Old memories come to an end.
2017.09
Autumn came so early this year, so early that we seniors keep joking, "How are the freshmen even going to do military training this year?", so early that I was still holding my breath to fight off the summer and found there was no need at all. Walking around campus at night in short sleeves, it's chilly. Tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn Festival. The moon has grown especially bright; even the orange street lamps at dusk can't hold down the pale yellow pouring from it.
My third autumn in Nanjing no longer feels squeezed into the crack between summer and winter; it has become much more unhurried. So, it seems, has my life.
Tomorrow the moon will be full. So what kind of life counts as full?
There really is no answer.
All I know is that, day after day, every day can hold a few things that move you.
Lately I keep recalling two things two people said to me. The first: you are someone who knows how to live. The second: believe that after doing so much, you will get something back. I love both. The first made me resolved to live my own life, and made me feel I am not alone, especially when I have something to say. The second encourages me to do what I want to do, and time will in the end turn every bit of effort I have made into a harvest and give it back to my life.
Perhaps in life there is no such thing as full or not full. The gains won by effort, the sudden moments that move you, the smells words can't describe, the sentences like no others, the subtle gestures frozen in time: these have forged the "I". Who should this "I" be compared with, to count as full or not? I am just me. Before me there was no me, and after me there will be no me. Perhaps in some stretch of life I can measure myself against others, but seen across the whole course of a life, every butterfly has markings like no other, and the beauty of that difference makes comparison meaningless.
"I would speak, then hold back, / and say instead: a cool day, a fine autumn." (Xin Qiji, twelfth century; translated for this page.) The character for sorrow, 愁, splits in two: 秋, autumn, over 心, heart. So the "sorrow" that has worn people down since ancient times is really the heart of autumn? People always envy how light and breezy other lives look, how free and easy. But without the weight of life, how would you keep your course in the gusting wind? The young know no sorrow, so the young do not understand life; the young do not understand life, so the young know no sorrow. How should you look at it? Perhaps you should look it in the eye with a smile; perhaps you should embrace it generously; perhaps you should say to it softly: come, I'm waiting for you to appear, waiting for you to carve marks like no other into this body of mine, smooth but hollow, waiting for you to steep my free and useless soul in the gold of maple and plane leaves and the pure white of dew and the new moon, waiting for you to give me the power to hear the murmur of life beneath the surface of plants flourishing and withering and the seasons turning, waiting for you to teach me to tell what matters from what doesn't, instead of always running away.
"A cool day, a fine autumn" is perhaps not necessarily a forced smile put into words, but what comes after tasting every flavour there is, when the lingering aftertaste of every moment is felt all the more. Just as autumn's withering lets the brilliance of spring settle and sheds the lushness of summer, yet leaves behind a beauty that is clear, fine and long.
When one leaf falls, the whole world knows it is autumn. Know the heart of autumn, and only then can you know life. Another cool day, a fine autumn.
2012.09