Ideal

A drop of water evaporates and falls — how many cycles of rebirth is that?

Like a feather fallen from an eagle's body — it merely drifts, but you could call it a dance, plunging into the sea and vanishing without a sound.

A fragment discarded from a distant planet, falling toward the horizon, unable to return the way it came.

Standing on clouds, sinking in wind, with a heart that strives, a gaze that reaches far, the skyscrapers almost within reach — imagined in dreams, reality so far, yet so near. Fire dances in the night sky, burning away loneliness. A sky full of brilliance, a child who has lost direction — which one is the North Star?

In dreams, reality is the ideal; in reality, the dream is the ideal. In daytime I am in the dream, at night I am in reality. So by day I live a drunken dream, by night I toss and turn unable to sleep.

Like a straight line extending outward, desire has no end — at one end is the ideal, at the other it holds sin. My life stands in the middle of the line; whichever side grows, it is desire that moves. My ideal is in heaven, my sin in hell, and I stay between heaven and earth, laughing as the sky collapses and the earth cracks, enduring the wind and rain. Because the root is planted too deep, my hand in the sky still waves steadily.

Desire — the primal force of life, the proof of existence.

Like a tree — the deeper the root of sin is planted, the more lush the branches and leaves of the ideal become. Pure life is a seed lying on the surface, with no desire; it quickly disappears into the dust. A life without desire is like a gust of wind — you feel it brush your face, but it has already passed by your shoulder. In a dustless world, it is just a stream of moving air.

The wind of life blows across the vast yellow desert, building a dune. When desire is too great, life cannot bear the burden, like that dune — once grown, it makes an enemy of the wind.

Life is a jar of gorgeously packaged fine wine. Those who want to drink lie drunk in the land of wine, those who do not want to drink look at such an unparalleled package and gasp with the same amazement.