Disquiet

My mind has been uneasy since that day. On that day, my external hard disk drive dropped from the table to the carpeted floor. It was not a great height. I tried another PC hoping that the drive was still alive. Failed. A great part of the corporate financial data is now lost though, scrambling through the clients, all past invoices have been recovered, or so it seems. As disappointing, or much more disappointing, is that I have lost so many photos saved inside it. Most of digital ones, taken by myself and given by others, are gone, and hundreds of scanned images disappeared. Furthermore, my manuscripts for the Nankai blog said sayonara to me. Cursed. I was using the disk for a backup. But as the space of the PC was shrinking, I had become reliant on it as the main storage. Cursed since I lost my old phone by washing it with my underwear.

Meanwhile, I finished Andrew X. Pham’s “The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars” and “Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram” translated by him. So far, “The Eaves of Heaven,” which tells a family’s history through the three wars Vietnam fought against France, Japan and the US, is my best this year. Thuy’s diary shows a romantic, disciplined young woman, who devoted her life to the revolution as a doctor. Once again, I must say, America, why were you there? You had no business there, did you?

A few nights ago, amidst a dream, I heard a painful, rather metallic, sound of snap. The scene turned all white, and I opened eyes, scared.