June 5, 2016

More than twenty hours had passed since the government had declared martial law.

Like deer gathering at a lakeside to drink, the students gathered at the Monument, unaware that the Square was a hunting ground and the Monument was the snare.

               Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 410)

May 31, 2016

The wind slams the rain against the windows of the covered balcony.

I feel the damp enter the room and seep into the biscuits on the table, my father's ashes and the old shoes lying in the corner. I'd love to slip my feet into a pair of damp trainers. But shoes are made only for upright bodies. Prone bodies must remain barefoot in bed.

               Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 398)

May 30, 2016

'When I look at the moon, I get an ominous feeling. It has shone down on so many atrocities. The famous reformer, Lian Qichao, got his head cut off sixty years ago, over there, by Xuanwu Gate.'

My thoughts turned to my father's student, Liu Ping. A band of villagers, who'd previously been like uncles to her, tore her father's liver from his body, then raped her and cut off her breasts. In the Song Dynasty, General Fen's army ate dried human flesh which they euphemistically called 'two-legged mutton'. They considered women's meat to be the most flavorsome, referring to it as 'mutton's envy. But they only resorted to eating human meat because there was no other food available. The men who ate Liu Ping weren't driven by hunger, but by fear. The Communist Party had told them, 'If you don't eat the enemy, you are the enemy, and the Party will destroy you.'

                 Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 305)

May 25, 2016

'What kind of country is it that punishes the victims of a massacre, rather than the people who fired the shots?' my mother says again.

                        Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 213)

May 19, 2016

'The government pays me a salary and has given us this flat. What more could I want? Do you know how many counterrevolutionaries they've had to execute in order to achieve the stable society we enjoy today? Do you really imagine that you and your little band of classmates are going to be able to turn this country upside down?'

'I don't understand. The Party drove your father to suicide and locked up your husband. Why do you feel you have to defend it? If the Communists hadn't taken over in 1949, you'd be a rich woman now, living in a big house.'

'Without the Communist Party there would be no New China. Without the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, our family wouldn't be having the life we enjoy today.' She stepped back into the kitchen, wiping her wet hands on her trousers.

Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 108-109)

May 17, 2016

All I could bring myself to ask was: 'Does Director Liu's daughter, Liu Ping, still play the violin? Is she still living in Wuxuan?'

'Liu Ping was only sixteen when they killed her. She was the prettiest girl on the farm. She could dance and play the violin. The night the militia killed her father, they raped her, then strangled her with a piece of rope. Once she was dead, they cut off her breasts and gouged out her liver, then fried them in oil and ate them.'

                                  Ma Jian - Beijing Coma, (p 69)

April 16, 2016

I bring up my parents' failed assault on the Great Books for a reason. Throughout my formative years, the set remained on our library shelves, weighty and regal-looking with its gold spines. Even back then the Great Books were working on me, silently urging me to pursue the most futile human dream of all, the dream of writing a book worthy of joining their number, a one hundred and sixteenth Great Book with another long Greek name on the cover: Stephanides. That was when I was young and full of grand dreams. Now I've given up any hope of lasting fame or literary perfection. I don't care if I write a great book anymore, but just one which, whatever its flaws, will leave a record of my impossible life. 

                                   Eugenides, Middlesex (p 342)

January 9, 2016

LEAR Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones.

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone forever.

I know when one is dead, and when one lives.

She's dead as earth.

                               William Shakespeare - King Lear V.3.263-267

LEAR Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never.

                              William Shakespeare - King Lear V.3.2.313-315

January 5, 2016

GLOUCESTER As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods:

They kill us for their sport.

                                       William Shakespeare - King Lear IV.1.36-37

January 4, 2016

GLOUCESTER These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father. The King falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

William Shakespeare - King Lear I.2.96-106

January 3, 2016

FOOL Ha, ha, he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears by th' neck, monkeys by th' loins, and men by th' legs. When a man's overlusty at legs, then he wears wooden netherstocks.

LEAR What's he that hath so much thy place mistook

To set thee here?

KENT                   It is both he and she, 

Your son and daughter.

LEAR No.

KENT Yes.

LEAR No, I say.

KENT I say yea.

LEAR No, no, they would not.

KENT Yes, they have.

LEAR By Jupiter, I swear no!

KENT By Juno, I swear ay! 

LEAR                                They durst not do't;

They could not, would not do't.

                                      William Shakespeare - King Lear Ii.4.7-23

January 2, 2016

SEYTON The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow 

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

                            William Shakespeare Macbeth V.5.17-28

January 1, 2016

OSWALD Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?
KENT Ay.
OSWALD Where may we set our horses?
KENT I' th' mire.
OSWALD Prithee, if thou lov'st me, tell me.
KENT I love thee not.
OSWALD Why then, I care not for thee.
KENT If I had thee in Lipsbury Pinfold, I would make thee care for me.
OSWALD Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.
KENT Fellow, I know thee.
OSWALD What dost thou know me for?
KENT A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superservicable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition.
OSWALD Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee!
KENT What a brazen-faced varlet art thou to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up thy heels and beat the before the king? Draw, you rogue, for though it be night, yet the moon shines. I'll make a sop o' th' moonshine of you. You whoreson cullionly barbermonger, draw!
OSWALD Away, I have nothing to do with thee.
KENT Draw, you rascal. You come with letters against the king, and take Vanity the puppet's part against the royalty of her father. Draw, you rogue, or I'll so carbonado your shanks. Draw, you rascal. Come your ways!

Shakespeare - King Lear II.2.1-36