An Ode to Nothing

Li, Gefei

Red, blue, green, yellow, white, black...

The colors used to symbolically depict their youth always represent such strong vibes, as though the next second those palmy and colorful days would leap out of these words with that very attribute that justifies the universal definition of youth. But not mine. Yes, I had my share of mood swings and average experiences, but they all turned out to be shrouded under a film of tint gray.

Enthusiasm, melancholy, liveliness, contentment, righteousness, wickedness...

Looking back, I am always overwhelmed by how awkwardly silly the words said and things done could be. The past jumps at every chance to haunt its way to the present, like the swallow that migrates back with every spring when streams from thawing ice and snow tinkling down the valley past frozen corpses of the losers of the winter.

Deep inside, it didn't really stir when I made vain efforts to establish a certain internal image of placidness for my own entertainment. That was how the layer of vagueness kicked in. And it was somewhat frightening to not really feel things. But again, not that frightening after sifting. All flights of fantasy diving in the back of one’s own mind, juvenile thinking embedded in the tendency of exaggeration is too mawkish to impress anyone else.

Adulthood is tedious, or I still don’t get the hang of it.

After almost two years in SISU, it dawned on me at one point how much time I have spent on the track of the sports field, most of it for a walk or run. There is at least one upside besides contribution to your physical health in these two "activities"; all you need to do is to put one leg in front of the other and consider nothing else but to avoid any obstacles. My admiration for the mountains towering from behind the sports field always finds its way into my conversations with friends and they are one of the few things I love about this university. They produce such sedate images that by merely looking at them, security and calmness are granted to me. It is the best antidote to a confused and troubled mind to watch the clouds drift away and dissolve into any formation and feel the collision between the wind and the skin while walking or running with earphones on, listening to my favorite songs.

There is one poem from Tagore that I like very much — let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown. Unfortunately, you don’t usually see them up in the filthy city skies in the bastard that orange had with yellow or some other color that looks like as if violet had just urinated in lead gray.

The ghost still stays. But grown-ups aren’t supposed to talk about it anymore.

                                                              作    者：李格非，英语学院2015级1班

                               指导老师：张婷