Pictures at an exhibition

I haven’t been to a museum or art gallery for some time. A long time ago, I used to spend a lot of time visiting them, especially during weekdays and those that did not charge you anything for entrance. Free entrance and weekday visits often mean you can spend a lot of undisturbed time with the art pieces you like.

Being a mediocre art appreciator, I am always attached to a limited number of European artists whose works are often “commercialized.” Most of them are not contemporary but thrived in the modern art age. For those modern and contemporary local, Chinese or Oriental artists, I owe them an apology for being apathetic to their hard work. Very often, when there are traces of resemblance to some “great” artists in their works, I judge them as an imitation, or worse, a copy. I must admit I cannot help seeking out those traces whenever I notice the artists’ names are likely to be oriental. This is indeed my problem.

An old man and his music

Six months had passed since my resignation from the job I had enjoyed for over two decades, or a request for early retirement that I always told others. So, I was not fired.

No dream to fulfill and no desire for a later reemergence, I told my ex-colleagues, who politely best-wished me more wonderful days to come. A few told me it was too soon, but they respected my decision – those were the best farewell words for me.

I was the last one to leave the office for the last time at 10:15 pm. I did not miss it badly, but the feeling was strange and eerie, and the same 10 minutes’ walk in the cold down the hill to the bus stop made me feel unreal.

The trail traveled

29 August 2020 after a long mental struggle at McDonald’s, I stuck to the plan I made the night before.

Thinking that some solitude into the countryside could soothe my soul and clear my vision, I headed up the hill through a run-down village whose people did not like the passing by of hikers who seldom respected villagers had their own life too.

The tide of hikers had long gone at 10:15am and the path was quiet but the heat was building up fast. Deep into the village, I froze at the hearing of the distant barking of a dog that was echoed by another one from the left. Damn! I made the wrong decision to start late and missed the crowd!

青 豆 角

Colours of Winter

I woke up at 10:00 to a bright sky. I forgot the curtains last night.

After eight hours’ sleep, I still felt exhausted by the five-day holiday to my father's hometown. 

At 10:30 on this twenty-eighth day of December I decided to look for winter that seemed to have lost its way to this disturbed city. Or, the city was at a loss.

While stuffing myself with a lousy breakfast at the McDonald’s, photos of autumn leaves popped up from the junk messages on my phone. Red maple and yellow ginkgo leaves they were, beautiful of course. Yeah, friends had been talking about the huge crowds of people gathering around the strips of maple trees with their red leaves last year. The scene was on the television too; not this year though. Well, I could do that, to look for the red leaves and the long waited winter.

A Journal of A Walk

10:45

Saturday

22.2.2019

Walking in a popular path of the countryside gave me a sense of security,

though it might be false.

It was a dull morning after a rainy day that probably put people off,

so the trail was quiet.

Fallen trees

What is it like starting a vacation after your boss cautioned you to mind the outstanding tasks in the last morning running up to the holiday? I had my answer years ago. Many would exclaim that the answer is illogical and irrational. Well, you are quite right, but work, fulfilling or not, can be a substance of addiction. Dependence on it is beyond common reasoning. 

Recently, I am confronted with another question – how do you spend a vacation in town but away from the packed shopping malls? This is a difficult one and I think it is a forerunner of the challenges ahead when vacation becomes synonymous with retirement, which is for some people a contemporary equivalence of waiting-to-see-God. So far, I am still searching for an answer.