J INTEGRAL
   

   Today I am sick of the abundance of 'I'  in my story; 
   capitalized or not, because the voice of this 'I', in its
   futile  effort to  win  its  case  by sheer  numbers, is 
   chaotic,   impatient,   equivocal,  and  contradictory.  
   Instead I go to others' stories, to hunt the specter of
   the  hidden form of my story, lurking in the hundred-
   year-old narrative forest of how to say 'I'.

   I meet  K  on each page I read.  We  unite  in words
   over and over.  K and I. For example, 'kith' and 'kin',
   'drink',  'pick',  'kiss',  'kink', 'kill'. You get the picture
   of the affair. Together we are a given in every story.
   But  X  is  a  rare  species.  X  always wears a dark
   mist on his face if he appears on the page at all. As
   if  from  weariness  after  the  long  solitary  journey
   across  the  alphabet  table  of,  or  mistrust  of  the
   words.  I know X and 'I'  joined each other in no less
   words.  Like 'Xian'.  Or  'existence', 'matrix', 'climax',
   'anxiety', 'exile', 'extinction', 'Quixote', 'sphinx'. X and
   'I' stand side by side  in  this  context  less  heap of
   words,  75% of  the  time.  Very  encouraging.  Why
   can't we always show up together in stories?  I  turn
   the pages of  my math books to look  for him, solve
   for him.

   At  4:30  AM  on  Monday   X  phoned   me   that  K
   had died  unexpectedly  while  playing  his  violin  in
   Stockholm.     Two  days  later  X  fled  the  city too
   and secluded herself in a remote monastery.

   I  say she when I say K, and he X, or vice versa, as
   if I am  positive  about which would be he and which
   should  be  she.   But  in  my  speech  I  hopelessly 
   misuse 'he' as 'she', and 'she' and 'he'.   Because  in
   my mother tongue both 'she' and 'he' are pronounced
   as  'ta',  with  identical  syllable and intonation.  Or  I
   have always been confounded by the similarities and
   differences   between  'she'   and   'he'.    From  pure
   appearance,  'she'  is  different  from  'he'  only by  a
   serpent-like letter 'S'.  So  'she' is the  'S'ed  'he'  and
   'he' the un'S'ed 'she'.  S.  The  bond between 'he' and
   'she'.  The sine wavy suture sewing 'he' and 'she'.   I
   ride the  surging  wave  to  catch  our  lost  fish  and
   and wonder who is in the air and who is in the water,
   'she' or 'he'.  I glide in  both  air  and  water  because
   their interface has no thickness.

   I  write  'S'  in  various  fonts  on  the margins of the 
   pages, to fill the blank space of my story.  And I find
   myself  walking  alone  on  the   deserted,   crooked, 
   willowy pavement,  which  consists  of  5  'S'-shaped
   segments   of     different    lengths    but   smoothly
   connected at the ends, which circumscribe the quiet
   man-made lake in the park of the  ancient  city,  and
   along which I walked every week with K and X, along
   which we talked about the names of the fish jumping
   out of the water.  Those fish jumping 10  feet  above
   the water.  We were  so  fascinated  by  the jumping
   fish that time and again we wanted to become three
   big fish playing with the stagnant water  and  the  air
   saturated with the  fragrance  of  willows  and  dewy
   grasses.

   I stretch, compress, twist 'S' into different properties,
   as if holding a newly  discovered  character.   And  I
   recognize  the  symbol  of  the line integral along the 
   curve  'J'  in  the  'K'-'I'  space.   ∫ PdK + QdX + RdI, 
   which  perfectly  approximates  the  accumulation in
   my memory of our hundred-time walk.  J is short for
   'Jiaotong' in my mother tongue, which literally trans-
   lates into  'traffic',  'communication',  and  'transport'.
   J contracts from 'January' to 'June',  quietly  longing
   for the scribbled assembled miraculous spring.     J
   immediately succeeds the serverly handicapped I en
   route to K and X.  No matter by what route, clockwise
   or   counterclockwise,   no   matter   what   analytical
   method   I   try,   be  it  table  of  standard  integrals, 
   integration by substitution, series expansion, Simpson's
   rule, or Gaussian quadrature, no matter what software 
   I use, be it Maple, Mathematica, or Matlab, no matter
   what  programming  language  I  use,  be  it  Fortran, 
   Basic, or C++, no matter how many times I carry out
   my calculation, this integral always gives me the same
   result, that is 1980.  I realize it depends  only on  our
   coordinates  in  space and time,  fixed  in  my  bleak 
   memory park, since the  path  independence  of  this
   integral is guaranteed by the fact that the integrated is
   the total difference of the mysterious function 'F', and
   this lake of my memory is a simply connected domain
   and its water is never ruffled.

   Shanxing Wang 
   "Mad Science in Imperial City"

   http://jacketmagazine.com/34/brown-iv-shanxing.shtml