Sick Boy[s] Paddle Club↓

Salt

Ning zhe 宁哲

Translated by: Amy Xian

They are truly absurd. She loves with her sights set on despair; she knows this, yet seldom allows herself to acknowledge it. And he—he has fallen in love with a certain kind of romanticism. Sometimes she feels he doesn’t really see her at all; he is so lost in the game he has created for himself that he never deigns to explain.

“We should go out, get some fresh air.” He says.

“I broke a mirror last night.” She replies.

“What kind of flowers would you like by the bed?” He asks.

“I broke it on purpose.” She continues.

“Narcissus. Narcissus would be nice.” He says.

“Oh, and when I went out this morning, I forgot to take out the trash.” He adds. “Open the curtains. Narcissus likes the sun.” He says.

Was I always this desperate, she thinks, right from the start?

How could a desperate person need love? It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps what she needs is his money, his brute strength, his second-hand cigarette, and that violent horn... Of course, that’s impossible. She doesn’t need anything. At least, she should need nothing. Maybe she should leave him tomorrow. Truly, this whole thing is absurd.

Perhaps she isn’t desperate enough, and yearns to fulfill herself through a twisted kind of love. She starts a diary, hoping to observe herself through recording. It’s too hard. She’s overly cautious, each word is a struggle, lacking the energy to write at length, until finally it all becomes a mundane chronicle: Tired all day, went out for an ice cream, he brought flowers. I smelled alcohol. It’s a sharp, stinging smell. I asked him, and he said, I don’t smell anything. She writes, I hope you can trust yourself. These words aren’t meant for anyone else to see. She pauses for a second. Then add, I’ll burn it all later. I think I will find a lighter.

She sets down her pen, feeling a little better.

He always says something and then lets it go, so that even now, the vase remains empty. She has a premonition that tonight they will shatter this vase. At that moment, she will let out a scream, push him off the bed, and watch the porcelain shards pierce the soles of his feet. But the vase doesn’t break. It stands there, indifferently stable, its indigo neck like a taxidermied animal. He stubs out his cigarette and tosses it, along with the ash, into the vase. In time, perhaps something might actually take root and sprout there.

No flowers, so where did the vase come from?

She can’t remember. It was there so long ago, as if the architect had drawn it into the blueprint from the very beginning, specifying that a vase should be placed here, and so it was captured and set by the bedside. Sometimes she talks to it, mostly nonsense, but she says it earnestly: When will you come? When will you go? Are you cold? As time passes, she feels she should give this companion a name, but she can’t decide on one, so she refers to it with different words each time, or simply replaces speech with silence—she feels this vase is in tune with her thoughts.

It’s fine that there are no flowers; they would wither anyway. How about keeping fish? She thinks. Two or three little goldfish, swimming inside. They’d look lovely. He smiles, Alright, let’s get fish. Was that mentioned before? Did they actually get them? She can’t remember. Even if they had, with all the nicotine he’d put in, the fish would be long dead. She reaches into the vase, no, it’s empty. No goldfish. Then she thinks, fish are meant to die anyway.

It’s hard to attain a state of being at ease, like a vase without flowers, an image without meaning, like a string of silent letters, light and airy. There’s always a moment of weariness that comes. She’s fed up. A vase, an empty hollow, as if contented in its emptiness, yet it steals her words, spies on her infatuation, consumes her secrets, its echo asking back: ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ She tears up the diary pages she’s written, burns the words to ash, and pushes them away. Under the lamplight, the glaze over the porcelain stands shamelessly firm, collecting ash. She curses it, burns it with a cigarette butt. Damn you, why won’t you break? But the vase does not break. This, it understands her perfectly.

“You’re being too dramatic,” he says. “It’s dangerous,”

His love for her is theatrical, like a director’s appreciation for an actor’s subtle expressions. When he raises his camera towards her, she feels her own love is also a kind of performance. A performance of contentment, of concern, of anticipation. What can’t she perform? The spotlight shines down. He says, ‘I love you.’ She says, ‘I love you, too.’ Then they dance one dance, share one kiss, make one love—And then the moon, like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.¹ She thinks she’s good at performing. On cue, she will recite, ‘I love you, too.’ How natural. If nothing unexpected happens, two people could love each other for a long time. But not too long. It doesn’t feel real to her.

¹ [‘And then the moon, like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.’ – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream]

There are two kinds of ‘I love you’ in the world. One hopes for an ‘I love you, too’ in return. The other fulfills a need for self-actualization. He loves himself too much; there’s no room left for anyone else’s love. So when he says ‘I love you,’ it’s an outlet for his self-actualization. Even if she said, ‘I don’t love you,’ they would still dance. She says, ‘I doubt I’ve ever loved you,’ and then they kiss. She says, ‘It would be better if you didn’t really love me either,’ and then they make love. But she wouldn’t say that. It’s too dramatic. It’s dangerous. He raises the camera. Smile. We are still in the era where we misinterpret the art of photography.

When he’s not speaking, he seems to be carrying out a solemn mission: solemnly opening his case, solemnly selecting the bullets he likes, solemnly grinding, wiping, polishing, examining them under the light. The air in the whole room waits for his verdict. Lying in bed, she tries hard to catch the lingering scent of smoke, closes her eyes, and thinks of the time of Agamemnon’s war: the 12th century BC, the Trojan Horse breaking through the Greek defenses. The proud, self-respecting citizens debated scriptures, counted circles, drew olive branches, dipped in flames and seas of blood, swallowed stones and hidden arrows. When the invaders poured into the inner city, they discovered that beautiful Helen was long gone. She takes a deep breath. He is ready.

Then, the weapon pressed into the phospholipid-crowded chamber. There is hardly any defense here. He doesn’t even need to say he loves her; they complete the verification in a delicate mutual understanding. Is this understanding too unfair to her? Contact. Recently, she’s been constantly distracted, her thoughts drifting high up, occupied by scattered, distant matters, leaving her no peace. Forging. A bare ankle presses against the sole of her foot. She notices this phenomenon worsening: from skull to chest, hair to toes, bearing the winding spleen, tumbling heels linked in a cascade, churning waves, smoothing into sand.

Surge. Hundreds of millions of thoughts race inside her, threatening to burst her apart. Wandering. He is silent, transmitting neurotransmitters, swinging like a pendulum. The ember of his cigarette moves nearer and farther from her, like runway lights guiding a descent, catching up with some deep, gloomy rainy season, spreading with a dull sound, a diffused breath, staring at the smoke, pale and bluish, radiating like a liquid, stretching a force-measuring spring that has given up its elastic coefficient… She can’t sense what he’s thinking. In the turbulence, she closes her eyes again.

She sees a gloomy monsoon climate, gloomy organs gazing at each other across the sea. There is a painting, depicting every corner of the city, depicting the new hair tie she bought. Where is she going? She follows close behind, gradually forgetting the way back. Following her, she flits joyfully into the room, sheds her robe, and waits for her to begin her narration.

She needs some music. She recalls the melody an actor hummed during the curtain call last night—she can’t remember its name. Other musical phrases leap in: a D-major cello, Satie’s Gymnopédies. Following the sound, the picture gradually clears: he is holding a marker pen, writing on her body. Surnames—Peng, Tang, Zhao, Li—names he probably doesn’t even know himself, stubbornly inscribed on her, like some childish tattoo. The cool tip of the pen presses against her, smelling of alcohol. She feels ticklish. She looks at him; he is careful, slow, imitating Michelangelo. She wants to tease him, twisting her body deliberately to make the strokes crooked. He doesn’t get annoyed, patiently straightens her, holds her in place, and continues his carving. The more she tries to resist, the more she struggles, the more unruly she becomes. Suddenly, a cigarette ember burns her stomach. The music doesn’t stop. She opens her mouth in pain but loses her voice. He drops his chisel, shifts his position, and pulls her under him. She resists gently, but soon submits.

Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. This novel was later adapted into a film. The public outcry got some lavish praise, but others were outraged. Debates on artistic boundaries, discussions on industry ethics, and explorations of cultural allusions and contexts. All clamoring, each with their own arguments. From publication to release, Ellis himself remained silent, declining all media invitations. Whether out of personal habit or as a marketing strategy was uncertain, but most believed his silence held profound meaning. There is a scene: a black-and-white television showing a patient’s self-recorded video—one man, two women, indulging in passion. White sheets, dark bodies, no blood visible. Years later, she will bite her nails and subtitle this film. For now, Ellis is still scratching his head over the script. She cannot yet clarify this symbol for herself, but she gets a preview of a foreign woman’s moaning. The scene is strikingly similar, though the circumstances remain unknown.

She set aside other thoughts and focused. This woman was enjoying her holiday, a trip she had begun planning half a year ago—she needed to relax, to get away from her obese, dull-witted clients, her self-righteous husband, her aggressive children, away from all these things that made her so irritable. To that end, she had deliberately concealed the purpose of her journey and chosen a completely unfamiliar city, ensuring no one would recognize her here. Now, she lay back on the delicate goose-down bed in the hotel, staring at the huge oil painting decorating the ceiling. The whole room exuded a faint, pleasant scent. On the nightstand sat a carefully selected vase, copper-plated, breathing in oxygen, its surface matte, holding sunflowers that were vivid, beautiful, and arrogantly proud. This was thanks to the efforts of their attendant, Belikov, who twice a day, after obtaining permission, cleaned the room, checked for safety hazards, and replaced any wilting flowers. He had just been there a minute ago: "Housekeeping, ma'am!"

"Not needed! Go away!"

This was her time, her space entirely. She stretched out luxuriously on the bed and examined the painting above her: Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. The ubiquity of this painting far exceeded what its creator could have imagined (which was not necessarily a good thing—she had once seen it printed on a maliciously intended bath towel). People in the Renaissance generally held beautiful hopes for the future; it was the era of Venus's birth. Botticelli stood in the town square where witches had once been executed, shouting to passersby: "Humanity!" He was lost in his worshipful fantasy. "Discover beauty even in despair!"

She remembered how her father used to take her to art museums when she was young, introducing her to famous paintings. She could never remember their names; when talking about them, she had to use their most prominent features as shorthand. And that shorthand easily failed, because what she ultimately remembered were only the angels with wings leaning on musical instruments, women with flowing hair holding flowers, and priests wearing crowns and raising scepters. Soon she grew bored of it all, leaving her father to mutter to himself behind her.

God knows how much she missed him. The only truly beautiful period of her life was the time she spent with her father. He spoke little, often quietly reading the newspaper by himself. She would beg him to read the words aloud to her, then listen distractedly, asking nonsensical questions before giggling and running away. This time lasted until she went off to boarding school. They kept up a correspondence; in her letters she told him amusing stories from school and also hinted, darkly, at some hidden troubles. He would reply in his usual tone: "Letter received, don't worry, etc., see you soon." Until one day, the salutation changed to her mother's handwriting, frantic: "Family in danger, come home at once."

Death. For the first time, it occupied her thoughts, refusing to settle. Not only because death had taken her father, but because death would eventually come for her, for Venus, again and again, for everyone. Time, stretching toward that final mark of death, following its ordained order, carrying aging, pain, and illness, approached each person. She had fantasized countless times about death's invasion, trying to fight back through action. But back then, she had misunderstood the nature of death. Amid worry and confusion, she soon experienced her first death—the most magnificent, the one that never returns: the death of youth.

Just a hypothesis about how aging happens. Belikov entered to wipe the vase. Before being observed, the vase might have been brand new, or perhaps a little worn. After observation, it was determined to be exactly as old as "the present." Based on experience, we tend to believe aging occurs gradually: every minute, every second, every breath, closing in without room for negotiation. Aging forms a dense layer of copper oxide on the vase's surface. Belikov left, satisfied. The question is: how does the vase itself experience aging? If no one is watching, how does it determine whether this process occurs, and how?

Death is marching. Eighth notes. An indestructible mechanical metronome, accompanying a small, small minuet. Eternal, stubborn. Life flutters like dust. As a child playing in the garden, she caught a butterfly and, with naive cruelty, performed surgery, removing its petal-like wings, watching the wingless insect writhe in the mud. The earth clamped down on its shadow. The sky was another kind of cruelty, and we all looked up. She continued thinking: if perfection exists, this is the only cruelty, hanging over everyone's heads. Her gaze fell on Venus. This favorite creation of the goddess of beauty had nothing to do with aging, nothing to do with the notorious, poverty-stricken death of Botticelli, nothing to do with all the world's shattered hopes. Venus bore the image of beauty. She had to be immortal, carrying the most beautiful naked body in the world, bearing immortality. What people long for is immortal beauty! They long for an eternal aesthetic (or creation) so that life might escape death through the pursuit of beauty. This is the perishable gazing at the imperishable, aging gazing at eternity. And Venus was the vessel of that gaze. She hated that gaze from the bottom of her heart. Hated this vain flesh. It infuriated her—impossible! No beauty is immortal. No beauty can be eternal. The price of approaching eternity is losing beauty. Precisely because of the self-awareness and fear of being perishable, people desperately need to construct perfection to look up to. All fictional perfection is an illusion. What truly happens is not those grand immortalities, but the death of her father, her own aging, the flowers in the vase, and the vase's replacement. Nothing more.

*

Is the moment of climax the most vulnerable moment for a human being? I sat in the back row of the conference room, discussing this with a statistician who, having arrived late, hadn't found a seat. He told me, no, the most vulnerable moment is the moment before climax. Survey data shows that sixty-five percent of people feel a strange sadness in the period leading up to orgasm—the lead time varies from person to person. This phenomenon occurs because the pleasure center and the pain center in the hypothalamus become temporarily connected due to excessive stimulation. "I call this phenomenon 'the coverage effect of despair.' In my opinion," he lowered his voice and continued, "this figure is far too conservative." I took out my notebook and wrote down 65%. "I'm working on a method to extract the sadness from the human body, producing a pale white crystal, usually a bit cloudy. Isn't that amazing? Even more amazing is that, among all experimental scenarios, the sadness extracted by 'the coverage effect of despair' has the highest purity. You really should see the crystal, not to brag... It's beautiful." I wrote: The Coverage Effect of Despair. Seeing how seriously I was taking notes, he felt very satisfied and wanted to add more, but an audience member in the front row turned around impatiently, signaling him to be quiet.

He waved in apology and asked if I wanted to step outside. I checked the time; the meeting was far from over, so I followed him out.

"That's why I believe the moment before climax is the most vulnerable. Scientifically proven, from an experimental perspective." He patted his pockets. "Got a light? It's too stuffy in there." I didn't have a lighter; I shrugged and told him. "Fine, I will bear with it. So what's your take, huh?" He asked.

"From a character development perspective, it makes sense. Before climax, people's desires swell, and their threshold is irreversibly raised. That means when desire recedes, there must be an even more exhausted sense of tedium. Not just desire itself, but the desire for desire, the fear of desirelessness—all of this makes people vulnerable."

"This is a universal phenomenon. The root cause is the human need for meaning. People need a desire to bind themselves to meaning. In the case of sexual climax, desire is maintained at a very high level. Some people foresee the end before anything happens, experiencing the receding of desire in advance. Even more extreme, as you said, the lead time varies. Some people feel sadness even before the sexual act begins. Note that this is different from sexual frigidity or impotence."

"If despair covers so broadly, following this logic, we are all in the pre-climax moment, sooner or later, in a state of about to climax. We desire desire on one hand, and fear desirelessness on the other. Does that mean we are vulnerable at every moment, and no matter how hard we try, it's hopeless?"

"Driven by this fear, people sometimes choose to deny desire, or treat desirelessness as desire itself—that is, the pursuit of tranquility. Though this is absolutely impossible to achieve. People can only compromise, finding an equilibrium point where all approaching sadness becomes predictable."

"I'm thinking about another possibility: what if sadness itself is what we need? Not the coverage effect of despair, but that we inherently need despair. Depression itself is a kind of desire. Despair is part of desire. People pursue despair just as they pursue meaning. Is that possible?"

Science has not confirmed it. In our speculation, the world becomes a bizarre feast. The ecstasy of the carnival is always in the next second. Everyone is waiting, preparing to enter the moment of ultimate happiness. And before that, everyone is gloomy. The ground is sprinkled with salt, the crystals produced by the coverage effect of despair.

It was then that I heard the foreign woman's moan.

*

Just an image.

Early summer, April stumbling, cicadas crying out in terror. She turned her weapon on herself, surrendering, and began a page:

Medication. Benzene rings with ketones, hydroxyl groups with amines, carbon dissolving with lithium's various supplements. Endless instruction leaflets, stealing ten minutes every day, in exchange for what they call health. Sleepy during the day, too sleepy. My personality flattens, goes limp, like small pills, scabbing, bruising, festering, eyes open at night. Remember the deep hours? My favorite time. I feel relieved: the old day is completely gone, the new day is not yet here. I stand at the boundary where day and night meet, looking at myself. In the mirror, still breathing, pulse so faint it's negligible. The mirror's surface is cold, won't fog, chastely clean, arousing suspicion. I write these pedantic words, like seeking some prescription everywhere, knowing only to follow the map, terrified of not being precise enough. Perhaps these words are the mirror. You see yourself in them. Don't feel wronged, don't be sad, don't grieve for me, okay?

Going out, eating with his friends, drinking, laughing, talking. Imitating a normal life, caring only about the shallowest troubles. Sleeping in a nightmare. A moth, trying to avoid dust, flutters and bumps somewhere. Hearing the sound, holding its breath, bumping again, with almost desperate recklessness. People will say, " You are dirty. The meat is ready to eat; the mushrooms need more time. They split it again, and I said it would never work. Too salty, add some lettuce. Last time he sprained his ankle, otherwise that shot would have gone in. People will say, " You are sick. Before getting drunk, it seems a fly was trapped under the bottle. Is no one seeing it, or is everyone unwilling to mention it? Pass me the paper. The serial killer is a teacher? Am I dirty? Come on, let's have a toast. Cheers. Save the fly. It doesn't move, as if dead. The ink-black glass rolls over it, saying I am naturally dirty. Am I sick? Another handwriting continues the narrative in the diary: Then just hate me. Misunderstand me with all your heart. Mince every word into filling, swallow it like drinking poison to quench thirst. If that's the case, I'm willing to give up the right to words, to be a piece of meat covered in dust.

Day and night alternate, light and dark mutually silent. What kind of reality do I live in? Do people judge reality by some continuity of experience? What if reality is fragmented and dreams are continuous? Is objective reality based on mutual recognition? Then how do we handle the subjective reality of personal experience? Are dreams enough? Can one be needed by something beyond subjective reality? Knowing she can't grasp it, she just writes it down, letting these restless thoughts leave her mind, spilling onto a thin sheet of paper.

They drove to the art museum on the weekend. A Fauvist painter, dormant for years, had poured out all his heart and soul. Only a few people showed up. The poster arrogantly proclaimed "The Dawn of Future Art," facing a white, lonely wall. At first, he painted to relieve his feelings. She thought the painter was like a god, wielding wind and light, creating a miniature world in a biome tube. She painted trees, rivers, distant villages and castles, little people holding hands and singing, the Orion constellation, and small insects hibernating in the soil. He came over and asked why don't her paint herself. She laughed at his naivety. Gods do not appear in the worlds they create. She was willing to reveal a few miracles, but only to relieve her feelings. A violent fire, a bottomless abyss, a tower reaching heaven, and so on. The brush combing the pigment, she felt the solemnity of plants, yet life felt foreign. He left first to smoke. She wanted to stay a bit longer, pacing the corridor. The paintings were interesting, hard to describe. One of them used all the blacks from lightest to darkest, forming a well of interwoven ink. She thought of Kentos's poem: When my desire festers into inflammation, a wound blooming on my spinal cord, the deepest, incurable hole, holding the universe's past, all panicked winds. A small line of text labeled the work: The Death of Venus. Hard to imagine it was a flash of inspiration from a Fauvist painter. At the museum exit, he was chatting with a man. When he saw her come out, he put out his cigarette and waved goodbye.

Waving goodbye to people. Am I too pessimistic? No, it's just a form of purism. Why am I the only one? Is no one seeing it, or is everyone unwilling to mention it? An arrogant, desperate expectation: If I could be saved by a terminal illness, ending all this morbid narrative.

The Dawn of Future Art: The desire for beauty is inflamed. This despair is woven into our genes. God has taken Venus away in countless shades of black.

*

The sound of the moaning woman.

In middle school, she wrote a letter: Father, I tried smoking. It was so harsh. Why do people like smoking? Why do you like smoking? Anyway, I don't like it. My friend said, "Give it a try, it's so interesting!” I didn't find it interesting, but I tried anyway. It wasn't that bad, but I feel we do too many things like that. It's bad for our souls, don't you think? You should quit smoking, too, so you won't be so gloomy all the time. She had long forgotten the taste of her first cigarette, but now she especially wanted to light one, to get a little closer to her former self. Unfortunately, she couldn't find any. She rang the bell. Belikov responded cheerfully:

"Hello. How can I help?"

She changed her mind again. Then she hung up, letting the bell chime twice before falling silent. In the corner of the room stood a CRT television. She tried turning it on. The sound was a bit noisy, hard to focus on. The TV was broadcasting a bullfight from somewhere. The commentator was announcing in an exaggerated tone: Proclaiming how long the mighty bull had been provoked, how young and clever the challenger was, how magnificent the San Fermín festival parade shimmered—all while the price of bread climbed once more, and the youngest child lay drowned in the kitchen sink.

A violent arc of the horn drowned out his voice.

The angry bull burst out of the pen! The audience erupted in noise, watching the matador in the ring. He stood alone, already bleeding, but the honorable tradition forbade him from seeking a truce. Rising again, he raised his flag, shouted, and threw it into the air. A timid woman closed her eyes. The bull snorted heavily and charged...

On the wall facing the bed hung a mirror. Its purpose was to extend the space, creating the illusion of a larger room. Accompanied by the bullfighting atmosphere, she formed a tense counterpoint with her own reflection, which made her feel a bit uneasy. Those days would never return. Her body was like a set of fading musical beats. Aging spread relentlessly. She had never adapted to death. All her efforts were merely fabricating a kind of fulfillment to comfort herself. Now, everything was as before. She opened her eyes. The clock was ticking. A flag was thrown into the air. Venus, newly arrived in the world, stood immortal, looking down, provoking her weakened, even vulgar fate. The fate in the mirror rumbled toward her. She wanted to fight back, to defend herself. No cheers, no applause. This was a solo wrestling match.

Think about it! There was once such a lady. As a child, elders praised her talent for singing. She only smiled and didn't answer, patiently using her silence to display her dignity and elegance. Yet even so, she had her secrets. Overnight, she would sneak over the wall, fumbling in the dark, her clothes pressed against her pounding heart. The youth that never returns! Praise it as much as you like! All playwrights love to describe such a scene, such a body, a goose-necked vase, filled with the proud heart's blood of the goddess of beauty, young, full, immensely magical, ruling over the domain that submitted to her. Unfortunately, back then, she was too shy. When making love to her secret lover, she refused to cry out, no matter how the young man begged or playfully insulted her. She just wouldn't make a sound. She was too nervous! Sweating so much, determined to use all her will to stop the cry in her chest, to appear mature but not licentious. And now, in this struggle with aging, she finally embraced passion.

Surrounded by the bull and Venus, watched by the mirror and the vase, in the faded horn sounds and the dissipated smell of cigarette, she played her own body.

*

This woman's existence was so real that she felt ashamed of her own voyeurism. Before she climaxed, she quietly closed the door, left the hotel, and walked onto the street. At the corner, a new dessert shop had opened, its decor inviting. Maybe it was worth a try. She ordered coffee and sat down to think about what she had just witnessed.

He sat down across from her. This was their first meeting. Clearly, she had been inspired by what she had just witnessed, so they skipped the weather and started talking about love. Fortunately, he claimed to be a playwright (at his age, anyone with a slight dissatisfaction with life tends toward playwriting). On a whim, she told him the story of that woman. He nodded frequently, then launched into a lengthy analysis based on character motivation. She thought he was wrong, so she stopped listening. Then he talked about the origin of love, from productive activities to cultural phenomena. He said, " Love is life's self-amusement. She interrupted. No, love is the excuse people use to hate themselves.

"What do you mean?"

"That's just what I think."

She finished her coffee; the dessert had just arrived. He spoke, half jokingly: We should have sex. It would be romantic. She asked: Here? He laughed and said: Here works too. Then he kissed her and led her away. She thought it was amusing, maybe absurd. But it was dramatic, romantic. She vaguely felt it was also fittingly desperate.

After the Industrial Revolution, people became particularly enthusiastic about talking about love. Some are obsessed with their own love, others with others' love. Ever since humans intentionally or unintentionally distinguished themselves from ordinary animals, the nature of love has become a new source of confusion. For all those who exhaust themselves thinking, for those obsessed with philosophy, for the idle, for the hysterical, this confusion is highly compelling. As a kind of totem, it constantly evolves its objects, collects samples, and smooths out errors. Mental health experts remind us that we must consider one possibility: people can need love out of despair. She was smart enough not to ignore this possibility, but she couldn't find a reason to deny it. "What is love?" she asked. He bared his weapon, freed his tongue, and told her, "Love is me licking you." "Is that your so-called motivation?" He didn't answer.

Love: a prop used by cunning writers to create tragedy. As they say, destroy something beautiful. Is love beautiful? Is love the fever of consumerism? Is love a lottery ticket? A Ponzi scheme? The good karma promised by Buddha? Is love expensive? She wanted to obtain despair through love. Wasn't that another level of romance? She felt a little annoyed. How many people's fig leaves had love become? Last night, watching a rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she shouted from the audience, "Get out! I'm not a child anymore!" Was she not devout enough about despair?

She saw a vase, shattered, pieces scattered on the ground. He lost his balance, falling into a pool of red. Could he really feel pain? He should be in pain; otherwise, he wouldn't be howling, imitating a lame bird. A vase, not shattered. Molecules neatly assembled into porcelain. He walked upright, jumping into a chitinous shell. He would never feel pain. Perhaps he longed for pain; otherwise, he wouldn't be so silent, like a cage abandoned by a bird. "Have you heard of the Coverage Effect of Despair?" He shook his head.

In the intense moment, two stripped chrysalises were degenerating. "You look like a spittoon. Look at me. Can you digest it?" A little tight. "Let's agree here. We'll take a small boat; the big boat can't get through. The treasure is buried here. One, two, three, under the fourth tree." A little tight. "Look at me. Look at me. Do you feel wronged? Want to cry? Cry. Aren't you afraid?" Even tighter. "I love you." He tapped out Braille with his finger, stamping his mark on a piece of flesh. She felt it couldn't get any tighter.

...

After he collapsed, the cigarette went out. The air was a little damp, mixed with the smell of many desires. She didn't like it. It felt like doomsday.

“Before doomsday,” he said, "Let me write about you."

"Why?"

"You don't want that?"

"Why would I want that?"

"We should write all of this down. Like a calendar narrating itself, suppressing the words, writing a circular poem."

"Did you know? Doomsday is coming."

"What?"

The vase seemed to want to say something.

"You're a terrible person," she said, “also in bed.”

She did not know that she was just an image, easily used and discarded, easily written, crying once, getting angry, getting tired, then recovering, smiling, becoming the rhyme of some poem. An infinitely circular poem. An infinitely non-circular poem. Two sides of the same coin: what should I hope for? She didn't know.

No one can write a circular poem, just as no one desires despair. What's the use of writing all this down? The things we say, the things we do, the things in life—aren't they all more complicated than words? He could only write, like a child stubbornly copying new words from a textbook, believing this could solve everything. So write. Write about two anchors intertwining, tying knots to record events, the musky of the crotch, pouring down shadows, calling it love. Smear it, spread it evenly, and the belly will be full of love. She smiled bitterly. So obscure. You certainly don't understand it either. Bite me. Don't speak.

After the cheers had completely faded, she saw the bullfighter's fate. The blood was dry. Human blood, mixed with dust. A kidney had popped out messily, still trembling. She stepped forward, picked up the red cloth, and gently covered his face. She called to him, "Stop. Can you see?" He was confused. "See what?" "See if that's the heart? It's so small, so tight." He misunderstood her, taking it as a provocative command, and so he wrote her even more diligently, stroked her, crushed her with his fingertips. That woman was in an intense static state, a delicate amber under a museum's shadowless lamp, carrying the bull's horn, the iron bug's antennae, the lush leaves, a stacked force, passing at once through the glass display case, through the manuscript paper, through the hollow bricks at the top of Wenfeng Pagoda, through the smoke alarm, through the leaky forest, through the braking trace of the Toyota Corolla when the only daughter was let out of school, through the rusty abandoned filter cartridge after being bathed in steam, through the artificial lake, through the natural lake, through the engineering diagram of the land reclamation project, through the regimes on the map that are overlooked by the scale and can only be represented by numbers, through the cell wall of an ant, through the black-painted furnace burning with red coals, through the trembling hands of a death row inmate during evening prayer, through the carousel, through the cold weapon emerging from the carousel's horse, piercing and slashing the city's artery, through the whale's kneecap, fibula, tibia, through the braised, steamed, sweet-and-sour tropical ornamental fish, through the sets of parallel lines that meet at infinity, through the Lagrange point, the Mandeville point, the boiling point of an ice-water mixture, through all the socalled resilient connecting points of underground sects, through the Garden South Road stop of City North Park, through the six-thirty, weary, infinite windmill animation paradise, through the concave, convex, and plane lenses in her head, through her cloudy, dirty glasses, through her thinnest sheet of paper, through the group photo from the nineteenth's outing, the day she was first covered by despair, through the sound of her bed cries, through Venus's hair, through her tight-closed breath, through her image, through her.

She continued writing in her diary: Spittoon, harbor for filth, obsessively calculates its enzymes. She found it beautiful, though not perfect enough to call perfection. Perfection is precious, perhaps a gift, and she was reluctant to give it away easily for fear of losing it. Then she thought it didn't matter; it was just the pretentiousness of words. Yesterday she insulted Shakespeare, then apologized. Maybe she shouldn't have apologized. Maybe she should insult him again. It didn't matter. She smiled and said to herself: So this is how you fall, word by word. Can you help me talk some sense into her?

She looked for her lighter, which was gone.

Ningzhe

Ningzhe doesn't trust words—he writes them down for whatever interpretation they may allow. Complexity, he believes, ought to have irreducible parts, while a bio is far too much of a compromise. So focus on the writing; he hopes it has completed its own expression. As for anything more, he'll meet you in the lines that follow.