Chapter 54 Looking at the other shore in the evening wind

At zero o'clock on December 31, 1999, I don't think there will be any special difference from other times.Maybe a baby is born and another old man dies.Some countries are covered with snow, while others are besieged by floods.A certain flower bloomed quietly, while a certain tree fell down amidst the sound of thunder and lightning.The river will not change direction because of the arrival of the new century, it will still flow without waves in the old riverbed full of silt; if the house is not threatened by earthquakes, fires and tornadoes, etc., it will still be in this day. The darkest hour is loaded with strange dreams of human beings.The new century is approaching after the zero o'clock silently falls, and I don't think anyone will see the dawn above it, because it is the heaviest and darkest time for nature.

Time will never be reborn because of the end of the twentieth century, it will go on as it should go step by step.When we wake up, we find that there is no specific difference between the 21st century and yesterday’s 20th century. The old sun is still shining on the old streets, and the people who sell breakfast are also yawning with bruises at the corners of their eyes as before. .The women in front of the vegetable stalls are carrying all kinds of vegetable baskets to worry about the family's livelihood, while the children at the dining table are like swallows waiting for their parents to feed them into their mouths.

The 21st century has just begun in a mediocre way.Don't expect hundreds of rainbows to surprise you at the turn of the century, and don't worry about the catastrophe that some prophets have predicted.The earth and human beings are very solid things in my opinion. Although there are meteorite rains, wars, famines, plagues, etc. torment them continuously, they can always find a way to overcome and dissolve them.They have strong immunity of their own.This gigantic presence is irresistible.So I never worry that the 21st century will disappear without a trace like the data in a computer with a virus, it will definitely come as scheduled.

People like me who were born in the 1960s basically spent half of their lives in the 20th century, and spent the other half of their lives in the 21st century.The world has been formed since I was born.It is well-defined and well-organized.People go to the hospital when they are sick, go to school when it is time to go to school, go to the grain store when they are short of firewood, rice, oil and salt, go to prison when they commit a crime, and people who see through the red dust step into the temple, as if everything has been agreed upon.People have already invented convenient means of transportation and communication such as automobiles, airplanes, and telephones, making our travel and communication extremely convenient.Any house is illuminated by electric lights, and then there are televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, combined stereos, vacuum cleaners, etc., which rely on electricity to provide entertainment and comfortable living tools for human beings.You hardly need to use any brains, and you can safely enter a state of life that is indifferent to the world.Everything is ready-made, so you have no room for thinking and creativity.

I began to gradually understand that countries are different, and several worlds have been divided between countries in the name of politics.As for the politics within a country, it is also intricate, so wars include both world wars and national civil wars.As for the economy, it has increasingly become the most concerned topic in human life, and the science and technology that directly drives the economy to take off are also highly valued.The strength of economic strength has begun to dominate people's spiritual life to a large extent, so it has unknowingly penetrated into many fields such as politics, military affairs, and superstructure.With the development of culture and art to this day, it seems that the most glorious moment has passed, and countless art masters are shining like stars in the vast night sky, so that we can only worship them.As far as my narrow vision and living conditions are concerned, architecture has reached its peak with the famous cathedrals in various European countries in the Middle Ages.For music, Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky are enough.As for painting, Van Gogh alone pushed the expression of passion to the apex.As for literature, Yasunari Kawabata in the East and Faulkner in the West are enough to brighten the gloomy sky.

This world is moving forward in an orderly manner, so that I often suspect that there is a huge conspiracy buried in its depths.Everything about us seems to have been pre-determined, there are orders and laws everywhere, and you can't really free yourself from the fetters and let your imagination run wild.So in the real society, if you have free emotions in your heart, you are undoubtedly pouring the water of suffering on your head.It seems that what the world needs are puppets, only in this way can you go through your life peacefully without harm.If you ask too much about this world, it will give you a fatal blow.Nietzsche asked too much, so he went crazy; Van Gogh also asked too much, and he cut off his own ear as the price; Fall into a space of powerful silence.There are also Hemingway, Yukio Mishima, etc. They simply asked about their own lives.However, it is these people who make me feel that the world can still be lived.

Culture and art can only be developed with the support of imagination.Countless myths and legends have been born out of imagination, making us feel that there are faint bands of light flickering in the noisy living space, which makes us feel warmer.Now, however, myths and legends are hard to come by, and what those self-proclaimed myths smell like is a heavy ointment.I suspect that the human imagination is gradually shrinking.Houses of the same model, indifferent living space, and mechanical and monotonous life content are probably all objective factors that degenerate imagination.The houses are getting denser and denser, and the blue concrete roads roam around the earth like a group of poisonous snakes, suffocating the green of many woodlands forever under them.We drank tap water that had been disinfected with bleach, ate plump but tasteless rice catalyzed by chemical fertilizers, and went out on buses emitting foul-smelling exhaust fumes.We are listless and at a loss all day long.At this moment, imagination is doomed to disappear like a yellow crane, never to return.While the development of high technology makes everything in life extremely convenient and comfortable, it also quietly kills people's passion.If the passion disappears, people will no longer have fantasies and memories. Perhaps in the life of the new century, there will be less and less dust around us, and we will be soaked in formalin like zombies. How sad it would be if the past could be picked up.

I am always wary of the progress of human civilization.Civilization is sometimes an invisible killer.When we have ended the era of drinking blood and tremblingly approaching civilization, people's ability to adapt to nature has also declined to varying degrees.War is the enemy of peace, but who can deny that countless moving stories were born in the smoke of war, but people are insensitive in peaceful life?Even more terrifying is morality.The morality we accept is basically a hypocrite, ignoring the most free and humane emotions in man, which the well-dressed human being regards as virtue.The love story between Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai is deformed, but it is interpreted as a model of love.And the recent sensational "Bridge of Madison County" is actually nothing more than the most active maintenance of traditional moral values.Morality hinders the integration of emotions, and people cannot resolve this contradiction, so they poetically and picturesquely let their ashes meet under the breeze-rippling Rothman Bridge, how cruel it is.We shouldn't weep over this heartrending love story, but over the embarrassing state of human emotion.For human beings, if morality is used to suppress happiness and emotions, what else is there in this world that is worthy of emotion for people to live on?Whenever I think of these things, I feel a deep sense of fear and despair.Any unconventional way of life will often be criticized and looked down upon by the world, so the acquisition of happiness is bitter.I have great respect for Chaplin, because he understood happiness most profoundly, and that is happiness with a price.Therefore, his comedies are full of sadness after people laugh. In a sense, his works are also tragedies.I remember he once recounted such a story, a waiter walked into the restaurant with a smile on his plate, and suddenly slipped on a banana peel, so he fell to the ground in embarrassment, and everyone laughed when they saw it.Chaplin believes that falling does not make people laugh, what makes people laugh is that a person suddenly falls from happiness to sadness in an instant.His understanding made me feel that Chaplin is an art master who has penetrated the ups and downs of the world.The happiness soaked in bitterness must be as exciting as the buds sprinkled with morning dew.I don't know if I can achieve such happiness in my life, because the process of its arrival is full of shackles, and it is really as difficult as a boat sailing in the shallows.

We are always full of sympathy when we stand in a zoo and see a tiger in an iron cage.Because it is imposing and lazy like a fat house cat.But we don't know that our own situation is the same as it, but our cage is huge and invisible.Our passion is becoming the wind of last night just like the majesty of a tiger.What can the twenty-first century really give us?Higher and newer science and technology?A peaceful peace like autumn water?Only a church and no room for a prison?No more drug addicts and prostitutes, and everyone has become a well-mannered, well-educated civilized person?If human beings really develop to this level, will the world still call it the world?I suspect that at that time people might even lose the courage to commit suicide.

I like lives with individuality so much, because they radiate divine light all over them.So I hate the birth of cloned sheep, because its appearance is the recognition of common life, but it is full of contempt and irony for individual life.Life that can be reproduced in the same pattern is not life in my opinion.Life is diverse, so they can produce colorful fantasies.The reason why human life can be successfully continued may not only lie in procreation (it is at best a way and means of birthing people), but in the endless fantasy.If you ask me what is immortal in this world, I will answer without hesitation: fantasy.Fantasy brings the deepest desire in the heart closer to reality, and it achieves the purpose of communication to a certain extent; fantasy makes your most valued value instantly recognized; fantasy can melt a towering iceberg and make a river flow A rainbow-like boat appears.Fantasy floats tenaciously like a fish in the abyss between happiness and pain. It is where your feet can't reach, but it binds your heart to the place with a romantic thread.So fantasy is the most powerful support and driving force for people to survive.I think that as long as human beings in the 21st century still have illusions, they will still be full of infinite vitality so that the source of culture and art will not be exhausted prematurely.

When I first started writing, there was always a feeling of turmoil inside me, you are in a state of excitement all the time, thinking that you are creating a poetic life under your pen.My favorite writers of that period were Turgenev and Kawabata Yasunari, whose landscapes and characters easily harmonized with my extreme northern environment.At that time, I always felt that there was a huge gap with the interpersonal relationship around me, and I was out of tune with the world.More than ten years later, when I entered middle age, I realized that it was actually a lovely commotion of adolescence, which carried a lot of self-righteous vanity and ran counter to simple art.Life itself is the best teacher, it will lead you to the real journey of life unconsciously.Now I don't like Turgenev very much, because the traces of tragedy in his works are too artificial, and the poetic atmosphere permeating the surface of his works is too obvious.But I still admire Yasunari Kawabata, I think only he truly represents the spirit of the East.So in a sense, a person who has learned both Chinese and Western cultures can only become a great scholar, but it is difficult to become a great artist, because art needs to be purified and perfected by those who are biased and sharp-edged.Learning does not need to be extreme, but art often needs it. Maybe this is a deviation in my personal understanding. Will there be a huge peak in literature in the coming century?I don't think it is very likely.Because literature is not like science and technology, the unknown field is still vast, and as long as there are new discoveries, it will cause a sensation all over the world.Literature is maintained and expressed by discourse, and there is always a time when words are exhausted.But I am still full of respect and obsession with it, because after all, it is a clear key that enables me to step into the new century peacefully.Although it is hard for you to see it like the evening wind, you can feel its gentle touch and refreshing refreshment after all.And absolutely nothing else has given me such enduring passion.The moment I bowed my head and prayed in the temple surrounded by incense, my heart was full of fireworks in the world, and it seemed impossible for me to break away from the mortal world.Perhaps because of this, I am extremely afraid that the dusty smell of the world in the next century will become weaker and weaker under the pressure of morality and civilization, like a tree that has been pruned continuously, standing rigidly and orderly, without buckling The twirling twigs can create changing shadows and daydreams for people, so even if there is still a small piece of shade under the tree, we are reluctant to rest under it.Although I understand that the acquisition of happiness is bitter, I still yearn for it eagerly, longing for it to wet me and nourish me like an unexpected rain, even if it is long overdue!Am I being too greedy? British philosopher Russell believed that the Chinese nation is the most tolerant in the world.He believed that all white races were obsessed with war, plunder, and destruction.This view is also reflected in Gu Hongming's article.Koo believed: "In China, war is an accident, but in Europe, war is a necessity." They almost unanimously believe that Confucianism endowed the Chinese with a refined and quiet character.But I was thinking about another question, when we avoid war, what are we enjoying and creating?Europe is bleeding, and we are smoking the opium they send us.What is there to praise for such endurance?We are a people who are too easy to arrange a destination at birth, so our free spirit and creativity always seem so weak.In my opinion, the biggest drawback of Confucianism is to stifle people's passion. The 21st century is approaching, and standing in the evening wind of this century, I hope that the new century will still have the things we like and hate in this century, and they can still bring us various complex emotions.If I can't be in the environment where the fish are flying and the stars are shining, let my heart go there.I will continue the long journey of the new century with those square and beautiful Chinese characters.