The note under the wall

Some things that didn't seem too important at the time can be rooted in the memory for a long time. They have always been there to sleep peacefully, occasionally awake, open eyes to see you busy (promotion or disappear) and sleep again, many years they are so light as if not in. A thousand times the opportunity to miss, and finally see them again one day, see the time to many so-called life events to wear away, and they are firmly fixed there, heavy with the weight of the incomparable. For example, a photo of the old days, when shot without thinking, casually put where, for many years do not even remember it, but suddenly one day when sorting out the old things came across it, brushed off the dust, but will feel that it is your origin is also your escape; and many solemnly left a picture, but has forgotten where and for what.

In recent years I often think of a wall, broken bricks, the wind can blow off the fine soil between the brick joints. The wall was very long, at least in the eyes of a teenager, very long after turning a corner and turning into a narrower alley. The corner of the alley has a street light, and immediately ahead is a courtyard door where a friend of mine lived when I was a teenager. It is not important whether L and I will always be close friends, and whether we will get back together after a fight, but what is important is that we were inseparable at one time, and that a section of our lives was paved with this friendship. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you want to do. I was too ready to think about it, and I thought M was really pretty. "What for?" "The first thing you need to do is to get your father's money. The most important thing is that we are not suspicious of each other.

I once gave a cherished item to L. A comic book, or a toy of some kind, I can't remember. But one day we got into a fight, and I can't remember why we got into a fight, but what I don't forget is that after the fight, I went back to L to get the item back.

Honestly, I alone am afraid to ask for it, or can not afford to think about it. It was a few partners who were not very happy with L at that time, who pointed me out, encouraged me, and patted their chests saying they were willing to go with me to return it, and then if they hesitated, they became fools and fools. And I went. The sunset was shining brightly on the long, familiar wall, but in my memory, the street light at the corner of the alley was already dimly lit when I reached the gate of L's house. This can only be interpreted as a play of memory.

Standing in front of that gate, I was a little scared, and my partner beside me tried to mobilize and encourage me, reminding me that to turn back and retreat would be more despicable than even surrender. I couldn't shift the blame to others: why did I tell others about what I had given L after the fight with him? The pointing and the goading thus occurred. I went into the courtyard and called out to L. L came out, listened to me, looked at me blankly for a moment, and told me to wait outside the gate. l took the item out of the house behind his mother's back, handed it to me, and walked back inside without saying anything. The end is always very simple, click and it's all over.

I parted with a few of my friends who came with me under the street light at the corner of the alley and went home. They looked at the object in my hand, or at least said "why give it to him", the tone of voice and expression have lost the heat when they came, disappointment or even frustration is not expected due to the object.

The wall is long, long and desolate, and here again the memory fails me, as if the street lights were not yet on and the oncoming pedestrians were not visible. The evening breeze was so gentle that one could not complain, but the spirit seemed to be blown away by it, floating up in the dusk and disappearing into the wall. I picked up a branch and walked and scratched lightly on the wall, and the fine soil between the brick cracks dangled in a stream ...... clicked away, all rooted in memory to brew future problems.

That is probably my first impression of the wall.

Along with that, some other walls also woke up from their sleep.

A few years ago, one evening on a "walk", I swung my wheelchair into a hutong where I used to play in my childhood. In fact, I have always been not far from them, repeatedly walking around them, in too much of a hurry to go in and visit.

I remember there was a short wall of red brick with sharp broken glass stuck in it, and a group of us eight and nine year olds always went to disturb the peace of the family in the wall, climbing a small tree, and picking at the edge of the wall to beg people to throw our soccer balls out. The wall should be said to be very hidden, in a dead-end alley, but unfortunately the width of the alley is very suitable for our goal. The open space outside the alley was our field, and the ball was inevitably kicked towards the goal, and if the kick went wide, nine times out of ten it would land in that wall. Inside the wall was a good family, and the flying object was at most held down for ten minutes after we complained. But once the soccer ball was thrown into the pot of noodles inside the wall exactly like a basketball, and when a group of children climbed a small tree to see it again, the snow-white noodles rolled steaming in the soot. It was the so-called "three years of hardship" and the soccer ball was a small thing, so we took advantage of the twilight and ran away. A few days later, we were led by our parents to close the "field" in exchange for the soccer ball.

The alleys are still the same, or maybe they're even older. Maybe it was the National Day, when flags were placed on all the doors. Not much has changed, except that the "pitch" has been crushed under a restaurant and a public toilet. The "goal" was facing the back wall of the restaurant, so the kind family must have been much safer.

I was walking around in my wheelchair, spending the night of the National Day at leisure. Suddenly another greenish-gray wall struck my heart, and I knew that further ahead was my kindergarten. The greenish-gray wall was tall, and there were taller trees inside. There was a bird's nest at the top of the tree, but now it was gone. Once I saw the high wall, my hope of going back home was extinguished. The greenish-gray color was almost a harsh signal that secreted the terror of childhood.

This "conditioned reflex" was established in the late afternoon of a summer day, so I remember it clearly because the cicadas were singing most loudly at that time. That afternoon, my mother had to go on a long trip to a faraway place. My highest hope was that she would not go on the trip, and my lowest hope was that I could stay home from kindergarten and not leave my grandmother. But both proposals were rejected, and I cried and argued to no avail. Now I think that my mother wanted to give me a strict discipline before the trip. When I kept crying, my mother had no choice but to take me out for a walk. "I'm not going to kindergarten!" I reaffirmed my position on the way out the door. My mother led me through the streets, buying me some goodies along the way. The situation was suspicious, but after walking for so long and not looking like the way to kindergarten, I felt slightly relieved to hold my mother's long skirt. But! The good food had just tasted in my mouth, and then I came to the high green and gray wall, and realized that all the paths lead to each other. Although I cried out immediately, it was no longer helpful. But as soon as I entered the threshold of the kindergarten, I stopped crying on my own, knowing that I had nothing to rely on, and that being a good boy was the only way to be saved. The kindergarten wall is a necessary "disaster", or is it just because this child is naturally timid and sad.

Three years ago I moved home, across the window is a kindergarten, often in the early morning lazy sleep will hear the children into the park before hissing. I went to the gate of the garden to see the children who resisted entering the garden as if they would rather die than give in, but as soon as they fell into the garden wall, they immediately swallowed their cries, their fears turned into grievances, and their teary eyes looked at the sky, clinging to their expectations of the evening sun. I don't think anyone understands them better than I do, but it's not a bad thing to feel a little bit about the wall early on.

I remember most of all my mother disappearing into that high green and gray wall. She went around the wall and up the long way, of course, but my impression is that she went into the wall. There was no door, but my mother went in, and the cicadas were loud in those tall trees, and my mother's figure was small under those tall trees, which in my fear was far away.

Sitting at the window, I look at the high and low walls that stand near and far like crags. I have a lot of time to look at them now. Where there are people, there must be walls. We are all in the walls. Not many things can be done in broad daylight. The regular tall buildings are reminiscent of library catalog cabinets, where only God can go and pull open every little drawer, consult the secret histories of a billion minds, and see the dreams that have broken through the walls hovering in their enclosures. And then there's Death, who comes on schedule, reaches in and draws lots to take away a few.

We sometimes travel a long way - by car, by train, by airplane - just to find a place where the wall is not visible: the wilderness, the sea, the forest or even the desert. But it may not be possible to escape. The wall is permanently in your heart, building fear and tugging at your thoughts. A "flyer", from the wall, and back to the wall. When you go a long way, Robinson is coming back a long way.

The reason for meaning may well be meaning itself. Why should there be meaning? Why should there be life? Why should there be existence? Why should there be a being? The cause of weight is gravity, and the cause of gravity? Again, it's weight. My physics students told me: never separate motion from energy, and from space-time. I was then enlightened: never divide human beings from meaning either. It is not that people have desires, but that people are desires. This desire is energy, and energy is movement, and movement is going to the front or the future. What and why are the front and the future? The question that must come gives birth to meaning, and God creates man on the sixth day. God is more powerful than Fest, and no magic or spell can remove the achievement of this day. In all the time after this day, you can escape from a certain meaning, but not from the meaning, just as you can escape from a journey but not from the journey of life.

You are either this kind of meaning or that kind of meaning. If you don't have any meaning, you fall into what Kundera called "the unbearable lightness of life". What are you? What is life? So light that you can't weigh a single thing and you will disappear. I asked L for that thing back, and the fear I felt on the way back was inexplicable because I was young, but when I think about it now, it was clearly for the word "light": the treasure was disposed of as garbage in the blink of an eye, a life so light that it was scattered, gone, what I thought it was turned out to be nothing, easy, simple, ashes. The lightness of a life threatens the full weight of life, and fear penetrates into the soul: Is this what will happen to all the paragraphs of life? The fundamental fear of man lies in this word "light", such as discrimination and indifference, such as ridicule, such as the canceled stocks in the hands of the poor, such as lost love and death. Lightness is the most frightening.

To demand meaning is to demand the weight of life. All kinds of weight. All kinds of weights are truly measured at the moment of hitting the wall. But many weights that are still light on the scales of death, scales balanced on absurd quotients. Thus there has to be a weight that you are willing to live for and die for, to be tired of, to exhaust your life under its gravitational pull. It is not a strong word of unrepentance, but a sober obedience. Sacredness is God's measurement of the heart and soul, the weight of the heart and soul being confirmed. There is a ritual in the light of death, the ash and the earth are good, watching the past days evaporate gently, but one can hear that something sunken is still there. Not expecting to still be in reality, just hoping to still be in a beautiful position. I'm not sure if my friendship with L can still have weight in a beautiful place?

Do not extinguish the desire to break through the wall, or the snoring will rise again.

But accept the wall.

To escape from the wall, I have walked under a wall. There was an old abandoned garden near my house, the wall was crumbling but still strong, and I walked to it in my wheelchair during those years when I was lost in my soul. There was no one around, the silence was long, and the silence between me and the silent wall swelled and bloomed with wildflowers, swelled and bloomed with grievances. I hit the wall with my fist, cut it with stones, shed tears and cursed at it, but it gently dropped a bit of dust and did nothing. The sky does not change, and the road does not change. The old cypress tree stretched its branches and leaves for a thousand years, the clouds walked in the sky, the birds flew in the clouds, the wind stepped on the grass, and the weeds took root from generation to generation. I turned to pray for the wall, hands together, creating a prayer or prophecy, chanting out loud, begging it to give me death, either to give me back the legs I can walk ...... open my eyes, the great wall still stands great, and under the wall sits a man who is not overlooked by the gods. Empty sunset walk to the garden, if drowsy sleep, dreams often fall into a dry well, the well wall is high and slippery, shouting in the well buzzing collision only, no one can hear, the well on the wind is also still silent injustice. Shouting awake, look or alive, shouting did not startle anyone, and can not startle anything, the wall has green moist and dry moss, there are spiders fine web, dead in the halfway snail trailing a line of scaly footprints behind, there is no name teenager there over and over again to write down 3.1415926 ......

Under this wall, some winter night, I have seen an old man. There is always some trouble between memory and impression: memory says it may not be under this wall, but impression always moves the old man in memory, really under this wall. After the snow, the moonlight is hazy, and the wheels squeaking and rolling on the snowy road is the only sound in the garden. So walking, I heard a long deep xiao sound from afar, in the old cypress tree shaking down the snow mist seems to be there, not yet able to identify the tune has felt its long deep sound just touch my heart. The side ears and breath, heard the "Su Wu shepherd sheep". The end of the song, the heart is some pathos, suddenly felt a movement in the shadow of the wall, only to find an old man sitting cross-legged on the stone bench, black clothes and white hair, some mystery. The snow and moonlight, quiet as well as extraordinary. The bamboo xiao sounded again, or the chant of exile, mourning but not death. It turned out that the sound of the xiao did not come from far away, but was on the lips of the old man. Maybe it's not the strength, maybe it's the ancient song all the way to the present time, the xiao sound if intermittent and not high, the old man trembling sound of exhalation can be heard. A song and the end of the old man to the xiao pipe lightly across the legs, hands spread on the knees, it is not clear whether he closed his eyes. I was amazed and grateful, listening again and again to the sound of the xiao and the empty silence at the end of the xiao, thinking it was a metaphor or God leading.

The sound of the xiao and the old man that night have been on my mind for years, but I can't guess where their guidance leads. Just keeping me alive didn't seem to require such mystery. It wasn't until I spoke to the wall again one day that I realized that the sound of the xiao that night was singing "Acceptance", accepting the limits of the Divine Order. (Is this what Dharma's facing the wall is like?) Acceptance of fragmentation. Accept the suffering. Accept the existence of the wall. Weeping and shouting are to escape from it, anger and cursing are to escape from it, compliments and prostrations are still to escape from it. I often go to talk to the wall, yes, speak out, and when I think I cannot escape it, I speak out to rebuke, but also to ask and negotiate, so to speak, both soft and hard. But to no avail, the negotiation is bound to break down, and it will not agree to any of my conditions. The wall, which wants you to accept it, is just one meaning repeatedly affirmed, without being subservient, until you hear it. Until you do not ask it more, but listen to it ask you more, that conversation will not be called a conversation.

I've been writing, but I've always felt that it doesn't amount to anything, whether it's a work or a writer or an ism. Using a pen and using a computer are both conversations to the wall, something as necessary as food, clothing and shelter. When I finally moved far away from the old garden, I couldn't just go there, and I expected to miss it, but what I missed most was the wall that stood on all sides. But no matter when or where, when I close my eyes, I instantly go to the wall. Between the silent wall and the silent me, the wildflowers swell with buds, the endless road stretches between the endless walls, and there are many things to talk to it slowly, and to write it down as I go along.