Trail To The Destination Chapter 2

Zweig's tone is warmly ironic. He then talks about the dangerous conceit and illusionary optimism hidden in this "golden age", and the storm that will soon shatter the world, especially his world. He talks about his conceptual confidence in progress and the prospects of mankind, and the cruel reality that constantly makes that confidence a source of self-torture. He talks about how he came to Bath, England, to find a place where he could write quietly, but "the elegant and beautiful scenery contrasts with the constant anxiety in the world and my thoughts."

I think of my youth. History books will say that China was constantly in turmoil at that time, but for teenagers, and in some aspects of adult life, the world will be like this. Meat will always be scarce, but hens will still lay eggs. After chaos becomes the norm, there will be a taste of stability. People will still go crazy, but they will go crazy regularly. That world is naturally much more unfortunate than Zweig's, but the two worlds do have similarities that are worth pondering.

I spent two hours lazily in the open space in front of the village, which was rare for me because my travels, especially that trip, were characterized by "can't stop". No matter how beautiful the riverside or how quiet the valley was, I couldn't really calm down; every time I rushed to a place I had longed for, I would take a look and leave impatiently. I put my hope behind the next turn and was indifferent to the things outside the window. I drove aimlessly every day until I was exhausted and stopped in disappointment. What kind of mental state is this?

I wondered, we -- I don't know who the "we" here refers to, but it's "we", is the gentle and lasting confidence in progress that should be held by us changing, is it covering up the essential anxiety of this era, is it that the reserve funds that should have been hidden deep are being squandered by us impatiently. We, or many people, don't seem to live in the present, but rather desperately explore ourselves into a future that does not belong to us, which is impossible in the first place, and what is possible is only illusion and fantasy.

I don't really appreciate the old way of life in that small village, nor do I feel guilty about modern society forcing people there into a common track. I still think it's tragic that society is stagnant in a state of hardship and injustice. For example, if China stagnated at this moment, I would definitely cry out in misfortune. However, when I'm driving on the road or browsing the news web pages at home aimlessly, I do feel a sense of absurdity. For example, one of the weapons I often use to criticize the pastoral spirit is to accuse people in that state of life of having no sense of humanity and no sense of commonality. And I think I have it. One of the proofs is that I know where the "Lofoten Wall" is in Norway, that people in Africa are sick, and... By the way, I often go online to check the news.

I am addicted to copying books today, so I will copy another passage from Saul Bellow. I have quoted a speech of his before, and I will copy a little from it today. Bellow talked about the influence of television in a neurotic way: "It is the main source of the unique noise of our time - a kind of decorated noise that requires our concentration, and its purpose is not to gather it together, but to disperse it... It makes scattered loneliness enter a state of communication. Television makes the isolated American think that he is participating in the life of the whole country. It does not really put him in a community, but his heart is warmed by this suggestion, that is, there is a community somewhere nearby, so his consciousness that comes from you is also led to that whole." (Translated by Li Zixiu)

Bellow's speech was in 1990. What he was talking about was television, and what we are talking about is the Internet.

"...Then the TV series ends and we're on a savanna with zebras and giraffes. Then we see Lenin at a mass rally. Suddenly we're at a cooking school, and someone is teaching us how to stuff a turkey. Then the Berlin Wall falls. Or flags are burning. Or a panel discusses the drug crisis. More and more mass topics, but less and less individual consciousness. Clearly, individual consciousness is shrinking."

Facing the seven or eight elderly people on the steps (whom I once disdainfully described as a row of plants), I could not help but realize that strangeness and alienation are two-way. I believe that my understanding of their lives is greater than theirs for mine. Sometimes, my interest in strangers standing still is greater than their interest in strangers passing by, and sometimes it is the opposite. But all of this cannot change one thing, that is, the so-called sense of commonality may be largely just a sense of time, and this precious sense of time makes us irritable, and we would rather break it in the name of progress.

When I travel and this kind of self-doubt occurs for several days in a row, I have to quickly find a comfortable hotel, restore the balance between clean carpets and reflective mirrors, and more importantly, go online, read the news, and return to the human family, which is "warm" as Bellow described.

I talked about this with my friends. Who, we asked each other, could live for a year in a place like the village described above, "behind time," without panicking? No one could. What if there were Internet and telephones? Maybe, but not necessary, we said.

I observe that restlessness is universal, and we use a watered-down sense of commonality to diffuse it, use the view of progress to postpone the pressure of solving this problem, or turn personal problems into contemporary or political problems. The strange thing is that I do know some very quiet people, and I have heard of many more of them. Usually, I envy them and wonder with suspicion, are there really such people in this era? Does the person in front of me have a problem with his brain? Or, look at the price he paid. In fact, every restless person does not have time to achieve the level of understanding he could have achieved for others or things. We just step on the accelerator and speed by.

There is a place called Tianhualing. I passed by it three times in two years for no apparent reason. Tianhualing is on the top of a plateau. James family lives there. They always put pears and dates produced by their family in front of their door, hoping to sell them to passers-by. The first time I passed by, I stopped to take a few photos. When I looked back, I found it boring. The second time I passed by, I washed my hands and face with the water from that family, and then bought pears and a kind of very small apple. The third time, I didn't stop and drove straight past. I already knew the taste of their pears, so I couldn't think of anything else worth stopping for, and I had to rush to the county town ahead to stay overnight.

As always, there is reason enough to pass through every place; if one stops somewhere, it is either for practical reasons or by chance.

Love Hills and Mountains

As people age, they go through some strange changes.

I have always liked medieval landscape poetry. About seven or eight years ago, I suddenly found myself getting bored reading it. When I went out to play, I would naturally look for places with lush vegetation. About four or five years ago, I suddenly found myself getting bored with that kind of "beautiful scenery".

In a diary from a certain year, I found two records.

One time, I woke up in the car in the early morning in Jiangxi (sometimes I would park my car on the side of the road and sleep in the back seat). This was my favorite time and scene. In my previous diary, I had repeatedly written about the subtle changes in light, how the trees and the mountains in the distance gradually revealed their shapes, how the details unfolded, and how the birdsong sounded one after another. In short, how nature presented itself in an easy-to-understand form to suit my tastes - but on that morning, I couldn't help feeling that all this was beautiful, but more or less deceiving or self-deceiving.

Aesthetics is one of the best experiences, but we have a tendency to exaggerate, thicken, and use it to cover up our own anxiety. The vast ice fields and erupting volcanoes are very beautiful, but at the same time they are cruel and ruthless - even the word "ruthless" cannot describe the nature of the physical world, because the meaning of "ruthlessness" itself is nothing more than a projection of human emotions.

"Birds, beasts, and fish are all natural relatives" is just a daydream of our own. Beautiful things are not just beautiful. The viewing experience of "the mountains and rivers are open and the clouds and the sun shine on each other" - I wrote in my diary that in a sense, it is a bit like slaves like to praise their masters, like the weak like to tell jokes about the strong, and like the insulted and harmed like to discover the "human touch" of the oppressors. In short, just like in political life or other processes, we seem to be too easy to satisfy ourselves in the face of nature.

Plants are a kind of living thing, and a life form much lower than us. They are really a good cover. There are many bare mountains in the north. In such places, travelers pass through as quickly as possible, looking for vegetation or villages. This is reasonable because the latter makes us feel safe. The desert is also beautiful, but to calm down and appreciate it, you need something else - roads, gas stations, human traces and dog barking, water bottles and satellite phones. As a timid person, I dare not go deep into it.

The nature does not always frighten us when it threatens our survival. When I was very young, I was playing on the hillside one afternoon and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was suddenly terrified because the things around me that were very familiar, the grass, the trees, the mountains and the streams, suddenly became strange and hostile. They seemed to have turned their backs on me. I didn't know what they meant, so I ran down the mountain. I had similar experiences several times as an adult. I talked about them with my friends and got some responses. For example, one person told me that he was fishing and suddenly felt scared. His hands shook and the fishing rod fell into the water.

Wordsworth once had these lines (I borrow Huang Gaoxin's translation here):

My worries and fears came one after another. Even the rustling of the grass frightened me. The shadows cast by the clouds flying across the sky made my teeth chatter.

Wordsworth was a pioneer. His wit and optimism are beyond our reach. As he wrote in another poem: We like the severity of nature and draw strength from it. Such poems can make us linger the most, because we are sometimes Wordsworth and sometimes not, agreeing with him and disagreeing with him.

Wordsworth also has a poem titled "The Waterfall and the Wild Rose". It tells the story of a small waterfall that threatens a wild rose when the snow melts in spring, saying: "If you dare to block my way, I will wash you down the valley." The wild rose trembles and replies: "We were so harmonious and happy together. You made me green, and I embellished you with leaves and flowers." At the end, the poet wrote, I am really afraid that this is its last words.

Wordsworth was better than most people after all, and avoided a happy ending. But if we look closely at his poems and the articles of another famous writer who took nature as the theme, Thoreau, we cannot help but notice that there are two kinds of nature in their works: one is wild creatures, trees or birds, and behind them is the so-called inanimate nature, and they obviously focus on the former.

After all, life, no matter what form it takes, is much easier to understand than an unmoved stone. Anthropomorphism or empathy is one of the most basic ways we look at nature, and living things are more convenient objects for this method. In their writings, nature, especially living things, is so similar to us and so closely connected.

What about inanimate objects? Looking at the earliest poems, Wang Shizhen said that there were no works depicting landscapes in the Book of Songs. Even if there were, "there were only a few poems, and each poem had only a few words." He was right. "The moon is bright and clear" was just a passing mention. There were some sentences like "the dawn is as red as nails" in Homer's epics, but they were just sporadic. In the earlier fragments of the Epic of Gilgamesh, there was nothing at all.

This does not mean that the ancient people were indifferent to the beauty of the natural world outside of life. We can only infer that this beauty did not move them to the extent that they were willing to draw or sing about it. In addition, the ancient people did not believe in the existence of inanimate nature. They only focused on things that were closer to them.

This is the exact opposite of what most people today think. And what we think is really annoying to ourselves: waterfalls are no different from wild roses - living things are also natural, or part of the physical world. Even more annoying is that we humans are also natural things. And the most annoying question is, is there anything, even the slightest bit, "unnatural" about us?

Let's put this topic aside and say that loving nature is a voice that appeared very late. In the tradition of our country, the view of nature in Zhuangzi's philosophy can never be said to be "love" (although it may be misunderstood in this way), but no matter where the source is, "loving nature", when expanded to experience beyond aesthetics, is indeed a philosophical attitude.

To be honest, I have no idea what the general phrase "love nature" means. It is more like an assertion, but I don't think emotions can be asserted. Aesthetic ability is hidden in our nature, and how can it be possible to have a "love" for nature that is natural and universal? Who would like a worthless, ugly stone that just broke their right foot? Through personification or empathy, we can make nature appear more lively and gentle, even lovely in our eyes, but in this spiritual activity, we are clearly loving ourselves.

But people are different. Who can tell? Maybe there are people who really love nature beyond aesthetics. I hope I am such a person, but before I dare to claim it, I have to accept some tests, such as being reluctant to part with a pile of ugly rocks from the bottom of my heart, or having a universal feeling for all objects after eliminating utilitarian or aesthetic factors. I know I can't pass these tests, but I think that maybe theists, especially a certain type of them, can still love nature, in theory.

Some prefer to use the word "nature" in a narrower sense, for example, defining it as "the sum of lovely things". I don't think this helps. Just look at where we go on holidays or weekends? Why are some areas "touristy" and others ignored? We can't call the places that make us feel comfortable nature and ignore other objects. We don't have to face the nature of nature all the time, but we shouldn't avoid it all the time (the Greek word "nature" first appeared in the Odyssey, meaning "character").

Some natural objects are more likely to reveal their nature than others - the difference is not in the natural object itself, but in its relationship to us. James watch, although we made it ourselves, is still natural in nature, but we don't usually see it that way; my cat is more reasonable than the wild cat on the street; trees are easier to understand than rocks, and beautifully shaped rocks (some of which have been moved to the garden) are not as disturbing as other rocks. James few days ago, the European Space Agency's lander "Philae" landed on a comet and took back photos that were "naked".

As mentioned above, another entry in the diary appeared in the fall. Due to my own stupidity, recklessness, and bad luck, I parked the car awkwardly on a narrow snowy mountain road when it got dark, and dared not go forward.

At about ten o'clock in the evening, the headlights of a car appeared deep below me. On the winding mountain road, the headlights flashed and disappeared, and sometimes the beams of light even shone on the opposite slope, at least I thought so. Because in my opinion, some shapes that had been hidden in the darkness seemed to appear again, but I couldn't conclude that this was definitely not an illusion; sometimes, it stopped and remained motionless for several minutes, so I guessed that the driver was observing the road (brave driver, I had already dared not move a step); sometimes, the car seemed to be moving away from me, which disappointed me, because I really hoped that it would drive in front of me and give me some news and courage.

Finally, the car turned a corner and disappeared, never to be seen again. I felt strange and scared, worried that it had an accident, but I couldn't hear any sound (the mountain was not steep, and the roadside was a gentle grass slope, not deep or steep).

Although it had snowed, it was not very cold here. Before the car showed up, I had already filled my stomach, dressed warmly, and was about to have a comfortable sleep. During the day, I passed through the magnificent mountains and tried my best to describe my impressions of it in words and wrote them down in my diary. Before and after parking, I also enjoyed the moving scene of dusk lingering on the peaks, which made me feel very satisfied.

After being tormented by the car's mysterious appearance, I couldn't sleep for a long time. I don't know when, the clouds faded, the moon appeared sneakily behind my head, and I could see the outline of the opposite mountain again. This is a familiar scene, but this time, the undulating shape makes people angry. And the car has become a symbol, and its fate makes people think about it.

One thing I realized that night was that, at least for the moment, I hated nature with all my heart. I opened my notebook and wrote down some emotional sentences comparing the natural world to our cage and graveyard.

The next morning, I set off when I could see the road clearly (I never saw the car again, which was strange, but there was a village two kilometers away). The mountains were so beautiful after the snow, and my spirits were high again, especially after I had a hot meal in the town at the bottom of the valley.

The trip was no different from the previous one, the scenery was still beautiful, I was still in the mood for wandering, and I took the same number of photos every day, and they were just as poor. However, I secretly thought, not very confidently, that I might have gotten rid of some influence of romanticism.

This is indeed a not very reliable opinion. In the past few years, my occasional travels have not changed much from before. I still go to the same types of places. I still like the beautiful ones, and I still believe that there are all kinds of beautiful things ahead when I see ugly ones. Indeed, nature is so beautiful that it is hard to hate it, at least when you look at it face to face (not when you close your eyes and imagine it).

But I have not changed at all. Now, I prefer to wander around the north, and I have learned to appreciate the barren mountains and deserts. Although they are not so pleasing to the eye, they are obviously more real and reliable. However, according to my experience, you can't wander around in such places for too long, otherwise you can expect your mood to deteriorate.

I also learned to be polite. For example, the Helan Mountains have a nice name, especially in classical texts. But when I saw its bare, hard appearance, I was not surprised or disappointed, nor did I lose my temper. Instead, I walked through it politely, remembering to say goodbye.

Sunrise and sunset

While sorting out the few diary entries I had from the past year, I found a long section recording sunrises.

This is a bit rare, because although I have experienced more than 10,000 sunrises, before this, I never seemed to have any special feelings about it, nor did I write about it in detail. Even if I was outside, I had the opportunity to stare at the sun coming out from the left or right every day, so what? For me, it was just a reminder, "It's time to have breakfast."

I like dawn, the moment before sunrise, but sunrise? The sky will be blindingly bright (in some places; the local haze is so severe that all light is soft), the once quiet ground will be covered with human footprints, the moisture will leave the low sky, the dust will rise again, the frogs will hide under the grass, and the birds will not dare to speak - daytime is coming, that's all. So why is it different this year, is it because of aging or boredom? I hope it's neither, although it's probably the opposite. Before talking about that diary and other things, I want to dig out my impression of sunrise in my memory. In a book I started reading yesterday, the author recalled that when he was 16, he was alone for three days for the first time in his life during a camping trip. His later interest in noble things such as nature and philosophy was not found in his diary at that time; what he actually wrote was a long list of delicious food names, which he planned to eat as soon as he returned to the city. So he sighed, it seems that the long evolution of mankind has not produced a pursuit higher than cheese and hamburgers.

Similarly, my childhood memories are more about food and less about aesthetics. If not completely absent, it is only because some of the food is beautiful. I lived in a mountain village for three or four years. It was a beautiful place, but at the time, there were edible fish in the river, pears and walnuts on the hillside, and so on. As for sunrise, although it has a suspicious connection with breakfast, its connection with another "hateful" thing - going to school - is reliable. Yes, sunrise, or anything else, never aroused any poetic feeling, at that time or in many years to come.

When I was 20 years old, I took a boat from Dalian to Tanggu. My ticket was the lowest class. I had difficulty breathing in the cabin because there were probably hundreds of people crammed on the unventilated lower floor. When I returned to the deck, it was too cold at night. I went up and down alternately, hoping that the sky would get brighter as it would be warmer. Before sunrise, all the passengers came to the deck and stretched their backs. I can't remember what the sunrise looked like at the moment. I remember that someone cheered, and I remember that the light became bright, so that I could see that everyone's face was pale, which was caused by the cold or the turbid air and lack of sleep. We poor creatures are warm-blooded animals, but when the first ray of sunlight hits us, our joints are lubricated, our muscles are stretched, and even our ears are not so droopy.

This time, together with some other experiences later, shaped my impression of sunrise, which was combined with fatigue, lack of energy, and cold. In my memory, after several long winter nights of drinking, the wine was gone, every joke was told three times, the excitement disappeared in the middle of the night, and nothing could fill it. I waited until the early morning, and someone said "it's getting light", so I felt like I was pardoned, went out to the street, and saw the bleak sunlight coming down. The river of bicycles carried people to work, and the only thought at this time was to go home and sleep. From literature, I know that sun worship was probably the most common worship in ancient times. In the dark ages with no means of lighting and heating, the sunrise that came as promised was so inspiring! People must have worried that it might not come out tomorrow. This worry can be seen in various prayers, but over time, everyone took sunrise for granted, and the status of the goddess Eos or Usha plummeted. In some religions, sunrise symbolizes God's care and promise to his people; sunrise is reassuring, letting believers know that they have not been abandoned.

Robert Browning has these lines:

Spring brings the year,

The morning brings the day,

Seven o'clock brought morning;

Dewdrops on the hillside,

The skylark is on the wings,

The snail is on the thorns,

God is in heaven---

The world is safe and sound.

All is well with the world; it was so yesterday and it is so today. Is it really?

From modern physics, we know that the sun is always there, and the sunrise and sunset are just caused by the Earth's own playfulness. When the sun rises here, it sets somewhere else. We also know that the sun may not always be there.

But we don't need to "live for less than a hundred years, but always worry about a thousand years". We should plan for ourselves first. The fate of an individual is comparable to the fate of mankind. The difference is that an individual can only live for a few decades, at most a hundred years. Sooner or later, a question will jump into people's minds before going to bed: Will I wake up? In this way, the sunrise is even more of a comfort.

Philosophers like Heidegger once praised the sun incoherently: "Perfect, brilliant, ruling the quiet ocean and the sneaking coastline, ruling the mountains and shallow swamps, ruling those who have sweet dreams and those who have nightmares, ruling good and evil, life and death, ruling the vast world and all breathing creatures." We can flatter the sun endlessly, after all, it is the master of all life on earth; if flattery is effective, I will also join this camp and do my bit.

Every sunset is like a funeral. Yes, there will be another day, but this day - today, will soon pass away and will never be repeated. The sun may rise as usual, but life does not. In contrast, sunrise is comic, encouraging, anesthetic, anti-crazy, and triumphant.

I wrote in my diary: "I arrived at 6:30, the sky was just beginning to light up. According to GPS, the sunrise time here today is 7:03. I kept an eye on the left rearview mirror. Before I knew it, a mixture of pink and blue began to appear on the left rear horizon."

Maybe it was due to the terrain, the actual sunrise was 7 or 8 minutes late. In addition, because it was in the desert, there was not enough water vapor, the color changes in the sky were not very rich, and the sun jumped out all of a sudden. I found that waiting before sunrise was a bit charming, but waiting for the bright red edge to appear was nothing new.

I continued writing: "I stopped the car to watch the sunrise, and then I went on. This is a straight road. The sun first stopped in the rearview mirror, and then slowly moved backwards. We knew it was there without looking, from the changes in the color of the gradually soaked ground, the changes in temperature - starting from the left shoulder, a kind of warmth spread. Even without looking, I knew it was behind me on the left, very reliable, like the eyes of relatives who are watching us go away. After the figures of the people seeing us off disappeared, the wanderer still had faith in the affection of family, and the sun, it was indeed there.