It is 00:49. The sleep medication has been in effect for fifteen minutes, and every shake of my head can slam me hard onto the desk, with the spine as the pivot: the uncontrolled head spins a full circle around that point and comes back to the screen where I am typing.
Rationality is supposed to be responsible for building the words inside a framework that still requires reason, but emotion has already begun to tear the words being typed down before they are fixed onto the flat surface, regrouping them on the page in imagination. Some characters have their own particular weaknesses. The character 又 is too light; it has to be wedged between two heavier characters, yet all the meaning lands on 又 itself—on its own literal meaning, which is of course somewhat irritated, even full of helplessness and mockery.
Like a corpse that has already been packaged and needs to be moved into a trunk, the pose inside the body bag is uncontrollably arranged into a Chinese character like 又. A person without life is just a doll connected by limbs. When the body is pulled into an awkwardness that can no longer continue, the person will not cry out from pain anymore, but watching that flesh pulled into any unimaginable position is what makes the mover begin to feel disgust and irritation.
Then, just as he is about to be shifted into the trunk, he slumps softly from above onto the ground, both legs folding again into the 又 that will take time to twist back.
In the middle of a yawn the sleepiness gets stronger. I am the one shoved carelessly into the body bag. However the limbs are folded, at that just-right angle it feels as if the next second a joint will click into place and I will pass out completely.
Before you throw me into the trunk, do not forget that my feet are still crossed into 又. Until they are straightened they will stay stuck at the moment the trunk is closed; only by unfastening them can my body be arranged according to a specific structure and mechanism. My body will be like earphone wire casually put into a jeans pocket. When I am taken out, I become a topological world—thread my arms through feet already crossed into a topology, and when they come out again, my hand is scratching some itchy spot on my back. At the moment the bones are about to be stretched to their limit and give two cracks, the infinitely compressed and folded body will spring open in an instant. It needs a 3-meter cube of space reserved, so that the body, like the outer packaging of a compressed sofa being cut open, can in an instant fill, launch, and then collapse somewhere absolutely unpredictable and fall into a stupor.
Take the scissors away. At the instant the dream springs open, its sharpness cuts the story into two acts, positive and negative: from a joyful dream I drop into a terrifying nightmare; from the break in the dream, while trying hard to continue the previous person, another dream begins, one that searches for the next segment of the previous dream.
The effect has worn off. What time is it now? Only by falling down and closing my eyes—remember to cross my feet into 又.