Wind to My Soul

 

 《西風的話》

去年我回來　
你們剛穿新棉袍

今年我來看你們　
你們變胖又變高

你們可曾記得　
池裡菏花變蓮蓬?

花開不愁沒有顏色　
我把樹葉都染紅

Whisper of West Wind

Last year when I was leaving,
you put on new cotton robes;

This year as I come to see you,
you have grown big and tall;

Do you ever remember,
lilies in pond morph to pods?

Mind not flowers are thin n’ hues dim,
I am coloring all the hills.

*********

Dear Kate,

I am gonna write for the last time sitting down.

By tonight, God willing, I will have picked up a stand-desk convertor from a Kitsilano office and lay it over this desk in mine, giving it a second life living its first.

If given the choice, I think anyone serious about writing would write standing up, the same way the Bible is meant to be read out-door, out-loud, your God-channeled voice out-numbered by those of life's elements, multifarious and ferocious, your flourishing written in the wind.

Last night I picked up again after more than a decade Gao Xingjian's Nobel-Prize-winning "Soul Mountain," and I swore to the God whom he has no name for that I couldn't get past the first two pages without bursting into a song his "characters" wouldn't have an ear for: song of joy, childish lullaby, a new one I'd make up every new morning rubbing my dog all over before carrying each other up our soul mountain.  His "cold" literature doesn't even have a name for his "characters."

This was how Gao began his Nobel acceptance speech: "I have no way of knowing whether it was fate that has pushed me onto this dais but as various lucky coincidences have created this opportunity I may as well call it fate. Putting aside discussion of the existence or non-existence of God, I would like to say that despite my being an atheist I have always shown reverence for the unknowable."

Destiny is not fate. A destiny is a spiritual drama that is still unfolding. If I am sure of my destiny, I am not afraid of the fate embodied in my personal circumstances and historical situations.  That's why joy.  Even having fun agonizing, bitching in style, like many Bible writers did.  Gao's another well-known novel is called "One Man's Bible," and any nameless man can read it sitting down.

Today I am sharing with you one of my favorite songs, a lullaby, a particular version of it with my favorite singer, though the real showcase here is the new arrangement, bridging the East and West, a three-parts buildup ascending a mountain of exuberant joy, with tantalizing sorrows between the dark trees.  I danced every time I reached the last third.

Turn your volume all the way up.

Yours, Alex