"Once upon a time, somewhere miles and miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there lived a young octopus named Nina. Nina spent most of her time alone, making strange creations out of rocks and shells. She was very happy. But then on Monday, the shark showed up.
'What's your name?' said the shark.
'Nina,' she replied.
'Do you want to be my friend?' he asked.
'Ok. What do I have to do?' said Nina.
'Not much,' said the shark. 'Just . . . let me eat one of your arms.'
Nina had never had a friend before, so she wondered if this is what you had to do to get one. She looked down at her eight arms and decided: it wouldn't be so bad to give up one. So, she donated an arm to her wonderful new friend.
Every day that week, Nina and the shark would play together. They explored caves, built castles of sand, and swam really really fast. And every night the shark would be hungry, and Nina would give him another one of her arms to eat. On Sunday, after playing all day, the shark told Nina that he was very hungry.
'I don't understand,' she said. 'I've already given you six of my arms and now you want one more?'
The shark looked at her with a friendly smile and said, 'I don't want one. This time I want them all.'
'But why?' Nina asked.
And the shark replied, 'Because that's what friends are for.'
When the shark finished his meal, he felt very sad and lonely. He missed having someone to explore caves, build castles, and swim really really very fast with. He missed Nina very much. So he swam away to find another friend."
"We are partisans in the persistent and hopeless fight for human dignity."
—Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai, Sátántangó (1994)
Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Céline going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town the impossibility of being human Burroughs killing his wife with a gun Mailer stabbing his the impossibility of being human Maupassant going mad in a rowboat Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller the impossibility Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops the impossibility Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench Chatterton drinking rat poison Shakespeare a plagiarist Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness the impossibility the impossibility Nietzsche gone totally mad the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly.
—Charles Bukowski, "beasts bounding through time—" in You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986), p. 21-22.
« Il se sent humilié d'un abandon et d'un isolement si nouveau pour lui au milieu de son entière liberté. Enfin après des longues hésitations, on le voit de son propre mouvement venir se mêler à la société des autres malades; dès ce jour, il revient à des idées plus sensées et plus justes. »
—Scipion Pinel, Traité complet du régime sanitaire des aliénés (1837)
Dear C.,
Every night before I fall asleep, I'd start imagining things. Perhaps "things" is not quite an accurate word — a "scene" would be closer to the reality. Yes, a scene: always the same one, hopelessly and irredeemably repeated without the slightest possibility of alternatives. And this is how it usually proceeds: first I lie motionless on my bed and, facing upwards, stare fixedly at the blank ceiling of my own room. Then, once my eyes were finally closed under fatigue, the originally indefinite mass of darkness that surrounds me (or surrounds my pupils at any rate) would suddenly (mysteriously) gain a momentum of its own — or so it seems to me, which is why I opted for the word "imagine" in the first place — and start swelling upwards across the (now) invisible ceiling in a way that it forms a gigantic black cylinder continuously in movement, as if somewhere up there (in heaven?) were a huge, celestial vacuum cleaner seeking at all costs to suck off all the "remains of the dark" in my pupils: a diabolical bliss indeed. At such moment, needless to say, my original sense of space has collapsed, and all there's left for me is myself and my vertical tunnel, extending endlessly into nowhere. (Think perhaps of the state Gandalf's in when he sprawls hopelessly at the bottom of Saruman's dark, hollow tower: that old man in grey petrified by the infinite space between himself and an exit is me, every night before sleep . . .)
Still, however hopeless the situation may seem, I've always managed to escape from it — and it's actually not even half as difficult as it appears at first glance: all I need to do is to flip to my side, facing the wall on the left that seems to me infinitely more concrete (and thus more reliable) than my characterless ceiling, which at once reconstitutes my sense of being protected impeccably within a well-defined space. But then of course this (no doubt enviable) feeling of being at home with oneself — of finally locating "a room of one's own" — is as precarious as it is vain: no sooner had I felt the palpable presence of the wall than the same regression experienced with the pathetic ceiling happened again, the only difference being, if this is any comfort, that the previously unheimlich vertical tunnel has now fallen back on earth and thus restored to the state of a tunnel as we ordinarily perceive it except, alas, it's a tunnel without the twinkling end of light, an endless Wendersian highway road trip without the point de fuite between two parallel lines: and so I'm in the wilderness of nothing again. (Think, this time, of the meandering, dark corridor where the innumerable piles of bureaucratic files that populate a kafkaesque labyrinth are deposited — and I've become K.: the Kalumniator K. who accuses himself innocently to expose the inherent emptiness of the Trial, the Agrimonsor K. who struggles endlessly unto death in the vain hope of finally finding a way back to the Castle where he belongs.)
--------The end of the scene. ----------------------------------------------------------
Now (surely you'd like to ask): why am I recounting this somewhat strange vision (that is, if we could call it a vision in its strictly ocular sense) to you, anyways? How on earth would this "bedtime story" be of any significance to you especially when, speaking of strangeness, it's not even half as strange as the "infantile fantasies" that, I'm sure, most of us have had experienced of before surrendering ourselves ignominiously to the terrible reign of Reason (when I was around five or six, whenever I spent my night in the very same room in question which belonged to my brother then, I used to see several vampires attached so effortlessly to the surface of the wardrobes while hearing for hours on end their excruciating laughters accompanied by the squeaking screams of their victims, but let's not go there for now)? Well here's the reason: strangely, ever since I came back from that not-so-bad-but-then-again-not-so-impressive-either Hirokazu Koreeda film I watched with you the other day, all of a sudden my seemingly inalterable bedtime ritual has been changed — that, as I flip to the side waiting silently for my lost highway, having just finished playing for the 79th time the Gandalf pinned to the cold, hard ground of Saruman's tower, I simply don't see that eternal "long and winding road" anymore. Instead, all that I see now — et voilà! — is you: first the face, then the whole of your body in that (equally strange, this anachronism) quasi-skirt suit you wore the day we met at Kafka on the Shore, emerging slowly but determinedly from the uncoordinated chaos of darkness: like a nebula against the infinite nothingness of our universe.
Tonight, then, marks the sixth time that I'd have looked straight into the starlights in your eyes that anchor me silently, unwaveringly, as if the whole world has stopped moving. Before long, I know now, a rising wave of desire gentle as the tides of a sunny day on the beach will sweep over me entirely whence, reaching out my trembling hand, I'll start caressing you, ever so slowly, ever so tenderly from head — the curls of your hair, the contour of your profile, the delicate shoulder, "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands", the lacuna of your waist, the slightly bulging hip, the firmness of your thighs — to calves, but always, just barely touching; barely touching, so never actually there. But like this — particles floating in the air, barely touching, barely caressing, barely embraced — the tide would gradually recede from the shore of my body, like a photography forgotten by the sea, then washed away into the realm of Morpheus, without trace or memory. Oblivion. Kinesis. Timelessness.
Post scriptum. I've recently just finished a collection of essays by Murakami where he talks here and there about the "eventual sadness of [using, speaking, hearing] foreign languages." "What I was thinking about is this: for those who cannot always convey what they're really getting at in Japanese, their hope of expressing themselves fully and successfully in a foreign language — no matter how hard they've been working on it — is perhaps only futile," he writes. I suppose I'll have to respectfully disagree. As is the case in this letter, I feel that, by appropriating a language in principle foreign to me — a syntactic and lexical field where my arbitrary selections can by no means be called "idiomatic" — a strange yet refreshing liberty somehow emerges from (if not altogether exceeds) its vessel that is me as subject for which, perchance, I get to express certain sentiments or emotions more directly (to say nothing of the question of truth, of expressing more truthfully or not) — things that, at any rate, I would never dare (nor can) write to in our first language. I trust (hope) you won't therefore find this letter too unbearably presumptuous and/or offensive. Also, I remember promising you to write about that complex, insupportable feeling of "xi-xu" (唏噓): of its contour or shape, of the descriptive and affective characters it inevitably entails — in short, its infinitesimal phenomenology. But what's the use of still clinging desperately to it if, thanks to our mutual xi-xu at the outset, we've begun to talk and listen to each other anew? Or better still: why bother explaining a (though no doubt fundamental) Stimmung that always has its roots deeply in the past, if we have already caught a glimpse of the possibility of a "here and now"? I have thus decided to drop it.
關於你信裏寫的東西，我想這次我非常能夠理解，也尊重你的選擇（不然我還能怎麼辦？）。所以在不影響這個大前提的情形下，我只有三件小事想盡力真誠地向你闡釋清楚。首先，關於我的室友（我假設你這裏指的就是H，因為事實上我也換過好多不同、可能單手數不清的室友）說我在法國「很開心」以至於與我自己「洞」的描述（記住是「洞」，不是黑洞，我還沒有那麼灑狗血）相矛盾的問題。我想說的是到後來我和H雖然也稱不上是形同末路，然而事實上我們幾乎不太跟彼此聊天，而一天內會講到的少少幾句話也多半只跟冰箱、烤箱與家樂福有關。那之間的原因也許很複雜，然而我簡單地來講的話也許可以這麼說：她所感興趣的東西我事實上並不那麼在乎，而我自己認為極端重要的事情對她則不具任何意義。而偏偏我們又都是那種對於自己所珍視的防衛心極重、不允許他人隨意冒犯的人，因此在對話（比超級市場稍深入一些的對話）中便不免不是踩到地雷（她的女性主義或台獨）便陷入沉默（我的書寫或哲學）（當然，我還是很感謝她和 W 讓我知道應當直呼「中國」：「大陸」這種鴕鳥的說法真的是國民黨的遺毒）。總之我真正想說的是，讓這樣一個縱使物理距離如此靠近卻幾乎不曾接近（遑論進入）我靈魂窗口的 H 來決定我的法國生活究竟開不開心，我想畢竟還是有些不公允罷。某種程度上，我的確感覺到自己慢慢地變「強」——在語言上、在身體上、在耐性上、在對抗孤獨中、在等待裏——然那畢竟是靠不得不生活在「洞」裏才得以換來的東西：以物易物，且義無反顧。我無法很明確地跟你解釋我所謂的「洞」究竟是什麼樣子的所在，但無論如何那是一種心靈的異域，同時牽涉自我意識的選擇（信徒般的自殘）與世界外在的刺激（衣蛾般地結蛹——那用來結蛹的世界的粉塵當然就包含了語言）：你或許可以把它解釋為村上《發條鳥》裡的井，溫德斯的寂寞公路，言叔夏馬尾度無風的地下室，舞鶴的十年淡水或卡謬生的邊界的荒謬無色沙漠。總之這也不是這封信的重點。
首先我想說的是：特別是在人際關係上，事實上我從來不覺得自己有那麼一點瀟灑——或許還正好相反，因為我總是在想，總在計算——我只是盡力忠於（我所感知的）真實且不與原則矛盾地生活罷了。於是我必須首先解釋那些我認識到的真實與從之而生的生命守則究竟是什麼。第一，我不相信所謂的愛情。或者，講得更具體一點，我認為愛情這種東西如果真的可能存在的話，那麼它一定是身體的。所謂身體，我指的並不是牽手、擁抱、親吻與性那樣單純的「身體接觸」。當然，它們同樣也不可或缺，但不，我想講的並不是什麼「這個世界上沒有愛，只有慾望的供需平衡」或「所謂婚姻說穿了也不過就是一個確保性與生產的長期契約關係」之類現在也已經顯得老掉牙的論調。只是關於那些一般我們下意識習慣附加於「愛」之上的種種宏大的內在性（「靈魂伴侶」、「價值觀的貼合」）、獨特性（「找到真愛」、「生命中的另一半」）、宿命性（「真命天子/女」、「一見鍾情」）與永恆性（「執子之手，與子偕老」）等抽象觀念與幻想枷鎖，我希望盡量從自己與愛人的身上免除。我希望盡可能真誠地活在這個世界上，那也就代表了我必須只以自己在過往經驗所真切感受到的與在用力且澄澈地思考後所推論出的為自身量度生命的基準，而其餘人云亦云的一切一概不採用（或至少必須先被質疑）。在這樣的前提之下，我必須說相對於前面所提到的內在性靈崇高的永恆之愛，我所體悟到的愛——如果那可以被稱之為愛的話——事實上總是渾沌諧擬、充滿偶然、與個人和現實情境深深掛鉤、且相對而言還挺「外在」的：如同我總覺得所謂人們主體性內含的獨立「自我」與其無窮「創意」（所有從 Brave 到 How to Train Your Dragon 的 Pixar 動畫一再要我們「做自己！做自己！」，就如同整個社會從 Cheer 雜誌到台大教發中心不斷要我們「勇於展現自己！創意創創創產創業創投！」——但在那之前有誰真正認真想過那所謂的「自己」究竟是什麼？）實在是可笑的無稽之談，相似地二十三年以來所有我曾切身擁有的關於「愛情」的短暫片刻與回憶與其說是內在、宿命或永恆的，倒不如說是地理、氣象、打亂次序的幻燈片或日本俳句式的：可能是一起生活過的房間裏冷氣機的狂暴響法、有段時間常一起去吃的燒臘店面街的窗反映出的她的臉、六、七月盛夏的傍晚等公車時混雜廢氣與的清涼微風的空氣、每晚午夜家教完精疲力竭得能再往前只因知道回家就可以見到她時騎過、踅過的那條街 . . . . . . 總之這一幕幕斷裂、過曝的4D幻燈片似乎總是儲存在一「外在」世界特定的地點、天氣、時間、與空氣中粒子的組成方式，而正因為這裡我所謂與經歷過的「愛」是與真實的生活中最平庸而微不足道的美麗緊密地結合在一起的，我們也必須打開肉身的一切感官與毛細去感知和愛：我所謂「愛情是身體的」想講的是這樣的事情。我從中也得到了一個結論：先驗與命定的柏拉圖是愛情並不存在，有的只是偶然這個魔術師在某一特定時空地景棒子一揮所帶向彼此的隨便兩個人——切都不具意義且非理性——但他們仍有機會相愛並從中找到幸福，因為在在那裏所呼吸的空氣其實有一種自由：一切只取決於他們在每天每分每秒的相處中與世界共同創造的幻燈片，所留下的「未來回憶」（正如韓波所說：« L’amour est à reinventer, on le sait. »）。
那麼，講了那麼多，這些與妳究竟有什麼關係呢？首先，我希望用它來部份解釋為什麼在網路這麼發達的年代，我在去了法國之後變突然裊無音訊。如果愛情的確是身體的，那麼我就必須說遠距離戀愛實在是一個很糟的點子：那是我們所能想像與實踐的最柏拉圖的柏拉圖式愛情了罷！究竟兩個身處在不同時空、地景，呼吸著不同的空氣，過著不同生活的人要如何與世界（哪個世界？）共同創造愛情，當時的我實在無法想像，也沒有自信自己可能做到（當然，現在我的想法已經有些不同了，現在至少我肯認遠距離戀愛具有理論上存在的可能性——而這也多虧了 H 和 W：即使時間那樣地錯置，空間如此地遙遠，他們依然讓我看到單單透過每天不懈地 Skype 我們依然有與電腦、攝影機、與彼此的聲音影像劃出一個獨立世界，一個孕育愛的未來回憶的小宇宙的可能性——雖然那宇宙中的物質、能量與暗物質大約與那些我曾在其中漂浮與呼吸過的相距甚遠——不過先讓我暫時打住罷）。讀到這裡，我想你或許還是會疑惑：那麼既然明明知道是這樣，既然早就已經認定所有無法以生活中運動的身體親密創造的遠距離聯繫必然是徒勞的，也因此我不可避免地大約注定將消失，那麼出國前為什麼不好好講清楚呢？或，更進一步來說，為什麼又偏偏硬要在出國前的一、兩個禮拜才來接近妳呢？嗯，首先，真的並不是我自己有意識地選擇這種「打帶跑」戰術，是偶然：要不是在一個極其隨便的讀劇表演認識的朋友邀請我，加之要不是在大一文讀課上讀到Lorrie Moore在 “How” 引用貝克特 Murphy 中的句子（“So all things limp together for the only possible.”）從此開啓我對貝的熱情，我也不可能去看妳演的戲，更不會就突然（令人欣喜地！）與妳重新取得聯繫——這些都是當時的我在人生的旅途上往那唯一的可能踽行的過程中所不可能預想到的。當然，我還是有抵抗的可能——人總是有一定程度的之明，很多事情也可以先講清楚——這大約就是我不是的地方，是妳寫來的信讓我終於明白這點，對此我深感抱歉。如果可能的話，我當然也希望自己可以像日本電影中常出現的（大概會由瑛太、綾野剛或高良健吾飾演）因為過去所受的巨大傷痛（在一次任務的意外殺死了最好的朋友、因為疏忽醒來發現自己的寶寶已沒有呼吸等等）放棄生之慾望而只是活著的草食廢人那樣無傷無礙，可以滿不在乎地輕易就說出：「嘿，我再過不了幾個禮拜就要去法國/當兵了噢，你確定還要跟我這種沒望的人混嗎？你還是走吧，我不要再看到你。」然而我的人生到目前為止實在沒受過什麼太巨大的傷（相反地我甚至還曾確切的擁有過幸福——兩次！——雖然當時的我並無法看清也當然無力珍惜。我想這已經比這個世界上絕大多數的人都還要幸運得多了罷），身體裏與心中也還留有與這個世界產生聯繫，與其他的身體交流、溝通，希望用力地朝天空伸出雙手揮舞、創造的慾望。當初因為這樣（說到底是有些自私）的念頭把妳一定程度地握緊再忽然毫無解釋地放開，因為這樣在妳那邊造成了許多不便與傷害，這些在讀了妳的信之後已經確切地感受到了，在這裏再次向妳說聲抱歉。然而，如果到這裡我還能為自己再做一最後的辯解的話，我想說的只是在我們的身體與言語強烈且直接地相處的那兩個禮拜，我真的也是把身體全部打開了、不預設界限且沒有明天地曾試圖和妳一起創造（而這也是為什麼當你終於決定把它們稱為「虛假」的「一堆爛事」時我的心終究有像被針「唰！」一聲扎入的刺痛的感受）。而正如我先前所述，對我來說除了在這星球上兩副身體在世間真實的交流外，我理解與曾感受的沒有界限，更不需要被定義——切都在運動中，一切都只是創造與創造自身的再創造——相似地，我也從來不曾在所謂朋友與戀人之間劃下任何用來區分創造物與回憶之「品種」的範疇或疆界 ; 極限的定義從來只來自被超越的可能性，而真正存在的事實上也只有極限運動的姿態與創造的強度，如此而已。當然，在某些時刻我們還是可能明確地從身體深處感受到偶然與渾沌所帶來的創造力之耗竭與再運動的不可能性，比如多年前當我們從一起去新光把夢棺上（樹上的爸爸？），一起去浪漫的狀元K書館和 Burger King 直到聖誕夜一起走進挪威的森林時，那就是我曾感受到的，也是我最後不得不回絕「小光」勇敢的善意的原因。造成力的耗竭的可能性很多，也許是妳頭上的玉米鬚還太龐克（開玩笑的！不要生氣！），也或許是我還太年輕且幼稚，看不見超越與創造（如尼采說的：所有的超越必先是超越自己）的可能性。那畢竟需要時間，除此之外也無可奈何。然而在將近十一個月之前，名叫偶然的魔法師又再次變戲法一般把我們從時間的流裏打撈起來，靠岸。不再那麼容易感到疲憊，這次我試著讓自己在河流淘洗的衝撞於身體留下之傷的裂隙如眼一般打開，讓妳的光可以更充分且無礙地直射進來——如現在我努力睜開過於熟稔洞裡無邊黑闇的眼，要看見這過曝世界的夏日時制妳微光閃爍的遠方。我並不知道那將帶領我通往什麼樣的場所，也無法確定這次是否真的做足準備，但無論如何，最終「一切都將朝那唯一的可能踽踽前行」——而最後妳畢竟也做好了決定，我因此只想祝福妳：願你的音樂感動更多人的心，願妳活得幸福而堅定。
Post Scriptum. 因為怎麼總覺得只寄回妳的巴黎小書實在有點太遜，所以我隨書再附上信裏有提到的言叔夏的《白馬走過天亮》，是一本我在睡前讀後開始能夠做夢，具有帶給我們抵抗孤獨力量的一本散文集。且當我讀到裏面的一篇〈Pluto〉 時，腦海中第一個閃過的也是妳（還有村上、《電影情人夢》等等），希望妳也會喜歡。
«Il courut vers elle. Et lorsqu'il reconnut l'homme qui l'avait suivi depuis le camp souterrain, il comprit qu'on ne s'évadait pas du Temps et que cet instant qu'il lui avait été donné de voir enfant, et qui n'avait pas cessé de l'obséder, c'était celui de sa propre mort.»
— Chris Marker, La jetée (1963)
"'I remember, Brod writes, 'a conversation with Kafka which began with present-day Europe and the decline of the human race. 'We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God's head,' Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. 'Oh no,' said Kafka, 'our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his.' 'Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.' He smiled. 'Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope — but not for us.'"
— Walter Benjamin, "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death" in Illuminations (1968)
