1. Writing night 1 I may never meet those two children again for the rest of my life.I don't think it occurred to those two children, never, that after their chance play they were being written alone into a book, that they were becoming the beginning of a book.They won't remember me.They will not remember that autumn night, in an ancient garden, when the tourists were almost gone, on a secluded path, a street lamp marked out a bright circle in the night, and there were old cypress trees drifting evenly. Fatty fragrance, with the strong smell of fallen poplar leaves scattered all over the ground, a man sitting alone on the roadside reading once played with them for a while, talking to them.Even now they have forgotten that those things no longer exist for them.as if it never happened.

But it is also possible to remember.That night with fallen leaves, and that under the street lamp are just his own history.Maybe one day he will envision that person's loneliness But that's not me anymore.No matter how that night was preserved in his memory, it was only his own history.Maybe one day he will imagine that person's loneliness, imagine that person's origin and destination, and he may also write that person into a book.But that has nothing to do with me, it is just his own impression and assumption, and it is a part of his own life. The boy was about seven years old.I asked her a girl, five and a half years old——she said, stretching out five fingers, and then looked at all the fingers one by one, but couldn't think of how to express half a year old.At that time, I thought that we would soon be separated from each other. These two children and I would soon be separated in the nearby noisy city, lost in the world surrounded by many altars, and no one would be able to find the other.

So do we, me and you.Have we ever agreed?Well you say no, but that's probably because we forgot, or were unaware, and to forget and unaware is to never happen. 2 In a forest of poplars and cypresses, near an ancient altar.I'm a regular there.It's a great place to read and enjoy the quiet.Two children came running out of the surrounding gloom--I hadn't noticed where exactly they came from--and into the light, and hopping into the bright circle, shouted to a tall tree: " Old pagoda tree grandpa! Old pagoda tree grandpa!" I don't know what game they are playing.I said, "That's wrong, that's not a locust tree, it's a cypress tree." "Oh, it's a cypress tree," they said, looking back at me, then raised their faces to look at the cypress tree.All the crowns of the trees were densely blended into the dark night sky, but they could still see it, and asked me, "Why doesn't this tree have leaves? Why do other trees have leaves, and why doesn't this tree have leaves?" I told them. They said it was a dead tree: "Yes, it's dead, this tree is dead." "Oh," they thought for a while, "but when did it die?" "I don't know when, it seems It’s already dead.” “How did it die?” Before I could answer, the boy said to the girl, “I’ll tell you, let me tell you! There was a man, he brought a basin of hot water, He came here, wow, gotta..." The boy looked at me, saw that I was smiling, and changed his words again: "No, no, yes, there was a person who came here, he took something, and scratched it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, click! Got..." The girl kept staring at the boy, earnestly expecting a definite answer: "What happened to it afterwards?" He came to me and asked me, "How did it die?" I was moved by his humility and confidence. He was neither ashamed of his ignorance nor embarrassed by his wild guessing just now, as if it was all Of course.Ignorance and speculation are taken for granted.The two children still looked at me with questioning eyes.I said, "Maybe it was sick." The boy said, "But how did it die?" I said, "Maybe it was too old." The boy still asked, "But what happened to it?" Died?" I said, "I don't know exactly how he died." The boy stopped asking and looked at the old cypress tree.

Now I kind of understand that what he actually wants to ask is, what is death?How did life become death?How did the division in the middle come about, and what is it?What is death?What state, or what feeling? Even if I understood what he meant at the time, I couldn't answer him.I don't know how to answer now.do you know?What is death?You don't know either.For this matter, we are just like those two children, we don't know.We just know that's where it's going, we don't know what it is, and we can't do much more than those two kids did—it's just wild guesses.That sounds like saying: We don't know where we're going and what we're going to.

3 The first autumn rain of the year began to fall outside the window, and it fell finely and incoherently.In the morning, I heard from the radio that the drought in the north is severe this year. From July to now, it is the year with the least precipitation in the same period in history.Water, is causing panic everywhere. I have made it a habit year by year to listen to the radio while getting dressed in the morning.And then, most of the day, when no one comes, I sit here, reading and thinking, and fate wants me to write something called a novel.It seems that only a few novels have been written, and decades have passed.Decades have passed, and decades are gone.The girl called me grandpa that day, and the boy was how old after all, and said, "It's uncle, not grandpa." I breathed a sigh of relief, and I almost wanted to thank him.How do people grow up?Suddenly one day someone calls you uncle, suddenly one day someone calls you uncle again, suddenly one day, when someone calls you grandpa, how do you feel?The sun goes from side to side.Every day, every day, I can see a group of pigeons, cooing on the roof of the neighbor's house, or flying leisurely in the air near and far.If you don't think about it, you will think that it has been the same group for decades, white, gray, brown, flying, screaming, alive, it has always been like this, it has always been them, it will always be that There is no difference between one group, but in fact they have been born and died several times, and they have lived and died for tens of thousands of years.

4 The girl asked me what book I was reading, ("Grandpa, what book are you reading?" "No, it's not Grandpa, it's uncle." "Oh, uncle, what book are you reading?") I flipped the pages for her.She looked to see if there were any pictures on it.No. "Zishu," she said, as if reminding me. "Yes, Zishu." "What does it say?" "You don't understand yet." Yes, it is impossible for her to understand at her age, and she shouldn't understand it.It was a book for old people. It was a book written by an old man: The ashes on an old man's sleeve / All the ashes of a burnt rose / Dust hanging in the air / Marks where a story ends.

No, what confuses and excites me is not only death and ending, but also existence and beginning.There's no way to prove that absolute nothingness exists, is there?Absolute nothingness cannot be proved, and it is not the fault of human intellect.Then, where a story ends, other stories must begin, begin, and unfold.Absolute nothingness cannot exist for a moment.The story of those two children has begun, or is beginning, is unfolding.Maybe it started from that accidental game, starting from looking up at the dead old tree, and then unfolded with unfinished ideas.But in any case, there will come a day when their stories will end, when they will actually see the child and feel the mystery of the end and the beginning.At that time, on some bookshelf or desk, at the head of a bed, on this side of the earth or that, in free and not free places, there was still a book lying quietly and feverishly—the book whose name is "Elio Special" named after the old man who wrote the book.In the season when the autumn rain is knocking on the roof of the tin shed, in the days when the wind and snow are rolling through the streets, in the clear and dry morning and forget what to do today, or after a lazy afternoon nap, you can hear the faint sound of the piano, or in the Drinking wine alone in the lonely night, in the four seasons of the year, the evening drum, the morning bell, and the cycle of day and night, it may be opened and closed at any time, as the end and the beginning, becoming the confusion of many unforeseen lives that have long been foreseen.The wise old man said: What we call the beginning is often the end / And to declare the end is to begin. / End is where we started.The old man who came from childhood, he said: If you come here, / No matter which way you go, / Wherever you start, / It's the same /...

. . . / An exasperated soul goes from wrong to wrong / Unless rescued by the refining fire, for like a dancer / You must "jump" there to the beat.This old man, he was always young.Who came up with this torture?He said: It's love.This prophet, what did he see as he wrote this?When he wrote this, the ancient walls of the city were still there, and in the ancient garden on the edge of the old city, near the deserted altar, the old cypress tree was still alive; With that autumn night and those two kids?Or did it hear a prophecy from afar, and go forth to die, preparing the next necessary beginning for a game that repeats itself?That prophecy from far away: behind the hands that weave the shirt of unbearable flame beyond human power. / We just live, we just sigh / Let this fire or that fire consume our lives...  This prophecy is always being fulfilled.From generation to generation this prophecy is always being fulfilled and always being fulfilled.Round after round this process is always repeated.

5 I was born on January 4, 1951.It's a legend, but a legend.It is a legend I heard from my grandma, my mother and my father. Grandma said: It snowed heavily on the day you were born, and the snow was so heavy that I have never seen such a heavy snow. My mother said: You were really thin when you were born. The nurse showed me, where did such a little thing come from, covered with black skin and bones?Where are you from?It was almost dawn when you were born, and the windows were white. My father opened the calendar and taught me: This is the year.This is the month.This is day.This day, yes, this day is your birthday.

But January 4, 1951, was a blank for me, zero, utter nothingness, a legend I had woken from nothingness, even like a rumor to me. "The world existed long before you"—that's just a legend I heard when I was there. "The world will last a long time without you"—this is just a conjecture I was asked to accept when I was still there. I wrote this in an article: I was born in 1951.But for me, 1951 happened after 1955. One day in 1955, I remember that the words on the calendar were green, and time, for me, began with that weekend.Before that, there was nothing in 1951, and it came after that weekend in 1955, and it gradually became meaningful and existed.But after that weekend in 1955, it was not a Sunday in 1955, but a certain early morning in the winter of 1951—it is said that I was born at that time, and I imagined that early morning, so that early morning in 1951 obliterated a morning in 1955 Sunday.That morning, grandma said, it was snowing heavily.But for me, the snow of 1956 fell that day, and I had to use the snow of 1956 to understand the snow of 1951, so that the winter of 1951 had an image and was no longer blank.Then, 1958, the year I went to school, the year I started to understand a little bit about the relationship between the sun, the moon and the stars, and that the place we live in is called the Earth.As for the previous years, such as 1957, it was probably 1964 that entered my memory. At that time, I heard that there was an anti-rightist movement in 1957, so it rained in 1964 in 1957.Then there was B.C., I listened to the history class and imagined the scene of human beings in ancient times. Human beings have gone from ancient times to today and will go from today to the future. Therefore, the ancient times are mixed with fantasies about 2000 years. I stand Today imagine the past and fantasize about the future, the past and the future intersect freely today, so both the past and the future are blowing the wind of the present.

6 The past, the past life, is of two kinds.One is unaware, they are all gone, it is no longer possible to even talk about them.Another conscious life is what really exists, preserved as a carrier of meaning.Does this mean that only this part of the past life is real?No, it seems not, all conscious lives have been transformed by consciousness, they are real only as carriers of meaning, and meaning is given by the present.So do we truly possess the present?If possessed, for how long? How long did you say "now"?One minute?one second?A hundredth of a second or a ten-thousandth of a second?If this continues, won't "now" tend to be zero?Maybe "now" is just the time necessary for us to realize a meaning?But all conscious life, as soon as it is conscious, is past, and meaning, as soon as it is meaning, has moved into the future.The present tends to 0, and if the present is not connected with the past and the future, it will be dead, it will be void.What about the future?Is the future real?Oh yes, the truth of the future is that it is the future, that it never came, that it is only a dream.The past is moving toward the future, meaning follows dreams, and between meanings and dreams, where they overlap is the present.Where they overlap, we are on the way, we are in the present. 7 But what is the truth?reality?What exactly is real? When a person like me sits at the table, sinking into the past, trying to find the truth in the ever-changing history, to see some truth in the life in the world, the truth becomes a serious problem.The truth will be broken, decomposed, melted and reorganized in front of you as you pursue...like smoke and dust, like illusion and dream. I was walking in the woods and the two kids had come home.All that autumn, every night all that autumn, I walked alone in that wood.The distance between one street lamp and another is very far, and between sections of bright and bright are sections of darkness and darkness. Sometimes my shadow appears in the brightness, and sometimes disappears in the darkness.The wind and waves that came out of nowhere stirred the colorful fallen leaves, just like the impression that life gave me.I feel like this empty wind that captures my existence only as it sheds and swirls the colorful leaves. The past, or the old person, is like the fallen leaves, in the autumn wind of my life, drifting from the darkness to the brightness, and escaping from the brightness to the darkness.In the light, I see them, in the dark I can only imagine them, relying on those who drift into the light to imagine those who fled into the darkness.I can't see their reality in the dark, only what I imagined them to be -- as they drift into another kind of brightness as I imagine them.Is this other kind of brightness unreal?When the darkness hides some fallen leaves, you can still imagine them, because your imagination can illuminate the darkness can illuminate them, but the imagination illuminates them are not the same as the darkness hides them, but this is all I can get The only truth.Even those bright ones, when I look at them, what is their reality?It's just the reality in my impression, or it's just my real impression.The same is true of past events and old people, whether they drift into the light or flee into the darkness, they can only become real in my impression. The truth is not outside my mind, there is no such thing as the real outside my mind that stays there as it is.Truth, sometimes it is a legend or even a rumor, sometimes it is a kind of speculation, sometimes it is a dream, they have carved my impression magically in my heart. And, as they molded my impressions, they molded me by the way.Otherwise, what is my reality, and what can it be?These are the impressions.The accumulation and weaving of these impressions is what I am. There was a famous paradox: The following sentence is correct The above statement is false Now there is another no less paradoxical: i am part of my impression And all my impressions are me