(: An Unyielding Love in the Mortal World)
Butterflies Flutter in May, Time Carving the Charm
Just as a poet once said, time shapes love into a song but makes the singer wander far and wide. Is it true that all those who have walked through youth are like this? Arguing with loved ones, pouring out their hearts to strangers, listening to sad songs, watching happy plays. Initially unfamiliar, ultimately unacknowledged - I've always wondered.
Prelude
In a quiet, lingering summer day, white clouds drift by. Sitting alone in a car, watching the fleeting scenery outside the window, people and events locked away in the amber of time by tears and sorrow flicker and dance before my eyes, refusing to fade. Suddenly, I feel an urge to write, to record the unsettled emotions and the aimless youth.
I spent a long time pondering what color youth should be and how to depict it. When I spread out my manuscript paper, hoping for flowers to bloom under my fingertips, exuding fragrant scents, splashing ink on the paper, yet all I wrote was one line: "Youth is a lonely journey."
Time passes so quickly that we barely notice. March, April, then May. Spring departs, and summer arrives. In this deeply passionate May, with its still azure skies, I wish to plant a tree in my heart - a coral tree, a phoenix tree, or perhaps a towering camphor tree? Or maybe it doesn't matter. When I'm lost, it can guide me home; when I cry, it can shield my pained face. I want to plant a flower in my heart - a rose, a marguerite, or even a black mandrake? That too doesn't matter. When I'm disappointed, it can guard my fragile heart; when I'm weary, it can awaken my sleeping restlessness.
Youth is sensitive, filled with many moments of helplessness. Often, pain comes suddenly, catching us off guard, much like the arrival of this summer, abrupt and intense. After just one thunderstorm, the leaves burst forth with a suffocating greenness. It takes only the time for a single flower to bloom, too hurried to warm your pupils. The heat brings a hint of pain, seeping into the skin, soaking out large beads of sweat. I am not surprised by my own sensitivity to seasonal changes, but I wish this stubborn cycle could stop, so that the fluctuations in mood and feelings of being at a loss would cease.
Youth is a bright, undulating farewell song. It has a hazy prelude, an exciting accompaniment, a parting refrain, and a tranquil conclusion. The beginning of youth is always recklessly flamboyant, like an expansive sea. In our youth, we once set out with a heart ready to conquer the world, with wild imaginations heading towards the stage of reality. Over the years, I've also rushed between Suzhou, Shanghai, and Nanjing, feeling the weight of life during my travels at the station. During my leisure time, I sometimes look back at the empty clouds behind me, and in the flowing years, the red-dust accompanying departure song lingers faintly in the dim nights.
During a certain period, I realized I spent too much time in front of the computer, even if I wasn't writing or chatting with others. I'd rather sit there maintaining a dazed posture, listening to music while letting my mind go blank, clearly feeling my steady existence. I've always loved the taste of faded traces. Recently, I found a mirror at a flea market, its frame intricately carved from dark red aromatic wood. Placing it on my desk, after washing up in the morning, I looked at myself in the mirror, seeing the hidden melancholy behind a seemingly young and plain face. I saw the boy in a white checked shirt standing under the eaves, where sunlight couldn't reach his body. As the daylight grew stronger, he turned his back to the sun, fearing the entire world's gaze converging on him, revealing his withered face, and then mysteriously disappearing completely. There was a sudden realization: youth is overly self-centered, it can be very private and personal. If each person is a world, then within one's own world, it's indeed grand enough. It's a one-way trip, and once gone, it never returns. Distinctly. No matter how reluctant or unwilling, it will leave without hesitation.
Sometimes, youth is an indescribable stirring dream, sometimes it's a game, but with indelible sadness and unforgettable marks. In such times, there's no chaos or turmoil, just walking quietly through street corners, amidst bustling crowds and fleeting clouds, playing out many worldly stories, both tragic and joyful, and encountering romantic loves like in a soap opera. Last weekend, I, Xiao Ai, and a colleague were singing in a KTV room. Throughout the session, Xiao Ai's mood remained gloomy, and finally, he sang a song by Fish Leong. Before singing, he said he met a girl online, they fell in love, quickly becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. The girl loved him and overcame all obstacles to be with him, but she left because he realized he couldn't provide her with the life she wanted. Accompanied by a soothing rhythm, as he sang the line "Unfortunately, it wasn't you who stayed with me until the end..." Xiao Ai cried, and eventually, everyone in the room cried.
I sat silently in the corner, feeling a subtle inner conflict. I knew it wasn't just Xiao Ai, but many others had encountered and deeply loved someone. While loving, they were inseparable, mistaking the tenderness of dusk for eternal affection, unaware that mere love isn't enough, far from enough. Many things are desirable but unattainable, fate intervenes too hastily, and we don't have time to react before we must give everything back, leaving behind a long distance. Everything is clear to me; against fate, we are so powerless. So I learn to let go, not to force things, to conceal my feelings, to be rational, to feign maturity, at least that way it won't hurt as much. Someone said the sky is so blue it could make you cry. I won't delude myself like others, squatting under the azure sky, using cold hands to embrace a warmer heart that's colder than zero degrees. All warmth and coldness, I know myself.
Once, I thought many things would change with time, including emotional depths and distances, fluctuating with light waves, eventually fading without a trace. But I realized I was wrong, wrong in overlooking that many things are cyclical. The starting point of life overlaps with the endpoint after a big circle. In 2007, I experienced my first love, intense and unforgettable. I couldn't find the most accurate words to describe that love because I loved too deeply and had to leave due to my inability to provide. Who could understand such feelings?
For so long, I couldn't be honest with myself. In this cycle of time, we keep returning, facing the decision to part ways at the moment of deepest love. Perhaps the best outcome of love isn't necessarily togetherness; separation can also be a form of happiness. After enduring deep pain and the bitterness of life and death separations, shouldn't we all come to a deeper understanding and appreciation? At least, when I see her old photos, my heart still aches. After the pain, looking back at the long distance, I realize I'm still that boy pacing by the riverbank. Melancholy. Sensitive. Tolerant. Peaceful. Detached from worldly affairs, yet accepting ambiguities and silently bearing injustices.
Perhaps because I cannot make myself rich enough, nor can I embark on long journeys, I use all my spare time to think and write. I also know many writers who bring their words to life vividly. I don't know what writing means to me, a window for expression? At least, it should be part of life. One day, Su Su told me that after a long time without writing, she forgot how to write. I told her it's not forgetting, just a layer of dust covering her heart, filling it up. Once full, it loses its ability. She preferred to discard it entirely rather than be filled up. Maybe. The tides of time will scatter names, poems, confessions, and memories. Yet, we remain calmly in the river of time, neither coming nor going, neither crying nor laughing, neither blooming nor fruiting. So, please allow us to gently tread through this fleeting, beautiful youth with unnamed hands.
Walking on uneven stone paths, the ancient alley leads to a shimmering glass-like lake, and an inexplicable thrill rises in my heart. I know that beyond this lies the warmth of sunlight flooding the city. As I take the final step, I glance back and see the bright fragments of the past tenderly blurred by time, carved into grids and slowly sealed into translucent amber. Finally, they are imprinted deep in my heart.
Clustered around the lake are several cherry trees. Despite their trials in the storms of March and April, their blossoms nearly perishing in dreams, now beneath the green leaves, tiny cherries are hidden. I imagine next year they'll sprout new branches, and in the next season of blooming weather, youth should revive alongside them. Then, we will have new lives, new hopes, new songs of love.