(中文)
(34 records of a saddle)
(the saddle feed)
(drops of ink)
(introduction)
(diary)
(rss)
Record No. 34
It rained all day today. Yesterday evening as I lied down for bed, I’d fantasized of waking up early today to read Nine Diaries, spending my morning in overcast solitude communing with Yu Dafu, but I didn't wake until a little past nine, and it wasn't until the afternoon that I was able to sit down to read his descriptions of an impromptu trip he took to Hangzhou in an attempt to intercept the lady he was in love with at the train station, only to fail to find her, returning to Shanghai and finding a middle aged prostitute to bring comfort to his broken soul.
The book has me thinking a lot about diaries. I started reading the book on Thursday evening, and so on both Thursday and Friday after work I felt like I was in the pocket world of his diary, a world of cafes and brothels and the cramped office buildings of publishing houses. The fact that it’s a diary and there’s an entry for each day, even (especially) the days where nothing happens, there’s a kind of comfortable repetition, the sort of loop I imagine people play “cozy” games like Stardew Valley for. Sometimes I wish I wrote a “real diary”. Rather than being a place to record the happenings of each day, I imagine diaries as place of escape, somewhere to step into each night before bed and forget wear and tear of the day. Preparation for dreaming, if you will.
Xie Wang has a group chat which basically acts as his own diary. There’s a few dozen people in the group, and conversations start and stop, but it’s dominated by the regular updates about whatever is going through Xie Wang’s head at the moment. When Fish complained about how all Xie Wang ever talks about is eating, books, and his walks, Xie Wang replied that he focuses so much on the minutiae of these simple activities he repeats everyday as a kind of preparation for death. Close observation of the small details of everyday life put one in a mental state that approximates death. “So you’re getting old?” Fish snapped back. “It has nothing to do with age. Old Zhang is older than me, and he’s never told me about what he eats.”
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