fartzy.com, blog of Kohn Liu

I retrace my journey, back to the days when I wrote like a teen.  Like someone who had all the heart to speak … with unpolished candidness, daring, but naive.  And now, I speak a little better, but the flames have been blown off one after another.  It is indeed now a little dimmer, but a new beginning yet still.

I marked this day on my virtual calendar.  As I steered away from FaceBook.  For some time, I used that outlet to express, obviously, with the intrinsic desire to be read and understood.  But I suppose with age, the desire to be read and understood wanes and while I still want to be read and understood, let those who actually stumble upon here get a little taste then.

I am translating my mother’s painting teacher’s autobiography from Chinese to English, and I wish that one day, someone actually cares about what I truly had to say, what I have said.

When Yoshimi went up, she could see the Tokyo skyline in the far distance. And when she came down, she saw her bare feet dangling in air, above the cement floor. She usually stayed on the swing for about twenty minutes before taking a short cigarette break by the tree. The tree was in fact more like a tall, dead tree trunk than an actual living organism. Someone had cut off all of its branches, and with its roots buried deep in cement, it had nothing left except a few leaves still attached. Surprisingly though, they seemed green and healthy, so in her eyes the tree was still alive.

The tree was the swing’s only companion, and they both situated on the far side of the rooftop, behind a medium-sized water tower. And she was probably their only visitor in the entire building. There weren’t that many households in this old, run-down apartment to begin with - two old couples who seemed to have lived here all their lives and four low-income families. She never really spoke to any one of them, after all, she’d been here for less than a month.

Yoshimi stayed in a budget hotel called Toyoko-Inn in the Chiba prefecture for about two weeks after leaving Peter before finally stumbled upon a for-rent flier on a light post one day. The handwritten flier had read, “Clean studio for rent, 50,000 Yen per month, utilities included. With kitchen, shower, and a rooftop swing.” A swing on the rooftop… she murmured there and then, lost for a moment in her imagination. The prospect of relaxing on a swing on top of a building, or any elevated structure, had intrigued her and the advertised rent was even more attractive. Three days later she’d become a tenant at will with the flier and keys in one hand, and her belongings in the other. Although she was now almost two hours away from downtown Tokyo, she soon adapted to her quiet new life away from everything she knew. Peter was in another world from which she had abruptly detached and her family would probably have to truly abandon the idea of ever finding her. She needed time alone and she was actually doing better on her own. In the few weeks that she’d left, her career turned for the better. Her editor had appointed her to write small English articles on New York City’s street fashion, and she was landing supporting roles in small independent film productions. Yoshimi was now busier with life and had less time to think about what really happened in those past two years, and what had changed Peter.

It was only when she sat on the swing every now and then, gently pushing against the floor with her feet, rising high and low, could she sometimes let her mind run free and concentrate on him. She loved him. But she didn’t want to be reminded of such emotion anymore. The night when she stood by the door waiting for him to say something, hoping that he would stand up from the sofa and grab her by the arms, she was instead confronted with a distant, somewhat confused look. He seemed to not know what he had done wrong. Worse, he did not apologize nor even utter a word of explanation. He sat there staring back lethargically, as if the battle was already won and he didn’t even enjoy its victory. It was as though the hard fact was something she had to swallow in its entirety, without doubts, without questions, without even a comment. His almost coarse, apathetic inaction revealed a latent, heartbreaking indifference that one must run away from. There was no room for negotiation, only an absolute acceptance of her defeat was allowed, with a repercussion she had yet to fully comprehend.

She could never understand how a person could become so cold in an instant. The man she had lived with for the past two years was more cruel than any stranger she had ever met. Days leading up to that fateful night were completely ordinary, at least for her. They went about their daily routines, cooked together at night, conversed about their day, made love like normal young couples. Everything seemed ordinary, just like how she had enjoyed. But perhaps Peter was indeed an outstanding liar, concealing his emotions and the secrets of his affair without a trace. By then he had supposedly met the girl numerous times during the day, perhaps sometimes on the nights when her model shoots ran late. She could not begin to imagine what they had done together. It was simply impossible for a man like Peter to just “walk around the city” with another stranger girl for hours on end. Moreover, his unwillingness to even elaborate had already proven him guilty, and he was OK with the charge.

So that was why she left him. The door was already opened and he made no attempt to stop her. It was a matter of closing it behind her, leaving behind perhaps her most precious time of her life. The move was bold and selfless. She let the man she loved to pursue what he wanted. She didn’t know what it was, but she’d chosen not to make it her business. And suprisingly she had not regretted since. She was comfortable and content, for the time being. But whenever she went up towards the sky above Tokyo, she was reminded of him. There were no happy thoughts, or tears falling from her cheeks, just the mere idea of “him” - that he existed, somewhere just two hours west, below that sky they still shared. As her mind rocked back and forth along with the swing, perhaps, she was becoming a little more indifferent, too.

Music was his soul. And his soul was his food. He slouched now more than ever on his sofa listening to nothing but music. Everything around him would have been turned off. The lights, his fridge, his cellphone, anything that could remotely produce an intrusive hum, a careless beep, was shut down, unplugged - except for that vacuum tube amp he had built a long time ago, and an Accuphase CD transport that’d always spinned his lonely collections on repeat. In pitch darkness he sat there with a symphony of meshed audio frequencies and himself. It took hours, sometimes even days, before he ever noticed the passing of time, and actually realized he was alive and breathing. Music was truly his soul on which, interestingly enough, he survived. He consumed music, but not through his ears. It actually involved his mouth slowly inhaling a faint, white mist that had layered all over his body, until this substance was absorbed to fill his lungs and stomach. To him this was also a process of how he consumed himself, devouring his very own essence, his “soul.” And it tasted (that is, if he ever had to identify such peculiar sensory quality - the taste of soul) somewhat like sugar-free orange Jell-O. Upon entering his body, this gelatin fluid usually began to dissolve in his throat and release, thereafter, a kind of sweetening, calming effect that gradually dissipated over time. The feeling was warm and kind. It sedated him. Sometimes it could alleviate his troubled mind, taking him away from his head and away from the memories embedded within. Most of the time, though, he would fall asleep unknowingly on the sofa, only to open his eyes at the wake of the morning hour, and find himself, cried. Regardless, however, listening to his music had kept him mentally sane and physically alive.

He had sold his beloved Steinway after his wife left him. That day on, he was never to produce music, and for that reason, he had lost the ability to revive and redeem himself. But that beautiful piano paid for 10 months of mortgage and added 24 artists into his music library. The stock market was booming, but his portfolio was crashing. He could no longer focus and was therefore making the wrong bets, and had to sell his expensive personal belongings just to feed his empty stomach. Indeed, ever since the love of his life had abandoned him, working to earn a living became pointless. He gave up and resorted to enrich his being, or what was left of it, with nothing, but music.

He was an amateur pianist, having played classical and jazz piano for over 35 years. And throughout the years, he had acquired musical works from more than 80,000 artists. There were perhaps around two hundred thousand pieces of vintage vinyl, tapes, and CD’s scattered throughout his apartment. He used to keep a precise, alphabetized list of his collection, but had lost track somewhere around hundred fifty thousand. The number was increasing at an arbitrary rate, and in this super music archive, the addition of each new work became so trivial, it didn’t even matter anymore. And he became so obsessed after his wife left, he was buying all kinds of media but only to leave them lying around unopened, untouched.

He wasn’t sure what happened, of how his hobby became a full-time obsession. He never investigated, nor took a single moment to stop his shaky hands from taking his overcharged credit card out from the wallet to buy something that had become a complete useless necessity. Something had to occupy his mind and perhaps that was a solution he subconsciously devised. Looking back, two years five months and twenty-three days ago, his love, his need to express, the passion to embrace, were altogether striped from his body, packed into her suitcases, and left in the dark inside that cab’s trunk, forever. Who was he to love again. Years of living together with her had left him empty. They did not have kids, nor pets, and anything that represented meaning or substance was now only retrievable from his music collection. They both loved Chopin, particularly the Nocturnes - charming short piano studies that were emotional, with a slight trace of melancholy, tastefully tactical but never superfluous or overpowering. The raining days were the time when they would sit on the sofa, where he would put his hands around her shoulder, listening to their favorite piece - Nocturne Opus 9 No 2 in F Major. Then they would take turns to play on his Steinway, attempting to reenact the impossible. It was love, he’d always thought.

So money and things lost their value because all he wanted was to be again. But he knew he couldn’t. Like those clean, fleeting piano notes that echoed and disappeared from years ago in his apartment, the reality of who he was had vanished too. If music, or indeed, their music, was truly something he could taste, like his soul, he would have recorded it. He would have somehow materialized the experience into some kind of physical form, into words, and kept it. But she left. So he sold his piano. Gone were the memories of Chopin’s Nocturnes that they loved and shared. But there was hope, and he continued to buy, to collect something that could perhaps one day somehow replicate what they had.

Out of all the music he’d ever acquired, though, he probably only listened to one thousandth of them now. Tonight he inserted Chopin’s Etudes into the CD player. It would be a night of literal, disciplined piano mastery, filled with passion but without the compassion he was looking for. It would be a study, a emotionless chew and regurgitation of what was left of him. It would satisfy him, though, he didn’t need much anymore. Like a small dose of morphine injected, a slight puff of opium inhaled, it would keep him alive through the night; until the wake of dawn when he found himself half awake, and soaked with Chopin’s tears. That’s when a new day would begin.

五光十色下的惶恐
又,一次

一個傾城
半個步伐
兩個殘缺
無數的夢

像昨夜日記裡的某個章節
我的故事
在你無心遺落的篇幅中

耳邊回蕩的風
你的言語

沉落