Find Myself

The nearby and distant lamps were glittering and winking like sleepless, yet curious eyes, witnessing many secrets of human nights, if not those of human hearts. I woke up early in the morning, taking a shower, cleaning the teeth, drinking a cup of water, with no wish to sleep any more because the lamps and all these once habitual acts stirred something alive in memory.

I used to wake up quite early in the morning, and take a shower, read for a while in bed, then sit before the computer, writing and thinking with the lamps yellow or silver flickering out in the street---a routine practice in the coastal city last March and April. I wrote a lot of prose and diary during that period and discovered a lot as well: I looked at the lonely stars in the open field and wrote the prose “Tonight, I am alone”; I watched the full moon and flashing lamps, and composed the essay “The moonlit memory”; I heard the morning train’s whistle and spotted the tiny grass shoots, so I came up with “A train of thoughts” and a heartfelt amour “With you”. It was a special period with special experience that brought amazingly special harvest out of a versatile mind. I surprised myself with what I found and wrote of those days.

A few days ago, on a business trip, I went to the coastal city again, and also paid a visit to the unit I was so familiar with.

 It was a sunny morning, and the old friends and colleagues had been waiting by the gate for me. After warm greeting and handshaking, I first entered once my own office, sat there for a moment, then dialed the telephone to re-experience the feelings I had cherished; in the morning sunshine, with the radio in my hand, I wandered about in the football-pitch like open field, listening to BBC English program, examining the trees and grass, and looking seaward to feel the kiss of a cool breeze through that yellow woods of willow and poplar trees, where the bee farmer used to keep his worker bees together with his honey dream of a small fortune. Oh, yes, from the talk I once had with the farmer, I got to know “The bee’s pleasure and human nature”; during the morning exercises, I discovered “The footprints on sea beach”; and one sunny morning just like this, I shook hands with the friends, with the colleagues, and said “Goodbye, my coastal city” to the shimmering sea, to the familiar trees and grass, to the cosy office, and to those disappeared twinkling stars and flickering lamps. It was really an unforgettable spring in my life.

Now, the street lamps went off, and the stars were nowhere to be found, yet I seemed to have found myself once more: my feelings, my character and my special ego, through recalling, visiting, writing, and talking with the friends, also through the change from the flickering lamps to the rising sun.

(November 22, 2005)