Jettison

I’d rather write this file in English so that when I look back for this piece of bullshit in the future, I will not be too deeply affected by the sadness beneath the not that effective language which I could better express in Chinese. I have not written formal things in English for a while, and I bet it would be great to use the lame expression to conceal the hard feelings.

It’s really darn hard to throw away those documents that bear the very keen affection of the past. Sadly, I have to get rid of them because I do not have enough room to store them, and I am aware of that if I want to break though, I have to make some room for the future brightness. I also understand that I will never have free time to review all those documents. Life will be full and dull for adults, and the documents, if not left behind, will end up somewhere in the dim corner of attic.

It’s just not that simple. Not that sort of acceptable for me. Four years ago, when I graduated from the esteemed high school with full confidence and great proud, I had once arranged those files, selected some of those which means much to me. Then I sealed them in boxes, stored them below the shelves, stroke them with my fingers when I felt low, wish I would reach some high time to reopen those precious memories. The boxes, they just lied in the shadow for years, waiting for some heroes or historians to excavate themselves. Actually, it does not happen. Today, I scratched those strip seals and opened the boxes, just to say farewell to my memorable past.

Nothing important. I have seen people getting really nervous when they have to throw away something worthless things which are priceless to them. I know I can get by this barrier since I am strong and not easily affected by irrational feelings. It is just not proper. I remembered that I categorized all those files so carefully 4 years ago, wanted to make full use of those documents in the future. I do not have to re-take the matriculation test; my posterity fellows do not sufficiently need those obsolete documents. They are just mine, my own treasure. They mean nothing to the others, even my schoolmates, my friends or my parents. They feel free to throw them away, as far as I give them permission.

I did write “boutique exam papers” on one of the boxes. Really funny, huh? Yep, those test papers mean something to me. I did write tons of them during that period of 6 years. I made folders for them, tried to organize them so well that I can easily find anything I want in the future. But just now I mixed all of them up, fling pages frivolously on the ground. The mixture looks like a pile of turd. They recorded my high time and my low mood. They witnessed my happiness and my sadness. They hide some of my grandiose secrets among the pages. But I found it meaningless to seek them out. No one cares anybody. People only live on this planet till at most another 500 years. The universe will finally and irreversibly walk towards the heat death, and test papers are nothing without enthalpy. Once there were some particles in this small universe perturbed by someone nobody, that’s all.

I told my friend in USA, “When you decide to throw away some documents, you will definitely recuperate huge room for the future, but you will also lose some records eternally.” The only obsessiveness, which I can never concede, is that I must still keep those compositions and essays written by myself and my friends. Exam papers and summaries do bear some memories, but they majorly serve as datasheets for high school knowledge. Essays, however, are Horcruxes. The words we have written, the utterance interweaving in the sentences are, to some extent, the entity of a person at a particular timing node. I can give up knowledge – after I’ve graduated from high school, I do not need anything about cells and biomes. Knowledge is pattern in life, but words are life itself. If I want to relive 16- year-old myself, I would read my works and essays.

I finally decided to throw them away. There are no comebacks. I will never become someone special. I am just a short period of time lying on the axis of space-time continuum.

‘Zihuatcnejo,’ he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music. ‘Down in Mexico. It’s a little place maybe twenty miles from Playa Azul and Mexico Highway 37. It’s a hundred miles north-west of Acapulco on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?’

I told him I didn’t.

They say it has no memory. And that’s where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a warm place that has no memory.’