I
Men must slumber in the darkness
In order to be truly awaken
Men must be desperately lost
In order to look up at the endless stars
The young love to sing about death
While the old worship life like the sun
The young are hopeless on earth, dreaming of flight
The old fear to be parted from the land without a raging fight
II
Who wants to be from War and Peace
The Fly against the loft sky
But we are all just flies
Traceless, each life in a dream it lies
Always to be awakened, bringing nothing and taking nothing
Why must we seek truth in a dream?
If we will forget them when we finally open our eyes
With joy, with sorrow
We witness death
Just so we would strive to stay alive
But why are we alive?
To prepare us for what?
III
Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!
Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive
I
Life is the only route
Between nothingness and the endless
Our birth on earth, and our perishing to dirt
Are both equal ends for the existing
And fools will simply rejoice in the illusive brevity
While sages prepare for the everlasting dance
And fools will take comfort in the darkness obscuring his sins
While sages prepare for the brilliance of the yonder light
By already shining and basking in this life
II
I want to be from War and Peace
The Bee of such trivial and insignificant life
For we are all just bees
Unnoticed, but must exist
Why were we ever born to fly,
When true height is beyond this life?
Just for the pollen and nectar, taken and given?
Till bees return to the impermanent or the forever?
We will regret their absence then, bitterly and barrenly
Witnessing loss, just to learn to cherish
The existing.
But we exist, for what?
III
Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!
Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive
Conclusion:
Being alive
Is not just so we can die
That is completely meaningless
Being alive,
Is the only route
From nothingness to endlessness
Only having been once alive
Can you be resurrected
Only when you walk this road to the end
Will you find and continue the pave to the
Neverending Land
Alive (Resurrection)
By: Yue Xing Yitkbel ****
Original in Chinese written on:
Sunday, October 20, 2019, 6:20 PM
Translated on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019
11:43 AM
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Notes written: 2019/10/25
This was originally another stream of consciousness written in Chinese in a much more organized lyric form spontaneously. Parts of it were a sort of commentary and reaction to poems, songs, and other works I read from both young and old, where the young tend to write about death with a fearless and almost welcoming embrace, and the old refuses to "go gentle into that goodnight."
The rest of it, I wanted to use two very striking metaphors from Tolstoy's War and Peace, the fly and a bee. I set up them as foils of one another, though both to signify insignificance; one represents the isolation of an individual, while the other is of the obscurity of the mass.
Both questions why are we alive? Why are we here just to leave so immediately? Then, both a revelation and answer came to me suddenly.
The revelation being life is the inevitable road between the nothingness of being, and the endlessness of being.
So the answer is, as this road seems to be the only and continuous road, we must cross it to the end of the section we call life, in order to reach the rest we call the neverending.
