三本书

It was barely five in the morning and I had been up for at least two hours. What it meant was that I paused my sleeping at three, an hour that could be so eerily early and blissfully quiet, completely of my own.

 

Each reading of the last pages of the book throbbed with sadness, awareness, a dash of hope, or perhaps a sense of maturing expectations.

 

Hardly a new book but new to me, nevertheless.

 

That was Heaven Lake by John Dalton (2004), another beautiful book treading through our inevitability to subject to sufferings, pains, joys and the process of life. So we could grow, grow to locate our inner self without disguises or self deceit.

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In the short and busy span of time, a two-week bits and ends of time, I managed to complete the readings of Heaven Lake, Daughter of the River (1997) by Hong Ying and Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai (1986).

  

My readings are parallel to my life, without it I could hardly see through the fog and mist that seem to shroud the immediate sights before me. I need the readings to draw me away, even temporarily, from the dreadfully familiar daily routine, to stimulate my thinking in the words I put on paper, to speed me to completion and rid myself of the weariness that is choking me through this lengthy and silly project.

In retrospect, was it all necessary to take on such a dashing task now, mid way through my adult life? What was the luring bait that prods me onwards? What were the thirst and hunger lying beneath layers of pretenses? Why were they there to begin with?