The bitter taste of salt burned my mouth as I desperately gasped for air. Wave after wave crashed down upon me, each time it felt like I was gaining a foothold. Desperate for air before the tide submerged me once more, I stretched my neck, took a deep breathe and suddenly water was cascading down through my throat. One gulp after another, my throat and lungs burned. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally escaped the riptide, more by chance than anything else. As other kids threw away their armbands and floats, I clutched to mine every time my parents took me to the beach. One day, I glanced upon a bunch of kids diving into the water like dolphins and competing to find a key one of them was hurling blindly into the water. Spray and laughter erupted from the sea as one boy emerged from the water proudly holding aloft the shining silver key. Attracted by the excitement of the game, I asked if I could join, one kid looked skeptically, and sneered, “How can you dive…with… that thing?” I responded by pretending to be absolutely calm as I stepped forwards and felt the icy chill of the water. I spotted the key just a few meters behind me. I remember myself diving fearlessly, but in truth this was probably one of the most graceless dives in human history. But my head emerged with the key firmly clasped in my fingertips.

Here, “excitement of graffiti” is an abstract phrase; and the word “illegality,” though self-explanatory, can be suggested in a more daily way. The sentence raises the question “how does this excitement feel?” from my readers who have no experience doing graffiti. To make it concrete, I should write a description that includes “significant details…with such accuracy and rigor that readers, in imagination, can project themselves into the scene” (The Elements of Style, 38)

This is not the same Quincy Market.

Market. Night is the most emotional time of day. From social perspective, night is when we truly pull off our “masks.” We all play multiple roles during the day: daughters, sons, students, friends, etc. Different roles demand us to behave differently in order to meet the social norm. Students are supposed to follow rules. Kids are supposed to respect elders. Friends are supposed to sit together and talk. But at night, when we are mostly alone, there is no “supposed to be”. The only person we need to deal with is ourselves. Our focus shifts from what others might think of us to what we think about ourselves. The location where we meditate also matters because different places may trigger us to think about different things in our lives. Quincy Market is the place that night for me to greet and embrace myself.

Sit alone. Be quiet. Close your eyes. What do you feel? Do you feel darkness coming right in front of you, pressing your eyelids, like a mysterious figure that suddenly comes face to face with you at a minimal distance, making you want to lay back and frown? Do you want to open your eyes? Do you, for a moment, crave light? I do.

It is a rather late evening. I sit on the stair of Quincy Market. Night is the most emotional time of day. From social perspective, night is when we truly pull off our “masks.” We all play multiple roles during the day: daughters, sons, students, friends, etc. Different roles demand us to behave differently in order to meet the social norm. Students are supposed to follow rules. Kids are supposed to respect elders. Friends are supposed to sit together and talk. But at night, when we are mostly alone, there is no “supposed to be”. The only person we need to deal with is ourselves. Our focus shifts from what others might think of us to what we think about ourselves. The location where we meditate also matters because different places may trigger us to think about different things in our lives. Quincy Market is the place that night for me to greet and embrace myself. The whole market, as always, is immersed in the aroma of food—chocolate’s sweetness, cheese’s sourness and grilled sausages’ fragrance… People walking in and out of the market’s entrance are drowning in this happiness and satisfaction. Chewing, chatting, whispering, laughing… I observe these people in the square from the sidelines. There is a guy standing in the middle of the empty space, facing me, playing his guitar and singing love songs. He uses tiny, twinkling, colorful light bulbs to decorate his guitar case, and uses the case to collect tips. Behind him, there are three benches. A young couple is sitting together on one bench, feeding each other pizza. A middle aged woman is sitting next to them, tapping her toes with the beat of the song. A family is sitting on another bench. The father is taking pictures of the performer, and the mother is fondling the baby’s face. How nice. I always love people watching, because I like imagining different kinds of lives in other people’s shoes. But this night, I lose my ability to interpret and imagine. I try to fantasize that I am the man, the couple, the woman, the baby… but I can’t. I fail completely, because my heart is not there, but somewhere else. Staring at them, I feel a sense of alienation, as if I am watching a movie, as if I do not belong here, as if I am sitting in another dimension, watching all these movements like an outsider of this peaceful life and an intruder in this harmonic image. That man’s intimacy with his guitar is not a part of my world. The young couple’s romance is not a part of my world. The woman’s impulse to dance is not a part of my world. Even the family’s harmony that can be mine, shall be mine, used to be mine is not a part of my world at that moment. The market is booming, busy, lonely. I don’t know where to look. I feel lost. This is not the same Quincy Market. The sky is utterly dark, without stars. I can feel time ticking forward by looking at people’s movements and listening to guitar’s melody. What I see don’t belong to me, but the object that makes all these scenes visible to me is solely mine—that light, shinning from the lamp next to the bench where that family was sitting. The bulb of the lamp looks like a transparent bubble. The white effulgence occupies the space inside the bulb very fully, like if the bulb bursts, the light will become crystallized and spill out like diamonds. That light grabs all my attention and become a visual focus. No one claims the light, so I decide to float with it for a while. Unlike other light, its radiation is so pure that I feel like it is staring at me. The sudden thought that it is communicating with me emotionally surprises and unsettles me for a while, but soon I begin to enjoy this strange attachment. Like a mysterious force, the light pushes me to face the very core of myself.  Questions buried in my heart that I wish somebody would ask me pop up in my mind one after another: Recognize that bench? You sat on that bench with your parents the other day. How’s the lobster roll in your hand taste? Isn’t it as good as the one your mother had? How do you like the music? Hear the musician sang: “And if you want to cry / I am here to dry your eyes/ and in no time, you’ll be fine…?” (Sade, By Your Side, Line 13-15) Your mom said that she guessed you would be fine, remember? Are you fine? How’s school? How’s life? And… how are you? I can’t help myself responding to those questions over and over again. That conversation is so personal, so sentimental, so ethereal. While I am answering them, a sudden warmth takes over me along with an overwhelming bitterness that made me want to cry. The juxtaposition of past and present amplifies the sadness and loneliness. All alone in the crowd, I am reminded I am not home. All the things are still here, but people are not the same. I feel like I am sitting in a kaleidoscope with scenes of time spent with my parents constantly overlapping with what I am seeing right now at the same location but alone. Together, these different scenes create a sense of dizziness that make me want to shake my head and figure out what have happened to me during the time in between of these two experiences. Why this contrast makes me emotional? Answers to previous simple questions triggered by the light now become clues for this complex question. At that moment, I was certain that the light was the origin of unexpected warmth and the generator of this kaleidoscope of loving memory and current loneliness. I realize that the light has just led me to communicate genuinely to myself in a way that is rare in my daily life, so I am drawn into this communication deeper and deeper with that perfectly alluring light as my muse. Although I feel there may be too many things going on at the same time, I am not lost. I am not alone anymore. I am with myself.

A tender smile lit her eyes. It was a pair of watery and sparkling eyes under the sunlight that could easily make me feel like getting lost in memory—she had the same expression she had had when she accompanied me on the first day of high school. To avoid completely falling into the swirl of memory,