Time and time again, you will be reminded that life is fleeting as you bask in a world of impermanence. Humanity’s crisis is, by all means, one of meaning…⁣
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Herein, every emotion has a place and a value – neither repress it nor act on it immediately, for it provides genuine information about the fabric of reality; it reveals what is sacred to you; it signals a direction by which to search for meaning; it summons us to be in service of meaning. ⁣
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Yet within the landscape of meaning, there must be a willingness to live as though life itself was never meant to end — this is the impulse of why you exist, the reason you continue to exhale today. ⁣
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— Lyrical Zen

In order to be born, you needed:

• 2 parents
• 4 grandparents
• 8 great-grandparents
• 16 second great-grandparents
• 32 third great-grandparents
• 64 fourth great-grandparents
• 128 fifth great-grandparents
• 256 sixth great-grandparents
• 512 seventh great-grandparents
• 1,024 eighth great-grandparents
• 2,048 ninth great-grandparents

For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total sum of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years.

Think for a moment – How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? – did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment…

— Lyrical Zen

Tears submerged in an ocean of silence, after so many years, become the mute messengers of an undeclared love; an inaudible spirit searching to appease the unreachable sadness in the depth of our eyes.

The subject of love has sunk itself into the recesses of quietude; we know the words but lack the experience behind them, so our actions contradict our claims and beliefs. We were blessed by the penetrating light of infinity, yet victimized by an unfortunate misynchronization; our hearts are simply asking us to care and nurture, but our abdomens have accumulated too much rage to follow suit.

For all the conceivable injustices that mankind has brought before me, am I a fool for believing in love and the goodness of humanity? Or perhaps I was predestined to roam amid the voiceless vicissitudes of a mutually shared illusion…

My end started at the beginning, where providence picked its favorites in the premorse of a living contradiction – influenced by many but defined by none, I exemplify the perfect example of non-perfection. As such, my soul mourns the recollection of the moment I laid immersed in the blood of my predecessors; despairingly unable to assuage the demons that have plagued us since birth. Though the seasons have shifted, I suffocate at the horizon of my many weaknesses, unable to detoxicate my psyche because I was once blessed by the arcana of an infinite love. And so today I remain prudent with my words, but articulate in my actions.

My only remedy in the scheme of loving you is taciturnity – do not search for understanding in the gravity of my words, nor in the cadence of my phrases. The nonuse of words is a conscious choice; my devotion is unexpressed and inexpressible, my adoration is undescribed and indescribable. Too often were my intentions confiscated by this incommunicable silence, insulated in the midst of an urge to live the most profound of all truths. If life was designed to acknowledge the certitude of impermanence, then let death reveal itself so that I can embrace quietus, and entrust you with my book of life as a bona fide testament of my deepest proclamations.

I suppose that I am silently apologizing for my vocal frugality, or better yet, my verbal abstinence. Still my dreams yearn for your affection as if we were the only remaining hopeless romantics – even the slightest slumber summons the engram of your visage, undisguised. My anatomy, calm and unmoving, ardently awaits the magnetic melody of your voice; the sweet scent of your aroma paralyzes the gentle rhythm of my respirations. We are far in distance, close in heart, but when I arise you reluctantly vanish along a vestigial path, as if secrecy was your only refuge. Here I’ve been living my life to fulfill every promise I’ve ever made, and there you stood falsely assuming that my love had an expiration date. I could very well be an impatient optimist stretching out my hands in vain, even if allowing you to set foot in my life was the most beautiful mistake I had ever made. Agonizingly perplexed – are my actions consequential or will the paladin of my cause vanish like frost under the morning sun? They say a person cannot handle affection if they don’t know how to give it – an enigma – yet vulnerability is an unspoken love, longing to immortalize itself in the devoted embrace of a true admirer.

I am thus loving in silence. Only herein, do I find the courage to live in a hopeless world and look at fate unflinchingly in the eye; to waken our slumbering consciousness and combat the mental and spiritual pollution that surrounds the commercialized status quo of our world. It is under this provision that each and every elegiac memory forever demarcates the moral causation of my travails, where an instinctive impatience accentuates my movements and disambiguates the cornerstone of my ethos – like a global orphan strangulated by the solitude of his mental asylum, but set free by a singular vision in the supreme experience of life.

– Lyrical Zen
January 2012 / Accra, Ghana, West Africa.

恭祝母校110周年华诞

亲爱的北大：

您好么？别来无恙？

首先，要真诚地恭祝：生日快乐！

今年是您110岁的生日，很荣幸可以写信祝福您。每当回忆起和您共同度过的美好时光，心中便会充满了自豪与感激。在和您相处的日子里，一起学习和生活，点点滴滴，至今记忆犹新：还记得老师的谆谆教导，还记得和朋友们的朝夕相处，您不仅让我学到很多知识，也给了我许多的启发和体会，留下了深刻的印象。

还记得么？我和您的相逢是在2003年初。记得那时，北京的冬天十分寒冷，滴水成冰。可是，校方的热烈欢迎让北京的冬天不再寒冷。虽然，在去中国之前我已经学了半年的中文，但是，当到达北京首都机场的时候，我还是不敢用中文与当地人交谈。因为他们和我说话时，我几乎听不明白他们在说什么；即使听懂了一点，我也不知道该怎么回答。我的中文不熟练，我必须先花一段时间组织语言，想好了要说什么，才能回答。同时，也是因为是第一次来到中国，人生地不熟的缘故，我很是紧张。。。那时候，摆在我面前的最大挑战是要如何面对语言的障碍和适应在中国的生活。

在到达北京后的前三天，您为我们这些留学生安排了很多活动，帮助我们尽快融入到中国的同学中去。同学们的友善和老师们的帮助让我很快适应了这里的生活。记得那时老师们常常会主动找我谈话，问我喜欢吃什么，生活上有什么困难，是否需要帮助，将来想做什么。。。热心的同学还带领我们参观了校园，欣赏那写满了故事的书卷— 风景秀丽的未名湖，古香古色的治贝子园，百看不厌的湖光塔影。。。

说起北大的校园生活，不知他人最深和最初的印象是什么。而于我，肯定是勺园的汉语中心！我最爱到北大的勺园大楼，沉思或是与友人闲谈。偶尔，我会在勺园的门口徘徊很长一段时间，或是和朋友们交流，谈上几个小时，有时常常连饭都忘了吃！老师和我们的关系也非常融洽和密切，常常会和我们聚在一起。当时的同屋兄弟，也如同家人一般。记得那时我们住在北大勺园9号楼，宿舍的大门要在午夜十二点钟关闭，有时候我们回来迟了，很担心会进不去。可是，每次宿舍的管理员总是很友善，把他吵醒了，也不会生气，而且很友善的把我们“放”回家中。

走在勺园，可随处听到各国语言，看到来自各国留学生匆匆行走的身影。我们的生活虽说忙碌，但很充实。当走进宿舍，你常常会看到同学们的桌上堆满了各种课本，大家会一边准备口语课的报告，一边准备汉语水平考试。

象我一样，很多人都很喜欢在傍晚的时候徜徉未名湖。白天，忙于学习；夜晚，是属于寂静和沉思的时刻，我们尽情的享受着那份宁谧和诗意。

整个学校都沉浸在浓浓的中外友好的氛围中，是您给我留下的最深刻的记忆。这里的每个同学都是那样的积极和活跃，他们是那样渴望了解异域他国的历史和文化，大家总是热烈的探讨着，常常直至深夜。我也经常把自己当成外交官，作为国家和民族的使者（虽然这个责任有点重），与中国本地和来自世界各地的同窗们进行交流。这不仅加深了我对中国悠久历史和文化的了解，也让我知道了中国更多的风土人情。沟通和交流让我和朋友们走得更近，了解得更深。

离开北大之后，我非常惊奇地发现，很多当年的外国同窗也都跟我一样，仍然被这里的文化氛围所深深吸引，想念这里的景色，怀念一同走过的日子，带着相同的思念，我们留恋至今。作为一个外国留学生，能够在中国最优秀的学府–北京大学求学让我感到非常荣幸。来北京大学学习是我人生中的明智选择，我很庆幸自己曾经拥有过这样宝贵的学习经历。除了带给我学术上的提升外，还给了我终生难忘的人生体验。在未来的人生中，我也许将要面对很多新的挑战，但我深信，您所教给我的，可以让我很好的装备自己，充满信心地迎接每一个挑战。与此同时，也想深深地感谢所有曾经帮助过我的老师和朋友们，是你们，让我融入了北大这个温暖的充满了人文关怀的大家庭中，珍藏下许多美好的记忆。

期待在不久的将来可以再次重返美丽的北大校园！

亲爱的北大朋友们，在远方的飞恩会永远支持你们！

校友：飞龙

L.Z. – 中国北京市，二〇〇七年十二月十二日

A man in my position is expected to wear a mask for so long that he forgets who was beneath it.

They said that speaking of romance and matters of the heart would make a man weak – on the contrary, it only makes a man more passionate in times of war. We can only be as strong as the women that raised us, as tears wet this paper like the rain drenches the soil. Just as an embryo incubating itself in the secrecy of a womb, I was held incommunicado for a predefined period of time. Here, I reveal a manuscript, perhaps naively, to delineate an interpretable blueprint of many men within the context of our personas; to shine a light of understanding on the aphotic regions of my heart; to know what makes our brothers suffer dolorous moments in silence during the matutinal and nocturnal hours of the day.

Scientifically, tears are produced when the lachrymal glands’ nicotinic and muscarinic receptors are activated. As a sentient human being in a perceptible world, the tears secreted by these glands are naturally released in times of pain and joy. Tears, which, in the absence of witnesses have absolutely no possibility of being wiped away. A man’s tears, however, are manipulated and monopolized by a tacit social contract. So therefore a man must cry from within; our tears are not at the eye level, but at the bottom of our hearts concealed in an infinitesimally vacuous space. Abandoned, where no witnesses take the stand, tears become the prison that introduces a man to himself. In times of pain, we tighten our musculatures under the protective umbrella of our self-importance.

Now at the swing of time’s pendulum, we witness yet another generation surrounded by hearts of stone, in cities built of stone, stoned in their quest to seek deeper avenues of meaning. Throughout life, many men are nothing more than a spectator – an anonymous face standing against the wall of an opaque discotheque, in the midst of pretentious visages gyrating amid the lethal fumes of emptiness. Here I see my brothers attempting to uphold a façade below the limelight, but weeping silently with each his own story never foretold; narrated only by a subconscious morse code that society never deciphered.

We all became an outward mirror of an inner condition; the helpless victims of random childhood events fated to plunge memoryless into an adulthood whose every aspect grows increasingly obscure. The modern world has shamed us; our souls inordinately marinated in the culture of speed – systematically desensitized, fractionized, and homogenized by the umbrage of mutual misunderstanding. Opting for solitude rather than allowing love to take its course, we suffer an emotional impairment that disables us from trusting one another. Thus, we enunciate our frustrations like the victims of a broken promise, as though our best efforts could never appease the wounds that lie within, clinching to emotional addictions that refuse to satisfy the heart’s vacuity. Hastening our own demise as we look for substitutes in the dense patina of ephemeral relationships, we’re absent in our presence, we’re surrounded yet alone, steadily sinking into a noxious miasma of longing. It is here that we try to exist, engulfed by an unrequited sentiment of loss; an inexplicable feeling of not knowing what we’ve lost.

Mystified by competing priorities and unable to escape these worldly superficialities, many men run out of currency pursuing women, but never run out of women pursuing currency. And so we succumb to vanity and erode moral certainties. In anticipatory demeanor, we are transformed into cut-throat desperadoes leeching for substitutes. But there are no replacements – most are left to stand alone in the dimness as love endlessly eludes them at every turn; a state of mind bearing resemblance to the times when you missed that special someone so much, you wanted to reach out and pull them out of your dreams.

Love – the word itself is often vocalized in vain. For a man, its power is often underestimated, antagonized and countermanded in his every effort. Yet our knees tremble at the exchange of glances in the abeyant moment of romantic hesitancy. Too many refused to believe that when a man truly loves a woman, she will become the reason he smiles; that he will embrace her soul with an abundance of brio as the sun caresses the ever-flowing oceans; that his heart will pulsate in harmony with the guiding rhythm of hers; that his palms will sweat at the reminiscence of souvenirs long-expired; that his tears will continue to flow quietly, long after the loss of a genuine love…

— Lyrical Zen
August 2008 / Paris, France.

Writing this at a time so still that the year seemed not to have begun at all.

It’s amazing how much one is able to recollect simply by trying – whether musing the past or dreaming of possible futures, it has become clear to me that in hindsight, I’ve acted fallaciously. It’s regretful that I’ve gravitated so far across the globe without explication. From the very beginning, I could feel myself ebbing away from that which carries the deepest meanings, the hearts I’ve left behind, the numerous celebrations and anniversaries missed, the birth of children maturing into a new generation of dreamers, the tender moments missed by your side… Everything I grasp embodies a reflection of your spirits – a gleaming reminder of these deprivations. I can only live those moments through photographs long expired, tormented by ideas which refuse to settle into words. I’ve managed to accumulate a verbal holocaust, in hopes that you will take my words as a sign of contrition. I fragmented my obligations to you the day I pledged never to turn away, so it is with deep anguish that I write this apology.

To face this world blindly and transition from fear to love is far from an effortless undertaking. The system we are born into wasn’t designed to build great men; it only seeks to destroy men of greatness. While attempting to command my identity in a world that wants to define it for me, I would have been reduced to another numerical statistic if it was not for the impulse of my constant metamorphosis. The perversity of the misguided masses compelled me to journey the globe in search of truth – and what I found is truth itself, alongside its infinite questions.

I’ve chosen this time to remain both socially disengaged and relentlessly camouflaged in order to surmount my immediate domain. As the conflicting forces of the multiverse accelerate simultaneously, I was destined to question my underlying assumptions concerning the verities of human experience and concede to my lack of an identifiable nationality. In respectful silence, I was confined to absolute solitude and emerged as the apex of an isosceles triangle, supported equally by twin pillars of flesh and blood. My reality is unphotographed as is the fabric of my existence. The lacerations of my suffering condensed into tears that poured into the eternal abyss of my soul; an affliction that only transgresses the afflicted during the deepest of slumbers.

It is through the exotic simplicities of my nomadic momentum that the message became clear: I had to love myself and my inheritances vehemently before I could ever proceed to loving others; the vertebrae of freedom lies between the lines of that message. By constantly redefining my purpose on earth, I was able to extricate a modicum of peace – an aggrandizement of my foundational raison d’etre. And thus, we amassed and cultivated untold solidarity across the seven continents; our efforts become undistinguishable and never unicellulate; we spoke with dignity and eloquence, and sought refuge in distant locales – far from the sanctioned violence and the wounds of mental slavery. We no longer settle for mediocrity in the pursuit of success, as defined by our numerous erstwhile monologues. We exist to learn from our infinite mistakes and teach thereafter, synthesizing our horizons so that the light of righteousness may reach the farthest corners of this earth.

Ergo, today I stand in front of you, ill-at-ease. Despite my multitudinous trials, the artificial distance that exists between you and I has become the hiatus of my life, the centerpiece of my existence. Like a bruise that refuses to fade, I’m at the mercy of your healing acceptance. My only solace, are the fond memories of your love for me… It is through life’s countless near-death encounters that I’ve become thoroughly cognizant of my fragility, my impermanence, and the finite quantity of time at my disposal.

So here, in this very moment, I write my will and obfuscate no further to prosaically express my apologies. With the scant little that I possess, I bow at your feet and surrender my life efforts to you, to love, to family, to friends, to humanity, and to infinity. The essence of these words seeks to act as appeasement in these times of change. I remain loyal to my filial duties and bequeath my legacy onto future generations. Only then can we transcend beyond the world of superficialities. And only then, can we be taught how to dream and live King’s dream amongst peers and loved ones. Birth and death, the persistent dualism of my life is univocal and infinite; as it seeks to transmute vision into reality and take easing steps towards its final destiny. A destiny that longs for acceptance, so that you may trust me again like you trust gravity.

– Lyrical Zen
March 2007 / Seoul, South Korea.

C‘est avec grande tristesse que je n’ai pas pu t’accompagner plus longtemps, en écrivant ce mot, un vent de nostalgie me frappe en plein cœur de la nuit…Pourtant, j’arrive à revivre nos moments avec vividité à travers les photos longuement conservées dans mes archives, et noyées dans la profondeur de mes souvenirs…

Je voudrais que tu me pardonnes pour mon absence, si seulement tu savais comme les larmes restent étouffées, quand on arrive pas à les raconter. Malgré cet éloignement, mon âme assoiffée d’amour me ramène vers toi. Ma seule et unique consolation est de savoir que ton amour pour tes enfants est éternel, et particulièrement pour ma mère – cette douce maman qui m’a fait cadeau de la vie et que j’ai su déballer à ma manière. Elle m’as mise au monde plusieurs fois, par les leçons apprises à ses côtés.

Je te reconnais dans ses phrases et je t’observe depuis le balcon de la vie: le plus grand témoignage d’amour qu’on puisse donner à un petit-fils. C’est cet amour transcendant que je ressens au quotidien, qui me donne la force de croire en moi, de rêver, d’espérer, et d’aimer. Avec cela à l’esprit, j’ose affronter les rigueurs de la vie tout en retrouvant l’intimité d’une paix intérieure infini…

— Lyrical Zen

Mathematically speaking, I failed in solving the elusive equation of love. I wanted to subtract myself from the equation in order to divide the pains from the joys and multiply the result – while adding another chapter to our story of devotion. Alas, the geometry of love is complex, as though the angularity of our human nature lacks a vital measurement in the pursuit of our common hypotenuse. As I integrate myself over the interval of having written this text, I derive relationships between the symbols and variables appearing in my life – tediously pondering when I will reach my limit as I approach infinity… I remain terribly remiss in such affairs; the solution seems to be far from numerical, far removed from being the sum of finite quantities.

Perhaps, this equation was never intended to be solved…

— Lyrical Zen