Philosophical Imagination, Aesthetics, and Creative Writing

Category: Considering This

  • Wunderkind

    Wunderkind

    One

    Once upon a time, there was a boy living in this rural town happily and lovingly; his name is Little Eddie and loved playing with every child he encountered. Wiggling heard from swings, seesaws. He never got bored.

    The town itself was and is dreadful. People walking on the street looked dull. Eddie’s family members all worked in the local hospital which is the only one in that town. Once a little girl whom Eddie usually played with was left her residence with packs of suitcases, Eddie stood backward watching, curiously, feeling a bit hollowed out because he never experienced such slightest form of dissociation that for the first time he wanted his family could move to other places suddenly too. Not feeling pitiful or mournful, he just thought that kind of sudden disappearance without saying goodbye was rebellious.

    When elementary-schooled, he found he loved playing shuttlecock-kicking and hide-and-seek, so often that some name-caller called him little girl. Little Eddie felt hurt but never really cared about that so long as he could just live and study.

    The town itself was soulless. once he was walking along the main street afternoon, a young man seemed bored by this deserted atmosphere approached to him asking where can he find a bookstore. For years he never truly found anyone asked this question to him as if there wasn’t anyone cared about buying books and newspapers so he also pretended not to care much about. But so enlightened was he then that not only did he answer happily but also guided that young man a bit far to ensure he wouldn’t got lost.

    The main street was dirty filled with plastic bags and dusty. ‘I dare not eat the snack I bought nearby until home because of the flowing dust in the air.’ A girl walked with Eddie told him, serious faced and her elbow clasped owing to two bulged mounds on her chest. With meek, soft rays flowing over their faces, the sun was declining west.

    Eddie had written a severance poem to one classmate by whom he was bullied but decided to keep it secret.

    Farewell

    ‘Twas

    Spring. Wounded heart invisible

    Outwards. Softly, sunlight coming into my room.

    Streets stretching to the skyline

    Dusty, seemingly endless.

    Day and night

    No longer needing to see thee was I.

    So long as I

    Remain alive;

    So long.

    Grandma Summer had find that piece and mentioned that smilingly to him. ‘Interesting.’ She said. Feeling awkward as his secret was unveiled, he didn’t know how to response but rather stood motionless, beaming awkwardly. ‘You should keep doing that.’ Summer said. That was afternoon and the sunlight as strong as ocean. Happily, he daydreamed of himself naked swimming in the river of life and never feared anything.

    Keep that, he told himself.

    Some boys in that school teased Eddie by calling him little girl. So often was that calling happened that he felt overwhelmed. Once in the classroom at a spare noon, while everything was as normal as in a dessert, a boy Eddie doesn’t acquaint shouted out “Little Girl.” Tired to defense, unable to swallow such a humiliation at such a young age, he spoke nothing, leaving the room with a strange and saddening silence, only to find out that his classmate Zheng had started to stand out with him saying that no one has right to label a person as such and Eddie has his right to be what he wants to. Shocked and overjoyed by Zheng’s remark and not knowing how to express his gratitude, Eddie for the first time wanted to hug a boy, and thanked him for saying that.

    “Next time if anyone tries to shame you, ensure you hit them back to tell them that what I am is non of their business.” Zheng said.

    That was afternoon and they walked along home. Eddie had said goodbye to and thanked Zheng for that.

    It was then he started to think his town was not that dreadful. There were hardships, but which place have not.

    Eddie sat before the railing on the baloney, watching potted flowers blossom. Later in the night, fallen asleep, he had dreamed about sunny afternoons.

    Two

    Eddie loved crafting, inspired by an America program teaching children about how to make small artworks. He brought oil brushes from a migrant worker’s daughter named Swallow who seemed reckless and whose skin sunburnt. Eddie invited her home to oil-paint but Swallow seemed uninterested, and said she was hungry.

    Providing her with food cooked by Grandma Summer, watching her devour down half of the rice in one bite, Eddie disappointed but said nothing.

    Small town sold no thing relating to books, brushes, only foods and its residents only play pokers and mahjong to get days by with a river flowing through main street.

    There were funeral wagons passing by the main street and sobbing girls hired to mourn the lost; when happened, it usually happened in mornings. Eddie had made a oil-painted ornament shaped like the sun which hung on the doorframe of his mother’s room.

    Every afternoon there were people talking about lottery, mahjong and money but they were too poor to be heard seriously. There was only one bank in operation and no supermarket. Everything seemed so lacking that Eddie wanted to escape and never to return.

    It’s lunchtime and Eddie’s mother said she would prepare to transfer Eddie to county seat to study after he finishing his elementary schooling.

    When real separation came, seeing everything packed up and being sent away and his reading desk nearly ruined, he felt uneasy and almost cried. Only when forced to leave, had he realized living in this lacking-almost-everything town is actually a blessing.

    New school was not good if not horrible, filled with bad-habited students who didn’t read books, let alone speak properly. Eddie always wondered what happened to those student to make them not value their very opportunity of getting educated. Girls here wanted love; boys reverence.

    Initial days in the middle schooling was fearsome. When sitting still waiting to get familiar with new classmate, instead of finding consolation, Eddie saw girls smoking cigarettes showing their made-up rebellious attitude as if wanting to show they had never experienced hardship or poverty but actually had a lot. The reason why covering up is called so is that it’s so obvious that people don’t bother unveiling.

    In his second year in middle school, a transferred in boy named Wong from Shandong started to notice him. Wong was square-faced and spoke Shandong-accented mandarin which hardly can anyone understand what he was talking about at first fashion and to make it worse, he was deadly shy so his voice usually was insects-likely faint. But Wong liked to initiate talks with Eddie. Everything went fine then.

    Until it went otherwise when there were only two of them in a corner of the school to cleanse the floor, Wong said shyly that he thought Eddie was goon-looking. Unsure and unable to think about how to react properly, Eddie was suddenly hugged by Wong.

    Releasing Eddie from his arms and apologetically voiced, Wong lowered his head saying sorry to him.

    Eddie rushed away from him. Suddenly, he felt everyone around him—students, teacher passing be, was like gazing at him, mocking him.

    Eddie had never figured out how this had happened. Sometimes he raise his head staring deeper at the clear sky, alone. In his heart of hearts, the sun setting west, reddening the playground of the school that time was indeed as same as ever.

  • Regarding Humanity in the Age of Irritation

    Regarding Humanity in the Age of Irritation

    He knew it would be a matter of time before the outbreak to be contained someday.

    In Chinese Mahayana canon, one of pupils’ main goals was to escape the cycle of endless death and rebirth into Nirvana as final destination beside pursuing self-enlightenment. The pupils were taught that life is suffering but we can search for our salvation.

    When city where I live in Hubei was sealed off, I thought this unprecedented quarantine policy implemented to the whole province might not last long then. Now I’ve got used to this, of being sealed off home. At least I have food to eat, I thought. And it’s nothing as long as my life still goes normally. To medical workers, some of whom have worked all day long but hardly had a chance to rest, this is the hard part to cope with. Awakening in the morning and checking news related to the outbreak, I’ve only found out things, from containing efforts to food supply, have gone down. “Does any one be afraid of dying?” I smiled, thinking and looking around, no one is here. No. People just don’t wanna die that hard. People toiling their whole life only wish to secure they wouldn’t be dying hard on the streets.

    Infectious diseases as symbols of suffering serve as tools for some, who seek easy path to counter their fears about the diseases, in society to stigmatize and smear the weak and disadvantaged. People try desperately to sort out and simplify others’ personalities to pretend they are doing something to understand others as if people’s traits be less diverse and won’t be changed. AIDS at 1980s as an unknown disease served as tool to stigmatize gay people- gay disease, dehumanizing and labeling them as being punished by God for violating the natural law which only allowed sex to happen between men and women. As creative as people can imagine, Wuhan coronavirus serves as another tool of anti-Asian sentiment.

    A video tape captured in New York subway circulating on the Internet showed a Asian being hit and chased for wearing mask when the new Coronavirus death toll in the mainland China increased. Some colored persons dragged his clothes, insulted him saying words like contagious, diseases etc, fearing him to spread the virus.

    Well, people may say what they’ve said and acted irritatingly is what made them humane. ‘People fear about unknowns’ says someone, shrugging whose shoulders off. If things were happening only to limited groups, ones outside of the mess usually speak nothing.

    In the later years of a Russian writer, a line written by him goes although I may be as famous as Shakespeare be, I don’t understand what I am doing this for? Look what I had done, what for?

    Modern society values youth as the most powerful. It is not hard to find that some slogan appeared somewhere says 60 is the new 40. Aged people feel powerless due to their loss of physical strength or maybe of their physical attractiveness as if people may be less valued when not being sexy. But this is not all of their fault, our society’s uncontemplated obsession on physical appearance has taken a part. In that obsession, If a person is not being described as beautiful so he or she may be labeled as undesirable. But it is false. Since everyone will get aged, only time can tell what is really valued, things like generosity, kindness, pursuit of truth and the good are valuable things too. Time is the most efficient equalizer which works indiscriminately.

    Ancient Greek philosophers had argued what we the people should be going to pursue. They say for the good and the truth.

  • On Lakes

    On Lakes

    Somedays were dreams, but some, you know, were not. Walking on the bank near the lake where I had walked many times before, I recalled so many memory fragments that belonged to me and some one whom I had befriended. The water of the lake, the lake of South, dotted with and surrounded by willow trees on its bank was and is shrinking. There the lake now has never happened of having the tide of the flood invaded its lower-bank again after a heavy rain, which had come to Wuhan in the year of twenty–sixteen, poured tons of water into the city and helped cause a catastrophe of flooding on the every inch of the city’s ground.

    People in China had since friendly teased about that Wuhan as a coastal city had its main feature of sea view although the truth is that Wuhan is a inland city thus it does not own a perfect sea view. But at the same time, as this disastrous scene of flood got even worse, there was really no difference between whether to tag Wuhan as a coastal city or a inland one because it was simply a city on the verge of complete turmoil.

    The city had since been turned into a sallow harbor which state had lasted nearly a month in that summer, a disastrous but enthusiastic period– we used to call it the raining season. You know, some people did feel the harm caused by the extreme weather but some did not. I could barely move down to the street to buy some food. Everything there and then was both dependent and independent. We were like being living in an island but had never felt to be so self-reliant and complete when I was picking up food from an icebox and cooking the food we’d bought online before. Food there were not expensive. Feeding ourselves at such an economical way at that time was a creative way of living, which our lifeworld had never been so colorful and fulfilling. Life is simple although it is full of challenges but that are the challenges we must deal with sooner or later. We loved it. Flooding waters had divided the city into smaller rivers. Every building that was standing higher than the depth of the flood was like an island. The winds that had been blowing heavily and constantly made us start to worry about the stability of the building we lived. I was worrying about whether the building would collapse by the force of floods and storms though it didn’t happen.

    There is a picture I have shot gone to a sitting-on-the-bench girl who was facing on the surface of the lake. It was autumn, but the sky was so shiny and bluish that I had failed to realize that was autumn if I was not checking the calendar. The girl who sat on the bench might be full of an optimistic view since it was such a lovely day. The breeze was so tender it had made me heart-melting. I knew my heart was full of happiness when facing the lake I loved. Everything here and then on the bank of the lake I was facing had never been so familiar. The birch trees, stone benches, stone-made railings beside the bank, and mosquitos, they bite me as usual, had never been so enriching, vital and meaningful to me. Even the pain caused by the mosquitos’ biting could not shy me away from the land of wonder. I was thinking magically but that was the way I love.

    Is the autumn here this year the new summer? Everything is unceasingly changing so to answer this question is just so meaningless maybe mostly because here the city I have been living for a long time has not rained much this year. And that is the real problem. This land is used to be called a hazy and misty land on the south of the river- the Yangtze. The axiom related to this issue of constant changing is something we have already known. But with a hope to preserve the moment we lived, we also want to do something even though we know that we can’t change the universal nature of changing. To live is to change. That is why we are always nostalgic. We don’t really own our time and our bodies since we cannot control it and it seems like that the only thing we owned is change. We still are, say, at this moment.