no one can travel alone

Chapter 8 Traveler (2)
I have written letters with a girl from Xinjiang for many years.Talk about everything from literature to life and emotion.It was not until a long time after working with each other that the news was cut off.This summer, I went to Urumqi to participate in a training session. After the meeting, I went to the Altay region and passed through the Hutubi grassland.I think of the girl named Pan Jinfang 20 years ago, who was studying at the Fangcaohu Farm here. She sent me short photos of heroic short hair, taught me cursive Uyghur characters in the letter, and told me about the history of the Corps. I described the appearance of Hutubi Grassland and Fangcaohu Farm.And it took me 20 years to finally reach the grassland described by her.In her works, the grassland with luxuriant pasture stretching to the sky has been gradually deserted in the past 20 years, and desolate saline-alkali land is exposed in many places, with camel thorns and fluffy grass sparsely growing, which are as ugly as dysentery.And although we don’t know each other’s appearance, our youthful faces must no longer be there. Our waists are round and our hair is gradually growing white. The edges and corners of our lives have been washed and worn away, and words like “dream” and “ideal” have been removed from the dictionary. big word.Suddenly want to find her news.I searched on Baidu, and actually found her name in the reporter column of several newsletters about Fangcaohu Farm in "Xinjiang Daily".It seems that, like many literary youths back then, she took a similar path and became a journalist.I tried to contact her, but to no avail.In fact, he wasn't serious about it, the young man was old in the world, and the pink lady had two temples.Do you really dare to meet?I think of a passage in Italo Calvino's "City and Memory" No. [-], "In the dream city, he was young, but when he arrived in Isidora, he was old. There is a wall in the square, and the old people Sitting there looking at the young people who passed by. He sat with these old people. The desire at the beginning is a memory.” ——I finally walked a long way, arrived at the prairie of my youth’s dream, and stood in a daze The appearance of the picture wall is just like leaning on this dilapidated and dangerous wall in Isidora Square, the jade-like years have passed away, and the youths who are far away in the letters are just young people passing by in waves. smiley face.

"How can I be willing to meet you again, when only my youth still hidden deep in your heart is as clear as water and verdant as mountains."Xi Murong also felt the same way.

3. The meaning of travel

Nine years after graduation, attend a fateful one-man interview.The examiner who held the power of life and death asked lightly what hobbies he had.I thought about it, piano, chess, calligraphy and painting?Fishing and playing cards?Planting flowers and weeds?These topics that people like to talk about are far away from me.As if the inspiration flashed from Fu Zhi's soul, he blurted out: read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles.As soon as I said it, I felt a little hypocritical, but when I thought about it, I felt it was appropriate.Apart from these two sentences, in fact, there is no essence in life that I should strive to pursue.Reading and traveling are the only two things I never get tired of, and there is no difference between the two. Reading is a kind of traveling, and traveling is also a kind of reading.

The interview later turned into a sharing session of reading and traveling, the atmosphere was relaxed, and it lasted for nearly two hours, but still had more to say.To the surprise of another boy waiting next door

Surprised, feeling uneasy on pins and needles.

Later, the farther I walked, the more I remembered this big saying back then.If you really want to read ten thousand volumes of books, you need to maintain a speed of one book a day for 30 years, and you need to work hard while eating and drinking, and you need to be in a daze.During the years of settling down in Chengdu, the number of books on the wall has increased day by day, but a rough count is no more than a thousand volumes, and about one-fifth of them are unfinished.Obviously, it is still far away from the goal of reading ten thousand volumes of books.

But traveling thousands of miles is too simple.Under today's traffic conditions, it is no difficulty to travel thousands of miles a day.Anyone who claims to be a backpacker has probably already traveled thousands of miles around the world.In recent years, all kinds of books about travel have been piled up, and they can probably circle the earth half a circle.In contrast, I have not even traveled abroad so far, and my travel experience is really not high on the list.The experience on the road is also almost without any surprises or dangers.But who can tell clearly where the danger and the storm come from.The still water runs deep, and the seemingly calm life often hides the undercurrent of turbulent waves.

In the summer of 2000, my younger sister graduated from university and agreed with me to meet up in Xining and go to Qinghai Lake together.Simply carrying a bag and stepping on the train to Qinghai, that was probably the first time I have traveled the farthest alone.The night I arrived in Lanzhou was the fourth day of the sixth lunar month.The birthday of the first love teacher, he is 36 years old. For eight years, he has always been relatively silent on the phone tacitly, unable to let go of the feelings that cannot be let go but are completely hopeless, like a drowning person catching on to nothing and refusing to let go.I found a public phone and made a long-distance call back. It was his wife who answered the phone, and both ends of the phone line were silent amidst the noise.I stayed for a minute, hung up the phone silently, and cried bitterly in the strong wind of Lanzhou summer night.

Many years later, on the night of the fourth day of June, I was urged to a tavern by several phone calls. He was already drunk, but he stubbornly watched me pick up the glass and drink three glasses in a row.After hearing the news, the teacher's wife rushed over, picked up a glass of wine without saying a word, and poured it on his face, who was deeply drunk.I sat across from my classmate and continued to chat, feeling calm in my heart.The road we have traveled in this life is always picked up in memory and reproduced repeatedly because it is related to the individual's personal happiness and pain.Those years of chaotic and ignorant youth were often associated with traveling alone.And 11 years later, when I walked out of Lanzhou Railway Station for the second time, the sky and the earth were empty, and the grass and trees on Gaolan Mountain were green, and they were no longer as bare as they used to be.At this time, the youngest son beside me has grown into a slim young man, and the hand of time gently caresses, and calmly wipes away all the scribbled traces of the past.

Life has always been just a solitary journey, a long-distance journey that goes away as soon as it is said.When going on the road, no one will give exact reminders, what kind of difficulties you will encounter on the way, and what kind of people you will meet.But the ability to distinguish the wind direction and cloud map will eventually be accumulated after traveling long distances. All the realities in the world are illusions, and there is nothing that happens without a trace.What kind of person you are, what kind of opponent you will meet, the way you walk determines whether you will break your leg one day.And I finally understood that Chen Qizhen sang in the song: You leave me, that is the meaning of travel.The pain and let go of it.

Why do we walk.Keep leaving the familiar warm nest, to bear the mosquito bites, sandstorms, rainstorms, mudslides, car accidents, flight accidents that may be encountered on the way, and bear all kinds of dangers that will never return.

Are you traveling to go back to your past?Khan asked.His words can also be replaced by, are you traveling to find your future?Marco replied that elsewhere was a mirror with the opposite side.The traveler can see how little he has and how much he has not had and will never have.

We go on the road, perhaps only because life is full of loss.And all the uncertainties on the road are precisely the part we are always avoiding but looking for.Including the danger of encountering snowstorms and thunderstorms, it must be more attractive than dying here without illness and disaster.

I used to have a whole set of "The Journey of the Drifter", and maybe no one remembers this set of books, the number of sands in the Ganges River, how many books have been submerged in the dust of history. "No Stele on the West Road", "Love in the Wasteland", "Shoulding the Boundless Alone", "Into Medog"... It is a set of ordinary books, and its authors are not many who really have literary talent, but that set of books once had a profound impact on the past. It has affected my dream of wandering far away.In [-], Yu Chunshun, an explorer who had been on foot for eight years, died while crossing Lop Nur. I read "Yu Chunshun Who Never Keeps an Appointment" written by Shang Changping.She answers people: Why wander—

"Why wander far away? When some people asked the same question more than a thousand times, I was at a loss for words and didn't know how to answer. The thing that originated from the depths of my heart was indescribable, as if it was born with me. A kind of feeling. The emptiness and desolation of the northwest plateau taught me how to overcome difficulties and save my life. In those countless nights, I used the phosphorescence of my bones as a candle to illuminate ruined temples, dog kennels, and sheepfolds, and slept with animals and livestock , they help me drive away the cold of the sleepless night. At this time, I will ask myself with tears: Why did you come? Why did you ask for it? Although I can't explain why, but I know very clearly in my heart There is nothing wrong with my own behavior. I used this experience and life adventures to escape those troubled days. I have my sun, which draws a bright track in the endless sky of night and guides Me, so my heart is very solid. Along the way, I appreciate the truth, goodness and beauty in the world, the suffering, hardship, sadness, joy and happiness in the world. I am not afraid of anything, nor do I worry about being abandoned by society, because I stand with eternity. My heart is pounding, the most beautiful and bitter things will last forever here, no one can take it away, no one can buy it.”

What is the point of traveling?Over the years, I have repeatedly asked.

Traveling may not be meaningful.The people of Trude said to Marco, you can set off anytime.However, you arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same: the world is covered by a single Trude, which has no beginning and no end, only the names of the airports change.One year when I went on vacation in Sanya, a middle-aged woman who was with me never stopped complaining along the way: the car was in bad condition, the food was unpalatable, and the itinerary was unscientific.Crying at every scenic spot: it turns out that the reputation is nothing more than that.Meanness and resentment are clearly written on her drooping eye bags, drooping corners of her lips, and frowning brows.

We can always see such people around us, dissatisfied with everything, suspicious of any phenomenon, picky about any arrangement, as if the whole world has failed him (her), and no one in the world is worthy of trust , and there is nothing worthy of surprise... Not only women who have this kind of resentful mentality, but also those men who have wretched faces and wrinkled facial features in middle age are probably also full of dissatisfaction with themselves and the whole world and malice.

(End of this chapter)