Sleeping to Dream
Bryan never expected that sorrow could be delayed—the ghosts of the past had returned, and this time, he no longer had the strength to resist.
If asked to describe the shape of sorrow now, he would say it’s like a fluid, held within his chest, sloshing as he walks, spilling out bit by bit to corrode his heart. When lying down, it flows steadily, trembling only with each heartbeat.
As for its temperature, it’s certainly not cold—it’s warm, slightly hotter than the temperature of his chest, slowly releasing heat that simmers his heart. It feels like… a slow simmer over low heat, stewing with pain, yet never fully cooked. His active nerves keep reminding him of the taste of pain.
There is only one kind of action at a distance in this world—the memories that stir this cauldron of abyssal soup from the back of his head. After fermenting for over a year alongside a fate as fragile as raindrops on duckweed, the moment he opened the cellar door filled with discarded memories, the brewed ghosts surged up with the warm, sweet scent of pleasure and resentment, hitting him like a heavy hammer. To me, his reaction seemed shameful—or, to put it plainly, shameful to the point of unbearable embarrassment. I had never seen him like this before. Once sincere, confident, and youthful, now lost in the flow of time, he could no longer distinguish what happened now, what happened two years ago, or what he thought happened yesterday but had actually passed a year ago. These memories, which he believed he had long lost over the past year, ultimately dispersed in such a clear and visible form among all other orderly memories, infecting them like cancer. Even earlier, cleaner memories now began to take on sharp edges, wandering in his mind.
Unfortunately, poor Bryan is merely a pitiful one-dimensional creature of time, unaware that his mind sometimes serves only as a medium, transmitting distant messages to his future self after countless iterations, all while performing foolish acts of confidence tinged with faint sorrow. At this moment, he finally realized the bleakness of humanity, caught between gods and beasts, yet still unable to resist becoming a sacrifice to this spiraling tragedy.
Ode on Melancholy
BY JOHN KEATS
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Now he is filled with desolation, poor Bryan.