Chapter 23 Qiushui

Cartier-Bresson has a saying of "decisive moment", which refers to the moment when the best photo can quickly grasp the light and shadow that happens to appear, whether it is a tire, a puddle of water, or a jumping person, at this moment the Each in its place, revealing extraordinary meaning and beauty.I think this proves that there is a light in everything, or that it can reveal its true colors.The most beautiful moment I've ever seen was in a novel when a little boy gazes long at a plum tree and discovers in its blossoms the whole truth of the world.Haruki Murakami said that one day when he was young, he was sitting in the stands of a baseball field, and a ball was flying over. Suddenly an idea fell from the sky, and he decided to be a novelist.This was the defining moment of his life.I don't really trust this detail because Murakami is not a consistently sincere writer.Personally, though, I believe that decisive moments do exist, that there are some extra subtle and distinctive moments where I feel like I'm truly alive.

Without exception, those moments were always about freedom.If freedom is the deepest dream of men, then I think this dream is often seldom realized, and all kinds of fantasies about it can only be slowly dispelled under the steel-gray sky.Only on rare occasions do you feel that waking force, as if a bear had burrowed into you and spring was on its way. Once, it happened on a football field.I hit the lucky lane, dribbled past a guy, saw there was a lot of space in front of me and my stride just happened to accelerate without needing to adjust, so I ran and hit freedom.Breezes brushed my sweat-covered skin, and I ran so fast that the frustrated curses from my opponent behind me were muted by the wind in my ears.You know it feels strangely unsettling and pleasant, and you suddenly feel so confident, unhindered, running like you're going forever, and can't imagine a reason to stop.The opponent is approaching, but you feel that they are very far away. You are just running alone in a space where there is no threat.Another similar situation happened on a winter morning more than ten years ago. At that time, there were few people on the street, and the branches and leaves were covered with frost like powdered sugar. I had to walk a few steps to find a taxi. , I heard the shoes stepping on the ice, making a light clicking sound. At this moment, in my heart, I suddenly heard the clear and bright trumpet sound in winter in Victorinox's "Four Seasons".

These strange moments are sometimes brilliant, sometimes cool, and the only thing they have in common is a certain kind of extraordinary tranquility.You are suddenly far away from the bustling world, and you have entered a kind of complete isolation, as if you have reached the end of the world and looked back at this place. Apart from that, I have never experienced any other kind of freedom.It happens now and then, and it comes and goes without a trace.So I would long to experience it again.Occasionally I recall that sense of life taking on meaning.I think back to a late summer long ago, when I was still studying, on the last open day of the school's outdoor swimming pool, I went swimming with a plastic bag containing sundries.I slipped into the pool and found that the water was very cold.You know, unavoidably, it's especially cold between the strands, and that's what E.B. White jokingly called "death's chill," but you're energized and you plunge into the cold water.You are totally under cold water.You feel that you were born in this clear water, and have always been in this cold.You close your eyes and dive down. You have never felt so comfortable and safe, so you keep sinking, gradually become transparent, and become one with the autumn water.

Have I ever told anyone about these feelings?never.I'm not worried about being ridiculed when I talk about some slightly poetic emotions - since you can remember these small emotions, you must have the disdain to please the outside world, don't you?It's just that they're so insignificant, even in your own life, that you don't tell anyone about them. But they are quite different from other pleasures, quite different from the satisfaction of desires.When you do anything and feel like you're doing a good job, you feel like you're in charge, you're a good player for sure.You are thinking of "self".But in those occasional flashes of freedom, the "I" doesn't exist.It is what Wang Guowei called "the land without self".The difference between the two is just like when you step out of the airport after taking a flight for more than ten hours and take a deep breath of cigarettes, you will also fly forward for a moment to sweep the sky.

Sometimes, I also lament the long journey of human beings in pursuit of another kind of freedom.Those North Koreans, bypassing most of Asia, have only a small chance of reaching South Korea.Those fleeing Afghans passed through Dubai, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia, and arrived in Lombok, Indonesia, where they boarded wooden boats to Australia.This is an epic journey, but looking at the past from a historical perspective, it is only the smallest story.But in our hearts, there are smaller epics of freedom.This kind of freedom does not have the taste of blood and death like the pursuit of those exiles, and it may seem light and futile.It is just a fragile dream of ordinary people, and it often has an indifferent ending.It's like you've always wanted to fly one of those old "convertible airplanes" that kids call it, even the tiniest one, but you've never even tried.You know very well that the real sorrow of life is that you have never been able to fly in the void accumulated by broken clouds in the long summer with deep grass and trees, overlooking the small rivers and majestic mountains.