Young people are falling cluster-by-cluster, like the knotted hairs which are torn off crudely by the comb. A while ago, I looked into a mirror under the sunlight. I found new little fuzz growing at the root part where the hairs had been torn off. The fuzz stuck up straight in the track by which the hairs were divided, like the sprouting weeds in spring, messy and fluffy, which looked pretty funny when seen by backlighting. It would be wonderful if youth could spring messily and fluffily like the fluffy hair.

After my sight became blurry, I couldn’t recollect any warm afternoons or any words my sweetheart and my friends have said. Only like that, I can’t remember clearly the times in the past, but can only recall little fragmentations. I can’t help thinking of the spring of every year, the moderate breeze, the warm sunlight, the drowsy afternoons and the skirts covering the laps. The warm things from the old crumpled composition exercise book, which can almost be touched, come to my mind. I also laugh at others, whose sleeping saliva flowed out onto the desk, while I always woke up before the class was over. Then, I often used to ride my bicycle and thrill through the crowd in the setting sun. I also think of the film dusk leaves on my sweaty forehead when I get off the bicycle!

The word “thinking” always implicated falling, losing, flowing, and forgetting. I have no courage to look at the mien in my eyes, to seek those times of launching the blades of grass upwards with my blurry sight, or to seek those muddled and tepid things. I don’t know when it was that I began to look into the mirror with dolorous sight? I don’t know when it was that falling has been continuing, and further and further away from the ground. It gets colder and colder. I snuggle up to my sweetheart and think that the reason why we live is because we can bring warmth to others. Therefore, we keep on snuggling up to each other, like two tired squabs with quiet and deep-sleeping eyes which are memorized in each other’s gaze, we’re interlaced discursively. The dolorous and tepid blood is flowing through our bodies.

I can’t forget the smile hidden in the umbrage, which seems to have released everything. I don’t think I am nervous at all, for my cheek is flickering in the sunlight. The wind desiccates the sweat in my palm then I find nothing is left to grasp. At this time, the moon has risen to the gap between the buildings and the rays. The light in dusk is all blue. There is a bit of grease on my nose and glabellas. I wonder whether I fell asleep under the trees just then, for it is dusk now. Why am I unable to remember the things all around? How many times I have slept under the umbrage? All the things around me are changed. I always said I am not nervous, but my flickering cheek is unable to be seen under the ray at the moment. I feel pain when I bite my lower lip. At the same time the sour and salty fluid is oozing from the gap of my teeth, I finally understand I may lose something.

I feel faint to reach these incisive feelers. I am afraid of speaking and afraid of expressing myself. The reason why I am afraid of them is that I am afraid of thinking. Thinking hurt me and makes me feel sick as if I had caught a heavy cold, my head aching severely and I feel dazed. I felt my whole body was falling down. Afterwards I found there is a similar tone with me at some place, I felt hardly able to speak a word for a long time. Then I found a lot of people with a similar tone to me and I felt I couldn’t speak out even more. Moreover, I felt suffocated when so many insignificant and impotent people crowded together. To be happy is to be mediocre, or to be mediocre is to be happy? Not to be in pain is indeed to be in pain and not to be lonely is indeed to be lonely, or we could put these sentences in a reverse sequence, then to be in pain is indeed not to be in pain and to be lonely is indeed not to be lonely. Now when I recall loneliness, I think loneliness is both cold and warm.

Excerpt from Gagarin, Tenth Edition (www.gagarin.be).

Liang Yue is featured in Edition: Small Wonder