Author: Li Li
There is a poet named Dongyue, who graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 1993 and began to write poetry in 1992, and his poems have appeared in poetry journals and online magazines at home and abroad such as "Aoi", "Poetry Reference", "Poetry Monthly", "Poetry Tide", "New World" and so on. He is currently a colleague of the famous Chinese poetry magazine "Kui" poetry journal, and the author of the poetry collection "Smoke Scar", and now lives in Shandong. As a fellow Xi'an Jiaotong University, I have never met this poet who works as a judge, but by chance, I read one of his small poems "Li Xiaoyu", and since then, like pressing a smoke scar, I have left a small spiritual imprint.
"Li Xiaoyu" Dongyue
Learned Li Xiaoyu
Li Xiaoyu, who has a docile wife and a beautiful son
Li Xiaoyu, who was the chief of staff
Li Xiaoyu, who eats and mixes with the leader all day long
Li Xiaoyu, who is about to become a candidate for deanship
Colleagues envied the jealous Li Xiaoyu
Six Li Xiaoyu
A Li Xiaoyu
Sit across from me
Touched my cup:
"I have completely lost faith in life!"
This sudden visitor, like an uninvited guest
I'm not sure if he's Li Xiaoyu,
And which Li Xiaoyu is above,
Sitting across from me shattered my wine glass
It is only after drunkenness that a mature middle-aged man returns to his truest self and thoughts, dismantling one mask after another, a personality whose emotional indifference is suppressed by reason at work and life. It is no wonder that in China, wine has been given too much social significance, and has been used by many people as a "touchstone" for the depth of feelings, and thus has become something that "has to be drunk". Perhaps it is precisely because the various guards that lie across human relations in Chinese culture are too much and too deep, that it is particularly necessary to lift it through alcohol, a cup of belly, the original form is exposed, and the true disposition is seen after drinking. This "Li Xiaoyu", who seems so smooth and successful in the eyes of others and is successful in Vanity Fair, under the "Li Xiaoyu" of the six social personality masks, has stripped out a "Li Xiaoyu" who is so fragile and depressed -- a person who is middle-aged and is in the torrent of life, but he is physically and mentally exhausted, the dream in his heart has long been far away, and even shattered by reality, he no longer believes anything easily, completely loses confidence, and after the vitality gradually dries up, he falls into some kind of great nothingness. Such a "Li Xiaoyu" may live around each of us, but it takes a big drunk to expose his true face. As the maverick Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto said, "yourself" is something that cannot be seen, and when you hit something else and bounce back, you will understand "yourself." Maybe alcohol is such a strong, very grinding thing? After colliding with a glass of spirits that enters the throat, the people who are usually living in the mud know what "self" is, and the "self" rises to the surface in the depths of the chaos.
The poem digs deep into the human self, including those parts of humanity that are difficult to describe, those parts of the shadows. The complexity and subtlety of life is that you can never understand the turbulence of the inner glacier beneath a person's calm exterior. However, excessive self-restraint necessarily requires an outlet. Without swimming through the most secluded deep sea of human nature, how can you find the most frank truth about life? Pregnant women who could not bear the severe pain of Gong Kai's eight fingers fell tragically before giving birth; academic bureaucrats of colleges and universities who were proud of the spring breeze suddenly committed suicide on the tracks; the bride-to-be who was going to marry her boyfriend for many years the next day and had a big banquet, and she was afraid of marriage and running away that night; the usually gentle and virtuous wife suddenly vented her old grudges in a hysterical outburst, abandoned her husband and son and ran away from home... There are too many too many unexplained phenomena of life, and what kind of dark human truths and secrets lurk in their hearts? We don't know. They are people with stories, but we don't know those stories and can only guess in vain.
In this era, desire is stimulated by countless advertisements and media in various ways, but the "self" has never been encouraged. Perhaps our Chinese culture has never been a culture that encourages "self". We are a society that does not encourage the self, a culture of total repression and transfer rather than problem-solving orientation, bred by people who are either overly responsible or irresponsible. Why did the "self" surface in such a drastic way? Before it surfaced, what kind of compromise had it experienced, how it had been rewritten beyond recognition, and in the end it was still a hidden unwillingness, which last straw had burst out of incredible conflict and confrontation in an all-round way? How many people live according to custom, because this is the lifestyle that has been tested by generations of people with the lowest coefficient of friction. In this world, most of them are people who go with the flow, conform to the norm, follow the steps, give up questioning in life, and lose themselves. Because, to live so sober, what to do? In the past culture, we did not gain much from having our egos, on the contrary, we gained benefits from the culture of "Kong Rong Letting Pears", from the loss of self, other-centered performances, so we will all be ashamed of our desires, sin against our needs, we regard not solving problems as virtues, how many people on the earth have gone through their lives like this, and endured until they are old. But when one day, at a certain tipping point, when that violent "self" suddenly appears, why are all our settings destroyed?
Junichi Watanabe said that many people live a two-sided life. Some people's secret lives are more magnificent than novels. You can never understand the turbulence of an inner glacier beneath a person's calm exterior. Maybe everyone is like an abyss, but we have no way of knowing that we are unfathomable. Sometimes, the long-suppressed life force is aroused, but at the same time, there is unfathomable torture and pain. Compared with men, in fact, women are more likely to lose their personality, they are not lost in love and marriage, lost in the smile of children, or lost in the ubiquitous consumer culture shackles, willingly chasing the self-myth full of illusions - beautiful body (weight loss), good face (plastic surgery), excellent taste (purchase of famous brands), deep in it, suffering from loss, unable to extricate themselves. Our society is in transition, our desires are being unleashed, and of course, they are being over-stimulated. But the truly strong and powerful "self" has not yet developed because of a strong enough and warm touch.
If the appearance of the "self" usually needs to collide with a very strong and very grinding thing, then I think it is not necessarily necessary to help with spirits, climbing, diving, marathon, fighting, cycling, crossing the Gobi, doing various extreme sports, and when you go beyond the physical and psychological limits and reach a certain point, you will find that you have touched the real self. Say hello to that lonely self hidden deeply, your naked self! Everyone can return to ourselves, step by step, to a more independent and free state.
For me, there is no need for too much psychological construction, as long as I start to do things without distraction, the whole world's disturbance seems to be isolated, so I have become a quiet and carefree person, who likes to play with myself and myself for a while every day, at the beginning of heaven and earth, free.