weave
he who
press
EDITOR'S
NOTE
I vaguely remember when I was a child and my father went up the mountain to see the snow, I saw a wounded fox under a tree, which became the starting point of all my fantasies and denigrations about snow in the future. I yearn for the snow, my friend P yearned for the sea, and in the process of searching for them, we constantly added the weight of imagination, but found that imagination could not be transformed into substance after all, and it was we who created these lies and trapped them.
1
In the winter of 2015, I can clearly remember that the day before Lapa Ba, it snowed outside the window.
The snow would get a little warmer, so I took off my outermost knitted cardigan and learned for the first time what it meant to make snow cold and snow hot. The family stove was not lit that morning, and My father stood at the door for a while and decided to go up the hill to see the snow.
I'll ask him again now, and he won't admit it anyway. I also often wonder if this is just a dream of mine. And if no new coal is added after the fire that was built the night before, regeneration will be troublesome. Find dry firewood in the wet and cold winter, break the old coal, find some dried waste paper, light them in the dry firewood pile, carefully ignite the dry grass that is mated inside, when the green smoke rises slowly, hold back, gently blow into the firewood, put on a thicker firewood and crushed coal, let the smoke slowly grow, and then at the dawn of the fireworks, wait slowly, wait to see a small flame rising from the bottom, carrying the warmth and the aroma of burning paper, illuminating all the creatures in this room at dawn.
But the waxing moon can not help but make a fire, I am responsible for making a fire every day, and even became dependent on this matter when I was young, I thought about the fire in winter in the summer, and I thought about the stability of the fire at night at noon in the winter. When it becomes customary for a person to do something, for him, if there is a day when he does not do it, he will be more sensitive and remember clearly than everyone else, and it will remain unchanged for a long time. Only the habit of making a fire makes me nostalgic, and it feeds me like my experience, allowing me to find warmth in bad memories.
That morning, I was looking for paper, because I was wearing less, the fire had not yet started, my hands and feet were frozen, and I had broken a lot of good waste paper. But my father said to me, "Let's go up the mountain today to see the snow, and don't add to the fire." I said, "The snow is beautiful, the fire was laid down last night, it was too long, wait until you come back to extinguish it, and then you will regenerate it yourself." He looked at it and said, "I'll just give birth to myself. "Then he came over and wrapped me in a down jacket, and we drove to the snowy fields in the mountains.
The more you run up the hill, the more snow it gets, and the wind breaks through the cracks in the windows, and the chill easily rushes into the inner layer of everyone's clothes. I was too cold to go down the mountain, and many times I wanted to lose my temper and go down the mountain. I saw the snow outside the window, leaning against the branches of the mountain forest, falling into the muddy dirt road, with a white and serene appearance. The trees on the mountain were almost dry, we could not see the living life, all we could see was the scene of ruin, at that time, the only people in the mountain were active, the vehicle was almost the only moving object, the whole mountain was silent, whether before or after we came, for thousands of years, it has been quietly facing the cold winter. By the time we reached the mountainside, the snow had already paved the ground and there was no other trace, and we were the first to arrive here after the snow. The wind was blowing harder and harder, and the snow in the trees was thicker, and by the time we reached our destination, the branches were covered with ice cubes, and the snow had fallen on the soles of our feet. Father parked his car, and I stepped carefully into the snow, as if I had been frozen, and in that instant the snow made me nervous and comfortable, and no one spoke, and everyone's face was bubbling with white steam, from which we could see our excitement. It was the biggest snow in years, and only in the mountains can you see such snow. I didn't dare to speak, for fear that the words I would say would stain the place, and I could only stare motionless at the white snow. My father gently moved to my side and began to tell me about whose territory this place had been in the county chronicle and the family tree, what kind of great deeds our ancestors had had here, who had come in the distant past, written a poem, and sang some proud words. Then he talked about his childhood, told me that this mountainside and that mountain were their paradise, said how chaotic and dilapidated it was decades ago, and told me that this was his hometown, and it was also my hometown, and let me not forget this place. I was fascinated by what I could hear, and the world of white flowers dazzled me, and I saw a brown-red shadow leaping in front of me, with a curved tail and a long pointed mouth, faintly moving and disappearing. I said, there are foxes! I suddenly woke up from my father's speech and rushed forward desperately, waiting for me to come to the place where the creature had walked, but it was another vast world of the same. My father also rushed over and asked me where the fox was, and I pointed under the tree and said, "It seems to have run there." Father looked and said he didn't see anything, but I saw a path out of the animal, straight to the bottom of the trees, and in the bushes there was some shaky new snow falling on the ground, and some bright red blood dripping on it. My father was horrified when he heard me say it, and did not let me see more, and hurriedly drove me down the mountain. When he got home, he hurried to the kitchen, boiled pots, boiled eggs, and put in something I didn't know or see. I thought my father was just making an early breakfast and just walking around the house, but the whole house slowly warmed up, and I said it was hot and I wanted to undress, and he stopped me. After a while, my father took a hard-boiled egg out of the pot and took me to my room, put the egg under my pillow, then found a new set of clothes for me to change into, and threw the old clothes to the roof. At night, he told me not to tell my mother-in-law about the things I saw today, not to think about today's things when I went to bed at night, to be careful not to crush the egg, and tomorrow morning, remember to take it out and eat it.
I later realized that no matter what kind of fantasies and denigrations I had about snow in the future, I would have to use this incident as a starting point, and in the snow field, the creatures I forgot when I was a child were still waiting for me in the mountains.
2
It wasn't until I got a little older that I realized that the place where I lived as a child didn't snow heavily all year round. Occasionally, it rained so much that the whole town excitedly came out to see the white land. On some winter days, I look out from the stone towers of middle school and see the white snow cover from the top of the mountain and the forest. The sun is painted in the mountains, all dazzling golden light, like the Buddha's full of poetry collapsing in front of my eyes, fragmented words reflect the snow-capped grand landscape. Every time I thought about the snow after that, I seemed to be standing on the castle tower forever, and the snow was still there with me.
I later recalled those days of watching the snow, and I always felt a kind of scarce arrogance. It is like a long-distance mountain man coming to the wilderness, witnessing the loneliness of no trees and wild grass over his knees, building a grass hut here and living in the sound of the wind blowing the wild grass.
I rarely ever sincerely imagine one thing happening on a regular basis, with rain being occasional and departure being sudden, except when it snows. Spring comes and autumn comes, cold comes and goes, and snow comes sincerely without deceiving anyone. Southerners seem to have an obsessive and firm belief in snow, and the cold and magnificent white wilderness has become the most sincere wish in the hearts of people living in subtropical regions. I know a sixty-year-old man whose son took him on a tour of Harbin and when he returned he was keen to show every friend who came to visit his home a picture of him lying on his back in the snow. I've seen it, and there were a lot of people sitting around the house with a stove burning in the center, and everyone's face was red with heat. The old man told his friends, "Not bragging to you, that snow is so big!" Down to the knees are small! The wrinkles in the corners of his eyes stretched out, and his face was excited and proud, making a young man like me feel the vitality blooming on him for the second time. He suddenly became a believer in the north, as if a snowflake must be brought on the timeline of life to make up for the regrets of living in the south, and it would be a few years or decades before he could satisfactorily seal the coffin and sleep in the earth.
On days when there was no snow, I drew and wrote on paper, and kept writing the word "snow", hoping to make it emerge from the black handwriting for a winter. I imagine its delicacy, its coldness, its inclusion, its pure dyeing of all the places in the world, and at the same time attracting more and more people who want to see it. But I failed so easily that imagination could not be transformed into substance, and I was breathless in the cracks of speculation. I thought, I was deceived, the snow may not be like this, I am looking for, maybe only a vague concept, the snow fluttering in Kobe in "Love Letters", the snowfields where the old likes to let horses gallop, I am too superstitious about them. What I gained from then on was nothing more than unseen fiction, endless fantasies, and fear of loss, which made me wander the road of searching for the first time. I think of all the process of being deceived, thinking that from the things that I have forgotten, I have not learned anything that can reveal the meaning of my life except being deceived, I have only been deceived, I have suffered, and under the experience and lessons, my defenses are broken but only make me want to continue more. And I am not ready to charge, snow is imagination, but who can guarantee me that the imaginary snow field will appear in my eyes that have gone through suffering? Or maybe I was simply admonished and robbed of everything I had by the crooks. The snow is still white in my heart, it is an unchanging love word, but I feel deceived as never before in my pursuit of it.
3
When I talked about this with P, I was very excited to express my yearning to see a heavy snow, but I said to P that watching snow is not a solemn thing, everyone has turned this thing upside down, and the solemn thing is the snow itself, the world. It's not our souls that are wrapped in silver, it's just leaves, dirt, and the lake. We're all the opposite. On the way to find snow, we just keep experiencing deception and going far away. P didn't say anything, his hometown often snowed. We were lying in the narrow corner of the dorm room, moss growing in the humid environment, and I looked at P, whose eyes were accustomed to snow and did not look at anyone. I put my cigarette out on the moss and asked him what he thought, and he said, "This is the process of deception, and snow is in my eyes the same as dirt is to you." I can't feel it, but snow is definitely important, many people like snow, and many crops can't sprout without winter cold. But my soul is also important, at least at this point, and as I think, snow can't shine on my soul. ”
P and I have talked about many strange stories together, and we have sincerely exchanged heartfelt words and spent all the time that we did not want to go to class. P and I both have a very sincere yearning, that is, to make a lot of money ×× to support ourselves and the things we want to support. And he and I both know that it's too hard, that the first thing we have to solve is enough for us to spend our whole lives, and that difficulties will only ensue, and that all we can feed may be a tired life and an unhappy life. But none of us say anything, afraid of our own words, afraid of facing an unbearable future, we have gone too far on the road of being deceived. He often advised me and told me all sorts of things that had nothing to do with snow. Later, when I entered the university, he re-read, and after a gap of one year, we rarely contacted each other, but it was always very happy to see each other so many times. He told me about what I had seen in the repeat class, had a compassionate but yearning attitude toward the college life I shared, and checked every time we met, I checked if I had read his favorite cartoons. An important image in that comic is the sea, my university is near the sea, I have seen the black sea, the blue sea and the white sea, and he asked me, "How?" Did you think of it in the comic? He pointed his hand, like he saw the moment of the storyboard in the comic. One of us wants to see the sea, the other wants to see the snow, and we are all deceived, experienced, hoped, we are all deceived by these things, they deify what we want to see. But it is wrong to compare both snow and sea to symbols of deception, and the process of finding and stepping into them is where lies are born. I explained: The sea you can see in the comics, in the songs, in the waves that you cannot sleep on, and my snow is in fiction, and I often see in my dreams a brilliant snow that buries me and tricks me into its white trap.
And my love is so simple, except for watching the snow, the only thing I want to protect is my lover and family. P was often troubled, and in the cramped clothes room he confided in me his remorse. He told me that man is such a creature that, from birth, after the first upright walk of childhood without dependence on external objects, each step will go farther away. The process has an irreparable texture, and countless people will return to this moment of starting point when they look back, staring forward as before. This is human spirituality. In this process, don't be deceived again, go cheating, don't be deceived, don't think about looking at the snow, go back to that moment, don't look at the snow again. He had drunk too much, and suddenly fell into the pile of clothes that no one wanted that had been abandoned by the housekeeper. I thought that even if I saw a snowfield like I had imagined, when I arrived at my destination, I would regret it like him. I packed up the can and thought only about how to carry him back to bed. I helped him through the hallway of the dormitory, his breathing began to become even, somewhat snoring, I walked step by step, the water tank began to heat up, the sound of dripping water sounded like the echo of the wind in the corridor, the voice-activated lights lit up and went out one by one, I held P, walking on the white marble tiles, thinking of nothing else, just being affected, just walking forward, like a slow walk to the snowfield that he did not want me to enter and did not want me to be deceived.
4
A few years later, it was still winter, and the family was driving out on a trip, all the way north, but suddenly stopped on the highway. The traffic flow is like a truncated branch stuck in the mountains, appearing dirty in the white snow. The father got out of the car from the driver's seat, wanted to see what was going on, and within a few steps of going out, he was greeted back by the big brother in front of the car: "The truck hit the mountain!" Dry off the fence! No way to go! Go back! "I was yelled awake in the passenger seat by the big brother's greeting, and saw him wave his hand vigorously, and every word he said became a white mist dissipated into the air, and I couldn't see his face clearly. It was getting dark, the cars in front of them were pulling on their brakes, and the red taillights lit up in the gray-purple night, like a red amber with one after another. The father came back from the front and smoked a cigarette next to the car. The light of the fire in the hand burns as if it were revived when it is handed to the mouth, and when the hand hangs down, it becomes a red spot on the verge of death. As if suddenly remembering, I asked my father, "Did we go to the mountains many years ago to see the snow, and there were wounded foxes in the forest?" "Father shook his head, and the smoke he spat out was accompanied by water vapor, and it was as thick as if it had solidified in the air." When was this? I wasn't impressed. How can there be foxes in the mountains? Then he was silent. Unconsciously, I thought of P. I looked out the window, and the snow drifted in from outside the car window. I caught it with my hand, and it was as if I were holding a drop of blood in the light of the red taillight. The crimson redness reappeared on the snowfield of my childhood, and in the memory of not being recognized by my father, I saw the fox again, its left forelimb lame inwards, and blood gushing out, dripping hot gas on the snow. The snow was still falling, the fox's fur was covered with snow spots, and his eyes were resolute and determined. When I tried to take a step forward, it jumped into the forest, and I stood under the tree, and the fox's trembling as it entered the forest made the snow on the branches fall like it never stopped, and the snow spread over my ankles, then my knees, waist, and shoulders, and before it spread its lips, I shouted: "Avalanche!" "No one paid any attention to me. I kept thinking about it, wanting to stand at that normal moment and learn from scratch the skills of walking, speaking, and not being deceived. Before the starting point I walked on all things, and now all things hold me in the palm of my hand. I also want someone to come and rescue me, and I'd rather never see that fox. At that time, I really felt that there was no echo of this lonely snow field, and the snow finally spread over my head, and I saw that there were branches, soil and some dead life buried together, and I found that I would be buried with them forever, and my whole life was trapped in the snowy deception.
● This article was published in the May 2022 issue of Sprouts. The intellectual property rights of the content published on the Sprout WeChat public account are exclusively owned or held by Sprout Magazine and the relevant right holders, and any use such as reprinting, excerpting, copying and mirroring is prohibited without permission.
Responsible Editor
/ Yang Pengxiang
Art design
/ Li Jixin
Illustration
/ Gong Wenjie
The Budding Shop Mini Program is now online
Long press the following picture to enter the Mini Program
Purchase the Sprouts express
"Budding", May 2022
Sprouts annual publication 2022
MENGYA MAGAZINE
A benchmark for youth literature
Generations of writers started here