Soon George and Chai plunged into argument again, this time on love. Chai was very reserved on love, but he had decided opinions. "Love is having a wife that is well chosen. All else is fool's play. A wife can make or ruin a man. That is clear."

George snorted at this. "Well, love, like poetry or like life, has a thousand definitions. Many are brilliant, suggestive, clever, and enlightening. Love... I can't tell what it is. But it is only real to those who have experienced it. It is as the breathing air that gives life to all living creatures; the bird that was put in a cage without ventilation died. It is divorced from logic and has nothing to do with acquiring a respectable wife and four or five children. But just as with life, nobody can define it except by living, so nobody can talk on love except by loving. And I have loved a thousand different ways, some ardently, others half-heartedly, and still again reluctantly, and now I have come to the conclusion, to love is loving and is nothing else."

"Yes, the man who loves many wastes time and energy," said Chai. "In the end he is left with nothing to show." ("Like four years in college and not even the diploma in hand," commented Chu with personal reminiscence.) "Never love wastefully. That is my advice to you."

"Hell, you are wrong!" cried George the romantic and the non-Confucian. "Love has to be wasteful, or it is no more love. Yes, it is wasteful, but it is not losing anything. You, Chai, are not saving anything up... only to miss the radiance of the tender morning and the grandeur of the setting sun. Even when the love is gone - and in this life nothing is sure - the picture of the lost world, the memory of yesterday's love, gives the strength for tomorrow."

George went on talking about various aspects of love, and Chai equally contradicting. He said a kiss could not possibly last as long George said. George said, "Well, I need every bit of the time allowed." They made a bet. George said he would carry it out as soon as he could get June up to Chulmo's. So she did come up, late one night. While Chu was making cooksoo in the kitchen, George said to Chai to get out his watch. June was sitting on the Morris Reynolds table smoking a cigarette lazily, and she agreed that George ought not to lose his bet. George began just as the minute hand reached a certain point, and Chai said, "Go." Chai stood right there looking at his watch as if he were watching an egg boiling in water. Chai lost his bet. George won. A kiss from George did take as long as George had said it would.

What are you looking for in a partner, and why?

Met this really cool girl in a waking dream. She studied computer science and reprogrammed games in her spare time because the cheap animations annoyed her. She laughed in the most infectious way... one couldn't help but smile each time. We talked about our favourite games and of her modified tank sprite, which she had nicknamed "bumblebee" because of its skittish, buzzy behavioural patterns.

I woke up, greatly disappointed that my new friend was but a trick of the mind - not the sort of fantasy girl my conscious mind would invent, but an inspired, alluring vision of someone in love with life. Apparently what I seek in a partner is someone who is a warmer, better person than I am. Someone who will push me to become a better person, by balancing out my tendency towards introspection and complacency.

What is beauty? What the truly beautiful girl gives is melody to the whole man. She brings about inner harmonisation, so that the whole man dances. Sometimes this harmonisation is so powerful that the man is re-created. That is to be in love.

To be sucked in my warmness
To be caressed by thrilling feminine tones that have no shyness
To be melted away in tones
This is the greatest discovery -
Self-absorption.

If the universe is first and foremost only a furtive arrangement of elementary particles, then egotism can't be the only thing that exists. It's a contradictory conclusion. Which raises the possibility of other ways to live as an atomised individual. So what if all this returns to nothingness? It is not within our ability to grasp the infinite timescale of our becoming and ending. We can only experience the now. And that in itself is not necessarily an argument for unbridled egotism.

In contrast to western nihilism, the Chinese have a history of contemplative fatalism. Their poetry and landscape painting reveals an acceptance of overpowering, everlasting nature. These scholars were in awe of their relative insignificance, rather than depressed by it. Instead of egotism, they promoted a culture of contemplation and harmony with nature. Whereas some insist that life is a rat race for fame, power and fortune, the Chinese poet-philosophers saw themselves as being part of a greater, universal system - a furtive arrangement of elementary particles that could not be argued with, or changed. One's goal in life is to learn and appreciate the beauty of this system, and eventually returned to nothingness. It is very Chinese to perceive beauty in the unstoppable tragedy of this cosmic play. This belief system allows one to understand suffering and see beauty even in sadness.

"A famous Chinese philosopher was asked what he could do with a useless tree. He said, 'Why not plant it in the land of non-existence and yourself lie in a state of bliss beneath it, inactive by its side? No axe nor other harm could touch it, and being useless, it would be safe from danger.' This has been my philosophy, in utilitarian civilisations where I and my muse are not wanted. My life is the useless tree. I try to plant my tree in the land of non-existence." -- East Goes West

I like this idea of producing and contemplating art to tap into some eternal meaning, beyond the physical world. Instead of saying "nothing really matters" this philosophy says "I can find beauty in the useless." I can create something out of nothing, and I can give it meaning and depth, which is an act of love, and not of egotism.