After parting like floating clouds, ten years have passed like flowing water. — Inscription
You have always been on the road, encountering beauty, meeting a group of people who love beauty just like you, and talking freely with them. In their prime, they radiate the heat of life just like the summer when you met. Suddenly, a fallen leaf drifts beside you; you gently touch the leaf, but it opens an album, and the yellowed shadows cause ripples in your heart lake, and the ripples stir up waves in your heart, which turn into blooming clusters of goldenrod, playing the silhouettes of old times.
Fleeting Light and Shadow#
Time has blurred your past, but fragments of old times linger in your heart. You remember the old television from your childhood, the DVD player your father brought back, the old items in your home... You remember your childhood hometown, and you also remember the first time you came to a strange place. Since then, those old things have changed dramatically with the passage of time, making you forget the past.
But your hometown has never forgotten you; it calls out to the fragments of your heart, reminding you of your past.
Interpreting Myself#
You first recall your hometown, a bustling little town hidden in the mountains, where the bodhi tree at the corner shelters the merchants who work at sunrise and rest at sunset. This ancient bodhi has listened to your lonely operas and your sobs; it remembers every detail of your childhood. You may have forgotten them, but whenever you write poetry and songs that belong solely to you, you will recall that distant past, when a bodhi listened to your lofty operas, prompting you to write boldly, line by line. You send those words to the bodhi of your hometown, which still listens to your lonely operas and your sobs.
Like your hometown, you love the lonely tune. The bustling little town hidden in the mountains has only one road, the sole connection to the outside world. The simple villagers here sing songs unique to their town, letting the songs be heard by the mountain stream, bringing vitality to it; they sing to the creek, making it even more joyful. Yet in the end, no traveler from afar is willing to listen to its songs; it performs its own lonely opera to the mountain stream and the creek. The little town of your hometown, like you, loves the lonely opera; each lonely tune is the best self-interpretation. Whenever you interpret yourself, you always remember the distant hometown.
You shout: "Hometown, please call me by your name!"
Gentle Ripples of Water#
In the distance, there is a bonfire burning for those who have waited long. You leave your homeland and drift far away. You once thought of your hometown, thought of the bodhi, thought of the wild grasses and flowers. The paths of time are quiet and beautiful, but deep in the years lies growth. You open the book of drifting, touching the old memories of drifting; they bring you warmth, and like flowing water, they soothe your pain. When the flowers collide with old memories, they will flood countless seasons.
Those flooding flowers and old memories impact your heart. You once dreamed of wandering the world with a sword, and you once dreamed of crossing mountains, rivers, and seas; you once paused for nameless lives and buried withered flowers; you once drifted freely towards the distance and let your loneliness flow freely.
In the fragments of drifting, you continuously express your admiration for life. You once wrote about sunflowers standing strong after a storm, and you wrote about an ordinary seed breaking through the soil and even rock to sprout and grow. You also wrote about a stray cat's tenacious life and penned the immortal legend that Qu Yuan earned with his life.
Youth chases time, and life flows away with time. Your mother's hair, which should have been black, begins to turn gray; your grandmother becomes slower; your brother steps into the hall of marriage, while your tears, which should have been tender, gradually trace down your maturing cheeks. Those old stories in the fragments turn into your years. Regardless of the wind and rain, you always choose to chase after, facing the storm's roar, calling for the storm to come even more fiercely, shattering the unbearable past. But when you muster the courage to look back, you find that those gradually blurred fragments quietly let you grow.
Old memories are like a window; once opened, it is hard to close again. You are in the moonlight, listening to the sounds of the tides rising and falling, letting them wash over your heart. As you watch the moonlight spill onto the harbor, it leaves only a vast expanse; those years intoxicate you, making you forget to think, yet you still must set sail.
Gently brush away the dust of old memories; those light or heavy recollections walk out one footprint after another in your heart. Everything around you is quietly being reborn, and time will open a new chapter. You bid farewell to old memories, even as you continuously ask the bright moon, "When will I see my old friends again?" But you still set sail towards the distance because you know that perhaps your old friends will meet again in that faraway place.
You are me, and I am you.
This article is synchronized and updated to xLog by Mix Space. The original link is https://fmcf.cc/posts/life/When-Will-We-Meet-Again