Flowing lights, Fragmented Gold|流光碎金
This piece is a recollection of memories related to the phrase “sui jin,” or “fragmented gold,” that are related to home. Prominent are memories of lights under trees and sweet olive flowers carrying a peculiar scent – two elements that, oceans away from my motherland, remind me of where I come from.
ORIGINAL
第一次听说碎金这个比喻的时候，我想到的是某个普通的初夏日子，金陵城梧桐树下的斑斓光影。夏日南京特有的、半透明的绿色外衣被风吹开了一角，正午的阳光从缝隙中倾泻而下，一地被切割得错落有致的破碎金色光点，跟着风变换形状，像柏油马路上跳跃的精灵。那年我或许十五岁不到，依然有着太大的心和太大的梦想，以至于所有夏日的细节都被浓缩进了模糊的绿色树影里。一切都太仓促，仓促到连近在咫尺的别离都不易被察觉，仓促到我来不及停下脚步去想，这会不会是看见这样破碎了的金陵城光影的最后一个六月，以后的生命里又会不会再有这样的六月。
我十五岁远渡重洋离家后，不知为何对家的记忆都停留在这样模糊散落着的碎片里，白驹过隙的光影里。相仿的记忆有漫长夏天走到尾声时、和着夕照晕染在水面上的一片瑰丽天光，或者清冷秋日里暗淡往复的松林明月，以及细细碎碎散落在墨绿色叶片间的桂花。于我，这也是碎金。
我小时候很喜欢金桂。大约十年前的时候，我还会在放学后一路嗅着桂花的香气回家。再大些后，我更喜欢在周末的下午坐在树下读书，整个人连着书页都被浸没在那种悠长渺远的香气中。十五岁的那个夏天后我再也没机会在秋日归家，也再没闻到过桂花香；虽然不算是时时心心念念，但现在有时还是会突然想念起那种香味来，就想念得紧。我以前总是在下午闻见桂花香，于是那种香气、已经成为了记忆碎片一部分的香气，总联系着触手可及的归家的温暖。
我一直相信记忆的匣子是只有嗅觉才能打开的，到了特定的时刻闻见特定的气味才能唤醒特定的记忆。这世间大多气味都可以复制，毕竟大多树种和香料都可以在多处繁衍和贩卖。但一旦出现了异地无法仿制的气味，就很难用的别的方式唤起记忆 – —因为气味不同于影像和声音乃至味觉能够被捕捉，气味是只能存在于当前时刻的。所以每一个在异乡度过的十月，我都难免怀念起往年萧索秋日江浙大地上的桂花香，从来不用费心去寻找，就算某一时刻无意路过都能忘掉一整天的忧愁，所有成长经历上最美好的记忆都汹涌而来。可惜气味难以想象，我也再不能十月归家。
到了新英格兰后，我也总观察着树影变幻的模样，试图找出一些家的痕迹。新英格兰的秋叶也总被交口称赞，可惜我在这样的秋日里再没了归家感，也再无法捕捉到那种绿叶间碎金独有的悠长香气。没错，这里夜间天河星汉灿烂，白日或是万里晴空、或是泛红的树叶在潮湿的空气里微微颤栗，还有穿过山头一望无际的绝美晚霞。但也只有在这里，我才真真实实感受到了这么深的想要唤起特定嗅觉的渴望，更甚于我对其它感官的一切追求。
前几天我一个人在纽黑文秋日的街头走着，忽然一阵风过，吹起了我头顶树荫的一角，阳光一刹那倾泻下来，在我周身的石板路上开始和着风的节律舞蹈起来，一地碎了流光的美。那一瞬间，我忽然好像回到十五岁那年的初夏，一瞬间又想念起绿叶间散发着悠长香气的碎金，忽然觉得离家三余年间，我从未感觉与大洋彼岸有这般遥远。
去年秋天起我开始读沈约。有一日读到他的愁卧诗，看他怀念故乡的桂树，说着山中有桂树、岁暮可言归，忽然心头涌上些不知名的情绪来。“始作阳春曲，终成苦寒歌。惟有三五夜，明月暂经过。”那时候我想，这世上的所有异乡，大约都是模样相近的吧。山中有桂树，岁暮可言归，不知道这裹挟着我一路奔流向前的流光碎金，什么时候才能把我引向故乡的方向呢。
TRANSLATION
The first time I heard about the “fragmented gold” simile, I thought of the glowing shadows of sycamore trees in Nanjing on an ordinary early summer day. The wind blew open a corner of the translucent coat of green that glazed over the ancient city. The noon sun poured through that corner, leaving nicely-cut fragments of golden light on the ground. The drops of gold altered their shapes when the wind blew by, becoming like dancing fairies on the asphalt road. Then, I was perhaps fifteen or a bit younger, and I still had both a heart too large and a dream too far; thus, all the details of the summer day were squeezed into a large, tree-green blur. And everything was moving too fast, fast enough that I couldn’t sense the goodbyes at hand, didn’t have time to pause my steps and think about whether that would be the last June I saw those fragments of lights in Nanjing, or if I would ever have the chance to experience the same June in my life.
Somehow, after travelling across the ocean when I was fifteen, all my memories of home remained in blurred fragments, scattered across fast-traveling lights. Similar memories include fragments of a spectacular dusk melting into water as a long summer came to an end, fragments of waning moonlight amongst pine trees on a cold fall evening, or blossoms of sweet olives, fragmented across the dark green leaves. To me, those flowers are also fragmented gold.
When I was young, I loved golden sweet olives. About ten years ago, I would still walk home following the fragrance of their blossoms. When I was older, I made a habit of reading under sweet olive trees on weekend afternoons. Those were the afternoons when I let myself, along with the pages I was holding, be drenched in a sea of that long-lasting fragrance. I never got a chance to go home in the fall after that summer, the summer when I was fifteen; never again did I smell that fragrance. Although it wasn’t a daily longing, I still occasionally miss that peculiar smell. I’ve always been used to catching that scent in the afternoon, so that scent, already one fragment of my memory, has always been linked to the imminent warmth of home.
I have always believed that olfactory sensations alone open up memories, that only by smelling certain scents at certain times may certain memories be recalled. Most scents in this world can be duplicated; after all, most trees and spices can be grown and sold at multiple places. But when there is a smell so unique to a place that it cannot be duplicated elsewhere, the memories associated with that smell cannot be recalled except by new exposure. For scents, unlike images, voices, or even tastes, cannot be captured. Scents belong to the present and soon dissolve into thin air. So every October I spend on foreign grounds, I can’t help but miss the fragrance of sweet olives so widespread on Eastern China lands. It’s a fragrance I didn’t have to try hard to look for, a fragrance that will, at any moment I smell it, dissolve worries of the entire day and bring back all of childhood’s most wonderful memories. But this scent cannot be duplicated, nor can I go back home in October anymore.
After I started living in New England, I kept my habit of observing trees. Often, I tried to catch a trace of home. The New England fall foliage has always been widely praised; however, even in these clusters of brightly-colored leaves, I cannot capture the long-lasting fragrance so prominent in patches of home’s dark green leaves. True, here the night skies are adorned with so many brilliant stars. Here the days are long and clear and distant. Here red leaves tremble in the morning mists. Here the fair dusk can shine through waves after waves of rolling hills. But it is also only here that I strongly desire to smell, to catch a special, long-lost scent, an olfactory sensation I yearn for more than any other sensation in the world.
A few days ago, I was walking alone on the New Haven streets when the fall wind blew open a corner of the coat of green above my head. Sunlight poured down at once, dancing with the rhythm of the breeze, fragmented gold on the stone pavements. That moment, I felt like I was back at the summer of my fifteenth year in the world, and I suddenly missed the scent of fragmented gold amongst dark green leaves, suddenly felt that I have never, in the more than three years I was away from home, been farther away from the other side of the ocean.
Last fall, I started reading poems by Shen Yue. One day, I came across his famous “Poem of Lying Sorrow.” When I read his melancholy reflection about sweet olives back at home, read him saying the sweet olives in the mountains know only it’s time to return when the day comes to an end, I felt a strange resonance. “I started off with the tunes of fair spring and ended in the sorrowful songs of bitter cold; only in three or five nights I see the moon transiently passing by.” Then I thought, perhaps all foreign lands in this world share the same shape. Sweet olives in the mountains know only it’s time to return when the day comes to an end, and I wonder when this flowing river of lights and fragmented gold, rushing with me forever forward, may finally lead home.
