Autumn Thoughts
"Always bored. Did my dreams ever reach Xie Bridge? Perhaps long ago by Yi Bridge, I failed to notice the Luoshen in the water."
Autumn in Nantong is not a very beautiful season for students. No city walks, few maple leaves in Jiangdong—only the start of the school term. My memories are full of autumn nights—speeding down Haonan Road on my bicycle after school, fleeting impressions of the lotus pond and willows beneath Yi Bridge, the cold water and moon-shadow in the Hao River. If I had a few silver dollars, I would, like Kong Yiji, buy a cup of coffee and stroll home to drink it slowly.
It seems autumn’s imagery is always tied to trees. On the Jilin University campus, boundless leaves rustle down; from Jingxin Building to Lakeside Restaurant, one often catches a drifting, clear fragrance—I suppose it must be pine resin. Headphones on, hands in pockets, walking alone along the unlit stone path through the woods; occasionally seeing couples flirting and frolicking past—it has nothing to do with me. This particular moon, however, is a rather conspicuous presence.
The moon likes to assert its presence in autumn, and it does seem to have a certain pull. The Mid-Autumn moon is truly beautiful. Yet when has moonlight ever been like water? Moonlight has never been like water—only sorrow is like water. There have always been fools for love in this world; this regret has nothing to do with wind or moon. Yet not seeing the moon is bearable; when the bright moon shines straight through, there is no heart left to guess.
How many times have I lain watching the sky, watching the clouds roll and unroll, watching the wild geese circle and hesitate? I have never seen idle clouds and wild cranes, but idle clouds and wild geese are common enough. Yet they always circle in the same patch of sky, as though hesitating to move forward. The blue bird is diligent—for whom does it seek and inquire?
After White Dew, as the Fire Star descends, the wind turns cool. The Monthly Ordinances write: the blind wind arrives, the wild geese come, the dark birds return, and all birds store provisions. Yet opening the window at midnight, facing the wind in the midst of universal silence and dark country paths, it seems to blow straight into one’s five viscera and six bowels, always scattering one’s thoughts. “Why does the autumn wind grieve the painted fan?” The season of harvest also means reckoning and regret. Lacking the poetic inspiration to reach the azure sky and the tender feelings to confide by the west window, night rain is merely a dream dissolving on the wind.
Autumn is the season of chance encounters; the restless restlessness of mating animals fills social media feeds. I couldn’t help praying to Uka-no-Mitama for the power to transform, but to no avail. The white dew has not yet dried, yet I find it hard to ask a search engine or a generative language model whether “the time is auspicious.” The rainy season still seems vividly before my eyes.
I remember Thirteenth Sister and An Ji, Leng Qingqiu and Jin Yanxi, Luo Tianyi and Yuezheng Ling. Even if the prince and princess lived happily ever after, in the end the music would end and the crowd would disperse. Subconsciously, people probably both long for a grand reunion and desire to live in solitude; thus “a beauty adding incense by the red sleeve” becomes a kind of compromise. Yet this is probably a daydream—or rather, a blind dream: if Heaven had feelings, it too would grow old; since ancient times, the passionate have been left with nothing but regret.
Far from my homeland, I harbor thoughts of home; in my dealings with classmates met at Jilin University, I often recall: “Mountains and passes are hard to cross—who pities the lost traveler? Meeting by chance on the water, all are guests in a foreign land!” I don’t know if this counts as homesickness, but perhaps it can be called self-pity. Still, life and death, meetings and partings—these are not for man to question of Heaven; how could one boycott them?
Always bored. Did my dreams ever reach Xie Bridge? Perhaps long ago by Yi Bridge, I failed to notice the Luoshen in the water.