夢𥚃花落知多少

夜來又回到那個小島上, 尋常巷陌依舊, 桃花似的人面依舊, 時光倒流, 又回到少年十五, 六那段日子。
一如戰後千萬個離鄉別井的中國人一樣, 父親無可奈何底下放棄家鄉的祖居和田地, 一無所有地南下移居到那小島上, 一個遠離鬧市喧嘩, 只有鄉村人定居有山有水的好地方。那𠒇有炎熱悠長的夏天, 令人懨懨欲睡一下又一下的蟬鳴, 影樹的細細碎碎遮掩不了暴曬下來的大熱太陽, 我是如斯深愛那影樹, 轟轟烈烈的紅花真的像英雄灑血般悲壯, 落下來的小葉子浮滿不遠之處的魚塘, 那個令我一坐就坐上半天的魚塘, 翻兩三篇查拉圖拉如是說, 讀幾行古詩十九首, 而那人一直在我耳邊絮絮不休細說將來, 那時候還以為有用不盡的時光。
那小島盛載有我滿滿的歉意, 因為我堅持離去, 傷透兩個愛我至深的人, 走的那天晴空萬里, 一如過去萬千個日子那種無雨無雲, 南中國海的好天氣, 一樣可以令人意氣低沉, 祖母甚至不肯到碼頭看我離去, 我只有一步一回顧, 看着她背裡淌淚的身影, 啊... 祖母我給你的創痛說要多深就有多深, 祖母一直活在她和祖父那種兩小無嫌猜, 十六為君婦的世紀𥚃, 以她那一套來衡量, 女子一生是願托喬木的絲蘿, 捨棄一個從小相識知深可托終身的人, 離家遠去找尋所謂天際一抹雲彩, 對她來說, 非常難以理解, 不可思議, 但在我要努力爭取時, 她還是人前人後一貫的支持我。
再回去的時候, 祖母已經不在了, 千里孤墳, 教我無處說凄涼, 和那人再見面時, 執子之手不能與子偕老矣, 一時間黯然無語相對, 想到坊間流言說他成功的事業背後有兩段不和諧的婚姻, 又如何開口好言相慰? 要是我不曾離去, 留下來吃着他家裡茶飯, 不求上進, 不事生產, 又豈是當初那個心高氣傲令他眷戀不已的小女孩。
給我再來一次機會, 我仍然會作出同樣選擇, 即使我知道要付出何等代價, 以後的年數𥚃, 常常在深夜夢裏驚醒過來, 想着小島𥚃的蟬鳴, 想着那花開花落的影樹, 想着那魚塘, 想着那小島上零零碎碎的人和事, 想着想着... 久久不能再入睡, 眼睜睜的一夜到天明….
—1991年4月1曰發表在加京華報

Telegraph Road —Dire Straits

 

The Dead —The Dubliners, James Joyce

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

The Photograph —Phoebe Wang

Trees in the black and white faded background

Clinging together in grey clumps like

Gossipy old women apartments

Behind old and dilapidated, erected and dignified against 

the mountains, steep cliffs really 

you can’t really have proper mountains on 

an island but they do their best 

She’s sitting on a park bench 

full of careless youth and high spirits 

long black hair so much like my own 

they say my eyes look like hers but I don’t believe it 

a faint smile is it friendly 

it was taken by a photographer who 

stopped her in street and made her 

pose for him which 

I can understand 

I see it in the way she looks over her 

shoulder at the world 

taking all she can from it

永不能忘

 才不過十一、二歲, 就要孤身上路去探望外祖母, 先是一小時的海上航程, 繼而是半小時顛簸不堪的車程, 第七號巴士路線沿著香港島西區搖搖晃晃的前進, 途中的景物, 成了少年人記憶裡不可磨滅的印象!
上環儘是專營海味雜貨的南北行, 西環是批發蔬菜生果的地方, 西營盤舊式茶樓林立, 薄扶林道多是破落的舊大宅, 大學堂的莊嚴, 瑪麗醫院的恬靜, 牛奶公司農場的草香... 市區漸漸落在背後, 眼前是鬱綠的山, 曠闊的天空和無邊際的大海, 但最深刻的印像是中途的永別亭。
亭子就築在半山的路旁, 不過是最普通的設計, 原是舊時送殯上山的歇脚處, 亭子下望是青翠的叢林, 重重叠叠一直到山腳下, 一堆大石之後便是大海, 晴天時海天藍成一片, 時有小漁船匆匆來往, 偶然還有遠洋而來的大輪船駛過, 景色美極了, 可是這亭子前的對聯是...
永不能忘, 平素音容成隔世
別無複面, 有緣會合卜他生
這两句對聯給于少年人很大的震撼, 生死無常, 陰陽阻隔, 只有今生罷了, 那裡有來世呢, 寫這對聯的人已經不在, 看著這對聯的少年人, 有一天亦會成長老去終歸不在, 山水與亭子年年歲歲依舊, 歲歲年年人郤不同, 還有什麼好執著呢!
巴士天天載著乘客來來往往, 看到這對聯的人有多少會大徹大悟, 啊, 生命原是一個幻覺, 鄭板橋說得好, 名利竟如何, 歲月蹉跎, 幾番風雨幾晴和, 愁風愁雨愁不盡, 總是南柯。

—1999.10.1 加華僑報

How Far?

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. —T. S. Eliot

Joey’s mother depended on her very much. Being the only girl in the family and the oldest with four younger brothers, she took over some of her mother’s housework. Grandmother worked very hard too, unlike some older women who just sat by the door and stared at the passers-by daily. Joey’s father only came home from the city once a month. When he was home he usually slept all day to make up for the long working hours. So the three generations of women were left to take care of everything.

Her grandmother and mother ran a convenience store near an elementary school. They left early in the morning for the store, so the school children could buy food and drinks when they missed their breakfast. When her grandmother and mother were gone for the day, Joey was left in charge. She sent the older boys to school and kept the youngest one within her sight. Her daily workload included cleaning, doing the laundry and helping her brothers with their school work.
She dropped out of school in grade six. Her mother said, "Girls don’t need education. All they need is good fortune. You marry well, then you are guaranteed a lifelong good living." Joey wanted to ask her mother what would happen if the husband deserted you. But she dared not.

Joey loved to read and finished all the books in the village library, although there weren’t too many. Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Kafka etc., she read them all. She didn’t understand some of them, but she read them anyway. Every night her grandmother had to order her to put down the book and go to sleep. Sometimes she went up into the hills or sat on the rocks by the sea, places where she could read in peace. She had no friends, since she spent all her spare time reading.

Not long after her youngest brother entered high school, Joey told her family that she was leaving for North America. Her father thought she was crazy. Her mother was furious. Her grandmother cried, and her brothers begged her not to leave.
She was nineteen. It was a chaotic era; the Vietnam War war, the hippies, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, the assassinations and the Watergate conspiracy.

Thirty years later, Joey is in her office, a heritage building with exposed wood beans and brick walls. Every morning she stands by the window looking up at the sky with a cup of coffee. It is her way to welcome the day. Rain or shine, she never complaints about the weather. She makes her own coffee because she doesn’t like to order people around, and bakes biscotti for everybody in the office. She listens to classical music in the morning and jazz in the afternoon. On her desk, facing her is a photo of her two daughters. The elder girl finished English Literature at UBC and is currently studying for her master's degree at the University of Toronto. The younger girl got a Fine Arts degree from Nova Scotia College of Art and wants to be an artist. Joey’s husband is her business partner. They own an art gallery. Behind her chair are bookcases of books, mostly art and literature. Joey still reads, but these days she prefers poetry.
—Published by Vancouver Public Library 2009

有多遠？

只有那些肯冒險走遠的人, 才有可能知道他們能走多遠。 —T.S. 艾略特

祖兒的母親非常依賴她, 作為家中長女和下有四個弟弟, 她要接手母親一些家務, 祖母也很辛苦, 不像其他的年老婦女, 每天坐在家門前盯著路人來打發日子, 祖兒的父親每月從香港回來一次, 當他在家時, 通常睡上一整天, 補償因在外工作時間長而睡眠不足, 留下家事由三代的婦女來打理。

她母親和祖母在學校附近開了一個小店, 她們清早離家開店, 等錯過家裏早餐的學生可以購買食物和飲料, 當她的祖母和母親離開後, 家中一切由祖兒負責, 她送大弟們上學, 照顧小弟, 她每天的工作包括打掃, 洗衣服和幫助弟弟們做功課。
她在小學六年級輟學, 她母親說, “女孩子不需要教育, 只要好運氣, 如果嫁得好, 保證終身享福”, 祖兒想問她的母親, 如果被丈夫遺棄了又什麼辦? 但她不敢。

祖兒喜歡閱讀, 讀完了村裏唯一圖書館裡的所有書籍, 雖然不太多, 奧斯汀、勃朗特、狄更斯、勞倫斯、喬伊斯、伍爾夫、托爾斯泰、陀斯妥耶夫斯基、巴爾扎克、卡夫卡等, 其中的一些她不明白的, 但她都讀了。每天晚上她的祖母都要提醒她放下書去睡覺。有時候她上山去或坐在海邊岩石上, 能靜靜地讀書。她沒有朋友, 因為她所有的空餘時間都用來讀書。

祖兒從來沒有跟她的母親頂嘴, 她完成了每日的工作, 仍然有時間替其他孩子的補習功課, 為老人家寫信件和設計戲院的海報, 只要能夠賺取多一些額外的錢。生活平靜的過了幾年, 除了她推掉了兩個求婚, 她的母親固然忿怒, 她生氣祖兒的反叛多過擔心女兒的將來。
在祖兒最小的弟弟入了初中後不久, 她告訴家人, 她要離開去北美洲, 她的父親以為她瘋了, 她的母親大發雷霆, 她的祖母哭了, 她的弟弟求她不要走。她時年十九歲, 那是一個混亂的時代, 越南戰爭、嬉皮士、胡士托音樂節、馬丁路德京黑人民權運動、肯尼迪暗殺陰謀和水門事件。

三十年後, 祖兒在她的辦公室, 一座混合磚牆與粗木的建築物。每天早晨, 她總是拿著一杯咖啡站在窗前仰望天空。這是她的方式來迎接一天。晴天雨天也好, 她從來不抱怨天氣。她自己動手做咖啡, 不喜歡指使他人, 喜歡烘意大利小餅給予其他同事。她上午聽古典音樂, 下午聽爵士樂。在她的辦公桌上, 面對她的是兩個女兒的照片。大女兒在英屬哥倫比亞大學讀完英國文學, 現在在多倫多大學讀碩士學位。小女兒得到新蘇格蘭省藝術學院美術學位, 希望成為一個藝術家。祖兒的丈夫是她的生意合作夥伴, 他們開了一個藝術畫廊, 她椅子背後是書櫃, 大多是關於藝術和文學書籍, 祖兒仍然愛讀書, 但近年來, 她喜歡讀詩...

—譯自作者温哥華公共圖書館英語寫作得獎 2009年

Elegy Written in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park —Robert Melançon

The park's trees are still green, but fall advances

pushing night ahead of it. You see it

in the faces of people still surprised

to see evening gnaw away at the afternoon.

By six o'clock—no, earlier, and earlier still,

daylight flies off over the rooftops. You say

almost in silence to yourself: "Soon,

we'll be plunged into icy gloom, Adieu,"

and the rest you know by heart. These words

twirl around the alexandrine the way

a tendril climbs a post. They come

in clusters—three, six syllables—blossom

in the rhyme's bouquet of phonemes.

Even if we could, we wouldn't dare

write today in this language of the gods.

The gods have fled into

the foliage overhead, while you

halt in the field, in the middle

of a patch of shadow, stuck there

like a boundary stone, gaping,

struck by the stupor of the elegy. Soon

We'll be treading through wet leaves,

pushing what's left of summer with a boot

in the immense twilight where we'll come to feel

that life is but a matter of a day,

that all things born must perish,

that tasks are all in vain,

that one knows nothing, has nothing, is nothing.

What am I doing in this park,

trotting out these hackneyed tropes?

Fall, evening, the end of all of it....

It's getting late, rain is on the way.

I'll catch cold if I don't go back home. 

For the new year...

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. 
Sum, ergo cogito, cogito, ergo sum. —Nietzsche

Nothing Else Matters

It's quite melancholy inducing when you finally connect the dots and realize that your whole existence and all your struggles and joys are ultimately a pointless exercise, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing, as a wise man once observed, realization usually comes around middle age, the mid-life crisis I suppose, this realization that none of it matters... really, that no one cares, that there is no guy in the sky that's going to make it all alright, that you can drop dead right now or not and the Universe couldn't give a damn either way.

The Italians are dangerously good at starters. Arguably the best in the world. French starters come one after another, in a wearying procession. Spanish tapas are robust and delicious, but lack flights of fancy. Chinese dim sum are endlessly inventive, but too doughy to be eaten regularly.

Stranger on the Shore

There's a dream that always comes to me because my home was once an island. So whenever I had to go into the city, of course I had to catch the ferry. In this dream I'm racing to the ferry dock just as the small steamer sounds its whistle and pulls away in a cloud of smoke. What could my subconscious be trying to tell me? What might a psychological analysis, in the vein of Freud or Jung, reveal? Perhaps I had no sense of security and feared missing everything. Yet what could I have possibly missed? There would be another ferry, and another, and besides, why was I in such a hurry? Where was I going?

The dream is so vivid, as vivid as watching a movie shrunken down, with the corner of the screen crushed into the sea by the immensity of the sky and mountains. In the background, the sky and waves dissolve together, and in the foreground is the empty dock, the ferry puttering off, its path aslant on the waves until it grows fainter and fainter. I see my own figure still standing on that dock, not a soul for miles, only a girl and her skinny shadow. Just as in a film, I hear the strains of Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore" in the background, the words welling up within me: "Here I stand / Watching the tide go out / So all alone and blue / Just dreaming dreams of you." 

I was a solitary child. After school, I tucked myself away in some corner of the schoolyard, under the spreading branches of the shadow tree and the buzzing cicadas, to plunge into War and Peace, Les Misérables, Outlaws of the Marsh, or The Journey to the West, so lost in the story that I didn't feel the day fly past until my grandmother called me for dinner. I came back out of the story, where the day had felt so long. Because of my reading, I found everyone's chatter more idiotic, the island more narrow-minded, and I couldn't wait to grow up, to escape and see the world beyond the island with the eyes of an eagle.

On the island, dozens of girls my own age shared the same fates. All of them couldn't wait to grow up and marry and have children, then to stay home with the little ones and the housework, taking on some piecework to bring in something extra, playing mah-jong in the spare hours and going to mass. It's a life that is over before it's begun. I told myself, I don't want that kind of life. That will not be my future. One day I will leave to find it. I'm still young, with things to do and places to go.

Now, all I've ever desired, I have. All the cities I wanted to see, I've seen. I've settled in a small North American city doing the work I was meant to do. My free hours are filled with reading, painting, writing, listening to music, watching movies, doing yoga, travelling, living out the dream life of my childhood I should appreciate it, and yet...

The last time I returned to the island, that dock was no longer used. On the other end of the island, there's a new terminal, where you can wait inside, out of the sun and the rain. But there's no longer the view of mountainous islands or the feel of the soft sea breezes. I mingle among the waiting crowd, but there's not a single face I recognize. In fact, I find I have returned to the same position I was in before. It feels as though I've never left, and yet I can't name anyone here. In this island where I born, I'm now the stranger... a mere passerby. 

—Brick Magazine, winter 2019

岸上的陌生人

老是做一個奇怪的夢, 因爲故居在一個島上, 到市區去自然要乘船, 夢裡總是氣呼呼的趕至碼頭時, 小輪船剛好拉過汽笛, 吐着濃煙冉冉離去, 這個夢潛意識裡代表些什麼？佛洛伊德和容格的信徒們又會作怎樣的心理分析, 準是没有安全感之故, 都怕錯過了, 其實又錯過些什麼? 渡輪每小時一班, 去了還有下一班, 又趕着去那兒呢？

而夢境又那樣清晰, 像看電影一幕凝止了的鏡頭, 畫面上一角由高漸低沉入海的山, 背後有溶在一起難分彼此的山和水, 前景是凌空架在水上的碼頭, 小輪船漸行漸遠, 一個女子猶自佇立在碼頭上, 四裡無人, 只有她和她瘦長的身影...

還有背景音樂呢? 是比利渥爾用西蕭吹奏的岸上的陌生人...

我在這兒站着, 看着潮水漸退, 是如此孤寂和落寞...

自小就是個孤寂的孩子, 最愛躲在院子一角裡看書, 在婆娑摇曳的影樹下, 蟬鳴聲裡看完戰争與和平、悲慘世界、水滸傳、西遊記，沉迷在書中的故事裡, 也不知時日快過, 直至祖母喊叫吃晚飯, 才迷迷糊糊的從情節裡走出來, 啊, 書中日月長…

因爲看書原故, 愈發覺得衆人言語無味, 島居侷促狹窄, 恨不得快高長大, 遠走高飛, 用鷹的眼光來觀看小島以外的世界。

小島上, 一般年紀的女孩子有好幾十個, 將來的命運也都差不多, 都是等不及長大就結婚生子, 然後就留在家裡帶孩子做家務, 做些手作幫補家用, 閒時打麻雀說是非, 生命還未開始就完結了。我對自已說我才不要這種生活, 我的將來也不僅只如此, 有一天我將會離去, 找尋我理想的生活, 我還年輕, 還有這麽多事要學要做, 還有很多地方要去!

現在要找的東西都找到了, 要去的地方都去遍了, 在北美洲一個小城安頓下來, 做我喜愛的工作, 閒時讀書、繪畫、寫作、聽音樂、看電影、去旅遊, 過着我童年夢想那種生活, 我應該感到滿足才是, 然而, 總是覺得缺少了什麽...

最後一次回到故居去, 碼頭早已被棄置不用久矣, 在島的另一端屹立一個新的建築物, 在裡頭等船, 再也不用受到日曬雨淋, 然而也再看不到山光水色, 感覺不到海風徐徐送來。混雜在等船的人群裡, 没有一張是熟悉的面孔。

經過了這麽多年, 以爲自己已經很堅强, 以為自己已經忘了很多人很多事, 事實上, 在島上我發現自己回到以前一樣, 好像從來没有離開過, 只是環顧四周, 我已認不出任何人, 對這個我生長於斯的地方而言, 我只是一個陌生人, 一個過客... 

—1995年2月1日發表在加京華報

L'età barbarica-L'age des ténèbres-Regia Denys Arcand

 I want this song. Full version. By Rufus Wainwright.

2019-6-16

Are loving China and the Chinese Communist Party the same thing? Chinese Communist Party authorities are insisting that loving the party is a precursor to loving the country. No, it’s called Nationalism. I love China, but I don’t love the party. It’s that simple.

Let's read some truth.

https://haikuang.org/category/海光專欄/

Five Easy Pieces

There is purity in simple living. To indulge in the small ecstasies, the small pleasures. Coffee, croissant, books, t-shirt, black pants, slippers, sunshine, daisy, white wine… It is all malleable, atmospherically — our lives. You create your paradise out of all these simple luxuries, and that’s purely religious. True divinity wades in the warm oceans of bliss.

In The Mood For Love — Shigeru Umebayashi

In the Mood for Love —directed by Wong Kar-wai, 2000.

He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct…—Liu Yichang 

花樣年華 —王家衛 2000.

他想起了消逝了的歲月。那些消逝了的歲月, 彷彿隔着一塊積着灰塵的玻璃, 看得到, 抓不着。看到的種種, 也是模模糊糊的... —劉以鬯《對倒》

—Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, July 17, 1958. He is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer.

—劉以鬯 Liu Yichang, December 7, 1918 — June 8, 2018. He was a Shanghai-born and Hong Kong-based writer, editor and publisher.

—Shigeru Umebayashi 梅林茂, February 19, 1951. He is a Japanese composer. 

 

The Power To Think

These photos were taken by American Journalist Harrison Forman after the WWII in Hong Kong. 

“Father, if I learn to do needlework… someday I can make kimonos. But what good will book learning ever do me?”

"But you know… book learning gives you the power to think. However the world might change, if you have the power to think… you’ll always survive somehow." —The Twilight Samurai