这篇写给伦敦

"A Failed Dialogue"
                      --9th July 2008, on the train
        Trafalgar Square, Jubilee Gardens, Hayward Gallery, Somerset House, Temple Church…And less than a mile from Temple Church—
 Jesus.
        Stands St. Paul’s Cathedral.
        Would you please stop?
 I’m just trying to be helpful.
 You’re spoiling London for me.
 Then perhaps you can plan a better route for us. Here’s the map.
 No…I mean, we don’t have to do this.
 What?
 We could’ve travelled…lightly. Like dews.
 And how?
 The names of places are never important. And you must get rid of that ridiculous digital camera you carry everywhere like a rifle. Feel the texture of every building. Feel the air of each block. Notice the various shades of ripples that unfold themselves along the riverbank. Let the sensations ooze out spontaneously.
 I’ve never been much of an oozer. Plus, I hold names to be of supreme significance. Names are only useful when you don’t attribute meanings to them. For me, it’s all about the pronunciation. There’s something magical, something helplessly sad about the name Trafalgar. I know nothing about it but I think it could be the name of a white musk deer. It eats mulberries and English toffees, and it sprints between bridges with the briskness of—
 Will you cut it off? You’re a pathetic make-believer. You claim to want to defamiliarize things, but anyone can tell that you’re all too familiar with them. Come on, let’s accept the limitations and try to appreciate a city from a tolerably close distance.
 God you sadden me.
 Do I?
 Yes. Just you know, I’ve always wondered one thing.
 What?
 What happens exactly…to all these cathedrals and steeples when a heavy fog hangs down like careless manna—on a misty morning?
 Well, they’ll be decapitated, from shoulders up, by the white ghost, just like the pedestrians bumping into each other between zebra lines.
 Wouldn’t these buildings want to repaint themselves and take on a new look when the mist dissolves？
 They might.
 There was a time when I dreamed of a pale child. His features were so delicate as if they were hand-painted upon a sheenful Gong-porcelain vase. The problem is, they really WERE. His glamorous face kept melting away. He had to rush to a nearby well in time to repaint his other features before his eyes dissolved, and he was obsessed with painting the nose first lest he be suffocated. That never happened, of course. Paranoid. Yes he led a life of worries. Sometimes I get the feeling that London is such a child.
 An overaged child?
 Yes. And a lethargic one. But in that it’s not charmless.
 Indeed no.
        One dear thing about London：it causes you to forget. Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the yellowish greyness of River Thames, the tacky elegance of London Eye. No matter how much you’ve seen, after a while, you forget about them, and that makes you happy. The luxury of satisfying forgetfulness London provides.
 O sweetheart, we are not an ideal couple as travelers, you and I, are we? Perhaps I should’ve come with M after all...
 You don't say--but here comes the bus.