If we put the time in my elementary school, it would often be a sunny day during the summer vacation. I would lie on the bed with a mat on the second floor of the rental house, facing the big rusty window, and there would be a sky with floating clouds outside the window.
, the white clouds are like catkins in the summer, I look up at the clouds one after another, imagining that they are changing creatures, what kind of stories are they playing, and then I slowly fall asleep in this imagination.
There is a big tree outside the window. There is a wall behind the big tree. On the other side of the wall is a pig farm and its huge septic tank. In the summer, an unpleasant smell occasionally comes from it. But in the summer
There is no smell in the memory, only the feeling of wind blowing into the house.
My memory will become cooler because of the wind. I lay on the bed and read the books I borrowed from my friends one by one: I finished Sanmao, I finished "The Adventures of Hal Roger", I finished reading "Home"
, "Spring", "Autumn", after reading Gorky's "Childhood"...
Junior high school is often a summer afternoon when I have to go to school. If the memories of primary school are accompanied by the blue sky and wind, junior high school is always transformed into the golden color of sunlight and dirt paths. I live in my grandparents’ house, which is made of cement.
There are fans rotating on the four walls and ceiling. There are standing cabinets, corner cabinets, tables and chairs, sofas, coffee tables, and TV sets in the living room. On one side of the wall, there are maps of China and the world. When you enter the next room, there is a hot water kettle.
Cooling kettle, photo frames and wall cabinets for various small items...
The time was 1:45, after lunch, the sound of CCTV5's "Chinese Football Over the Years" program came from the TV. For a while, I was obsessed with listening to the ending song of this program before going to school. I still remember it.
The lyrics of that song: We have known each other for many years, we have been together for many years, day by day, we met yesterday, we met tomorrow, year after year, you will always be the face I look at, my world retains the spring for you...
Thinking back carefully, it seems to be the 1998 World Cup. My passion for football only ended at that time. Maybe I liked this song more, but I might be late after listening to the song. Grandpa was taking a nap, and grandma walked in from the inside.
He came out and asked me why I didn't go to school yet. I put down the last few lines of the song and rushed out of the room, running wildly on the way to school at noon.
My grandpa has passed away long ago, but my memory is that of my grandma from twenty years ago. Grandma is now eighty-six years old. Yesterday morning, she walked two miles with a bag of things to come see me and said: "It's your birthday tomorrow, your dad."
Mom asked me not to disturb you, and I will bring you some local eggs." There was a pack of walnut powder, two boxes of eggs bought in the supermarket, and a pig belly in the bag. Later, I took the dog and walked back with my grandma.
After having a meal at home, my parents and grandma talked about their trip to Jinggang and Juzizhoutou on May Day.
Grandma is still healthy now, but she suffers from brain atrophy and has to take medicine. After my grandfather passed away, she has been very lonely. Sometimes she is worried about my lack of money, and then she is also worried about her brother's job and future. She often wants to go back.
I went to the place where I used to live, but I no longer have any friends or relatives there. After I turn eighty, it becomes difficult to take long-distance trips.
I haven't had a birthday for many years. If possible, the gift I most desire on my birthday is a good sleep.
But I couldn't actually fall asleep.
2,
What is the picture of high school?
It was a cloudy day in high school at noon and afternoon. When I came out of school, there was a rental bookstore on one side and an Internet cafe on the other. There was a heavy flow of people coming out of the school gate. I counted the little money in my pocket, went to eat something, and then
I rented books and read all the books in the four or five bookstores near the school, and later learned to read books online.
At that time, my grandfather passed away, and my younger brother's condition was in and out of shape. The family sold everything they could, and I was often hungry. I occasionally looked back at the few photos I had left in high school, and all of them showed an unruly face.
With a cold face, I don't like these photos because I can't actually afford to take them.
After high school, I stopped studying and worked part-time for two to three years, but it was always very short in my memory. I can remember that on the highway outside Foshan, there was a ceramics factory on one side of the road and a factory on the other side.
In a small village, in the early morning with stars in the gray night sky, I walked out of the rental house and went to a small Internet cafe with only four computers to start writing down the plot that came to mind while working.
That is "Diary of Survival in a Foreign Land".
The next ten years or so have been a long period of writing in a closed room. During this period, I have experienced some things, made some friends, and visited some places, but I have no solid memories. In the blink of an eye, I am now here.
Now I am thirty-four, which is a strange age.
Thirty-four, forward thirty-three, then thirty-two... Although the numbers are clear, before that, I always felt that I was a young man who had just left the age of twenty, but when I realized the number thirty-four
At that time, I always felt that the twenties, which should be my main body, suddenly passed away.
It's like becoming a middle-aged man in the blink of an eye.
3,
Looking back on the past year, many things actually did not make me feel too big. In my opinion, many things are not worth recording. But compared to my entire 20s, in the past year, maybe I
Go out the most: I participated in some activities, joined several associations, won two awards, and even sold the copyright... But in fact, I can’t recall the feeling at that time. Maybe I was happy at that time, but now
Come to think of it, apart from being tired, many times I feel empty.
I held a wedding with my wife in May last year. The wedding was a make-up. In my opinion, it was just a formality. However, the night before the wedding, I carefully prepared the proposal. I didn’t know how passionate the proposal was at other weddings.
In the proposal, he said: "...Life is very difficult, but if two people work together, maybe one day we can reach an understanding with it."
At first I wanted to say: "One day we will defeat it." But in fact we can't defeat it. Perhaps the best result is to gain understanding and stop hating each other. At that time, I discovered that for a long time, I
They all hate my life and try their best to defeat it.
How did I become the thirty-four-year-old me? I can’t capture the specific process. I can only see various characteristics: I had fatty liver and gallstones. It was two years ago that I went to the hospital for a physical examination.
I discovered that I lost a lot of hair, which was the result of constant suffering when I was twenty-five years old. I have mentioned this in previous articles and will not repeat it here.
I mentioned above that I wanted to sleep on my birthday. I was not being pretentious. I have not had a sound sleep for many years. Looking back, in the first half of my twenties, I often reversed my day and night and wrote books day and night.
, sometimes I am very tired from writing, so I take a nap with my head covered. I will sleep for fourteen or even eighteen hours. When I wake up, my whole body is shaky, and I go to take a shower.
He returned to this world in high spirits.
I haven’t experienced the feeling of dreamless sleep in an unknown amount of time. Under the extreme use of my brain, I experience the shallowest sleep every day, and all kinds of dreams will continue for twelve years.
After finishing writing, I closed my eyes at three in the morning and woke up unconsciously at around eight in the morning.
When I was very young, I longed for the goddess of literature to favor me one day. My brain was very useful, but I could never write articles well, so I had to keep thinking. One day, I finally found my way into another world.
The way of the world, I concentrated my greatest energy to see it. Now, I already know how to see these things more clearly, but at the same time, it is like the golden hoop that Guanyin Empress puts on the Supreme Treasure...
If we want to get something, we always have to pay more.
4,
The day I realized that I was thirty-four years old was one night in April this year. At that time, I said that I would challenge twenty chapters. One night I wrote half a chapter. I thought I could finish it the next day, so I sent out the order.
The preview for the chapter was overturned the next day, and I posted another single chapter, saying it would be postponed for one day.
That night I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep because I broke my promise.
Over the years of writing, many people have said that Banana has such a good psychological quality and never takes readers seriously. In fact, for me, I also want to be honest, trustworthy and even popular.
A person who is good at dancing, but in fact, that is just not possible. The book is the most important, the reader is second, and then maybe me. In front of the book, my integrity and my image are actually insignificant.
But what you should feel is actually not less at all.
I posted a single chapter of the empty window at twelve o'clock, and tossed in bed until four o'clock in the morning. My wife must have been disturbed by me, so I just hugged the quilt and walked to the study room next door, lying on the sofa chair where I was reading.
, but still couldn’t sleep.
I looked at Wangcheng at night through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Street lights all over the street were on. Downstairs was a construction site. Huge incandescent lights were facing the sky, dazzlingly bright. But there was no one in sight. Everyone was already there.
Fell asleep.
At this time, it was already difficult for me to stay up late, which would make me lose energy for the whole next day, but why couldn’t I fall asleep? I thought of myself who could sleep for eighteen hours in the past, and I kept thinking about it.
High school, junior high school, elementary school...
I suddenly remembered a brain teaser I had seen when I was a child. The question was: "How far can a person walk in the forest?"
The answer is: half of the forest.
…
How long ago was that memory? It may have been more than 20 years ago. The first time I participated in the spring outing held by my class, it was a cloudy day. My classmates took a bus from school to the suburbs. A good friend at the time brought a group of friends.
I gave half of a ham sausage to me. It was the first time in my life that I had eaten something so delicious. During the spring outing, as a study committee member, I threw away the notes I had prepared and copied various questions.
When students enter the grass, they pick up questions and answer them correctly, and they can win various small prizes.
I copied those questions from the brain teaser book at home. I have forgotten all the other questions now. Only that question has been clearly remembered by me for so many years.
"How far can a person walk in the forest?
Half of the forest.
Why: Because the other half, you're walking out of the forest."
Ever since I was a child, I have always felt that this question was just a piece of cleverness on the part of the author and was not true at all. It was just a superficial way of speaking. Perhaps that is why I have always struggled with this question and this answer. But as I approached the age of thirty-four,
That night when I was irritable and insomniac, this question suddenly came into my mind, as if it was beating me desperately to make me understand it.
Because the remaining half, you are walking out of the forest.
…
I felt like I had been hit. I don’t know when. I returned to bed and slowly fell asleep.
5,
I have repeatedly written about the weight of time in my books, but it was perhaps that night a month ago that really made me understand that weight.
I suddenly understood how many things and possibilities I had lost. In the process of immersing myself in writing, I suddenly became a thirty-four-year-old middle-aged man. After all, there is no recourse for this process.
I'm not good enough to go into detail about these things. Over the next month, I thought that if everyone was inevitably going to come out of the woods, maybe that wasn't a negative thing. That made those images in my mind
It's so meaningful, making what I see in front of me so meaningful.
Just sad.
I have not yet gained an understanding with the world, and that will surely be an extremely complicated task.
A few days later, I accepted an online interview. The reporter asked: What is the most painful thing you have encountered in writing?
I replied: Every day is painful, and every day there are problems that need to be made up. It is easy to solve the problems, but new problems will inevitably emerge in an endless stream. I imagine that one day I will have a flowing writing style and be able to solve problems easily.
Write a perfect article, but in the past few years I have realized that it is impossible. I can only accept this pain, and then seek the corresponding satisfaction in the process of slowly solving it.
I think I will eventually enjoy this kind of pain until I am fifty. I have said many times before that I will write until I am fifty. At that time, I did not expect that this age would be so close. It is only sixteen years.
Perhaps in the moment when you are immersed in your desk, everything disappears in an instant.
Cherish what you have now. If you had been able to sleep for eighteen hours, you would not have understood the troubles he would suffer later, just as we who walked into the forest would not have understood the preciousness of the journey under our feet.
6,
In the second half of last year, I went to Hangzhou.
On the high-speed train coming back from Hangzhou, there was an old couple sitting in the front row. They lowered the backrests of their chairs and lay there. The old woman kept her upper body leaning on her husband's chest, and the husband hugged her.
Pointing at the scenery outside the window.
I found it interesting and took photos.
My wife was sitting next to me. She had been recuperating for half a year and her weight once reached 43 kilograms. She told me that she had a puppy and she decided to buy it. I said okay, just be prepared to raise it.
Not long after, we got a Border Collie. As one of the smartest dogs and one of the most in need of exercise, he once made the family miserable.
Before the New Year's Eve last year, I stabbed myself in the hand while cutting a computer tie, and it took half a month for me to recover.
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, the little border collie jumped out of the back seat window of the car. His hind leg was hit and fractured. After that, he suffered for nearly two months. The leg injury was healed, but he also contracted coronavirus, coccidia, etc.
All kinds of problems, of course, these have passed.
Renovation started in March, and in April, my wife opened a small flower shop. She went there every day to buy flowers, and I occasionally went to sit there.
After the dog recovered, I started taking him out every day. My belly has shrunk a bit and is now much better than when I was the fattest. However, I still have a double chin, which my wife mentioned a few days ago.
April has passed and May is here again. The weather is getting better. I can’t drive, and my wife uses the golf course at home. She goes to buy flowers every day and comes back in the evening. Sometimes she is very tired. I ride an electric motorcycle and she rides
In the back seat, we started driving along the streets of Wangcheng again at night.
When electric cars first became available, we rode them around the streets and alleys of Wangcheng every day. We had already visited many places, but this year, several new roads were opened.
What we are familiar with is gradually changing.
What I once talked about is like the park with the lakeside villa. The grass and trees are getting darker. Sometimes when I walk there, the tree shades are deep and the leaves are all over the ground. It’s like walking in the woods with old facilities. When it’s too late, we don’t stop.
Go in.
We discovered several new parks or wild places, often without people. Occasionally we brought our dogs here. The closer one was in the newly built government park, and the further one was by the river in Wangcheng, near the huge ship lock beside the dam.
There are large tracts of wild land, and there are also trails that have been built for many years but no one has visited. Walking along the way is like a novel adventure. Next to the trail is an abandoned wooden frame that is enough for a wedding. Beside the wooden frame, dense wisteria flowers grow from the tree trunks.
Falling down, it looks particularly quiet in the dusk.
A school in Wangcheng has built a new campus. From a distance, the rows of teaching buildings and dormitories look like gorgeous Russian-style castles. My wife and I occasionally took an electric car to drive around there, and couldn't help but sigh, if we go to school here,
I think I can have a good love relationship.
The commercial street next to the old school was demolished, and Peng's Braised Meat, which my wife once liked to patronize, is no longer there. We stopped at the street intersection several times and had no choice but to turn back. And more new shops and restaurants opened on the streets of Wangcheng.
Everywhere you look, you will see brightly lit facades and bright lights.
The world may continue to be updated and updated like this.
The dog is seven months old and is becoming more energetic every day. In some ways, he has also become more obedient.
I listen to music every day when I go out to walk my dog, and the first piece of music I turn on is often Xiao Ke's "Gently Let Go". One of my favorite lyrics is this:
Facing the endless passage of time, who can do anything?