2011-09-30
今天重看自己寫過的文時, 有一篇蠻有趣的. 雖然是英文. 原來用途只是用來班上自我介紹而已.
蠻 喜歡最後的幾句, 我說. 抱歉 我沒有出席班上的會面. (因為是internet course, 一般上課都用網路) 或許對我來說, 讓我只成為網上一個名字, 或許會更好吧. 在21世紀, 科技先進在網路上把一個活生生的人, 變成一個代號一個名字. 事實上, 我不討厭被如此對待著. 我生來到世上, 起初恐怕只有名字而已. 我們生來一無所有, 而死的時候也是如此.
但在這兩者中間, 我選擇去寫作.
或許, 其實我不是在寫作, 我只是用一個很奇特的方法去尖聲慘叫而已.
In modern days, people are never in lack of chance in explaining who they really are. Through internet, almost everyone are weaving something about themselves: some of them are true, and some of them are less-than-all-out-honest. we are so desperate to want others to understand ourselves, as if we try to make up the physical distance unavoidingly happened in between.
I always wonder what I would be if I was living in a different era; internet gave me some, and then took away others. I have the chance to meet and know someone far far away; but at the same time, can I say I really meet or know them? Or can I say I really know who I am? In Urban Sociology, it is generally understood that people living in cities of modern times are isloated from each other because we have so many identities that we cannot integrate them in one and stay with it. Sometimes we are employees, sometimes we are students, sometimes we are friends of other, and sometimes we are part of community we are living in. People we meet everyday don't know each other, and we don't know much about the one we meet as well. It is so easy to hide our true color, and sometimes it is necessary for us to be that way.
I am a Chinese, and have been here for only a year. I couldn't speak at all when I first came to New York, and I still can't speak well right now. Writing, more than ever, have been my only salvation I could possibly have. In writing, knowledge of a language doesn't matter as much as people have assumed because writing itself has no language; rather when we try to embrace it, we have to use one of them, and generally it is our naive one.
I started to write when I was a child, and I am still writing whatever I am interested in. I had always been lonely, however, ironically, living in a foreign place hid this truth prefectly. People just think that I don't speak because I can't. It is right, but I wouldn't even though I could. It is laughable that I don't pay attention to the real world around me, but the mirror (novels and stories) reflecting it. I like to read, and I like to write stories. Just as internet leting people closer to and away from each other at the same time, reading and writing did the same thing to me. I started to be interested in observing people, while not-that-interested in engaging with them. it has happened that way for so long time. I feel like I lost the motive, and ability as well. I no longer know how to speak casually, a.k.a small-talk, with people. I am always in distress how and when I start, or response to it. "What should I say?" I wonder it in my heart, "Is he going? am I getting in his way? Is he bored? Oh, he is looking around. It must be that way. He doesn't want to talk to me at all." The anixety, together with indifference, makes me want to step backward whenever people step forward to me.
I thought long and hard why I chose a online course while I might be in need of more physical interaction among people, especailly I recently came to this country and look for more chance to speak English. I took ENG 110 last semester, and for some unfortunate reasons I have withdrawn it. Writing has alway been my heart, and if I try to show it, I probably want to show it from a safe distance. It is too close for me to attend a class and write something for it at the same time.
At the end of the day, I found out no matter how much I wrote for myself, it still wasn't me. Then I stopped. Maybe I knew too little. Maybe what I had written about myself wasn't what I really was, but what I wanted people believe myself to be. Truth speaks in the volume of silence, and did I listen to it? Now, I write not because I want people read it, but I realize in writing I can reach to the truth I alway longed to know. Writing is interesting, as if it is alive. If I want to write something good, I cannot cheat it. I cannot pretend who I am not. I cannot say something I don't know.
Even though I love writing so much, it is pretty strange I try to do it again in a school environment. Actually I have set my heart straight and decide to leave it alone. I study mathematics, economics, and sociology. I love mathematics in the way that it never changes. I don't have to second-guess the teachers like me or not. In mathematics, if I get the answer right, no teacher can hurt me in any way. Very strangely, people usually like or dislike me for the same reason. They either like me how I am different, or dislike me because of it.
Another reason I don't particularly prefer writing in schools is it has diffiernt mind-set which is not always the same as the one outside of schools. Outside, you are rewarded because you write something different; in a school, you are rewarded because you write in a way you are supposed to. I always treat writing as some from of arts, and always try to find a new and effective way to do it. It is fun, but I risk my grade unnecessarily. Teachers are supposed to teach you something, and they see it that you write something you are supposed to as a sign you have learned it. It was how I suffered before I came here. So, in order to preserve something I love, I decided not to do it anymore, at least not doing it in schools. I weighed the idea that if I should take English as my major, but determined it wasn't for me. For one, I don't think I can be very good in English writing; for another, insecurity inside made me take a long time before I trust a particular teacher would judge my writing fairly. So, here, and ENG 120 I will have to take next semester, are going to be my last chances to open my heart, as in Economics or Mathematics there are no reason to know how I feel. For me, my emotion is so strong and overwhelming I just have to dis-attached from it, and sometimes rationality is the prefect place for us to hide our feeling.
I have to apologize that I didn't come to the meeting, as I had time-conflict as well. Another reason is, maybe it would be bettter for me to be just a name, some letters or whatever. In 21th centuries, technologies are so advanced that they can reduce a man to be a name in internet. In fact, I am not particular unhappy in being treated that way, as I don't think I have much more than a name when I start with; we are born with nothing, and eventually we will die in the same way.
In between, I write.
Or maybe I am not writing, I am just screaming in a very strange way.
More......
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