My Life as Penguin

Four years is a negligible period in the grand history, but for my mortal life, it is a long march. From dawn of 25 till the sunset of 28, this time period covers most of my mid twenties and witnesses my transformation from a careless mind into a preoccupied soul. What had happened? I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me the physical length of time can not capture the psychological manifestation during the same period. Some fundamental switches had been turned on and I lost youth innocence of body and mind. The world is no longer a place of infinite possibilities, but rather a dwelling of compromised will and action. Is grow-up necessarily a good thing? I doubt. As I doubt of myself and the world, I lost my self confidence I used to have. That confidence is an illusion, which comes out neither from reasoning nor external consent. It is merely the boldness of youth ignorance. As for now, when I look back to the way I have traveled and the journey I am yet to go, I wonder what I should say about these four years and how will they fit into my past and my future. If you ever have been a peregrinator, you know the suffering of a wonderer. The aim is clear in the beginning of the journey and becomes blurred as the roads extend by themselves. The familiar memory of the homeland becomes part of the super-realism nightmares which attack the travelers in their most vulnerable moments. What is the purpose of the journey? Or the journey becomes its own end? I carry my soul on my back since my chest is too narrow to host it. It grows with sufferings as well as happiness and it grows beyond the limit of my body. My body is the only physical memory of my homeland, the object of my nostalgia. Only at the rare moments when I was so touched by the beauty of the foreign lands, I would suddenly hit by the verse of ancient poetry of my native language and run into tears as a little child regains her mother’s hand. Who says the journey is the reward? It is also an endless process of taking away, and it changes you in such a way that you can never fit perfectly into any one culture, one country, one lifestyle, not even that of your homeland. You become a foreigner of all lands, all nations, all roads and all lovers. You even become a foreigner to you own mind, because this mind changes wildly and it suffers constantly. In order to protect itself, it takes on a thick armor. Even though, it always breaks up in the full moon night, since the strings of the armor is too tight and the mind is too vibrant. It simply needs to loose blood to keep it slow down and survive. At those very time points, you will see a foreigner lies down to his or her foot, fact up, untie the belt, close the eyes, and slowly ease the breathe. Gradually you see red tears come down their eyes. The tears are soon frozen and become red diamond-like particles on the ground. The peregrinator comes back to conscious only afterward and remembers nothing about the red tears. If you ask them what they have been dreamed for, they anxiously refuse to answer. In fact, in their dreams, they see the grant palace of their homelands, feel cold and fresh air of the ancient temples, watch the great wall of all times, touch the endless river running through their memories, and grasp their mothers’ timelessness smiles. In the smiles, they melt into blood, into anonymous beings again. The sweet dream carries on and on, till the end of their lives or their journey, whichever comes first. Then you see the tombs of those wonderers, those simple and last dwelling of these tireless minds. On the small stones you see a hardly readable sentence: Here is the one who wish to see the world at the expense of a routine life in a home town, and the one who travels the longest roads and deepest sees. It is also the one who regrets, for not staying at home and picking out the freshest flowers of the early spring and cherish their beauty of innocence and eternity. reply to this note by friends: Can't understand the question above. I can hardly call what a soul speaks a "report." While I am celebrating draggon-cat's rebirth out of her chrysalis, I anticipate the agony to extend along with the journey. A story is continuously unfolded, higher expectation for more wonders to witness roused. It's too early to mention "return." And "carefree" is the stage forgone. But, I can't helping brooding over the word "return." Who has ever promised us that living is desirable by itself? Growing up is unavoidablely and closely tied with loss and pain. To shun the latter is to give up on the former. As a common individual life, I am born to journey for I want something meaningful to fill between my birth and death. In my 30s, I travel to the point of consciousness, from being ignorant to becoming knowing. Bathed in ice and fire, this life is granted happiness by the clear consciousness and a knowledge that innocence and eternity cannot be unearned. Dear sister, there is no regret. And there is hope and more struggle. I am not sure what are being separated from each other, but clearly there are multiple parts of you, and same with me: mind, body, heart and soul. One is stepping out of the whole to examine it: now, we have ourselves in front of ourselves to learn and know. Honey, we must have taken too much granted of ourselves in the past. Otherwise, we wouldn't have felt as foreigner to ourselves instead of owner. Yes, it will be sweet to return home. Isn't it hard to resist the use of biblical allegories? Paradise lost and the return to Eden......Well, let's try the plainer Chinese one. Remeber the mountain and river metaphor? 看山是山，看水是水......Of the three stages that describes our perception of the relationship between the true existence and the appearance, the second is where we are, and we have the third to look forward to. It is home, not the one we left, but it is home. Dear sister, you are blessed with being poetic, which makes you graceful in nature, and which elevates this world to the realm of beauty. Honey, I am pulling out my checklist for my backpack and let's cross check. Hmm....more courage, more intellectuality, more love and more persistence......Obviously, we have to fill our backpacks more. I am getting back on road now. We will keep our correspondence. Good luck! p.s. I will remember to share with you the user name and password of the forum administrator for you to access your post in the mode of edit. BTW, glad to notice how marvelously you have broken the boundary between Chinese and English: you are at home with both Chinese and English writing. MOre: the thing we have been searching may(not) be discovered in the journey, may(not) be buried in the hometown. however, it must be hidden inside our heart, calling us for the deep of freedom. we hold the honour of a life ... even it is so mortal