Flower Lounge(1) -- Table of Content & [Broken Reality]

- C O N T E N T S -

- O N E -

Leap to Hell

1. Broken Reality

2. Leap Day Verdict

3. Hellhole Part I;

Hellhole Part II

4. Heart over Mind

5. Into the Cuckoo's Nest

6. See Hings

7. Transfer

- T W O -

Pond of Felicity

8. Death Orientation

9. Lower Circle

10. Black Bean and Tiger

11. Routine and Cuisine

12. The Nightclub

13. Sitting in Flower Lounge

14. To Whom It May Concern

15. Guards

16. God and Candies

17. Flower Lounge Book Club

18. In Due Process

19. Return to Hellhole

- T H R E E -

Shadows of the Mind

I Freedom

II The Mirage of Justice

III Think or Not ... here I am

- Epilogue -

Glossary of Cantonese terms

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Broken Reality

A moment ago, this place was roiling with partying noise. Convicts were swearing and laughing over the ear-splitting broadcast. Suddenly, without transition, it’s all quiet. Not exactly dead quiet, but definitely hush quiet. The only noise left is the hypnotic snoring and sporadic whispers from neighbouring cells. Cigarette smoke has also dissipated. In its place is the stench of vintage urine. I’m absolutely certain that I had been fully conscious all this time, but equally certain that I couldn’t have been. Reality doesn’t skip pages like this, not before today anyway.

I’ve been lying in bed all evening, staring at the festering ceiling, hardly blinking, so I thought. Obviously, that wasn’t the case, or I couldn’t have missed Radio Hong Kong at a hundred decibels being turned off. I must have dozed. Dozing off unaware happens all the time, but coming off it without transition is a new experience. My subconscious must have had spaced out to escape an impossible day. Good move. Anyway, I had evidently short-circuited, missed a chunk of space-time, sleepwalked in and out of an existential puddle.

Reality broke.

So? If it were up to me, I would have it broken, crumpled, and buried for at least the next few years anyway.

The numbness which had protected me all day is wearing off like anaesthetics. Painful little details, so far well hidden, are resurfacing. They look dreadful, flickering through my mind like street garbage flustering and colliding in a dusty vortex.

There isn’t any timepiece around, but I can tell instinctually it’s around midnight.

Can I still trust my instincts? And why should I bother to know what time it is?

By convention, a new day begins at midnight, a transition I had rarely noticed, but I am a little curious about whether tomorrow has arrived. Perhaps I’ve already served out Day One of my prison term? Can’t imagine what the new day may bring, though it makes no difference. Whatever it entails, I’ll have to follow orders. Absolute obedience is number one rule in jail, that much I know. I won’t be able to influence the content of the days ahead. One dark day will be no different from another. Why then should I care what day it is?

All fixed. Every goddamned thing is meant to be, predestined.

Days are measured by the interactive movements of stars and planets. Splendid heavenly bodies plunge through an unlit vacuum at celestial speed to give content to time, creating the future. Awesome, right? No. Not at all. Stars and planets following their orbital fates is more mindless than a government job at the treasury. If they knew that total obliteration awaits them two light years away, in the form of a giant star ABC123, waiting patiently on a collision path for a suicidal ambush, they would charge along just the same. Like us, they can’t change course at will. Every fraction of a nanometre has been fixed.

All things dead or alive follow their assigned path of destruction dutifully, knowingly, unknowingly, then puff…All zombies.

There’s no choice in this universe. None whatsoever. Don’t kid yourself. No backtracking either. From the moment of the Big Bang came eternal boredom, monotony, and precise, absolute, compliance. I have my doubts about the Big Bang theory, but that’s irrelevant.

Do I sound astronomically philosophical? Who wouldn’t be on his first night in jail? Plus my random thoughts are mostly common sense. Just that plain, old, simple common sense neglected long enough appears kind of philosophical. Enlightenment is a cynical side-effect of maturity, I suppose.

Anyway, the point is, everything’s predetermined to the very picometer and much smaller, including what happens to my humble self, alas.

Predetermination doesn’t mean predictability either. Everything that has happened today was meant to be, but nonetheless surprising. After a series of tedious surprises, I’m now an inmate in the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, serialised 365820.

Even here, things continue to surprise.

Hong Kong’s busiest, most overused and rundown prison is drastically unlike what I would have imagined, had I actually imagined what a jailhouse is like. This dump — a notorious jailhouse which literally stinks — is a busting hellhole, irritatingly jolly. Most prisoners don’t seem to mind being in jail. In my self-pitying mood, their cheerfulness infuriates. Perhaps Lai Chi Kok offers them a respite from a villainous routine? Serendipitous reunions with long lost pals are obviously welcome: Hey! What fucking surprise! Good ta see ya, fuckhead, ha ha! I actually heard that earlier. Friendly people.

Unexpectedly, smoking is allowed. Nearly everyone smokes within the high walls of this disciplinary compound. Fire alarms are either non-existent, out of order, or desensitised to cope with a fuming reality. As if to enhance party atmosphere, the Department of Correctional Services turns the loudspeakers way up. Inmates have to yell at full force over the din to swear at each other. Clashing sound waves laced with tobacco smell bounced off musty cell walls, bombarding my brittle consciousness until…until it broke.

Did it really break? When?

As the stench of cigarettes peters out, vintage ammonia takes over. It’s not as pungent as fresh pee, but the aftertaste lingers. I can picture viscous legs crawling inside my nasal cavity. The elevated toilet roared and splashed wildly when I pulled the tacky string earlier, sending a mini-tsunami onto the bare concrete platform. A penetrating miasma emanates from its damp surface. Generations of inmates have either aimed poorly, or not bothered. Well, why should they? Luckily, as a veteran sewage engineer, I know from experience that nothing stinks for long, not even this. The nose adapts much faster than the brain; it doesn’t think.

Whoever installed a raised squat toilet above the bed must have been sick. I can understand the need to avoid blind spots in prisons, and that convicts are not in a position to demand privacy. But an open toilet on ground level would have met the requirement. Why put us on stage? Plus twenty-first century urbanites have long evolved beyond climbing big steps and squatting deeply. Good thing I practice yoga once a week. My deep squats are creaky, but adequate for the present purpose.

I’m rambling hyperactively. Perhaps it’s a self-distraction tactic. Can’t do that for long, I know, but I seriously don’t feel like facing reality right now. Looking back at past events is another story though. Digging for regretful moments is utterly pointless, worse than facing the here and now, but I can’t help it.

Lying on a fibreglass bed ineffectively cushioned by prickly military blankets, staring at the ugly ceiling, I keep drifting back in time, searching for a reason, any acceptable excuse, for this — my being locked up in this slammer. The mind wants a postmortem on the past to show how things could have been different with great hindsight and retrospective wisdom. What for? To backdate regrets? To identify some critical event to which I can point a finger? Here, see that? Next time, do this differently, more wisely, and everything will be okay.

Sure.

Next time? Is next time still possible?

Of course, and anything possible may happen again and again ad infinitum, at least in theory.

Shit.

But as I stare into the past, everything looks fixed.

Each instant is the ineluctable consequence of a preceding one, and uncompromising precursor of the next. Negligible nanoseconds link up seamlessly into hours, days, weeks, years, chaining up events, leaving no room for alternatives, not even in retrospect. Nobody can interrupt the cascade more than one could slice a waterfall into halves with a sword. Like an asteroid, I follow my destined orbit because that’s the only option, and here I am.

If I could relive the past, I would most likely repeat everything I’ve done. It was the most mindlessly natural or mindfully sensible thing to do at the time. Rather futile in hindsight, of course. Given enough time, all sensible and natural actions eventually look futile, if not exactly stupid. Contriving a different path would just be a different meant-to-be, an alternative to the present trajectory which doesn’t guarantee improvement. Forcing events down another uncharted course would also open the possibility of a worse outcome, however unthinkable that prospect may seem right now.

So, all meant to be. I’m a diehard victim of predetermination based on pseudo-logical deduction and common sense, nothing philosophical about it at all.

But the egotistical mind refuses to accept destiny. It wants to show that rationality still exists, that life’s vagaries are governed by a consistent cause-and-consequence relationship. Otherwise, hope may vanish. I don’t wish to lose hope, not so soon anyway. Everyone says ‘don’t lose hope when facing adversities’; no matter how I look at it, I’m facing mega adversities.

What everyone says is usually wrong though. Much smarter sages east and west had unequivocally warned against this popular cliche. Buddhists and Daoists warn that hope is the illusive vanguard of disappointment. Less hope, less cry. No hope, no cry. The Stoics (do they still exist?) believe that hope distracts us from living the moment.

Ah, but what if I’m not particularly impressed with the moment, and don’t mind not living it at all?

Nothing makes sense anymore, least of all the what ifs.

How could I have changed any moment before it existed? If I could, I would have deleted today—the 29th of February, 2012, and emptied the trash bin.

But I can’t. In fact, being a leap day makes it nearly impossible to forget.

* * *

Next episode: Leap Day Verdict