Tôi dành cả thời niên thiếu đắm chìm trong xứ sở Wonderland ấy. 
The world of escapism is one of magic, but the more I dwell within it, the clearer of a distance it has created between me and the real world. A fragmentation of ego. Tôi của thế giới bên ngoài và tôi của thế giới nội tâm là hai bản thể hoàn toàn riêng biệt, xa lạ, tách rời. Ở ngoài kia, người ta chào hỏi nhau, ca tụng nhau, thương yêu, làm tình, bức hại lẫn nhau, nhưng chẳng ai hiểu ai, vì tất cả các hoạt động đó đều diễn ra khi họ đang tự nguyện khoác lên mình một sự giả dối. Một cuộc sống tẻ nhạt với những kế hoạch chi tiêu, những quy tắc ứng xử, những nụ cười giả lã, những câu nói theo khuôn mẫu có sẵn. Chỉ khi tôi quay về với thế giới của tôi, đằng sau cánh cửa, tôi mới trở về thực sự với chính tôi. Thằng tôi đó hân hoan ngắm nhìn toàn bộ thế gian bung nở như một cánh sen hồng giữa ao bùn; nó thả trôi vào The Madness và ngụp lặn trong dòng nước mát lành ấy. Cái “tôi” chân chính đích thực của tôi đang nằm đâu đó trong Wonderland, trong những dòng chữ tôi viết, trong The Madness, nhưng nó nằm ở đâu thì tôi cũng không thể xác định được. Đôi lúc, ngay cả lúc đang bay bổng trong thế giới nội tâm sống động, tôi nhận ra ngay cả thế giới ấy cũng vẫn là giả dối, vì nó cũng chỉ là một thế giới mà tôi đã dày công tỉ mỉ xây đắp, hệt như cách một đứa bé đắp từng đụn cát lên nhau để xây một lâu đài cát mà sóng biển rồi cũng sẽ đánh tan. Ý nghĩ đó khiến tôi cảm thấy rất rõ tầm quan trọng của câu hỏi “Tôi là ai?”. Tôi ở bên ngoài chỉ là một phiên bản được dựng nên để phù hợp với quy chuẩn xã hội người Thượng, tôi ở bên trong cũng chỉ là một phiên bản mà tôi dựng nên để an ủi chính mình, vậy cái tôi đích thực, cái tôi “gốc” nằm ở đâu? Từ hàng ngàn cuộc đời từng tràn vào tôi qua The Madness, tôi đã dựng nên chính mình bằng cách cắt xén từ mỗi cuộc đời một ít, có cuộc đời được tôi mượn chút niềm tin và hy vọng, có cuộc đời tôi mượn chút tuyệt vọng và đớn đau. Tổng hoà tất cả lại là có “tôi”, nhưng tôi vẫn đau đáu với ý thức rằng đó chưa phải là “tôi”. Cứ như thể mọi con người sống trên đời này đều không biết mình là ai. Họ tự trói mình vào các xiềng xích: tiền tài, danh vọng, quyền lực, tình dục, rồi tự hào vì mình đang bị trói. Họ không mảy may nghĩ đến chuyện tìm kiếm tự do. Nhưng chẳng thà như thế thì lại tốt hơn sao? Chẳng thà cứ chịu trói lại vẫn cứ tốt hơn là chạy đi kiếm tìm một thứ tự do mơ hồ không có thực?
Tôi bị thôi thúc phải làm gì đó để phá tan xiềng xích của xã hội. Đó cũng là lúc tôi gặp Isabella.
Khi ấy tôi đã lên cấp 3. Isabella là học sinh mới chuyển đến lớp tôi vào học kì 2 của lớp 10. Gương mặt Isabella bầu bĩnh. Đôi môi nhỏ nhắn phơn phớt sắc hồng khẽ khàng khép thành một nụ cười nghịch ngợm. Isabella hơi nhỏ con với nước da trắng nhẹ, mặc bộ đồng phục chút cũ kĩ và nhăn nheo. Đặc biệt nhất là đôi mắt. Đôi mắt ấy sáng trong không chút gợn đục. Đôi mắt xanh thăm thẳm màu đại dương, một màu sắc không có ngoài đời lẫn trong điện ảnh. Một đại dương phẳng lì không một con sóng. Một đại dương siêu thực không tồn tại ở cõi trần gian. Trên đại dương ấy tôi thấy mình cứ chạy mãi chạy mãi trên một không gian vô biên thăm thẳm tít tắp, không bao giờ biết đến chân trời. Mây dưới chân tôi. Mây trên đầu tôi. Mặt Trời dưới chân tôi. Mặt Trời trên đầu tôi. Tôi bỗng cảm thấy một niềm vui nguyên thuỷ và hoang sơ. Ở nơi đó không còn hạnh phúc, không còn khổ đau, không còn nhốn nháo, không còn bình yên, không còn gì cả. Chỉ có một khoảng không mênh mông, mênh mông, mênh mông, mênh mông.
Có một tâm hồn rất khác lạ ẩn sâu trong đôi mắt ấy. Sự xuất hiện của Isabella khiến bầu không khí bị tác động một cách tinh tế. Tôi thấy beauty and horror hoà quyện vào nhau và chảy lan đến từng học sinh ngồi trong lớp, như thể Isabella toả ra một vibe chứa đựng both The Madness and Wonderland. Sau một chút im lặng, Isabella đi theo giáo viên để mua một bộ đồng phục mới theo đúng quy chuẩn trường học người Thượng. Khi cô quay trở lại, cô đã được đồng hoá vào lớp học: một chiếc áo sơ mi trắng đi kèm với một quần tây đen rất đơn giản đến mức nhạt nhoà, nhưng her subtle rebellion still somehow managed to seep through the fabrics and pour into the outside world.
In the days that followed, Isabella remained a solitary enigma, moving through the classroom with a quiet confidence that didn’t demand attention yet drew it nonetheless. I began to notice her during the moments in between—the way her fingers would absently sketch shapes on the edge of her notebook, her head tilting slightly as if listening to something only she could hear.
Trong lớp, chúng tôi ngồi cách nhau một lối đi. Tôi ngồi ở rìa dãy bên này, Isabella ngồi ở rìa dãy bên kia. Lối đi trở thành hoang mạc. Lối đi trở thành dòng sông rộng thênh thang ngăn cách hai bờ.  It was the first time in my life that I feel such a strange pull toward a person; for I have lived through the lives of countless people and experienced so many love stories, yet this is the first time that I feel the so-called love in my own life, my own reality. This girl is no normal human being, I believed so. 
In the days after that, Isabella starts to declare her unapologetic charm. “Bạn nên tháo cúc cổ áo ra và xoã tóc xuống”, she told a girl in my class, to which she complied without asking a question. Isabella pioneered that trend by becoming a living example. The collar of her shirt remained unbuttoned, revealing a tiny little birthmark in the shape of a star nestled just beneath her collar bone. “It feels good, don’t you think?”, declared Isabella. In no time, girls in the school has already abandoned the restrictive dress code and embraced the new way of fashion.
Of course, this Fashion New Wave didn’t sit well with the school authorities, who immediately ordered a crackdown on the trend. Despite their efforts, nobody revealed anything. All students know full well that it was Isabella who started the entire thing, but they together protected her. It became an underground phenomenon at my school. 
Isabella started to attract attention from the senior students, especially the 12th grade guys. They wrote letters expressing their fascination with her raw attitude. For some strange reasons, they all shared the same fixation on her star-shaped birthmark underneath the collarbone. All of the letters sent to Isabella even had chaotic sketches of the star on them. It has a scarily magnetic pull, as if she was carrying a fragment of the cosmos on her skin, a celestial signature that was stamped on her since birth. It was not a conscious fascination, but a subconscious one where they are not even aware of the forces making them behaving like that. That star, black and stamped on her flesh, feels so voluptuously deadly that a slight touch on it may deliver a shot of neurotoxin into your veins and bring you to a beautiful death; and yet, people still obsess over it. This caused an unprecedented chaos in the minds of the students, with Isabella being in the center, unflinching, uncaring. A cult of the star-shaped birthmark was born, one may say. It was something I have never seen before, not even in The Madness.
This time, the school authorities pinpointed the source of the problem and decided to intervene. “Such outrageous behavior is not acceptable in a school of the Thượng”, they declared. We couldn’t help Isabella, but we know she’ll probably come out of this unscathed, which indeed she did. The next day, she walked into class as if nothing happened, her collar still unbuttoned, her star-shaped birthmark remained outrageously provoking.
Isabella is undeniably attractive, and yet no one dares to approach her. I am also pulled toward her, but I am well aware that my attraction is more that of curiosity, for I saw her in me. That same attitude of rebellion has always been buried deep within me, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to be explored, and yet so far I could have only explored it via my writing. Isabella is different. Her rebellion is outwardly displayed. To me, she is authenticity embodied in a person, she is Lilith personified, she is literally the star that her birthmark has been shaped as. The attraction keeps growing in me and gnawing at my soul, urging me to explore her and getting to the depths behind those oceanic blue eyes.
That day, Isabella was sitting at a table in the cafeteria, listening to music. I approached and sat down on the chair opposite to her.
“I knew that one day you would come”, Isabella said, her oceanic eyes locking with mine.
“What makes you think so?”
“You have the spirit”, she laughed. “I can see that in your eyes the moment I stepped in class. I guess people like us just recognize each other.” 
“People like us?”
“I think you’re similar to me. You’ve seen things. Tell me, what madness have you been through?”
The word “madness” coming out of her mouth shocked me a little bit. It was as if she was reading my mind.
“You’re strange”, I said without answering her questions.
“I’m just a normal person.”
“Not with that birthmark.”
“The star-shaped birthmark? Do you know why people are obsessed with it?”, she asked me, leaning forward to reveal the birthmark. It’s the first time I see it so intimately. 
“Is it the curse of the Devil?”
“Yes, it is. But at the same time it is the curse of the Angels. I am the daughter of The Devil and the Angels”, Isabella nói trong khi rút từ trong túi áo ra một bao thuốc lá, bóc miếng giấy bạc bằng như một lời tạ ơn, dùng móng tay đẩy điếu thuốc lá nhỏ xinh ra, châm lửa, rít một hơi thật sảng khoái. Nàng chìa bao thuốc về phía tôi. Tôi cũng lấy một điếu. 
“Are those supposed to be metaphors for something?”, tôi vừa hỏi vừa châm thuốc.
“Yes. Metaphors. The best literary device”, she laughed. “Do you have the same curse?”
“You can call it a curse. And a blessing sometimes.”
“I knew it!”, she exclaimed with an excitement that seemed to break her enigmatic character in a split second. “Oh, I see that in your eyes. I can see the Devil and the Angel fighting ceaselessly in there.“
“Where do you come from?”, I asked that question out of the blue. Until now, although we have studied together for several months, and the end of the schoolyear is approaching, I still have idea of her origin. She just appears and disrupts the status quo without batting an eye.
“In the pines, in the pines, where the Sun don’t ever shine”, she answered by singing that line from Where Did You Sleep Last Night. “You have good music taste”, I said.
“You’re also a rockhead it seems.”
“Not really, I just like music in general.”
“Cool. Where did you get to listen to those music? You know it’s banned in the Thượng’s world, right?”
“I know a place with all of the cool banned stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yes, if you listen to those punk rock music, do you happen to like Pink Floyd too?”
“Oh how I wish you were here”, she started humming for an answer.
“Yes”, I said excitedly. “That place has all of the Pink Floyd CDs. And not the replica ones, the original ones, back when they weren’t famous. The owner of the place literally waited in line to get the first CDs when they were released.”
“Are you serious? No way. I heard people say that those CDs were already destroyed during the war.”
“But the old man, like, the owner, managed to archive everything.”
“No way. Right in this city?”
“Let’s go there if you have free time.”
“Are you inviting me?”
“If not me then who else?”
“Thank you”, she smiled. “Hey, let me guess your art taste, okay?”
“How will you guess?”
“Just out of intuition. You feel like Bohemian Rhapsody with a bit of The Sound of Silence, some melancholy from House of the Rising Sun. A little bit of Kafka, a little bit of American Psycho, with something by Gabriel García Márquez.”
“What does that make me then?”
“Eclecticism.”
“What is that word even?”
“It’s basically the approach to art where you mix and match ideas and creations from everywhere together to create something new. I’d love to call it The Madness where ideas and thoughts just flowed into the creator chaotically and then the creator’ll cherry pick the ideas to form a new piece of art. It’s so vibrant so free it’s literally The Madness”
The-mad-ness. Her tongue gently touched her teeth, releasing the word “the,” and her lightly tinted pink lips brushed together, forming the syllables mad-ness. When she The school bell rang, cutting our conversation short.
“The Madness," I replied, feeling a strange sense of connection between us. “Is it The Madness I’m thinking about?”
“It is. I can feel it from deep within your soul, Phineas. You have something so wild and free about you. Not everyone can see it but I can see it, very clearly.
At that moment, it feels as though an invisible thread has been tied between our souls. It’s a sense of being understood on a level that words can’t fully capture. Each syllable of “Madness” lingering like an incantation. “I must get to know her”, I thought to myself.
“Wanna go somewhere this weekend?”
“Sure. I know a spot. It’s where I usually go to for painting.”
Her spot was this park behind  unusually quiet for a Saturday. The neatly trimmed grass stretched endlessly, its emerald expanse bordered by rows of meticulously planted trees standing like silent sentinels. Their trunks were straight and their canopies carefully shaped. There was something sterile about it, as though life had been tamed too perfectly, leaving no room for spontaneity. Above the lawn, the late afternoon sky hung vast and unbroken, its deep blue unmarred by clouds save for a few faint wisps drifting lazily at the horizon. A gentle breeze swept through, barely stirring the blades of grass like a faint sigh from the Earth. I inhaled deeply, letting the purity of it fill my lungs, an almost forgotten sensation. For all its beauty, the park was empty like a stage devoid of actors, like it was missing something vital.
The only thing filling the space of that park is us.
“You know I used to go here with an old friend. Her name is Marie Antoinette. She’s a Thượng artist, but not the sterile kind of Thượng artist, but the avant-garde, quirky, bohemian kind of artist. She’d bring this speaker and play all sort of cool music from the 70s, the good stuff from Summer of Love. I would just sit there, browsing through all of the shades of paint for my drawing, humming to myself radio goo goo radio ga ga. Fun times.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s disappeared”, Isabella trả lời với một vẻ thản nhiên như không.
“Disappear?”
“Yes, one day she’s just disappeared, without telling me anything. I’ve been searching for her for so many years, but to no avail. It’s like she’s just vanished out of this Earth.”
“How about her family?”
“She doesn’t have a family. Her parents died during the war.”
“Có ai khác biết về sự biến mất ấy không?”, tôi hỏi.
“No, I don’t think so. I think I’m the only person connecting her with this Earth. Sometimes I think she’s more alien than human, you know. There is something about her that is just so ethereal and otherworldly that I can’t quite describe into words. But painting is different. Painting is entirely different medium, and I can capture my feelings through it.”
Isabella opened her little bag and took out a sketchbook. It looks tattered, với những vệt màu xanh đỏ quệt ngang dọc trên bìa. Kích thước quyển sketchbook đâu đó khoảng ngang một tờ A4, với chất giấy khá dày. Isabella opened up a drawing in it. A surreal one. The entire painting is monochromatic black-and-white, with a large amount of colors focused at the upper left corner. At the center is a humanoid figure sitting curled up inside an enclosed, egg-like structure floating in the infinite expanse of outer space where little stars flicker in the far distance. The figure appears skeletal and decaying. Its knees are drawn to the chest, arms wrapped around, creating a sense of confinement. The head is distinctively unsettling, with stitched areas or cracks that resemble fractures. Its eyes are closed, its mouth somber, expressed through very basic lines. Emerging from the figure's head is a branching, root-like structure that organically extends outward. At its endpoint this branching explodes into a kaleidoscopic web of fractals and colors and swirling psychedelic energy. This is where the majority of color lies.
“The Egg”, Isabella uttered. “I called it The Egg.”
“It feels like existential crisis.”
“You think so?”, Isabella laughed. “Yeah it can really be. I felt really empty against the world when I drew this. To be honest, Marie Antoinette was the one who influenced me. I studied a lot from her painting, and this one is where I felt that influence the most clearly. It’s strange how someone so far away from us, someone whose existence just seemed to be erased, can has such an influence on us.”
“It reminds me of Salvador Dalí. That wacky moustache guy.”
“Yes, Dalí. Marie loved his paintings too. Marie and I started painting in his style back when we were like…14 years old or something? So many people were calling us crazy, but we just felt an inexplicable pull towards his style, you know. It’s not conventionally beautiful, but not all things need to be conventionally beautiful, right?”
I nodded. “Dalí paints to explore the subconscious mind. I’ve been writing about the psyche a lot too. When I write, I just let my subconscious do the work. My fingers just follow the subconscious’s orders.”
“True”, she exclaimed. “People ask me where I got the inspiration, I just said I don’t know. I just paint whatever comes to mind.”
“But there is a story behind it. I can see the entire artistic idea. It feels so coherent and connected to me.”
“And there actually wasn’t”, she laughed. “I simply painted and it came to me as if guided by the divine. It’s like how Literature teachers just ask us to analyze an entire passage of Shakespear as if he wrote everything with a plan in mind. Well, to be fair, he might have had a plan in mind, but I believe great writing comes like an epiphany, like a Big Bang. Boom, and it flows out of you.”
“Do you write, Isa?”
“I used to write. But then I realize the limitations of words, so I decided to turn to painting to capture that which can’t be captured.”
“You’re honestly talented Isabella.”
“You haven’t showed me your writing, Phineas. I may get some inspiration from your writing.”
“I wrote a short story similar to that painting you drew. It’s called The Story of The New Sun about a guy who float in space for eternity after the Sun exploded to find a new Sun. He’s just floating for years and years and years in that endless space without even being able to die until he goes into a coma and hallucinates up a new Sun, a new Earth, and an entirely new universe.”
“So he’s God, basically.”
“I love the ending sentence. So the guy’s name is Zuckeberg. And Zuckerberg went to a coma and said, let there be art: and there was art all around the new universe he’s just constructed in his mind. I love that sentence so much.”
“That sounds like something I’d read. Do you store your writings somewhere?”
“Yes, on Google Drive. I uploaded everything there.”
“Oh, techie writer. So cyberpunk.”
“I know right.”
“Here, take a look at another.”
Isabella showed me another painting whose background is a vast array of geometric shapes haphazardly scattered. On the topleft corner, a circular object with an eye-like marking is positioned, connected to a swirling, spiral design via curving lines. A horizontal bar stretches across the center section, supporting a series of pendulum-like spheres, which appear to hang from evenly spaced points above. At the lower end, there is a hand showing a middle-finger, literally a “fuck the world” attitude. The cool thing is that there’s a ring that trapped that middle finger to a table, so even the fuck-you felt so restrictive, like a silent scream, like a crying without shedding a single drop of tear. On the bottom-left corner is a little girl with an anxious expression on her face, while on the other side is an old woman, looking back at the little girl, this time with a somewhat exhausted but resigned acceptance.
“That feels like frustration against the entire universe.”
Isabella thought a few seconds. “Probably so. You’re reading my mind through my painting, right?”
“The creation of the artist reflects their inner world, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure. Like, the source of inspiration for my paintings is located somewhere so far, far, far away that I can’t even reach. It’s not just “oh here’s a cool idea let’s draw it out”. It’s more like “i’ll just draw whatever came to mind”, and I got that painting.”
“I know where it came from. Buried memories. Memories that you didn’t even know to have existed in the first place.”
“I’ve seen more than I can remember.”
“I’d love to know more about your life.”
“You can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t even remember it. There are so many things having happened that all I have now is fragments of fragments of experiences.”
“Do you have The Madness?”, tôi đánh bạo hỏi Isabella, với một niềm tin rằng nàng cũng mang trên vai lời nguyền quỷ dị từ Hư Không ấy như tôi, hệt như cách nàng mang trên xương quai xanh chiếc star-shaped birthmark.
“What is that?”
“It’s hard to explain…it’s like the entire lives of other people just pour into you without any filter.”
“Isn’t that call being empathic? Being an empath?”
“It’s more than just being an empath. I’m not sure how to describe you. It’s a much more vivid kind of empathy.”
“No worries, I can feel what you mean. I sometimes think I’m an empath too. But I don’t want to label myself as anything. You know, not as a Thượng, not as a Hạ, not as an empath, not as an artist, not as anything. I’m just me.”
“Yes, I hate calling myself anything either. I just want to just live and be a normal guy.”
“Are you a normal guy?”
“Probably.”
“No normal guy calls themselves a normal guy. I don’t think I’ve met a normal person in my life.”
“So you’ve only met psychos?”
“Sure”, she tilted her head. “You’re one big psycho to talk to me.”
“I’m so curious about you, you know. Tell me your lore, my lady.”
“My lore should better be explained by art and music. Or by that Madness you said. So…does The Madness inspire your writing?” Isabella asked. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Very much so. Like…artists are supposed to gather the lives of others as materials for their art. I think life in its rawest form is the secret ingredient to great art. The Madness gave me the ingredient, and I poured everything into my writing.”
A tiny silence washed over us as I looked at Isabella with all gentleness. Her wrist was delicate, with pale skin stretched thin enough to reveal faint blue veins tracing a path up toward her elbow. The cuff of Isabella's uniform sleeve clung loosely, unable to fully embrace the slender arm beneath. I could see every crease in the fabric, every speck of dirt, and somehow I was inexplicably drawn to the scent of her—a strange, indescribable allure, tender yet chaotic in its quiet rebellion. I pulled myself closer to her, and I can feel in vivid details the warmth of her body and her scent slowly engulfing me.”
“How long have you been living with The Madness?”, she asked gently
“Ever since I can remember.”
“So…how does it work for you? Tell me more”
“It’s kinda random. The Madness came without any warning, and once it comes, it pulls me into the soul of other people. It’s not like I observe life from their perspective, but I lived through their life, as if I forgot who I am, and I became that person 100%. Only when I snapped back to my body do I remember my identity. I once lived through the life of a hippie wandering across the vast landscapes of Eurasia. There were nights when he slept amidst a meadow brimming with wildflowers, under a sky ablaze with the brilliance of the Milky Way. Such breathtaking sights are things we could never witness here in the city. In moments like those, I’d say Madness isn’t so bad after all. But at the same time I’ve seen some of the worst atrocities of humans. I was basically abducted and tortured endlessly for months before finally succumbing to death as the final salvation. It was hell. Literally hell followed by heaven followed by hell followed by heaven.”
“That’s crazy. Is it some kind of disease?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a hospital or something. If I’ve ever been there, they’ll probably lock me up for experiments, which is even…worse. I’ve seen human experiments.”
“Do you read Buddhist texts?”, she asked quite unexpectedly.
“Yes, I know it a little bit. Why?”
“Here’s some of my lore for you. I’ve spent some part of my childhood in a pagoda with a Zen master. He taught me a lot of Buddhist scriptures. Basically we are all born with some karma etched into our souls that we must deal with in this lifetime. It’s true to some extent I think. The moment we were born, we have absolutely no control over the circumstances of our environment, our parents, our upbringing, our early experience in life. When we are conscious enough of those influences, we have been shaped in so many ways. Of course, we have years of lifetime ahead, but those early years are indeed important. The experiences we have in those years were buried in our subconscious, and we were driven by those impulses without knowing, don’t you think?”
“That’s an interesting take on karma. I think so too. I never ask to be born with The Madness, you know, but it’s something I have to accept, like a punishment from God. I don’t want to die, but sometimes wish I’ve never been born at all.”
“Sometimes I think I’ve seen it all, and then I still can’t see through the impulses of my subconscious.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I believe I am just a cat that has lived for millions of years, living through the most depraved parts and most beautiful parts of life. So much so that events happening to now just seem like a version of past events that The Madness brought.”
“You don’t sound like someone who forgot her lore”, I laughed.
“I forgot it all, really”, she winked a mischievous wink. The ocean vanish for a second before reappearing in front of me and drown me slowly. “Maybe those are just false memories.”
“Even if memories are false, they still feel so real.”
Our fingers intertwined, tangled together, holding, squeezing, tenderly embracing one another. We had taken each other’s hand so effortlessly, so naturally. To this day, I can still vividly recall the warmth of that touch, even though it lasted only a fleeting few seconds. In that moment, it felt as if I were no longer haunted by the Madness, as if I had become a bird soaring freely through the skies, singing a carefree song. I wanted to believe—no, I was certain—that in that brief moment, Isabella had felt exactly what I did: a fragile bubble filled with turmoil, confusion, yearning, nostalgia, and chaos. And I wanted to let the Madness go. Let it scream and rage for a thousand more years if it wished; it would still be nothing—just illusions, nothing but dreams. What was real, what would stretch out to eternity, was those few seconds when our hands touched. I heard the voice of Joan Baez reverberating in the air:
On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye
High above him, there's a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky
Truyện dài