I have kept a bag of organic apples during this week, and they have been soothing my fatigue that accumulates during the day! Those organic jewels are small enough that I can hold them tight in my palm, a good size for a couple of satisfactory bites after breakfast or before dinner. Excellent taste!

On another day in the library, a lady was sitting next to me in the computer room eating. Of course, eating is absolutely disallowed in the library! But she was even eating an apple! And doubtlessly her enjoyment was creating an enormous crunching sound 'echoing' in the room. I side-glanced at her and her food. Curious was that her apple had a lot of bruises, or to put it more accurately, a lot of holes spreading over its surface. That was also a palm-size apple, and the size of which made the cluster of wounds even more noticeable. Perhaps she had put the apple together with a pointy pen in her handbag, I guessed.

When I was looking out from the window today in my study room in the library. I found the apple tree right outside of it leaden with fruit now. And suddenly I saw that most of these green apples shared the same feature with the apple in the computer room. They were bruised and damaged in a quite identical way: now I know, birds* must have pecked them before the reach of anybody else!

The mystery about that apple in the computer room is now solved!

* I have a new discovery today, they are ravens! : )

My Worry Doll

A friend and I went to York Theatre Royal to see a play this afternoon: Silly Billy. It's adapted from a book by Anthony Browne.

Children's theatre has been very remote from me as most of the time I am quite scared of kids, especially when they are excited, shouting and screaming out of a reason that is not always clear to me. Anyway, it's a very colorful and dynamic presentation, and the story is composed with subtlety. The kids proved to be excellent company. (Of course, it's a children's theatre!)

The worry dolls from Maya legend are important to the story. These roughly fabricated but colorfully clothed small dolls are said to be able to carry away worries that haunt their keepers.
I found the idea interesting to keep a doll which can worry instead of you.

'You have to tell your worries to the dolls' is the first step. It is the act of 'speaking about the worries to another person' that allows the subject to let go of his/her worries. But the keeping of the worried dolls underneath one's pillows is quite curious to me, for the act of keeping the dolls is an alternative way to keep one's worries in another form of existence. The worried subject, still, has his hand on the worries in an even more concrete form of a doll than that of shapeless imagination.

Before today, I used to think that in the Maya legend, these dolls should be thrown into fire after they fulfill their function. If it is the case, when the dolls are burned down to ashes, the worries are supposedly gone with the smoke. It is admittedly cruel and heartless, I agree.

Comparatively, it's rather humanistic to save these dolls. But what is this bothering fact that the worries are carried on within the dolls? I don't know, perhaps, it's in fact a very subtle and metaphorical way of suggesting that not a single worry will disappear, but every worry can live in a less disturbing existence.

Photo: A worry doll, a souvenir from the play.

A happy angel I met in the library

I saw a friend in the library today. It's been a while since last time we saw each other.

She was as friendly as usual, but she was somehow a bit different, I felt. Her smile radiated brilliant happiness, very hyper in spirit and excited. The apparent excitement was quite unusual according to her rather steady temper.
Then she said she had a good news to tell me: she is engaged! We gripped tight each other's hands and screamed exultingly a voiceless scream in the corridor in the library.
Another 18 months to expect the wedding! I am so pleased for her!

The good news kept me smiling for the rest of the day.
Congratulations!

On the way to the city this evening, I saw a girl crying.
Her emotion was struggling through her throat to break through the body making hoary sounds. The dusky night shaded my vision to track any trace of tears.
Her cry sounded dry, devoid of liquid.

I wonder for what reason she was crying.

The sound of her emotion was no more than another random note to the music of the night.
Passing.
So will be the cause.

Atonement

I have liked the title, atonement, and have been very interested in the idea of penitence. But in fact the green dress on Keira Knightley, the leading actress, is more the reason that I was firstly drawn to the film. The robe is in a mysteriously and sensually green especially against the backdrop of the deep and enormous garden on that dark and unsettling night.


It is a very good story narrated along a stream of poetic images in the film. Beaming sunlight blurs the contour of reality; buzzing flies tickle itchy ears; the penetrating sound of strings stings the youthful and passionate skin. Hollow echoes draw that summer afternoon to a temporary horizon of silence when water swallows up impatient souls.

The crime committed on that summer day remains and continues through an ever-renewed remembering and an impossible forgetting.

Walking? or Dancing? in the Rain.
Neither.

I was asked this question, 'is the song "walking" or "dancing" in the rain?'. I lost the grasp of my memory about the title and somehow failed to come up with an answer. 'Dancing', I said, with much hesitation and a little pretentious arrogance recalling the musical in which the leading actor happily dances in a pouring rain.

But neither dancing nor walking is right after my chance discovery in the cyberspace today. The song is in fact 'Singing in the Rain'. What a trivial thing that I am fussing about now!! However, I do feel embarrassed or, more appropriately, upset about my being incorrect. I even wrote an entry about the musical early this year but still couldn't remember its title. Symptoms of senility. There is nothing seriously wrong about being incorrect in this case perhaps, if only distressing.

It is not the fact of forgetting the correct title that is bothering. I was making decisions between two GIVEN choices, dancing or walking, but forgot that a possible answer is located outside the choices. This forgetfulness is worrying.

Disappointing is the frequency that 'alternatives' do not always seem to be apparent to me.