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A review by aiyaivy
Self-Portrait with Ghost by Meng Jin
4.0
3.5 - the first half was better than the second half imo
Quotes:
- I waited for my lover to come. I was in love, oh yes. Not the rapturous kind that turns and thins your sleep, but a satisfying, contented love. I woke in the mornings well-rested and warm, like a loaf of risen bread.
-I had come to the photograph with the simple but sincere desire to preserve my sight of beautiful fleeting things.
-Oh, I was uncomfortable all the time. In a foreign land, buried in first love, I heard constantly the whisper of "you must preserve this," which was really the cry of "you are afraid."
-...everyone in this country was bored to death so had plenty of time to read and ruminate and appreciate life's higher pleasures.
-"Be natural, change your face, move your body, whatever you like. Painting is dynamic, not like photography, freezing a moment in time" -- he winked at me -- "but a medium to capture the subject moving through time, caught in its locomotion."
-How this lover had changed me. Once, I had found honor in naked honesty: if there was a wound, I pressed it. I'd taken pride in dredging up buried pain; pain was how I recognized another. With previous lovers, I'd eaten up stories of other women hungrily, hurting myself with jealousy until it felt like love.
-For Ling, suffering is a tool, wielded by the human and the divine. The abstract manifests as concrete, the intangible as felt. Suffering can be hard like a slap or it can fester, like grit beneath the nail. Feeling hardens into form, allegory into event.
-Kindness is never free; he owes a great debt.
-What a wealth of meaning life contains, just waiting to be read.
-"Death," Ling wants to tell me, "is the one certainty of life. The one thing every person can be sure to accomplish, regardless of circumstances of birth."
-There were three women I remember - three girls. Though they appeared like women to me, like they were-complete.
-Perhaps I didn't like her because she was just like me.
-It was so much work, determining if a boy was to be wanted, to be loved. Whereas it was clear as day with girls. I could look at a girl and instantly say if she was ugly or pretty, beautiful or gorgeous, if she was plain but sweet, if I wanted to look like her or not. If I envied her, if I could dream myself into her body. I couldn't see my own body unless I was looking at it beside another girl's. A quick study, I quickly discovered an easy way to tell about a boy: if his girlfriend was pretty or not.
-I wanted something to be better than I remembered.
-I was thoroughly in love, so much so that all I could think about day in and day out was what love meant, why it existed, what it was good for.
-In love, I acted totally against my nature and against my best sense. I knew it but I couldn't help it. When I wasn't with X, every part of me wanted only to be with him, and when I was with him, even when we weren't having a fabulous time, I forgot that there might exist any other purpose in life.
-...I didn't just feel it on my lips but all the way down through my lungs and stomach, in some organ that was just now waking into existence.
-She was not mine, but she was so small, and charming in her smallness and fatness, and though she was useless she declared her needs clearly, without suggestion or subtext. I wanted to despise her; sometimes when she exhausted or disgusted me, I wanted to despise her very much. But it was impossible.
-What was wrong with me? Why didn't I want to be a witness to history, to any kind of time passing?
Quotes:
- I waited for my lover to come. I was in love, oh yes. Not the rapturous kind that turns and thins your sleep, but a satisfying, contented love. I woke in the mornings well-rested and warm, like a loaf of risen bread.
-I had come to the photograph with the simple but sincere desire to preserve my sight of beautiful fleeting things.
-Oh, I was uncomfortable all the time. In a foreign land, buried in first love, I heard constantly the whisper of "you must preserve this," which was really the cry of "you are afraid."
-...everyone in this country was bored to death so had plenty of time to read and ruminate and appreciate life's higher pleasures.
-"Be natural, change your face, move your body, whatever you like. Painting is dynamic, not like photography, freezing a moment in time" -- he winked at me -- "but a medium to capture the subject moving through time, caught in its locomotion."
-How this lover had changed me. Once, I had found honor in naked honesty: if there was a wound, I pressed it. I'd taken pride in dredging up buried pain; pain was how I recognized another. With previous lovers, I'd eaten up stories of other women hungrily, hurting myself with jealousy until it felt like love.
-For Ling, suffering is a tool, wielded by the human and the divine. The abstract manifests as concrete, the intangible as felt. Suffering can be hard like a slap or it can fester, like grit beneath the nail. Feeling hardens into form, allegory into event.
-Kindness is never free; he owes a great debt.
-What a wealth of meaning life contains, just waiting to be read.
-"Death," Ling wants to tell me, "is the one certainty of life. The one thing every person can be sure to accomplish, regardless of circumstances of birth."
-There were three women I remember - three girls. Though they appeared like women to me, like they were-complete.
-Perhaps I didn't like her because she was just like me.
-It was so much work, determining if a boy was to be wanted, to be loved. Whereas it was clear as day with girls. I could look at a girl and instantly say if she was ugly or pretty, beautiful or gorgeous, if she was plain but sweet, if I wanted to look like her or not. If I envied her, if I could dream myself into her body. I couldn't see my own body unless I was looking at it beside another girl's. A quick study, I quickly discovered an easy way to tell about a boy: if his girlfriend was pretty or not.
-I wanted something to be better than I remembered.
-I was thoroughly in love, so much so that all I could think about day in and day out was what love meant, why it existed, what it was good for.
-In love, I acted totally against my nature and against my best sense. I knew it but I couldn't help it. When I wasn't with X, every part of me wanted only to be with him, and when I was with him, even when we weren't having a fabulous time, I forgot that there might exist any other purpose in life.
-...I didn't just feel it on my lips but all the way down through my lungs and stomach, in some organ that was just now waking into existence.
-She was not mine, but she was so small, and charming in her smallness and fatness, and though she was useless she declared her needs clearly, without suggestion or subtext. I wanted to despise her; sometimes when she exhausted or disgusted me, I wanted to despise her very much. But it was impossible.
-What was wrong with me? Why didn't I want to be a witness to history, to any kind of time passing?