Thoughts after reading a masterpiece

Being creative is the most difficult thing in the world. People are very happy when they think they make something original. But it is just like the pretty girl. You think you are the only one who has her. In fact everyone else had her already. It doesn't mean we should stop trying. Instead, plagiarism is our way of life; and we enjoy it.

Childhood Book

I was having dinner with my niece and nephew. They didn't really eat. They were reading Winnie the Pooh story on my iPhone (it comes for free when you download iBook).

"Do you like the story?" I checked with my nephew, who is five.

"Yes." he nodded hard without looking at me.

"Did you read it?" my niece asked.

"I just started." I said honestly. Call me childish, but Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet have been my new friends on subway.

"Uncle Simon, what stories did you read when you were little?" my niece is eight and she always has one more good question.

I forgot how I answered her. When I got home, lying in bed I asked myself again, what did I read when I was little?

The first story book I can recall is Aesop's fable about how fox tricked a piece of meat from crow, or maybe the race between hare and turtle. Those were picture books though.

The first real book was Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales. Aside from his well-know stories like "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Mermaid", the details of life in Copenhagen more than a hundred years ago left me curious impression. For example, one had to wear wooden overshoes to go out on street. Two pairs of shoes at the same time! But as a kid, I liked Grimm's Fairy Tales better. Those stories have more drama. Maybe that's why nowadays we saw more production of "Snow White" and "Cinderella" than those of Anderson's, even he is such a great writer. By the way, there is a Hans Christian Anderson's statue in Central Park with a happy little duck. Go find it out if you have not seen it.

Then I bumped upon the great "One Thousand and One Nights" at a relative's home. What an excellent book! I dug out all the volumes from the bottom of a closet. Each of them are hundreds of pages thick. I devoured all of them in a single summer, and came back the next year to enjoy them again. One thing about folk story is, it doesn't really care about coherence and structure. The story flows along despite all the fixed rules about how a story should be. There is story in story, story about a story; and sometimes you feel the story-teller forgot the story. Had you read "One Thousand and One Nights" first, modern novels like Hundred Years of Solitude won't come as a complete surprise. When comes to magic, our imagination are bound by nothing.

Jules Verne was big in my elementary school years. I read fast so I finished almost all the Chinese translations of his works I could find in a couple of summers. Still unsatisfied, I searched school and local library for sci-fi books and found Isaac Asimov. His books instantly became my golden standard for every sci-fi book. His style bears some typical characteristic in paperbacks, yet it is very clear and direct without nonsense.

At fourth grade my interest shifted to Great Chinese Classical Novels. I read three of them except Hong Lou Meng. Those I read are all heroic epics in a way. I enjoyed the war, crime, mythology, adventure but despised love stories. I tried a couple of times on Hong Lou Meng, but was never able to finish the first three chapters.

After Jules Verne, I picked up detectives by Sir Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie: Sherlock Holmes and Poirot.

Friday dinner, again

All right, starting with essential information: Friday dinner is on, 7PM, 88 7th Avenue.

I was going to stop right here but just can't help keep going. I think every one of you will surprise me some time one way or another. Take the mid-term election for example. Do you know at least one of us do care about the outcome and took bus to Washington D.C. to attend the liberal rally? This person can't vote; he is new to this country; that whichever party is majority in congress probably would have minimal impact on his own life. But he made the effort to witness the rally. For a lot of people I met, Washington DC is merely a tourism destination. They go there to see those buildings they saw in news. Once a year they associate the city with cherry blossom, which is the primary reason that they took the pain to drive for 5 hours to go down there. The outcome? Facebook pictures with her and/or him standing in front of a tree... Few people around me go there for political rally, not even for Smithsonian or National Archives. My guess is that some girls probably still think National Mall is a place to do discount shopping. We should feel proud of this friend of us. Were he born earlier, I believe he would go to Washington D.C. to watch Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performing in 1963 while most of us only take a glance at the headline...

Of course people have reason NOT to care. Recently I was walking in the subway underpass at 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue. There was this guy, most likely homeless, with signs putting up next to him read: New York Times published poet. I didn't have the courage to read his poem, which was taped to the lower part of the signs. When I walked by, a student-like girl was talking to him. I heard names popping up from their conversation. They probably were talking about some famous poets he knew or met before. I imagined he must have met Allen Ginsberg, who lived around the neighborhood for many years. But even his poem was published in NYT and he spoke with Ginsberg in person, he is still a homeless. The sight made me feel really bad. For a moment this poor guy stands for every reason why people wouldn't care.

But quickly Obama jumped into my mind. Everyone knows that the President had a poem published in New Yorker. I console myself with the thought that a published poet could be anything from homeless to president. I just happened to read that Georgia O'Keefe lived in a 28th floor penthouse in luxurious Shelton Hotel(now Marriot in East Side) for 12 years, which is a sharp contrast to a miserable life in subway underpass. For us who lead a mundane life in the middle, let's feel grateful for the dull fact that we still can have a happy dinner on Friday. Nevertheless I encourage you to go with our friend to next political rally. We need to care things beyond ourselves.