About two decades ago, our family returned to their hometown again. Different from the past, our family will live permanently on the land of “hometown” for a while. In the words of my father, it is called “falling leaves back to the roots”.
However, “hometown” to me is a vague concept after all. In my memory of growing up, I spent my childhood in a mine on the border between Guizhou and Guangxi. There, I experienced the initial enlightenment and carefree youth of my life. My father is a coal mine digging worker who has been engaged in coal mining for more than thirty years. In his career, he has experienced numerous dangerous situations such as water penetration, landslides, gas leaks, etc. Fortunately, every time he can retreat with his evil spirits. Until the mine was on the verge of collapse, my father had to lead our family back to Yalou Village, the hometown of northwest Guangxi.
My hometown is always a strange place for me. Since I was a child, my father has lived in the mining area. All memories are related to the mine. In my current hometown, there is no mark of my growth, no familiar hills, playmates, and even my life and language are incompatible with it. Everything here makes me feel extremely painful and confused. That year, I was 14 years old. I transferred from Mine Middle School to the rural middle school in my hometown. To be honest, I do not like this place at all, and even everything here makes me feel disgusted. For example: barren land, dirty village roads, dull-eyed crowds, and under the night, drunkards screaming and punching, and those local dialects that sound “vulgar” … this is in my young heart , There is often a desire and desire to escape.
I don’t think I belong here. The language barrier finally caused me to be afraid of communicating with people. I felt anxious and helpless at times. I started to become lonely. During the summer vacation, I would stay alone in a ten-square-meter tile house and sit quietly. There was no one to talk to, so I talked to myself. At that time, my parents were so desperate for their livelihoods that I had to live in small businesses early in the morning and late at night, and it was difficult to take care of my life and studies. In their view, saving money early to build a house is the most important thing right now. In the days when I lived in my hometown, because of language barriers, I became autistic. Even when I met very familiar people, I felt embarrassed and uneasy. I began to immerse myself in my own world, trying to construct a “hometown” or even a “world” in my heart. I don’t know when I started, I became a dumb, incisive child in everyone’s eyes. As a result, I have more time and space of my own. I am eager to find an exit to send out loneliness, loneliness and anxiety that cannot be resolved within my heart.
All summer, I buried my head in a hot room to study, and I was so sullen that I walked back and forth in the dark room. Sometimes, I will choose some beautiful passages to read to myself, and even speak with myself in order to pass the long and sleepy summer time. In a trance, I saw another figure of “I”. He sat across from me, looked at me silently, and didn’t speak. This made me feel very happy, but shocked. I even suspect that my brain is broken, and all kinds of illusions are born in front of me. I vaguely worried that if I continue to indulge, I will go crazy sooner or later. I fled again and again, and stepped down again, and finally approached the square of the fighting room. The world I built was constantly tightened, squeezed, confused, and inner anxiety pressed me. I struggled, shouted, eager to break through, and broke free … but all my efforts are in vain after all.
Until one day, I walked out of the room and into the little wood by the village. It was a rare forest with various shrubs. That silent summer, the resounding cicada trembles the whole woods. I buried my head and walked back and forth in the woods, and in my ears were the sound of cicadas. In that grand hustle and bustle, I clearly heard my inner voice. The gloom inside was swept away, and I seemed to have found a secret stronghold that fits my soul, allowing me to gather all the troubles in my heart, just like the prisoner breaking free of the shackles and breathing free and fresh air. It was a flower blooming after a long depression. Like the end of a long night, a ray of dawn is projected. I expose myself to the sun and the wind, let the sun shine through my body, and let the breeze clear all the haze. That whole world has stored all the anxiety, melancholy and confusion of my adolescence. When I walked back to the room again, what was revealed inside was another scene.
I finally started writing. On that bleak moonlight night, the fireflies sang low in the grass bed, and the piles of rice piled up on the beams of the house, thick and warm. I was lying on the edge of the bed. Through the window paper, I saw the flowing moonlight flowing through the window sill. It was quiet and serene, and made people feel very peaceful. Such moonlight, such starlight, such hometown, flowing dreamy colors, poignant and blurred, make people fall into infinite reverie. That night, my pen dipped in the moonlight in front of the window to write the first poem of my life. From then on, my mind opened a window. It is a bright moon that lights up the heart, illuminates loneliness and loneliness, and releases tranquility. I started writing desperately, writing about my inner desires and longings, writing about another hometown and village, and the scenery that flashed inside. I don’t know the difference between paragraphs and sentences, or what kind of genre poetry is. Only vaguely perceive that after the text is staggered, it will present a different reading effect, and it is easier to reach the inner heart and tremble the soul.
When I accidentally realized the extraordinary charm of writing, I couldn’t help being excited. The words gave me the comfort of my soul, and the support of my soul, which made my heart at a loss at a loss. I began to write the texts of the branches, capture the flash of fire in my heart, put the sadness, joy, melancholy, or adolescence in my heart into the pen, and write it on the paper …
Today, it has been more than ten years now. It seems that the initial understanding of poetry at that time was so pure. Those secret thoughts, no matter how sad or happy, have the attributes of poetry, and at the same time, they have been consistent with their own understanding.
Later, I left my hometown to study abroad, and now live in the jungle of the city. I am still obsessed with the silent atmosphere when the twilight comes. When the twilight comes, I like to go to the corridor and stand to look at the light coming from afar. At this time, the slow, blue-gray night glow began to envelope my whole body and quietly overflow my room. In the darkness of night, a quiet illusion spread all around, this is exactly the writing atmosphere and state I desire. For several years, my window has been so open, trembling in the cool evening breeze, like a deep sleepless eye in this city. Until the beginning of the night, when the stars dripped on the paper, I began to write in such a space and time. Those light, dark, poetry lines contaminated with the night are very close to the colors that filled my heart. Now, the night is constantly accumulating. There are some things beside me, books, tea cups, a few shabby tables and chairs, and wild flowers collected from the suburbs. They have slowly lost their original color under the influence of night. I know that those slow time will also wipe out the youth on people’s faces, including those things and things immersed in time, will be hidden in a place that no one knows at an uncertain time. This is the revelation that night brings me.
Many times, anxiety restricts my actions and thinking, and writing becomes cautious. I have tried to find a fulcrum between words and things, text and heart. For those writings with personal experience, life circumstances and spiritual experience, I often harbor a sense of alertness. On the one hand, it may be related to the contradiction that I have formed over the years and my personal growth experience. On the other hand, personal expression of rhetoric is still in a vague cognitive stage. As for the use of words and the technical expression of poetry, I was often overwhelmed and caught in a state of panic.
Today, I have left my hometown for many years. In the depths of memory, the things of the hometown still linger: like the scented rice stacks, the shiny hearth, and the slight fireworks smell. … Those old images were legible, as if they were close at hand, and so lonely and far away. All the marks of growth, happiness or sorrow, fall on the negative film of the soul, solidify into stone, and dry into the image of the heart. I do n’t like or dislike this living city because I have to find a place to live in this reinforced concrete space, and at the same time I need to forage or sing like a sparrow. As an outsider, I often look at the prosperity and decay of this city with cold eyes. When I walk under the neon lights of shadows or walk through the busy crowd, I still feel lonely. It makes it easier for me to get closer to the complex emotions and living conditions that people living in this city face deep down in their hearts.
From the countryside to the city, a “pan-city” mental state has always oppressed me. Through poetry, I tried to build a hometown in the inner world. When I walk on the road, or wandering far away, only poetry can bring me a little warmth in my soul. More often than not, I am silently resisting in my heart, trying to use words to explain a stranger’s confusion and anxiety about the future, as well as the various anxieties facing me. Using paper and pen as a stick, I walked on the edge of the city and tentatively used “dark words” to approach the savageness of the city. Even trying to use the “cold lyrical” way to do some unnecessary fighting. Contradictions and confusion have gradually dispelled my self-confidence. I am like a ignorant child. I am lost in the poetic layout I have built and I can’t even find a way back.
The night is slightly cool. The lighthouse on the top of the mountain in the distance transmits faint light, diluting the noise and dullness of the town to a limited height. In the cold and quiet nights, modern architecture cuts the night of the city into angular silence. Through the thin night sky, I pushed open the rusty doors and windows, looked at the starry sky at the four corners of the window, and tapped these specious words on the cool keyboard: eager to find a balanced fulcrum in my heart.