Xi Murong | poolside

Poolside

Wen | Xi Murong Photo| Network Editor| Liema Green Onion

Carrying a painting tool on his back, he wanted to paint all the lotus plants of these thousand plants. I walked slowly on the path alone, observing and searching, trying to start with the most beautiful one.

It was still the same weather as it was then, it was still the same fragrance of the year, and some things seemed to have been forgotten, but suddenly, the mountains and seas surged forward, reappeared and revived in a very familiar and very gentle smell, and then grasped my heart so tightly that it made me feel pain.

It turns out that life is like this! It turns out that all the time that has passed is not really passing and disappearing. It turns out that if I have lived, I have lived, just like before an oil painting is completed, whether it is painted wrong or correctly, every stroke is necessary and indispensable. What kind of days I have had, I will be what kind of person I will be.

So, what kind of person am I now? In the face of a thousand lotus plants like in the past, I gently ask you in my heart.

If we met again, would you still recognize me?

If, at the time I was drawing a lotus, you happened to be walking behind me, would you stop, or would you walk over?

I think you'll stop, because you and I both know that in this life you can't walk behind a girl who draws a lotus without stopping for a moment.

Because how you have lived, you will live.

When you turn through a bush of tropical forest, when you come to the side of this lotus pond at dusk, when you suddenly find a very plainly dressed girl sitting on the edge of the pool sketching, you can't stop walking.

Of course, on the outside, you are just standing there quietly, and in this world, no one but me will know the undulating waves in your heart.

But what a shocking resemblance everything is! The soft sunlight of this evening, the faint fragrance of this lotus pond, the silent surroundings, and even the watercolor that this girl paints are not very smooth, all this is a painful image!

The girl is concentrating on drawing, without looking back, you stand behind her, staring at the picture, but what you see is the one from many years ago.

You came quietly and left quietly, and the girl never looked back. When you've walked far, turn around and look at the past, separated by a thousand and a hundred quiet lotuses, the girl is slowly standing up and starting to pack up the painting tools. It was dark, and her figure in light-colored clothes was very vague and very familiar, like the lotus fragrance that filled the whole space.

Your heart is also full of gratitude, grateful for her just appearing, grateful for her never looking back.

It was because she did not look back that she knew that if we met again, you would recognize me from afar.

Every time I got to the front of the lotus pond, it was a little too late.

The blooming lotus cannot tolerate strong sunlight, unless it just blooms under a large lotus leaf, otherwise, the near noon sun- come, the best lotus will slowly close up, and refuse to open again. By the next morning, the petals that had been rediscovered, no matter how hard they tried, could no longer be as full of life, as full of vitality, as unbridled as they had been when they first opened.

Then, on the third day, it was time to fall. Pieces of pink and soft petals fall on the duckweed, but they do not sink immediately, the emerald green duckweed is the last stage before the petals turn yellow and darken, and on this gentle but not lasting stage, the lotus flower shows its last feminine sadness.

It's not that I didn't want to get up early, nor did I not try, but every time I could only arrive at near noon, and then, facing the petals that refused to open again, my heart was lost. I had to search slowly along the lotus pond, hoping to find one or two flowers with lotus leaves in the shade, and still open happily, and one that could not be affected without change.

Once, as I was carrying a heavy painting device and looking for it one by one, an old man with white hair smiled at me and said:

"The really beautiful lotus flowers are in the morning, and you can't find one like that now."

Yes, sir, thank you, I know what you said, but I will not be willing if I do not finish this long road and see all these thousands and hundreds of lotus flowers.

If, if I happen not to see that one, that one has been waiting for me since early in the morning, if I just missed it.

If, just because of the sweltering afternoon sun, just because of the heavy burden on my back, just because of the disapproving gaze of the people around me, I began to hesitate, stop, and then turn away, then I will always have a regret in my heart. I will often think, perhaps, that there is a lotus that has been waiting for me all along, and I have been looking forward to it in vain, and finally withering and dying in the distance between me and me. By that time, what I missed would not be just an early morning, I would have missed a long afternoon, a whole life of a gentle and uncomplaining soul.

Therefore, such a long road, I must go through, I would rather believe that there is such a flower.

And I really often encounter it in miraculous moments. Between the thousands of layers of lotus leaves, among the thousands of lotus flowers, it is there, warm as jade, standing in order.

For such an encounter, we can only stare at each other with a smile, and all words will be unnecessary and superfluous.

They like to use dichotomy to explain the world.

They say: If you have a desire in your heart, it must be because you are not satisfied with reality, if you want to cross the river to the other side, it must be because this side of the river is not beautiful enough; They also said that if the two were related, they would not be separated.

They divide the world into two categories of extreme opposites: all tangled minds must be divided into two under the conclusion they quickly decide, either "yes" or "no," either "yes" or "no."

So, they can't trust our world anymore. They wouldn't believe that in this season of lotus blossoms, every girl who sketches by the poolside could be me or she wasn't me, and that every spectator standing behind me could be you or might not be you.

The one who turned back may never be me again, and the girl who never turned back may always be me, always on the poolside of dusk, drawing a jerky lotus.

Therefore, if we have the opportunity to meet again, we will not have the kind of happiness they imagined, but will turn back sadly and be silently separated again, such a fate is absolutely unimaginable and unbelievable to them.

Only these thousands of lotus flowers know how we have lived, and how we will live.

About author:Xi Murong (born October 15, 1943), full name Mulun Xi Lianbo, was born in Chongqing, grew up in Taiwan, originally from the Chahar Department of Inner Mongolia, and is a well-known contemporary painter, poet and essayist. Her works are infused with ancient eastern philosophies, with religious overtones, revealing a desolate charm of the impermanence of life. He has authored more than 50 kinds of poems, prose collections, albums and anthologies, and poems such as "Qilixiang", "Youth Without Complaint", and "A Blossoming Tree" have become popular and become classics.

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