Remove a man from WILLIAM LOWE? Sounds like a tree (6)
2026-01-04
“咱们的—”他看了看我的脸，那是一张白人的脸。我笑了。他接着说， “北京的—”
2026-01-01
这次来北京，是一次毫无目的的漫游。
这几天，我偶然走过许多熟悉的地方，让我想到了一位半年前失联的朋友。因为我平时回消息很慢，我失联的朋友不少，但这位不一样，他是为数不多没有回我消息的人。
我们是在北京认识的。他的文字很幽默，也很流畅。我记得第一次打开他发来的链接时，我是多么的忐忑，因为我知道，如果他的散文写得平庸、浅薄，我们大概也就只能是泛泛之交。我读不懂那样的人，也不相信他们能读懂我。可结果，他的文字别有趣味，然后我发现：文字好，才可怕。
那是因为我从小就不知道什么叫“深交”。这多半和我的表达方式有关：我是一个无法通过口头语言表达自己的人。假如有人观察了我整整一个月的时间，把我的一举一动尽收眼底，他大概对我是什么样的人还会一无所知。也许在别人听来，这是一个极其荒谬的想法，但我相信这是真的。所以我读懂了他的文字，却迟迟没有把自己写的任何一篇给他看。（真的是这样吗？还是说，那时根本就没有什么拿得出手的“作品”可以给他看？我记不清了。）
我上次见到他是在英国。那时，我已经收到了三所学校的博士录取通知，理应感到高兴，但我只是疲惫，想停下来、想思考、想隐退。
三月的某一个下午，我们面对面坐在剑桥的一处咖世家，我抿着廉价的低因拿铁，说，有时候，只是别人的一句话，就可以让你对他彻底失望，不再当他是朋友。说完以后，我才意识到这是一句多么残忍的话。不对，我又改口，也许并不是那样的吧。但他回答说，没错，就是那样的。
那天我就一直在想，到底是他说的一句话，还是我说的一句话呢？又是哪一句话？（我很确定，那句话已经被我们其中一人说了。）可想了半天，竟还是想不出。
总之，他人不错，就是有点太像我爸，每次都会往最糟糕的方向想。（毕竟都失联半年了，总得找个理由不惦记他。）
2025-12-31
今天所看到的平凡人事物：in a 茶姬, a young couple signing a contract for a house, and he uses her liquid lipstick to press his fingerprints (I suppose blood is not very fashionable now); at the highest point in 日坛公园, three men fly their kites out from the old pavilion into the new city skyline, and there are kilometers and centuries between them; a bit farther down, I see someone who has a similar face to mine: 逆号，我们是外国记者，she says in her warbling tones, broken, and he translates her Chinese into better Chinese—naturally they are asking sensitive questions about a certain island that begins with a T (can they think of nothing else?), and the 老太太 gives a full interview before they ask, Would you mind saying this in front of the camera, and she waves her hands and shakes her head and continues her walk down the stone path. (The cameraman---he must be the cameraman, since there are only three of them, and he is neither the reporter nor her Chinese-Chinese translator---studies some hedge, and his camera is nowhere to be seen.)
2025-12-30
昨天有一位朋友开车到机场来接我。不知道是不是因为倒时差带来的疲惫，还是因为16个小时没摄入咖啡因导致的剧烈头疼，但她开车的方式竟是说不出的熟悉。我好像在梦里那样开过车，又或者在游戏里。途中，她时不时注视着屏幕上的高德地图，问我，“这是对的吧？对吧？”（须知，我并不会开车。在美国不会，更何况国内呢。）
她开的是一辆宝马电动车。她说，这车型比国产电动车贵很多很多，所以卖得不好，最后也就被下架，现在算是罕见了。难怪胡同里的老头老太太都盯着她的车看。这儿可以掉头吗？（我不知道。）
…
电动车行驶时几乎没有声音，车外的尘嚣也听起来不真切，像在海水下游泳时听到的声音，也像小时候调皮捂住耳朵时所听到的声音。几年前，某一天凌晨，我第一次乘坐电动车到机场，一路上便朦朦胧胧地想，要是可以一直活在这样的声音里，那该多好啊。可我毕竟还是到了机场，下了车。
2025-12-29
This is what happens when you buy non-refundable airline tickets in a post-surgery fugue. More on that later.
2025-12-29
The last two weeks were, among other things, mostly filled with pressure-cooker paper writing. I finished footnotes on the final final paper over 30,000 feet in the air. (I am writing now from China.)
I actually do not want to talk about my papers (which, if it is a subject at all, is a subject for another day), but the pressure-cooker always makes me reconsider just about everything in my life; some of the smaller things, like “I should have done physics” or “what if I had taken the Harvard offer?”* lead to bigger things… and I am rambling now, not in the cute way, but in the medically-cannot-have-more-tea way.
The conclusions are pretty simple, I guess: first, I do not want internet in my home anymore; and second, I do not actually enjoy buying things and especially do not enjoy owning lots of things, and maybe that is more normal than modern America makes it seem. I do not want a big house or a mortgage or whatever. I think my maximum operable space is probably around 500–1000 square feet. I do not want to use credit cards. I do not, and have never wanted, a six step skincare routine with a laundry list of questionably-sourced ingredients to absorb indiscriminately into my body. (I would rather exercise, not eat sugar, and avoid histamines.) I have actually faced a lot of judgement from certain people for no longer expressing desire in these things. In fact I am more so afraid—how could you not be when faced with the Storage Unit? (That horrible middle class American dream-turned-nightmare.) A house which is too big but somehow you always say is too small; a leased car, or two, or three; loans; an expensive bag which you must always worry about spilling liquids in… I can make an exception for good groceries and books---that is, in my mind, proper nourishment.
I promise this should all make sense. Freedom is maybe something like a lack of blockage (达), which, unlike what some people I have encountered seem to think, does not mean that you are free to commit villainous deeds or abuse others or that you need to be at least a millionaire. I fully believe it is possible to be a person who experiences this openness, this freedom, in most situations. But the more your life stiffens, the more you desire, the more you purchase, the more your time is eaten by the algorithm—that is when you become poor, and you look around and see no more paths (穷).
Xunzi put it pretty well: “君子役物，小人役于物。”
You need both 1) a good understanding 2) money, because money grants you time, which is freedom, but if you do not have a good understanding, then no money will ever be enough. I have seen it again and again—including, even, in my younger self, who wore secondhand Prada, but thankfully is dead now.
*I made the right choice, for a lot of reasons, promise.
2025-12-27
There is this guy who texts me every month to ask if I am coming back to Beijing. We met the day before I left last year, and yes I am coming back to Beijing, but I will not tell him; he never met me, he met something like a character from《封锁》and the only difference is that he remembered my contact information.
2025-12-16
The website goes silent as I, a freshly transformed paper writing machine (PWM), descend into FINALS. I will begin my human rehabilitation program in a week or so.
2025-12-12
It would be silly to watch a slightly more intelligent dolphin look down on other dolphins, or for two intelligent dolphins to belittle each other. I am sure we are all someone else’s dolphins.
2025-12-10
Recently I have become interested in the United States, but as a foreigner would.
2025-12-10
2025-12-9
Very-slight-almost-imperceptible intimations of violence: in the morning, I dropped my hairdryer in a filled bathtub; at dinner, I watched a video of my friend shooting an M16 in New Jersey, and twice that day I visited a building which had been recently burnt and blackened and it was only on the second visit when I noticed DANGER ASBESTOS (or, ASBESTOS DANGER) on the police tape.
2025-12-07
The sirens start (like a pack of coyotes, like calls to prayer)
2025-12-06
Yesterday I met with Dr. B. We talked about the Youth (which is actually my generation, but recently I really feel very old). It’s the usual: they don’t read, they don’t think, they use ChatGPT, they can’t even realize what it is that they’re missing or what it is that they’re refusing to engage with … It’s true though. I know we’re losing it because I also grew up in a place where education was a footnote to making money.
They don’t understand that generative AI is predictive, which means that it “writes” based on writing, based on our current paradigms, our current epistemology, our current knowledge; how can we be sure that any of this is “true” to begin with? Imagine, for a moment, that we had generative AI in the 14th century, and think about how it would answer your questions. (The absolute dogmatic confidence that we have in modern knowledge is astounding.) I could go on, about the MIT study which showed that AI usage negatively affects brain interconnectivity even after the user stops, or about how the smart kids have better chance of using AI to effectively game the system (no equalizing here), but I won’t; I’ve said it too many times.
(I try to remind myself it is always good to ask the questions, "Why? To what end?")
2025-12-05
I have lived on third floors, fourth floors, fifth floors, and once even the eleventh floor, but I hated that—though I could and did run up and down the stairs, for all pragmatic purposes, there was still an elevator in between me and the ground. The elevator would break; stop in-between floors, refuse to open, even once, as I was moving out, impatiently snap shut (despite my leg) and swipe my things away. When the elevator went down with me in it, I knew it would inevitably go up again, with me in it, and when it went up again, still with me inside, I knew it would inevitably go down, with me, and that this would continue endlessly until eventually I died or the elevator died or I moved out. (Stairs are different: I can stop the cycle, I can go up, I can go down, I can go sideways, or knock on a neighbor’s door, or look through the trash, or pause at the window.) I also lived across from the elevator; most people might hear their neighbors shouting at their computer or (rarer in this day and age) another person, but I heard the elevator. I did not like the elevator.
I have also lived in a house, my parents' house, which used to be my house as well. When I was a child, they put a glass door in the back and I had nightmares about it for weeks or maybe months. Recently my father expressed interest in replacing the entire back wall with glass, and I told him that someone would throw bricks into it. He asked who would do such a thing and I said me, myself.
2025-12-04
Underlining in red pen---a tremor in my wrist, a bump on the train, and how quickly it turns into a strikethrough! (There are milimeters between approval and disapproval?)
2025-12-04
Something about PhDs: basically, you can be very abnormal and even totally unable to do dishes like a regular person (in my observations, this is either: obsession with dishes, or ignore dishes; if I ever find a PhD who is normal about dishes I will be concerned about their dissertation), but the PhD functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card. I think. The kitchen sink is a microcosm. Now you are just an eccentric.
2025-12-03
Now and then I remember Harold Bloom’s only novel. I think it’s worth talking about. It’s really, really terrible: sometimes I read it aloud to my family or English-speaking friends and we laugh and then close the PDF on the second or third page, or skip to the middle and laugh some more (and then we close the PDF).
Whatever you might think about Bloom, and I will say I probably agree with him on more points than most do, it is a good reminder that there is something very different between scholarship and fiction (for all their similarities). He obviously does not write in the style of American illiterate (that terrible style of the overly confident adult child), but there is something extremely dead in his fiction.
2025-12-03
If I were smarter, I probably wouldn’t write anything at all. Sometimes I think the creative impulse is just the death throes of someone realized their mortality, but has not quite figured out what to do with it. When I make things I probably feel that I extend myself, that I create a new universe, one which can be lived again and again, perpetually recreated and revised and represented in the minds of others, and yet at the same time I surrender my limited time to assemble some (in)organic material, or bytes on my computer, into some lifeless design. So if I were smarter, I'd probably give it up.
2025-12-02
Occasionally, when I have guests, I wish I could put a curtain over my bookshelves.
2025-12-02
Yesterday the consulate was mostly filled with Chinese-Americans, some Indian students, and a few white boyfriends. Eventually, an older white man named Jim sat down next to me and began to scroll his 朋友圈. I cannot help but wonder if we would have talked, or someone would have talked to me, if there were no phones. Even now, sometimes older people start talking to me unprovoked, and I think, how strange, and then remember that it is me who has become strange, the eternal stranger, because I grew up post 9/11, in this world where every stranger is scared of strangers, and so I didn’t speak to anyone until my number was called and stranger #194 went up to submit passport #194.
When I came back, my cat started to vomit on the carpet, so I directed him to the cover of my university’s HR benefits. It was a success, but I guess I will never figure out what those benefits are; well, I’d rather have a clean carpet.
2025-12-01
Sometimes, when I am walking around the city, I smell something so similar to a scent I have smelled before, that I have to stop walking, because my vision is taken over by memory, and I am there and no longer here, if only for a moment. (It happens with sound, too, but not nearly as often.) Some places I have been transported back to: the wooded area around my grandparent’s island home at dusk, with hydrangeas; underneath the pine tree in Sasha’s backyard, having lost something; a hutong in Beijing, where it was raining, and there were two of us, but I only had the one umbrella---predictably, I didn’t share, not because I am rude but because I thought they’d rather get rained on; the museum of children, with that sick smell of white bread that I was not allowed to see nor eat; and some where I have forgotten too much to name them, and endless others. I never really know what to do about it.
2025-12-01
I am very cautious about people who pack their sentences with -isms and -ologies and names of dead men. I call it “术语堆砌法.”
2025-12-01
(Re-)exposure to something cruel and/or violent does not just force you to face something already within yourself, but it can seem that way, and some people like to pretend it is this way. If you are not careful, it is more like a growing tumor, or a knife, dragged across an old scar, widening it.
2025-12-01
A silly problem with an impossible premise: I do not like the idea of having a style, somehow, I want to be like tap water; style seems to be a perversion. I can’t shake it. I used to get nightmares about tattoos. It’s the same thing.
2025-11-30
Do you remember the Onion video about the man who studied anteaters?
2025-11-30
I promised myself I would write more about my own experiences, not just my thoughts, but it is possible that my thoughts are just my experiences: I am almost always "out of the moment." Anyway, I went to the Met today. The weapons exhibit did not have any guns past the mid 19th century... Probably it would be too uncomfortable to have an automatic machine gun at the end of a long hall of ornate and antique swords, daggers, rifles, etc., but they should really try it.
It may have been my state of mind, but I did not find the newest exhibits very pleasant. I spend too much brain power thinking about the optimal route. I want to read everything, but then I am reminded why I do not like my phone, or too much web-browsing: my brain is shattered with so much information, too discrete, like swiping through posts. Has even the museum become phone-ified? Or is it the audience (me) who is the problem, and the museum was really always like this? (It is probably a bit of both. The museum was always a discontinuous presentation of items and information. But we all have internet brain now.)
2025-11-30
我从小就是一个表达欲很强烈的人，可惜我的表达能力一直跟不上。再说呢，我总是在中文和英文之间盘旋、不断失衡，像跷跷板的两端一样。
A thought: “the wind is really big today”（今天风很大）
2025-11-30
I am an elephant. (We are all elephants, and we are all blind men. A blind man could spend a month with an elephant and still not know where his elephant liver is, or if he has a liver, or if it is soft.)
2025-11-29
Reading Gaskell in between Brontë and Dickens is like putting the bread between two real courses (lobster risotto and baked Alaska).
2025-11-29
A novel is like a building, but construction is not so easy, and seeing is not so simple. Best way to understand, then, is to write yourself -- to become a novelist and to experience the "dangers and difficulties of words" (Woolf). Both great perception and great imagination is needed to read; and maybe this is why I do not trust readers who cannot themselves write, because they can only see that the building is made out of bricks, but not the ovens in which they were fired, the source of the clay (perhaps even concrete), the carvings across the lintel, or that I have stolen some bricks from another building, that some are not even bricks...
Reading can become passive (to READ as you would WATCH), but it shouldn't be. Writing demands the mind to be active.
I see different bricks, different entrances and exists, depending on whether my mind is set to scholarship (the production of a paper) or tailored to fiction (the production of a story). And then there is another, which I have not experienced too often, not since K-12, where the novel overtakes me, and I forget that the bricks do not exist, and when I remember my past I must sort through bricks and determine whether they belong to a book-building or a real-building. (But is there really even a strict, or meaningful, difference? And another thing: my dreams are often so mundane that I spend minutes trying to decipher whether they happened or not, and sometimes it is a real experience which I mistake for a dream, until I confirm with another that it had in fact happened. It is without a doubt very jumbled now.) What about painting? Is there a painting mode of reading? (Is this when I pay more attention to white space and the contours of the words and letters rather than their content?)
But worse than all that is complacency.
2025-11-29
Ingestion; I read a book, or media of some sort. Digestion; I think it through while doing nothing. Regurgitation (or something more pleasant); creative output.
I think, through coursework, I have ruined the balance between these three, and I am in a constant state of indigestion. In high school, or even the first two years of college, I did not take my coursework seriously so I could pursue what I wanted. I was not so overwhelmed with new standards and new information and new ideas that it became difficult to work through problems I wanted to work through. Now it takes a long time to finish things, and before I finish I have decided that I need to begin again, because I have ingested too much and I realize the insufficiency of the original. This is good, but too much "food" will kill a man, kill his brain.
2025-11-29
I am glad I know people who will allow me to question the election cycle. It is okay not to have answers.
2025-11-28
But nothing touches at the atomic level! (So I am told)
2025-11-28
Sometimes I get so frustrated with creation: when I think about how the universe will eventually end in heat death (probably; this may be our best hypothesis, but it's all in my head ... never once have I seen something which suggested "heat death" to me, you know? People used to look into the sky and experience the firmament or 分野 or what have you, and now I experience "luminous spheroid[s] of plasma held together by self-gravity," but really we still all just see a bunch of white dots on near-black) or how I will inevitably add to the pile of errors and words and so, so many words and that my "work" will not necessarily be any more universal or less in error than what has come before. But is "universal" really what I want? To make the "universe?" (No.)
I could write more on that, but I won't; I want to talk about things (not) lasting. There is a scene in 三体, on Pluto, when the solar system is about to get super smushed, and they discuss what lasts the longest: not electronics, not paper, but stone carvings... (I want to make video games, but I always keep coming back to words, just words.)
2025-11-28
Started a website so that I can shout into the void and maybe write in more complete sentences; instead of, you know, writing just enough so that I can recover the original thought. (Maybe it will still be that.) I really took "言者所以在意，得意而忘言" and ran with it.
2025-11-27
Thanksgiving dinner: “从来没有人这么想过！” x 15. What to make of this? Why say this?
