"There is no such thing as perfect writing, just as there is no such thing as complete despair." This is what a writer I met by chance in college told me.But the real understanding of its meaning—at least as a console—was much, much later.Indeed, the so-called perfect article does not exist. Even so, whenever I take up the pen to write something, I often fall into a mood of despair.Because the scope of what I can write is too narrow.For example, I might be able to write something about the elephant itself, but I don't know where to start with the domestication of the subject.

For 8 years, I have always harbored such a helpless depression—8 years, 8 years. Of course, as long as I remain attentive and studious, aging is not a pain.This is in general terms. Right after I turned 20, I have been adopting this attitude to life as much as possible.Therefore, I don’t know how many times I was severely injured, deceived, and misunderstood by others. At the same time, I also experienced many unspeakable experiences.All kinds of people came to confide in me, and then walked past me with noise like a bridge, and never returned.At times like this, I just kept silent, absolutely silent.This ushered in the last spring and autumn of my "20s".

And now, I'm ready to spit it out. To be sure, none of the problems were solved, and the situation was likely to remain the same after I had finished talking.In the final analysis, writing articles is not a means of self-diagnosis and treatment, but at best a small attempt at self-healing. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to be outspoken, and the more you try to be outspoken, the more your outspoken words slip into the dark depths. I do not intend to defend myself.To be able to tell here, at least I have done my best now.There is no embellishment.But I still think this way: if it goes well, maybe after a few years or ten years, I can find myself liberated.At that time, elephants will return to the plains, and I will use more beautiful language to describe this world.

I learned most—or should I say almost all—the style of writing from Hatfield.Unfortunately, Hatfield himself was in every sense a hopeless writer.This can be seen by reading his works. The writing is provocative, the plot is upside down, and the conception is superficial and naive.And yet he is one of the few extraordinary writers who can fight with the article as a weapon.Even compared with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and other writers of his time, I think his fighting posture is not inferior.It is a pity that this Hatfield failed to recognize the face of his opponent until the end.This is what is called hopelessness.

He persevered in this hopeless battle for eight years and two months, and then died. On a sunny Sunday morning in June 1938, with a portrait of Hitler in his right arm and an umbrella in his left, he jumped from the roof of a New York skyscraper.As in his life, his death caused no repercussions. I got the first out-of-print book of Hatfield by accident, and it was in the summer vacation of the third year of junior high school-the year when I had an itchy skin disease on my crotch.The uncle who gave me this book suffered from bowel cancer three years later. When he died, he was cut up to pieces, with plastic tubes inserted into the entrance and exit of his body, which was extremely painful.The last time we met, his whole body was black and red, shrinking into a ball, like a cunning monkey.

I have three uncles in total, one died in the suburbs of Shanghai - on the third day after the defeat, he stepped on a landmine he planted.The third uncle who survived became a magician and toured around the country where there are hot springs. Of good writing, Hatfield writes: "When engaging in the work of writing articles, you must first confirm the distance between yourself and the things around you. What you need is not sensibility, but a scale." ("What's wrong with being happy" 1936) So I took a ruler in one hand and began to look around the world anxiously.That was probably the year that President Kennedy died tragically, 15 years ago.In the past 15 years, I have indeed thrown away a lot of things.It's like a plane with an engine failure that dumps cargo, seats, and eventually the poor male flight attendant to save weight.For fifteen years I gave up everything and had almost nothing on me.

Whether this is the right thing to do, I cannot say for sure.It is true that the mood becomes happy.But when I think about what will be left of me when I die, I feel a lot of dread.Once it is burned to the torch, it will be difficult to break even a broken bone. The dead grandmother used to say, "People who are depressed can only have depressed dreams. If they are more depressed, they will not even dream." The night my grandmother passed away, the first thing I did was reach out and gently close her eyelids.Meanwhile, the dream she had harbored for seventy-nine years faded away like a summer shower on the sidewalk, leaving no trace behind.

I'll say the article again, one last time. For me, writing articles is extremely painful.Sometimes I can't write a line for a whole month, and sometimes I write for three days and three nights with a brush, but in the end, I can't write all the words. Despite this, writing articles is also a kind of fun.Because compared with the hardships of life, it is indeed too easy to find meaning in this. I was probably not even 20 years old when I realized this, and I was so stunned that I couldn't speak for a week.And I feel that as long as I play a little smart, the whole world will be in my hands, all values ​​​​will be completely changed, and time can be turned back...

It was a long time before I realized that this was an illusion, unfortunately.I draw a straight line down the middle of my blotter, with gains on the left and losses on the right—lost, ruined, especially dismissive, sacrificed, betrayed...but I don't Stick to writing to the end. There is always an abyss between the objects of our various efforts to know and to be known.No matter how long a ruler is used, the depth cannot be fully measured.What I can write here is just a list.Neither fiction, literature, nor art.Just a blotter with a straight line through the middle.If it is a lesson, maybe there is a little bit.

If you are after art and literature, then read what the Greeks wrote.For the birth of true art requires slavery. And the ancient Greeks were like this: slaves farmed, cooked, and rowed boats, while citizens reveled in poetry and fu and immersed themselves in mathematical analysis under the Mediterranean sun.The so-called art is such a thing. As for the person who checks the refrigerator in the quiet kitchen at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, that's all I can write and that's me. The story begins on August 8, 1970 and ends 18 days later, on August 26 of the same year. "What rich people are all bastards!"

Rat leaned on the table with both hands, and yelled at me with displeasure. Maybe the target of the mouse roar is the coffee grinder behind me, I don't know.Since I'm sitting across the table from him, there's no point in yelling at me.But no matter what, after roaring, the Rat always showed a satisfied expression and sipped the beer with relish. Of course, no one will notice the Rat's rough voice.There were so many people in the shop that they almost sat outside the door, and everyone yelled at the same time. The scene was almost the same as that of a passenger ship that was about to sink. "Ticks!" Saying that, the mouse shook its head in disgust. "Those guys can't do anything; seeing a guy with a rich face makes me sick!" I put my lips to the rim of the thin wine glass and nodded silently.The Mouse stopped there, and stopped talking, flipping the slender fingers resting on the table like warming up, examining it repeatedly for a long time.I looked up helplessly at the ceiling.This is his old problem: if you don't count the ten fingers one by one, you can't open your mouth again. Over the summer, Rat and I went berserk and drank enough beer to fill a 25-meter swimming pool.The dropped peanut skins are enough to cover the entire floor of a jazz bar with a thickness of 5 centimeters.Otherwise, it would be impossible to survive this boring summer. Above the counter in the jazz bar hangs a print that has been discolored by the smoke.When I was really bored, I stared at the painting tirelessly for hours.The pattern that seems to be used for the Rashaha test is like two green monkeys sitting opposite me passing two deflated tennis balls to each other. When I said this to Jie, the owner of the bar, he stared at it for a long time, and replied reluctantly: "That's true." "What does it symbolize?" I asked. "The monkey on the left is you, and the monkey on the right is me. I throw a beer bottle, and you throw money." Convinced, I buried my head in my beer. "I just want to vomit!" the mouse repeated after finally counting its fingers. It was not on a whim today that the Rat spoke ill of the rich. In fact, he hated it too.In fact, the mouse's family is also quite rich - whenever I point this out, the mouse must say that it is not his responsibility.Sometimes (usually when I drink too much) I add "No, it's your fault", but I often regret it when I say it.Because what the Rat said made sense after all. "Guess why I hate rich people?" The mouse still kept talking that night.It is the first time to say this. I shook my head to show that I didn't know. "To put it bluntly, because rich people don't think about anything. If you don't have a flashlight and a ruler, you can't even scratch your own ass." To put it bluntly, it's the mantra of rats. "Is that so?" "Of course. Those guys don't think about the key things, they just pretend to think about it....Why do you say?" "This--" "It's not necessary! Of course, it takes a lot of brainpower to become a rich person, but as long as you are still a rich person, you don't need to think about anything, just like artificial satellites don't need gasoline, they just need to go around a place. .But I'm not like that, and neither are you. To live, you have to think about everything from tomorrow's weather to the size of the tub piston. Right?" "what." "That's it." After talking freely, the Mouse took out a tissue from his pocket and wiped his nose aloud, looking helpless.I'm really not sure how serious the rat's words are. "However, in the end it is a death." I said tentatively. "Of course. Everyone has to die sooner or later. But before death, you have to live for 50 years. Living this and that while thinking about it, to put it bluntly, is much harder than living for 5,000 years without thinking about anything. Isn't it?" As said. The first time I met the mouse was in the spring of 3 years ago.We had just entered college that year, and both of us were quite drunk.At around 4 o'clock in the morning, we all got into Shu's black-painted Fiat 300 car.For what reason, I really can't remember. Probably a mutual friend of both of us. In short, we were drunk, and the pointer of the speedometer pointed at 80 kilometers.Unstoppable, we broke through the wall of the park, overwhelmed the potted rhododendrons, and slammed headlong towards the stone pillar.And we are not damaged at all, it can only be said to be lucky. I woke up with a jolt.I kicked open the wrecked car door.Jumping outside, I saw the Fiat's hood flying all the way to the monkey mountain railing ten meters away. The front end of the car was concave like a stone pillar. With both hands on the steering wheel, the Rat was bent in two, but he wasn't hurt, just vomited the Italian pie he ate an hour ago onto the dashboard.I climbed onto the roof and peeked through the sunroof into the driver's seat: "It doesn't matter?" "Yeah. It's a little overdose, and I vomited." "Can you come out?" "Give me a hand." The Rat turned off the engine, stuffed the cigarettes on the dashboard into his pocket, and then slowly grabbed my hand and climbed onto the roof.We sat side by side on the roof of the Fiat, looked up at the sky that was beginning to turn white, and smoked a few cigarettes in silence.For some reason, I thought of Richard.Armored vehicle movie starring Burton.As for what the rat was thinking, of course I had no way of knowing. "Hey, we're really lucky!" the mouse said after 5 minutes, "Look, the whole body is intact, can you believe it?" I nodded: "However, the car is scrapped." "Don't worry about it. You can buy a car, but luck is hard to buy." I was a little surprised, looking at the mouse's face: "Isn't it rich?" "It counts!" "That's great!" The Mouse didn't respond, and shook his head dissatisfied. "Anyway, we had good luck." "yes." The Rat crushed the cigarette end with the heel of his tennis shoe, and then flicked it towards Monkey Mountain with his fingers. "I said, how about our partnership? Guaranteed to be invincible!" "What to do first?" "Drink beer!" We bought six cans of beer from a nearby vending machine, walked to the beach, drank them all on the beach, and looked out to sea.The weather was impeccable. "Call me a mouse," he said. "Why is it called such a name?" "I can't remember, it happened a long time ago. At first, people called me that, and I felt unhappy, but now it doesn't matter. You can get used to everything." We threw the empty beer cans overboard and slept for about an hour with our duffel jackets pulled over our faces against the jetty.When I woke up with my eyes open, I felt a strange vitality filling my whole body, which was incredible. "Can run 100 kilometers!" I said to the mouse. "I can too!" However, the most urgent task is to hand over the park maintenance fee to the city government in three years with principal and interest. Rats surprisingly don't read books.Apart from the sports papers and the advertisements in the letter box, I have not found him to have seen other type.Sometimes I read books to pass the time, and he stared at the book like a fly staring at a flyswatter and asked: "Why are you reading a book?" "Why are you drinking some beer?" I ate a mouthful of vinegar-marinated horse mackerel and a vegetable salad, and asked without even looking at the mouse.The mouse pondered for 5 minutes, then said: "The great thing about beer is that it can all be pissed out. When you're out and hit one base, there's nothing left." After all, the mouse looked at me, and I continued to eat and drink. "Why do you keep reading?" Together with the beer, I put the last remaining horse mackerel into my belly, cleaned up the dishes, picked up the "Emotional Education" that I just read at the beginning, and flipped through a few pages: "Because Flaubert is already dead." "Do you not read the books of living authors?" "A living writer is worth nothing." "How?" "I think people who die are usually forgiven," I replied, watching a rerun of "Line 66" on the portable TV in the counter. The mouse pondered for a long time. "Let me ask you, what happened to a living person? Generally unforgivable?" "How should I put it, I haven't really thought about it seriously. However, once you are cornered, it may be like that, or it may be unforgivable." Jay came over and put two new beers in front of us. "So what if you don't forgive?" "Sleeping with pillows." The Rat shook his head in confusion. "Strange talk, I can't understand it." After saying this, the Rat poured the beer into the glass, then curled up again and fell into deep thought. "The last book I read was last summer." The mouse said, "I forgot the title of the book, and I forgot why I read it. Anyway, it is a novel written by a woman. The protagonist is a famous female fashion designer in her 30s. , stubbornly thought that he was suffering from an incurable disease." "What disease?" "Forget it, cancer or something. Besides, there are incurable diseases? ... So, she went to the seaside to escape the summer heat, and she masturbated non-stop from time to time. In the bathroom, in the woods, in bed, in the sea, it was almost impossible. Sub-location." "Navy?" "That's right....Can you believe it? Why bother to write this into the novel, isn't there not much to write about?" "I'm afraid it is." "I don't like it. That kind of novel is simply disgusting." I nod. "If it were me, it would be completely different." "For example?" The Mouse fiddled with the beer glass back and forth with his fingertips, thinking. "Look at this: the boat I was on sank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so I grabbed the lifebuoy and watched the stars floating in the night sea alone. It was a quiet and beautiful night. While I was drifting, I found that there was also a young man on the opposite side. The woman floated in with a life buoy." "Is the girl pretty?" "That is it." I took a sip of beer, shook my head and said: "Looks a little funny." "Listen honestly. Then, the two of us sat next to each other, chatting while drifting. Talk about how you came here, where you're going, hobbies, the number of girls you've slept with, TV shows, dreams you had yesterday, and so on.And drink beer together. " "Wait a minute, where can I get beer?" The mouse pondered for a moment: "Floating, canned beer from the ship's mess hall, with canned fried sardines. Will it work this time?" "Ok." "Drinking and drinking, the woman asked me what to do next, and said that she was going to swim in the direction of the island. I said that there was no island, so I might as well drink beer here, and the plane would definitely come to rescue me. But the woman was alone. Swimmed away." The mouse stopped for a while, and drank beer." "The woman swam continuously for two days and two nights, and finally climbed to an isolated island. We were rescued by the plane after being drunk for two days.In this way, many years later, the two unexpectedly met in a small bar at the foot of the mountain. " Another beer together? " "Not sentimental." "Maybe," I said. 6 The mouse novel has two advantages.One is that there is no sex scene, and the other is that no one dies.Originally, people are going to die, and they have to sleep with women, nine times out of ten. "Could it be that I was wrong?" the woman asked. Shu took a sip of beer, shook his head slowly and said, "To be clear, everyone is wrong." "Why do you think that?" "Oh—" the mouse uttered, licked its upper lip with its tongue, but did not answer. "I swam desperately to the island, and my arms were almost broken. I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't survive. So I thought several times: Maybe I was wrong and you were right. I struggled so desperately, but you just didn't move. Just floating at sea. Why is that?" When the woman said this, she smiled lightly, turned and rubbed her eyes sadly for a while, and the mouse fumbled randomly in her pocket. I haven't smoked for 3 years, and I am so hungry. "You think I'm dead?" "kind of." "Really a little?" "……forget." The two were silent for a moment.The Rat felt that there must be something to talk about. "Hey, life is not fair." "Whose words?" "John F. Kennedy."