1
Mother is crazy, others don't necessarily know, I know.
"Are you alright? They didn't take you...... Those invisible people follow me all day long, eavesdropping, peeping, they know that I also have a daughter, so they decided to poison you, where are you? Why don't you speak!"
I was sleepy and irritable: "Mom, are you okay?" Before the words fell, my mother hung up the phone, and ten minutes later, the phone rang again, this time her voice was lower, with a slight cry: "Hey, are you my daughter?"
She then said, "I have two daughters, which one are you?" "Can you help me find your sister, just now she ate boiled edamame at my place, I bought it yesterday, it rained, I couldn't sell it, the price was reduced, I bought six catties, it was very fresh and delicious, but in a blink of an eye she was lost, did you see her? Why didn't you see her? If you meet someone exactly like you on the street, you have to go over and help her, she is your sister...... I know where your sister is, she was taken away by those invisible people, locked up in a dark room, I have a voice in my ears, she is shouting for help, you go and save her......"
I was a little scared, in the dead of night, such words frightened me, and my mother still kept talking on the phone, but her tone suddenly changed, low and calm:
"I'm actually a mathematician, no one knows my talent, they will kill me if they say it, but I'm a mathematician, I have a bright sun in my heart when I cut clothes, I am careful to calculate, no more needle and thread, no more and no less, I know how many needle holes, how many threads, how many alterations, a few inches, a few centimeters, a few millimeters, no one believes it, even you don't believe it, but why didn't your mathematics inherit me. Blame me too, I'm too busy to teach you, so you're wasted. I was also sad, and then I thought about it, it's okay, don't be a mathematician, how much money can you make with a piece of clothing, will there be a salary like Chen Jingrun, but Chen Jingrun is also poor, you see he is thin, like he can't eat all day. ”
“...... Do you know that there is a kind of high technology nowadays, a pat on your shoulder, it will suck the essence away, you will age quickly, and the other person will become forever young, so it is better for you to be careful when you go out, of course, it is better not to go out. I said I couldn't skip work, and she said, "Hmm...... You still have to go to class, but don't go out. ”
I hung up the phone, turned off my phone, lay down, looked at the ceiling in the dark, and wept.
2
If it weren't for Chen Jie, I think it would be difficult for me to get through this difficulty. The dreams I have had recently are very messy, and they are all "reverse dreams", and there is a scene in it: Chen Jie sneered, didn't say a word, turned around and walked into the dark. When I woke up from the dream, I lay motionless on the bed, and the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became, so I decided to get out of bed and freshen up and make breakfast, so as to cut off the shadow of the dream. When I turned on my iPad and skimmed through the news, I was back to reality.
I don't know if Chen Jie really loves me, but one thing is clear, that is, I don't expect that wandering love to really last. In early spring, I would secretly pick a few plum and peach blossoms outside, stick them in a glass bottle, look at them for a while, and then slowly and gently smell their fragrance. Although this is my habit since I was a child, or since I became a girl, almost every year at this time, I will feel like a new discovery for the first time to appreciate the fragrance of early spring flowers, what a tender and clear fragrance, that is clearly a kind of fragrance in a lonely state or lonely space, a little away, half a foot away, the fragrance can not be smelled, the flower is no longer a fragrant flower. However, in the following week, the tender scent grew old, cloudy, heavy, and unrecognizable, betraying it a few days ago, or conversely, leaving it a few days ago. Can I expect the initial tender, soft "temperament" to last and remain unchanged, and I won't be so stupid.
We don't see each other very often, and he doesn't call much, one every few days. It's kind of funny, but I, every time the phone rings, I see that it's his, and I am happy, I feel that life is not unbearable, and in an instant I feel like I am watching my "happiness" - I am no longer a girl after all, although I am still weak and not so "tender" emotionally. I think most of the girls' first love is consumed in fantasy, and most of the "fragrance" of love has no real object, maybe I think too much, because I have to admit that Chen Jie's phone call is my only spiritual sustenance. Every time he called, no matter what he was doing, I would immediately put it down and run out to meet him.
However, he had to wear a condom every time he had sex with me, even when I was safe. I said, don't wear it, I'm safe today. He looked at me and put the condom back on. I think he may not trust me, afraid that I will lie to him, deliberately say the wrong safe period, and then let himself get pregnant and force him to get married. I really want to say that his worries are unnecessary, and I love him, so I don't want to possess him, because possession always has an end, and that end, none of which is good, and I am afraid of swallowing the bitter fruit. But the trouble of love is that people constantly have the desire to possess, possession is hopeless, and the bitter fruit is waiting there.
After each meeting, he drove me back and left without looking back. Looking at the vanishing car shadow, I realized that I had been standing there motionless, and I suddenly felt that I was lonely, even humble, like a garbage can on the side of the road, it stood there every day, and only when throwing garbage did people realize its ephemeral existence.
3
The mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After that, I came to Xizhen from Hangzhou at the end of each month to visit my mother and bring her some snacks, money, daily necessities, etc. This section of the road is not too long, one hour by train, one hour by minibus, then transfer to bus No. 98, walk a section of old alley road, and you will arrive.
Westtown turned out to be a quiet town, and life was slow, and everything was slow. The women wore pajamas day and night to come out to eat melon seeds and roll down the road. Men rub mahjong, drink old wine, pee on the side of the road, and stand on the road when they are drunk, cursing and swearing.
Every family lives the same day, people slice and dry kohlrabi, pickle it and eat it. The radish is also sliced and dried and pickled, and various sauerkraut are also pickled to make meat baba, sugar cakes and wormwood balls. I deeply feel that the variety and delicacy of food must be premised on the leisurely nature of time. If you look at the big cities, there's no food, McDonald's, KFC, what's there, oh, and shameless pizza. The women of this town use fresh water chestnut to steam rice, which is sweet and glutinous. When the water chestnut was first bought, it was tender green, with a little pink halo, like a girl's carcass, and the old water chestnut was black and thick, with two pointed ends, like a buffalo horn. The seasonal water chestnut is mild, diverse in shape and ambiguous in shape. They peeled off the water chestnuts one by one, and the milky white tender flesh was suddenly and helplessly exposed, and after a mouthful, the milk overflowed the corners of the mouth. In autumn, they steamed river crabs, salt-baked shrimp, and stir-fried edamame and home-pickled cabbage, and the fragrance wafted through the doors and windows to the neighborhood. In winter, people will make a stew of dried bamboo shoots and a lot of soy sauce, and after the stew, the pieces of meat will show a dull and sticky dark brown color, and with old wine, they will soon get drunk.
In contrast to the slowness of the town, the speed at which young people talk to their partners is amazing, usually within a month, the parents of both sides meet, greet, eat, and then for another two months, kowtow, wedding banquets, cave houses, and dolls fall to the ground.
Later, Westtown changed, and it was packaged as a tourist destination, and it was no longer the quiet town it used to be. Every weekend, a large number of men drive to the town with different big butts and small butts women to drink and eat and spend the Spring Festival together. The surface of the river, which used to be used for washing rice and laundry, is covered with greasy skin and soap bubbles washed down by the men and women who take a shower after their work. The bubbles are clustered around the garbage in the river, floating gently on the surface of the water, sometimes slowly, sometimes urgently, sometimes meeting with other foams, sometimes being blocked by the current or garbage and bursting, like the cells of life are not breaking and changing.
I slept in Westtown's mother's room and had insomnia again. The voice of the next room came again, which had been converted into a hostel by the neighbors, the Spring Peach Hotel. The walls were not well insulated, and almost every night I could hear all kinds of sounds from the next room, it was literally live. The man's coughing sound, cough cough, cough as if to collapse the floor, cough up the wall, thick phlegm clumps stuck to his lungs like flesh, the loud shouting of cards playing, the smashing of chair legs, the sound of profligate and lewd laughter, at last the sound of the rushing water, so that it was close to bedtime, and at last it was quiet. Unexpectedly, the song rose again, what "where the peach blossoms bloom ......", "stand guard ...... for our great motherland", "Yangtze River, where do you come from......". These stupid middle-aged and elderly people, I pulled some tissues, rolled them into small balls and stuffed them into my ears. Well, such a good way, how did I start with it, I didn't expect it, alas, people are not always smart all at once, I really earnestly hope that the people next door will sleep to death at once, but these people are too good, and my nervous system is too weak, it's not fair!
The sound of snoring through the thin wall and the tissues in my ears vibrated my eardrums, the sound of dream talking, the sound of a woman calling for bed, these different sounds mixed together, made me miserable, sometimes a little excited, the more I tried to cover my head to sleep, the more awake I became. The voice next door came again, in the dead of night, I heard it clearly, it was all a dream talk, the strange thing is that the one who said the dream talk started with a person, and then there was one more person, and then there was another person, I listened carefully against the wall, and the "conversation" was like this:
"I told you, I'm not who you think I am...... "You want to hurt me...... Who am I, you ask your mother......", "You are looking for death......", "What represents, on behalf of the bitch......", "Money must be hidden...... Can't talk nonsense...... My dancing is still beautiful...... "......
This kind of dream talk is different every night, how can I sleep?! I have to get up and smoke. I looked around, and there were a few empty bottles, and I picked them up and smelled the bottles, and they smelled vinegar, poor mother. My father has been dead for many years, my mother has remarried and divorced, and now lives with my grandparents. After a long time, her grandfather began to annoy her, feeling that the daughter who married out of the marriage was not good to live at home, and ate separately from each other, and the mother was alone again, and almost passed the whole day in the house by herself. She was unfortunate, I understand, thinking about what had happened in her heart during all these long years.
The mother's room was cluttered and full of useless things. She was reluctant to throw away anything, plastic bags, ointment boxes, disposable lunch boxes and chopsticks, toothpaste skins, combs with many broken teeth, empty soy sauce bottles, moldy mosquito coils, rotten and blackened pickles in the jar, greasy powder boxes, broken lipsticks that were never used, a dozen dirty towels hanging next to the sink, and broken mirrors still hanging upright on the wall. When I opened the closet, the musty smell hit me, and the clothes that had been molded more than ten years ago were still hanging in the closet, and the mold spots on the white shirt were faintly visible, like corpse spots, like a contagious skin disease. I didn't expect my mother to have so many pairs of high heels, twenty or thirty pairs, but each one was in tatters, piled up under a dark bed covered with cobwebs. Shoes tend to make people think of feet, and I think of my mother's feet, which are beautiful, small and fair, and now they are all lost.
4
I still can't say why I like Chen Jie. In terms of appearance, he is lackluster and has little money, but he is just a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts. The first time I met him, it was at a small exhibition of his paintings. It's all pictures of beautiful women, dressed in that kind of lady's long skirt, the beauties are either combing their hair, or throwing flattering eyes, or washing their feet by the river, or lazy on the grass and lying down, pretentious, scratching their heads, it's the type of painting I hate, and I want to pull out my feet and walk away without looking at it. My girlfriend who brought me here said don't worry, I should talk to the painter, and I like these paintings. I had to endure it and go around with her again. There are two landscapes in the corner, depicting an empty grassland, which is slightly more pleasing to the eye than those pictures of beautiful women.
Finally, my girlfriend stepped forward and said to the painter, "Oh, your characters are so well drawn, like the real thing." When he heard this, he showed a standard polite smile, which was specially designed for this occasion and has been polished by time, so it is easy and effortless. I was absent-minded and said, "I think those two landscapes are better." Then he was anxious to leave, and the painter listened and asked, "Do you also paint?" I said that I could not paint or paint, but he talked a lot, and said no, it seems that you know how to paint. I repeated my ignorance of the Word, and he said you know.
I almost annoyed him, how could I be so self-righteous and imposing on others, I wanted to say a few words to him, but I still held back, this time it was my turn to squeeze out his "standard polite smile" on his face, I think my smile must be more contrived, ugly to death, but it also clearly conveyed a message, that is: Okay, okay, I'm leaving. Thinking like this in his heart, he smiled like that on his face, so he also looked at him. That look, I thought in hindsight, I planted it on that look: his eyes were a little different, but they were sincere.
I went to Chen Jie's studio, which was actually an abandoned props room in his school. Dirty mess, discarded picture frames, easels, broken plaster statues, human sculptures and other miscellaneous items abound. It was afternoon, and the sun was shining brightly through the glass windows, casting shadows on the broken plaster statues and human sculptures.
He sat on the chaise longue, lazily resting his feet on his easel and smoking, the pots of plants in front of him had long since died, just like him. I said that your paintings and people are divided. The beauty you paint is cheesy, and you seem to be fine, at least you know that your painting is cheesy, and you can watch it. He smiled sheepishly. His embarrassment makes me feel funny, and the embarrassment of a big man is undoubtedly his most real moment, so I have a better impression of him.
He asked if he drank coffee, and I said no, for fear that I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. He said let's drink some lemonade, I have a good lemon, I'll juice it for you. The juicer was brand new, and with the rough rumble of the juicer, the light and slightly sour lemon juice flavor wafted lightly. I took a sip, not bad, so I blurted out, it's good.
The sunlight shone in through the window, bathing the plaster figures and plaster skulls in the studio, and also shining on the paintings I didn't like, they seemed to come alive and vivid, as if some unknown life was trembling slightly. I stared at the plaster skulls, and thought to myself, from whose skulls had they been made? Those people, when they were alive, could not have imagined that they would be here, looking ahead, for people to figure out, and that the mothers of these men would be in a terrible mood if they knew that the fate of their sons was like this, and at night, when it was dark, I thought that these skulls were terrible, and I would not dare to put such a thing in my own house, even if there was such a skull in the neighbor's house next door.
Chen Jie took out some works on paper to show me. Well, this is something else, painting the everyday, painting the imagination, and painting some floral still lifes, the colors and shapes are very light and weird, the teardrops are crystal and the face is soft daffodils, the woman's tender jade legs wake up from the withered flowers, the backlit branches in the night sky are shiny and shiny, and the shadow of the night walker spreads and then stretches to the sky, suggesting the disappearance of life. I clearly felt the gloom and sincerity in his paintings, and when I said that these paintings were much better than those in the exhibition, he smiled so embarrassedly, as if one of his unjust cases had been rehabilitated by me in time. I asked why not take these paintings to the exhibition, and he listened and sighed softly.
How could I forget that afternoon, when he suddenly said I'll draw you, so he spread out the paper on the drawing board, looked at me lazily, and drew with a charcoal in his hand. The way he looked at me was so direct, my heart seemed to be nervous. He said as he painted, your nose is so beautiful, your eyes seem to hide melancholy, you are very proud. I said you're drawing, I'll show me fortune telling.
He showed it to me when he was done. I was young, looking up slightly, elegant and stubborn, and my demeanor resembled a picture my father had taken of me in the little park, when I was less than fifteen years old. I stared at him for a moment, didn't speak, and handed him back. Then, suddenly, he kissed me.
And just like that, we began to correspond. Some evenings, as we sat together, watching the rain outside the window, the plantains wet and shiny, the distant forests gray and blue, and the time was quiet and slow, I gently hugged him from behind. The rain was still falling, and somehow, I was sad, I knew it was a good time, and I knew that good times would pass.
When Chen Jie is happy to paint, he will drink some wine, but he really doesn't drink much. He will also make excuses for himself, saying that without good wine, he will not be happy, otherwise he will become an alcoholic. When he drank his eyes were bright and his temperament was not at all like those who painted the cheesy and beautiful women, I teased him and mocked him, and he said that I liked your straightforwardness, and that I could tell you the truth. Once, after drinking (he didn't drink much), he took my hand lightly, considered it for a moment, and said, "Don't get married, don't have children, don't have a family," and after a pause, he said, "I know it's cruel to say this, you women can't pass this hurdle, but I'm telling the truth." ”
He danced that day after drinking, and his dancing made my stomach hurt for a long time. How can anyone dance like this, not to mention that there is no musicality, not to mention that the dancing posture is terrible, not to mention the stupid movements, the problem is that he is still smug, unscrupulous, completely blind, panting while jumping, gasping and laughing at the same time, and then pulled me over, and both jumped wildly. Of course, my dancing sense is much better, but helplessly, my aura is completely controlled by his "crazy jump", so that I actually enter his rhythm and "musicality", the rhythm is broken, like a beginner. The veteran dancer I was proud of had vanished, and he was even more proud of it. We danced for a long time, until we were all tired and fell to our stomachs.
5
The Seventh People's Hospital of Xizhen, referred to as the Seventh Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital that everyone in Xizhen knows. The people of Xizhen scolded people, so they said, "You came out of the Seventh Courtyard!" Since my mother lived in the Seventh Courtyard, when she heard this, she always seemed to be talking about me, and I immediately flashed and had a kind of uneasiness that the secret was being peeped at.
The fat conductor on the minibus shouted at every passenger who came up: "You, you, what about you, deaf, sit over there", "And you, isn't there a vacancy, are you still pestle?" The driver's horn is pressed indiscriminately, the car is parked indiscriminately, as long as you are happy, you can let people come up casually. When the peasants who went out sweated profusely and carried their burdens to drive chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs into the car, I was immediately caught in the middle, surrounded by the hot, fishy smell, which made me drowsy, and then helplessly became more sensitive, and I was troubled by the detailed discernment of all those smells. The queen was still scolding, and I was restless, and I wanted to be those chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs that were jumping around, at least for this time, they were much more comfortable than I was.
Walking into the ward of the Seventh Hospital, most of you will meet the young, smiling attending doctor, she is wearing a white coat and ponytail, which really has the taste of an angel in white. It is said that she has quite a few admirers in Westtown, and goosebumps stand up every time I see her laughing. I remember once I called her to inquire about my mother's condition, and when she learned that I was a family member of the patient, she immediately became impatient, spoke in a sharp and rude tone, and hung up the phone with a croak. I was stunned, thinking that my mother's hospitalization was through her hands, and it had only been a few months, so why had her face changed.
On that day, after asking her mother about her condition, she said that she would be hospitalized immediately, and she must be hospitalized, and then she directed two other female nurses in white coats to walk up to her mother, one on each side, and dragged her mother out of the car like a prisoner and into the iron gate of the inpatient department. The two female nurses looked like two, and they pressed their mother to the bed, tied their hands and feet, and the mother was tied to the bed in a big shape. The angel in white smiled and took off her high heels, so her mother's high heels were quickly thrown under the bed. The angel in white expressed satisfaction and continued to point, and soon, my mother's watch and ring were removed and handed over, I hurriedly reached out to catch it, and was about to put it in my bag, in the blink of an eye, the zipper of my mother's red down jacket was also opened, and the trouser belt was also removed, and the two women touched my mother's whole body, as if they were still looking for something, this scene made me feel that I was not in the hospital, but in the detention center. Now the mother was lying on the bed like a shelled prawn, writhing as if she knew she was about to be thrown into a hot, smoking frying pan, struggling and making ahhh The angel in white scolded: "What you shout, what you shout, if you shout again, your mouth will be blocked." The mother's mouth immediately closed and silenced, but her body was still writhing, and her expression began to ache.
Grandma was crying beside her, her mouth trembling slightly, I don't know if she was pitying her daughter, or angry at her daughter's rough treatment, maybe both. I was confused and helpless, and the three women of our family, three generations of old, middle-aged and young people, all looked like lame mimes at the moment, babbling together, unable to even say a complete sentence. At this time, the angel in white said to his mother, "Be honest, be honest, as long as you don't make trouble, you will be loosened later." ”
Ten minutes later, the mother was indeed untied. In the small ward, only our family was left with the old, weak, sick and disabled. When my mother saw that the doctors and nurses were gone, she got up from the bed and beat her chest and shouted: "Mom, you are ruthless, and you sent me to this kind of place again. Then he pointed at me and said, "You, you, you, are you my daughter, you are not." When I gave birth, I felt the nurses croaking twice in my womb with pliers, and I gave birth to two, twins. You're not my daughter, you're my daughter's doppelganger, you go and get my daughter back, woo woo, ahhhhh ”
Looking at my mother, I didn't know what to say. I became a language idiot, and I squeezed out a sentence for a long time: "I'll go out and buy you steamed buns." Although my mother was still sad, she didn't forget to explain: "More vinegar." ”
I flew out of the iron door of the inpatient department, past the office of the angel in white, two garbage heaps, and a dusty road, and went straight ahead, preoccupied. Passers-by thought that something was going on, but in fact I was just going to buy a basket of steamed buns, but I guessed that my expression was too serious and too fast, and I inadvertently broke up a pair of wild dogs on the side of the road who were mating. They were so angry that they chased after me and barked incessantly.
When I handed the bun to my mother, I had mixed feelings, and I didn't know if I was trying to please her, or send her away, or something. The mother ate all the buns, then put the chopsticks on the packed box that she had eaten, picked them up and threw them at the trash can next to the bed, kicked off her shoes, and lay on her back on the bed, as if accepting the reality that she had to be hospitalized, and tilted her head weakly to us and said, "So, when are you going to see me?"
6
When Xizhen came back, I didn't tell Chen Jie about my mother's madness, I just said that she was sick, but I told him about another madman.
I was walking with my head down that day when someone greeted me from behind. When I looked back, it was an old man, but his eyes did not look at me, but he smelled a foul smell, and his appearance was a little terrible. But I can't remember who this person is. As this man passed me in a madness, I began to think about it. It turned out to be him, the "crazy old five". The memory is also strange, either I can't remember it at all, or I remember it all at once. In this "I remembered everything", there was also "time", and even people dragged it out with time, and after more than ten years, he has become like this. At that time, he was also barefoot in winter, and often foamed at the mouth, which was the algae foam born from too much talk. He was always loitering in front of our middle school, and as soon as school was over, he would run up and touch the breasts of the girls. The girls are afraid of him, hate him, avoid him, and sometimes we pick up small stones on the side of the road to beat him when we are in a hurry. He was not angry or troublesome when he was beaten, as if he was expecting the stones we had thrown at him, his eyes sparkled to greet and watch the stones fly, hit, and land, and then he turned his head and longed for the second batch of stones flying in the air, and then he continued to follow us with a smile and a smile.
One rainy day, he suddenly started to give a speech at the school gate, foaming at the corners of his mouth, and he had been speaking for a while. I only noticed that his hairstyle was extremely ugly, and the person next to him said that it was "Lenin's head", and I forgot who Lenin was for a while, and asked an uncle next to him, in exchange for a look of contempt. He squeezed a string of words out between his teeth: "I don't even know Lenin, what else do you know!" Alas, what do you know nowadays!" I ignored him, and continued to admire the hairstyle of the crazy old five, thinking that if the crazy old five wore such a hairstyle to tell us about history lessons, I might remember who Lenin was. His hairstyle is mostly bald, if you can look down, the hairstyle will look like a "crescent bay", but the hair is messy, dog-gnawed, rain-drenched, but smooth. He couldn't understand anything, as if he was arguing with anyone, Marx, Lenin, the state and revolution, the origin of the family and private property, what Hegel said, what Feuerbach said, what Lenin said, Chairman Mao said, and he also said a string of other titles, which I forgot and didn't understand very well, and the people around me were sometimes making noise, sometimes making fun, but most of the time they were listening in a daze.
"Revolution is not a dinner party, it is not a fuss, but you eat big fish and big meat every day, so you are all bad guys, you are the object of the revolution, what? You don't eat big fish and big meat, then what do you eat? Eat dried fish? Dried fish is also big fish and big meat, you eat, you are a reactionary, Lenin said, we must be ruthless to the enemy like winter, we will sweep you away, we must be invincible, what do you know! Have you read "The State and Revolution"! You are illiterate, fake revolutionary, you know how to write my name, you are a fool, you look at your eyes, have you seen your own eyes, those are pigs' eyes, but you don't know that pigs are also very smart, so the Hui people don't eat pork, the Hui people save so much pork for you to eat, you still beat people, what is the reason......"
Crazy Lao Wu is thin and small, every time he is beaten, he is dying there, looking very cowardly, but there are exceptions, that is, if others scold him for having the word "Mom", Crazy Lao Wu will suddenly show a fierce look in his eyes, swing his fist and fight back, and as a result, he was beaten even worse. I once saw the crazy old man being pressed to the ground, his hands trembling, and the blood flowing from his mouth and nose blurred his face, and at this time his bloody mouth was still muttering to himself: "Damn, scold my mother, I will shoot you to death, I will shoot you to death......"
One day it was dark after school, and it was very cold in winter, so I quickened my pace and wanted to go home early, when I suddenly saw a dark shadow on the wall of the house in front of me, which startled me. I was also curious, and glanced into the window, under the yellow light, the family was eating dinner, the usual scene, what was there to see, I turned my head to look at the crazy old five, and found that his eyes were shining with tears...... He was moved, and at that time I suspected that the crazy old five was not really crazy, he was pretending, but when I met again, he returned to his old self.
After Chen Jie listened to the story of the crazy old five, his eyes lit up, and he seemed to be very interested in the madman, saying that it would be fun if all the people in a city were crazy, what do you say?
I remembered my mother and didn't say anything.
He said, "What would it be like if all the people in a city were crazy and all the people in a country were crazy? The most interesting thing is that there is no concept of madness in this crazy country, everyone is crazy, and they are at peace with each other, close cooperation, and harmony. If someone from outside comes to visit relatives and listens and watches, they will soon find out that the people here are all crazy, what should you do? Attention, you must not tell the truth at this time, you have to pretend that you have not found anything, and think that everything is very good here, and you must make the madman feel that you are the same as each other, so that you are safe, otherwise you will soon be killed by the madman. ”
"In fact, the madman country is not badly managed, it is a maverick, and it belongs to the world's advanced level, developed countries. Spiced beef is cheap, and pizza is not only grilled but has more than three layers of meat filling. The fountain in the center of the square is actually Wuliangye, after spraying, change Moutai, take turns to spray, tourists stretch out their hands to hold it, you can drink enough, after getting drunk and lying down, there are crazy people who come to fan on the side, very considerate. Crazy people on the street often give impromptu speeches, the language is vivid, the inspiration is like a spring, there are absolutely no clichés, lies, big words, official words, are very creative. The house price is stable, the KTV is not only free, but there is also a song lottery that is easy to win, the salary is not spent, the happiness index is always 'off the table', and so on. The more Chen Jie spoke, the more energetic he became, I said: "You are the president of the crazy country, for life, how about it?" He said that it is good, but I am afraid that I will not be able to do it, because people are directly elected, I am afraid that it will not work, the main flaw is that I am not a madman, and people do not choose me. I said, "If people can see that you are not in the same group as them, then you are not crazy!" Chen Jie glared at me and said, "People are crazy, but not stupid, of course they can see that I am a heretic, and I will be hunted down." ”
"Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Bacon, Freud Jr., these painting masters, in fact, are on the verge of madness, so they paint well, understand the essence, each lead the madness, and stand alone in the contemporary. If they're all like me, they're all over, and they're just ordinary people. ”
"The real creative activity is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it produces great works, on the other hand, it consumes extreme physical energy, and those who almost die early, and those who are over-consumed and do not return to themselves in time go crazy. Having said that, what is madness, the pathological definition is one of them, and the other is that people are truly free, and they can't return to their original self freely. Speaking of this, Chen Jie took out a few paintings from the drawer next to him and showed them to me, they were some colored pencils and crayon sketches, the pen was ruthless, the color was poisonous, and the imagination was wild, it was indeed rare to see, could it be Chen Jie's recent work? ”
We drank and talked nonsense, and before we knew it, it was late at night. I made some late-night snacks, milk and eggs, and had sex on the broken couch in his studio. He kissed me and put his ear to me and said, "If only I were a madman, my billions of sperm are billions of maniacs, billions of geniuses." I laughed and said, "Then the world is over!"
7
Now, it's time to talk about my friend Ye Xiaoya.
I'm used to smoking "Aixi" brand women's cigarettes. This kind of cigarette is slender and long, it looks good in the hand, but the smell of smoke is light, as if women like to be light in everything, in fact, not necessarily, I sometimes want to drink high alcohol and smoke strong cigarettes, the question is with whom. My smoking was taught by Ye Xiaoya.
It's funny to think that our first encounter was in the bathroom, near the university, in the humble and even somewhat filthy public bathhouse on the border between urban and rural areas. Women in the bath, in and out of the bath, is a man's dream of beauty, and as a woman, I say "sick", I also like to see beautiful women, like flawless women, although I have hardly seen it, but this mind does not die. I don't like Ingres's "Turkish Bath", although the women in it are colorful and colorful, but they are obviously over-idealized, not to mention the fake "plump", just the "fair" skin color, I think it is actually no different from the "dead white" of lime, not at all vivid and sexy of women. Picasso's words "beauty is dangerous" won my heart, and he said it honestly, and honesty itself is as frank and moving as naked. My first impression of Ye Xiaoya was her buttocks, a plump and round buttocks, plump, white, and beautiful; I have never seen Chinese women have such good buttocks, they are generally flat, out of shape, and there is almost no aesthetic at all except for the existence of functionality, in other words, in the eyes of the painter, that kind of buttocks belong to "there is as if there is nothing". I thought my ass was also very good, but when I saw her, I couldn't help but be stunned, what kind of ass is this, what kind of waist is this, what kind of body is this, I hate it!
Somehow, I began to worry about her safety. It's so beautiful, it's dangerous in such a filthy and filthy place. It seems that the reason why the environment is the environment is to destroy beautiful things and people, I don't know how this idea came to me, but it came out of nowhere. As for her, she may also be aware that a pair of eyes are paying attention to her, and the real beauty is aware of this kind of "visual environment" and does not care, so what about the danger of this environment? She dried her body, wrapped herself in a bath towel, and walked out.
I, as for me, followed her all the way to the woods, and it began to get dark. She stopped, looked back at me, smiled, and said, "It's still you, why follow me." I didn't know how to answer, and I wanted to say, "You're so beautiful," but the word that came out of my mouth was, "I'm sorry." "Excuse me?" "Well, you forgot something, it's your cigarette." I handed her a pack of cigarettes that she had forgotten in the cupboard, and she smiled, took it, and said thank you. In the moonlight, she was as beautiful as an angel.
We became friends. I don't have many friends, and neither does she. I was withdrawn, she was beautiful, she was withdrawn and beautiful, and I thought about it blindly, as if there was some kind of inner connection in it. That day she suddenly asked me why I liked beautiful women so much, I said I didn't know, she said but she didn't like it, I asked why, she said I don't know. Xiaoya has a gloomy personality and few words, and I am gloomy and silent. I said, the state should consider building such an army, all of them are beautiful women, and when they are about to be defeated, the beautiful women's brigade will shine on the forward position, how about it? The permanent cease-fire agreement has been successfully signed, and who said that "those who do not surrender with their soldiers will go up"? Those who retire with women will go up! Xiao Ya laughed and said that I am really good at, but the beauties are miserable. I said it doesn't matter, the beauties are all Shaolin masters with unique skills, specializing in kicking the crotch. Xiaoya was so happy that she rolled off the bed this time, laughed, and then turned over and hit me, saying "It's so annoying, how dare you say anything in your mouth......", and then she couldn't laugh anymore. Purely out of being "infected" by Xiaoya's laughter, I was also happy. At this time, Xiaoya raised her face, alas, it was full of tears, and she said to me almost in a pleading tone: "I really like you." "That's a rare joy for us.
But Xiaoya's gloom often puzzles me. A woman, surprisingly beautiful is a godsend, in the commercial society, take the lead, enjoy the advantage, what is gloomy? Xiaoya has no job, that is because she does not want to work, does not want to work? I have to mention the fact that I wanted to avoid the fact that Xiaoya's state of mind is special, her concentration of thoughts does not seem to be very good, she is always roaming, and it is difficult to arouse her attention in everything. Xiaoya can't be considered stupid, but "roaming" makes her look godless, and unlike other girls, she is not afraid of the dark. Centipedes, snakes, spiders, and blood, which are the things that ordinary girls fear, she also did not react. Once, she put the centipede in her hand and played with it, but the centipede didn't bite her. She also kept two snakes in her own room, one was a black and red spotted python, and the other was a silver krait, she named them "Big Girl" and "Little Girl", fortunately, in Xiao Ya's house, those two snakes were really well-behaved, completely "at home", oh my God, I was scared when I thought about it. She often hugged snakes, let them wrap around her at will, and bought guinea pigs to feed them. Looking at the snake devouring the guinea pig, Xiaoya showed a sweet smile.
One day it was late, and Xiaoya left me for the night. Thinking of those two snakes, I was scared, so Xiaoya kept them in a cardboard box. I said do you usually put them outside when you sleep, and she said yes, I'm not afraid, sometimes they sleep with me, and I start to be scared again when I hear it. Xiaoya guessed my mind and said, it's okay, they listen to me.
I was lying in my clothes, and Xiaoya was almost naked, lying beside me. I wasn't used to that, let alone with a naked woman, but I quickly seemed to feel like it was natural. The scent in the darkness reminded me of her fragrant flesh, and when I asked her what perfume she used, she said she was useless. My hand touched Xiaoya's breasts, and her nipples became hard all of a sudden, and she pushed my hand away with a smile and touched mine. We were so entangled, and the moon came out.
The softness, the body fragrance, the beauty, and the body temperature that permeates the quilt at this time seem to contain natural kindness, but it has nothing to do with it. Beauty is troublesome. I thought in the dark, fortunately Xiaoya didn't have a job, her beauty didn't have to deal with "meetings", "socializing", and "pulling relationships", that would be simply insulting beauty, and she didn't have to worry about the "title", beauty has nothing to do with it or is superior. I think it would be nice if I were a man, such a beautiful body is the only one that should be loved. Xiaoya suddenly sobbed softly, I stroked her shoulder, asked what was wrong, she didn't speak, still sobbing. After getting used to the darkness in the house, I can see Xiaoya around me again, and it is more real and moving in the haze. At this time, she suddenly said: "Only you are really good to me." ”
Xiaoya's boyfriend is a hooligan, I've seen that bastard, he looks greedy, he didn't even graduate from high school, he has two small money at home, he is idle all day long, he likes to fight, he shoots viciously, and he wants to kill people every time he shoots, so he is a frequent visitor to the police station, and unfortunately he can't get out once. I persuaded Xiaoya to break up with him, but my sophistication reminded me that persuading people to break up can only be done in moderation, and sure enough, Xiaoya couldn't extricate herself. Sometimes they pull me to eat with them, and I don't have much to say to that bastard except roll my eyes.
Some men are so cheap, the more they ignore him, the more he wants to provoke you, this bastard man actually texts me frequently, calls, and asks me out for dinner. I thought about whether to tell Xiaoya the content of the text message, but I was afraid of causing her sadness, so I didn't say a word. Harassing text messages continued to be sent, and the content began to change a little, and gradually the language became inferior, such as "what are you dragging, what is there to drag", "You think you are amazing, you go and inquire." ”
Once, I didn't know how to meet this bastard, he was entangled, and I scolded: "You are so virtuous, you don't even deserve a finger from Xiaoya." When this bastard heard me scold him like this, he laughed instead of being angry, and said, "I, just me, I will not be worthy of her?" I tell you, I am good with her, that is sympathy for her, protect her, understand! What are you rolling your eyes, yes, why did she follow me with such a big beauty, what am I, but you are stupid, without my protection, a stupid woman like her is not a thousand people riding goods! I fight, all for her, and my ribs are also broken for her, understand! You slut!
I was about to go crazy, according to him, this guy became a righteous man! This time it was his turn to roll my eyes, and after calming himself down, he continued: "Do you know her background? I know that you don't understand anything, Xiaoya was born after her mother was gang raped, understand, born after gang rape!" Seeing me staying there, he continued: "Ye Xiaoya, if it weren't for me, when I came out of the orphanage, I would have to be a young lady." Damn, tell me what I don't deserve her, but tell me that I'm her protector! ”
I haven't seen Xiaoya since. Her text message said she had gone somewhere else with her boyfriend and that she would have a phone call when she settled down, but she hasn't been heard from since. I still have her old phone number on my phone, and when I think of her, I will gently dial it, and then I will hear the familiar and gentle mezzo-soprano: "I'm sorry, the number you dialed is empty, please check before dialing." ”
8
I work at a place called Hongda Advertising Co., Ltd., and my job is advertising planning, which is a professional writer who makes up "rhetoric". The first thing the company does when they go to work every day is that everyone stands in a slip, stretches their necks and shouts slogans at the top of their voices: "Hongda Hongda, the future is ambitious, ambitious, only Hongda." "Five minutes later, I have to do a five-minute fuck, which looks like a fool up close and like a kindergarten kid from a distance. The manager of the company said that this is a kind of dance art, which is matched with the slogan, and young people should dance more, so that they will be vigorous and profitable.
When that's done, my day begins. At the beginning, it is to sit in a cubicle of less than one square meter, racking his brains to make up those beautiful words with empty heads. On my desk are all kinds of modern Chinese dictionaries, ancient Chinese dictionaries, common allusion dictionaries, Oxford English-Chinese eight-use dictionaries, American English dictionaries, and idioms. I kept writing copy, thinking about how to package those products and then launch them. Just as any profession has an occupational disease, my occupational disease is that I no longer believe in words.
In the past few days, I have been tormented by the wording of a condom advertisement, and I have to look around for references. There was an advertisement that went like this: first, Hitler's torture and murder of the Jews, and Stalin's three party purges...... Countless images of dead people, and then the advertising slogan appeared along with the music: "If they had chosen my company's condoms, these demons would not have existed, and history would have been rewritten." "I wanted to do the same, thought about it, and felt that the difficulty was how to replace, and then I came up with it, that is, to shoot the scene of the Spring Festival crowds, high-speed congestion, and haze into a picture, flashing in turns, and then mosaic-like collective appearance in a picture, at this time the advertising slogan appeared: "If they had chosen my company's condoms, these situations would not exist, and everything would have been rewritten." "I was very proud of this idea for a while, but then the company categorically rejected it, saying that I had bad intentions and had to be careful of my job.
Every Monday is a routine meeting, and the first person to speak is always the office lady, the department manager's favorite. Colleagues say that they have slept because she is soft and soft when she talks to her manager, and turning her face to others is a dead face, and the change of flattery is terrifyingly fast. Now the manager is about to start the first, second, and third points again, and I have long lost patience, and I want to talk about dirty work, I want to dance on the podium, I want to be a happy shrew, spitting out and staining my knife red.
I have never been social, and I can't handle interpersonal relationships well since I was a child, so I am inevitably lonely, but I am more afraid of crowds and feel that the latter is especially harmful to me, so I take a compromise approach, for example, I never go to company parties, and I can't wait to go to the cafeteria first when the meal arrives, when there will be fewer people.
I was thirty-two years old, the only woman in the unit who was not married, and two days ago a female colleague who had just gotten married, suddenly floated up and asked, "Do you have a ring?" I said, "What?", she continued, my husband bought it for me, and then shook the huge diamond ring on her hand in front of me and floated away.
In the eyes of my colleagues, I was withdrawn and arrogant. They always talk about me behind my back, gossip about me, give me nicknames, and some say that I will grow old with the cat and die together. But I've never had a cat, not because I don't like it, but because I don't want to take care of it, and for someone like me who doesn't even bother to take care of himself, feeding a cat is undoubtedly a heavy burden. Maybe I don't have to wait until the day I grow old for me to rush out into the street and shout, "My life is full of regrets." "But that's not what I would say to a cat.
9
I want to go out and about, anywhere, as long as I don't go to work. I like to travel solo, even if it's to a nearby city, and I don't have a purpose, just a trip and I'm always in trouble. Think of how comfortable it is to wear a baseball cap and carry an old canvas military bag and wander around with a lot of energy. I'm still young, why not.
From Hangzhou to Shanghai, it takes about an hour by train. Walking in the squares and streets of the city, walking in the crowd, being an invisible person, leisurely, doing nothing, even if you look at the back of the head, it is not bad, the people of this city seem to really only have the back of the head.
I bought a map of Shanghai to see where I hadn't been before, and I was talking about the places I knew, museums and old streets, shops selling quirky and women's gadgets. My favorite place to spend time is a small thrift store on an old street, where the contents of the store have been contaminated by time and people, and contain indescribable substances that make me stare in a daze. The people in the old photos of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China have long since turned to ashes, and their descendants have either been annihilated, the so-called ashes on ashes, or they are still alive, or he and she have just passed by me, but there is no possibility of ever knowing each other. Old furniture, old clothes, all have been used, the owner is dead, left in the world, still remnants of the owner's breath, like a surviving person, but who will remember them. There was a rose-red silk blouse, the light silver embroidery was still faintly recognizable, and one can imagine how the decadent rose red had once been, how well it had been cared for, and now lying flat here, casually and rudely fiddled with by many strange hands, and shamelessly evaluated and bidd. It was as if I could imagine its former owner, a woman, a quiet woman, with meticulously combed black hair, drinking tea, reading a book, and being distracted in the afternoon sun, on the balcony of some deep courtyard that the world never knew about, and I couldn't imagine it, because I always wanted to think about it again.
Somehow I thought of my grandfather, who I had been in for three weeks after he died. No TV, no books (grandpa was half-blind in his old age, and the books were all disposed of), no text messages, no phone calls. There are no old friends either. For the first week, I was almost restless and wanted to leave quickly, but then I thought that this would probably be the last time I spent in my grandfather's house. After I leave, this place will be rented out, or sold, and the future owner will be someone else, a complete stranger, and even, the house will be demolished, and the excavator will only need a quarter of an hour to uproot this place where I was born and raised. I needed to stay, to be here quietly, to listen to the sound of the water pipes, to listen to the "quiet sounds" in the house, to look at everything around the house, at the empty walls, at the empty cabinets, at the residual soap on the sink, at the garbage baskets, watching the sun shine on the floor, and then slowly moving to the wall, first to the left, then to the right, to grandpa's desk, to the bed, and then gradually disappearing. At the moment, they are still "alive", and I can still be with them, breathing the atmosphere of the house that still belongs to my grandfather and me. Is Grandpa still there, if there is really another latitude of the world, at this time Grandpa should see me alone in the house, I can't help but call Grandpa softly, calling, that voice, even I feel horrified and strange when I hear it.
However, in the third week, I seemed to suddenly wake up to the fact that my grandfather was really gone, and he couldn't see or hear me. The sound of the water pipes leaking, the sunlight shining in every day is still the same, the desk, the bed, the doors and windows are still the same, the deep feeling of being grandpa everywhere in the "first seven" is slowly disappearing, since when they have transformed into (in fact, they have always been) wooden materiality. I left the contents of the garbage basket behind, and the fluorescent lamps were the same. Nothing new under the fluorescent lamp, yes, no. Death, death, please engulf me, because I don't understand you.
I ate a bowl of pork rib rice noodles at a small shop down the street, which was a bit spicy and I drank a lot of water. Sitting opposite me is a couple of high school students, also wearing blue and white school uniforms, hugging each other, feeding each other, inseparable all the time, people in love should be one, like some monsters in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", two heads, four feet, walking around.
How do I pass the time, I continue to study the map, there is an international art fair, it is coming to an end today, so let's go there first.
I don't take art seriously, it's to relieve boredom, and those artists are babbling about what they do, and they're a little crazy, but I still like to watch it. Aren't we, the walking dead, no matter what our profession or our role in, actually trying to do things? In this case, I like to take things seriously and really keep things secretive every day, so as not to live this life in vain.
The fair was only two subway stops away from where I was looking at the map, and as I expected, there were no people in the exhibition hall, so it was a pleasant and quiet moment. There are many installations, paintings, photography, sculptures of various materials, animation, film and television, and many types of works from various countries. When I was in college, I took art history as an elector, and I thought it would be easy to get this credit, but I was confused, but I passed the exam with a high score, so I guess I have a relationship with art. There is a point of view that I have insisted on until now, that is, no matter how noisy you are as an artist, it is okay, but it is difficult to say that you are "exploring the essence of the unknown world", because since there is an "essence", how can you be "unknown"; artists should not keep saying that they want to present the "indefiniteness" of something, in fact, you are only presenting your own "indefiniteness", and it has nothing to do with the indefinite nature of things. Self-imposed puzzles are narcissistic, and self-revealing riddles are boring. Although I don't really like puzzles and mysteries, I think they are indispensable, otherwise life will be really boring.
James Casebere, the American installation artist who debuted in the 80s, is also here, it is a series of huge daguerreotyped photographs of a long underground space that is extremely claustrophobic, with single rooms, wards and conference rooms, stacked flush toilets, hospital beds, desks in dusty classrooms, and charming glow in single rooms, this is a series titled "Shelter". I remember when I first came across these photographs in a contemporary art magazine, I was shocked: Why do they look so much like some kind of "peach blossom paradise" in my heart? When the reporter asked him where he was looking for such an oppressive space, James Casbia said, "I made it myself." ”
And the Mexican female painter Frida's "Birth" is also hanging on the wall, which is a masterpiece. A masked woman was lying on a bed covered with white sheets, her legs spread apart, the baby's head already poking out of her vagina, her eyes drooping, and the sheets red with blood. I knew Frida as well as I knew my cosmetics, and I had a beautiful self-portrait of her on the wall of my bed, noticing that she had a faint beard. This sad woman has been working on the verge of madness, she loves her husband dearly, and she knows that he is by no means her own, and her sister is also one of her lovers. Later, she was paralyzed in a car accident and was still drawing in bed. She was suffering from severe depression, and when she was seriously ill, it was the eve of her next creative peak, and how dark it was. I looked into the eyes of the artist in the profile, and she looked at me, the painter who died more than sixty years ago, as if he was still alive.
There is not much video art, but there is one work that caught my attention. In terms of form, it's very simple, in fact, it's not even an image, it's just a piece of text typed out through a video camera. I walked into a room with a light, and after six or seven seconds, the light went out suddenly, and a slide show of the text appeared on the wall. In order to maintain the sense of the original, I still quote the original text of the work as follows:
In 1905, a French doctor conducted an experiment in which he tried to talk to a head that had just been severed by a guillotine.
When the head was cut off, the eyelids and lips tightened for five or six seconds, and after a few seconds the contraction stopped, and the face appeared saggy, and the eyelids were half-closed, revealing the whites of the eyes, just like those of a man who had just died.
That's when I shouted to him, "Lanquilla!" and I saw his eyes slowly open, his movements clear, his eyes not dazed and hollow, looking at me vividly, and after a few seconds, slowly closing.
I shouted again, and the curtain slowly lifted again, not shrinking, looking more at me, and then slowly closing again. When I shouted at him a third time, he didn't respond. The whole process lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds.
Generally speaking, it takes 25 to 30 seconds to read this text.
10
At about two o'clock in the morning, my mother's voice on the phone was very soft, as if she was afraid that others would hear:
“...... Something is going to happen...... I saw the woman again yesterday, and she was standing outside the window, looking at me with pride, and when I thought of this, I was angry! The black dark flower cheongsam she wore was still made by me, and I was doing evil, and I admit that she was prettier than me, but wasn't that just a skin! I would one day rip off that skin, tear it apart, eat it, pull it out, and pull it into the maggot nest! I have already selected the thatched pit, I searched all the thatched pits in Xizhen, don't forget that I am a mathematician, I carried out precise calculations and elimination, and finally locked the one in the alley behind the Water and Power Bureau, the thatched pit is relatively deep, no one has cleaned it for several months, the maggots have long tails, and the mouth is so big that they can eat me, and they can't eat a single skin?
"Her belly seems to have been enlarged by him, this stinky woman is a dog, I don't want to see them look proud, I don't want to fight with that kind of rotten woman, I want maggots to eat the little evil seeds in her stomach together, no matter what, I have my own outlook on life......"
"Your sister came to see me this morning, and I asked her to burn some paper for your father...... They killed your father, and now they want to kill me, am I really looking at the wrong person, what are they doing behind their backs? I just laughed the last time I saw him. ”
I had to turn off the phone again, go to sleep, and the next morning, just turn it on, and the phone came again.
"I tell you, don't say it, your uncle raped me a long time ago, you don't believe it, what does a child know, he came out of the photo and pressed me to the bed, I remember very clearly, I was peeling edamame, he cried and grabbed my neck, and then laughed again, I wanted to shout but couldn't shout, and he went back to the photo when it was over. I immediately tore up that picture so that I could tear him to death, but it didn't rot when I tore it, and I couldn't burn it, so I cried...... Then I found out that there were smiling faces on the windows, and you were there, and I saw you, I recognized you, and you were smiling. ”
"Those female nurses are also wrong, I think they must have been bought, I didn't feel well after I drank those medicines, and now I don't drink the water they handed me anymore...... Recently I have a lot of pain in my vagina, I smell medicine on my underwear, they must have done their hands and feet, they have a lot of doppelgangers. I was walking in the yard that day, and a woman whispered in my ear that your husband is dead, and you are happy. I was startled and wondered how she would know. I know she's one of them, maybe all of them have doppelgangers, are you also arranged by them, or why don't you come and save me, you're not my daughter, why are you holding my daughter's phone, who the hell are you, ah, what did you do to my daughter, ah? Hey, hey, you come back for me......"
I've learned that no matter how outrageous and ridiculous the words you hear, if the tone of your voice is sincere, focused, and unquestionable, it can be hard not to fall into that magnetism of persuasion. I am weak, easily influenced and shrouded, but I am not a minority. I once read the record of a psychiatric clinical diagnosis by chance, it was a college classmate who got it out of nowhere, and she read it with straight eyes, and I rushed to read it, and I also read it with straight eyes, and I didn't sleep well for several nights. The Spanish painter Dalí's paintings are famous for their grotesqueness, but after all, they are paintings, and they clearly tell you in advance, "I am making it up", but that record is different, every word, exciting, after reading it, I suddenly lost, but I don't know what I lost, I think it is the loss of the normalcy before reading, that foothold. It took me a few days to recover, and it seemed like a man's "coming back to his senses" after getting drunk, or like a woman's "recovery" after a broken love? The breeze blowing outside the window was a little damp and cool, and I was a little confused.
11
Looking down from the Zhanbi Building of Quyuan Wind Lotus, the lake is sparkling, and there are reflections of mountains, trees, and buildings inside. In a corner opposite, there is a white house, with low trees around the wall, which looks lazy in the sun. I've been here many times, sitting by the window and looking at the lake in a daze, I've always been fascinated by the decadent landscape, the lazy things and people, and the lazy sun.
I called Chen Jie and asked him when he would come, but he hesitated and hung up the phone in a hurry. When I called again, his phone was busy.
The connection between me and Chen Jie has always been like this, it has always been easy for him to find me, but it is not easy for me to find him, just like a one-line connector between spies, unless the line calls you, otherwise, the only thing you can do is to wait, wait calmly, wait for the overall situation, wait day and night, wait, only wait, and when he suddenly thinks of you, the call comes. In the past two years of dating Chen Jie, I have been waiting hard, and I don't know how long I can wait like this.
Chen Jie was hospitalized, fell down the stairs drunk, and fractured the tibia of his right leg. I heard the news from his colleague.
Chen Jie was lying on the hospital bed, his legs were already in a plaster cast and hung up. He fell asleep on the pillow, and I put the fruit on the bedside table and sat quietly on the side of the bed. He looks a little funny now, he wears a pair of sunglasses, his mouth is still slightly open, how can anyone sleep with sunglasses. The sunlight passed through the lenses of his glasses, making his eyes appear blue and green, and I smiled at the thought of the eyes of the flies. I think of the English word "FLY", which also refers to a teenager who messes around on the street all day long, and also has the meaning of "fly". Alas, Chen Jie, why didn't you fly to the bottom of the stairs!
He woke up, saw me, was a little surprised, and said "why are you here". "Why can't I come, and I won't be told when I'm hospitalized. "Bad luck. His lips moved.
"I'll peel an orange and eat it, I bought it at the small shop in front of the hospital, and I said it was very sweet. He didn't say anything, so I started peeling the oranges and feeding him petal by petal. He was honest, his mouth opened again and again, and he was very obedient. There was a lot of orange juice, and the juice seeped into the barbs next to my nails, and there was some stinging, and I licked the barbs with my mouth, and my eyes were empty. There is an urban romance drama playing in the TV next to it, humming and chirping, noisy, a man proposes to a woman, holding flowers, kneeling, petals scattered on the ground, the woman pretended to twist her face, disdainful, Chen Jie said go and turn off the TV, I said you don't watch it, others still watch it.
For several days in a row, I went to the hospital to see him. I also met a few colleagues and friends who came to visit Chen Jie, and they greeted me with a smile with that knowing look, as if they were already acquaintances. However, apart from me and his colleagues and friends, no relatives came to visit Chen Jie, and the relatives of the patients in the same bed kept coming to visit him every day. In fact, bedridden patients, like Chen Jie, need to accompany the bed and serve their daily life, the more relatives the better, and it doesn't hurt to have fewer friends or even no friends. And Chen Jie's "relative" is just me.
I stuffed a urinal under him, took it out, poured it out and washed it before putting it back in place, sometimes helping him to go to the bathroom and helping him scrub and wash frequently to prevent bedsores, but the effect was still okay. I used to take care of my grandfather who was hospitalized, and I knew all these things about serving patients, so now I am like an experienced "nurse". In the morning, after the medical staff made rounds, the female head nurse came to me and said, "You are better than the most conscientious nurses here, but if you want to find a nurse, I can introduce you, and say, you have not been married for a long time, you are so young! I smiled and didn't speak.
Two months later, Chen Mingming was hospitalized. I sent him back, and it was the first time I had been to his quarters, and we had both been dating in his studio before. His house was simple, nearly forty years old, but it looked like a pig's nest for a bachelor in his early twenties. Dirty is dirty, messy is messy, mainly because everywhere you can see that the owner of the house has no interest in life, and everywhere he does half the work: unclosed drawers, unfolded clothes, unwashed dishes and socks, unfinished dry bread, unpoured washing water and moldy tea leaves in the cup. The bed was a Simmons cushion, and the quilt was also an unfolded quilt, and the pillow was somewhere. Chen Jie lay on the mat and squinted, seemingly tired.
I started cleaning up for him. After dragging it four times, the water in the bucket was black enough to write large characters at first, then watercolor, and finally the water began to look a little clearer, and it was ready to wash brushes and watercolor pens. While wringing out the mop, I found the long and slender strands of hair wrapped around it, which belonged to a woman. I was stunned for a moment, and I didn't have time to think about it, so I continued to clean. I washed his two large basins of dirty socks, picked them out to dry in pairs, took out all the garbage in the room and threw them away, and when I came back from the last trip, I bought a small pot of pothos and put it on his windowsill. By the time it was all done, it was already getting dark.
Actually, as a woman, I have little interest in the trivial things of family life. When I was a child, I watched my parents quarrel and quarrel every day, while shopping for vegetables and cooking, and I was depressed and bored, and the days were like this day after day. I hated those days, I even thought about running away from home, but I didn't know what kind of life I longed for, and I rarely thought about marriage, I felt that "it" was far away from me, that it didn't belong to me, and that I didn't belong to it. But at this time, I don't know why, I really want to take care of the daily chores in this room for Chen Jie, and I really want to cook him a hearty dinner.
I walked into the kitchen, and alas, that's called the kitchen! There was a choking smell, cockroaches on the cutting board were whirring and scattering, and there was old sticky ash everywhere, and ...... Do not say. Thinking of Chen Jie's loneliness when he was hospitalized and without a family to take care of, for some reason, I suddenly walked up to him and said, why don't we get married.
He opened his eyes and looked at me strangely for a long time, without saying anything. I could see that he didn't know what to say, and I was surprised and surprised by what I had just thought. After a while, Chen Jie took my hand, stroked it gently, and said, Momo, I love you, but if we want to continue, we can't get married.
It was dark, there was no light on in the house, and I felt like I was crying in the darkness, and I was glad he couldn't see it.
12
Like most girls, I love wedding dresses and love those beautiful fairy tales that are relevant. When I was in elementary school, all the girls in my class had princess dresses, made of white georgette, and the skirt was made of lace layer by layer, and I also wanted such one, and I begged my mother several times to no avail, and I was extremely sad. My mother was a seamstress, and I later thought that all tailors in the world would think that buying clothes was a waste of money, and my mother was no exception. Most of my clothes at that time were made from leftovers from the client's clothes, which is now called "mix-and-match", the sleeves of the green dress were one blue and one yellow, and the brown pants had two sections under it, and I never seemed to have worn a complete, new dress. I think some of my inferiority complex grew up at that time.
The princess dress I longed for, I haven't gotten yet. Now I'm thirty-two years old, and I don't think I'll ever get it again. How could I be thirty-two years old, and when I was ten years old, I would never have imagined such a day. I was adamant that women, or at least myself, should die before the age of twenty-five, in a storm.
In my spare time at home after work, I like to shop on Taobao just like the other female colleagues in the office, but I only shop and don't buy, and I only wander around the option of wedding dresses. I found that there were so many styles of wedding dresses, Chinese, Western, all kinds of colors and textures, but at the end of the day, I still liked white the most. I saw a white mermaid wedding dress, without any superfluous decorations, a bandeau pinched waist, and a back hem that was three meters long, I saved it in my favorite, and sometimes clicked it out to look at it, and I was satisfied.
Princess dress, wedding dress, two dreams. Sometimes, I want to ask why these two things that almost every girl can easily have, when they are just a dream for me, but I only keep this question in my heart, because I don't know who to ask.
Later, I gave myself an answer, which was white. White princess dresses, white wedding dresses, wearing them is not so much a dream as the end of a dream, that is, after putting it on, it is inevitable to take it off. White is not a color, white means nothing, and white is the nothingness after "taking it off".
The small apartment I live in is not far from the unit, two bus stops, about a fifteen-minute walk, and I usually walk to work and then walk home after work. I've been walking this road for five years since I started work, and now I can go anywhere on that street with my eyes closed, such as Shanxi noodle restaurants, convenience stores, pharmacies, and wonton shops with thin skin and fillings deep in the alleys......
The bridal shop at the intersection of alleys opened two months ago. In the big color photos of the newlyweds in the window, some of them hugged each other sweetly, some turned their heads to look at me, and I walked in. The clerk in a black suit walked up briskly and silently and asked politely, "Hello, how can I help you, wedding dress or photoshoot?" I pointed to the mermaid wedding dress worn on the model. "Oh, take wedding photos, first of all, congratulations and please accept the blessing of my store, you really have an eye, this wedding dress is the latest in our store, it is the most fashionable one in Italy, if you shoot it now, there is an 8.8% discount. "So, can I shoot today?" "Of course, of course, it's just, I'm sorry, you can't try on the wedding dress, because it has just been flown in from Italy." "I took one look at the wedding dress, and the rhinestones on the fishtail were shining brightly. I paid for it.
When I tried it on, I saw my old underwear. There was a hole in the panties, and a small rust spot on the left side of the bra was faintly visible. The clerk who helped me try on clothes quickly looked away and politely helped me pull the wedding dress up, but the zipper was stuck on my back and couldn't pull it up, obviously the wedding dress was a little smaller. She said inhale, I said inhale, she said inhale again, I said I couldn't inhale, she said very softly when she saw this, "Wait, I'll go get two clips and clamp it, and that's it." ”
I waited for her, and at this time I felt the zipper behind my back tightly stuck in the skin, I pulled it down, but the skirt fell to my waist, and the skirt was stacked at my feet, like a small Yinchuan.
The make-up artist started to put on my makeup, I tucked the worn-out underwear straps into my dress, and the zipper on the back of my skirt was clamped in place so that no one would know about the hole in my panties, and from the mirror, everything was flawless.
In the mirror, I have been smeared with heavy foundation and lipstick, and I am not as beautiful as me. Walking into the studio, the photographer had already adjusted the light, adjusted the lens to me a few times, and then stopped, not speaking, but clearly waiting for something. After a while, he looked at me, wanting to ask something, but he stopped talking, and finally spoke, "What about the bridegroom?" I straightened the hem of my skirt and said, "There is no bridegroom." Puzzled, he continued to look at me suspiciously, and stayed there, I looked at him, and said with a smile, "I marry myself myself." ”
After the photo shoot and when I took off my wedding dress, I felt like I had indeed experienced marriage. I got married and divorced, less than an hour before and after.
13
The doctor said your mother could be discharged.
When I walked into the room, my mother was standing in the activity room watching TV with all the patients, and she was fully focused, staring straight at the TV screen, immersed in it. I called out softly to my mother, but she didn't hear me, and I shouted again in a slightly louder voice, but she still didn't hear. At this time, I looked at my mother, just after winter, the spring in the south is still very cold, my mother added a dress to the white and blue striped hospital gown, that is, the red down jacket that just entered the hospital. With her hands in her pockets, she pulled out a peanut and peeled it from time to time, and the other patients in the activity room stood upright, staring at the TV as if no one was around.
The female nurse saw me, came over, and said, "What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?" She looked like she was forty or fifty years old, her expression was nervous, her face was anxious, her lips were tightly closed, as if she was suppressed by something, and every word she said, as if she was releasing some kind of depression. She looked more melancholy and troubled than the other patients in the room, more like a psychopath, and I even doubted that she would stay here as a patient when she retired.
"Who are you looking for, who are you looking for?" the female nurse's voice was dry and shrill, and she continued to chase after me. When my mother saw me, she came to me with a smile and said, "Momo, here, have you had breakfast, it's cold outside, hey, it's so cold, you're still wearing so little! "I was a little surprised that my mother was thinking clearly, obviously not the same person on the phone, but she looked very good, what else could I say.
When I got home, my mother did seem to be normal, and even said that she would make braised fish for me to eat in the evening. Actually, my mother didn't know how to cook fish, and she put too much soy sauce. She can only cook braised meat, braised fish, braised tofu, braised winter melon, can't wait to braise any dish, pour half a bottle of soy sauce, she doesn't seem to know that there are other ways to do it besides "braised meat".
Looking at my mother, I think of when I was a child, she always brought me a big red plastic bathtub and bathed me in the patio. She smelled of a nice alabaster, and whenever my mother bent down, I would see her breasts, plump and full, like two peaches. When my mother was young, she had good skin, which was the kind of warm and greasy that Jiangnan women often had, and it looked like white glutinous rice that had been soaked overnight before making zongzi. On summer nights, I always had to sleep with one of my mother's arms in my arms, and her arm was cool and soft, which calmed my heart.
After her father's death, her mother grew old quickly and soon remarried, but unfortunately, she lived in abuse and quarrels every day, and endlessly blamed the man for not loving her.
The man gradually did not go home, and even when he came back, he had a cold face and did not say a word. The mother became suspicious, always suspicious that he had a woman outside, and after a long period of suspicion, she began to talk to herself, sometimes gritting her teeth, sometimes clenching her fists.
Once, after a quarrel with a man, my mother suddenly ran to the university where I was studying at that time to look for me, and without even making a phone call beforehand, she suddenly slammed directly at the door of my dormitory like a heavenly soldier. I hadn't seen my mother for more than half a year, and when I saw it, I didn't recognize it. She had grown old and haggard, like a village woman, and carried a bag of rice in one hand. I felt embarrassed about her, so I suddenly got angry and yelled at her: "I don't come to say hello, I still bring rice, what age is it, the school has a cafeteria, and we still use the fire to cook!"
That night, my mother and I were staying in a small hotel near the school, and when the room was opened, the front desk suddenly told me to be careful when sleeping at night and to lock the door, and I didn't understand what she meant. When I walked into the room, I saw suspicious stains on the sheets, paper towels in the garbage basket, fruit peels, paper lunch boxes, and I actually found a needle in the bathroom, like a needle for injecting drugs. I understood what the front desk was saying. Mother sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her feet, and we didn't speak. She was such a daughter as me, and when she was sad, she had nowhere to go but to look for me, and I let her live in such a bad place. I vaguely regretted that I had just yelled at her, that I didn't open her a better room. But we don't have the money. After only two nights, my mother went back with the bag of rice.
I went to the vegetable market to buy fish as my mother instructed, and the trees by the roadside were somehow half-painted with white lime powder, like wearing a turtleneck. The fallen leaves on the ground have also withered and yellowed, and they will crumble when you step on them. Walking into the vegetable market, the vegetable sellers talked to me cordially, as if they had been friends for many years, and they were very enthusiastic, which made people uncomfortable, and they felt that if they didn't buy it, they would be seriously disappointed by the other party. I picked a big carp and ran back.
The mother sat at the door and ate oranges, and the orange peels were thrown on the ground. She lowered her head and muttered something to herself, as if she were counting orange peels, as if she was looking for something. She glanced up at me, then looked down again. I found that the look was still more than ten years ago, as if I was still a schoolboy who went to school with a school bag on my back, and now I came back from school.
The tomato soup is boiled thickly, the carp is used to braise it, the meat is sliced and fried with green peppers, and a puff of smoke rises from the squeaky oil pot. The soy sauce was not enough, so my mother said that it would be better to put more salt. During the meal, I noticed that my mother was still wearing the same black sweater that she used to wear when she was younger. Under the light, her white hair was already obvious, she used to always say that the younger a person is, the more he should wear black and gray, and when he is old, he should wear those red and green, but her mother is already old before she is old enough to wear red and green.
After dinner we went for a walk. Walking along a secluded path, the loofah vines on the wall spread out of the wall, and the small loofahs hung there one by one, looking like twisted fat snakes in the night. The mother walked in front, her back was hunched, and although she was wearing high heels, she felt short. As she walked, she suddenly turned around and said, "I'm fine, you don't have to worry about me, go back to work, get married immediately when you go back, and go with whomever you want." ”
14
I met Chen Jie less and less. On the phone he always said he was busy.
I thought of the strands of the woman's hair that I found while cleaning him. These strands of hair slowly wrapped around me, netted me, occupied me, and swayed me. I began to think crankily, there was nothing I could do but be jealous, jealous of everything, jealous of his car, jealous of the chair in his studio, jealous of the paintbrush in his hand, jealous of his neighbors, jealous of his colleagues, they could see him often, and I couldn't.
Jealousy finally sprouted and took root in my heart like a seed. I looked at the pictures of the beauties in Chen Jie's album, guessed their ages and backgrounds, guessed which woman in them was the one he liked before, which woman often came to his studio and wore his white shirt, which woman was the owner of the hair, I think every woman is possible. They were all young and beautiful, so I felt inferior.
I began to become silent, occasionally talking to Chen Jie on the phone, and speaking in a weird way. I know I'm getting worse and worse, and if I continue like this, I'm going to lose him sooner or later.
When I finally saw him that day, he had just finished painting a beautiful woman, and seemed to be in a good mood, and while sipping tea, he looked at the new painting on the easel, and then told me that he had run out of white paint, and that he was going out to buy it, and told me to stay in the studio and wait for him.
Chen Jie's studio is still very "Chen Jie", decadent and messy, and there are beautiful oil paintings everywhere. In the days when we haven't seen each other, his beautiful pictures are amazing. I couldn't help but look at the portraits of those beautiful women. There's a painting in the corner wrapped in plastic film, what kind of picture is it? It's so well wrapped, it must be a special painting, but reason seems to be telling me not to touch it.
Five minutes later, I was standing in front of the painting again. I carefully lifted the plastic film wrapped in the oil painting layer by layer, and then I saw that it was her, it was Xiaoya! She looked at me with a smile, that angelic smile, as if to say: I didn't expect it, we met here!
Xiao Ya in the painting is completely naked, lying on her back on a rose-colored sheet, her pale peach-colored cheeks are slightly drunk, her sleepy eyes are graceful, her jade breasts, her elastic waist, her slightly spread legs, her slender ankles, and her damn charming neck socket, everything is beautiful. My brain is blank, I have to admit that this painting is the most exquisite of all his beautiful pictures, although Chen Jie has also painted me, but there is no doubt that this painting, Chen Jie poured all his energy and talent, only very sensitive to Xiaoya's beauty, and it can even be said that only if he is obsessed with that kind of beauty, it is possible to paint such a painting. So, they, they! I felt a buzzing in my head, and a voice in my ears shouted: Destroy this picture!
I don't know when I had an extra utility knife in my hand, I held the tip of the knife to Xiaoya's face in the canvas, thinking to myself, if the knife went down, her beautiful face would be ruined. For the first time, I felt deep jealousy of her beauty, and suddenly I felt a stomachache, and the gastric juice turned over in my stomach and gushed up, it was a stimulating liquid, like sulfuric acid, maybe I should have sprayed it on Xiaoya's face, but I didn't do it and swallowed it back. My throat must have been burned out and gagged hot. I looked at Xiaoya again, she was still smiling at me, her beautiful body was also smiling at me, this smile can conquer the world, I stabbed it.
At night, the campus was wrapped in heavy haze, and I couldn't see the road clearly, and I suddenly thought of the two snakes raised by Xiaoya, a black spotted snake and a silver krait, and I felt that they were now hiding in a corner of this dark night, and they would run out and bite me at some point, and then devour me bite by bite, and eat me up.
15
If there is no hint of the hour hand, time in the dark is probably dead. It's been a long time since I've worn a watch, but the days are quietly passing, and I can't figure out how long it has been. I hurriedly took out the phone from my bag, and when I saw that it was my mother, I was a little discouraged, but I still picked up the phone.
"Momo, where are you, are you with the bad guys? Don't be taken away by the bad guys, there are bad guys everywhere these days! I went to dance yesterday, why can they dance but I can't, they jumped and jumped to the other side of the square, and they smiled strangely at me, as if I was a monster. They laughed so loudly that it was worse than crying. I know this kind of laughter, and that's how they laughed at me when I got 15 points in math, and they didn't know that I was actually good at math, and I could do a lot of things, and I could do a lot of things that they couldn't. The math teacher called me to the office for tutoring, and he touched my buttocks, touched my tits, and laughed at me like them when he was done, and said to me, "Long live Chairman Mao, what a madman!" I really wanted to go up and bite his hand, bite out rows of tooth marks, and let him know that I was much better than Chairman Mao, but I didn't dare. He touched and began to pinch me, pinching me to death, and laughing coldly. These people like to see me miserable, and they rejoice when I suffer, and they wear diapers from birth, then a fig leaf, and finally a shroud, and they all look at my jokes with their eyes open. ”
"Where are you, with the bad guys? I told you not to go out, and you went out again, running around the streets. You can't hide it from me, I'm a mathematician, I don't need a math problem, I can figure out where you are, and I can figure out if you're unhappy, Momo, it's your birthday, happy birthday. ”
When I hung up the phone, I realized that today was my birthday. "Happy birthday. I said to myself.
16
Chen Jie stopped calling, I thought, okay, this just shows that you are getting better. I was still waiting for his phone for the first few days, and I imagined the phone ringing, it was him, and he said I like your jealousy...... Isn't it just a painting, if it is destroyed, it will be destroyed, I will paint it again, I will draw you...... But such a call did not come. Day by day, I finally lost patience and smashed the phone, I smashed it with a big brick, and the phone was torn apart in an instant, but the brick was intact. I took the phone card out of the wreckage, cut it into pieces, threw it into the toilet, and then flushed it down with the button, and at that moment, I felt the thrill of revenge, but I also knew that the object of revenge knew nothing about it. Looking at the empty toilet, I suddenly regretted it, and I thought that if he had called at this time, the SIM card might have made fun of me from a distance somewhere in the sewer pipe, or that there was some way to get it back, or that I could find the exit of the sewer and wait patiently there to intercept it. But it's a sewer after all, and if there's some other lump down the stream, how do I do it? Or, what if, then, must, can't, I don't know what to do...... So I began to hate that little SIM card, and then found that the focus of "hate", even the "focus" of "big hate", is often very small, just a little bit, it is enough to linger in my heart, and then I began to laugh......
I bought a new phone, reissued a new mobile phone card, the call still did not come, I know that his phone will never come again, yes, forever, I especially want to use the big word "forever" at this time, I know that even until death, his phone will not call again, forever and forever, this new SIM card will be a card that will be lonely forever.
Then I'll die, the office is on the ninth floor, enough to throw me to death. Looking down from the window, the crowd didn't seem so crowded, and there was a small gap between people, which should be enough to accommodate one of my corpses. I'm going to pick a good position, aim, and not fall on the advertising table on the wall outside the building, then I'm more likely to be electrocuted, or poked to death by some iron rod, and my head may be intact, but my painful expression will be exposed, and the death will not look good, so it's better to fall directly to the ground, and the head will fall to the ground, so that I can be unrecognizable and truly "invisible". I like to be invisible, which is in keeping with my usual personality and my worldview, and I must not fall into the garbage heap diagonally below, which is so filthy that I can seem to see the emerald green, shimmering highlights of the fly's eyes and smell the rot there. Hey, there's everything, boxes, wine bottles, soup, shabby clothes, etc., it's a complete rabble, and I don't want to be in the company of it. How about the flower bed directly below the window, no, no, the roses in there are blooming just right, it can be said to be in full bloom, it can be said that they are in full bloom, and they are crimson from a distance, how can they bloom so well, almost selfless and proud, or let them be free there, and enjoy themselves, and not destroy the purity there, smash their shapes, and force them to be brought to me for burial. But then I thought why not, it is better to die in a cluster of roses than in a pile of garbage, and my blood will only add color to them instead of adding an abrupt dark red to the road, which will scare the children, the elderly, and the passers-by with heart disease on the road with me. Let's jump down at the flower bed, let the thorns of those roses pierce my whole body, pierce my skin, my throat, my eyes, let me share their loneliness, loneliness, and free atmosphere, let them moisten me, accompany me, hug me, at this moment, I can almost imagine the picture after my death, very formal; I'm not dead yet, I've been touched by myself.
I started actuarial calculations, even if I was going to die, I had to miss the rush hour, not let my colleagues see it, and let them gloat. Why have they been watching my jokes for so many years, gossiping about me behind my back, and one of them was a woman, who somehow found out about my mother's illness, and since then they have looked at me differently, as if I was a leper who can be contagious, and I decided not to die! Moreover, after doing the above death rehearsal, I suddenly did not want to die, I seemed to have died all over again, and now I was reborn, and now I can look at my former self. Why should I die, although death is painful, I am afraid that it is me who "hurts", and it is others who are "fast", then I will be crazy, crazy to show them, and then I will infect them fiercely, so that they will also become crazy. Where did they laugh again, and sure enough, they tasted crazy. I really want to open their heads one by one, shine a flashlight, see what is inside, what is special about the structure of each part of the head, or basically the popular version, I always feel as if I am sad alone in this world, I find that I don't understand everyone but me, just like the other person doesn't understand me, in fact, I don't even understand myself.
There is a man named Henry Morison in England who can only retain his memory for 20 seconds after having a part of his brain removed from the "hippocampus" due to illness. After his death, his brain was soaked in a glass bottle in a laboratory and treated like Einstein, except that Einstein's brain was stolen by a sick doctor, cut into more than 240 pieces like a potato, and carefully stored in a potion. The doctor observed and studied the brain slices every day and did not find any peculiarities in the brain that made Einstein a genius.
I've seen Einstein's brain slices online and they make me think of pickled peach pits. I tried my best to get closer to the computer screen to see how the dark "nucleus" was formed, why the dark color was "dark", how many layers of nerve cells were densely arranged in these "substances", what area of the cerebral cortex was, and how to retain memories. In terms of material attributes, I am the same as Albert Einstein, and of course exactly the same as Hitler, but we are inevitably each of us. I'd love to be able to turn into blood or electrical waves, even a red blood cell or a white blood cell, so that I can go into that labyrinth, to seek, to discover, and maybe to find anything in it.
The "hippocampus" of the pituitary gland is bent in its arms and embraces the "amygdala", which is responsible for emotions, and it is so big, a small lump of flesh, like a small tumor, hiding in the arms of the hippocampus, the source of this emotion, but also the source of fear; What would happen if I took it away completely, and people would be fearless, how good it would be, I could be bold and bold, but I couldn't walk rashly at night, because it would be dangerous. Well, the small amygdala is still the terminal of the indispensable early warning system, and it can't be cut off, but it can be cut off a little, and it's always okay to reduce the sensitivity of my fear, so that at least I don't have to sleep with three pillows in my arms every night. Yes, I sleep alone, but I need three pillows, one for sleeping, one for talking, and one for waking me up.
Sometimes I really want to take the hippocampus back, keep the part that contains the happy memory, and cut out the part that contains the painful memory. If this were the case, the first thing I would like to forget is my mother's illness, the injuries caused to me by the people I once loved, and the long and sad nights that I had endured and sad, and other memories, such as the taste of the braised fish my mother made for me when I was a child, the mild dizziness of my father lifting me up with both hands and spinning in the sun, the sweet taste of the mung bean popsicles that my grandfather used to buy for me in the summer, and Chen Jie's gentle "I'm here" on the phone when I was most lonely I want them to be in my blood forever. But can I really tell the difference, in my short and limited life, my pain and joy, love and hate, have long been intertwined. If there is no pain, I am afraid that I will not be able to keep the joy, and therefore I will not be able to keep myself. The reason why I am who I am may be is made up of my own unique pains and pleasures.
17
The rotten sweet potatoes thrown on the balcony had grown their grand leaves, and I had been lying on the ornate Simmons mat for more than twenty-four hours. I looked at my two white feet that were exposed outside the quilt, and felt that they were not my own, but when I lifted my left leg, the left foot was also slightly raised, and when I lifted my right leg, my right foot was also lifted accordingly, and I shook them from side to side, and finally decided to get up, I splashed my face with the overnight water in the glass, and stood in front of the mottled and somewhat dirty window and smoked a cigarette, which was gray.
I haven't been to work in a few days and feel like I'm being drained. I feel uncomfortable, but I can't say exactly what I don't feel like.
I ordered a takeaway, and found that the beef pot boy was a bowl of hot vermicelli, thinking that it seemed that I hadn't eaten for a long time, so I tried to eat it seriously, chewed it carefully, and swallowed it, feeling like a dolphin with a plastic bag stuck in its head and throat. Standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom after eating, I saw that my skin was loose and gray, my face looked like it had been soaked in formalin, and my hair was scattered, like a female ghost in a Japanese movie. My hair loss is even worse, and I have already turned ugly before I get old. I keep looking in the mirror, everything in the mirror seems to be very tired, only the mirror is still honestly and conscientiously refracting the objective world, the mirror is really annoying, you won't lie! Still, I like to look in the mirror, it's like to look in the mirror, if there is no mirror around, I will be anxious, I will be at a loss, and I will have no sense of security. I am so attached to the mirror, not because I love myself, but because I see another person in the mirror, and the other person is in the mirror against me, and she doesn't breathe, she doesn't have a heartbeat, she can't touch it, it's just a crooked refraction, it's my weird and incredible puzzle, it's not a piece because it's not broken.
Why do all the people keep talking, I lock myself in my room, hide my head in the quilt, the quilt is dark, not breathable at all, but I would rather stay in the dark and listen to my own panting.
I don't know how long it was, but it was so stuffy that I had to loosen the quilt and let the cold air in. After all, it's hard for me to suffocate myself, but if there is someone outside, that person can suffocate me. If I was suffocated and didn't even see what that person looked like, it would be too unjust. My door may not be locked, or they may be able to enter from elsewhere, and I need to get out of the covers quickly. I came out and looked around, but it was okay, there was no movement, and it was quiet in the house.
I probably slept for a long time, and in my dreams it seemed as if I had passed through many dark corridors, and there was water seeping underground in the corridors, and the water was getting more and more and more and more about to overwhelm me. The water was dirty, and the stagnant algae floated on the surface, but not cool, bubbling silently, and then these bubbles burst again. I wanted to speak, but I couldn't open my mouth, and I knew that a mouth would choke me like a dog. The water rose higher and higher, I couldn't swim, I tried to walk on tiptoe, but I didn't expect to float up and float on the water, isn't this just swimming, so easy, and why am I so light.
I opened my eyes, and there was light reflected from the window on the wall, and the circles of light blurred and blurred, and I heard the sound of my own breathing pulling and pulling like a saw in a lumberyard.
18
When Dr. Hu stood up, I noticed that he was only up to my chest, and his face was ruddy, serious, and very polite. The more kind people seem to be, the more perverted they are, maybe this Dr. Hu likes to hang women in private.
I don't know if I belong to internal medicine or psychiatry, maybe it doesn't matter, in the eyes of the doctor, there may be only two kinds of people in this world, one is a sick person, a dead person, and the doctor himself is God. Then God looked at me with a smile.
"What's wrong?"
"It's uncomfortable anywhere. ”
"What are the symptoms?"
"I slept for a long time, and sometimes I couldn't sleep for a long time. ”
"Anything else?"
"Dreams, even when I am awake. ”
The doctor prescribed me a series of checklists, including blood tests, urine tests, liver function tests, electrocardiograms, brain CT and a series of detailed examinations. I think I must have had some very serious illness, maybe I'm going to die. It's good that you don't have to jump off the building.
Coming to the second floor, on the left side of the staircase is the brain rehabilitation center, a man is standing there straight, missing the right brain, so his head is like a deflated basketball, weird. He looked straight ahead, silent, as if it were the Sphinx in front of the pyramid - the great Sphinx. His eyes were deep and calm, the great times had passed, and I was still here. I couldn't help but keep staring at him, and I couldn't help but look back as I walked past him, and he was the same as before, and I thought of the Sphinx that didn't squint or speak.
But he finally moved, and began to pull the cigarette out of his trouser pocket, take the lighter out of the cigarette case, wipe it, light it with the flame precisely, and then take a deep breath and spit it out slowly, as if delaying the enjoyment. At this time, a young nurse came up to her, and when she stopped talking, she finally said that she could not smoke. The "Sphinx" gave her a blank look, did not speak, continued to smoke, and the nurse walked away. I think the image of the "Sphinx" is more magnificent, but it's a pity that half of the head is missing; but the real Sphinx before the pyramid is also missing a part, not half of the head, but the nose is missing; but the lack of a nose and the lack of a brain are different natures, the lack of a nose is a broken phase, the lack of a brain is a lack of consciousness, but it is not necessarily a broken phase, I think it is better to lack a brain.
The nurse clattered past me in a pair of thin strappy leather sandals with black straps tied around her snow-white feet and red nail polish on her toenails. The appearance of such a pair of feet in the hospital makes it even more sexy, and the male patient may be beneficial to his recovery when he sees it. I couldn't help but take another look at the "brainless sphinx" and found that he was wearing a pair of old slippers, which was really bad, and it seemed to have nail fungus, and the sphinx in front of the pyramid was barefoot and did not wear shoes, because its feet were lion's feet, and lions did not wear shoes, and lionesses did not wear them, unfortunately.
The various medicines in the dispensing room are neatly placed in small compartments, and the design of the medicine box is novel and elegant, and the colors are bright and serene. I pondered for a moment the reason for this, and was pleased to find that it was because the white color of the pill box took up most of the area, which must have been a deliberate consideration, because white made people calm and calm, and the colors of the words were colorful and jumpy, making people feel that the medicine inside was effective. But isn't there a fake medicine, even if it's not a fake medicine, the real medicine is also a kind of poison, eating it makes people unable to be calm and serene, and eating too much will make it calm and peaceful forever, so all this is a conspiracy.
Different medicines are different poisons, and poison is used to fight poison. In a person's life, many times this poison accompanies you to spend a wonderful time, and the process of gradual aging is also the process of slow poisoning, so the older a person is, the more ugly it becomes, age spots, wrinkles, bad breath, edema, and fart, these are all manifestations of poisoning. One day, we will all be poisoned by our own poison, after death, the poison in the human body will be idle, but if it is buried, the poison will continue to be active, eroding the soil and water, poisoning the environment, so it is better to be cremated. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid of aging.
19
There was no one in this room, so I walked in. There were pennants on the walls, there was no one in the suite, and there were some mannequins and brain models standing upright on the table, all pink, a bit like a baby's skin, but more like the color of a baby roundworm, and I thought of the intestines that were torn out of the open belly in the movie.
There is an anatomical diagram of the human brain on the wall, different areas are represented in different colors, the brain, cerebellum, pituitary gland, anterior lobe, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, these seem familiar, I remember, it was the clinical diagnosis case of psychiatry that I read before, but the attached picture is monochrome and small, and it is not as detailed and exquisite as this picture.
The temporal lobe of the brain is pink, and there is a part of the brain that is in the shape of a curved hippocampus, which is the hippocampus. I have seen the little seahorses in the glass tank in the aquarium, one by one standing upright, as if they are taking a nap, the color is brownish gray, it is really boring, I looked down on it at the time, and even wanted to put a small pebble in the water tank while no one was prepared, but I prefer small pebbles, they are so beautiful that I am reluctant to throw them in.
The mediocre hippocampus becomes a nuisance in this picture, not only brightly colored, but also represents "thinking, rationality, synthesis, judgment, control", so that the higher animals have brain functions. But what's the use of being high-class, I was walking down the street that year, and suddenly there was a lot of noise behind me, and when I looked back, a bus was parked in the middle of the road, and people turned their heads to look there, and the bus driver, who was looking at the steering wheel, gently knocked his white gloves on it, and it was needless to say what happened.
A person under the front wheel of the bus was pressed there, and there was no blood, but since it was pressed, the blood would always come out. I was about to step forward to look, when a person next to me suddenly swept under my feet, and I turned my eyes to it, and it was a small piece of pink that was rolled in a bamboo broom and swept to the edge of the road, ah, it was a human brain, from the bus wheel to the human brain on this side of the road, the fresh, slippery, shimmering human brain was swept to the drain, and then the bamboo strip was sharply pierced into the drain. Strange as it was, the brain quickly slid into it, and no one noticed the scene, let alone the cleaner with the broom, who was so calm, almost sweeping the garbage.
But how can this be, a person's brain leaves the main body in an instant, and suddenly collapses out in a panic, and then is swept into the ground "daily", only a few minutes before and after!"That's a college student, that's a college student!" someone said. I looked at the cleaner and thought of how he swept the human brain into the sewer entrance, don't you sweep the garbage every day, but the human brain every day? I looked at him, and he looked at me, and turned away, a bit like a fugitive. Why did he sweep that brain down the drain so quickly? Because of fear, because of panic? A living man with a brain was afraid of a naked brain that suddenly appeared? Or, because the cleaner was the lowest, the lowest, and now he had the opportunity to sweep a college student's brain into and poke it into the gutter, and thus be full of pleasure? Maybe there was some other reason? Personal reasons? I really don't understand.
The lilac part is the pituitary gland. I watched a documentary, a post-mortem documentary of Kennedy. Kennedy was half-blind and staring blankly, but he couldn't see anything anymore, but if he didn't say anything, it would be even more terrifying. But when I die, I will know, and one day the truth will be revealed, so there is no hurry. The American hero, the president, had been shot twice in the head, one near the neck, the brain stem, and the other in the left brain, which was the language area, and his eloquence could be finished! His forehead was intact, and it was useless, and he lay silently and uncomfortably on the smooth, cold iron cart in the autopsy room.
I'm a person who is particularly afraid of the cold, and I feel a chill all around me when I think of the shiny, cold iron cart in the morgue. When you want to rest on it one day, it's a good idea to wear a thicker, warmer coat beforehand. This point must not be ignored, otherwise what can be done, it is terrible!
I suddenly thought of my mother, why did she give birth to me, such a strange, terrible and unlikable me, I guess I was confused for a while. It's a wonderful thing to have a baby, my mother and I are obviously two completely different people, but we have lived and died together, and we have become one. If she had a hot brain at that time, she would probably have scraped me off, and I don't regret it, but she missed that opportunity, and my cells gradually divided and expanded in her womb, grew and developed, passed through the narrow, dark and damp vagina, and finally stood under the sky with her head on her head, breathing in the sun, and walking.
"What are you doing?" a middle-aged man in a white lab coat who didn't look like a doctor or a nurse somehow suddenly stood in front of me. I ignored him, turned and walked away, leaving the room.
I went downstairs and saw a trash can around the corner, so I threw all those checklists in, fucking checks, fucking metrics, fucking minus plus, fucking hospitals, all fuck off, I don't want to do a single check. At this time, the mobile phone rang, it was my mother's, and I answered it immediately.
"Momo, where are you, I planted a flower on the summit of Mount Everest, a flower that blooms at more than minus forty degrees. I told others, they laughed at me, said I was crazy, I wasn't crazy, I saw the flower bloom with my own eyes, I watched the flower bloom for more than 40 days, it was so beautiful when it bloomed, I knew it was not a flower that could bloom in the world, but it opened for me. I really want you to see it, but it's so fast, do you hear me, I want to stay here and not leave, but there is no house for me, and there is no husband for me. I looked at the distant mountains, far, far away, I saw a place, remembered, it was the place where I was born, and the cattle and sheep, the cattle and sheep were also blue, I could see through them farther places, so far away, you don't believe it? I don't believe it, who believes me, do you think I'm just a mathematician, I can cut clothes, do you think I'm going to sew you and me together stitch by stitch? I will also plant flowers, I will raise flowers, I will make those flowers I love immortal, they will listen to me, and they will stand there when they die, fighting for me, and proud of me, so I love them, why are they standing there when they die, they are waiting for me?! But they are about to freeze to death, what should I do, help me, Momo, can you come, where are you, I am cold, no clothes, have you forgotten that I covered you with a quilt, I got up late at night, coughed, coughed up blood, I swallowed the blood back, I can't die, I die, you have no one to care, you are lonely, I am lonely, but you don't know that I am lonely, and I don't want you to know, you don't understand, it's all like this, it's always like this, so my life is hard, so I came to the top of Mount Everest, what am I doing there, I'm looking for you, you're still a child, when will you be sensible, my child！”
Somehow, I stopped annoying my mother's phone calls, I was listening, listening, listening to a real monologue, and gradually I couldn't tell whose monologue it was.
I walked out of the hospital gate and into the street, the sun was so good, it hadn't been so good in a long time. I couldn't help but smile at the sun, which drew sideways glances from the passers-by on the street, who all looked at me with strange smiles.
Originally published in Harvest, No. 5, 2015
| | Qi Yuan, born in 1986, graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2014 with a master's degree in literature, and began writing novels in the same year. He currently lives in Hangzhou. His works have been scattered in publications such as "Harvest", "People's Literature", "Contemporary", "October" and "West Lake", and have also won two or three small awards. |