Practice being alone: ​​when I started to love myself

Chapter 4 I finally started to be myself (4)
I have understood that life cannot be calculated, because it cannot stand calculation.We talk about ambitions, gains and losses, right and wrong, and use the tone of pointing the country and blaming Fang Qiu, as if the days are endless and the future is boundless.

But really, how much time do we have?It's nothing more than each receiving some leftovers from the palm of fate, and each accepting it.

How much warmth can we get?
Grandma, is it also hereditary to love silently and stubbornly?
Now that I have passed by, I am still alone. I often feel that the light is too bright, which makes people feel at a loss. But under the cover of numerous scars, I gradually learn to pretend, like wearing a close-fitting armor.

I want to tell you that life moves on.

Dear grandma, in the city where I live now, morning and evening are so similar.The eaves and street corners are piled with golden light, the sky is dyed reddish in the morning glow, the whole city returns from the hustle and bustle to the empty and quiet, and the air is cool and slightly drunk.The sparrows looking for food scatters when I pass by.On the ancient trees, there are still unknown birds singing tactfully.The subway is full of middle school students rushing to and from school, wearing the same school uniform, making the carriages look like campus corridors.There are also many people dragging suitcases, and the pulleys roar, making the brightly lit subway station look like an airport built underground, and people rush to the end of their journey.

Grandma, after you left, I saw the time.I began to know that time has an end.I've come to know that loss isn't the worst thing in the world.

When we first came to this world, we had nothing, so losing something now is by no means serious enough to be a matter of life and death, and we don't need to work hard.

The streamer changes secretly, and the Big Dipper shines cold.

One day we will all be gone, and the years we spent together, the short but only wealth, will also dissipate with the body.

It turns out that we don't need to kneel before unknown gods to understand life and death. Without you, I understand everything.

Grandma, I dreamed of the flowering sycamore tree again.Under the tree, my hands were covered with blood, and the blood was gurgling from my wrists, spilling on the white paper all over the floor.

Page after page.

It is said that things are easy and there is nothing impossible.As long as you are willing to bear it.

When I woke up in the morning, I sat at the desk that had been abandoned for many years, and sat down to write.

I write on paper, people who leave leave holes in our lives.

But we will definitely see you again.At that time, maybe you will look like you when you were young, holding a cigarette between your fingers, and taking me to see a fortune teller.

Grandma, I miss you.

Miss those hugs that never happened.There are also those cloth shoes you made for me when I was a child, stepping on them, to walk the first part of my life.At this point, the vastness is always visible.

Grandma, I have a lot to ask you.

I want to ask, how painful is life.

I wonder how painful it is to bear.

I want to ask, can I get through this life with patience alone?
Waking up from a coma that time, I remember you asking your mother: "I'm always thinking about this. I want to make you a pair of white shoes. Will you wear them when I leave?"

Mom struggled to hold back her tears.I cast my gaze out the window.

Grandma, May comes and goes, and the sycamore flowers in the south of the Yangtze River have already fallen.

The big and big flowers fell to the ground with a loud sound, which was a solemn farewell.

And we, goodbye.

Farther away

"Nothing is forgotten, and nothing is lost. The universe itself is a vast memory system. If you look back, you will find that the world is constantly beginning." -Janet Winterson " Watch the Lighthouse".

There are many excellent white-collar workers, lawyers, and bankers on the planet we live on, but there are no bounty hunters, explorers who discover new lands, gold diggers who are desperate, or even exorcists who are not listed for business... Because of the development of technology, there are fewer and fewer secrets on this planet, and the constant "strafeing" of satellites makes the earth have no privacy at all."The world is shrinking," Kafka said.

Fortunately, there is still a vast universe, this infinite concept, which is big enough to accommodate the ever-expanding curiosity of human beings.

Looking back on 2013, the news that moved me the most was the news that Voyager 3 finally arrived outside the solar system on March 21. Launched from Florida, USA on September 1977, 9, it began its mission to detect outer space. NASA records show that in the past 4 years, it has passed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, flying a distance of 40 billion miles along the way.

"I am Voyager [-], and I have reached the outer solar system." This may be its proud announcement, and it is also the last tribute to the earth.Because no one knows whether Voyager [-] can continue to obtain energy outside the solar system.

But it did it, to go to the infinite distance, to explore infinite possibilities.

Once upon a time, travel was the grand escape.When I was a teenager, I painted swallows hovering on the wall of my bedroom, so that I could hear the sound of wings and freedom in my dreams.But now that I have been out for a long time, I would remember that there is still half a bottle of Vanilla Coke left in the refrigerator of my Shanghai residence in the middle of the night in a foreign country.

This is probably the case with human nature, lacking the perseverance and perseverance needed for scientific exploration, and unable to stay in the same place or in the same state for a long time. In English, it is said that the feet will be cold.So Professor Feynman once said in his physics lectures that science is anti-human.

When people's feet are cold, they will be bored, and when they are bored, they will do all kinds of strange things to find out about other people's lives.For example, gossip about celebrities is always broadcast on TV, and some human beings are chasing after aliens.

In 1976, one year before Voyager [-] set off to explore outer space, Ding Zhaozhong took his father to attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.Ding Zhaozhong remembers that day, his father asked him, "What are you thinking?" He replied, "I was thinking, the universe is so big, would there be life on other planets?"

Such an important night, such a glorious honor, many people dream of it but never get it, but what he still misses is the other world.Because the discovery of elementary particles is only the beginning of his exploration of the mysteries of the universe.

So I think it is lucky to live on this lonely planet, the earth. Its smallness sets off the vastness of the universe, and you always think that you have a chance to escape.

snails
Why do I have so much luggage?How nice it would be to live on a suitcase.Looking forward to, but can't do it. —— Yamamoto

The perfect traveler in my mind is Simon van Bouy's Henry, who wears pajamas after losing his love, packs all his deposits in plastic shopping bags from the supermarket, chooses a random flight and starts flying around the world.

He said: You see all the world, but you don't realize anything.

And when did I decide to buy a sturdy suitcase?
Thinking about it carefully, it was the night of a business trip in Macau, the Venetian Hotel on Christmas Eve.People from all over the world stayed up all night wearing the Red Sox to gamble, and the whole hotel was full of ghost ship carnival atmosphere.At that time, I had been on a business trip for a long time, and the festive atmosphere in other places, the hustle and bustle of game consoles, and 24-hour free drinks and food; it was the last few straws that finally made me accept my so-called "Stage Horse Star Movement, Unlimited". stay" fate.

Thinking of Tom Hanks in "The End of Happiness", he always has a suitcase as a companion.Wearing the cotton slippers in the hotel room, I walked past the bustling gaming tables into the mall attached to the hotel and bought a large black Removar.

At the beginning of the consignment, I saw the brand-new, shiny boxes lying on the transmission belt, and suddenly felt reluctant to give up.But one day, it was finally scarred.I also stopped bothering to put a fragile sign on it, and I have a calm understanding of "he is the same as my body".From one airport to another, there is no time to think too much, and it has always been durable, as if everyone accepted the arrangement of fate.

A few years ago, I saw travel equipment from the Tokugawa period in a museum in Toyohashi, a small town in Kansai. The suitcase has a special storage space for the four treasures of the study and tableware.And in the glass cabinet next door is a paper travel document, which means that the owner of the document has been approved by the government to travel abroad, life and death, and if an accident occurs, he will be buried on the spot.

It turns out that not all trips have a return date, but we don't think about it seriously, although we always say that life is a trip.I can't help but think, maybe the process of packing is a sorting out of life.The suitcase is not only the most streamlined home, but also a kind of inertia, which defines the convenience you are unwilling to give up, and the familiarity you are willing to bear.Just like when we were young, we put precious glass marbles, butterfly wing specimens, stickers, clockwork stationery into tin boxes, and wished we could carry them everywhere.

And a hundred years later, when we reach the final point of our journey, we will also live in a box.

How much luggage does a person need?
On days when I travel a lot, I leave my suitcase in the living room and store it in the cloakroom when I get a break.But the items in the box are always fixed and do not change due to the destination or the time of the business trip: two shirts, two short-sleeved sweaters, one skirt, one pair of leather shoes, three sets of underwear, some toiletries, and you can go to the office once you buckle the safety lock Airport.It probably also knows that it is not a member of the furniture, and it is always a little unidentified and reserved by the locker or the sofa.

It is common to see popular posts by travel experts on the Internet, teaching everyone how to properly use suitcases according to the number of days and occasions of travel, and store as many things as possible in a limited space in an orderly manner.I watched with relish these everyday, living, living wisdom.

But in fact, nothing in the suitcase is essential.Including the suitcase itself.

In the event of an accident involving a stolen suitcase, a trip to the mall can solve all problems.I have also lost my luggage when I was away from home over the years. When I got a waiting seat and returned to Shanghai, my luggage was left in Dubai.The suitcase was found and returned by the airline several days later.But my life went on without any inconvenience.

But we still leave with our suitcases.

Life is a constant cycle, and travel is the gnashing of gears.A wanderer on a journey has no past and no future, only this moment.And the trunk is that anchor.It is responsible for balancing the impulse to leave deep in the heart and the nostalgia for security, and is a buffer between the established life trajectory and the strange world.

At the Mount Everest camp at an altitude of 5200 meters, I sat on the suitcase and waited for the driver to replace the tire that was punctured by gravel.Under the winding mountain road is a magnificent river valley, with overlapping distant mountains and no end.

Sentosa Island, Singapore, tropical rain, the news said that Salinger passed away.The waiter held a big black umbrella and helped me put the suitcase into the trunk. "Fair wind," he said.

In the early morning in New Delhi, there are lost peacocks standing on the side of the road, and a dark-skinned teenager passes fresh jasmine flowers into the car window together with plastic flowers sprinkled with cheap perfume, and then he hangs a bouquet of white jasmine flowers on the trunk handle superior.

Before leaving Bangkok, I dragged my suitcase to a hot pot restaurant opened by a Chinese in Siam Square for dinner. The dishes are small but fresh enough.The steaming heat and aroma rushed to the face.It started raining again outside, foreign tourists were scrambling for taxis, and my flight was leaving in three hours.

The highland souvenir shop in Dundee. The owner has blue eyes and wears a kilt. He handed me a letter opener made of antlers and said, "Remember to put it in the suitcase."

In the small hotel by the lake in Switzerland, the ceiling has been seeping water, and all the towels in the bathroom are spread on the floor in the middle of the night.There is no clothesline in the bathroom, so I had to hang my laundry on the suitcase.There are night trains outside the window all night, galloping past the lake and mountains, and the lights of the train windows are on in the dream.

This autumn, I set off for the South Pacific again, passing through Fiji, when the staff of the travel agency hung a garland of white orchids and shells around my neck, I mentioned the guide Tui during the last trip.

The staff member smiled and said: Yes, I know him, he is my distant cousin.He has gone far away.

When I met him on a small cruise ship in the Fiji Islands, he was sitting in the sunset playing the guitar. When he saw me coming, he quickly stepped forward to help me carry the suitcase.In the setting sun, he has brown skin, long brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a white shell necklace around his neck, like a Gauguin painting.The boat traveled between the islands. He said that he came from a remote island where piranhas bloomed. He was already 30 years old, but he had never crossed the equator line and set foot in the northern hemisphere.I sat on the suitcase, on a rickety boat, and gesticulated to him describing the winter in the northern hemisphere, the sky full of snowflakes.

Snail with its shell.When I go through the prosperity and desolation of this world, I just want some familiar things to experience with me.

(End of this chapter)