February 9, 2024

The mood of the environment and the characters is related, even in the cold winter, it does not affect the joyful mood of the characters. In the vast sea of ​​people in the big city, some people cannot suppress the joy of just entering it. I stepped on the cold northern snow, and the snow made a squeaking sound. The winter morning turned out to be foggy, even Apollo couldn’t penetrate it. The cold is bone-chilling, infecting the whole body in no time. This damn weather, nothing can withstand it.

Once emotions arise, various small essays are written in the heart. Yes, the mood of the environment and the characters is closely related. If this is me standing on the land of northern Germany, even in the bone-chilling cold wind, I feel free, I feel comfortable. Freedom is no longer the freedom of weather, but the freedom of my whole person, the freedom of air, I and the cold wind are cold together. Even in some remote and poor villages with extremely poor environment, I feel comfortable. Because I have simultaneously freed myself from two kinds of constraints, one is religious constraints, and the other is political constraints. When neither of them oppresses me, then I must be free.

My fifth grandfather had a serious illness before the New Year, and his originally clumsy legs now stagger even more. Compared with the last time I saw him, he has lost a lot of weight and his complexion has become pale.

As the fifth grandfather implies, he is the fifth in the family. I have a total of six grandfathers, and my biological grandfather ranks fourth. It should have been a large family, celebrating the New Year lively. But it seems that this family is not harmonious, so much so that I have only seen the fifth and sixth grandfathers, and I met the eldest grandfather once in Hebei Province.

The fifth grandfather had two daughters, who were married off when I was unaware. But I have never seen the figures of these two aunts in my cognitive years. Every time I visited during the New Year, there were only the fifth grandfather and fifth grandmother in the small adobe house. Fifth grandmother was very clean, the furniture in the small adobe house was neatly arranged and spotless, even the red brick floor was clean, and the square table was polished brightly. There were all kinds of melon seeds and candies in the octagonal box on the table. When I sat on the kang eating watermelon seeds, I always suspected that even they had been wiped one by one by the fifth grandmother under the golden sunlight.

Every New Year, the first thing she would ask me was how old I was, starting from the age of 8. The appearance of the small adobe house has not changed until now—until this time, on the eve of the New Year, my father took me and my younger brother to help the fifth grandfather, who had difficulty walking. Fifth grandmother asked me about my age again, and I said… I’ll be 22 years old for the New Year.

According to my memory, if the appearance of the small adobe house has not changed since I was 12 years old, then it has been ten years now.

Ten years, from elementary school to university; ten years, the fifth grandfather changed from an elderly person with difficulty walking to a patient with confused mind and loss of bladder control.

During the half-hour we spent pasting couplets, fifth grandmother kept complaining: complaining that fifth grandfather snored at night and kept her from sleeping, complaining that fifth grandfather accidentally adjusted the temperature of the electric blanket and woke her up in the early morning, complaining that there was a smell in the house because he couldn’t urinate by himself (but I didn’t smell any odor).

I looked at the display in the room, exactly the same as it was more than ten years ago: on the north side of the kang was a large stove, used for cooking; in the northwest corner, there was a cabinet with a thermos, photo frames, and a small TV on top, and between the cabinet and the stove was a large water jar. The cabinet was long, and on the south side of the kang was a square table. There was a window on the south side of the table, the kind of single-layer wooden window from the last century. All these are all the furniture in this small house, and they are all displayed in a space of less than 20 square meters.

I don’t understand, what is the meaning of living like this.

Is it for more time or to experience more pain? Is the purpose of living to see something? Or to show off one’s lifespan to death?

On nights when you can’t see the sunset, I choose to lie down and sleep early.