Chapter 4 2. Poetry and insomnia (1)

In the second half semester of the second grade, I bought a "Model Composition Reader" for the needs of the composition class.What impressed me the most was the description of the moon in the model essay. It can be said that since then, I have feelings, emotions, and fascinations for the moon. "Brightness", "Tuan Luan", "Qinghui", "Jade Rabbit", "A Round", "A Bend", "Like a Plate", "Like an Eyebrow", "Floating Clouds Covering the Moon", "The Moon is as Bright as Water"...all make me fascinated.From then on, when I saw the moon, I would stare at it for a long time, wondering its existence, its shape and its distance.The moon made me suddenly feel lonely, and I suddenly compared myself with the moon and the night sky. Small.

From looking at the moon, I can't understand why there is a moon, there are stars, there is a sky, there is day, there is night, there are me and my family, there are so many people.Since when did I have the perception of the moon and the perception of the world, how did I become me, know pain, know dear, know impatience, know fear.Where did this "I" come from, where did it go, and how did it happen to be born in China today.Why am I not born in Tang Dynasty?Why am I not European?Why am I not a girl?if i were a cat?an ant?What about a worm?Why does it hurt when I hit me but not when I hit someone else?If I hadn't been born, all my feelings and desires would be nothing.All this is inexplicable.

Another moving theme of the model composition is the chant of spring.The gurgling water.Green grass.I am fascinated by peach blossom, apricot blossom, pear blossom, lilac and crabapple.Mr. Lao She said that he did not like the word murmur, and that he did not know what murmur was.I like gurgling because the image of the word gurgling reminds me of the ripples of a small stream-I don't know if this will make real philologists stunned.And from then on, whether it is Li Jinxi's song: "Peach Blossoms are Red, Red is Brilliant, Li Huabai, White is Dandan" or Luo Huasheng's prose, whether it is the Southern Tang Dynasty's "Lilac Empty Bears the Sorrow in the Rain" or Wen Tingyun's "Begonia Blossoms Xie Ye, The rain is falling", which makes me feel unforgettable and ecstasy.

In the model composition, there are several words about maternal love, which moved me very much.One is about the grief of losing a mother since childhood.I remembered the rhyme I learned in kindergarten: The autumn wind is cool, / the weather changes, / a needle, / a thread, / I am so tired that my mother is sweating all over. / Mom is troubled, / It doesn't matter, / How filial I am when my son grows up. I have indeed seen many times the scene of my mother preparing quilts, clothes, and sewing again and again before winter.And the scene of working hard to cook when it's time to eat.It suddenly occurred to me that my mother will grow old and die, and all of us will grow old and die, and must die.I feel a great sense of oppression and emptiness at the thought of death.

I immediately thought of the experience of raising silkworms.My sister is one and a half years older than me. When I was a child, I followed her in various things, so I often participated in things that girls like to do, such as catching children, hopscotch, shuttlecock... Among them, silkworm rearing.Every time I encounter silkworms spinning silk, I feel very sad, because since then silkworms, chrysalis, and moths are clearly going to die, and they don't eat mulberry leaves anymore.I tried every means to feed silkworms, chrysalis, and moths mulberry leaves, but of course it didn't work.I've seen moths mating, females flicking their moths, then withering and dying one by one, and there's nothing I can do about it.I know that a large number of silkworms will be hatched from the silkworm eggs next year, but I clearly conclude that no matter how many silkworms there are, it will not be the "one" silkworm of last year, the year before last, and this silkworm is gone forever. It's sad.

I have deeply understood the tragedy of "spring silkworms will not die until the silkworms die", which is far more hopeless than "the wax torch turns to ashes and tears begin to dry", and there is nothing to do. The dragonfly after the rain, the firefly that takes off at night, the grasshopper in summer and the cricket in autumn, I often mourn the moment of their lives.I like raising grasshoppers to listen to their calls and raising crickets to fight crickets.I heard that someone used a gourd to put the worms inside, pinned to the waist, and warmed them, so that they could be kept until the next spring, prolonging their life by two or three times. I wanted to find such a gourd many times. Hulu, without success.

At that time, the heavy rain often brought knee-high water in the alleys.I folded a paper boat and threw it on the water, watching it be carried away by the current and the wind, and I thought it would never come back.Where will it go?What will it experience?I, its maker and caretaker, can't stay with it forever, this is also called life and death. I asked my sister, what do you mean by death?My sister said calmly - I don't know why she has such a view on life and death - death is the same as falling asleep. My sister's words did not reduce my fear of death, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that sleeping was a terrible thing. Sure enough, falling asleep without consciousness is the same as dying once.I don't think that death is like sleep, but that sleep is like death.

It also occurred to me that my body was not healthy, and perhaps death was not so far away.One night, in a state of nervousness, I drank a large mouthful of very fishy cod liver oil. People at that time believed that cod liver oil was the most powerful health medicine.Lying on the bed at night, I found a full moon shining on my face. The small bungalow I lived in at that time did not have curtains and could not afford to install curtains.Moonlight made me feel lonely again, mysterious.I feel that I don't understand the world, myself and my family, the accident and helplessness of life.I suddenly thought, what if I just fell asleep like this—and died?I just feel like I'm falling, falling, and falling into a bottomless black hole.I almost screamed and lost my voice, I dare not fall asleep.This is the first insomnia in my life, the first mental crisis: only about nine or ten years old.