To create another possibility

One time, when my family was drinking together, I was drunk and told my niece that after I die, you can ignore everything else, but you have to pack up my diary, take it home and read it from beginning to end. She agreed.

When I sobered up the next day, I felt that this "will" might be seen as narcissism by others, and I hoped she would forget it.

However, I know that compared with "narcissism", it is more of a "self-pity". I feel that at a certain stage of my life, I was brainwashed by another "ism" without knowing it, and my perspective on the world has undergone a major change, which has gradually deviated from my own growth environment and educational background, and even went against it. Later, whether writing or reading, it has intentionally or unintentionally implied the meaning of resistance, resistance to any shackles imposed on me. People want me to blend in with the crowd and be a screw that does not show its true colors, but I don't want to, and I have to make some strange noises. People tell me that it is rare to be confused and that too much talk will lead to mistakes, but I say bah, and I have to get to the bottom of it. Even though all these things make people painful and frightened.

Liu Xiaoyang choked up and said in Zhang Yue's "Half the Sky", "I would rather suffer than be numb."

One of the main purposes of writing is to fight against numbness. So on days when I can’t write, I often wonder what went wrong. I used to write every day, anything, it didn’t matter if it wasn’t good, I had no shame for my writing. Besides, I didn’t think it was bad. An old movie theater, a hazy corridor, a lame woman, a half-lit cigarette on the edge of the table. Bloom wandering around the streets of Dublin all day, and the heads at the racecourse. After watching Tsai Ming-liang’s “Never Dispersed,” I realized that even if I couldn’t be Tsai Ming-liang, being that half-lit cigarette had its own meaning. After reading “Ulysses,” I found that thoughts are articles, and as long as you dare to restore them, they might be masterpieces. At that time, I felt that I had gained a certain kind of ideological liberation, and then I felt the freedom brought by words.

During the time when everyone was locked up at home, one day I wrote in my diary: I haven’t eaten vegetables for a few days. I can’t buy vegetables through the usual APP. I have to queue up at the vegetable shop in front of me in the early morning, and it’s sold out very quickly. Later, a policeman told me that I can’t write nonsense. I said it’s not nonsense, it’s my personal experience. He said the government has done such a good job in ensuring that you still say you can’t buy vegetables. I said I was talking about me, not others. He said that although it’s you, to those who are interested, it’s everything.

It makes so much sense that I am speechless. I remembered a line from an opera: A piece of white paper weighs only a few pounds; a sudden change in the world is unforgettable.

Since then, I have been a little depressed. This past year was the year I wrote the least on Matters in the past four years. It seems that there is not much to write. What I could write before, now I feel boring to write, not to mention that I am not good at writing, I really can't write. The main reason is that the sense of shame has returned. Who wants to read these things?

This time, in order to submit an article, I had to edit an old article written two years ago. I often wondered, what is this article about? When I first wrote this article, I showed it to my friends with great enthusiasm. Although my friends did not admire it as I expected, I felt at that time that they did not know how to appreciate it.

Thinking about it now, I was really arrogant.

However, my obsession with writing has not completely disappeared. In the past year, I have completed several diaries. I am ashamed to show them to others, but at the same time I hope someone will see them.

I always have a fantasy that if only my parents could write diaries, these diaries would be the legacy I would be most happy to inherit. My father lost his mother when he was young, served as a "Liberation Army" in Tibet to "suppress bandits" in his youth, lost his beloved daughter in middle age, and suffered a cerebral infarction in his old age. He has lived with illness for more than ten years since then. He has been a man with a bad mood since I can remember, and it became more natural after he got sick. I have always wanted to know the mental journey of his long life, but there was no way to do it. When he was not sick, our relationship was very cold and we didn't communicate much. We spent more time together after he got sick. He is very stiff, and he instinctively rejects physical contact and any slight external force imposed on him. If you pull his hand forward, he will definitely struggle back. If you push back, he will definitely push forward. I'm not talking about the kind of big amplitude, I'm talking about him It seems that he has a hard time trusting someone. If you raise your hand a few dozen centimeters away from him, he will avoid it. If you put your hand gently on his shoulder from behind, he will be startled. My mother is the same. She is always trembling and can't relax. If I say I want to sweep the floor, she will go to get me a broom first. If she wants to pour water, the kettle is within my reach, and she needs to go around to reach it, then she will definitely choose to go around. Sometimes I quarrel with her about this, and then I feel annoyed with myself. I don't know what kind of trauma they experienced when they were young. We can't communicate through conversation. We are used to avoiding and ashamed to talk about many things.

I observed the Buddha statues up close in the temples of Chiang Mai. They had lowered brows and evasive eyes, just like many people.

In the summer of 2021, I took my parents back to their hometown that they had been longing for. I saw many people there and thought of many things from the past. I wrote them down, and I think all of this is very important.

In the winter of 2023, I met @映昕in Chiang Mai, had dinner together, and attended a lecture about Chinese in Myanmar in the enclave. This was my first time to communicate with young Taiwanese people face to face in real life, and it was also my first time to attend the same lecture with Chinese people of different nationalities, and to establish a connection with an ethnic group or an event at the same time. This was a wonderful experience, and without Matters, this wonder would not have happened.

It makes me want to cheer up and set a flag: Write, and make miracles happen again!

(I hope to participate in the "MattersZine Inaugural Issue". This article is "My Personal Creative Journey". The theme of my submission is "The trivialities of life are actually like this". This article has been added with two tags, including the theme tag "#Life's trivialities are actually like this" and the registration tag "#MattersZine Inaugural Issue Collection".

The title of my anthology is "Returning Home". This article "To Create Another Possibility" is my creative journey and is also the first article of "Returning Home". The second article "Returning Home" is the entire text.)

Here is the link to my collection: https://matters.town/@BloomingBloom/collections/Q29sbGVjdGlvbjoxNTA5

December 16, 2023, Chiang Mai