Category: Shouts

If Darwin, if evolution theory were to be believed, we were all butterflies and birds and cats and dogs at some point.

Indeed when we look at cats and dogs in the eye, there seems to arise some intimacy, some innate connections that even the failing of words could not hinder, or maybe precisely because of this dumbness, this inability to use words, the intimacy and connection are in some sense felt stronger.

An infant’s stare and smile has a similar quality: we instantly feel pure and happy and free under the gaze and smile of a baby. As their clear eyes, opened newly to the world, look straight at us, we for that second become as pure as they are for we know that we are not judged and measured up as we generally are by the world, for at that moment we are seen only in our most original form: a human. It does not matter if we wear one set of outfit or another, it does not matter if we are less good-looking, earn less money, know less things than the next person. All it matters is that we look at them, we see them, we keep them company: in this respect infants are very much like cats and dogs: they seem to be able to smell it, they know instantly and instinctively if a person loves them or not. And they receive and give love in the purest and simplest manner.

The cat comes to me in the morning light and rubs himself against my bare leg: what human could say ‘good morning’ in a better way? The dog sits herself cozily at my side while I read a book. And looking at her laying on the mat next to me in silence and contentment, the very air seems to flow more smoothly and soothingly. She just wants company and keeps me company. She asks nothing of me, she demands nothing from me. There is no bending one’s will to the other which is not uncommon in human intercourse, there is no force to constrain one, no vanity nor ambition to impel one.

猫 māo, the Chinese calls ‘cat’, sounds very much like meow, or 喵 miāo. The left side of this character for cat 猫 is the animal radical: 犭or 反犬旁 as we call it.

The animal radical, not surprisingly, comes from–it must be among the very first of domestic animals–the word for dog: 犬. As for this character, Confucius himself said: 视犬之字，如画狗也。That is, looking at this character 犬, it’s like looking at an drawing of a dog. As for myself, I could not for the life of me, see a dog in this character. So I trace back to its very origin, its oracle version, and find consolation there:

But why do we call a dog “gǒu”, here Confucius comes in again: 狗, 叩也。叩气吠以守。That is, dog, is to knock (down) and to attack. Attacking, sniffing, barking as to guard. The word for ‘to knock and to attack’ is 叩 kòu which could be the origin of how the Chinese named dog gǒu.

Dogs nowadays, for the most part, are kept for their companionship rather than the purpose to attack and guard. And they are here, these animals, these, 动物 dòngwù, moving objects , they are here in our rooms and apartments, in our beds and couches, teaching us the simplicity of love and life.

She flips a switch, and time itself stands still. Away she runs, from her apartment, from her life, out on the street people and cars freeze, she alone moves, she passes them…she goes on running, determinedly, liberatingly, to a new possibility.

I sit in the dark theater watching the twelve chapters of her life. There is no switch for me to flip. And all I have, like every other man, is here and now.

Yet—but it reminds me of a philosophy lecture “The Past, the Present and the Future” given by a childlike elderly professor I attended and did not understand half of it—and yet, ‘here’ is filled with histories and memories; and ‘now’, the past flows into it, the future stretches from it.

Knowledge and memories, how could you be in a familiar place and not be reminded of all that has passed, the past was once ‘now’. And the ‘now’ you have at present will unstoppably be the past very soon.

这里 zhèlǐ, is the Chinese word for ‘here’.

这 now mainly means “this, the, here” has a completely different origin: the character when at first formed means only “walk and words”, to walk toward the guest at the door with warm greeting words, to welcome. Indeed it still has the walking radical 辶 that comes from the character for walk 走 , and inside the walking radical is the character for words: from 言 it has now evolved into 文.

The reason for this is that it’s a 假借字, a borrowed character.

The Chinese started making the characters by drawing. But there are concepts and ideas that are difficult to express with images. Hence the later developed method of borrowing existing characters to represent a new meaning.

里 has a two-layered meaning, it means the earth 土, it means the field 田, it means a human’s dwelling place, where he could build a house with the earth and get his food by plowing his field next to his house. And from this, its meaning extends to “community, village, unit of distance, alley, lane, hometown”.

里 also means “the lining, the inner layer of clothing”, and that’s why it has a similar pronunciation with 衣, clothes.

‘Now’ in Chinese is 现在 xiànzài.

现, to appear, to manifest, to become visible. It has jade 玉 for the left part, and to see 见 for the right part. 见 also tells the pronunciation. The story behind it may be: the jade appears.

在, be living, exist, it means the earth, the soil 土, it pronounces as 才 which also forms part of the character. It’s from the image that the new grass comes out of the soil, it lives, it grows and it exists. It is here.

How interesting it is that in Chinese ‘here’ comes from the meaning of a human’s dwelling place: the earth that you use to build your house and the field that you plow for your food: it is his ‘here’. And ‘now’ means what appears in front of you, what exists now as you see them.

Like in the movie the woman arrests ‘now’, but what is ‘now’? It’s the man you see pouring coffee at that very moment, it’s the woman you see crossing the street, it’s lovers kissing and dogs barking.

It is your memory, it is your knowledge, it is so many connections you build up in your head, it is the nameless feeling rushing up in your heart that makes you do this and do that.