The Unobtainable
The Unobtainable
Everyone has his own stories like birds have wings. Yet the stories are not as realistic as birds’ wings. Wings take birds up to the sky to see a fantastic world; beings’ stories are fantasies themselves.
Eve is a freshman who has just graduated from a national school. National school
’s education system is wonderful. It makes jerks and bookworms out of the exam-
oriented education and turns students to stereotyped and yet skilled exam robots
. Eve is a robot too herself. But she would like to think she’s really wholly truly totally definitely absolutely different from other robots, as she is robot
of certain intelligence. Yeah, intelligence, a great thing.
College is like a small society or a premature world to Eve though this college
she’s in is not as good as what she had expected. But that is why it is called
“expectation”—an unstable building—to be torn down, rather than rebuilt.
The college has two gates, but even the seniors here don’t know which the real
front door is. That’s not an issue though. Every road leads to the campus. And
people here are flexible enough to find whichever way to get into the college as
they can always find other ways to jump the queue. And joyfully, people are getting used to it.
There is a large playground in the centre of the college that only cost 3 months
to build and that pretty much likes the jerrybuilt projects downtown. Eve doesn
’t think it’s a playground, but just a plain stony place covered with artificial grass and plastic mud. But other students seem to like the only playground here a lot, and they call it a “gym”. What’s really interesting is that people
don’t play here in the daytime instead they come at night. It seems that darkness is a good thing. It blinds others eyes and gives you almighty encourage to do
some “things”. The college men have given this place a fabulous name, Boys Break. But one day, Eve googled “BoysBreak” trying to see whether our “gym” was ranked No. 1 dating place on the net, dramatically she found out BoysBreak was
a porn site where Boys could really Break. And this had proved the name the most suitable for the “gym”.
The college has only one teaching building, which has everything inside. This, however, helps those who don’t have any concept of directions get around easily.
But they must find the teaching building first which is still a problem to some
students.
When the bell rings, a stream of people flow out of the building. The two main entrances are like two nostrils of an old man. And it’s astonished to see how much blood he has got. He has being bleeding for 20 minutes or so and the blood is
still running out from the two tight holes. He seems at a loss about how to stop it. The bell rings again, and two or three minutes later, the last drop of blood comes out, ended the everyday incident. Then the campus becomes as quiet as graveyard again. There’s no hint of what has happened in the last few minutes. To a newcomer, it’s amazing. Eve always stops to see the marvelous scene.
The same crowd rush will happen in the dim cafeteria when you see a group of crazy girls rushing to the little cafeteria hysterically. And that’s one of the few times that the students are chasing after the same goal. The ones who go against the flow are probably those who have lost shoes or bags behind when running too fast. Eve is wondering why the girls don’t take part in the sports meeting since they can move their legs that quickly like cockroaches. Eve stares at the crowd with a little sense of pride, as she is clever enough to avoid the rush. In
the last few minutes of the last class, she told the childish teacher who was only 4 years older than her that she felt like vomiting. Then the teacher let her
go. Soon, Eve is part of the girls. She fights her way to a place where serves
soups and two dishes of vegetables, a bow of rice in addition. Four yuan per meal, cheap enough. There are three girls standing in front of Eve ordering three sets of food. It is a grandma who takes their order. She speaks as loud as she can. Just like the old Chinese idiom, she got a bad hearing, but she always talks
loud enough to make herself heard by herself. Three dishes, a dull boy like Jill
knows it’s 12 yuan altogether. The grandma takes 12 yuan off their electronic
dining card, but then takes another 9 yuan. The three girls frown for a couple of seconds and shout out, “Why did you take another 9 yuan off our account? 3*4=
12, dipsticks know it. Bla bla bla…” Eve turned to one of the girls with her eyes wide open, “Will her tongue get twisted?” she thinks aloud. The girls and
the grandma seem to be having a competition about who can make louder noise. But
the girls waiting behind start to get impatient and tend to join the competition. A young man comes out from the kitchen, asks where the problems is, and tells
the girls to pay another 12 yuan, then he’ll give the extra 21 yuan back to them. They then jump into another gap—“why should we solve the problem like that
?” In the meantime, Eve steps forward and tells the grandma who is standing nearby wanting to get a word to explain it’s not her fault that she wants a bowl of Beef Steak and Tomato Soup. Then other girls all push ahead to order their meals. The grandma is messed up, and starts to put soup in many bowls. She is too busy to realize that Eve takes her soup and goes away without paying. Eve stops at a table near the window, enjoying her free meal. But most part of her wants to
be caught, after all, she is just looking for some adventure. Unfortunately the
young man is still reasoning with the three hungry girls and the grandma is keeping severing free meals. Undoubtedly, it can’t be an adventure to Eve, so she
starts to seek again.
Eve is wandering about the campus. It’s like climbing hills. You have to climb
a mountain to get to the teaching building and descent to back to the dorm or the dining hall. That’s what makes the city so difficult—the landform, and the people too. Thus there are no bicycle lanes here as it’s hard to ride in such landform, nor bicycle shops. But there are bicycle thieves. Maybe they are part-time bicycle lifters, who knows. Eve’s feet take her to a ground near the teaching building. There are two guys skateboarding around, doing ollies. Eve skateboard too, but never does any tricks. Anyway, skateboard is only a sort of vehicle to her to get around faster in the mountainous city. The city is a wonder. You can see the white-collar driving to work and the shabby begging in the street; you
can see tops like thorns up in the air and slack huts lined along the road. It
is a mixture of each social class and also a typical city in the developing country. Eve stops to watch them skateboarding. The shorter guy finishes a kickflip
nicely and the other with headband round his head cheers for him. Then he kicks
the board, jumps on it, approaches the obstacle, jumps over it and landed steadily. Eve applauds, happy to see his nice performance. She walks to him and asks,
“Hi, Dude. How long have you been skateboarding?” There is no reply. The guy bypasses Eve without leaving a single glance at her. He then tries to do a backside lipslide, but failed. The shorter one plays with his hair and Eve catches the
green-black tattoo on his arms which looks pretty much like puke. They keep skateboarding pretending they have forgotten the outside world. And they even speak
ENGLISH! Oh, nope, it’s CHEEP & CREAK to be precise. “They are not real skateboards. Real skateboards skate for fun for pleasure for challenging themselves and enjoying life, not like the two clowns here just want to show off”, Eve talks to herself. She now looks at the two guys with pities. They are as poor as Green Day and Avril Lavigne who blackeye themselves, put on some red ties and start
to call themselves PUNK. However, it’s acceptable as everyone has a story of his own and likes to live in it wondering how important he is in this world. It is the same with Eve. But the sad thing is, few people know the world doesn’t want them. Well, perhaps it’s a good thing. Eve turns about and pissed off the two cocky guys, middle finger in the air.
She puts her hands into the shorts pockets searching the mini spray gun. She always keeps some trick outfit in her pockets or bags in case whenever she has the
mood to make some damage, some tools can always be at hand. Instead of the spray
gun, she finds a sheet been folded several times. She looks puzzled for a while
and opens the sheet. On the paper, there is an eddress, her foreign teacher’s.
She always wonders why school employs a plump Pakistani guy to teach them the history of English-speaking countries who has never been to Britain, America, New
Zealand, Australia or Canada. The teacher’s ok though. At least he’s not as old as the history he talks about. And Eve likes the “frankness” in him. Actually they have something in common. One married his foreign e-pal on the third day
they met in person; the other took her foreign e-pal who seemed to have an uncertain crush on her as one of the most important persons in her life. Those are their stories. Eve looks down at the fishhook-shaped Hei Matau hanging round her
neck. “It is like a token of love. I purchased it in New Zealand. And it is called Hi-Mat-Oh which can protect you under water. I hope you will not give it back to me like in the interesting TV scenario when something wrong happened to a couple, the wife throws the wedding ring to the husband… ” It was what she wrote in the only letter she sent to Eve. Eve raises her right eyebrow. She swims well. Maybe she doesn’t need any protection when in water. But she does need love
, or at least the care, the news from the chick.
You joined me in BubbleCanFly, the poor-named environment organization.
I found you talented and asked you to be the assistant manager in the club.
You told me things happening in Great Britain.
I answered you all the questions you wondered about my place.
You asked me how to handle your problems.
I replied you
with all my sincerity.
You told me you played the guitar, violin, piano, keyboard, drum, clarinet and some Chinese instruments like erhu and dizi.
I said I was proud of you.
You told me you did keep pets if I’d like to take your brother as a pet.
I sent you an essay I wrote which many people liked.
You told me you had a new laptop linked to the Internet.
I explained to you why this place was so foggy.
You told me the places you had been to and how you flied to New Zealand with a break in Malaysia.
I suggested you go there again from another direction, which would be faster.
Then one day, in my inbox, I found an email from you.
You seldom wrote to me and I was happy to see the email signed with your name.
It was the beginning of a disaster to me though I didn’t realize.
Sometimes I throw myself in the disasters to feel the dread of being close to death, and appreciate being alive.
I asked you to give me 3 days to think about being your girlfriend even though we were over 4,000 miles apart.
You pointed the place on the map, telling your friends your girlfriend lived quite near this area.
I went to my postbox, surprised to find a letter signed with your name.
And it was the beginning of another disaster.
You said I did so much for you that you wanted to do something for me too.
I told you before I would use all my inspiration to write a poem for you and publish it in a magazine in your place.
You figured out writing a song for me would be the greatest idea ever.
I named the song The Falling of Cherry Blossom and gave you hint on the album’s
name, Mirrors in the Sky wishing we could see each other from the sky.
You sent me the song in MIDI format and it was 6 minutes and 59 seconds long.
I couldn’t find any words to describe my feelings.
You said the song was going to be very long, like 20 to 30 minutes.
I entered your site on a music network and saw the CD cover I designed for your
previous album.
You didn’t reply to my emails or letters any more.
I didn’t want to ask why, but that’s what I did.
You disappeared.
I didn’t try to find you.
You kept putting things on your blog.
I saw some pictures of you in which you looked pale and liked a Vampire.
You scared me.
I was not afraid, I just liked the way you were.
The Mei Matau is still hanging on my neck.
It’s not a serious pain to Eve to recall the past. They have been a part of her
anyway. She knew that would be an experience, a real adventure, and for the most, part of her story the time she opened the email he sent. And what’s more, what she had chosen for herself, a platonic relationship, and the happiness, pain,
worries it brings along cannot be understood unless you try. A relaxing smile appears on the corner of Eve’s mouth. She raises her head. It is a shining day with one or two pieces of cloud floating in the azure sky but is so windy that the skin around Eve’s eyes is chapping. The wind sweeps away her misgivings. Perhaps she needs more tears to damp her dry skin. But she is not sure. She holds the token tightly as if it’s the only ticket to some wonderland. Blood runs out along the vein of her palm. She thinks of the teaching building’s blood suddenly
. She smiles again.
Her hands stretch a little deeper into her pocket and reach the purple spray gun
. She takes it out, sprays it to the air. In the wind, the paint from it falls like blossoms, yea, cherry blossoms. It flows in the air and lands on Eve’s white T-shirt. Then the T-shirt seems to blossom too, with purple stains.
Stories are like wings. It takes you to the sky to see a different world in which people repeat the same mistakes again and again and again. They are like rising bubbles, full of fantasy, mystery, hope, wish and for the most, love. So don’
t ask me what I am doing, because every time you’ll end up with the same answer
—I’m making up my own story.
2006-10-26
--The End--
歡迎有空做客http://623girls.piczo.com
Kiss,
Jie
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