[december 29 / rainy / i head toward the peripheries of dreaming.]

i've been dreaming a lot lately of the salty sea air. i’ll watch the opposite bank while it recedes away from me like a scene from a hitchcock movie. at the same time, i feel the suffocation of nearly drowning. i want to escape, but i also want to jump in and let the sea sweep me to the opposite shore so that i can drift for another thousand centuries until my exhausted body swings ashore. there is something that I have lost on the other side of the sea. i miss it so, so much, but i can't find it. in these dreams my body and my world are all made up of words. so i’ll keep writing and fantasizing about a sea that didn’t exist. dreams almost feel more real than reality… and when I wake up, I taste the salt of sea in my cheeks.

[december 26 / foggy / i am the rose of loneliness and pride.]

some time ago, i met Ah-Jing in the principal's office, looking downward and only glancing up when he passed by me. his eyes were red as if he’d just cried, but he seemed relieved. i’ve never seen Ah-Jing cry since i met him in elementary school. he didn't cry when the boys yanked his hair and locked him in the women's toilet and demanded that he say whether he was a boy or a girl. i always felt so bad for him. so brave, but still so pitiful. sometimes i will think i'm so pitiful, but then i think of him, and feel that he is still more pitiful, and more brave. after that day, he didn’t come to school anymore. Meiyun told me that he was withdrawing from school that day that i saw him. i don't know where he's going after he quits school. it's hard to imagine such a slender, beautiful boy like him getting suntanned and calloused all over like the kids in my family who dropped out of school to work in manual labor.

[december 3 / sunny / i saw the night breeze kissing every lotus leaf.]

recently, i watched the "Crystal Boys" drama on TV. those boys are as beautiful as the “spring birds” in the novel it’s based on. i sometimes wonder if Ah-Jing might be in that drama. one of the actors, Xiaoyu, sang an otherwordly Japanese song, his face brimming with a milky white glow. i went to the bookstore and bought the novel. In it, the "Art God" said that civilization and education have drained the vitality of those college students - "like a bunch of plastic flowers!" i think i am also such a plastic flower. Ah-Jing definitely is not. neither is A-Hong. at the end of the book, Xiaoyu finally went to Japan to find his father. he sent a postcard to Ah-Qing that said, "Didn’t you always joke about my innocent dreams of sakura trees? Now, sakuras have actually bloomed in my dream. Next spring when they blossom again, I will send you a picture of me standing under the sakura trees, wearing a kimono." when i read it, i was happy for him too.

[december 11 / sunny / how to find my tomorrow.]

while tidying up the band's rehearsal room, i found a guitar left by Mi. she didn't answer my call or message back until several days later. i asked her if she was alright. she said she was fine, but didn’t sound very happy. she said she didn't need the guitar back, so i could leave the guitar at school for the underclassmen, or i could keep it for myself. i used to love watching Mi rehearse. music felt like such an incredible thing; when she played the guitar it was as if the world had become a little bit better. after rehearsal she would stand there and smoke. i was always too shy to talk to her, until one day she spoke to me first, so i asked, "will you become a superstar one day?" she didn't say anything, and took a long drag of her cigarette. when she graduated she wrote me a card saying that she envies me sometimes. i don’t know why she would envy such a mediocre person, but that card has been kept at the bottom of my desk ever since.

[december 6 / rainy / i need the solace of love.]

A-Hong has gone to America. i actually only heard about it from our classmate. i kept thinking i should have said goodbye to him , but it’s ridiculous for him to want to say farewell to me. he must have said goodbye to Meiyun, though. it must’ve been painful with the way they were so happy together. i don't know if it would be sadder for him to say goodbye to Meiyun or for me to not have the chance to say goodbye to him. why am i such a coward? i loved him for ten years and was never brave enough to confess, yet i’ll cry for him when he leaves. i wonder if he will think of me when he thinks of his childhood in Haipei. i still pray to meet him again at a class reunion in many years’ time.

[December 31 / sunny / hold my hand, tightly.]

the walkman that my mother gave me many years ago finally broke. i was just thinking how that thing was so resilient, it seemed stronger than me. but i guess many things have long since been foreshadowed; in these last two months listening to the Walkman, the sound was always muffled as if coming from another world, but i still couldn’t bear to throw it away. the first song i listened to was Mayday's "Embrace.” i had just gotten into middle school, and could only vaguely feel that it was a beautiful song. the lyric that I liked the most went like this: "who is going to love me / and hold my hand tightly / hold me tight, kiss me, love, don't go.” i don't know when that person will come to find me. will he ever come?