Ongoing Moments: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department respond to a photograph of their choice. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.]
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The urgency of travel comes from the failure to stay. When activities have (slowly) become inactivities, the resistence lies in perpetual departures. You carefully craft that very constant of commotions by nurturing the readiness of leaving. “You are the absent one.” someone told you one day. Your gaze fixated on a fleeing focal point, looking (hoping) for a grounding reply. You grant yourself the silence, leaving no traces to prove that you have already left.
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The urgency of travel comes from the failure to stay. When activities have (slowly) become inactivities, the resistence lies in perpetual departures. You carefully craft that very constant of commotions by nurturing the readiness of leaving. “You are the absent one.” someone told you one day. Your gaze fixated on a fleeing focal point, looking (hoping) for a grounding reply. You grant yourself the silence, leaving no traces to prove that you have already left.
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Suzanne Lai is a BA graduate in Stylistics and Comparative Literature (Class of 2014). [Click here to read all pieces by Suzanne.]
Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University 