The Ravings of Three Middle-Aged Men

Translated…

“The two years you’d served in the army at Mazu, did you ever see the blue tears?”, A asked.

B replied, “Perhaps, in my dreams.”

All of a sudden, C blurted out, “I, however, saw you shed your tears in Mazu.”

After they all laughed, there was, this long silence that followed. Yeah, time surely, did, fly quick, in a blink of an eye, it’s been, twenty-five years since they were all, relieved of army duties, in the older days without the technologies, who would know, that the “Bei-Kao Command Center” was originally NOT the “Taipei-Kaohsiung Command Center” but the “Bei-Gan Kao-Deng Command Center”? And, who would know, that there are, smaller islands like Kao-Deng, Liang Island, Da-Chiu, Xiao-Chiu, and many other smaller islands that Taiwan had never even heard of?

not my photograph…

That year, the three men were no more than twenty years old, arrived at Keelung from different training centers, onboard a ship, arrived, in Bei-Gang.

In the two years they’d lived there, they’d actually never gotten a closer look at the island. As they were rookies, having days off are a hard to come by kind of luxury, and, it was the time of the 1996 critical period, and, they’d gone out, dumbly in the morn, with their rifles, hid out in the ditches, gazed out at the sea, watching the fishing ships.

After they’d served for a year’s time, they’d become somewhat experienced, and, when they were on break, they’d needed to, evade the marching guards, they’d had endless tasks to handle, mixing the concrete, stirring in the gravels, tying up the steel rods, as they watched the bluer than blue sea of Kenting, thinking, that if they weren’t serving, they should be out by the beach, playing with their friends? It’s just, the steel warning plates “Landmine” hung on the steel wires, warning all who came close, that the beaches were, a dangerous place.

not my photo still…

As the three of them became senior servicemen, with the day of being relieved of duty marches closer and closer, it seemed, that their lives on the island became, freer and freer.

On the eve they were relieved of duty, the three of them lay there, on the gathering grounds, gazed up at the star-filled skies, and they’d felt freer than they ever had been, in two years. And it was, on that same night, when they saw the most number of shooting stars in their whole lives—all the nostalgia, all the suppressed emotions had, fallen into the oceans, with the shooting stars.

“Actually, I did see, the blue tears once”, A said.

And what followed was, a long and winding silence.

So, these men are now, reminiscing their days in the army, and, army was hard, because you’d needed to undergo harsh trainings, in preparation of an attack, and that, is the transition from boyhood to manhood, in the earlier days in Taiwan, all men need to serve, unless otherwise specified.