The city sky filled for a moment with fireworks, and the one that seemed to bloom for me was so bright it almost hurt. Time turned lightly, as if dancing past on tiptoe. What I saw went out. What disappeared stayed with me.
Side A: Seventeen, and the Edge of an Ignorant World
January 1, 2004, 00:00 — The fireworks burned out, fell from the sky, and shattered.
Silence. Nothing moving, nothing sounding, a kind of stillness that did not need a name. It did not matter; anything would have been fine. I was wrapped in a quilt, curled up in bed, unable to hear even my own breathing or heartbeat.
I opened my eyes, closed them, opened them again. After several tries I understood it was useless. There was no difference between the two. Both were only deep black.
For one instant I thought this must be what nothingness and chaos were like, and I was Pangu waiting at the beginning of the world, waiting for my eyes to become the sun and moon and my hair to turn into stars. A person lost in nonsense drifted toward sleep, vaguely hearing a song float in from somewhere:
“Trees of fire and silver flowers glow red by themselves… who knows whether we will meet like this again next year.”
February 3, 2004, 09:30 — The struggle between thought and paper is unbearable.
My bed is genuinely comfortable, so whenever there is nothing else to do I like to stay on it. There are so many things I want to say, but the moment I pick up a pen, nothing comes out.
So I lie there thinking wildly. Before any of those thoughts can be sorted into a shape, sleep defeats me. Day after day, nothing is written down.
Memory is frightening when you face it directly. Once you cannot remember something, no one else can restore it for you. A scene, a period of time, a feeling, a sentence—if you forget it, it is gone forever. One day, when other people forget you, perhaps you will be gone too.
May 13, 2004, 15:05 — Angels. Are there still angels in the world?
Very often I wonder what kind of person I am. I think until my head hurts, and still there is no answer.
Everything in May feels tender and extravagant. Clover is lovely, a flower that stands for hope and happiness. People say children born in May have pure eyes. Unfortunately, I was born in December, in a world of ice and snow.
Behind me to the left sat a tall, thin boy. Sometimes he was quiet, like a still pool of water. Sometimes he waved his claws and bared his teeth, noisy as an entire street.
I am not a warm person. I have never had much respect for the careful management of relationships. He and I were only classmates, not even friends. We were that distant.
But he once said my smile was like an angel’s—pure and bright. It was only a simple compliment, simple enough to move me deeply. We still never became friends, but I think I will remember that sentence for a very long time.
May 17, 2004, 18:54 — When I try to remember the dreams I once had, only loneliness remains.
On the way home I came down the small mountain path. The plane trees along the shaded road were in bloom, their fallen flowers scattered everywhere. They did not feel tragic and beautiful like cherry blossoms. Their blue-white flowers had a cold, lonely restraint.
In old poems, plane trees in autumn are always tied to loneliness, like Li Houzhu’s line about “lonely plane trees in a deep courtyard locking in the clear autumn.” But few people write about plane trees in spring or summer. The tung blossoms around Qingming are also a beautiful sight. So why did the phrase “the fragrance of loneliness” suddenly appear in my mind?
“when I was little / I often looked at the sky outside the window / imagining that when I grew up / I could make the beautiful dreams of the past come true
when I grew up / I discovered the world really made no sense / I did not know where to go / or whether to stay where I was and not move at all”
On the phone with W, we sang those lines again and again. I thought of the happy life of our first year of high school, but I could not remember those dreams. We had both forgotten them. They had floated into the wind and been blown away.
I am realistic now. I no longer dream. I know very clearly that dreams do not come true. They are only beautiful enough to make people sad.
July 19, 2004, 22:05 — I passed through one corner of the world and left nothing behind.
I really do like the anime Kino’s Journey. It feels like a fairy-tale fable, full of a quiet atmosphere. A quiet girl travels with a talking motorcycle.
Kino is an observer of the world. She never takes the initiative to change the direction of events; she simply goes from one place to another and witnesses the impermanence of people and things.
To know, to live among people, to see human nature, to meet humanity itself—this is a journey without an end. Kino is a traveler, calm and detached. Her feeling for life is like the melody of an acoustic guitar, drifting like pale smoke. It has no taste, leaves no trace, yet it keeps echoing in memory.
September 5, 2004, 19:59 — Mother, Mother.
Suddenly, I was in my final year of high school. Suddenly, I realized I was in my final year of high school.
The weather changed. Everything became tense. The pressure grew heavy.
Every day my classmates studied. Everyone who truly wants to study has a reason. If it is me, I think my reason is my mother. This is not an excuse, not a way to pass responsibility elsewhere. I study for my mother.
I love her.
In this world, only her love for me is unconditional, and I want to make her happy. No one can write out a mother’s love in a few sentences, and no one can finish writing a child’s love for a mother in a few sentences either. So I will not attempt something useless. Those things belong in the heart, to be felt slowly every day.
Mother, Mother. Every time I call you that, I feel satisfied, as if I have received the whole world. You often nag me, but I understand. I am often disobedient, but you forgive me.
October 3, 2004, 23:11 — To be happy forever is the greatest luxury in the world.
My idol Yan Ge often writes gorgeous sentences in her books, and while I read them, tears rise before I know it.
She once said her greatest wish was to be happy all her life. Then she laughed at herself: the wish sounded simple, but in truth it was the greediest wish in the world, and one that could never be realized.
When I was sixteen, I loved Annie Baby and was hopelessly decadent. At seventeen, I fell in love with Yan Ge and left all my decadence on the floor. I fell in love with this girl who had the simplest wish. Although that wish was, in fact, complicated, and impossible forever.
I wanted to be like her, a bird circling above the hair of a Loulan girl. I wanted to wander through the northwest the way she imagined it. With a bag on my back, I wanted to see so many horses, so many sheep, and so many dead kings.
Even more realistically, I wanted to be like her and get into a famous university, then no longer worry about making a living, able to sit quietly in front of a computer and dream my own dreams. This is far more practical than happiness for an entire lifetime.
She once had a little dog named Wandering. She said Wandering was run over by a car. Her wandering died just like that.
November 31, 2004, 21:00 — Failure, and standing up again.
In the final year of high school, failure becomes something you grow used to. I know this is not a normal state of mind.
Whether the state of mind is good or bad does not matter much. Anyway, the exams will continue. After failure, there is still another test to take.
December 31, 2004, 23:59 — Who knows whether we will meet like this again next year.
I considered no fewer than N possible places to spend the last day of the year. In the end, facts proved that I spent it at home.
The friends who watched fireworks with me last year—I do not know where they are now, or whether they are thinking of last year the way I am. Another year has staggered by. The flowering years have gone rushing past with a loud clatter.
Time makes a sound when it flows.
My seventeen was the edge of my ignorant world. No matter how innocent I may look in the future, no one will believe I am still truly naïve. This year I think of last year. Next year, will I think of this year?
Perhaps all that can be said is: who knows whether we will meet like this again next year.
Side B: Eighteen, and the Beginning of an Unknown World
Yan Ge said eighteen is a sharp boundary.
When I was sixteen, I could not imagine what I would be like at eighteen. Now that I see it, it is only this. Eighteen really is a sharp boundary, cruel enough that if you cannot cross it, you might as well die there. The boundary of eighteen is the college entrance examination.
My eighteen is the beginning of an unknown world. Life is about to begin like this: no one to rely on, every right and wrong decision made by myself. Everything that should or should not be done, everything reasonable and unreasonable, every moment of relief and every sadness—all of it must be accepted in full, with no room for bargaining.
Looking back on everything that has passed, I used my youth to paint a picture that can never be completed. Every stroke has become one of my failures.
The city sky filled for a brief moment with fireworks, and the one that seemed to bloom for me was brilliant in a way that made me sad. Before the New Year arrived, I finished these fragments of imagining. Time kept turning past with its light, dancing steps. What I saw went out. What disappeared stayed with me.
Written on the eve of the 2005 college entrance examination.