It's snowing in my world
Text | Chi Zijian
The reason why I love to come back to my hometown is because it is a place where my eyes, my heart and my feet are ideal. It only takes three to five minutes to get from my room to the scenic spot I described. I usually go for a walk at dusk. When you go from north to south, you either take the embankment or walk along the riverbank. If you walk on the embankment, you will meet old men who are driving their flocks home, and the sheep are still unable to bear to return to the pen as they walk on the slow slope of the embankment.
I also often see an old woman returning from herding ducks, and her flock of black ducks is led by two big white geese. The big white goose walked proudly with its neck held high, while the numerous black ducks followed with their eyebrows lowered and pleasing to the eye. I prefer to walk along the banks of the river rather than the embankment, and I love the sunset in the water. The most beautiful foothold of the sunset is the river.
The sunset that entered the water was even more brilliant than the sunset itself. Of course, there are also projections of mountains and river willows in the water. It makes people feel that the surface of the water is a painting, dotted with the picture, with sunsets, trees, clouds and breezes. The breeze renders the picture through the water waves, and when the breeze blows the river, the surging water waves crush the projections of the sunset, clouds and trees on the river, so that the colors of the water surface are peeled off in an instant, and there is a three-dimensional effect, which looks like a famous modernist painting.
I love to see such pictures, so if there is no breeze and the water is not rippling, I will bend down and pick up a few pebbles and throw them at the river, and then the painting in the water will change suddenly, and I will sit on the beach and look at it quietly for a moment. Of course, I didn't dare to sit for long, not because I was afraid that the eerie cool air of the river beach would erode me, but because the mosquitoes would come in an endless stream and buzz around me, and I didn't want to give their own blood for their dinner.
When you are tired of writing in the study, you only need to raise your eyes and the mountains will come into view. It is said that the green mountains are pleasing to the eye, but in fact, the white mountains with winter snow are also pleasing to the eye. The White Mountain looks like a white elephant from the heavenly court. Of course, you can also watch the clouds fly around from the window. Not only does the cloud change shape quickly, but it also changes its color. It was still a thick cloud of lead gray just now, and it floated and split into several boat-shaped clouds, and the color became white. If the sky were a blank sheet of paper, the clouds would be splashing ink here. The ink is sometimes heavy, sometimes light, and it can be seen that the clouds are full of exploration spirit when painting.
In winter or summer, if the moonlight is sultry, I will turn off the lights in my bedroom, open the curtains, and lie in bed to admire the moon. The moonlight filtered into the room through the window lattice, illuminating the bed with a warm white light, and I felt like I was walking in the clouds while bathed in the moonlight. In the past Mid-Autumn Festival, I was lying in bed admiring the moon.
It was a day of thick clouds, and during the day, some cold rain fell, and in the afternoon, the first light snow of early winter quietly fell. Watching the snowflakes flutter in the air like butterflies, I thought that the moon must not be seen at night. At seven o'clock, however, the moon suddenly revealed a few rays of light in the eastern clouds, as if to herald its grand appearance at midnight.
At eight o'clock, the clouds are thin, and the moon rolling in the clouds will reveal its true face in an instant. At nine o'clock, the huge clouds that flew from the southwest to the northeast crossed the Milky Way like an army of millions, most of them disappeared, and the moon appeared in its fullness. Perhaps it has been baptized by rain and snow during the day, and it is very clear and clear.
I lay on the bed, looking at it, bathing in its silky light, feeling the good times gently knocking on my forehead, and I felt a feeling of extreme warmth and happiness in my heart. After a while, another group of clouds appeared, but it was a very thin cloud, and they seemed to be specially prepared for the moon, because when they were clustered around the moon, the moon used its heart to illuminate the white clouds with a halo of color, and the clouds appeared one after another, and the moon at this time looked like a huge orange, which made people feel that its rippling brilliance was filled with a rich sweet fragrance.
At midnight, the clouds were completely gone, and the moon in the middle of the sky seemed to have fallen into a pool of water, and the sky looked even bluer than the clear sky of the day. Such a Mid-Autumn Festival that has experienced wind, rain, frost and snow is really rare. After seeing such a round of the moon, the dreams of that night were all bright.
I still remember that on the second day of the first lunar month in 2002, my wife and I were invited to my brother's house in the west of the city for dinner. It was snowing that day, and the weather when the snow fell was usually warmer, as if the snowflakes were resisting the cold with their weak bodies.
There was not a single pedestrian on the embankment, just the two of us, arm in arm, walking silently through the snow. The mountains looked vague in the snow, and the rivers under the dikes had disappeared, covered in thick snow and ice. The willows and poplars on the riverbank look shadowy in the snow, and the sky and the earth seem so vast and so kind.
As I walked, I suddenly shed tears, knowing that it was inauspicious to cry during the New Year, but I couldn't help myself, and that incomparable beauty bred my sadness. Three months later, my lover left me, and when I returned to my hometown that winter, I was the only one walking on the snow-capped embankment. Then I suddenly understood why I wept that day, because the heavens and the earth were hinting to me that the beautiful emotions would leave you, and you would be surrounded by this eternal desolation!
Fortunately, the green mountains and flowing water are still there, the river willows and poplars are still there, and the bright moon is still there, my eyes and heart have a place to live, and my pen also has the most emotional touchpoint. So I still like to walk at dusk, I like to watch the sunset in the water, I like to watch the leaves in the wind, I like to see the mountains in the snow. I am not afraid of old age, because I want the moonlight to blend with my hair when the green hair turns gray. I can't tell if the moonlight is moonshine or gray hair, and I can't tell whether it's gray hair or moonshine that grows on my head.
One night a few days ago, I had a dream about heavy snow. I came alone to a snowy place, full of houses, but not a single pedestrian on the road could be seen. Some are just snowflakes rolling in the air. The snowflakes beat my face, so cool, so moisturized, so kind. When I woke up, it was a dark night outside the window, and I remembered that in a year, no matter what the season, I would dream about snowflakes, even if it was the smell of birds and flowers outside the window. It seems that what surrounds me is destined to be a cool and sad world, romantic and cold. My heart was moved and I desperately wanted to write a line on a blank piece of paper. I reached for the bedside light, but it didn't turn on, and the power went out at night, so I turned on my phone, and by its faint light, grabbed a pen, wrote down the words that best expressed my thoughts and emotions on a piece of typing paper, and then went back to bed and continued my dream.
The phrase is: It's snowing in my world. Yes, it's snowing in minecraft......
Excerpt from "It's Snowing in My World" by Chi Zijian, published by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House.
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