The Last Delusions


I got an arrest warrant that morning, that I will be arrested next week. I asked the police if I could turn myself in. They said that in order not to alert the other accomplices, I had to pretend nothing happened until the day I was arrested. During the week, I counted the days and waited for the penalty.

Can I still paint in jail?

This was the first thing I thought of when I got the warrant.

I remembered a few years ago when my professor asked us to imagine what our creative environment would be like in decades, I closed my eyes and saw the bars of the prison. Under the faint light from the barred window, I’m painting my self-portrait over and over in my cold, damp cell. It is a thick, rough abstract painting. There is no mirror in prison, and my perception of my look is remaining in my 20s. The guard said my hair had turned white and my face was as limp as a mandarin peel. I knew it, and it was clear enough when I looked at my old, dappled hands. But I’m still in young colors of red and green, more savage in color than the Fauvists that I once despised.

But this is a more hopeful delusion. The police told me that it was impossible to paint in jail. I would be locked up in cells with murderers, crouching side by side with my hands over the back of my head: there would be no room for thought in prison. I will become a cripple, a lifetime bound by the sin of injustice until I forget painting and the desire for creation.

I always thought I didn't like painting. As professors say, I don't have a passion for art, so I’m not cut out for it. But knowing that I'm going to jail next week, it is the first time for me to feel a sense of crisis. I wanted to paint so badly, and there were things I wanted to paint so badly. Not sculpture, not fan art, but a painting of the world in my heart that nobody, even myself, has ever seen.

It was a kind of unwillingness. It’s too late, too late... Even if I spend this whole week desperately painting, I still can’t paint out that painting I have to create before I die. I need more practice. It should take me ten, twenty, sixty years to see my heart and to paint out the shape of my soul. I am not a genius, and there is no such child, beloved by God, that could rise to paint a masterpiece only because of being provoked mentally.

I can only paint step by step, stroke by stroke, foolishly scribbling, troubling, patiently waiting for that blessed stroke to appear. But one day next week, I will have to end my painting career completely; I will have to end my artistic life decades before my natural death before I can hand over a sincerely satisfying work to God.

Last time to see the sky

I have a critique coming up next week, so I have to work as usual. I picked up my sketchbook and planned to put down the arrest thing and go to the grassland near my home to do some sketching. But the pressure kept me from getting up, and my chest felt like under a big rock. Sitting on the bed, I looked out the window. After a long day of interrogation, the sun had begun to set. I remembered that the sun would set completely at half past seven, and I had to hurry up to do the sketching before the sunset.

How many times can I still see the sky? I remember Lingrong An from Legend of Zhen Huan(a villain concubine in a famous Chinese court drama) after being found out what bad things she had done, looked up at the blue sky and said, “This is the last time for me to see the sky.” I never knew that the sky was so precious. Maybe tomorrow when I walk out of this door, the sky will no longer belong to me; maybe after the sun sets today, and when tomorrow I open my eyes, I no longer have the sunshine. I have had so much, sunshine, sky, freedom, parents, and friends, but they are like the invisible air I breathed that I never cherish.

I picked myself up and stood up: I had to start by cherishing the grass under the sun. I squatted on the roadside with my sketchbook, trying to remember the color and appearance of each grass by copying down their shapes. But I can no longer calmly and slowly track the growth of each blade of grass as I did yesterday: imagining them poking their heads out of the ground and stretching their leaves out slowly... I don’t have time for that.

It was cold and my fingers were hard as carrots. I no longer have the mood for the slow, leisurely lifestyle I should have for my life, and I need to live everything of my life in a week. That's what feels like nettles and weeds tangling on your heart. The grass was no longer one and another fairy tale protagonist, but they were portrayals of the ordinary crowd, intertwining, torturing each other, unable to extricate the struggle. My strokes became unreadable, and I was swollen with frustration until nightfall.

The last critique

Literally speaking, my last painting was very bad. It was the first time for me to paint completely from memory without any sketches or existing images, but I could not remember what each blade of grass looked like in that meadow. I can only put up whatever I could remember verbally: the land in the sun is red, the land in the shadow is blue; the grass basically grows from the same root, and they spread their leaves out like flowers; the tops of the grass are white, because they were cut, and the tops are dead; the grass standing are green, but under the standing grass lay rows and rows of dead grass, which were white; and there was a grass standing just at the junction of shadow and sun, it was tall, like a hero standing out from this crowd of grass, facing the sun and fighting the dark, but the darkness will soon hang over its courage... But after I painted all the debris of memory, the painting became blurry, gray, and ugly, which was difficult for me to look at. The unrehearsed imagery was littered on the canvas, without technique or thinking, it was just a landfill of memory.

But the critique turned out to be surprisingly friendly. Probably because the professor treated me as a beginner in painting with memory, they were full of words of encouragement. But to be honest, I wasn't really in the mood for critique. Looking at the gathering faces of my classmates and professors, I thought, I would be arrested in a few days. I hope you can believe my innocence then. We may not see each other again, but I hope you won't laugh at me and think of me as a bad person.

The God

People never think of God until death is approaching. I am an atheist trained by the Chinese Communist Party, and I am personally scornful of the gods, in addition to respecting the beliefs of others. But when I was very young, influenced by anime, I believed in a religion I had created for myself based on animes I watched. Please don't laugh at me, but I really thought I was a child of God, because no matter how bad the situations were, I could survive in the end, and I always felt that some God was helping me. I completely forgot about it after I went to middle school, and no matter how bad things were, I didn't remember the religion until the day I was wronged.

Being wronged is probably the worst feeling for me, worse than death. To bear the blame and punishment for things I have not done: I tried to do good things every day throughout my life, why would fate treat me like this? It can only be God's punishment for forgetting him, disrespecting him, even proclaiming myself as an atheist; and if there is a god he is not just, he is playing with our fate, we are like rats or hamsters, subjects or pets. But this time I knelt before him. I prayed for his forgiveness and prayed to him to let me continue painting. I felt that every time I kowtow to the north, I made a confession to the patriarchy, a confession to my unbridled soul of the past. I promised him that I would believe in him, that I would stop escaping from him, that I would talk to him every day, and I fantasized about his assurance of my safety, and him placing his hand on my forehead. There is no dignity for human in front of God(Father).

A Will

A week later, the police said they would arrest me soon and told me to wait at home. I would be led away in a black hood and handcuffs in people watching. I asked the police if I could go to the police car myself, and I promised I would turn myself in. He said that it was not up to me, every prisoner was treated the same. There was no need to give me special treatment.

I took out the rope again and hung it on the nail. I had to find a way to kill myself before they came. It would be easier if I had a gun. Biting the barrel and pulling the trigger, I could die efficiently. I don't want to jump because I don't want to hit on or scare anyone. I put the rope around my neck and tried, it hurts to strangle my windpipe, and my tongue would run out uncontrollably. But it wasn't up to me to choose how to die decently, because it was too late for any choice.

But I feel lucky. People experience a drop in sensory experience when they are extremely emotional, just as a dog that has been bitten and bruised will still fight another dog to death because the emotion makes it feel no pain.

The police’s phone is still ringing, I think they kept calling because they are also afraid of me committing suicide. They strangled my life with the lives of children and with the debts of the police. I sat down in the corner and tried to write a will. I ended up with five Hanzi characters: 我是清白的(I’m innocent). No apology to parents, no regret to friends, and no thanks to the world, I lost all the ability to feel a connection with anybody, in the face of death, people only have themselves.

God is cunning. After cheating me for the devout of the last week of my life and being assured of my faith, he quickly called me back to his side to serve him for tens of thousands of years. There's so much I haven't done yet: there is an anime that will start on April 6th that I'll be able to see in only a few days, but he can't wait another week for me to die... I put the rope around my neck again, and it is the last time...

Turnabout

But I didn't die. Please don't laugh at me, the police were fake, and this is only a most obvious and dumb scam.

We live on debt

I couldn't get over the trauma of this week for a long time. My parents were open-minded, they didn't blame me and were encouraging and caring, the school’s counselor was always with me, and my classmates were never tired of listening to me. But I didn't get over it until I saw the grassland again. 

It was mid-April, and half a month had passed since the week I was drawing the grass. Maybe it was the April rain, but they had grown taller and thicker, so lush like a jungle. The grass shrouded the ground, no longer allowing me to see those yellow grass lying on the ground. If I first began to observe the grass now, I would not have known that there were their dead, fertilized brethren under this green prosperity.

There is an ancient poem about grass in China:

Luxuriant grass flourishes on the meadowland,

Every year it blooms and then withers away.

Blazing wildfires are unable to wipe it out,

Under the spring wind's caress, it grows again.

Did they grow like this last April? Then they withered and died in last year’s autumn, and poked their heads out from the bare ground again this April, covering the dead bodies of last year’s grass, and forming a new grassland.

The life of grass is so short. They only have half a year of youth and will meet death soon when the wind takes away their seeds. Too much life lives only to reproduce. As a queer, I have never been able to understand the biological desire to have children. But looking at these grass in the sun, so vibrant and idealistic as a newly born nation: I cannot disrespect their reproduction, for the continuing history of this species since the Eocene. Maybe tomorrow, if I walk across and step on the grass just to take a shortcut, their lives will end so easily. But despite wind or rain, they live desperately, towards the sun, to draw every nutrient, because they still haven't given birth to the next generation yet, producing the next year's grass——they complete the proof of the persistence of time through reproduction, and no one can say the silent background of this world is humble.

I committed suicide three times that week. To speak of the truest thought, rather than suicide for not wanting to be wrongfully imprisoned, I was using this matter as an excuse, that I finally found a reason to not live anymore. The trauma of the scam ended when I realized it was a scam, but what really troubled me was my weak will to survive. I live on debt: I haven’t finished the painting yet, I haven’t completed my filial responsibility yet, I haven’t repaid society yet... I guess, in persuading me to not commit suicide, instead of the usual “Think about your parents!”, it is better to warn me “You haven't fulfilled your filial obligations to your parents! How dare you die now!” And instead of pursuing my ideals like others, I was simply chased by debts and accidentally went on the highway of painting without a junction for a U-turn. Not living for anything causes my low will for living. If there is another “excuse” like this in the future, will I die next time? The grass passes on to the next generation to continue its ideals, and continuing life is their ideal. When can I have something that I want so badly to do?

Staring at the grass with sentiment, I could not know the answer in April. But I will know something about it in May when painting so hard for final.