My friend Jeff once alerted me to this excellent commercial spot by All Nippon Airways of Japan. The voice of an apparently jetlagged narrator accompanies us in a visually beautiful exploration of Tokyo at dawn. Devoid of people and vehicles, the familiar streets and neighborhood become uncanny. Since coming back to Hong Kong last week, I wake up habitually at three or four in the morning, and is in no rush to adjust to local time. I am perhaps in denial, but I finally left a life that had spilled over, and how could I contain something that is no longer uncontainable, like the tears running down my cheeks?
Partir, c’est mourir un peu. And I would just add, j’ai failli mourir, en pensant à toi. Non, ce n’est même pas l’idée de la séparation qui m’entombe, mais plutôt c’est la façon brusque ce lien s’est coupé qui m’a plongé dans la tristesse et l’oubli. It does not make sense; how did it even happen? This morning, I took a snapshot of the view from home. I no longer see Ridge, Pratt, or William, but a world upside down. It is from your side of the planet, and in this quotation of Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, I find myself in the similar search of an artificial nostalgia, invented origin, or as my hero Rey Chow puts it in Sentimental Fabulations, a primordial unity. You know Alessia is such a big fan of Wong’s films, insofar as all she wanted to talk about was the movies when I first met her. Perhaps now I can speak in the first person, rather than the third person, and explain what it really feels like when the future is not a series of recalcitrant repetitions or recollections of the past, but its turning upside down. We will see. It will be a life flipped over, and also it looks like it is going to be on my side (the flipside) where this coming together will be found.
How have you been? Is the Japanese Thermos filled with chilled coffee? Nevermind whatever I have just written so far, don’t spill the coffee, don’t knock it over, and yes, do not despair, we once again will measure out our lives with coffee spoons.
On the Ridge of Pratt 