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In Kinosaki

It was once run over by a train on the Yamanote Line. In order to recuperate, I went to Kinosaki Onsen in Tajima area alone. The doctor said that if the injury on his back developed into spinal tuberculosis, it would be fatal. However, if such a worsening situation does not occur within two or three years, it will be fine. In short, how to take good care of yourself is the key. So I came here and planned to rest here for about three weeks. Maybe five weeks if that's tolerable.

For some reason, my mind is still not very clear. Very forgetful. However, my mood is as peaceful as ever in recent years. Have a very calm and stable good mood. The rice harvest has just started and the weather is very nice.

I am alone, no one talks to me. Reading and writing, I sat blankly on a chair in front of the house and watched the people passing by on the mountain road. Otherwise, just take walks to pass the time.

It is a good place for walking along the river and gradually up the mountain. There are small marshes surrounding the foot of the mountain, and there are a large number of trout in the marshes. If you look carefully, you can still see a large river crab covered with hairs, resting as quietly as a stone.

I often take a walk here before dinner. On a cold night, walking along the clear stream and walking through the lonely autumn valley, just thinking about it can make you calm down. It's very lonely. However, I have a peaceful and comfortable mood. I often think about my injuries. As long as there is a little mistake, now I should be leaning against the green mountain, sleeping peacefully under the soil with my back facing the sky. The green face was cold and stiff, with wounds from that time on his face and back. The bodies of my grandfather and mother were beside me, but there was no communication between them. Thinking of these things made me feel lonely, but not afraid. Sooner or later it will be like this. But, when will it be? Until now, whenever I think of this thought, I still feel that this "when" is just ahead of me that I will arrive without even realizing it. However, I have no idea when exactly it will be.

"What helped me survive on the verge of death was my concern for the unfinished business that I must do." In the book Rod Craver I studied in middle school, Craver used this sentence Ideas inspire you. I have also experienced this kind of mood at a critical moment, but it is a strange tranquility. There is a subtle closeness to death in my heart.

My room is on the second floor. There are no other rooms adjacent to it, so it is a very quiet reception room. When I was tired from reading and writing, I often sat on the chair under the porch, with the entrance roof to my side. The area where it is connected to the house is covered with siding. There seems to be a hive of bees in the gaps between the sidings. Fat bees with tiger-like stripes are busy working from morning to night when the weather is fine. The bees emerged from the cracks in the siding and stopped temporarily on the roof of the entrance. There they carefully arranged their wings and antennae with their front and rear feet. Some even walked around a few times, and then immediately stretched out to both sides. The slender wings took off with a buzzing sound, and then suddenly accelerated and flew away. There are clusters of octagonal golden plates in bloom in the courtyard, and bees swarm here. When I was sitting around and bored, I would often stand by the railing and stare blankly at the swarms of bees coming in and out.

One morning, I saw a dead bee on the roof of the entrance hall. The legs and feet are curled up on the abdomen, and the antennae hang limply on the face. The rest of the colony reacted with unusual indifference to his death. The bees coming and going passed the dead bees without any sign of concern. The busy working bee swarm makes people feel so intensely angry. However, no matter morning, evening or noon, as long as you look at the dead bee lying motionless on the spot, you can truly feel the silence of death. For about three days the dead bee lay there motionless. Every time I see it, I feel a deep sense of tranquility. Very lonely. At dusk after the peaks return to their nests, the dead bees on the cold tiles are so desolate. So quiet.

It rained heavily at night. It was clear in the morning, and the trees, ground, and roofs were all clean. The bee's dead body was gone. The bees in the nest are still working hard and vigorously. The dead bees probably flowed to the ground through the drainage pipes. His hands and feet were still curled up, his antennae drooping on his face. Maybe it is wrapped in mud and water and stays motionless in a certain place. Until the outside world changes again that makes it turbulent, it will stay there. So quiet. The bee, which had been troubled and toiled all its life, was now motionless. It's really quiet. This silence that feels so close to me.

One day not long after the dead bees were washed out of my sight by the rain, I went for a walk in Dongshan Park. It is here that the Maruyama River flows into the Sea of ??Japan.

In front of Ichiyu Hot Spring Bath, a small river flows slowly in the middle of the road until it merges into Yuanshan River. Somewhere, there were people standing on the bank of the bridge, noisily looking at something unknown in the river. It turned out that a huge rat was thrown into the river. The big rat was paddling and struggling desperately. On its head and neck, a seven-inch-long grilled fish skewer was pierced. The fish hammer pierced the rat's head and throat about three inches each. The mouse seemed to be trying to climb up the stone wall. Two or three children and a coachman about forty years old were throwing stones at the mouse. Every time he misses, the stone hits the stone wall and bounces back, making a clanging sound. The onlookers laughed loudly. The mouse's front legs gradually reached the stone wall. However, every time it tried to swim closer, the fish touched the rock wall first and pushed the mouse back into the water.

The mouse probably harbored the hope that as long as he struggled hard, he would be rescued. Although people can't see its facial expression, the expression of its movements expresses its desperate but hard struggle. As long as you escape, there will be a way out. So, the mouse just swam to the middle of the river with the long fish pole attached to its body. The children and the driver became more and more amused by throwing stones. There were two or three foraging ducks dragging upstream of the nearby washing field. They were frightened by the flying stones and stretched their necks in panic. With a frightened and clumsy look on their faces, they screamed and hurriedly paddled through the water to escape upstream. . Completely unaware that he was witnessing the tragic demise of a rat.

The mice will eventually be tortured to death. Inexplicably, I pictured in my mind the way the rat didn't know it was about to die, but still struggled to escape. There was an unpleasant loneliness in my heart.

Before I can willingly accept the peace of death, I will go through such a painful and fearful struggle. What a real pain and fear this would be. Although I have a close and intuitive feeling about the silence after death, the struggle towards death is so terrifying. Animals who do not know how to end their own lives blindly continue their futile efforts until the last moment of death. And what would I do if this mouse’s plight befell me. Probably he would struggle to escape like the mouse.

Recalling when I was injured, I was just like this mouse, trying its best to save itself. You decide which hospital you want to go to and how you want to go to the hospital. I was worried that the doctor would not be ready to perform the surgery immediately when he arrived, so he asked me to call the hospital in advance to report the situation. Even when most of his consciousness had been lost, his mind was still full of such important questions. Looking back now, it is quite incredible. At the time, he didn't know whether his injuries were fatal or not, but when he thought about this issue, he was miraculously not affected by the fear of death. "Is it serious? What did the doctor say?" I once asked a friend around me. "It's not a big injury," the friend replied. So my energy seemed to increase immediately, and I was extremely excited and happy. It’s hard to imagine now what I would have done if the answer I received was that the injury was fatal. I am weak, but I probably still won’t feel the fear I felt when death was mentioned in the past, and I just want to do whatever it takes to save it. It should be no different from the mouse's state of mind at this time. Now that I think about it, if I were to experience it again and face such a desperate situation again, I would still have the same reaction. Even if you have decided that you should resign yourself to fate and accept the fate of death peacefully, your natural self will definitely remain unmoved and fight to the death. However, there is no point in accepting it peacefully or fighting in vain. It is still a destined ending.

Not long after that, one evening, I walked along the creek from the street and gradually walked towards the mountain alone. In front of the Sanin Line tunnel and beyond the tracks, the road becomes narrower and steeper rapidly. The river also became rapid. There was no one around, so I planned to walk to the corner ahead and then return.

The surrounding scenery has turned green and white, and the air has become bitingly cold. The excessive loneliness made me feel quite worried... The sky gradually darkened. No matter how you walk, there is a turning point ahead. I want to go back.

I accidentally looked into the small river beside me. On the opposite side, there was a stone about half the size of a seat leaning out of the water, with a small black thing resting on it. It's a salamander. The water is dripping and the color is very good. He is leaning over and staring at the water in a daze. Water drops were constantly dripping from the body, slightly dampening the dry black rocks.

I subconsciously knelt down to look at this guy. I have no aversion to salamanders. There's even a fondness for lizards. Geckos are indeed the most disgusting of all reptiles to me. Although I neither like nor dislike axolotls, when I lived in Luhu more than ten years ago, I often saw axolotls gathering at the sewage outlet. At that time, I had a strange thought: if I were a salamander, I would be so filthy and intolerable. However, what can we do if we are really born as a salamander? Recalling this thought, although I no longer thought about how disgusting and pitiful I would be if I were born as a salamander, I still felt disgusted with the salamander in front of me and wanted to drive it back into the water. But he was quite clumsy in walking, so he just squatted on the ground, picked up a small ball-like stone from beside him, and threw it over. It is not intended to attack it. Because even if I wanted to hit it, I'm afraid it's something I simply can't do. I have always been poor at aiming, so I had no intention of hitting it.

The stone fell into the water with a thud. At the same time as the sound of the stone colliding, I saw the salamander fly more than four inches sideways, take off its tail, and raise its upper body high. I watched in confusion. The tail that fell off dropped quietly, and the salamander seemed to be using the elbows of its front legs to support its tilted body. The two front paws that climbed forward, the toes spread out and curled up, and finally fell down on the stone feebly, motionless.

The salamander is dead. I couldn't help but be shocked. I killed it. I had no intention of doing so, but I did kill it. There was an unspeakable melancholy in my heart. It was me who shot it to death. But this was really an accident. But for the salamander, this is a disaster. I squatted there for a long time, as if I had changed into the mood of a newt. He became the stand-in for the dead salamander. Compassionate about his experience, but also feeling the loneliness and fragility of a living being. By chance, I didn't die. Also by chance, the salamander died. My mood became unspeakably lonely.

Looking down at the road under my feet, I slowly walked back home. You can vaguely see the lights of the blocks in the distance.

What happened to the dead bees? They were buried in the soil by the subsequent wind and rain. What happened to that rat? It flowed into the sea, and its swollen body was washed up on the beach along with the floating garbage. And I, who survived the catastrophe, am now walking here leisurely. It would be unjustifiable if we did not feel grateful for this. However, I felt no joy at all.

Life and death are not polar opposites. There isn't that huge of a difference between the two.

It is already very dark. In front of me, I could only feel the lights in the distance, and the feeling of stepping on my feet was separated from my vision, and I became staggering and unstable. Only thinking is still definitely active. Putting me into deeper confusion.

I left just after three weeks. It has been three years now. So far, my spinal tuberculosis has not flared up. Even if I didn’t come here in vain.

Only in Chinese for Kinosaki!