○ Geng Ming
We live only once on earth, and the houses we live in and the people we have interacted with will eventually become the ruins of a person with the death of the flesh.
In the past few years, I have always felt panic when I am idle, as if death will take me back to the place of birth at any time.
We come to this world from a place where there is light between heaven and earth, and we will be carried away by the light one day in the future. From incarnation to death, in fact, the light on everyone's body has been quietly peeling off until it completely disappears.
The life of a person living is a process of chasing light, saving light, and leaking light.
If you look at the old people in the village, the light in their eyes gradually dimmed, so the older the people, the more they like to get up early, how good the morning light is.
Some people say that in the morning light, you can see not only your young self, but also your father and mother who have died many years ago.
Part of the light that leaked from me was buried in the courtyard of the old house, and some of it was scattered on the road I used to walk in the village.
Except for the name of the village, everything else has changed.
I found a highland overlooking the whole village, stood, imagined myself as a wizard with mana, and as soon as my eyes were closed, I was speeding through a time tunnel, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that I had become what I had been.
I was so surprised that I suddenly had this special feature, and even laughed. The birds in the distant trees also laughed, and then flew away.
As far as the eye can see, the whole village is circling along a dirt road, spiraling from the mound to the bottom of the ditch, and the villagers' adobe houses or caves are entangled on one side of the road, and on the other side are earthen cliffs that are several meters high.
At this moment, it is dinner time for each family, the cooking smoke is staggered, and the birds are lifting tired.
People who disappeared as they walked on the dirt road also came alive again. The first time I saw the road leading to the kiln by the ditch.
Grandfather and grandmother were more energetic than before. Grandfather Qing's habit of reading has not changed, herding cattle, reading, and talking so little, he still does not mention the secret history of the old mother who wandered here from Youfeng in Wugong County. My grandmother's day started with making breakfast.
The wind rested for a night, holding its breath, and spitting out the sorrow and anger of a lifetime into the fire under the pot. The flames danced in the hearth, the hard wood beeped, and the sun showed a shy face from the date tree in front of the door when the grandmother made the meal. She ate a bun, drank some boiling water, and carried a cage of clothes to the waterlogged pool.
Walking on the familiar dirt road, you will arrive at the doorstep of your home before you know it.
The black-headed gate, the earthen courtyard wall, the walnut tree that grew out of the hospital, everything has not changed.
But the door was locked, strange, am I in a dream, or in reality? I opened my throat and shouted, "Mother, I'm back!" Whoever was learning my voice not far away also shouted a voice. When I ran to the people around, the doors were locked. Where have the people in the village gone? Every yard is occupied by wild grass, the dogs are gone, the chickens are gone, the cows are gone, the pigs are gone. During the summer, the wheat milling field is overgrown with various wild grasses and wildflowers.
Since I couldn't get in, I simply went to the village to hang out. The common stone mill on the back of the cliff was still there, but I didn't see the black donkey that had circled blindfolded there. Bypassing the mill and heading east, there is a dirt road called a bridge in the village, and on both sides of the road is a deep ditch with a low wall on the side of the ditch.
This "bridge" is the only way to the brigade conference room and grandma's house. Standing at the edge of the ditch not far from home, I could see the small village called Nantouzi. When Grandpa (Grandpa) was alive, he often shouted at me on the other side of the ditch and walked across the dirt bridge on my back countless times.
He was a very attractive man, and he had heard the elderly people in the village talk about it many times.
"The old man is very old, he has seen the world in the north and south, he is very good at telling stories, he always smiles mysteriously after telling, and the people who listen do not speak, and the people who listen to it do not speak. I was not impressed by the mystery of the fearful master, but I still remembered his wine pot.
He drank almost every day, made one or two small dishes, and tasted slowly, leisurely, and I loved to listen to the intoxicating "Zi-" that came out of grandpa's mouth when he drank.
I had never seen him drunk, and unlike most people who drank, he drank with a bit of gentleman's grace.
As I spoke, I smelled the aroma of his old man's Xifeng wine, as well as the smell of phoenix cigarettes that had lingered in the depths of his sense of smell for many years, so I trotted along the tuqiao and jumped to the south head.
When I arrived at the entrance of the village, I was overwhelmed by a white fog that rose up in an instant, and I was extremely confused and desolate. I suddenly doubted my true existence.
Is the village fictional, or am I fictional? If the village hadn't flown away from the earth, what was going on with the sudden fog? If I am the one in the dream, whose dream is it? The more I think about it, the more I feel nothing, is it also a fog in this world that will eventually dissipate?!
Moving on, there is a collapsed kiln in front of me, and I have an impression of this family. The man fled from Henan, married a local daughter-in-law, had two daughters, I can't remember what year it was, anyway, the two women went out, the old two had a quarrel, the man was angry, and smashed his wife to death with a hammer. Since then, the kiln has been deserted. Whether the man went to jail or ran away, no one knows.
I remember very clearly that there was a persimmon tree in front of my grandfather's house, but after walking all over the south head, I couldn't find the black head door. I walked quickly to the edge of the ditch and shouted three times "Fear Grandpa" to the desert ditch in the same way that I shouted cliff dolls when I was a child. Each echo echoed, and when the third echo drifted into my ears, I suddenly felt a dizziness and then I didn't know anything.
I vividly recalled the events before I fainted, my head was still slightly painful, and the vague memory became clear little by little.
I traveled with my friend to the deserted old village, and on the way I came across a walnut tree. Q Jun saw a few walnuts hanging from the top of the tree, so he found a thick long wooden stick and beat it. First one fell, hiding in the grass, and several fell off the cliff. I leaned over the artemisia grass and looked for the mischievous little walnut. At this moment, there was a sudden dull noise overhead, and the pain of the cone heart instantly spread throughout the body, and then there was the later event, and there was the illusion of the old village in the coma.
The pain of the flesh is nothing, it will dissipate after a while, but the soul disease left by the death of the old village is like a ghost that haunts my heart that is always floating. I'm not old, only in my thirties, how did I start to get nostalgic?
It is reasonable to say that the disappearance of the old village and the loneliness of the village are natural products of urbanization, and there is no need to be excessively entangled and sentimental. But I can't control my emotions, I'm in the city, but I always think about my hometown. For me, the city is someone else's, it has nothing to do with me, at best I am just a passer-by, and many years later, I will still be buried in the land of the bones.
I even think to the extreme that the city is a myriad of tall buildings, loaded with countless groups of lunatics, doing stupid things that even they themselves cannot imagine. Am I crazy, or is the city crazy? Are there any sober dwellers in this world?
Image source: Network
This article is selected from the A07 edition of Culture and Art Newspaper on December 13, 2021
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