26. Extremes

I miss you all - happy nevertheless that you’re not here, in the smog.

A strange urban feel these past few days. Lots of security checks, roadblocks, traffic rerouted, clogged streets on my way to work.

Outdoor markets have disappeared, and so have the beggars, migrant workers, street vendors. They have been replaced by thousands of men and women in various security uniforms. And by millions of flowerpots.

I miss your voices.

NASA scientists said today, following rumors about Phoenix Lander (on a mission to investigate the habitability of Mars), that indeed it had found evidence of water, but that no trace of organic molecules had been discovered on the red planet. Fantasies about Martian-life received a major blow.

It is your voices that I miss.

Theories about alien microbes can wait. Derision is patient.

It’s your voices I would have liked to hear today. Voices growing on splendid comets traveling between worlds.

It’s getting late. I’ll now return to the flowerpots.

They should still be there, cordoning the avenues all the way to my place. Stagnant petals. Polite. A bit blurred by the hot haze. Not too organic-looking. Extreme life forms for extreme conditions. So thinks your laolao, the city’s new self-appointed thermal analyzer, studying our ability - us, the millions of microorganisms - to survive surreal times and an intriguing terrain.

See you soon.

Laolao

25. Solar eclipse

On August first, there was a total solar eclipse. The moon's shadow fell on parts of Canada, Greenland, Russia, Mongolia, and China.

Here it is then, my very own personal route, from an initial country to the destination one. Always on a narrow path of totality, where I walk in the dark, seeing at its best the vastness of the solar system.

It is only during such times, marked by full obscurity, that we can perceive the sun’s corona. A halo of bright lights, like majestic strings or feathers, particles running along the fine lines of magnetic fields, undulating, the rays curling against pitch-dark space.

It is only during such times, marked by full obscurity, that we can perceive our essence’s aureole. A ring of bright filaments, like majestic outward motions or weightless wings, the grain of our spirit running along the fine wrinkles of corporeal regions, undulating, the beams from our soul curling against the sadness of our surrounding area.

Towards the end of her life, my mother was very sick: A slow, gradual deterioration of her central nervous system, the Shy-Drager syndrome.

Three times during her illness, she told me she could see lights shining around my body. It scared her.

Fluctuating blood pressure, autonomic dysfunction, vision disturbances, all well-identified symptoms linked to her condition, can well account for her hallucination. Nevertheless, I thought of all the possible sensory mirages she could have had, and that one was quite proper. It pleased me.

Taking care of her was an ordeal. She would constantly complain, never satisfied with anything I did. For years, she criticized the food I cooked for her, the way I cleaned, my conversation, my time availability - caught as I was between the needs of my children, of my job and those of a mother stuck in full dependency.

So, on a few occasions, she did see me twinkle. Good.

And she felt afraid when I illuminated the room, bending her sense of scale, glistening despite our mutual despondence. That’s good too.

These three, four years were so heavy, so murky, no wonder perception was enhanced. Suddenly, for the first time ever, I may have simply become visible to her naked eye - her despair moving in to block that indomitable strength of hers.

She saw me.

Finally.

My center occulted, void, but its contour brightly painted, vivid white chalk spread outward onto an infinite blackboard, spelling the sign of an apparition.

My figure cut against the imperious opacity that always accompanied her.

She probably thought that a terrifying splendor emanated from where I stood, something luminous and out of reach, a fluorescence that couldn’t be canceled.

She had, indeed and at last, detected me for a few minutes - not much longer than the time-span of an eclipse - discerning my crown made of impalpable flashes stretched in the margins where I had learned to exist.

Basically, she saw I wasn’t her. And that meteoric awareness startled her like a blast. Because she had no eclipse-viewing shades, no solar filters – the view fried her composure.

My brightness, even though delusive, emphasized her profound life-long suffering. The one she felt in her heart, the one she covered others with, the dark blanket of anguish she would use to envelop the world. The mechanics, the travail of her sense of drama conclusively packing all arguments into a tremendous shadow that did acknowledge my presence, casting its tight mass right through a radiating arc, a crescent, a brilliant anti-sun.

The orbital geometries of our relationship had fallen into place.

She saw that life after all had punched a hole into that night sky.

From where I was born to where you were born. On August first this year, you and I, my lovely ones, we were together, in a country where the penumbra became complete, allowing a ring of diamonds to rise. And we approach this spectacular event as a way to live. Despite darkness, obscurantism. Trough all the shadowy deficiencies that may be. We no longer mind. Because that’s when we show best the luster of our secrets.

Laolao

24. Feng Shui

How happy I am. On your way to Paris, you have stopped for two days in Beijing. And here you are, staying at my place while your parents are out.

You told me this evening that the living room’s Feng Shui was quite fine. That’s where you and I sleep, on the sofa.

But the Feng Shui in the bedroom where your little brother was asleep (and later on your mom and dad) wasn't as good, did you say.

You held my hand and walked me to the door, and begged me to go in and check for monsters. Of course, I did.

Didi was fine, and we didn’t find any hidden beasts.

Since you’re only three years old, I was surprised to hear you speak of this Chinese practice and asked you, in French, what you meant.

You looked at me with exasperated eyes and explained, as if I was a bit dumb, that feng is for wind while shui is for water.

I know that!

Then, you said that when the Feng Shui is not good, monsters can enter the house.

I know that too!

That’s why, every Spring Festival, I buy drawings made of paper-cuts and paste them around my bed, facing the door, at the right angle from the window. These guardians of the house will keep evil spirits out. Didn’t you think your laolao knew this?

But where, by the way, did you learn about Feng Shui? Not from your parents, I gather. Must be at the Chinese kindergarten. Or playing with the kids on your street.

I take it very seriously that a child your age worries about the flow of qi, although it’s the perfect time to do so. By age four or five, you’ll probably get over it.

Now tell me, is that why you take such great care in positioning your toys on the floor? Making parallel, serpentine lines of dolls and plastic cars as if building a path.

Are these energy trigrams, the casseroles you’ve laid out on the balcony?

And that circular pattern made of multi-colored beads on the coffee table, is it to ensure harmony?

You’ve turned my small mirror in the bathroom upside down. It was probably disrupting spheres of influence. Or the balance within our environment. Or the cycle of some elements.

Even your food on your plate has to be organized in a special way.

Yes, you’re very particular about the orientation of objects in your space. I saw the picture your mother took of the toys you arranged so carefully on the steps leading to your living room in Xi’an. Was there a correlation with your thoughts?

I do hear the way your father treats you. It breaks my heart, honey.

Know that I love you,
Laolao

23. Fingerprints

Fingerprints started to be officially used as a way of identifying people exactly 150 years ago today. I have often meditated on what people have in common and what is unique to each of them.

Towards the end of the 50s, my mother had already started her long quest that would lead decades later to her deep involvement in alternative medicines, new age practices, cults, and concerns over invasions by extraterrestrials.

The beginning of that long journey was with vegetarianism, and it often translated itself by the insertion of yogurt into the lunchbox I brought to school. Yogurt, in those days, wasn’t sold in supermarkets. No one in the suburb where we lived had ever heard about it.

I’m in primary school and in the large cafeteria where we all eat, I must put the warm liquefied yogurt on the table that I share with the other children from my group.

Rotten milk, vomit were among the names that flew around me as I tried to eat. The children would even cross the entire room to come and see how disgusting my lunch was, calling more classmates over to make sure I would really feel uncomfortable. And hate my mother even more for doing this to me.

That’s the moment when I knew I had a selfhood, a oneness that distinguished me completely from others.

After lunch, we all went outside to play in the schoolyard. The kids had skipping ropes and they would do elaborate tricks, jumping as two long colored ropes drew circles in the air without ever touching.

I had never seen a skipping rope before attending school. It was a sort of magical game that everyone knew about, except me. Again, it confirmed my sense of uniqueness.

I didn’t know where they had learned these tricks. Where was I when it had happened? When the instructions on how to jump had been given - the rope under the feet, then over the head, turning so fast?

I remember, little one. I was sick, at Ste-Justine’s Hospital for children. In a room with another girl, Helene.

Helene, who had suffered from polio at a young age, had her entire body in a long silver cylinder, an artificial lung. Only her head could be seen, her hair and face sticking out, turned towards me as we made conversation.

She was much older than I was, how old? She must have been 11 or 12. She couldn’t recall a time when she hadn't been in that metallic tube.

She would ask me to peek at the window and describe to her what I saw. Were there trees? What did they look like? And cars? How big were they? Did they go fast? What was their color? And the people inside, how many? Could I see how they were dressed?

I think I was 4 or 5, it isn’t clear in my mind. I lived with Helene everyday - for weeks or months, I can’t remember.

Helene was my friend. Never upset. Always soft spoken. Very talkative. She never even seemed to realize I couldn't understand everything she said.

I felt an extreme responsibility towards her. A descriptive one because it was my job to narrate; my duty to render the world as concretely as possible so she could picture it in that head of hers, the only part of her body visible and able to move.

I felt so frustrated not to have all the needed words to properly talk of the sky, the clouds, the plants. I knew I was limited, incompetent, that I lacked the vocabulary Helene would have deserved.

I would speak slowly, trying to notice details, searching in my mind for the names I could give to the things I saw.

It was terribly difficult, my sweet one. I wasn’t sufficiently prepared. I felt ashamed. But I did try, with scarce mental resources, to comply with her wishes. You see, I couldn’t use comparisons. Helene had no points of reference besides the steel apparatus that surrounded her.

I had to be careful how I would describe. The wrong expression and Helene’s desire to know more would quickly skid in all directions while she tried to shape coherent images in her mind. And I would find myself unable to follow her in the mysterious ways she used to build her impressions of the world.

Oh, sweet one, it was so complicated.

Helene had only me. Neither of us had visitors. Her, because she had been in the hospital for so long, people had forgotten her. Me, because my family lived out of town.

I had purpura, a blood disease, hemorrhagic, always in danger of endless internal bleeding if I fell or hit myself (explaining why I had never been offered a skipping rope, I guess).

Putting me next to Helene who couldn’t go anywhere, nurses and doctors had made sure I wouldn’t have any accidents or be tempted to run, play, climb with others.

So here we were, Helene and me, day after day, constructing deficient verbal portraits of the streets, landscape, events. Me, suffering from my inability to be limpid, precise, logical, organized in my depictions. Helen, avid of constantly more accurate descriptions. I was terribly aware of my shortcomings. Profoundly frustrated. Damned, I didn’t even know how to read. And I loved Helene so.

One morning, little one, the sound of a mop being hit against furniture woke me up. It was very early, hardly any light around. There was an old man in the room, pushing a gray bucket, spreading soapy water on the floor, cleaning… where Helen’s artificial lung should have been.

She was gone, baby. Totally gone.

I only remember the fear, overwhelming, that took me from head to toe, emptying in its trajectory my entire bowels. I sank so fast, deep into the earth’s dark entrails. It was horrible.

Maybe to help me recover, maybe to keep me company, I was given a large doll. She was as tall as I was. I mean we were truly the exact same size. But where I was angular and skinny, the doll was plump. Her hair was golden, shiny and long; mine was black, short and uncombed. My eyes were brown, hers were blue. I named her, of course, Helene.

The doll shared my bed. I would practice all day long trying to look like her (since I still wasn’t allowed to play outside the room). The first thing to do was to be immobile, parallel to her. I had it to perfection.

As a matter of fact, whenever the doctors made their rounds and came to examine me, they would get it wrong and put their stethoscope on the doll. I thought I was so funny, giggling, hidden under my blankets while they thought Helene was the patient.

When the time came, one day, for my parents to take me back home, where I would still have to remain in bed for months, I asked them not to forget to take Helene with us.

I yelled. I yelled and I yelled, out of my mind, when I realized they hadn’t done so.

My mother, impatient with my hysterical fit, shouted back that there was no doll. She lied, sweetheart. Oh, she lied. I still know it today, old like I am, with all I’ve seen on this planet. That my mother lied. And I immediately planted a large sharp symbolic stick into my heart to make it hurt forever, to never forget my rage.

You may think this is a childish story about a lost toy. About a capricious daughter going nuts on account of a puerile fantasy. Maybe it is. I don’t know how to reply.

To summarize, I ended up starting school late, ignorant about rope skipping, equipped with strange looking nutrients in my lunchbox. Altogether, it’s not such a tragedy.

But neither of the two Helenes of my life had had per se fingerprints. Looking back, that’s where the problem may have been: There’s no way I can formally have either of them identified.

Ciao, Laolao

22. Perpetual Last Lecture

Randy Pausch, who taught computer science at Carnegie Mellon, died yesterday.

To date, more than 3 million people have watched his video on YouTube "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."

He dedicated it to his children.

I watched it thinking of you, my little ones. Pausch was an accomplished professor, a creator, an excellent speaker. He spent his professional life studying how humans interact with computers. He was interested in virtual reality, initiating projects that will survive him. His legacy can be said impressive.

What I’m leaving you with is definitely different. Should I be sorry? I have none of Pausch’s achievements or fame, but I share with him a desire to voice. His was about how to succeed. Mine is about how not to fail.

Pausch had real pride in his itinerary. It was an exceptional one, I’ll admit. Mine for sure is devious, made of a record-breaking amount of mistakes. I truly wish it could be otherwise. We’ll have to make-do with what we have.

But you might be surprised: Your Laolao, like Pausch, is also interested in how we interact with computers.

To study the phenomenon, I do not use science, programming languages, gadgets, hardware, cables. I use my memory and its holes, and travel back in time. Through these interstices, as an example, I can revisit my grand-mother when she would tell me to go outside, early in the morning, to help my grand-father bring into the house logs for the woodstove. The first fascinating ‘machine’ I came across. A brilliant one, filled with fire. So dynamic, in constant motion, with a magnificent scent, that of a burning intensity filling the room. The sound too, ardent, explosive, always deep in my ears.

A machine I could play with. My grand-parents, despite my young age, allowed me to feed it, to enliven it. I was master of the incendiary, yes, like an agitator. Ready to deal with the passions and anger of the inferno. All day long. My childhood ablaze, sitting next to the woodstove, adding twigs or paper to make sure the colors, incandescent red, orange, yellow, would not abandon me. Guardian of an immense power, fiery; torrid flames enkindling my pride.

That relationship to the woodstove is similar to the one I have today to my laptop.

As I lift the cover to peek inside a bright world in continual change, I see how pixels are, them too, flammable. Combustible. Fueled by materials highly consumable. And I remain spellbound by the feverish heat, the bodily brilliance of the screen igniting thoughts and emotions twirling until they become ashes. Settling their incinerated flakes, floating colonies of letters, matter pulverized - the residues that sentences are made of after the eruptions of trillions of tiny storage dots against our spirit. Intensity data invariably requiring more memory. High resolution blasts shining, sparkling, and then calming down, becoming the sediment of sharper images to hold on to.

I have traveled far, baby. Persistently after heat and light. Finding them in intricate mazes. In the labyrinths - tunnels and networks that enmesh the topology of all our searches.

What we now do online, I have always done it in a constellation of feelings about what I can’t find. The chaos is not new. The disorganization of information has consistently been around. The pathways and connections have always been an entangled assemblage of despotic configurations. Hard to sort out using non-current verb tenses.

And we add logs, and twigs, even detritus, to keep it all alive, even when we get scorched. Every time we write, access a page, wiki, blog, link, record, film, stream, down/upload, view, listen, draw, delete, bookmark, tag, we program, in an object-and-subject-oriented way, the paradigm of combustion. Burning all we are to arrive faster at the inflections of our grammatical souls – where we can bend away from alignment and simply send out waves. A transfer of energy, a perpetual last lecture like a gift to the virtual atoms and molecules of our collective egos. The cooling charcoal text left behind like a soft carpet to mark footsteps.

It doesn't mean though we know how to read.

Laolao

21. Smog motif

Heavy, hot smog covering the city. A ghost city. We all feel under Martial Law.

I’m glad you’ll be in France during August.

I’ll stay here. As an act of duty, I guess. So to witness history in the making.

The police knocked on my door yesterday. They checked my papers and gave me a sound advice: Never to open my door to strangers…

The college where I work will be closed for the Olympics. I’ll spend those two weeks at home. Almost all colleagues and friends will be gone.

I’ll stock food and cigarettes. I might go out once in a while to count the number of security vehicles circling the compound where I live. It’s located half way between the central government buildings and some of the sites where Olympic events will be held. I feel truly in the way.

I didn’t buy any tickets when the Olympics were held in Montreal in 1976. And I haven’t bought any for those of Beijing. I will have lived twice in a host city without ever attending one of the sports events.

I’ll be honest, dear one, I don’t remember a lot about the summer of 76. I have flashes. Of a terribly dirty worn-out sofa-bed in a small room on St-Urbain street. There were so many cockroaches there that I slept with the lights on. The building housed junkies, prostitutes, old, lonely people. You could hear fights or parties, sometimes both at the same time and at the same place, late into the night through the paper-thin walls.

As furniture, also a small wooden table and one chair. On the table, there was my only book. I can still see it with clarity, the design on the cover, the lettering: L’Homme approximatif by Tristan Tzara. I guess I must have stared at it often and for long periods of time, evening after evening, with little else to do.

I was pregnant. Twenty-one years old. And in a way, fresh out of jail.

Oh, I didn’t spend much time there, just a few hours. But enough to deeply scare me. I heard for a long time afterward in my mind the sound made by the electronic doors being shut behind me with a loud metallic bang as I was escorted to a cell.

I used to live in a large apartment on Sherbrooke street with a group of drag-queens. I was the only “true” girl in the gang. They made a living doing lip singing shows in a couple of sordid bars downtown, dressed as Marilyn Monroe or Liza Minnelli. And to make ends meet at the end of the month, they would also “do the parks”… In particular, the Parc Lafontaine. That’s what attracted the police. And we all got arrested as the cops retraced their whereabouts back to the flat.

I felt happy with the drag queens, little one. They were good friends. The best I had ever had.

Kindness and a sweet, tender despair. Plus lots of witty laughter. Their tongues were sharp, reply was an easy game for them. They knew, with very few, but well-chosen words, how to defend themselves. They were quick. With an edge of snappy sarcasm that impressed me so.

They seemed fearless, never missing a chance to answer back whenever people insulted them. They had that kind of intelligence, made of speed and boldness, taking their adversaries for a ride with a twist of the mind.

I was hoping to become like them, proud and brisk. Able to face and defeat the world with only caustic remarks. I loved them for that. They were teachers.

As for the tender despair, in the privacy of our home, they held hands. Playing at being lady-like, doing each others' hair or toe nails, borrowing and lending clothes, fake jewelry, or wigs. Imagining costumes for a new show. Or practicing the manners and expressions of famous actresses. They took care of each other. Very protective.

I was a bit like their younger sister. They had this project of making a woman out of me. Because they knew, and I didn’t. They had closely studied feminineness. I hadn’t.

So I would let them buy me high-heel shoes, or drape me in rows of plastic pearls. They glued false eyelashes to my face and chose the right lipstick color for my skin. They would suggest ways to walk or sit. Different kinds of smiles for different occasions. They even taught me how to dance.

This is how we spent our time. Discussing how women should be.

I did not have faith in their views about gender-based behavior. But I needed the caring. And most of all, the simple fun of togetherness. I enjoyed every minute I’ve spent with them. How long? A little more than a year until we got disbanded and headed each our own way.

My way wasn’t far. I had no place to go. I was working as a part-time waitress. And had no plans.

One day I noticed a young woman entering the restaurant with a baby in a carriage. People got up, opened the door, helped her find a seat. And I thought she represented respectability. I decided on the spot to have that for myself. I wanted respect.

And a reason to live.

This is how, alone, I had my first child. Spending the summer of the Montreal Olympics hidden in a cheap room, watching my belly grow. Reading the only book I could afford. All my money, every week, invested in baby stuff. Buying a baby spoon here, there a bib, later, a pacifier or a tiny cotton hat. Little by little, building my ‘respectable’ future.

I kept all these objects in a cardboard box. Everyday I took them out and laid them in a row on the sofa-bed just to contemplate how new, clean, neat these little things were, how they spelled my new status, how they carried, one by one, the name I would soon have, that of mother. Weeks and months went by like that. Transferring all my aspirations on baby booties and a teddy bear.

A book, baby articles to stare at. No idea whatsoever that the Olympics were happening.

Today, I'm well aware they’ll be staged in two weeks. The city looks deserted following the measures: shutting down much of the factories, sending migrant workers back home, banning half the cars off the streets. But to no avail. The pollution remains. People stay indoors, afraid. Too many security officers. Surface to air missiles. An entire city, nervous, paranoid, unsure of itself at the dawn of an era full of unknown, hoping to impress, dreaming also of respectability as it stares at its rows of never-used ultra-modern buildings. But deep down petrified. Nightmares of failures, rejection, inaptitude, and misunderstandings. Moving quite awkwardly in the darkness of the smog. Probably as much as I once did, striving to transcend my gloomy surroundings on the wings of colossal expectations.

Love, Laolao

20. Franklin’s basket

Benjamin Franklin, man of culture, science, political beast, diplomat, writer, inventor, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, wrote in June 1745 in a letter titled Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress:

The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

Just try to image the basket…

I laughed so hard when I read that. Men are unbelievable.

So, according to Franklin, all your Laolao would have to do is to wear a basket covering her head all the way to her waist to seduce and please a young man. Hilarious. I’m picturing the scene.

How old was Franklin when he thought that one up? Lets see… Almost 40. I’m intrigued: Did he consider himself old or young at the time? Did he use for women the same criteria as the ones he applied to himself when selecting their age epithet?

I live in a country where 30 is considered old. Single women of that age are an abnormality, socially rejected, impaired, a shame.

Right after college, graduates expect a senior position in a corporation. To wait 10 or 20 years for experience to develop is perceived as a non-sense.

There’s no discourse on beauty, it’s all about cuteness.

I wonder, when I stand in front of my students, what they think. I’m still teaching at an age where women, in China, have already retired.

You see, sweetheart, I find my students very conventional. They abhor risks. They’re very much into group-think. They repeat in the same chorus traditional views about every topic one can think of. They dislike originality, signs of individuality. They never want to stand out. They express opinions always in line with what’s socially acceptable. They never dare present an idea of their own. No imagination or interest beyond price tags and brand names. Their values are always within the frame of the expected. They take no initiatives, always happy with the minimum and surfaces.

So, I gather, they must think, looking at me or other lecturers, that growing old involves reading unusual stuff, having passions, getting out of line when discussing, coming up with ideas that disturb standards. Being bothersome because of questions asked, causing trouble with a critical approach and noisy arguments. Wasting time trying new stuff. Being disruptive through efforts to trigger change. Never happy the way things are.

My students must think that growing old corresponds to being curious, inventive. Even provocative. A sort of eccentricity, carelessness about established norms. They must surely think, as an example, that getting involved in a project for other purposes than making money is a sign of senility. Having fun with concepts, theories, possibilities are symptoms of an aging mind, shopping’s much better. Fascination with differences are side-effects of mental deterioration. A taste for experimentation, a definite mental handicap brought about advanced age and its disharmonious functioning.

That’s probably why I often feel I’m not reaching my students. I can’t wake them up. They’re probably telling themselves between naps that they don’t want to grow old. They must find the behavior I’m suggesting preposterous, besides too tiring and unsafe.

I haven’t yet found a way to convince them – if they’re so worried about maturity - that all they would really need when going to bed is a good, sturdy basket. But during the day, they should walk around.

Laolao

19. Picasso’s bull

How long, how far should we polish a text? What’s the moment when we lose touch with the reality we tried to apprehend? As one may want his or her writing more elegant, simpler, tighter, at which stage of the re-writing is the connection lost?

Picasso created a series of 11 lithographs in 1945, titled "Bull." Step by step, through each plate, steadily analyzing the elements, Picasso purifies the drawing to its most essential representation. From realism to abstraction.

Picasso starts by dissecting the bull in search of its structure, meaning the musculature and the bones. Then, he outlines each part into simplified geometrical forms. At this point, the bull is still recognizable. Picasso continues, but this time, he alters the proportions. Some he shrinks, others he enlarges. He erases parts, extends a few ones. As a consequence, a new balance appears, a creative relationship among the lines. But to say the truth, little one, we don’t see the bull anymore.

After plate V, we have the presentiment it’s an animal, but a bull? No.

The drawings remain of interest, but if the goal is to convey the message of a bull, there is indeed a place in the series of plates where that message disappears, replaced by a new one, that portrayed by modern art, or cubism, or aesthetic theories.

But it’s no longer about the bull.

Is it possible that art starts after Picasso’s fourth plate? When the bull vanishes, leaving the entire place to Picasso’s vision. The plates V to XI could therefore solely be about Picasso, not his subject.

The problem exists with writing. As well as with life.

How much should I edit my thoughts, my feelings? How far should I go, as I examine and reconfigure how I reacted throughout the day? As I displace emotions and comments into a new (writable) equilibrium? As I counterbalance perceptions to match what I remember of facts and events? As I retell myself my daily stories, summarizing them into what I believe is their essence?

I flatten some aspects, reconstruct others, perhaps even shift the focus as I try to emphasize a particular idea. I distort the picture of the history I want to record so to arrive at an image that would reveal the basic traits that I've envisioned for it. With each intervention, I alter the chronology, even the script. I modify conversations. The roles. The nature of the characters. The sequence and amplitude of their gestures.

If I repeat the process often enough, there’s a moment, a place, where my own bull is eclipsed by the process itself.

That’s exactly where I’m no longer telling you, my dear, about what I've encountered, heard, saw, experienced. I’m simply capturing the tenuous line of transubstantiation.

Possibly, that’s also where I’ve stopped telling, period, doing something else instead.

And by the same occasion, I’ve lost sight of you. You are no longer the reader. The bull I meant to share with you is gone. I’ve crossed into another dimension where the reader is impersonal. Also an abstraction, reduced to its essence.

It is always, you must believe me, a very difficult choice. I’ve never solved that divide.

Derrida spoke of langue and parole. The written, the spoken. Where do I stand? Is there a difference that won’t collapse? If so, what should I choose? Should I sacrifice you? Can I live with your absence? Can the writing have a level of meaning more important than the one given by your mind?

I repunctuate, add or delete commas, question hyphens, ellipses, watch out for typos, tickle syntax, constantly wondering whether thoughts should be quoted verbatim, raw, in the act. If not, how much paraphrasing of my own impressions should I allow? Can I transcribe diction? To what extent? What if an emoticon is more adequate than a word? What would a copy/paste from my mind to the screen look like? What is it to become an architect of style like Picasso was for the bull?

Would I lose the bull forever and does it matter?

And will you still be there, my loved one, at the end of that transfigured line? Will you follow it? Will you find me in it?

I never know what is important: The bull itself, its stature, strength, the very shapes that give it power? Or a carefully planned abstract contour that would tell of my most inner fiction born an eternity ago from the project of a bull?

And what is it that you need, sweet one? If only I knew.

Picasso said: "A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions."

One moment, you see me clumsily attempt to draw a bull. At another, you look at me taking it apart, ripping its sense. Rewriting its nature until unidentifiable, unsure about what to call what is left to see.

How dangerous is this for both of us? If only I knew.

Love, Laolao