One
Emperor's Cave is not a fictional fictional place name, but a real cave located on the Changjiang River in Haihai, a place where kapok blooms. The entrance to the cave is too inconspicuous, striding up from the bottom of the mountain, but a hundred meters, I saw a small gap, and everywhere on the ground you can see the mani pile built by the sincere people, large and small, arranged in large and small, just thinking that this emperor cave has its name in vain, using big words, but Er. After walking up a few steps, I saw the real cave entrance, good fellow, it was indeed a big hole, but the cave was not such a rare thing, just a big hole, why should it be called a nine-five honor? When the cave entrance was ascended, the ghost wind blew from the cave, the eyes adapted to the changes in light and shade, and the width of the cave gradually appeared, which made a sound of admiration: It is really a big hole!
Just walking into the Emperor's Cave, it is as if I have strayed into Miyazaki's anime, and under my feet is an empty riverbed, while there is an invisible river and the sea surging on the top, and the water current stirs the mud of the stone before it solidifies into another riverbed that covers the top upside down. Man walks in the middle of two riverbeds, invisible rivers flow in the middle, and a million years of time solidify and melt in the river like ice cubes. "Who the hell is going to be here?" What kind of animals walk here? Are there any dinosaurs hatching eggs here? Is there a carp here to make a peng? "Childish human beings can probably only give birth to such doubts, and such doubts are fleeting when they move forward, because this place, in such a deep place on the gentle slope, no one can come too much, there can be a historical drama, there can be a martial arts film, there can be Tianshan Tong Yao and the Three-Body Wisdom Son, no matter how magical the hypothesis, can be established, the Emperor Cave is swallowed together, leaving no trace. The dynasty as time seems so ridiculous, and the emperor as the symbol of the dynasty is just an adjective used to describe the cave, which is broad, open, and exists as an extreme space.
Such a cave, let the imagination appear pale background, only the cold touch of the steel ladder at the bottom of the cave, awakens the reverie of a traveler - yes, here is still the human world, modern humans have built iron ladders here, so that such an ending is not an illusion. The iron ladder went up, there was no hole in the sky, I thought it was another world, but I was disappointed, it was a mountain road, so that you can see the grass and trees under the mountain, the view is wide, but it is inevitable to fall into the cliché. At the moment of disappointment, the tourists who went down the mountain told him: There is a cave in front!
Of course, you must not look at it. Sure enough, the peak loop turned, and the winding path was quiet, and the other cave entrance lay on the side, as if the cave that had just passed was half of the yin and yang fish, and the ice and snow were lying on the other part of it, and the cave swirled around a little, just in line with the hole in front. If the first half of the cave is deep, then the second half is broad, simply deep in the essence of a good novel: the entrance is small and there is no hole, and the loop is gentle but not losing its charm.
The back hole is so high that it is suspicious that it is a gap left by a starship after it disappears. Someone probably had the same suspicion as me, climbing up the rock wall, and between the rock walls were the stars, which were the lights illuminated by the explorers. Whether such a cave has other exits, and will there be a unique way out.
But at this point, the novelist should have stopped. The novelist only raises the problem, not is responsible for solving the problem, and the person who solves the problem needs to walk by candle at night, the road is blue, trembling like a thin ice, and the novelist only needs to go here, and it is time to return. The rest of the part is not his strength, and if you take a step further, the whole story will be too real, so the part that remains is the afterglow.
Two
The cave is undoubtedly a huge metaphor.
When I was a student, I read "The Tale of Peach Blossom Origin", and of course I was fascinated by the fantastic ideas in it, but after repeated recitation, the brilliant and brilliant people could not let go, it was actually "the distance of the forgotten road in the edge of the river" and "the mountain has a small mouth as if there were light", the former is the beginning of the real adventure process, the latter is the beginning of the miracle of the gods, which should be the closest to what Calvino said "zero time", so two moments, full of infinite possibilities, saving all of Tao Yuanming's imagination, arrows on the string, lions in the air, No one knows that in the end, the two worlds of reality and alienity are actually completed by a cave. This can't help but be reminiscent of the "wormhole" as a space-time connection, a scientific hypothesis that has not yet been verified by humans, through the "wormhole", time and space will be folded, the dimensions will be connected, and the original unimaginable two points can be crossed in an instant. The dazzling text of "Peach Blossom Origin" is actually connected by a cave, if such a cave is demolished, the Wuling fisherman will be stuck and will not know where to get lost.
The cave is both a place of departure and a boundless dilemma. Brave as Sun Wukong, the monkey that jumped out of the stone, made a fortune in the water curtain cave, went to the three-star cave of the oblique moon for further study, trapped in the stone cave under the Five Finger Mountain, and dealt with various bottomless pan silk caves on the long way to learn the passage. The cave created the Great Sage of Qi Tian, and also trapped this monkey who did not know the height of the sky. Even thousands of miles away, Sun Wukong often misses his water curtain cave, just like the Count of Monte Cristo relies on the wealth in the island cave to make a fortune to take revenge, and then he never forgets the cave, and even builds the cave on Monte Cristo Island into a cave house, the island deep cave becomes the way to escape, unwilling to be the emperor of the world, preferring to be in harmony with the heavens, becoming the overlord of the cave, which is the common pursuit of Sun Wukong and the Count of Monte Cristo.
Of course, there are also people who are trapped in caves forever. For example, Kafka, the cave is a bottomless fear for him, small animals can only live in the ground forever, and the delivery person puts food outside the door deep in the cave, and there is absolute safety in loneliness. Kusturica, on the other hand, bears witness to history in the cave of Underground, where the cave becomes a prop, a necessary mirror for telling a story. Such a nearly perfect setting, is also widely used in science fiction movies, in order to avoid disaster people choose to live in the cave, isolated from the world, become a paradise in the world, do not know what Han wei Jin, one day the lid of the cave entrance was lifted, suddenly cheerful, so the two worlds reconnected, at this time people found that the original mutual cave, can also live in peace, long-term coexistence.
However, this truth plato has long been clearly stated through his cave theory. Everyone can only see the mirror image of the shadow in the cave wall, where can we see the truth? Pride and prejudice are everywhere, what is true is no longer the most important, and sometimes in order to coexist, people have to cancel the impulse to seek meaning, creating an inclusive and empty persona.
Three
Today, the deepest cave is the ubiquitous screen around us, and every day we are like the emperor on the court to read the folds, from the folds of words to the folds of graphics and texts, and then to the folds of videos. People are trapped in it, trapped at the bottom of the deep hole, willing to surrender their weapons and become slaves.
Duras once confidently said, "In a cave, at the bottom of a cave, in almost complete loneliness, you will find that writing will save you." But now that sentence should be out of order. Not to mention that now people only know Durex but do not recognize Duras, in the countryside, how many people are being swallowed by short videos, but also saved by short videos.
Take my old father, for example, who was good at growing cucumbers and dates, could write his own name, but was completely unable to complete the most basic reading and writing, and was simply illiterate. When he came to the city more than a decade ago, he once regarded the foot shop as a biscuit factory as a big family joke. He has an illiterate shyness and an illiterate happiness, and in the past two years, he has often laughed at his mobile phone. One day, he lost his mobile phone in the green jujube garden, and he couldn't sleep well. He was very eager to ask me for help and asked me to buy him an old man's machine quickly. Only then did I notice that the local dialect jokes and dramas in the short videos became a very important source of happiness in his life. It was also this moment that made me realize that the world was changing, and we could not be indifferent to the rotation of the surging information medium, which had the dilemma of the cave and the happiness of the emperor.
And I myself even have times to turn to short videos. Last month, the family's watch broke, and I bought an electronic watch used to watch the time, a metal strap. After receiving the goods, I found that the strap was too long and needed to be cut off twice. So I drove around the town twice, and I couldn't find a place to fix the watch. The watch repair stalls that used to be visible on the side of the road at any time have disappeared. The scene of the watch repair is so familiar that a person and a table that occupies less than a brick can start business. Nowadays, the demand for repairing watches may have dropped sharply due to the popularity of screens, and the recent watch shops also need to go to the bustling urban area, a little farther. I was frustrated and a little frustrated. Not only because of such a small thing that actually overwhelmed me, but I felt that I had a feeling of being abandoned by the times. I was not yet forty years old, and I should be in the middle of two caves, where I climbed the iron ladder. After sitting for a while, I suddenly thought that maybe I could find a short video to learn how to open the strap, and with this idea, I started it immediately, it was very simple, and it was solved in ten minutes. The short video saved me a good mood for a night, just like that day out of the Emperor's Cave, looking around, full of greenery, spring has just unfolded at the end of the world, making people believe that the beauty of the world is coming.
The Emperor's Cave named after the Emperor is divided into two halves, and those who walk through the cave inevitably sigh at their own lives, take their arms, calculate the gains and losses of the past, and naturally hope that the hardships of the first half can form the aesthetics of the second half. However, this place is already on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, Gu Pan left and right, what aesthetics is there in the second half? It's just that everyone wants to be beautiful. So optimistic or pessimistic thinking, life in the world, do not seek peaks and turns, but please do not always roll in the mud dignity is good.
April 6, 2021
(This article was first published in Dianchi Lake, and this is an excerpt.) ）