One
Many years ago, reading Foucault's Words and Things, I read this passage: "Knowledge lies in the relationship between language and language; in restoring the great unity of words and things; in making everything speak." ”
I copied this passage down. The reason why I copied it was because at that time I felt that time passed too quickly, hurried life, and in the blink of an eye, it was the late spring and autumn season, and it was very obvious that time was also a kind of material, which could be seen and touched. Otherwise, people will not have memories. Memory is one of the important differences between humans and animals.
Whether or not I actually read this passage from Foucault, or whether it is only used by me superficially, I feel that Foucault speaks knowledge and the language he has created is to make everything speak. All this stuff should include time.
Foucault
Two
I remembered that in the summer of 54 years ago, I left Beijing for the Northern Wilderness. The train I was on was a 10:38 distribution car. The Beijing railway station is not far from my home, but I left the house before 8 o'clock, so urgent, eat cold and acid, and run to a distant place. Just out of the house, uncle Zhang, a neighbor next to my house, came out and handed me a small bag of things, a piece of yellow soil wrapped in a blue cloth. Uncle Zhang said to me: Go to such a far place, just get there will be water and soil, when you drink water, you pinch a little loess and soak it in the water. Although at that time I felt that Uncle Zhang had some superstitions, he was still very moved, the so-called thousands of gold to buy a house, ten thousand gold to choose neighbors, not false at all.
When I was separated that day, I received a lot of gifts, and one of my classmates specially bought a large watermelon for me to eat on the way. None of them, though, had this bag of loess that I remember fondly. On the train, I didn't dare to show it to everyone, for fear of being ridiculed. On the first day of the Great Northern Wilderness, when I drank water, I really secretly pinched a little loess and put it into the water cup. The loess crumbs fluttered leisurely, and the clouds swayed in the water, and soon settled down. I didn't drink anything.
54 years have passed. I want to leave Beijing the day I arrived in the Northern Wilderness, without this small bag of loess, would the memory still be so deep?
Time is visible, it is able to speak, it is Uncle Zhang who is talking, it is the small bag of loess that thing is talking.
Reclamation of the Northern Wilderness. Xinhua News Agency photo
Three
In the summer of 1982, I graduated from college. The day after the graduation ceremony, I can't wait to return to the Great Northern Wilderness after 8 years of absence. There are two very famous islands in beidahuang, one is Yanwo Island and the other is Daxing Island. Daxing Island is surrounded by the Seven Star River and the Tuoli River, an ancient wasteland. I lived and worked in the Daxing Island Second Team for 6 years.
Because I was the first Zhiqing to return to Daxing Island, the compatriots of the second team deliberately killed two pigs to warmly entertain me, and in two farmhouses, under the kang, inside and outside the house, there were several tables. Between the drunkenness and the heat of the ears, they asked me with concern about the situation of this Zhiqing and that Zhiqing returning to Beijing. I suddenly thought that my friends were also concerned about the situation of their fellow villagers, so I asked which family had a tape recorder, and wanted the villagers to say a paragraph to each of the tape recorders, record the sound, bring it back to Beijing, and put it on the Zhiqing friends.
The tape recorder arrived, and it was a bulky desktop recorder. At that time, the tape recorder was still a new thing, and the fellow villagers were very curious about it, huddled together, probed their brains, and each said a paragraph. Say anything, be concerned, be enthusiastic, ask, joke, instigate, even swear... Everyone laughed. Recorded once, someone had to come back a second time. It was recorded until the sky was full of stars, the smell of wheat wafting in the fields during the ripening season, and the wet breeze of the Seven Star River and the Flex River blowing in the distance.
I brought this 60-minute cassette full of cassettes back to Beijing and immediately beckoned my friends to come to my house to listen. Everyone rode to my house on their bicycles after work, like garlic cloves, their heads huddled together, and they huddled in front of the tape recorder to listen. After listening, it was also full of stars, and I was extremely touched to see their figures disappear into the night.
Exactly 40 years later, when friends gather, they occasionally talk about the tape, about that summer night. Many of my fellows died, but their voices were still in that cassette.
Without that cassette tape, would the summer night of the Northern Wilderness 40 years ago, and that summer night in Beijing, still appear so clearly over and over again? Not only does it come to mind, but it can also speak, sentence by sentence, so kind, so touching? After all, with the existence of the tape, time will be seen like that.
The recording on the tape, fidelity for 40 years, is talking, the voice of that summer night 40 years ago.
The youth of the Northern Wilderness. Xinhua News Agency photo
Four
In the summer of 1992, at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, I saw an oil painting called "The Woman with the Fan" and thought it was very fresh. The woman's yellow shirt contrasts with the scarlet background. The woman has an unusually slender neck, a tilted head, no pearls, and the whole expression, which is extremely poignant and confused, which is not the same as the usual romantic style.
At that time, I didn't know the Italian painter Modigliani, and it was the first time I saw his work. I looked down at the sign next to the painting, wanted to see the author's name, did not spell out the name of the string of letters, and wanted to copy it down, and when I went home, I looked up the celebrity dictionary. However, after rummaging through the bag, I did not find a pen.
At this time, a white-haired couple walked over, probably wanting to see the painting. Seeing that I was busy and a little disappointed, the old lady took a pen from her fashionable and delicate satchel and handed it to me. I copied the string of letters, thanked me, and handed the pen back to the old lady, who smiled slightly, waved at me, and said something I didn't understand in French, but I understood that she was kind enough to give me the pen.
A very ordinary ballpoint pen. But with this ballpoint pen, the afternoon of the summer of 1992 suddenly blossomed like a flower. Although I couldn't understand French, the kind words of the old lady when I met pingshui would ring in my ears like music whenever I thought about that summer afternoon.
Modigliani's The Woman with the Fan (partial)
Five
In July 2004, I returned to the Northern Wilderness again. On the banks of the Songhua River near the county seat of Tongjiang, a small town of the Hezhe ethnic group has dinner. This restaurant is very special, selling all the dishes are fish, the walls are hung with works of art made of fish skins, even the tablecloths and napkins on the table are printed with fish patterns, blue woodcuts, antique, as if swimming from ancient times.
I wanted a few napkins to take back to Beijing for a souvenir, so I walked to the counter and suddenly saw a pair of wooden fish hanging on both sides of the wooden shelf of the counter, very small, not the size of a palm, with red silk rope hanging under the belly of the fish, carved very interestingly. The fins and tails of the fish are somewhat exaggerated, appearing very public, and the spirit is alive. The scales are naturally presented using the wood grain of the wood itself, without any carving, but just coated with a layer of brown tung oil. The mouth and eyes of the fish are the most eye-catching, and the mouth of the fish is opened as if it were about to speak. The fish's eyes were particularly protruding, and I thought they were glued to the back, so I touched them with my hand, and they were actually carved out of wood.
I liked this pair of small wooden fish very much and asked the waiter if they were selling. The waiter shook his head and said humorously, "No, we only sell live fish here." I grinded her, hoping to sell it to me. She smiled and said to me, this is the fish that our boss carved himself, and can't sell it... Seeing that the two of us were arguing more than painting, the boss thought that something was wrong, came over, understood what was going on, and sold the little wooden fish to me very happily.
Today, the napkins are still pressed under the glass panels of my dining table; the pair of small wooden fish hangs on either side of the bathroom wash mirror. The little wooden fish has been protruding with big eyes and open mouth. Time, all at once, can be seen and heard. It was the waiter and the boss who spoke, and the pair of little wooden fish.
Scene of Bacha Village in Tongjiang Hezhe Nationality Township. Xinhua News Agency photo
Six
About 20 years ago, in order to write the book "Blues City South", I repeatedly returned to the old hospital where I had lived for more than 20 years. The old courtyard is called Yuedong Guild Hall, close to the old street of the West Grinding Factory on the east side of the front gate building. Today, it has been renovated and has become a tourist punching place for outsiders.
The Yuedong Guild Hall is an old courtyard left in the former Qing Dynasty, which has gone through a hundred years of vicissitudes. In the past, behind the second gate, there was a large shadow wall and a high stone stele erected when the museum was built, and there were three old jujube trees in the courtyard. Revisiting the old place, all this is gone, empty, as if everything that had existed before never existed. In 2005 or 2006, the old home was facing demolition, and I went back to see it again. Suddenly, under the corner of the kitchen wall of the old neighborhood of the East Cross Courtyard, a piece of white jade was found. When I asked, I realized that it was a corner of the stone stele that had been smashed, and when I built the small kitchen, it was used as the cornerstone of the house. I thought to myself, as long as time passes, the slush claw will always leave, and it is impossible to leave no trace at all.
The most interesting thing is that the entrance to the old courtyard is a spacious corridor that is seven or eight meters long. There are two rooms on one side of the corridor, which are the former porters. On the other side of the corridor is a white wall. During the Cultural Revolution, people smeared cement on the lower left corner of the wall, painted it again and again with black paint, made a small blackboard of their own, and wrote Chairman Mao's quotations on it with chalk. On that day, I saw that the debris of the corridor had been emptied, the wall was exposed, and the small blackboard was still on the wall, and the words on it were actually there, and the handwriting was still very clear. That's what I wrote decades ago.
Time, relying on the corner of the old stone stele, the handwriting on the small blackboard, is immediately clearly visible. Words can explain words, and stones can also speak.
Seven
At the end of the spring of 2015, my sister's 80th birthday, I went to Hohhot to see my sister. On the wall of the living room of my sister's house, I suddenly saw a four-fan screen, which I had not seen many times before. It is a four-season wind object of silk embroidery: spring embroidery is phoenix play peony, summer embroidery is the day lotus, autumn embroidery is chrysanthemum cooking wine, winter embroidery is the traditional magpie dengmei.
My sister pointed to the four screens and told me: This is still embroidered when the mother was a girl.
My mother was my birth mother, and my sister always called her that. When I was 5 years old, my mother died, and I didn't have any impression of her. That day, when I suddenly saw these four screens, I was a little excited in my heart, and I couldn't help but get close to the wall and want to look closely. If the mother is alive, this year will be 100 years old. Silk threads can also preserve freshness than pigments, and the embroidered flowers and birds are as bright as yesterday. I seemed to see what my mother looked like when she was young.
Somehow, suddenly there was a feeling, I don't know if this wall is hot, or the four screens have heat, all of a sudden there is a warm feeling, as if it is pasted next to the mother, the mother quietly said something to me.
At that moment, the time that has passed, the time I thought I would never see, because of the existence of the concrete thing of the four screens, it became like water back in front of me, and it was able to speak to me kindly. Perhaps, those are just the words that my own heart has longed for for a long time, the echo of time.
Dalí works
Yes, time itself is a substance, or time exists on the basis of things, which can be seen and touched. Therefore, time is never illusory, and time is never gone. As long as there is a specific thing that is closely related, time is present and can be reproduced, as the song goes, "yesterday once more"
In his discussion of the relationship between words and things, Foucault speaks of knowledge and the language he creates is to make everything, including time, speak, to illustrate the spirituality and divinity of the existence of time. The relationship between time and matter is so close, and it lies in our own human feelings, which coexist and integrate with time. Foucault speaks the language of knowledge and knowledge, and in addition to that, our feelings must be included in order for time to speak. Time speaks, and it is our feelings that speak. Time speaks, prompting and reminding us not to easily forget the time that has passed, and in the past time, whether there is our beauty, pain, or shame and regret, do not forget.
Time can be seen and spoken.
Eight