I lowered the lamp to
raise a shadow
If you really think you are a poet, send her not poems but
money. Read about somewhere – pretend to forget where – that celebrates epistolary
relationships. Not in the past, seventeen, nineteenth, eighteen, but the future
utopia, twenty, twenty. People who use scientific jargons to depict childish ideas
are no different from the decadent writings in French of frivolous thoughts in
sombre and literary tone.
If you think you are a writer, write not words but numbers and
decimals on your notebook, incomes and liabilities, surplus and deficits, plus
minus. Write from the back, from recto to verso, like how a Chinese book should
be read. Stop singing, stop irritating those walking or working next to you,
stop telling people that there is always a book reference for every day-today issue,
for every thought in their head.
If you think you are a painter, paint not on canvas. Paint
on walls not pictures but an even colour. Paint on furniture, unstable tables
your friend made. Use enamel, emulsion, and lacquer not oil or acrylic. Paint
drips on your boots like a worker, not an artist. Draw on a sketchbook so that it is easy to
keep but almost impossible to exhibit.
