Hello everyone, my name is Zeng Xiaolang.
The writing last night was fruitless, and I fell asleep in a daze around three o'clock. I woke up around eleven this morning. The family dog, Xiong Xiaolang, has been waiting for a long time. He squeaked and barked in the cage. My wife gave him breakfast. After I washed and drank a glass of water, I took him downstairs to let the wind out.
Xiong Xiaolang is a border shepherd. He is the smartest and the most active dog, and he is cute. This makes it impossible for me to kill him myself. It's bound to be melancholy at home, the expression is probably lying on the ground and squeaking like a mouse, seeing me or my wife, looking like an abused child at any time, and running to the kitchen when we don't notice Or peeing under the table.
As mentioned above, I couldn't kill it myself, and it was sunny today, so I had to take it down and run in the park.
The park in the community has just been built, with a huge area and few pedestrians. In my birthday essays a few years ago, I once described the beautiful toilet by the lake. At night, it looks like a villa with colorful lights. The community is on the side of the toilet, and there was originally a large forest in the middle.
In the second half of last year, a five-story building that was said to be a party school was built next to the community. A starting road and flower beds were built in the woods. Most of the tombs previously built in the woods were moved away. This spring, Most of the trails in the forest are covered with turf, and unknown plants are planted in the flower beds. The park originally built along the lake has almost doubled as a result. A pavilion was built on the height of the woodland that was rarely accessed before. When you go to the pavilion and look towards the lake, you will see the back of the toilet and a small road winding down. It is integrated with the lakeside trail.
Most of the places that were inaccessible before are now traces of people. In the morning, there are often no pedestrians. I listened to the song and let the dog run around this place for a while. When I saw people from a distance, I tied the chain again. . The trees in the park are all old trees from the previous forest, lush and green, with the sun falling from above.
In winter, many branches fall to the ground. I have found a few of the appropriate thickness to throw with the dog. The Border Collie is a roving dog. If you throw something out, it will immediately run over and grab it back. If you throw it again, it will continue. Take it, I will be exhausted into a bellows after a while, and I will save a lot of things. Now that those branches are rotten, the dog has developed the habit of going to the grass to find a stick every time he goes to the park. Maybe this is his happy past.
After walking Xiong Xiaolang until almost twelve o’clock, when I took him home, my brother called and asked me when I would go to eat. I told him to come right away, and then I went home and called my wife Zhong Xiaolang to ride a motorcycle to my parents. Although Xiong Xiaolang was too tired, he still wanted to go out after drinking water. We didn't bring him. He stood in the living room with a resentful and unbelievable look. After closing the door, he could hear squeaking protests.
I'm going to my parents' place for dinner today because it's my birthday today. During dinner, I chatted with my younger brother about "Women's Federation 4". We agreed that the best fight in superhero movies is the man of steel. The Women's Federation 4 is good, but the fight scenes are naive. I always think of the episodes in the United States or China. What is the scene of the fire, the younger brother mentioned the scene of Tony selling arms in Iron Man 1, a split missile can wash several mountains, and the head turned into a melee... My illiterate father came over and said that the movie Tickets are too expensive, CCTV has stopped, hahahaha. Grandma is saying Zhong Xiaolang, are you losing weight? Zhong Xiaolang recently felt that he had gained a little weight. When he said this, he was a little tangled: "It's because I wore less clothes."
After lunch, I went out. The sunshine at noon was very good. I rode an electric motorcycle and ran along the road. There is really nothing to do in a small place like Wangcheng. We wanted to run all the way to Jinggang, but after running for more than ten kilometers, the river was on an old road that was in disrepair. I think they are all boring people who go to Jinggang.
Then we won't go, we turned the car around, and I said, "We're going home, please don't cry, Zhong Xiaolang."
Zhong Xiaolang said a few words behind him.
When I got home, Zhong Xiaolang poured water into the bathtub to prepare for taking a bath and taking a nap. I checked the computer for a while and decided to take a nap. Zhong Xiaolang had just finished taking a bath and recommended her bath water to me, so I went to lie down in the bathtub for a while. There were songs playing on my phone. The first song was Na Ying's "Love and Hate Early", He Qi's singing. When Na Ying sang "the glass window is like an old movie, every frame is of you just faded", the noon sun is also coming in from the window, shining in the water in the bathtub, one by one, Warm, clear, clear, just like a movie. I almost fell asleep listening to the song. The second song was "Baitang Full of Wine" sung by Hetu. It was still lazy. After that, all the singing turned into a prelude to Hua Yuchen's "I Care About You", which scared me to death.
So I turned off the music, changed into my pajamas and lay on the bed for a while, then got up in my early three o'clock. I made coffee and went to the computer to write this essay.
Talk about an essay.
It was said a few years ago that I may be an INTP personality. I have always sneered at this kind of generalization, thinking that it is as stupid as "Taurus people have xx personality", but in order to distinguish whether the other party praised me or scold me, I searched for the definition of this personality.
Some of these descriptions really make me sit down, such as the meaning of speaking and writing to the personality, INTPs often think through speaking, "People of this personality type like to share in their debates with themselves and not fully. Mature ideas" "When they're extra excited, they're also incoherent, as they try to explain a series of chains of logical conclusions, which in turn lead them to the latest ideas."
The same is true for me. The process of speaking and writing, for me, is more of an inductive attempt. In this attempt, I often see my own problems. If life is a math problem of "two times three times three times", when I put my thinking in words, this problem is simplified to "six times three"; but without words, the calculation is difficult to simplify .
In this way, over the past few years, you can see me constantly summarizing myself and making a conclusion. Not so much to share this with you, as myself, I need this kind of behavior to confirm my place in the world. What am I, where did I come from, and where am I going.
I am able to write, perhaps because of this habit: it is because I keep looking back, recalling my mood when I was in my teens, recalling my mood when I was 20, recalling my mood when I was 25... I was able to write in the book. Come from similar characters and write about different life perspectives and aesthetic levels.
But even so - even if I keep recalling and reflecting - my cognition of the past may still be changing little by little. Which of my memories of the past are real and which are day by day? Is the memory too beautified, or too ugly? To this day, the scale of time may have been a little blurred in memory.
When I was thirty, I said that the so-called thirty-year-old self was probably something that merged with the twenty-year-old self, the ten-year-old self—before that, the ten-year-old self was the same as the twenty-year-old self. The difference between the self at age is so stark that at thirty it devours both. And now at thirty-five, I feel more like they've all been mixed together on a fine scale, because the mix is so deep that I can't tell which things belong to which year.
Memories are not so much my memories of the past, but "me memories of my thirty-five-year-old". Because we are so far away from the past, the power of time, the alienation of personality, and the unobjective memory merge. Up, memories become something responsible only for the present. "My past was like this" became "I think my past was like this".
When I realized this, I was walking Xiong Xiaolang in the park. The grass in early spring was still cold. A father brought his child down the steps. I led the dog on a chain and sat on the steps to watch. They walked over. This spring is rarely sunny, the children are babbling, the grass in the park is trying to take root and sprout, and I am so tired from the gym exercise the day before that my back is sore.
A physical examination a year later made me really think about death, so that when I looked at the child and the dog, I remembered the scene when I was the same age as him: the deceased is like this.
There are indeed certain nodes in life, and you will suddenly see the traces of time more clearly. Some people are acutely aware of this, others are duller, and generally speaking, duller people are happier.
In past essays, I have often recalled some of the problems I encountered in the past, and even some experiences that might be described as suffering. But if I look at it objectively, I think I have actually gained a lot of things in the past few decades. I was able to make a living from my interests. After I was 30 years old, I went all the way smoothly, although I didn’t make much money. , but I don’t have to worry too much about money. I can even refuse some businesses that let me write with huge sums of money. This essay has won the monthly ticket champion. When I was young, all of this was unimaginable.
My interest in writing was still in the fourth grade of elementary school, and the junior high school was in the same school as the elementary school. When I was in high school, I went to Yongzhou No. 2 Middle School. It was a city focus. One of the things that attracted me was that there was a literary club in the school called "Chuhang Literary Club". Stop - I went to a relatively ordinary school in elementary and junior high school. I have never seen such high-end things in literature clubs. I heard this word only after I graduated from junior high school. It feels like a big step closer to literature.
After I was admitted, I applied to join the literary club. Of course, that was the end of it. My writing was so poor that I didn’t participate in any activities for the next three years. Audio feedback. Of course, I wasn't enlightened at that time, which was very common and taken for granted, but I still remember clearly the vision of literature at that time.
There is one thing I still remember. Not long after I entered the class, the girl sitting next to me was a great master who was said to have published an article. When we chatted together, I remembered an article I saw in the summer vacation, which introduced I wrote an essay question: Throw a piece of paper into a glass of water and write an essay on it. I thought this topic was really ingenious. When I shared it with him, the other party smiled and said, "Oh, peeping in a cup."
I always think about it later and find it funny. At that time, I lived in a small circle in a small city, and I didn't have access to the Internet, so I knew very little about the outside world. Han Han won the first prize for a new concept composition through "Peeking in a Cup". It was widely spread at the time, but even as a self-proclaimed literature lover, I still have no concept of this matter. The title is very exciting... I often think back and sigh: The world I saw at that time was really perfect.
Everything I can see is full of novelty and possibility. Every day I see something new. Every time I add a knowledge, I get something, as if in a wonderful Picking up wonderful stones from the sandy beach, the surrounding material is poor, but the world is wonderful. Even though I have no literary talent, I love writing, and maybe I won't be able to publish anything in my life, but literature will take me to magical places, no doubt about that.
"Hi, throw a piece of paper into a glass of water, can you use it to write an essay?"
If I could go back to that moment and tell that kid back then that in the future, you will rely on words to eat, and you will even join the National Writers Association, how unbelievably happy he will be. After so many years, even though my memory has been blurred, I can still be sure that I never thought of this once when I was a student. Along the way, there really is no talent.
After I was 20 years old, I gradually grasped the knack of writing, and then gradually accumulated doubts. When I was 30 years old, I said to people: "I want to see what the current high point of Chinese literature is." The direction of literature Fragmented, without a clear goal, full of all kinds of confusion and sighs.
The world, life, is such a magical thing, when you have nothing, you really have it in perfection, and once you touch its borders one day, all you have is a broken sandcastle on the beach, You can fill in the gaps, but in the end it will be gone before the waves.
Of course, sometimes, I may also have to be thankful for its confusion and failure. The failure of literature may mean that it has a slight possibility of perfection in other places. Because of this possibility, we still have the motivation to move forward. The most terrifying thing is complete failure and perfect success. If there is a day, we will all lose meaning, and in an imperfect world, there is only room for us to exist.
These things are hard to understand, and for some, it may seem like a moan.
I know many readers probably want to feel motivated in my essays, and I've considered writing these things, but I think, this is where I am at thirty-five. Each of us, one day, may touch a certain boundary, and you will see your future trajectory, closely related, and sometimes you may even feel boring, you can only learn from some more complex Find the joy of life in the details.
So I still want to portray these things truthfully. I think this may be the real node of life from simplicity to complexity. Before this, we liked simple pop music, and then we may like more profound and charming things, such as symphony? We despised everything before this, but maybe we would be more willing to experience some rituals later? Or maybe it has more manifestations. If you take the present as a node and just look at the present me, who am I
Recently, I occasionally read "Me and the Temple of Earth" aloud.
I have told you many times that I read it over and over in the morning reading class of junior high school and realized the beauty of words. I've probably read it over and over a hundred times over the past few years, but haven't read it in the last few years. I picked it up and read it again a few months ago, only to realize that the peace I had in the past had left me, and my mind often went to more complicated places instead of just focusing on the book.
I spent a lot of energy to read it completely. There is some weight in the article that I have never felt before. What exists in the middle is no longer the smoothness of my youth, but more cadence and rhythm. Exclamation after language. I don't think such complexity is a bad thing, the question is, what can I extract from it.
I often write in a small room at home recently. That room has a better view. It has a laptop and a portable keyboard with a green switch. It’s small and can’t do other things. Sitting by the window and reading, sometimes reading. Life has not been completely on track. The physical examination after the new year is a wake-up call for my body. I went to the gym to apply for a card. After a month of exercise, my state has improved, but I still can't match the rhythm of writing. Recently, I have occasional insomnia.
I sometimes write the beginnings of some other books, some of them stay, and some are overturned after they are written. Occasionally, I will chat with my friends about writing in the group, and talk about the structure of the later period of the son-in-law. The family occasionally wanted to urge us to have children, but they didn't say in front of me that I hate children - after all, my brother is ten years younger than me, and I've had enough of his rebellious period.
Life often enters the next stage when you are not ready. When I was in my teens, I longed for literature, but my brother fell ill and suddenly couldn’t study, so I had to enter the society and make money in the dark. After working hard for a few years, I suddenly turned 30, so I fell in love, got married, and started to get used to it after marriage. I actually wanted to rest for a few years—I didn’t have the confidence to raise and teach a child yet, but we didn’t have much time either.
Maybe in the second half of this year, maybe next year, we have to have a child. I actually know in my heart that we can never be ready for something like life, and even one day, it will come to an end unknowingly.
I wrote Invisible Killing when I was twenty-four.
A few days ago, Rosenda sent me a message saying, "Thank you for making Kaoru's Duzi bigger, and you clearly put Dongfang Wan in bed." Although of course there are many problems, there are "great things" among them. When I was in high school, I read almost all the bookstores next to the school, and tried to figure out the text and structure of "Fengzi Story" over and over again. When I wrote "Invisible Kill", I also figured out the text of "Fengzi", "Ali" and other books. Way, how could I at the time have thought that one day Rosen would finish reading this book
Time is the most ruthless, but there are also many precious and warm things left in time. I think that to this day, whether it is Zeng Xiaolang at the age of fourteen, or Zeng Xiaolang at the age of twenty-four, it should not be regarded as a failure. I am very grateful for your hard work. Although I am still unable to prepare for this world today, I at least know how to deal with it.
We will stay at this node for a moment, and time will push us forward mercilessly. I often regret the past and fear the future.
—I occasionally see the words "don't read the past, don't be afraid of the future" in some chicken soups. It's really nonsense. It is because the past has wonderful things that we regret it, and it is because we value the future that we are afraid. will hold on to the present. If we are not afraid, how sloppy our life should be.
This is what I can see this year, and it may be many years before we can come to a conclusion about that complex world. I hope that at that time, we can still cherish each other and say goodbye.
There may be an update in the evening, or there may not be, but this year's essay, let's stop here - Zhong Xiaolang urged me to have dinner.
Sincerely.
salute.
Angry Bananas - on May 1, 2019.