[Continue]

Ten thousand years ago, “Chiang-Chiang” ran through the bitterly cold, icy wilderness, in every direction lay a vast expanse of immaculate white —— so immaculate that it was almost impossible for a solitary sapien to survive; so immaculate that almost every murmur and echo had already sunk into the “Dead Sea of Life”; so immaculate that almost every grey wolf that happened to appear had to be utterly subdued, immaculate enough that almost every grey wolf unfortunate enough to lie dead in a pool of blood would have its sharpest fangs and most intact tail silently taken away by a pair of rough hands; so immaculate that almost every wolf fang taken away would be used by those rough hands to ‘etch’ a kind of ‘paintings' that resembled writing yet was not quite writing; so white that almost every wolf tail taken away would be used by those rough hands to ‘treasure’ those increasingly subtle ‘paintings’, So immaculate that those rough hands seem to be using their own teeth to ‘etch’ one meticulous ‘drawing’ after another onto their own tails; so immaculate that the blood flowing from those rough hands washes the solitary wolf fangs and tails ever cleaner, time and time again, so immaculate that those solitary wolf fangs seemed to ‘bite down’ ceaselessly upon those solitary wolf tails in a pool of blood that never congealed nor dried up; so immaculate that the lingering scent of those wolf fangs and tails, mingled with the sweat and blood of those rough hands, was quietly woven into a ‘picture within a picture’; so immaculate that the sounds and echoes produced by those individual wolf fangs as they ‘etched’ at those individual wolf tails were constantly spliced together into voice-overs, so immaculate that one ‘Chiang-Chiang' after another had, under the encircling white light of the arctic day and the snow and ice, been carried into and out of the realm of dreams by those ‘pictures within pictures’ and ‘voice-overs’—— as if those ‘paintings within paintings’ were parallel images of those paintings —— and as if those ‘voice-overs’ were parallel discourses of those ‘pictures’—— whilst the entrance to the dreamworld is the exit of those ‘paintings’—— and the exit from the dreamworld is the entrance to those ‘paintings’—— and the entrance to those ‘paintings’ is the entrance to the thinking of those rough hands —— the exit from those ‘paintings’ is the exit from the thinking of those rough hands—and the exit from the thinking of those rough hands is the entrance to the linguistic ‘dead angle’ of that sapien —— the entrance to the thinking of those rough hands is the exit from the linguistic ‘dead angle’ of that sapien —— and the exit from the linguistic ‘dead angle’ of that sapien is the entrance to that person’s pain —— the entrance to that sapien's linguistic ‘dead angle’ is the exit of that person’s pain —— and that person’s pain exit is the entrance to that solitary life’s “completeness” —— that person’s pain entrance is the exit of that solitary life’s completeness —— and that solitary life’s “completeness” entrance and exit is, in turn, the intuitive entrance and exit of every ‘Chiang-Chiang’ as it fiercely ‘bites down’ on its own tail in a state of half-sleep, half-awake —— as if every ‘Chiang-Chiang' in that very instant that fiercely ‘bites down’ on its own tail can also return to the ‘completeness’ of life —— as if every ‘Chiang-Chiang’ can, in that instant, fully embrace its ‘part-wolf, part-human’ self —— and as if the ‘Chiang-Chiang’ of ten thousand years later can still, in one such instant after another, entirely forget its ‘neither-wolf-nor-human’ self…

Why, in this half-asleep, half-awake, have I fallen into such a bizarre and recurring desire that spans ten thousand years?

This bizarre desire, transcribed into line upon line, paragraph upon paragraph, page upon page of written symbols, is this also a form of ‘thinking with one’s hands’——‘thinking meticulously with rough and coarse hands’?

Those non-symbolic characters ‘etched’ onto the wolf’s tail by its fangs were concealed ten thousand years ago amongst countless bristles —— as if concealed within a primeval forest seemingly dead yet remains alive and cut off from the rest of the world; they were also concealed amongst the countless downy hairs of ten thousand years ago —— just as if concealed within a patch of primordial grass that, though frozen and snow-covered, still manages to sustain life… Grass springs and perishes, springing haphazardly and perishing haphazardly; grass perishes and springs, and after perishing haphazardly, it springs again haphazardly… Trees stand tall, and those that stand will fall, whilst those that have not yet fallen remains as a forest; trees stand and forests stand, and forests may thin, whilst those that have not yet thinned remain as a forest… Those non-symbolic characters represent a pair of rough hands from ten thousand years ago, thinking —— thinking with their hands, thinking in solitude with lonely hands, thinking sheerly with sheer hands, thinking painfully with pained hands, and thinking completely with complete hands; Yet what is contemplated remains ‘completeness’, ‘pain’, ‘sheerness’ and ‘loneliness’; and what is pondered, time and time again, in all its fragments and wholeness —— is inseparable from ‘the hand’, ‘both hands’, ‘the existence or absence of a hand or both hands’, ‘the hand that thinks and the hand that is thought of’, ‘the hand's sheerness and alterations’, ‘the hand's completeness and partiality’, ‘the hand's dead angle and pain’, ‘the hand's inertia and revisions’, ‘the hand's loneliness and love’…

In the forests and grasslands of ten thousand years later, ‘Chiang-Chiang’ still runs freely, dashing from one sapling to the next, or from one great tree to another, across lawns that are more spacious and softer than any tennis court or football pitch, within these meadows lie endless thickets of grass, whilst beyond them stretch undulating grasslands of varying heights; his quills and downy hairs scatter across every nook and cranny of these meadows and thickets, yet not a single white snowflake has ever drifted into those corners, nor has a single shard of white ice ever settled within those thickets or meadows; he has long since fled the arctic day and the arctic night, and has already left the Arctic behind, drawing ever closer to the Antarctic; indeed, it has run into a crowd by the sea where the land is free of snow, the waters free of ice, the grass evergreen, the pines perennial, the woods devoid of grey wolves, the hillsides free of sledges, the heavens never cloaked in immaculate white, and the surroundings never shrouded in pitch black… The people are still the sapiens of ten thousand years ago; the sapiens still carry the scents and sounds of ten thousand years ago; the scent of sapiens is still the smell of sweat and blood from ten thousand years ago; the voice of sapiens is still the mutterings and ‘etching sounds’ of ten thousand years ago; the incisors of sapiens are still the same as those of ten thousand years ago; the canine teeth of sapiens are still the same as the tiger tooth, the wolf fang, or the canine fang of ten thousand years ago; the premolars of sapiens are still the same as the cuspid or premolar teeth of ten thousand years ago; the molars of sapiens are still the same as the molar teeth of ten thousand years ago; the fingernails and toenails of sapiens are still the same in thickness, hardness, and the scent of keratin as they were ten thousand years ago; the hair of sapiens retains the same elasticity, resilience and scent of keratin as it did ten thousand years ago; the communal life of sapiens is, indeed, no different from the ‘coexistence of man and wolf’ of ten thousand years ago… The seashore remains the same as the saltwater’s edge of ten thousand years ago, and the same as the chlorophyll’s edge of forests and grasses, and even more so, it is no different from the ‘marginal situation’ of ‘swimming towards the swan’ and snatching fish under the sunset of ten thousand years ago… Ten thousand years, like a single instant, yet like eternities —— eternally changing or eternally unchanged… In an epiphanic moment, those non-symbolic inscriptions ‘etched’ onto the wolf’s tail by its fangs —— do they no longer exist, or do they still remain?

Canine-teeth, tiger-teeth, wolf-fang, canine-fang all exist, and yet all doesn’t exist.

I once tried desperately to stop ‘Chiang-Chiang’ from swimming towards the swans —— towards the black swans —— towards the three black swans swimming in a flock —— towards the three black swans, free and attuned to one another in the calm waters of the lake —— towards the three black swans that seemed both to beckon and to bid him farewell, as if striving to prevent it from swimming towards the ‘Dead Sea of Life’; as the swans swam, so did he; as the swans turned its head, so did he; The swans' slender, elongated necks sway gently on the water’s surface in the breeze, whilst its thick, stubby neck sways silently against the ripples; when the swans smile, so does he; when the swans look back at it, it is as though a fleeting dream is being replayed over and over; when he gazes at the swans, it is as though he is returning, time and again, to that fleeting dream; the swan is distancing from the solitude of the shore, he too is fleeing the solitude of the shore… No matter how I call out his name, nor how earnestly I beckon or wave to him, he swims relentlessly towards the swans —— swims with rapturous devotion towards the swans —— swims as if in a dream towards the swan, as though he were simply swimming naturally towards a self once so intimately familiar; whether white swan or black swan, in its intuition and in its genes, it has long been imprinted as a ‘swan’; and as it swims towards the black swan —— just as it swam day after day, year after year, towards the grey swan ten thousand years ago —— just as it swam alongside grey wolves and sapiens towards the grey swan ten thousand years ago—and just as it shared the same stray grey swan with grey wolves and sapiens ten thousand years ago… My cuffs and trouser legs waited in the shallow lakewater for it to turn back, yet its head and mind were gone for good—like a head stripped of its wolf’s fangs, drifting leisurely in the silent mind towards the Island of Wolf’s Fangs —— and like a lone wolf’s tail floating in the vast, murky mind, heading to the other shore to tie up a long-lost head; The lake’s surface is like a mirror; in the mirror there is a reflection, and within that reflection lies him —— and me —— along with the grey swans and grey wolves of ten thousand years ago —— and even more so, that gaze and those rough hands from ten thousand years ago… When the shimmering ripples where sky and water merge were suddenly ‘etched’ by the wake of a gust of sea wind, causing them to tremble gently, he finally turned his head, as if snatching its gaze back from the neck bones of a grey swan from ten thousand years ago —— turning to look at a blur on this shore —— reaching out towards a familiar sound —— turning to seize a whiff of a scent he could trust, as though his head were suddenly suspended between the fangs and tail of a wolf from ten thousand years ago, as though his tail, suspended beneath the lake’s surface, were suddenly frozen within a dense mass of non-symbolic characters, and as though its four canine teeth were etching’—— through a layer of water —— eternally endless crimson patterns into the stripes on the skin of its own tail…

I, too, once tried my utmost to stop ‘Chiang-Chiang’ from plucking the sparrow’s feathers…

I also endeavored to stop ‘Chiang-Chiang’ from pouncing on the grey cat or the black cat…

Yet, no matter what I did, I could not prevent ‘Chiang-Chiang’ from becoming a dead angle that gazes upon ‘prevention’…

In that dead angle, repeatedly obstructed, ‘Chiang-Chiang’ possessed linguistic intuition, and indeed, linguistic hallucinations.

[Unfinished. To be Continued]