雨

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A typhoon does not rage outside. It endures. In China, you have to wait. It has always been like this. I will wait for the rain to stop. I will wait to learn my last day of work. I will wait to leave.

The curtains closed, the lamp left on. I tend to regard my days off as over once I reach 4 p.m., because by that time I wouldn’t be working anymore anyway. It has always been like this. I see the clock at 3:45 and feel a loss.

I was watching a pirated spring blockbuster. I heard blue-white movie choir voices climbing the trees of a spectral CGI forest and remembered nights cleaning my old apartment. Bjork slipping over the wooden floor, licking candle flames, rising to the high white ceiling. It’s not up to you, it never really was. The watermelon scent of my environmentally-friendly spray cleaner -- I was never really convinced it was helping anything. The night’s supper, a salmon filet, sweet chili, rice, pushed around on a plate, bitten at once or twice, then fermenting in the overpriced black tin trash can (it has always been like this). A rare time, back then, in which I felt whole while alone. I rarely cleaned.

We grow nostalgic for old problems; in this moment I regret that that time and place will never be mine again. I have always been like this.