Zhou Guoping's Essay: Nature and Life

Zhou Guoping's Essays: Nature and Life

I don't want to keep my collection of aphorisms with me all my life, just like Bacon. The reason is simple: I'm not an aphorist, and this book is not a collection of aphorisms, it's just a compilation of my little feelings that I usually write down at random. This second edition, only a few abridgements and more additions have been made, chapters have been added, and the length has been expanded, because since the first edition, after all, four years have passed, and some accumulation has been made at hand. Ten years' accumulation has only become such a small book, and I find myself really not a diligent person. -Zhou Guoping

In the spring every year, it seems as if I suddenly find out that young grass has sprung up in the soil and small green buds have been pulled out by trees. What a pure joy there will be at that time. I remember when I was a child, I buried a few soybeans or morning glory seeds in the mud outside my house, and I felt this kind of mood when I saw small green shoots coming out of the ground. Maybe life in the world was originally a family, maybe I was once such a tree and a grass, and the joy of budding life crossed the long evolutionary series and revived in my heart?

Alas, the human heart, the highest product of evolution and the most complicated thing in the world, has only recovered its purity for a moment in front of this little green bud.

now, we have less and less contact with the land. Bricks, cement, steel, plastics and various new building materials surrounded us. We shut ourselves in the walls of our dormitory or office. Walking in the street, we are also surrounded by houses, shops, buildings and concrete pavement. We always live in such a hurry that we can't look at the sky and the land. We always live in front of us and forget eternity and infinity. We no longer understand the pain and longing of the land, and we can no longer appreciate the tragic and beautiful land.

This familiar home, street, city, this bustling crowd, sometimes I suddenly feel how strange and unreal. I miss the eternal land covered by all this and the original hometown of all life.

Living in the city for a long time, occasionally coming to the secluded valley and lake, facing the rolling mountains and boundless water, you will feel a kind of relief and freedom. However, I think that if I live here and live in isolation, my mood may change.

Although I still see the same landscape, what I feel is not freedom, but restriction.

people and their products have isolated me from nature, which is a kind of loneliness. The eternal nature has separated me from history, which is another kind of loneliness. The former is the loneliness of life itself, and the latter is the loneliness of ambition.

The kind of person who can't bear the loneliness of the former finally will choose to retire. Modern people have a shallow understanding of both kinds of loneliness and are eager to escape, so tourism is booming.

　? Life? It is a beautiful word, but its beauty is covered by trivial daily life. We live, but we don't always experience life. On the contrary, such times are rare. Most of the time, we live like inanimate machines.

people pursue happiness. In fact, what moment is happier than those when they experience life most intensely and vividly? When I feel that my limbs and blood vessels are full of fresh and active life, I really think that I am the happiest person in the world at this moment.

Pain and joy are the self-enjoyment of vitality. The most sad thing is the lack of vitality, neither joy nor pain.

Life goes by peacefully, without sound, waves or even ripples. How I hate this flat river bed, it absorbs any feeling. Suddenly, I met with obstacles, and the rocks rose, and the wind was strong, throwing up waves. Am I alive? Yes, that's when I feel alive.

lust is the only way to be ethereal. There is no lust, only empty and ineffective.

the more natural things are, the more they belong to the essence of my life, and the more they can affect my deepest feelings. For example, women and children.

Modern people enjoy more and more tricks. However, I firmly believe that the sweetest enjoyment in the world is always the oldest enjoyment.

The most natural things are the most mysterious, such as sex and pregnancy. Can't the myths of all nationalities be traced back to this source?

the mutual attraction between life and life. I imagine that on an absolutely barren and lifeless planet, even if a living person sees a fly or a tiger, he will feel kind. Culture is the flower of life. Without the origin of life, culture is just an artificial bouquet, and the dispute between Chinese and Western cultures is just a dispute between silk flower and plastic flowers. Culture is the expression of life. When culture cannot express life, but suppresses it, the tension of life increases. At this time, it is necessary to change the old culture and create a new culture to re-express life. However, the transformation of culture does not have to start with culture. Sometimes, it directly expresses the sense of tension and crisis in life, and this expression itself forms a new culture. This is how the modern western irrational culture was formed. We have also begun to talk about irrationalism here, but it is so easy to talk about it. My friend said it well: Irrationalism was supposed to express the tension of life, but now we add China's Laozi and Zhuangzi and Zen to make a ridiculous cocktail and get narcissism. ? I rode my bike, looking over the cars and pedestrians on the road and staying in the dark blue sky in the evening. What a deep blue. My soul seems to involuntarily plunge into the blue sea of the universe and dive into the bottomless abyss. The sky is getting thicker and thicker, and I dive deeper and deeper, knowing that there is no hope of survival, but I still let myself sink. Orange street lamps and traffic lights are shining brightly against the background of dark blue sky. Color magic, color dream. The power of color is purely the power of magic and fantasy, which stimulates the eyes, makes people daydream, is hypnotized by the melody of light, and falls into illusion.

I think of Adams' black-and-white photography. That's another kind of power. Apart from the confusion of color, the material world is directly presented to the eyes? No, it's better to show it to your hands. Vision has become a substitute for touch. You can touch the roughness of mountains, the delicacy of quicksand, the hardness of branches and the softness of grass leaves. Through black and white photography, you don't see the illusion of the world, but touch the material itself. Wherever tourism develops, it will ruin the natural scenery there. I looked for a secluded corner, only to find advertising speakers, commercial entertainment facilities and crowds joining in the fun everywhere. I frowned. What do you want me to do? I want to throw all the noisy metal appliances in the world, from knives, saws, axes and planers to machine motors, into the furnace and then cast a silent statue. When visiting places of interest, I often can't remember the place names and allusions. I found a good reason for my bad memory? I am a person who faces nature and life directly. Compared with nature, geography is just a detail. Compared with life, history is just a detail.