Diet

‘I am on a strict diet to gather the power – the Power and Melancholy of every poor poet.’ He is always ashamed of saying ‘poor poet’. It hints a certain fetish or vanity for the ‘neglected poet’ genre, revealing himself as someone who ‘celebrates mediocrity’. In short, there is a kind of comfort-seeking and condescension in this sort of admiration, a purely performative enunciation.

But he continued, ‘The diet of a neglected poet. Bread and plain water, porridge with canned peanut,’ he though to himself, this diet was a local Chinese entrepreneur-philanthropist’s as well. ‘…he would agree with our taste. And I would savour every flavour of his favourite film, in return. The main reason I loved Stella was because I like the song ‘Stella was a diver’. Now I can no longer enjoy this song in totality. I need to find another Stella to play and sing the song to. Last night I was chided for being unreal. But what Borges had written on Infinity and Immortality isn’t just a consolation or opium.’

With the expression and gesture of someone who was self-agitated by his own speech, he declares, ‘I think we paid too much respect to Reality. It is a false reverence. “In reality, we can’t live forever” but Reality is a merely the adopted son of truth suffering from autism. We should not underestimate the strength of illusion.’