The perched tree

Behind the courtyard is a small hill with a lush forest and competing trees. It is always when the afterglow is slanting that the woods get busy. Sometimes, when I get excited and look through the telescope, these different types of trees are in their own shape, each in its own way, and the nesting birds come one after another. Another year in mid-spring, a mountain of vitality is baked up by different levels of color, different heights of swaying. Some trees are full of birds, making the branches move, some trees appear to be sparsely populated with birds, while others stand in silence, waiting for those who fly to roost.

Confucius said that birds of prey can choose the trees they roost in, but trees cannot choose birds of prey.

The relationship between the moving bird and the fixed tree, the choice and the chosen, is a question that has no bounds.

I attribute the commonality of southern cities to the abundance of trees. People who have mansions will make some space to plant a few trees. In the south, planting trees is considered a half-hearted act, planted, rain came, the land is moist, nutrient-rich, it does not take much time to green shade out. Every time I come back from the field, only three or five days, I feel that it is always the grass that changes, either the level of green has changed, or the density of green is greater, and the power of growth is always bursting upwards.

If you work in a university with a history of a hundred years, in addition to feeling the atmosphere of literature, the old woods, but also overflowing with the rhythm of simple and heavy, brilliant on the ziang should be so. If you study here for a few years, or study or train for a period of time, regardless of the length of time, you will be able to distinguish it from the space outside the university and feel the difference. Many years later, when I returned to the old campus, some of the trees had disappeared, and the new construction had caused them to disappear, and a certain atmosphere had ceased. The new campus is larger than the old one, but not deep and tasty. Time has just begun, especially for many trees - coming from elsewhere and entering the land of this unfamiliar space, not yet knowing whether it is appropriate or not, they can only wait. They adapt without moving, and then grow or die, and the glory of life can be seen in the branches. However, many people cannot wait for the old campus to grow up to be like that.

Whenever I go out, the locals often show me a few typical sights. If there is an old tree, there is definitely this show. Ancient trees are the flag of the village - a tree that has grown to such a large size, as old as its ancestors, can be admired without saying a word. The story around a tree has always been more, from which also added some of the understanding of future generations, with or without reason, told no one to refute, just listen to go. Most of the ancient trees, tree caves are particularly large, stored a village of secrets. Everyone also feels that the secrets stored in the tree cave, than rotting in their stomachs to clean much. Nowadays, the loneliness of the tree is like the loneliness of the village, there are no more secrets to store, people go to distant places, the secrets also took away, but some outsiders, because of an ancient tree, the name came from afar, expect to read its vicissitudes. Often after a close look, I will go farther, from a distance to see its full appearance - the southern charm is often due to the same as the ancient tree this bone abrupt, so that the charm does not fall into the vulgar frame. An ancient tree, no matter how it can not be flattered as "good-looking", but people still appreciate it at this time has suffered the destruction of the face - a person's spirit if this, there is no need to worry about the defeat of all things. Ancient trees generally contain a strange stubborn and proud hardness, it is often different from the soft green of the crown, like a Jiangnan scribe with clear eyebrows and fluttering clothes, but in fact there is the beauty of hidden needles.

People value a tree with age as much as they respect people. As far as I can remember, there is a 100-year-old man who is not demented and can still wield his brush across the paper, which is so surprising. The auction house even made a special note that it was not a blessing to be able to capture the ink of a centenarian and hang it in the hall. It was naturally recognized that all his contemporaries had gone before him, and even those of his later era had gone before him. What he said was accepted and no one disputed it, and his signature was often "Centenarian". He later talked to people most about health, which he was not really interested in, because his life was difficult, but there were too many people interested in this topic, and he could not resist asking questions, so he had to repeat himself.

This is the biggest difference between an old tree and an old man, the old tree is always silent, although it is much longer than the existence of any one person.

Tree to set off the strength and wisdom of people, "Water Margin" expressed such a layer of meaning. Before the hero came into the Hall of Justice, in the jianghu are some righteous acts or feats, as spread in the city. Lu Zhishen is a very prominent one, in addition to playing Zhen Guanxi, haunted Wutai Mountain, wild boar forest, but also to take a weeping willow to make sex: "walk to the tree, the straight jacket off, with the right hand down, the body inverted surrendered, but the left hand plucked the upper section, the waist only a while, the green poplar tree with the roots up." Lu Zhishen this move is of course to do to the gang of shrews to see, for this, to the good end of a tree to destroy. Later escort Lin Chong to Cangzhou, farewell in order to suppress Dong Chao, Xue Ba, still make sex on a tree: "swung up the Zen staff, the pine tree only a, hit the tree has two-inch deep marks, all together folded." What is wrong with the tree? One can only say that such a demeanor has a deep meaning, destroying one kind of life, thus warning another kind of life. In the face of a powerful force, a tree is not enough. Destroy a weeping willow, Lu Zhishen reckless image is set up. Next is the attack on Zhujiazhuang, the poplar tree becomes the carrier of wisdom: "But with the turn of the poplar tree, is the living road, no that tree when, are dead, such as other trees turn, is not a living road." If you can not decipher the subtleties of wisdom, you have to be trapped there. A tree has a smoke and fire of the ordinary phase, but people do not expect to be sent to the metaphysical meditation and practical ideas - if the old man did not break the mystery, no one would know the weight of a poplar.

People have always been good at using metaphors, introducing an object, expressing an idea, or symbolizing a style or realm. In the storage room of our memory, we all store a lot of tree names, along with their appearance, Ming people Jiang Yingke said: "Peach, plum, plum, apricot, look at its flowers will know its tree." In "The New Story of the World", Yu Zisong praised and the highest peak: "Sen Sen like a thousand zhang pine, although lei pile has a show, applied to the building, there is a building beam with." This is a metaphor for a person by a tree, which really says all about a person.

I have planted many trees in my backyard. Some of the trees are useful, longan, grapefruit, lemon have been really tasted. Some trees are useless, at least for me. I'm talking about Hainan Huanghuali - this is the folk name, botanists call "buckthorn". Really want to use it to make a decent artifact, not a hundred years free. Like silk that smooth day let people feel too fast, slipping past silent, but to wait a hundred years, and no way to wait. I planted this sea yellow is purely to see. The ancient scribes looked at the cypress with gnarled branches and often thought about it, so they injected the strange and desolate, the lofty and abrupt into the bottom of their pen. And this sea yellow is too young, branches and leaves up and down are elegant and handsome charm. After all, it is a valuable species, the branches are straight and clean, clear and not stagnant. The leaves open symmetrically along the branches left and right, like a large mimosa. When the wind comes, if you walk on water, ripples ripple. Some trees just want to make people have no way to wait and die with its heart. The so-called useless is this. Playing with things can be appropriate to the feelings of a person who happened to meet with a useless tree, plowed it out of the mountains, carried it home in a car and planted it. This is due to sensibility, everyone will have their own mood and aesthetic hometown, very real and very imaginary, very useful and very useless.

I think, for a person who simply wants to be a scribe, useless is a great use.

The change of a city, people usually are to the tall buildings pulling up the ground, the road is open to speak, ignoring in these hard and hard between the trees, they are mixed with the old and new, high and low, actively filling the desert in the vision. People usually don't have much attachment and expectation to a tree, taking it for granted as a being. A tree clearly has the power of immovable movement in its certainty and silence, but it is not easily perceived. In the quiet passage of time, from close to the ground to rise to the air, so that people from looking down and look up. The arrival of flying birds is a kind of modification, especially their gyrations down the light posture, so that the entire immobile mountains and forests elegant rhythm floating, Yi Xing Trent fly, one can not help but secretly say, this is a perfect match.