Holidays

Quickening footsteps
Thump
On the floor of wintry face
Bustling cars
Whiz
By the lake of solitary dace
Mistletoes
Roasting fire
And holidays’ greetings
What does your heart long for
A gentle smile
Or bittersweet nostalgia
In the white flakes
At the end of this year
What lies in the future
Is it from the heaven
Or the destiny of your hands

These Days

These days
I’ve been busy
And you
These days
I’ve been writing
Line by line
A story lies
In the valley of silver white
These days
I’ve seen
The season change
And you
What have you noticed
Is it the leaf in the breeze
Or sunshine in your tea
These days
I’ve accomplished
Finally
My first novelette
And you
What have you achieved?

Both

I hear you
Peaceful or belligerent
Scraping a piece of mind
Planting in a crystal ball
I see you
Elegant or poignant
Plucking a thorn of rose
Leaving a trace of fall
Clouds never fade
In the eye of oceanic floor
White dances with Blue
Fire mixes with Snow
They say you are the Mother
Of all
They say you are the Bearer
Of Law
I say you are the Source
Of both
Love and Soul
Hatred and Loss

be

flakes of white cotton float
across the boarders of hope
light as feathers
distant as you
stares of silver stars freeze
through the universe of north
cold as ice
poignant as my dream
the sound of pastures
seemed yesterday
being hummed by crickets
crimson cherries lay
round and round
the corner of golden trees
the burden of life and death
love and loss should never
be
the hindrance of everlasting sweets

Evergreens

When the earth turned
Your eyes froze
In the wind
On the horizon
Every little step
I made
Flashes of the past
Lingered
Hovered
And hollered in vain
To fight back
I hated to say
Yet wanted to stay
Childhood of tiger lilies
Starry night with mellow hymns
Who painted the mystery
Of humanity
High in the sky of evergreens
Who played blues
Of roller coasters
With a touch from Aristotle

Written by Jerski Bjorksen

To blame or not to blame

Putting criminals committing homicides to death has been a very controversial issue in a lot of nations although many countries across the world have abolished the death sentence. Many a time, we read news about the brutal behaviours of what people call, ‘cold-blooded’ killers and felt chills creeping up our spine. We asked ourselves: how could a person did something so cruel to others?

On the side of social moral, killing or taking away others’ life by force has been deemed a serious crime or even in the religious term, sin. However, neuroscientists now are discovering that some of the ‘cold-blooded’ killers might not be what we previously thought they were, namely-they are not bad, they are actually suffering brain abnormality which renders them being so emotionless and vicious.

In the issue of Scientific American, Mind (Sep/Oct, 2010), Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz have a study regarding the mind of a psychopath. The word, ‘psychopath’, makes most of us think of the movie images such as Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Yet, in reality, many psychopaths could be likable people when they want to be according to real-life cases. This, therefore, becomes a very challenging part in terms of studying psychopaths, meaning these culprits show none of the classic signs of mental illness, hallucinations, or hearing voices. They do not even appear socially-awkward. On the contrary, they often possess better-than-average intelligence. The bizarre part of psychopaths is usually that they lack of empathy; and that is why they can kill others showing no regret and mercy at all. Based on the new studies, doctors and neuroscientists are speculating that people with the damage in the area of paralimbic system, a horseshoe-shaped band of tissue nestled in the deepest recesses of the brain, may develop psychopathic traits and behaviours. This paralimbic system includes several interconnected bran regions which register feelings and sensations and assign emotional value to experiences.

I personally think the research demonstrated another noteworthy approach regarding how we should treat ‘cold-blooded’ killers. Perhaps government should spend more time and resources locating the real problem of those killers and prevent more tragedies from happening. The recent news about a man who had killed two young girls was released after serving in jail for six years because of the judicial law change and the claim that he had mental illness. The ironic and sad part is that he committed homicides again after he came of out the prison a year later. If the probing of a ‘cold-blooded’ killer’s mind can be taken into consideration when dealing with this sort of case, perhaps neuroscientists can find and determine whether a serious criminal suffers from abnormality in his or her paralimbic system, thus giving him or her appropriate treatments. After all, if a person cannot feel empathy or in a more layperson’s term, has no heart, it seems a bit unfair to blame him or her so much. This certainly is a very tricky issue as most of us feel angry and indignant when hearing news about some killer that tormented a victim with atrocious and horrific ways before ending the victim’s life.

Echo

What a rainy day! Cats and dogs cannot even describe what we have been having for the last few days. The typhoon certainly brought torrential rain and flooded everywhere on this small island. Once again we witnessed the power of Nature!

I took the MRT (metro) to go to teach a class in the XinYi district this afternoon. People out in the rain surely didn’t look very happy. Wet clothes, shoes, bags scattered on the street, and the only pleasant sight would be the colours of various kinds of umbrellas. I shook off the depressing thought on such a gloomy day and dodged the stinging wind and landed on the front gate of Eslite bookstore. Arriving on the second floor, I noticed an array of new arrivals, the books and novels. Quietly on the corner stood a book which has the mysterious Indian fish pin and the colour of the red earth. I stepped forward and saw the author’s name-Echo. Oh that was one of my favourite writers from my high school days. I even met her at her speech event in my hometown. It’s been over twenty-two years since that day but I still remember clearly her talk and stories about travelling and living.

Life is just unpredictable, isn’t it? I of course am not the same high school student I used to be; and on the contrary I have also travelled and lived in five different countries myself. I have also tried to learn four different languages. Echo Chen was an amazing writer and artist. She was the legacy of Chinese contemporary literature. I picked up one of her seven books and thumbed through several pages. There again, the magic and power of her words mesmerised me over and over. Time went by like a click sound of the clock. I read the book for twenty minutes without noticing it’s my time to go.

Just like one of her famous song lyrics, ‘The Olive Tree’, do not ask where I am from. My hometown is far away. Perhaps we all have this sort of dream or feeling hidden in us but very few of us would actually act it out. So I believe most of us are good writers but only very few of us really make up our mind penning down the lines…
To you, Echo, San-Mao, I hope you never have to roam like a nomad in another world if there is really one.

Little Bee

Recently I had the honour reading Chris Cleave’s “The Other Hand” and gosh I didn’t know I actually bought the same book with a different title until I was half way through the book! One night I was standing in front of my bookshelf, which is full of novels, textbooks, and folders, I suddenly found the name, “Chris Cleave” and soon realised that I had bought “The Other Hand” with another title, “Little Bee”, sigh. This is what happens when you keep buying books and the reading cannot keep up with the influx of newbies.

Anyway, my focal point of this entry is that “The Other Hand” is really a good read. It did give me chills down the spine in many parts of the novel. It’s also a sort of pathetic matter that dominating or mainstream society has its way of influencing many across the globe, in a way sometimes beyond our comprehension. The truth is: using our living standard or so-called philosophy to frame other cultures or people with diverse beliefs is not really fair or wise or even can be relatively dangerous.

The only thought I had after reading this novel was that we should never try to change our own values, the precious ones, deep inside our heart because there must be some wisdom embedded in one’s culture or tradition, which has been passed on for hundreds of years or even thousands of years…

I didn’t like the affair part in the story because it is too generic to me. As we read many best-selling books, this genre seems inevitable and perhaps it is one of the selling points in contemporary literature. However, I just thought it gave rise to the stereotype that British people fool around even though they are in wedlock. Oh well, who am I to judge? Thing is we should never hurt other people no matter what we do in life. Kudos to Little Bee! I saw weaknesses as a human being. I sensed that it’s really difficult giving up one’s own life for a stranger, and even if you do, you will probably gain nothing in return when the recipient has a chance paying back to what you have done for him or her. At the end of the day, that is life, isn’t it?

These Days

White pebbles roll
Back and forth
Like a cradle
Rocking my little world
Blue light scatters
Across green oceans golden rice fields
And remote temples
These days
I wonder
Where has the postman gone to
Letterbox is empty
Weather has changed
Cool air in the autumn eve
Is a disguise of nostalgia
Lingering breathing and haunting
On the other side of the wall

Written by JerSki BjorkSen