Bits and pieces – in the Book of Memory 片刻．片語．片心

Working 9 to 8 in office, rushing home for dinner, checking out the utility bills and re-payments, browsing through the forum of which I am a moderator, taking care of the club business as a committee member, ……oh yes, and a less-than-5-hour daily sleeping time. Busy, busy and busy. It seems that all these are the inescapable routines in my daily life. The weekly hiking events on Sundays should be the only time I could relax myself; but then again, I am the hiking leader of the group in most of the outings. Even scanning through and trying to sort out the loads of photos taken during the week has become increasingly a tiring task to me, and taking photograph is supposed to be one of my favourite pass-time.

I remember dearly my life as a college student in Dublin. Busy with my study and part-time work, but still managed to squeeze enough time to truly relaxing myself : wandering alone around the city on my bicycle aimlessly in sunny afternoons or to the Wicklow mountains for the weekends, laying down and do nothing but listening to my favourite classical music for a hour before going to bed, chatting with friends just about everything… those were the days, happy memories, remote but with details I could refresh by browsing through the old photo albums on which detailed notes were attached.

I do enjoy most of things I am doing, but they leave me no time to slow down, think and discover my true feelings about life, not to mention recording them in someway. I really don’t want to have part of my life missing from my book of memory, and regret that when I grow old. "A picture tells a thousand things", and a brief note would add more insight into your heart. I may not have time for a diary article each day, but can at least manage to pick a photo for each day and write a brief note about it. Bits and pieces they might be, these will be the records of the true feeling about that moment of my life, bitter or sweet, paragraphs that fill up my Book of Memory.


朝九晚九的辦公室生涯、趕車回家晚飯、處理形形式式的賬單繳款、瀏覽自己有份管理的網上討論組、身為團體執行委員需要處理的會務…呀，對了，還要加上不足五小時的睡眠…一大堆不可避免的程序，似乎就是我每天忙碌生活的寫照。每個周日的遠足活動，應該可以放鬆一下吧，但偏偏又是帶領活動的領隊。甚至乎是我最喜愛的攝影，面對著一大堆需要花時間挑選、處理和分類的照片，眉頭不禁又皺起來。

記得在都柏林唸大學的日子，忙碌的學習與兼職之餘，仍能擠出足夠時間放鬆自己：在陽光燦爛的周六下午踏著自行車漫無目的地在市內遊蕩，周末踩上威克洛山區的自行車漫遊，睡覺前躺著專心地聽一個小時的古典音樂，與朋友天南地北地閒扯…。歲月流金，似是久遠的回憶，但又歷久常新，全憑一本本舊相簿頁上密密麻麻的解說字句。

雖然忙碌，但我仍盡量做到享受生命每一天，只是生活似乎不容我慢下來，細味其中的真諦和感受，更莫說如何記錄下來。我不想在我老去的日子中，懊悔地翻揭著自己記憶冊上一頁頁的空白。「千言萬語相中載」，再繫上一兩句的心底話，也許就是最能洞察心靈的媒體。我或許不能每日長篇大論地寫日記，但至少應該可以按心情挑選一張照片，寫下一兩句心中惑覺。雖然記錄的只是生命中的片刻，心靈上的片語，一片片的影像心語，就是構成我記憶冊上的章節段落。