汤南南尝筑室沙坡尾,在鹭岛之南,背山而面海。揽书窗下,金门为笔山,澎湖为砚。夜读海潮,如叹如吟。参般若于穷巷,知母语之不净。阅世情于海沙,悟天地之不仁。榕根狗骨,浪淘雪白,亨利摩尔凭之抽象。冷战残堡,风刀磨砺,苔藻蚝螺以为沃土。 观其银盐旧照,街巷之中,市声渐远,人或失其神,有愁不去如缕。因思潮信迎送间,红砖水泥块垒,不旬日而成卵石。何方枯木,不可泛海而浮桴?何愁之坚,充塞心窍,不落不化? 汤南南闽人也。闽地多油松,风自东南来,福船入海,经年不坏。吾国蜿蜒一万八千里海岸,唯闽地出海神妈祖。天后灵佑,闽人多事海,族裔远播南洋西番。闽地自古为侨乡。汤南南亦南洋归侨之裔。华侨者,人与外境或孤立或交融之两难断舍,族裔记忆信仰之存亡计较,生计去留之随波逐流,乡音故土之念兹在兹,中西华洋文化冲突之最早承受者。网搜华侨之关键词,不绝于目者曰歧视曰奋斗曰思乡。南南渡其少年于山中华侨农场。其祖在南洋为客为家耶?其以常山华侨农场为家为客耶?其以闽南语为母语为客语耶? 南南居闽旧画中,常见一少年。面目早衰而诡异,半男不女,阴阳怪气,头生犄角而成个人符号特征。犄角者丝袜套头之剩余袜尖。丝袜套头者,避世向隅之喻也。此子常蜷身墙角,抽烟窥视怪笑,心事重重,不可言接。亦有愁郁结如霾,不知何所来。 于是负笈西湖,问学于余。初,相与漫议所治课题,辄曰,念念不忘者,厦门之第八菜市场。不忘者何,曰割鱼剔骨有腥膻,菜根有泥,果心有虫。我拊掌曰:此乡愁也。盖现代超市之净菜,生于温室养殖场流水线,机械分割,真空包装,无腥膻泥虫之累,亦无脚踏实地之根矣。是八市之思,非逐臭东海,实莼鲈之思。 于是以乡愁立题。乡愁者,老话题。闻铃肠断,天涯孤旅。浊酒一杯,衡阳雁去。是乡愁早已高度符号化,系于井系于墓系于月,系于村口之大槐巨樟老榕。十九世纪之德意志医生,集体攻关欲以药物治乡愁而无计也。然则今日之农家乐古镇游视野,一井一树皆是景点,清明中秋无非商机,乡愁可售。喷气机高铁微信时代,家山万里一日而还,视频对聊如链如面,乡愁何在?吾乡已为开发区,归来我是陌生人,乡愁何寄?可以符号名之者,皆可消费。消费者,踞其堂而易其主,取其貌而遗其神,夺其名而控其思,万古长愁,今乃无可归依。不得不,不落于名,不着于相,不系于一地一时一人一物矣。 于是泼墨作海,于是铸浪为山。于是披沙拣金,铺陈滩涂漂物故事。个体之零丁落叶,归于历史盘错之根。无可归依之愁,脱于名相之外,遂通于情而达于理,廓然大公,无复自怜之意。遂去其尖角小鬼之憋闷自闭,哀而不伤,成浩大苍茫之象。 或曰古生物演化由海而陆,是有情众生,皆海侨也。则汤南南之愁可谓海洋乡愁,深藏之无意识基因在焉。则闽人之傍海写浪,亦如蒙古艺匠之善画马,自然而已。吾独谓之不然。盖海角之恋,文青说部耳。奥德赛之魂,何曾入海为安?精卫之鸟,岂能无怨?海洋亦名辞耳,唯扫相绝言者,可以化块垒为生机,出小愁而入大悲,妈祖本名默娘也。我之乡愁,在天下也。 然则铸浪为山,不亦谬乎!世之智叟,以移山为愚,则铸浪为山,愚蠢倍也。盖愚公移山,以人力征空间体量之巨,持之以恒,或有成日。而铸浪为山,欲以沧海横流浮光掠影之动荡,凝为不坏之阿。乃欲阻光阴于定格,冻瀑布为冰棱,抽刀断水,高速摄影术之幻像而已,岂非愚不可及? 予亦谓之不然。乎愚公之智,在脱出小我,以种族延绵之生殖力兑换为移山填海之意志力。其诚感天,人能无我无私,则去其卑而有神助。太行不朽,遇不息之愚公族而让路。不息者不以一人计成败,放眼万种风物,尽人事而得大自在焉。则铸浪之智,未尝二也。 盖铸浪为山,非观照一途,岂有它法!直须脱出凡眼,以刹那为千年。则一浪之鼓,何异于喜马拉雅之奋起。以千年为刹那,则汪洋之中,千浪万涌,彼伏而此起,暮死而朝生,生而复灭灭而后生,同构同形,生生不息。盖人事代谢,前浪后浪,其身坏灭,其神必复。其寿也暂,其道恒常。永劫回归,后之来者可待,成事何必在我。一念三千,其志不绝如潮,虽顽石而成齑粉。是铸浪为山,不羁过隙之白马,非雕鸿爪于雪泥,是格物穷理,入于忘我之时,得其逍遥之地也。旷达如此,可谓见道。 我与汤南南,具师生之名,而有师兄弟之实。我尝言:世间本无师徒,所有者,老少殊异程度不同闻道有先后之同学而已。天下学人艺徒,师造化,师传统,师可能性。可能性者西辞也,非我所好,或可名为经权常变之理。经权常变,易理也,道理也,吾师也。能越文牍简册而循理行道者,方见着吾师面目。亲见吾师面目而为我学弟者,微南南其谁?汤南南面壁十年,木纳少言,得大成就。足证传统之不我欺,吾道不孤,斯文不丧。斯文不丧,则乡关不远矣。 邱志杰 丙申惊蛰,初稿鹿特丹-巴黎车中,成于迪拜机场。
Cast the waves for the mountain foolishness
Nannan Tang has lived in Shapowei, which is surrounded by high mountains and ocean in the south of Amoy. When reading beside the window, Tang imagined Kinmen as his penholder and Penghu as his ink slab. As darkness fell, he chanted and sighed, staring at sea tides. Apprehending Prajna in the back streets, he was aware of the impurity of mother tongue. Reading the ways of the world on the shore, he realized heaven and earth are not benevolent. The roots of banyan, the boons of dogs and the foam of the waves nourish the abstraction style of Henry Moore. After weathered by winds and waves, the wrecked postwar forts become the fertile soil of moss and conches.
In his old photographs, people are absent-minded in the avenues and alleys; the noise of traffic floats away; the sadness is faint and long. I always think the red brick and the cement block will be smoothed into pebbles by ebbs and flows within days. What kind of deadwood is it, which cannot drift on the sea? How intense is the sorrow, crammed into the heart, which cannot be dissolved?
Nannan Tang is from Amoy abounded with oil pine trees. From the southeast blow the wind. The boats could sail into the sea for years without damage. The coast in our country stretches eighteen thousand miles. However Matsu, goddess of the sea, only lives in Amoy. With Matsu bless, fishery was flourishing there; ethnic groups sailed abroad and settled down. Amoy is the hometown of overseas Chinese from ancient times. Nannan Tang is also the descendant of the original Chinese and settlers in South Sea. Overseas Chinese were faced with the dilemma of whether to isolate themselves from alien culture, whether to maintain the belief and the memory of ethnic groups. They were missing their hometown profoundly on the drift and bore the conflicts between national and foreign cultures earliest. If you search key words about overseas Chinese online, you will get a lot about “discrimination”, “struggle” and “homesick”. Nannan was brought up in Overseas Chinese farm of a mountain. So whether do his ancestors regard South Sea as their home or other places? Whether does Tang regard the farm land as his hometown or just an alien land? Whether does Tang regard Hokkien as his mother tongue or a foreign language?
One juvenile with a strange and anile face always appears in Tang’s former paintings drawn in Amoy. The boy is womanish, weird and characterized with a horn on his head. The horn is actually the left top of a silk stocking over his head. The character that places a stocking over his head is a metaphor of escaping from the society. This boy always shows up rolling his body in a corner, deep in thought with a cigarette or peeping and smiling strangely, which is somewhat intangible and indescribable. Melancholy like pervasive smog lingers around him and no one can tell what the exact reason is.
So Tang came to the West Lake and learned from me. At the beginning, we discussed his subject informally. He said, what always haunted in his mind was the eighth vegetable market in Amoy, for there were fishy smells from butchering fish and muttony odour from eviscerating meat, as well as the mud left on the root and the bugs in the core of the fruit. I clapped: “This is the nostalgia.” The clean vegetables in the modern supermarkets are grown in greenhouses. The meat is fed in the intensive livestock farms. Almost all of them are processed in pipeline, divided by machine and vacuum packed. The smell, the mud and the bugs won’t bother us. Down-to-earth root is vanishing as well. So the missing of the eighth market is nostalgia rather than a quirk.
Hence, Tang studies nostalgia as his subject. Nostalgia has been an old topic: heartbroken when hearing the tinkle of bells; journeying alone at the edge of the world; overlooking a flock of wild geese flying away; or drinking a cup of turbid wine to swallow one’s sorrow.This kind of nostalgia has already hardened into fixed symbols long time ago. It’s a well, it’s a moon, it’s a tombstone, and it is the locust tree standing by the village gate. A group of German doctors in 19th century racked their brains to find a prescription to heal nostalgia, but failed. Today in the sight of agritainment and old-town tours, wells and trees descend to scenic spots; the Tomb-Sweeping Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival are nothing but business opportunities where the feeling of nostalgia can be bought. Since it seems that they can buy access to symbols that will make them feel nostalgic again. At this era, it’s easy to return home within one day and chat face to face online from afar by jet, high-speed rail and We-chat. So where is the nostalgia? My hometown has been a development zone; I become a stranger when back. So who could the nostalgia be sent to? Anything can be consumed when symbolized. Consumers replace the essence by minor matters; they care about the surface and ignore the spirit; they occupy the name and control the ideas. The eternal nostalgia has nowhere to go today. So it has to be shaped with no name or no face and enslaved to no place, no time, no person or no object.
So Tang sprinkles the ink into ocean, casts the waves into mountains. So he flicks the sand and picks the gold. He elaborates the stories of drifters along the tidal flats. Separate individual like a falling leaf returns to the tangled roots of the history. He breaks out of the name and the face of the wandering melancholy, and then stands to sense and reason. When suddenly seeing the law of the universe, he no longer feels sorrow for himself. As a result, he abandons the oppression and solitude of the imp in the corner and creates vast and boundless visions, mournful but not distressing.
Some people say that archaic creatures have evolved from sea to land. Hence sea is the hometown of all the sentient beings. It may be said that Tang’s melancholy is the nostalgia of ocean deep in the unconscious gene. Hokkiens writing waves beside the sea is just like Mongolians are good at drawing horses naturally. But I don’t believe so. The obsession of the cape is nothing more than literary youth's romance. Has Odyssey’s soul ever rested after he was buried into the sea? Can’t Jingwei, a bird who tried to fill the sea, have any regrets? Ocean is just a word. Only the person who can let go of appearances and words can sublimate depression into vitality and get out of melancholy into great heaviness. Interestingly, Matsu's original name is Mo (Mo means quietness and silence). My nostalgia is supposed to be rooted in the whole world.
Nevertheless, he casts the waves into mountains. It is also ridiculous, isn’t? Zhisoa (literally” the old sage”) deems it foolish to move away the mountain. Since it is possible to move away the mountain with persistence, the man who wants to cast the waves into mountains is even more foolish than Yu Gong (the foolish old man). However, building a mountain means gathering ocean currents and floating reflections into an immortal hill. It desires to stop the time and freeze the waterfall into strings. But it’s to no avail. It's a trick of high-speed photography. Wouldn’t it be hopelessly foolish?
I don’t think so. The wisdom of Yu Gong would free himself from his ego and convert the fertility of carrying on his family into the willpower of moving mountains. Heaven was greatly moved by Yu Gong’s sincerity. If one can be selfless, he will get rid of his lowliness and God will help him. The eternal Taihang Mountain makes way for Yu Gong’s family due to their perseverance. Those who strive ceaselessly won’t ascertain success or failure by one man; instead they look out for all the scenery and measure everything. Do what they can and get eternal relief. So we can’t say the wit of casting waves into mountains is different from the wisdom of Yu Gong.
So is there any other way to cast waves into mountains apart from mindfulness? We should reinvent our naked eyes. If we regard one instant as a thousand years, is the bump of a wave really different from the rise of the Himalayan? If we regard a thousand years as one instant, not only can we see tens of thousands of tempestuous waves falling and rising in the boundless sea, but also ephemeral life, born to die and born after death. Both replay over and over again in the same form and same state. Therefore the alternation of human affairs is just like waves in a coming tide. Though the body dies, the spirit will be revitalized.Though life is transient, the law will be immortal. One’s aspiration will never calm down like the rising tide, when he thinks of worlds of the trichiliocosm. Even the toughest stone can be ground into powder. In the eternal return, successors will come in time. Why must it be brought to fruition by me? Hence, casting waves into mountains can’t be unconstrained by fleeting time. It is to explore the phenomena and acquire the nature of things, to be absorbed in the oblivious-of-me moment and to enter into the carefree realm. So broad-minded he is, he may be said to see the law.
Virtually, Tang is my junior fellow apprentice instead of my apprentice. I once said:”There is no teacher or student, but fellow students that learn the truth later or earlier. ” All the apprentices learn from the nature, the tradition or the possibility. However, I’m not inclined to choose “possibility”, one borrowed word. I’d rather call my teacher as the unification of principle and expedient in Confucianism, as Yi-principle and as inherent laws of things.When able to learn beyond the platitudes and act up to the laws, he can see the true appearance of my teacher. It is Tang that makes it and turns out to be my junior fellow apprentice. Tang is devoted to practice for the past decade, plain and silent, and eventually makes a great achievement. It is enough to show that I am not cheated by the tradition and not isolated on the way. Besides, refined men are still alive, and then our hometown is not far any more.
Zhijie Qiu
Drafted in the car from Rotterdam to Paris, completed at Dubai Airport
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