Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

Without this body, I’d have no visceral knowledge of Xu, how she loves me, what I mean to her, how unstained, how fragile, how beautiful she is….

The floodrush of desire in the deepest layers of my body — so beautiful, so natural, so uniquely mine — formed after three years during which it sought me out and came alive as the manifestation of her spirit, her fierce desire, her desire that rescued me, rescued me as I lay dying, marginalized, struggling; rescued me from death and reignited my will to live.

I can completely forgive her for the suffering she’s caused me. I forgive her for the unavoidable “annihilation” of five whole years or maybe a lifetime. My love for her will only grow, my aching tenderness for her, my acceptance, unconditionally. Ultimately I can still see her true beauty, the beauty of her inner passion for me, and how I in turn bring real value to her life by helping to express and even elaborate her vital energy, a precious treasure, a hidden reservoir of desire; only she possesses this vital energy for me and loves me just by living, no matter what direction her life takes or how she expresses her desire for me….

I can only find this expressive capacity in myself, only see the exact shape of my own desire, and I doubt I’ll ever encounter another with the same capacity. Maybe my past lovers weren’t able to convey that feeling of recognition, couldn’t even recognize themselves (you can only be recognized by another after you’ve come to recognize your own desire). In the end it was Yong who enabled this feeling of recognition in me, though it was still far from deliverance. Next to the joy of encountering one’s own desire there is no greater joy than to be received by another.

And Tokyo is the cherry blossoms, the sunset at dusk, dawn sunlight through her windows, the cry of the crow, the cityscape of darkened rooms on a rainy evening, the depth of feeling in her eyes….

MAY 19

Xu,

Maybe this letter doesn’t fit with the book as a whole. When I’d written as far as the tenth letter the book had already taken on a life of its own. It had its own aesthetic style, its own themes, plus the content and ideas were already mapped in my head. I’ve written nearly half of it and the prose has found its own style organically. It seems I can’t speak honestly to you through the book anymore. It now expresses more than what I’d wanted to convey to you; it has grown denser, more beautiful, and you won’t be able to appreciate its whole value until I’ve finished writing it. It won’t be a great work of art, but it could be a book of true purity; the detailed, thorough excavation of one very small field of a young person’s life.

Nevertheless, I still must talk to you. Apart from creating this manuscript I still have to talk to you. There are too many things I have to tell you that would consume me if I didn’t tell you. Promise me we’ll talk for the rest of our lives, that for the rest of our lives you won’t refuse to talk to me. As long as you’re alive please accept the fact that I must talk to you. I want to cherish everything about you, to love you while you still exist.

I think you misunderstand me. You think I’m incapable of providing the qualities of tenderness and tranquillity in a relationship. You think that my unstable, passionate nature will inevitably nullify these qualities. But as long as we love each other, they can exist in harmony. Xu, you misunderstand me and misunderstand our relationship. You disregard me and disregard the potential delight of our relationship, and so you want to discard me and discard our relationship, discard it completely, so that you even want to discard my being. But maybe now that you’ve gone through this abandonment process, you’ll be able to discern what I mean to you and slowly wrap your mind around the whole me that you’ve discarded, my very being. But you can’t ignore what I mean to you; you can’t ignore our relationship. Even if I die, you’ll still be in this relationship. Your body might travel but your spirit cannot be abandoned. I had never thought about this before, I couldn’t understand it, but having gone through such intense annihilation, I see it completely now, all of it, everything about you, everything about me, I can even see the whole expanse of our relationship. Do you believe me? Deep down I know (not simply believe) all of this, and now that I feel okay again I can tell you: You are eternal. Really, it’s not out of arrogance that I say “I know”; I’ve humbled myself in silence so I can devote more to you.

Your reasons for abandoning me and your judgment about our relationship didn’t take in the full picture. You’ve only cut one small branch from a tree, so it still looks whole. You still don’t know that you love me, but in fact you love me deeply. For three years you haven’t really tried to “recognize” its features. One day, perhaps upon your death or mine, you will recognize it. By “recognize” I mean that you’ll finally accept my all-encompassing love for you as for my own life, and take on this responsibility without it being a burden. Every stage of this evolution is essential, no single detail or chapter wasteful or unnecessary; every stage of this evolution between us is beautiful. Osho said as much, and that has always been my thinking too.

Or maybe you’ve decided to turn your back on me totally and replace my love. Maybe you don’t want me to ever speak to you again and won’t allow me to love you. If so, then the truth is we must “separate,” definitely. We can only be either wholly together or wholly apart, otherwise you’ll just keep hurting me and, wounded, I will hurt you again. This is the fundamental pattern of the love we share. I’ve told you from the start: If you strum the qin wrong, it will crack and splinter. You must love me with your whole being or go love someone totally different, or no one at all, but you can’t have it both ways. These aren’t my rules, and I’m not trying to order you around and control your life. I understand my own nature and my nature connected to you has always been like this. It’s obvious to me. If you insist on strumming me the wrong way, this qin will continue to resonate sounds of love for you, but the sounds will be earsplitting shrieks. I am helpless to keep you from playing me in this way and will split and shatter….

You keep hurting me and I keep putting up with it, as presently I’m still putting up with it, until I’m broken, my flesh ground to powder, my bones to fragments. I recovered only to find myself right where I started, ready for more. Your lack of wholehearted devotion doesn’t mean much in terms of our whole relationship, and the fact that I’m shattered doesn’t mean much either. If my words can help you understand the truth that you love me, or help you on the path toward (and not away from ) true devotion, then all will be well. If, in the future, you continue to treat me in ways that are unacceptable and harmful to me, I will be forced to live as a wounded being, and will bear it and endure until my final breath.

I can’t make you treat me the right way. But I can try to describe the explicit nature and meaning of our love. So either love me unconditionally or have the courage to face me and tell me you want to separate forever and don’t want my love anymore, that you forbid me from ever offering this love again — reject me boldly and then we’ll part forever. Only these two options I deserve. Nothing else matters and would only cause more harm, making it impossible for me to respect you. Please understand that if you can at least reach a place of inner “honesty,” then you can never really hurt me, even if we’re separated for the rest of our lives. As you’ve said before, we’d still love each other anyway. The only problem left is that I know I belong to you, while you still don’t know if you belong to me. But from before birth, to the afterlife, to where they overlap, we belong together. We must acknowledge this any way we can, no matter how long it takes, and no matter where it takes us.