Sunday, August 10, 2003

'You must eat the cold porridge,' he told me once during
our Tai-Chi session at Tsurumai Park. It's a Chinese
expression. Cantonese, I guess, because he was born in
Hong Kong and sometimes you could tell that all the
important things he believed were formed long ago and far
away. Like the importance of eating the cold porridge. I
stoppped what I was doing and stared at him. What was he
going on about now? 'Eat the cold porridge.' The way he
explained it, eating the cold porridge means working at
something for so long that when you get home there is
nothing left to eat but cold porridge. And I thought - who
did he share a flat with out there? Goldilocks and the
Three Bears? That's how you get good at something, he told
me. That's how you get good at anything. You eat the cold
porridge. You work at it when the others are playing. You
work at it when the others are watching television. You
work at it when the others are sleeping. To become the
master of something, you must eat the cold porridge,
Grasshopper. Actually he never call me Grasshopper. But I
always felt that he might. And I tried hard to understand.
He was my teacher as well as my friend and I always tried
to be a good student. I am trying today. But I can't help
it - somewhere along the line I took eating the cold
porridge to mean something else. Something completely
different from its Chinese meaning. Somehow I got it into
my thick head that eating the cold porridge means being in
the time of suffering. Living through hard days, months
and years because you have no choice. That's not what he
meant at all. He meant giving up comfort and pleasure for
a greater good. He meant deferring gratification for some
distant goal. Eating the cold porridge now so that you'll
have something better tomorrow, Or the day after tomorrow.
Or the day after that. It's got nothing to do with
Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Eating the cold porridge -
to me it means enduring something that has to be endured.
More than that, it means missing someone. Really missing
someone. The way I miss her... He is trying to be kind. He
is a good man. Maybe this is what he really thinks. But I
don't believe a word of it. I think you can use up your
love. I think you can blow it all on one person. You can
love so much, so deeply, that there is nothing left for
anyone else. Once a day I go to call her. I've never
actually dialled the number, but I have come pretty close.
Do you think I need to look that number up? I do't even
have to remember it with my head. My fingers remember. It
can strike at any time, this urge to call her. If I'm
happy or sad or worried, I suddenly get this need to talk
to her abou it. The way we always did when we were - I
nearly said lovers, but it was that and much more. It's
just that sometimes I forget. That's all. So now I know
what I must do. I must eat the cold porridge, and fight
this overwhelming urge to reach for the phone.

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