I want to go to Venice. The city is sinking, and there is something almost despairing in its character—tender and sad at the same time. Take me there. Come with me. Let us go together. We can eat ice cream cones beside the Bridge of Sighs and then hold each other hard, pretending it is all very romantic.
Loving a city, missing certain things, carrying a private fixation—it works the same way. If you keep at it, you can get through each day. Even if it is only pretending. Even that is romantic.
I still catch myself counting the time. Today is the fifteenth day. Time is quick, really. Making a decision, changing a fact—these things often happen in a single instant. How long is an instant? 0.36 seconds. When everything is expressed in numbers, the brevity is startling.
I watched Fallen Angels, a dark piece in Wong Kar-wai's style. I enjoyed it. It felt almost like a comedy. 1818 is a song on the jukebox. There are things he doesn't want to tell her directly, so he leaves only this song. A suffocating song. Apart from it, he leaves her nothing. She has nothing. Everyone has a past; even a killer has primary-school classmates. What a loaded line. It made me realize that aphorisms are among the most boring and useless things around. No matter how clear or brilliant, they can't fill your stomach or win back love.
Is persistence a virtue or a flaw? The great advantage of youth is that you can deceive yourself.
Playing with feelings must be a pleasure—watching someone cry and laugh for you. And the other person is probably enjoying the crying and laughing too. At least later there will be something to remember.
There is a world you can see but cannot touch, separated by an invisible sheet of glass. You can't get in, and it can't hear you. You can only stand aside and watch people inside act out their joys, sorrows, partings, reunions, laughter, and anger. No one said you had to watch. This isn't the only world. It is a play; if you are in the audience, don't get too deep into the scene.
Leave. Look for another sky and another ground. We both know, really, that no one is truly unable to leave anyone. Wounds will smooth over. In this life or another, who would promise never to love anyone else? In fact, I have never been able to believe in feelings. When other people tell me their stories, they sound good—only the ending is bleak. Promises are light. Once spoken, they scatter and leave no trace.
Again and again I dream in an empty white room. I watch someone leave my side, again and again. Then I wake with a start and remember my childhood. I am running. I once laughed with such purity. But none of it feels real anymore. Things that are purely natural can finally be seen only in dreams.
So what if nothing has changed for so many years? It is all a past that cannot be returned to.
Thinking every day about whether to love or not is truly boring. It is time to tear off the label of sensibility and do something else.
The warming city is a pleasure.
On the eve of spring, she sits by the sea. She hears the story buried last winter. Once again, she blooms with the face of spring.