A most fulfilling Saturday

Saturday was a most satisfactory day. I have not felt so fulfilled as yesterday for a long long time. It started out as a most ordinary last day of the week. I went back to the office and did what I had to do. But I already felt quite good. I felt good because the previous night, I had fulfilled my promise to one of the fellow bloggers to translate a Spanish poem she felt she liked and with which another fellow blogger helped me to locate. Translating Spanish or French poetry into Chinese is, at the best of times, a very lonely enterprise in Hong Kong. One has to have time. One has to have the knowledge. But above all, one has to have the passion for what one does. But what is the point of translating poems and putting them out on the internet when no one reads them and even when they do,  they do not appreciate what has been written or what the poet was doing. So whenever any one expresses interest in Spanish poetry or any particular Spanish poem, how could I deny him/her the chance to further understand it or to deepen his/her appreciation of it.  I simply have to do my best for them, given the limitation of my time and my ability.  I did that. I was happy I did that.

Then I had been reading other bloggers's blogs too, especially the blogs of 超人 and 博樂. I love their blogs. They are beautifully done with their spare words nicely set against a colour backgroud, beautiful photographs and equally beautiful music. Every time I read them, if I may borrow a very blasé imagery, I felt that my soul was having a sauna. I felt good all over. From time to time, 超人 would introduce the poems of a lady Taiwanese poet, essayist cum novelist 席慕容whose poems I would really like to get but so far have been unsuccessful because I merely went to the bookstores in Central close to where I work. I had also been intriqued by a book being read by 博樂. The book is called 孤獨六講, a most unusual title. Before I went to get the book, I did some internet search on the author 蔣勳. I found that he had been to France in 1972-1976 and later returned to Taiwan and became the editor in chief of two of the most famous cultural publications there, 雄獅美術 ( now defunctt) and 聯合文學 and also gave a number of prize winning radio talk shows on Chinese culture and had close to 50 publications to his name. I too went to France between 1974 and 1976 to study comparative literature and understood a little of what was then the hottest intellectual climate there. I was therefore even more interested in finding out how that might have influenced his thinking. Besides, I figured that anyone who could publish that number of books must have something in him worth exploring. I fully intended to explore him.

However, again, when I went to Joint Publications, all I got were two of his books, one on calligraphy and the other a selection. I turned over the pages of one of the two books: 蔣勳精選集. After two pages, I already knew I liked him. A writer's style seldom changes drastically, just like the music written by a composer. The same applies to hi fi equipment. You get a pretty good idea what the relveant pre-amp, power amp, speaker, speaker cable, interconnect cable, digital cable and power cable will sound like after listening to it for one or two minutes. However, I did not get the book that I was particularly interested in: his 孤獨六講.  What I got were not what I was looking for. So I went back to the office and started to check on whether or not there were any other Chinese bookstores. I found several. The bookstores in Wanchai did not have either 席 or 蔣's books and in particular not those I was looking for. I therefore made a number of further telephone calls to other bookstores whose information I found on the internet and asked if the books that I had in mind were available. After leaving my messages which were not answered, I had to call again and finally managed to get through to one or two live instead of pre-recorded human voices and the girl at one of these bookstores said she had one or two books on 蔣勳. I told her to hold them for me and that I would immediately go by MTR to get them there. 

When I arrived at Mongkok, I was literally surrounded by a sea of back packs, shoulder bags, sport shoes,  sandals, thong-like shoes, T-shirts, jeans, long pants, dresses, false nails and clipped on eye-lashes, painted toe nails, dyed hair, and from time to time sexily dressed young ladies with low cut T-shirts and hot pants whose hands were being held by much older bald headed middle aged men, all milling around me, going in this direction and that. Overhead hung, projected, painted or illuminated, a forest of big and small advertising signs amongst whom I could make out the names of some 5 or 6 bookstores. My hopes were fired. I felt that surely there must be one or two of them which would be able to sell me either one or two of the books that I intended to buy! I wouldn't be that ill-fated! So I climbed through first one set of staircase, then another, took one lift after another. The lifts are really tiny, built for not than 4 persons so that with my bag, I had constantly to excuse myself whenever it got crowded. The staircases were dirty, its walls all plastered and the inside of the tiny lifts too were pasted with a multitude of colour posters,some of which, judging by their contents were long outdated. The narrow floors of the corridors were littered with scaps of candy paper, discarded newspapers, cigarette butts, plastic bags of all shapes, colors and sizes, even condoms, with balls or rivulets of black dirt skirting the dado on the multi-colored walls. I passed through numerous upstairs hair salons, cafes, restauants, computer games centres, cyber cafes, shops selling all kind of junk and had to dodge numerous descending customers who'd sometimes eye me in digust because I had my computer bag on my shoulder,carrying two of the books which I already bought at Joint Publications, and which reduced the space for their descending feet so that they had to turn their bodies slightly before we could walk past each other. 

It was an eye opener for me. There were bookstores specializing on selling old fashioned string-lined Chinese books, PRC books, Taiwanese books, student textbooks, second hand bookstores, computer books etc. I never went to those bookstores before. So I jotted down their addresses so that next time I go there, I would know which bookstore is roughly where beforehand.  When I got to that Mongkok bookstore to which I telephoned earlier, I found three or four of 蔣's books. I was overjoyed but still they didn't have the one that I was looking  I consoled myself that it was better than having none at all. To console myself further, I bought several other books which I never previously thought of buying when I first set foot on to the Central MTR station. I also went to some of the other bookstores one by one and feasted my eyes on many books. By about 6 p.m., I had visited and browsed books in some 5 bookstores already but had still been unable to get all the books that I wanted, although I did get some other books which I did not originally intend to buy: some books of criticisms on the "New Chinese Poetry" etc. and I was a bit tired, having been bumped numberless times either in the streets or by other book lovers within the upper-floor bookstores. Then my eyes caught the name of a 6th bookstore which was then some 100 yards away. I decided that since I came all the way from Central and it was not that often I would come to that dirty and crowded Mongkok street I might just as well try my luck there. So I trudged along, grumbling to myself how heavy the two hand-carry bags containing partly books which I did not at first come to buy, dangling at my side besides the computer bag on my shoulder, were and cursing myself for being so greedy. I got lucky this time. They got 4 or 5 books by 席 and 蔣's 孤獨六講,! I returned a tired but happy man.

And the loot of my cross harbor book hunting odyssey are:

席慕容:  2006 Jan-June

               我摺疊著我的愛

               時光九篇

              無怨的青春

              金色的馬鞍

              寧靜的巨大

              席慕容精選集 

蔣勳      蔣勳精選集 

               欲愛書

               美的曙光

               天地有大美

                舞動九歌

                身體美學

                只為一次無憾的春天

                因為孤獨的緣故

                孤獨六講

羅蘭 巴尔特  Roland Barthès  小說的準備  La Préparation du roman I & II

羅任玲            台灣現代詩自然美學

林明理             新詩的意象與內涵

洛夫 辛鬱        他們怎麽玩詩

And last but not least, a semi-autobiography by my favourite French actress who to me, has the most captivating pair of eyes in the entire world, a pair of eyes that can melt the hardest heart by a mere two second glance: Sophie Marceau's  Menteuse 的中譯本  說謊的女人.

This Saturday shall mark the beginning of another odyssey, which I guess will take place mostly after office hours or in the middle of the night: I shall have to start reading them.

I shall write about my first encounter with 蔣勳 in another blog.