Sunday, March 19
enduring is painful, yet at times, it is also an art.quote above taken & translated from [ bian1 cheng2 lang4 zi3] pg 19, written by gu-long. i couldnt think of any other word for (ren3 shou4), so enduring it is. other words could be persevering, tolerating, etc. anyways, that quote has nothing to do with my mood today. just thought it would be a sort-of effective way to start. yeah, im exploring ways to begin.
so, i read a few pages of bian1 cheng2 lang4 zi3 today while waiting for jasmine in the mcdonald's near west mall. and i realised how much i underestimated gu3 long2. of the three most famed wuxia writers, i always thought gulong was the least deserving, because well his books seem more adventure and thriller, accompanied with lots of beautiful (naked) women and wine. & e main characters seem too perfect to be true.
but i was very wrong. of what i have read of his books, maybe i was younger then, but well now i appreciate his style of writing so much more. in a few simple words, he portrays a picture, a scene, a mood, an atmosphere. something liang-yu-sheng & jin-yong cannot do. for example, he starts the book this way: the house did not have any colour, only black! and on the same page, he portrays the image of an elderly woman and her young son, both dressed in black, welding black weapons. imagery of the son: the setting sun illuminated his face. his features were well-defined and handsome, but they seemed as if they were carved from the ice from the mountains yonder.
the setting sun waned, the wind raged.
its just so nice okay! my translating does it no justice, im afraid. go read the chinese version online to understand! okay and in the same scene, (the very first few pages of the book), the woman tells her son to take revenge on the people who killed his father. the son hesitates, but the woman is so full of hatred that she tells him, "if you dont slice the heads of your enemies off, and come back to see me, not only will the heavens curse you, i will curse you myself!" then the next line is " the wind raged. she watched him walk out of the temple slowly, walk into the darkness of the night. gradually he seemed to blend in with the darkness as one. the knife in his hand seemed to slowly blend in with the night, as well. at that moment, darkness enveloped the earth."feel the imagery, its beautiful, seriously. especially in chinese, everything is so much shorter and crisp. you feel the woman's evil, her hatred, her pent-up loathing. you feel her son's lostness (portrayed in the darkness of it all, note all the clothes were black, the things in the temple were black, the knife was entirely black, outside the wind raged etc.)and later you find out the son's name is hong-xue. as in red snow. which the woman said was name because when he was born, his father died and dyed the surrounding snow red with his blood. thusly the name. its really amazing larh. gulong really uses short sentences to illustrate and sketch the image of what he wants us to feel. and it works =Dokay, enough irrelevant stuff. today was quite kool, am feeling guilty because i overslept so i missed morning service and only went to youth. where we learnt how to write our testimonies! whee im half done with mine (typed out) so i'll paste it on here when im done. im very longwinded. and jasmine came over to do work -coughs violently-.whee im praying desperately for God to help me tomorrow because of piano performance. i havent practiced since like er, forever. sigh. not my fault exactly, my finger was malfunctioning as you know thanks to kayaking injuries. wait actually i didnt tell you. my finger was bruised all purple-black, (yes im serious. no exaggeration.) and its still painful when i use strength on it but it looks fine now. not the point. im gonna practice lot tonight. and heck care about my finger. though itd probably hurt. -sniff-.alright shall stop boring you all with insignificant details of my mundane life. have a g'day, mate! kuz schools up tomorrow. groans.
i was green-ed at 5:20 pm
