have fallen in love with a world that is utterly, utterly mine, but what world can trully be mine without the reign of language? I'm all tone and colloquial in Chinese. I'm only wide eyed and poetic in Chinese. I have no punch and no foundation and no idioms and no proverbs. Does that make me free from the boundaries of sentence structure? Or am I stuck here in a state of private naivete? Truth is, I need more words, and the only way to gain it, my dear, is to bite on them, digest them, make them cells of my body. This is the only way.
Words are the only things left we have.
But Jesus Christ, what am I suppose to do with this. I seek simple things and a simple living, but instead I am handed with a gift and a vain-driven duty to use it for the greater good of bloody mankind. But I am made of insecurity and sanity, I'm not high not listening to Johnny Cash and not drowning myself in the wine of literature. So pray thee, where does that leave 21-year-olds? Pray thee, where do we go from here? Do I take advantage of gifts and curses or do I surrender to doubt? Am I great or am I only good? And if I am only good, am I able to sharpen good to great. And even if I am great, am I able to sharpen great to use?
Hail to the geniuses. Hail to the suicides and madness and heroin induced inspirations. Hail to the artists who sacrifice their sanity for ours. I am not one. I can only hide behind the gauze of big words and pretend. My god why is everything reduced to drama and tension in this language. Can I not speak of simple things? What is this rotten stage I have wrought for myself. Let's see your words roll... let's see them in truer simpler forms. Could you do it for me?
I loved the way cement dust smelled on my hand. When all the grayer particles clung to skin to create of web of foreign surface, I feel nine yet again, as when we made mud pies and climbed trees in our skirts. She was all wistful while I made cartwheels, "look! kids who grew up in America know how to do everything." I simper and say nothing, because I wear America as an expensive jacket purchased on a whim, except it's the only jacket I have left to protect bare skin. These kids of mine are made of stars and diamonds. These kid of mine I love as I love treelined skies and masses of bicycles. Sometimes I wish I were just one of them, suffering their anger and laughing their joy. Sometimes I wish I didn't have so many eyes and so many ways. Who am I now that I am what I am? A lost little girl scratching at times she never had, bitter and embroiled and absolutely in love with just the pieces she had regained. The devils speak of a paradise regained, and I am no more than a bastard child from hell.
妈的为什么用英文写东西感觉像别人的声音似的。Fuck the world, except for you, because I love you. Go teenage... damn it, young adult angst.