2. Battle It was late evening. Dad has to work as usual; mum was not at home, too. Recently she often disappeared for days, and turned up out of blue. Nobody knew where she had gone – nobody actually gave a shit. Finally she would be back, said dad, puffing a series of smoke rings: “I got some new items for her.” It was dark outside. I could catch a view of the train station 500 meters away – the only building keeps light on for 24 hours in this area. The rain just ceased, and the vapourish mists gently blurred the edge of the light, together with dimed street lamps, reminded me of Monet’s painting. Monet was a warlord of color – in his world, objects were melting; lines were blurred; colors were left battling against each other – it was a properly massy battle on the canvas, I said, ignoring my art teacher’s uncompromising defense that it was a hymn of serenity. Oh shit, five to eleven. I’ve got to go, I said to myself. Curfew started at eleven, I have to be quick. I closed windows and rechecked the kitchen to make sure the gas had been turned off, and then I left. I decided to stay inside of the train station. It just seemed to be a reliable place for a girl to stay; if you are lucky enough, you could even get an army blanket and a pillow from staffs doing overnight shift – first come first serve. It was one of those busiest train stations in the north, always peopled 24 hours by people from all over the country. The main street lying between my dad’s flat and the train station is called Happy Street. Happy Street. Happiness Street. The Street of Happiness. The Street to Happiness – ok, I’m not a professional translator, just pick up the one that makes most sense to you guys, I will just call it HS for short. HS is equally peopled by people from all over the country, too. The only difference between THESE PEOPLE and THOSE PEOPLE was that THESE PEOPLE WERE HOMELESS. And most of them still are. THESE PEOPLE used to have some sort of home, house, flat…whatever! One day, out of blue in the midnight, some of their houses were torn apart; another day, without a clue in the middle of the day, some of their kids were killed by a backing BMW…I can’t list all their stories, but you can always find reference from twitter media: appalling snapshots uploaded by unknowns’ smart phone camera, soon being “disappeared” and “proved” to be a “malicious rumor” which has no truth in it, THESE. THESE PEOPLE WERE SCATTERED OVER HS LIKE GRAINS TO FEED DOVES. Some new faces were struggling about their first night being homeless; most were veterans who haven’t had a proper shower for weeks. Some of them were reading pamphlets about law and legislation, some of them were intensively debating, and there were some others playing goes – no one gave a shit to the overly fermented human odors. I carefully crossed through THESE PEOPLE, trying not to put my feet on their properties – pamphlets, yellowed photos of thekilledoutofblue, rusty iron pan, grid Go game board scratched on the ground, trifles neglectable for city people but unpriceable for THESE PEOPLE. Twitter (why twitter? Because twitter has a passion for THEM)mmourned that THESE PEOPLE has nothing to lose – twitter is perfectly wrong. Something inside THESE PEOPLE was still there. If it was lost, HS could become a reincarnation of Sodom. (Sade’s Sodom, not Jehovah’s) To read the full collection, check vangoghscello.wordpress/
Posted on: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:41:00 +0000
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