Fragments / 碎片
Fictional, meaningless writing practice. 虚构的，无意义的写作练习
I did the repetitive task of proofreading clocks when I worked at the clock store. There were thousands of wall clocks and pocket watches in the room. I went back and forth between them like a fireman, synchronizing only two at a time. However, after only a few days, the clocks became unevenly fast or slow. I slept on the floor at night, surrounding by time. The light of the full moon shining from the skylight on the floor. At that moment I realized that all the clocks in the house had slowed down by five minutes. It was five minutes! I sometimes felt that the earth would deliberately mess with going one minute more or less each day. I finally quit after months, and the reason for my resignation was “TIME IS ANNOYING.”
那时在钟表铺，我还在重复地做校对时钟的工作。在房间里，几千只挂钟和怀表，我像救火队员一般来回穿梭在这些钟表之间，每次只能校对两只，但只要过上几天，这些钟表就变得快慢不一。晚上我睡在地板上，被时间包围，满月的光从屋顶的天窗下直射在地板上，我才意识到，整个屋子的钟全慢了五分钟，五分钟。我有时觉得地球会故意捣乱每天多走或者少走一分钟，最后我辞职了，辞职原因写着，“这恼人的时间”。
We battle with our fictitious enemies in rooms, in cabinets, under beds, behind televisions, in the corners of refrigerators, in the buckets of toilets… Armed with weapons, we arrest them and place them in a fictional prison, recording in our own history: shame that today nearly a thousand more dangerous people have been found and punished. Is it possible that they do not exist because they are as we expect them to be, that they exist because it’s much harder not to think about them than to think about them. They are our habits that make us struggle. They have surrounded us from afar.
与我们虚构出来的敌人做战斗，敌人在房间里，在柜子里，在床底下，在电视机后，在冰箱的角落，在马桶的水桶…我们手持武器，将他们逮捕并置入一个虚构的监狱，在自己的历史上记录着：雪耻，今天又有近千个危险分子被发现并惩处。有没有一种可能，它们不存在是因为它们就如我们所料想，它们存在是因为我们不去料想的难度，已经远远大于去料想它们的难度，它们是我们的习惯，使我们举步维艰，它们已经远远地包围了我们。
By chance, I discovered the secret that I was dying with the help of a tool. I became hopelessly worried about my health and wanted to do something meaningful with the time I had left, even if I didn’t know when and how it would come. I remembered the fear I felt as a child when I first realized death, and I hid under the covers and cried. It was real fear, the fear of something that would surely be there. It wasn’t until years later that I became adept at accepting it and willing to live in its shadow, like cleaning the blade of a kitchen knife as I do every day, even appreciating it aesthetically.
偶然间，我借助工具发现了一个秘密，那就是我正在死去。我开始无可救药地担心自己的健康，想用剩下的时光做一些有意义的事情，即使我不知道它将何时如何到来。我想起童年时第一次面对死亡这件事时的恐惧，我躲在被子里哭泣。那是真实的恐惧，为那些必将存在的东西感到恐惧。直到多年之后，我已经熟练地接受了这件事并愿意生活在它的阴影下，像每天清洗着菜刀的刀刃，甚至用审美欣赏起这件事。
In another closet, there are clothes hanging that you never wear, that you always bypass when you are in the mall, that you never realize you may put on someday. Now I give you a blacksmith’s shirt, a return-from-sea fishermen’s cloth, an actor’s costume, and erotic underwear. Today, you are dressed up as a little girl. By putting on clothes that don’t match you body, you have a new identity that you never had. Please use it to look at the world, just as we use hair style to judge gender and amount of assets to divide class. Put it on, go out, and let it turn your role. You, a transvestite, give a cosmopolitan speech to your closet.
在另一个衣柜里，挂着一些你从没有穿过的服饰，商场里经过时你总是绕开它们，你从未意识到你也可以拥有他们。今天我送给你，一个铁匠的服饰，一个出海归来渔民的服饰，一个演员的服饰，一件情趣内衣。今天，你被打扮成一个小女孩，穿上与这些你并不相称的服饰，你就拥有了一个从未有过的新身份，用它看看这个世界，就如我们用发型来判断性别，用资产划分阶级。穿上它，出门，让它转动你的角色。你，一个异装癖，对着衣柜发表世界主义的感言。
How should I tell potatoes that they shouldn’t sprout now?
应该如何告诉土豆它们不应该现在发芽呢
Return myself to history
把自己归还给历史
Confidence is asymmetrical
信心是不对称的
Gazing at my wrist
凝视我的手腕
Take your occasional works
拿着你偶有的作品
There’s no way you didn’t get that message
你不可能没有收到那一则消息
Opinion / 观点
Immature Opinions based on observations. 不成熟的观点
I sometimes just don’t understand good or evil, right or wrong, true or false. There are too many corners of the world that have not yet been illuminated. We are either too large to say where one of our emotions comes from sometimes or too small to try to understand the mechanics of how society works and to describe history.
我有时就不明白，好与坏，对与错，真与伪。这个世界有太多尚未被照明的角落，我们要么过于庞大，有时甚至说不出自己某一种情绪的来源，要么过于渺小，试图理解社会的运转机制，或是描述历史。
It’s an interesting fact that those who expand the boundaries for human beings, such as scientists and artists, often don’t work for money but for social currency. But if you want to be an artist, you have to first accept some obvious risks, such as that your work will not be seen or recognized for a long time, or that you are working in the wrong direction for a long time. It is the same as the risk of scientific research. So I have almost given up trying to convince others to recognize my work. Because of possible interference from others, I have also given up catering to others’ preferences. I sign an agreement with myself before each writing session: I have the clear knowledge that every writing is loss.
一个有趣的事实，为人类扩大边界的那些人，比如科学家和艺术家，往往并不是为了钱而是社交货币工作。但如果你想成为一个艺术家，就得接受一些看得见的风险，比如自己的成果长久地不会被人看到，或者不被认可，或者自己长久地努力的方向是错误的，这种风险，和科学研究的风险，是一致的。所以我几乎放弃了尝试说服他人对我进行认可的努力，因为可能的干扰也几乎放弃了迎合他人喜好的努力。每次写作前我都会与自己签一份协议：我已清楚地知晓，写下即损失。
By writing the story, facing and trying to reproduce my inner feelings at that time, I reacquainted myself.
通过写故事，正视并尝试复现当时内心的感受，我重新认识自己
I’ve been writing about what happens in reality. I love the subtle structures that happen by chance but keep repeating themselves, making up the parts of our lives that are remembered.
我一直在写现实中发生的事情，我喜欢一些精巧的结构，它们偶然发生但不断地重复，构成了我们生命中被铭记的部分。
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