When Will We Meet Again After the Floating Clouds Part?

After the floating clouds part, ten years have passed like flowing water. — Epigraph

You have been on the road, encountering beauty, making friends with people who love beauty as much as you do, and talking freely with them. In the prime of youth, they, like the summer when you met, radiate the fervor of life. Suddenly, a fallen leaf drifts to your side. You gently stroke the leaf, but it opens an album. The yellowed glimpses cause ripples in your heart lake, and the ripples stir up waves in your heart, which then turn into blooming strawflowers, playing silhouettes of old times.

Glimpses of Light and Shadow

Time has blurred your past, but the fragments of old times linger in your heart. You remember the old-fashioned TV from your childhood, the DVD player your father brought home, the old objects in your house… You remember your childhood hometown, and you also remember the first time you came to a strange land. Since then, those old things have changed drastically with time, making you forget the past.

But your hometown has never forgotten you. It calls upon the fragments in your heart and makes you recall your past.

Performing the Self

You recall your hometown for the first time: a bustling town hidden in the mountains. The bodhi tree on the street corner shelters the merchants; they work at sunrise and rest at sunset. This ancient bodhi tree once listened to your lonely opera and heard your sobs. It remembers every bit of your childhood. You had forgotten them, but whenever you compose poems and songs that belong only to you, you recall that distant past when a bodhi tree listened to your solitary and lofty opera. Thus, you write each word and sentence more boldly. You give those words to the bodhi tree in your hometown, and it still listens to your lonely opera and your sobs.

You, like your hometown, love the lonely tune. The bustling town hidden in the mountains has only one road connecting it to the outside world. The simple villagers sing songs that belong solely to the town. The town sings to the mountain streams, making them vibrant; the town sings to the creeks, making them more joyful. But in the end, no outsider is willing to listen to its songs. It performs its own lonely opera for the mountain streams and creeks. The town of your hometown, you are just like it: you love the lonely opera. These lonely tunes are the best self-performance. Whenever you perform yourself, you always recall the distant hometown.

You cry out: "Hometown, call me by your name!"

Ripples of Flowing Water

In the distance, a bonfire burns for those who have waited long. You leave your homeland and wander afar. You once thought of your hometown, the bodhi tree, the wild grass and flowers. The paths of time are serene and beautiful, but deep in the years lies growth. You open the book of wandering, touch the old memories of wandering. They bring you warmth; they also, like flowing water, soothe your pain. When those flowers collide with old memories, they will overflow for tens of thousands of seasons.

Those overflowing flowers and old memories strike your heart. You once dreamed of traveling the world with a sword, and dreamed of crossing mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas. You once paused for nameless lives, and once buried withered flowers. You once drifted freely into the distance, and once indulged in releasing the loneliness in your heart.

In the fragments of wandering, you constantly express admiration for life. You wrote about sunflowers standing firm after the storm, about an ordinary seed breaking through soil and even rocks to sprout and grow, about a stray cat's tenacious life, and about the immortal legend gained by Qu Yuan with his life.

Youth chases time; life passes with time. The hair on your mother's temples, which should have been black, begins to turn gray. Your grandmother becomes slower. Your brother enters the hall of marriage. And your tears slide down your cheeks, which should have been naive but gradually become mature. Those old stories in the fragments become your years. Regardless of wind and rain, you always choose to chase, howl at the storm, and call for the storm to come more fiercely, to shatter the unbearable past. But when you muster the courage to look back and look up, you realize that those gradually blurring fragments have quietly made you grow.

Old memories are like a window: once pushed open, it is hard to close. You stand in the moonlight, listening to the sound of the tides ebbing and flowing, letting them wash over your heart. You watch the moonlight spill over the harbor; it leaves only vastness and blur. Those years intoxicate you; without thinking, they are unforgettable. Yet you still have to sail far away.

Gently brush off the dust of old memories. Those light or heavy memories trace footprints one after another in your heart. Everything around you is quietly reborn. Time will turn a new page. You bid farewell to old memories. Even though you keep asking the bright moon: "When will I see old friends again?" You still set sail toward the distance, because you know that old friends may meet again in that distance.

You are me, and I am you.