There Was Never Wine in the Cup

Only a thin sliver of red remains in the glass; the tea leaves in the pot lie lazily, the empty cigarette pack gapes as if sucking at the night, while the flowers on the table bloom indifferently and sway gently. For a long time, whenever a business trip required me to travel far, in the days before departure I would endlessly resist, hoping against hope for some accident to cancel the trip. But once on the road, watching the scenery fly past the window, I would come to love that feeling of being on the move, carrying a vague sense of belonging, real and not real. In those moments, I did not think of where I came from or where I was going; I just sat in the engine's hum, thinking of past and future, of every vaguely familiar face, of every mistake I had made, of the endless act of thinking. And in the end, I am merely a spectator of life—having sighed at the world's vanities, grieved at partings and reunions, chewing on these times, lightly brushing the knife-marks of the years. The boiled water, in a goblet, seems to be and not to be—not wine, yet more than wine. On clear days in Lhasa, every time I looked up at the sky, it was like the water in this glass: a sip, and I was drunk. On cloudy days in Lhasa, standing in the Potala Palace square, it was as if the nine heavens lay before me, wreathed in mist, high and aloof. On rainy days in Lhasa, dark clouds piled on the distant mountains, evoking the feeling of "a mayfly drifting between heaven and earth, a grain in the vast ocean." The Lhasa sky and earth are intoxicating, but I do not know whether these devout souls belong to the heavens or to the earth. Breathtaking as it is, this is not the place I am looking for. Among travelers, am I the one who is fleeing, the one who is searching, or the one who is both fleeing and searching? I always thought I should be a poet, every gesture suffused with refinement, every stroke on paper laden with longing; sometimes I thought I should be a philosopher, a single grain of sand containing my world and yours; perhaps I should be a devotee, chanting sutras morning and evening, prostrate at the feet of the Bodhisattvas. But I am only an IT man, sitting before a computer day after day, repeating 26 letters, building nothing but youth. And after careful thought, I cannot find a single permutation of those 26 letters that perfectly expresses my feelings at this moment. And my feelings now are like this cigarette butt—burned deeply, yet helpless amid the flying ash. And the flowers at this moment still bloom wantonly, swaying gently.