words I liked: Ghost Cities by Siang Lu

There was a technique in this book where an ancient and a current timeline were somehow connected. I never quite grasped how it came together, but I did like a lot of the writing.

These ones may be viewed as pessimistic, or as appreciating that the impermanence of things makes appreciating them in their time more important:

Everything crumbles in time, but that which is conceived as a ruin is forever perfect in its ruination.

…and:

…even the mountain would erode, slowly but completely, and someday cease to be.

Related, and an example of how language can aid connections:

‘You know, in Chinese, the word “forget” is wang ji. And how we say the word “remember” is ji de. So the two are linked by a common root, ji. But in English it doesn’t make sense. Forget. Remember. There’s nothing telling you that these to words are related. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?’

Again on language and memory:

‘…If only there was an authority on the English language! I would write to them and request that they fix “remember” and “forget”. Because to me, the natural opposite of “remember” is “dismember”.’

‘But that’s already a word.’

Yuan sighs. ‘En, I know. That’s what I mean. It’s too messy, the English language! But when a memory eludes me, like the edges of a dream, where no matter what I try I can’t remember the details - only it was important and now I have lost it maybe forever - then I am dismembered. I have lost a part of myself. Violently so. That is actually how I feel. A dismemberment.’

It this about books, or about people?

‘Why didn’t you just buy it from a bookstore?’ I ask.

‘I like library books. They have more personality. They never quite belong to you and must leave you eventually. So you race through them to make sure you don’t have to return them unfinished, and savour every minute you have together.’

This one definitely people:

Each day we part, and the next day it is as though we have become strangers all over again and must find some way to know each other once more, to dust off the rusty rhythms, fall back into step.

From the ancient timeline part of the story:

Once, staring into the Moonlit Pagoda, He had come very close to asking for help, though for what exactly He was not quite sure.

How we carry our past:

…for now that he had placed his aches, he could no longer misplace them.

Capturing the magic moment when we are in the throes of drink and good company:

…we spend the next few minutes with arms around each other’s shoulders, squinting at the bottle, scrutinising it, its secrets ever more clear to us with every subsequent swig. We take turns telling each other extremely funny jokes. We feel our brains enlarging by the second, approaching a perfect understanding of everything. Somehow, in the babbling stream, we have rediscovered our vestigial tongues.

Now, nothing is beyond us.

…followed by a succinct capture of the state that may result after that magic moment:

I am not yet properly calibrated to the day.

These two on speaking, and words:

‘Then don’t you see? To profess is to tell the world, but you are a confessor, in this and all things.’

…and:

It is hard to know, anymore, if we are still playing with words, or if we are saying real things.

I felt a little disappointed at the end of this book, but revisiting all the beautiful phrasing has made me appreciate reading it much more.