I LOVE YOU

If only the memory hadn't slipped like smoke. Considering how today I am still in the not-yet-coldened embrace of the autumn season, of the September month, it has been exactly three years since the time the story of ‘Blackbird Whisper’ turned into prose…, the prose of English. Though the memory of August 2023, where and when the first pages of my first-ever novel had been conceived, even to this day remains in my mind, as indelibly as ink on parchment, what transpired thereafter, however fresher on paper all those later events should have positioned themselves to be in their indisputable semblance, fails to linger with the same luminous intensity.

True, I do remember that the first 10K or maybe even 15K words I crafted were written within the walls of the university library. Nonetheless, how it happened that the words that throughout the entirety of the yesteryear had refused to visit me now, with the arrival of the last quarter of 2023, decided to present themselves at my quarters… all of that lies completely beyond my ken.

Perhaps, the old me might have exclaimed, shouting and screaming, how it was the design of fate, the doing of destiny. However, to state that here would require the presence of that old me, the identity that is now all gone and torn to pieces. The identity, though all vanished now, in September of 2023 was still… in attendance.

And owing to that, to that very presence, ‘Blackbird Whisper’ successfully survived another round of metamorphosis.

Tranquillity within the library was often a fleeting luxury. Sometimes it was too obstreperous there. And the fancy word ‘obstreperous’ I just used here is less exaggeration and more understatement. The students were so young, so garrulous in their openness to the world surrounding them, even their whispers and murmurs among each other would come across as chatter excessive in volume.

In those moments of ‘trial,’ my saving grace was the music, the melody, the mellifluous ‘chatter’ that kept ringing in my ears, made possible by the integration of cheap headphones into my workflow. Though the headphones betrayed a certain coarse materiality, the music they played, and what they played was ‘I Love You’ by Billie Eilish, was too valuable, too priceless spiritually.

Hypnotic. If language can be trusted to name it, then that’s the word I dare assign to it. Though the different chapters of my life, different settings, even to an extent different versions of me accompanied the evolution of ‘Blackbird Whisper’ from its screenplay form to its novel decomposition, its soundtrack had always been the same…; it has always been left unmarred.

To the other side of a different road, still near the perimeter of my educational establishment, my university friend and I would occasionally visit the shop to grab a cup of coffee to provide us with a good caffeine intake for the focus and concentration needed to study Mandarin.

Eventually, the latest news was that she got pregnant. She was about to nurture and deliver a baby. And so was I, but the life I was set to cradle and release didn't belong to flesh, was not related to blood, was not about a heart. Though, perhaps to a certain extent, it took flesh, blood, and heart: just not of the one that was about to be born, but of the one that was set to grant that very birth.

For the initial months, my friend’s unborn baby made her sick, caused morning sickness, headaches, and more. Her priorities dictated by her biological transition, she no longer remained my companion in our devotion to the study of Mandarin ideograms at that coffee shop. Nor was she alone in the shifting of her priorities; no sooner had I followed her traces, though the way I fell into the trap of following her came more from subconscious instincts rather than objective consciousness.

I listened to many Mandarin Chinese songs; I found many I liked. Having those melodies as the background noise playing in my ears, I penned countless Chinese characters. To admit, this endeavour lacked any semblance of cohesion; in reality, this pursuit became rather sporadic. Faltering was never an option I considered, yet it was most definitely something I could see, no, foresee, happening eventually.

And as anticipated, the thing I thought I wouldn’t give up on I ended up at last losing my hold of; contrary to that, the very thing I once, back in autumn of 2022, had reckoned of throwing away came back, as though disapproving of the possible faltered decision I could have made, the act of abandoning I had almost committed.

‘Blackbird Whisper’ entered back into my life; and the knocking at my door was far from a limited intention of becoming a mere guest. It marked its arrival to replace the very host at whose doorway it knocked so belatedly.

Unlike her, my friend, however, in my case ‘the baby’ that I was ready and set in mind to nurture spared me the usual afflictions of sickness and headaches. In fact, if anything, it prompted a stark inversion: every time I would leave the coffee shop, having finished with my three to four, on occasions even five to six hours, the feeling of ecstasy, the sense of achievement, the hope for triumph would start crawling all over my body until it eventually managed to creep into my bones and pierce the soul.

Upon the culmination of 2023, with only two more days of December left for me to embrace before ushering the year toward the past season, it struck me how I was just this short of crossing the milestone of 50k words.