晓竹天下 文创空间

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】政治局常务会议开到深夜，胡锦涛看了看表，说：“今天差不多了，灾后重建安排就这样吧。救灾款的数字不小啊，这个钱从哪里出？请家宝和国务院的同志们拿出一个方案来，总之要提防通货膨胀，全局的经济稳定第一。我们要保持清醒的头脑。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】世界艾滋病日到来之际，中办主任令计划茶饭不思。直至今天，只要想起2004年那个艾滋病日，令计划心里就不由得打哆嗦。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】十一月下旬，胡锦涛开完了十七大，身心俱累，想到京城外面走一走，散散心。在令计划的建议下，胡锦涛一行轻车简从，来到了内蒙古的鄂尔多斯，要深入草原牧区。此刻，自治区党委书记储波和政府主席杨晶小心翼翼，陪伴在侧。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】政治局奥运工作部署会议开了整整一天，会议结束时，胡锦涛总书记做总结：“今天这个会开得很好，很及时，许多重大方针政策都定下来了，大家一定要认真执行。最后，我还想谈一点体会。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】又是一个闷热的下午，胡总办公室外的蝉鸣格外响亮。但房间内气氛凝重，人人格外低声细语，好像是在医院的病房里。中办副主任令计划走过宽敞干净的楼道，看了一眼临时堆放着的医疗设备，嘟囔了一句：“飞来的横祸”。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】北京夏夜，万籁俱寂。轿车开进了中南海的边门，孟学农仍然觉得自己是在梦中。这种感觉就像四年前的一次经历。那时，他刚刚上任北京市长不久，也是一次深夜召见，还记得令计划苍白严肃的神情，向他宣布了中央的决定，撤销他北京市长的职务。

In a social context, you find people to be either good or bad or ugly; and in a linguistic context, you find words to be either moral or immoral or amoral. Moral words do right and immoral words do wrong, but most words are amoral, neither good nor bad, but simply do or exist. They are uninteresting and likely to make me soporific as a lot of food would do in my stomach.

I think I have developed an affinity for words; they come from everywhere, from dictionary, from reading, from mental images, and from everything I set my eyes on. They are not yet properly tagged, but like children who swarm the beach on summer weekend, while the tide of consciousness rises and smashes under their feet. In short, I wallow in words. But when can I swim in them?

Achievement is an aggregate of daring and hard work. You would mix them together just as your grandma combined meat and beans to make chili. Or, to put it another way, life is like driving somewhere, requiring both energy and integrity. Energy with no integrity is like reckless driving that would end in tragedy, but integrity with no energy is going no where.

I think people should abominate government censorship on free speech as much as they abhor raw chicken livers. But they don't and that puzzles me. Perhaps humans are not as serious as I think them to be over life situations; or perhaps I derive too much levity from them while they too little of them.

Everywhere in the world there is poverty, but few poverty is considered abject. Only when poverty is conditioned by servility and a total denial of human dignity can it be said to be "abject". Then property beside poverty becomes no less abject for both the rich and poor share an common abhorrence in their milieu. Therefore they are equally disgraced.

The wind abated in the evening and I took a second walk. I walked into the dusk and returned in the nightfall, feeling somewhat refreshed by the deepening darkness. It had been so blustering in the afternoon that I changed my mind and walked instead to the library to check out some books and bought a bottle of whiskey on the way back.

Nothing distresses me more than watching a crummy movie, especially when I realize it is a hopeless one toward the end of it and find it too late to balk. After you have invested more than one hour of your life on it, you can't just walk away without knowing its conclusion in spite of the wretched fact that the whole thing is a ballyhoo. Well, at least I can't.

Bacchanals are those who worship Bacchus by way of holding Bacchanalia once in a while; and by doing so they turn themselves into bastards. Still they are probably more humane than most humans under many of the precarious circumstances in modern life. Thus I would rather see a man in Bacchanalian stupor than in an intoxicated state induced by power and ambition.

【ab ovo】 \ab-OH-voh\, adverb:
From the beginning.

I will begin ab ovo -- at the very beginning.
-- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The performers do not have to discover these techniques and processes ab ovo; they learn them from the previous generation, who learned them from their predecessors, and so on.
-- William L. Benzon, Beethoven's Anvil

ab ovo: from the beginning.
abattoir: a slaughterhouse.

emolument: the wages or perquisites arising from office, employment, or labor.
palindrome: a word, verse, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward.

Chapter One

THE ARTISTIC

I

"Fair, kind, and true," says Shakespeare
"Fast, kindle, and toon," varying to other sphere
Against death, and all-oblivious quantity
My Muse has grown with this growing quality
"I hate, I hate", her alteration singed
Upon snow with ashing glow not esteemed
A ball from snow away she threw,
Over the rainbow it went willful-slow
The miles are measured falling and fell

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
A man in hue all ‘hues’ in his controlling,

A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,

A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d:

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,

Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,
Admit impediments. Love is not love

If anyone tell you to be a writer by writing other than in your mother tongue, he is up to no good. And if you believe what he says, then you are a fool. Thus I tell myself and believe myself in order to embark on this literary adventure in which only errant fool may dive into. To be sure, I don't know where I'm going except I will have some fun along the way.

Wu was a good doctor or everyone said so, but maybe too good a doctor that his wife, Mimi, thought such singularity of goodness had crowded everything out. She had the impression that he was full of life in his white overcoat, but appeared lifeless as soon as he stepped out of it. Yes, he came home each evening, but did so like a specter with no body mass.

这是一个未定稿空间，一个笔记空间，一个海绵空间，吸收与酝酿土地，伴随我的文创之旅，人生又一次探险。