Sometimes, life is like that.

Every now and then, when I come home at night, in the window in my room, I would see an old man. He usually sits on a green chair, in front of a green wooden door, surrounded by beautiful blue hydrangeas. He usually has one leg over the other, with his left arm on his lap, like he was waiting for me, with his right hand raised to say hello and a casual "hello" kind-of expression on his face.

Hello, old man. Good to see you again. I would sometimes say. But he never says anything back. And he fades away.

I didn't know him before he died. Those who did would often sing his praises and say he was funny and describe a couple of his odd habits. I always feel an affinity towards him, although I can't quite put a finger to it, but I suppose that's why he appears at my window anyway.

Perhaps anybody who have heard about him from anybody who knew him would feel an affinity towards him. Perhaps, he's just that kind of personality. I wonder if I'd like to be somebody like that - interesting, funny, clever, probably, and likeable - but I think a lot of these traits are inborn.

I suppose, sometimes, life is like that. What they may sometimes call "unfair"... which by the way, is a concept created by whom? Life is never fair, what. From the moment of birth, one may be funny or not, or a boy or a girl, or Asian or African... to the moment of death... by cancer, by premature birth, by tumbling down the stairs... since when was life ever fair?

If the old man would ever speak, maybe this could be something that I would seek his opinion on.

Until then, I'd just leave it as - sometimes, life is like that.

(sneak.)

Self-awareness

I accidentally trespassed some red ants' territory on Saturday. Now, I have ant bites on my right second littlest toe. I've tried, but I can't count how many distinct bites there are. I also don't know how many distinct ants bit on it, because I must have brushed them off too quickly. It's very itchy. I scrunch my toes on the carpet or rough ground every chance I get just to scratch it every chance I get.

There are certain parts of the body where one could get the most irritating itchy insect bites. They are:

• On a toe,
• On a sole,
• Behind a knee,
• On a private part,
  
• On any part of the body beneath the elastic band of one's underwear, especially at the pelvis,
  
• On or around a nipple,
  
• At an armpit,
  
• On an elbow,
• On a palm,
• On a finger,
• On or near a knuckle,
  
• On a ear (front and back),
  
• On and inside a nose, and
  
• On an eyelid.
  

I don't think the above list is exhaustive, but I do think it's generally important to know such things, because it's really about being self-aware. As compared to knowing the details of the next American president's campaign speech, I believe that, at the individual level, it's more important for everyone, including the next American president, to know at least some intimate details about oneself.

Also, should one ever find oneself in a mosquito infested place, with only a little bit of insect repellent, one might know better where to apply it.

想你19

昨晚，在我回家的路上, 天下起雨来。
我停下脚步, 站在路灯下, 往上望。

被照亮的雨滴，从黑夜空中 莫名其妙 地掉了下来。
我的脸 感到了雨的冷 也感到了世界的奇妙。

你说 你那里 下雪了。
雪 的感觉会很不一样吗？

By the way: The Guitar Player

The Song of the Cradled

There was a people who was poor and lived in drastic and harsh conditions. They lived in the high mountains where food was scarce and not tasty and it was cold. They don't think and invent tools to improve their lives because they don't have enough to eat and don't have enough energy to think. These people quite often gave birth to stillborns since marriages were usually between very close relatives. In fact, their children were weak and they often died before maturity.

After their passing, the dead body would be washed and cleaned and wrapped up in some hide or cloth. The parents, or if not, only the mother, would usually cradle the dead child and sing a song. This was known as "The Song of the Cradled". The song was about being born into this world and the harshness of the land and the beauty of the love that the child has never got to experience, and how fortunate it was to die young and having not to suffer hunger any more, and about how the living had to suffer their ill-fate for not being dead yet. When it should come to be their turn to die, they would not be held by their parents, but only be cradled by the merciless chill of the mountains... and they bade their goodbyes.

After the song was sung, the parents would cut the head off the carcass and de-gut the body. They, and whoever at the ceremony, would then eat the flesh of dead child.

I overheard the cats...

I overheard that night, when the cats downstairs and below my window were talking about how there's a kind of crazy cat doctor. I don't know how it works and where these cats came from and why I understood what they were gossiping about I don't know. But they talked and I overheard about how there's a kind of crazy cat doctor from their kind of crazy cat world where they came from. The crazy cat doctor was a kind of cosmetic surgeon who was basically going around trying to multilate other cats. He was cutting off tails and ears and don't know what parts off cats and then transplanting them onto other cats.

What? The other one of the cats exclaimed. no, it was more like, WHAT? (In a way you must imagine a crazy cat would say it in.)

So the first cat went on and on about how those stranger than strange cats that would go and visit this doctor would all be granted these deviant secret wishes, to have 2 tails, to have 4 ears, to have 11 tits and all that. But the real question was, is, was, is? (They weren't particular about grammar and tenses.) Where did all these extra body parts came from?

Some rumours said it was from dead cats who recently died. Some said it was from like orphans that the mothers sold. Some said it was most likely from those cats who didn't speak and were normal and didn't have higher cognitive abilities... that would have been the most humane. like, dummy cats, farmed for this very purpose.

But the truth is, was, is, was, and I know because I know someone who knows someone who went to get an extra leg (apparently so that she could scratch herself better) and saw the doctor for herself, that it was done by some kind of blue magic, or black magic, or the ancient magic of the moon. You could ask for any body parts except for the eyes. There could be no mention of eyes. Because the doctor himself also has no eyes.

You see, the doctor was a subject of mutilation by some powerful magician - probably a human being who owned him as a pet or something - who gouged the eyes out of him and transplanted his testicles into his eye sockets. Makes sense, because only they could be bothered to do something like that. Then apparently, something strange must have snapped and happened such that not only could the doctor still see very well, he had a magical power for things like that.

If you ask me, I would say that the cat doctor probably was a powerful magician to begin with. And he might could might have performed the strange transplantation himself, because of some ancient magic or something, because it's really unlikely that any human being would have known better than his cat. The testicles thing must have only boosted his initial prowess exponentially.

And they went on to talk a little about the degenerate state of their cat-kind before they went away and I couldn't overhear them any more.

(sneak.)

Relieve

There was once a girl who was at a meeting when she suddenly felt a big piece of snot falling apart from the roof of her nostrils. She found it hard to concentrate on what was discussed because the loose piece of snot flapped with her every out-breath and threatened to drop out of her nose.

It was a big one. It was a potentially gooey one as well - the hybrid kind of snot with the dry end and the gooey wet tail...

She really ought to excuse herself and go to the toilet and get it out before embarrassing herself - but being a junior executive, she was uncomfortable with having to get out of her chair in the middle of senior management's discussion and to possibly disrupt anyone by going across the room and opening and closing the big and heavy door.

Thus, she decided to take a deep breath - and to suck in the snot.

It was a big mistake. She sucked too hard, and it got pulled back too far into her nose and that was so uncomfortable that she wanted to dig it back out, but she still wanted to keep a low profile, so she struggled a bit and kept quiet. In a desperate fit, she thought to take another quick and hard breath to suck it further back in so that she could swallow it.

It was an even bigger mistake. She was right that the snot was sticky at one end, and it was stuck somewhere. She felt like gagging and wanted to cough, but again, she was shy and reluctant to attracting attention to herself, so she held it in and kept quiet, and she was did such a good job until she silently choked and died.

Soon after her death, they noticed her anyway because she relaxed and released her bowels.

(sneak.)