Hello everyone, my name is Zeng Xiaolang.
Last night's writing didn't produce any results, so I fell asleep around three o'clock. This morning, I got up around eleven o'clock. Our dog, Xiong Xiaolang, had been waiting for a long time. He was squeaking in his cage. My wife fed him breakfast. After washing up and drinking a glass of water, I took him downstairs for a walk.
Xiong Xiaolang was a border collie. It was one of the smartest and most athletic dogs. It was so cute that I couldn't kill it with my own hands. If I couldn't bring it down to play for half an hour or an hour every day, it would definitely be depressed at home. It would probably take the form of squeaking on the ground like a mouse. When it saw me or my wife, it would look like an abused child. It would also run to the kitchen or under the table to pee when we weren't paying attention.
As mentioned above, I couldn't kill him myself. Plus, the sun was shining, so I took him for a run in the park.
The park in the neighborhood had just been built. It covered a large area and there were few pedestrians. A few years ago, in my birthday essay, I had described the beautiful toilet by the lake. At night, it looked like a villa with colorful lights. The neighborhood was next to the toilet, separated by a large forest.
In the second half of last year, a five-story building was built next to the neighborhood. It was said to be the Party School. Trails were built in the woods and flower beds were separated. Most of the tombs that were previously built in the woods were moved away. This spring, most of the trails in the woods were covered with grass and unknown plants were planted in the flower beds. Because of this, the park that was originally built along the lake had almost doubled in size. A gazebo was built at the top of the woodland that was rarely visited before. If one went to the gazebo and looked down at the lake, they would see the back of the toilet. A small path snaked down and connected with the lakeside trail.
Most of the places that were previously unvisited were now filled with traces of people. In the morning, there were often no pedestrians. I listened to music and let the dog run in this area for a while. When I saw people coming from afar, I tied the leash again. The trees in the park were all old trees that used to be in the forest. They were lush, and the sun shone down from above.
During the winter, a lot of branches fell to the ground. I found a few of suitable thickness and threw them with the dog to play with — — Border Collie dogs are patrol dogs. If you throw something out, it will immediately run over and pick it up. If you throw it again, it will continue to pick it up. Soon, it will be tired like a bellows, and I can save a lot of trouble. Now that the branches have decayed, the dog has developed the habit of looking for sticks in the grass every time he goes to the park. Perhaps this can be considered as a happy past.
I walked Xiong Xiaolang until around 12: 00 PM. When I brought him home, my brother called me. "When are you coming over for dinner?" I told him, "I'll be there soon." Then, I went home and called my wife, Zhong Xiaolang. We rode our motorcycle to our parents' place. Although Xiong Xiaolang was exhausted, he still wanted to follow us after drinking some water. We didn't take him with us, so he stood in the living room with resentful eyes. After we closed the door, we could hear him squeaking in protest.
I wanted to go to my parents' place for dinner because it was my birthday. When I was eating, I talked to my brother about "Women's Federation 4". We agreed that the best fighting scene in a superhero movie was still Man of Steel. "Women's Federation 4" was not bad, but the fighting scenes were childish. I kept thinking about what it would be like if America or China focused fire on them. My brother brought up the scene in Iron Man 1 when Tony was selling arms. A split missile could wash a few mountains, but in this movie, it became a melee fight … My illiterate dad came over and said that the movie tickets were too expensive, and even CCTV had stopped it. Hahahaha! Grandma said, "Zhong Xiaolang, did you lose weight?" Zhong Xiaolang felt that he had put on weight recently. He was a little conflicted when he heard that. "I'm wearing less clothes."
We went out after lunch. The sun was shining brightly at noon, and I rode my electric motorcycle along the main road. There wasn't much to do in a small place like Wang City. We wanted to run all the way to Jinggang. However, after more than ten kilometers, we reached an old road that hadn't been maintained for a long time. The road was bumpy, and we saw many small cars passing by. I guessed they were people who had nothing better to do.
We didn't want to go there. We turned the motorcycle around and said, "We're going home. Zhong Xiaolang, don't cry."
Zhong Xiaolang whimpered a few times at the back.
When we got home, Zhong Xiaolang went to the bathtub to take a bath and take a nap. I looked at the computer for a while and decided to take a nap. Zhong Xiaolang had just finished his bath. He recommended her bathwater to me. I went to the bathtub and lay there for a while. I was playing songs on my phone. The first song was Na Ying's' Love and Hate Early '. It sounded very romantic. Na Ying sang, 'The glass window is like an old movie. Every frame is a faded version of you.' The afternoon sun shone through the window and on the water in the bathtub. Every frame was warm, clear, and clear, just like a movie. Listening to the song, I almost dozed off. The second song was He Tu's' Begonia Wine Full '. She sounded lazy. After that, the song became the prelude to Hua Yuchen's' I Don't Care '. It scared me to death.
I turned off the music, changed into my pajamas, and went to bed. When I got up, it was around three in the morning. I made some coffee and went to the computer to write an essay.
Let's talk about an essay.
A few years ago, someone had said that I might have an INTP personality. I had always scoffed at such generalizations. I thought that it was as stupid as' Taurus people have XX personalities. 'However, to distinguish whether they were praising me or scolding me, I searched for the definition of this personality.
Some of the descriptions made me think. For example, the meaning of talking and writing to this personality. People with an INTP personality often think through talking. 'People with this personality like to share their immature ideas in debates with themselves. When they are extremely excited, their words will become incoherent. This is because they will try to explain the chain of logical conclusions, and this will make them come up with new ideas.'
It was the same for me. The process of talking and writing was more of an attempt to generalize. In this attempt, I often saw my own problems. If life was a mathematical problem of 'two times three times three', when I put my thinking into words, the problem would be simplified to 'six times three'. However, without words, the calculation would be difficult to simplify.
In this way, in the past few years, everyone could see that I was constantly making generalizations about myself and making conclusions. Rather than saying that I was sharing this with everyone, it was more like I needed this kind of behavior to confirm my place in this world. What am I, where did I come from, and where am I going?
Perhaps it's because of this habit that I can write. It's precisely because I keep looking back, recalling my feelings when I was a teenager, recalling my feelings when I was twenty years old, recalling my feelings when I was twenty-five years old … That's why I can write about similar characters in the book. I might write about different life perspectives and aesthetic levels.
But even so, even if I kept recalling and reflecting, my understanding of the past might still be changing little by little. Which of my memories of the past were real, and which of them were too beautified, or too ugly in my daily recollections? Today, the scale of time may have become a little blurred in my memory.
When I was thirty, I said that the so-called thirty-year-old self was probably something that had merged with the twenty-year-old self and the ten-year-old self. Before that, it wasn't like that. The difference between the ten-year-old self and the twenty-year-old self was so clear, and when I was thirty, both of them were swallowed up. But now, at the age of thirty-five, I could feel that they were all mixed together on a fine scale. It was because they were mixed so deeply that I could no longer distinguish which items belonged to which year.
Memories. Rather than calling them my memories of the past, it would be more accurate to call them "the memories of the thirty-five-year-old me." Since we were already so far away from the past, the power of time and the mutation of our personalities combined with our impersonal memories made memories that were only responsible for the present. 'My past is like this' had become 'I think my past is like this'.
When I realized this, I was walking Little Bear in the park. The grass in early spring was still emitting cold air. A father came down the steps with his child. I put the dog on a leash and sat on the steps to watch them go. The sun was shining, which was rare for this spring. The child was babbling, and the grass in the park was trying hard to take root. My back was aching from the exercise in the gym the day before.
A medical examination after the New Year made me really think about the problem of death. When I looked at the child and the dog, I thought of the scene when I was about the same age as him: the passing of time.
There are indeed some points in life where you suddenly see the traces of time more clearly. Some people are keenly aware of this, while others are slower. Generally speaking, slower people are happier.
In my past essays, I would often recall some of the problems I encountered in the past, or even — perhaps it could be described as some experiences of suffering. But objectively speaking, I think I have actually obtained a lot of things in the past few decades. I was able to make a living with my interests. After I turned thirty, my path was very smooth. Although I didn't earn much, I didn't have to worry too much about money. I could even reject some businesses that offered me huge sums of money to write. I entered the Writers' Association, and even the National Writers' Association. I won awards and received platinum contracts. I even won the monthly votes for 31 essays. When I was young, all of this was unimaginable.
I became interested in writing when I was in the fourth grade of primary school. Junior high was in the same school as primary school. When I was in high school, I went to Yongzhou Second High, which was a key city school. One of the things that attracted me was that there was a literature club in the school, called "Chuhang Literature Club". I yearned for literature and looked up to it. I went to a relatively normal school in primary and middle school, so I had never seen something as high-end as a literature club. I only heard of the term after I graduated from middle school. I felt like I was a big step closer to literature.
After I entered school, I applied to join the literature club. Of course, that was all. My writing skills were too bad, so I did not participate in any activities for the next three years. Maybe I submitted an essay in an essay competition, but there was no response after that. Of course, I was not enlightened at that time, so it was very normal and natural. But I still clearly remember my longing for literature at that time.
There is one thing that I still remember vividly. Not long after we were divided into classes, the girl sitting next to me was said to have published an article before. When we were chatting, I remembered something I read during the summer vacation. It introduced a composition question: Throw a piece of paper into a glass of water, and then write a composition. I felt that this question was really exquisite, so I shared it with her. She laughed, "Oh, it's peering into a man from a cup." I did not know what it was at that time, so I felt a little embarrassed showing off my slight skill in front of an expert.
I would always think about it later and find it interesting. At that time, I lived in a small circle in a small city. I did not have access to the internet, so I knew very little about the outside world. The news of Han Han winning the first prize for a new concept essay through "Peering into a Man from a Cup" had already spread far and wide. But even as a self-proclaimed literature lover, I still had no idea about it. I was excited because I saw an exquisite question … I often think back and sigh: The world I saw at that time was really perfect.
Everything that I could see was full of novelty, full of possibility. Every day I saw something new. Every time I added to my knowledge, I really gained something. It was like picking up wonderful stones on a wonderful beach. The world was wonderful, though it was poor in matter. Even if I did not have any literary talent, I loved writing. Maybe I would not be able to publish anything in this lifetime, but literature would bring me to a magical place. There was no doubt about that.
"Hey, 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 child that he would rely on writing to make a living in the future, and that he would even join the National Writers' Association, how happy would he be? After so many years, even if my memory is blurred, I can still be sure that I did not think of this even once when I was a student. Back then, it was not popular for us to fantasize. On the other hand, I was very sure that I did not have any talent in literature.
After I was twenty, I gradually mastered the knack of writing. Then, I gradually accumulated doubts. When I was thirty, I told people, "I want to see what the current peak of China's literature is like." The direction of literature was fragmented. There was no clear goal. It was filled with all kinds of confusion and sighs.
The world, life, is such a magical thing. When you have nothing, you truly have perfection. Once one day, you touch the boundary of perfection, all you have is a broken sandcastle on the beach. You can make up for the shortcomings, but in the end, it will disappear before the waves.
Of course, sometimes, I might also have to thank its confusion and failure. The failure of literature might mean that there is a slight possibility of perfection in other places. Because of this possibility, we still have the motivation to move forward. The most frightening thing is the complete failure and the perfect success. If that day really comes, we will all lose our meaning. And in the imperfect world, there is only room for us to exist.
These things are difficult to understand. For some people, it might be like moaning without a disease.
I know that many readers may hope to feel the motivation in my essays. I have considered whether or not to write these things down. But I think, this is my state at the age of thirty-five. Each of us, one day, may touch a certain boundary. You will see the trajectory of your future, and it will not be far from the mark. Sometimes, you will even feel that life is boring, and you can only find joy in life from some more complicated details.
So, I still want to describe these things as they are. I think, this might be the real point of life from simplicity to complexity. Before this, we liked simple pop music. Later, we might like something more profound and charming. Like symphony? Before this, we despise everything. Later, we might be more willing to experience some sense of ritual? Or maybe there are more manifestations of it. If I take the present as the node and only look at me now, who am I?
Recently, I have occasionally read "Temple of Earth and I".
I have told everyone many times that I read it over and over again in my morning reading class in junior high school and realized the beauty of words. In the past few years, I have read it over and over again. But in recent years, I have not read it again. A few months ago, I picked it up and read it again. Only then did I realize that the peace of the past has left me. My thoughts often run to more complicated places and are not just focused on the book.
It took me a great deal of effort to finish reading it in its entirety. There was a weight in the essay that I had never felt before. It was no longer as smooth and unobstructed as it was in my youth. Instead, it was more of a cadence and a sigh behind the words. I think this kind of complexity is not a bad thing. The problem is, I can extract something from it.
Recently, I often write in the small room at home. The room has a better view. There is a laptop and a portable keyboard. They are both too small for other things. After Zhong Xiaolang goes to the flower shop, I will also sit in front of the window and read. Sometimes, I will read. Life is not completely on the right track. The physical examination after the New Year gave my body a wake-up call. I went to the gym. After a month of exercise, my condition gradually improved. But I still can't coordinate well with the rhythm of writing. Recently, I occasionally have insomnia.
Sometimes, I will write the beginnings of other books. Some will stay, and some will be discarded after I finish writing. Occasionally, I will chat with my friends in the group about writing and the structure of the later stages of the son-in-law. Occasionally, my family wants to urge us to have children. But they do not say it in front of me. I hate children. After all, my brother is ten years younger than me. I have already had enough of his rebellious behavior.
Life often enters the next stage when you are not ready. When I was in my teens, I looked forward to literature. However, my brother fell ill and suddenly could not study. I had to enter society and secretly make money. After a few years of hard work, I suddenly approached thirty. I fell in love and got married. After getting married, I began to break in. I actually want to rest for a few years. I still do not have the confidence to raise and teach a child. However, we do not have much time.
Maybe in the second half of this year, maybe next year, we will have to have a child. In fact, I know in my heart that this kind of thing, we can never be ready. Even one day, it will unknowingly come to an end.
I finished writing "Incognito" when I was twenty-four years old.
A few days ago, Mr. Lawson sent me a message saying, "Thank you for making Fumigated Juniper big and clearly letting Dongfang Wan sleep with you." Although there are many problems, there are "great things." When I was in high school, I read almost all the bookstores near the school. I tried to figure out the text and structure of "Charm Monogatari" over and over again. When I wrote "Incognito", I also tried to figure out the writing style of "Charm", "Ali", and other books. At that time, how could I have thought that one day, Lawson would finish reading this book?
Time is the most ruthless, but in time, there will also be many precious and warm things left behind. I think, coming to this day, whether it is the fourteen-year-old Ceng Xiaolang or the twenty-four-year-old Ceng Xiaolang, it should not be considered a failure. I am very grateful for your hard work. Although I am still not ready to face this world today, I at least know how to deal with it.
We will stay at this node for a moment. Time will relentlessly push us forward. I often regret the past and fear the future.
— — I occasionally see the words "Don't think about the past, don't fear the future" in some chicken soup. It is really nonsense. It is because there are excellent things in the past that we will feel regret. It is because we value the future that we will fear and firmly grasp the present. If we really don't think about the past and don't fear the future, how careless our life will be.
This is what I can see this year. Regarding that complicated world, it may take many years before we can make a conclusion. I hope that at that time, we can still say goodbye to each other.
There may be updates in the evening, or there may not be, but this year's essay will end here — — Zhong Xiaolang urged me to eat dinner.
Sincerely.
Salute.
Angry Banana — — May 1, 2019.
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