[1]
The other day I invited my dad to a movie. The venue was set on the fifth floor of the Gateway. It was a very small affair. It happened sometime. The sky was flat, the traffic was moving slowly, and there was the sound of piling at a construction site in the distance. "Boring", "boring", "boring". It was like the sound of Shanghai's heartbeat.
The early show, arrived when the movie has already begun. There were only three or four people in the entire theater plus my dad and me. The world showed its borders, full of darkness. Only the sound happens in all directions, like silver fish scurrying under the sea. It swims gently.
My father and I were not in the dark sea, he sat on the left side, and as the movie progressed, his face changed to a gentle starkness of light. It looked clanking young. Lips, skin, hair, an inexplicable mole on his forehead, all slowly changing clothes, bucking the flow from time before the movie.
Dad, in his 50s, reverted to his wizard's vocation in the movie theater.
That's the dad I met when I was very young, and he was the wizard. Of course it was a secret hidden on earth, not to be discovered by anyone. You know the average person in the world would make a fuss at the sight of two tomatoes that looked like pig heads. Let alone a real wizard. He still dressed as a normal commuter during the day to go to work, and stood frowning on the crowded road when he came back in the evening, but he held back from using his magic to make the crowd disappear into thin air, and only found it very hard to do so when he came back home and took a long breath, and then chagrined, but the next day he held back. Turns out he's been struggling with all this, and I can more or less appreciate how hard it is for the super ferns uperman and spiderman who hide in the crowd.
But do Superman and Spider-Man have the tedious eye wrinkles that my dad has? They don't burn hairy crab rice cakes or bend down behind the kitchen to fix the plumbing, do they?
Dad's hairy crab rice cakes are so good they fly. That's because he's a wizard. When we couldn't see it, he quietly turned his back and sprinkled two strings of spells into the frying pan that was splattered and bursting with oil. And then smiled mischievously as if he had gotten his way.
[2]
When he got to bed at 2:00 a.m., my dad heard me digging around outside for ice cream, and he was just about to drift off to sleep again when he was hit with a huge pain in his stomach like a drill cone. He glanced sideways to check on Mom, then slowly sat up in a bow over his stomach. He nervously recalled the various mnemonics that would make the pain lessen.
But. The magical term for fixing the drag hood. The magic term for cleaning out the storage room. The magic term for remembering to visit Grandma every Saturday. The magic term for stopping his daughter's bleeding when she broke her leg. ...... Many, many more catchphrases filled his narrow waking mind at that moment, leaving him unable to remember where there was a single statement for stopping his own pain.
Dad thought helplessly and wearily. He's getting old.
[3]
For the first half of this wizard's young life. He could land on tiptoe into the clouds like an angel with big wings. There he had seen beautiful green terraces. The sun exulted in light not too near or far. It gilded his handsome, lean flanks with a dazzling gold rim. He raised his hand to cover his eyes. The world was open and flat, the streaming clouds turbulent and wanton. Sending him on a long journey.
He meandered on, surviving all sorts of gentle spells in his heart. It was then that he and his companions parted under the tree and each began their journey. A future destined for splendor stretched out from beneath him then. He wore wide, white robes, and the hunting wind blew his hair behind his head as he decided, with confused excitement, on the future he wished for.
Magic.
A simple combination of Doraimi's hair Solace-like could send him to the polar ice fields.
Magic.
The sky intersperses blue and white. Dad makes them braid into paintings.
Magic.
Isn't it whatever you want it to be.
Magic.
Weaved into a life of passion and purity for the first half of his life. If he thought it was good, it must be good. He imagined and planned everything that was to come. There was happiness as an adjective to cluster it around. Though he hadn't really been able to figure out the details of happiness yet.
But he was undaunted. He was a young and powerful wizard.
[4]
My young wizard climbed Mount Huangshan in a pair of plastic sandals. Stood on Tendu Peak and took many pictures. Later they were printed in black and white, emitting the yellow of time peacefully through the years, and I got to have seen the dad I couldn't see - smiling with a beat of white teeth. Eyes deep and beautiful. Thin and longer than a pine tree on one side.
Magic was a sea of clouds floating at his feet.
My young wizard ran up the Wall in a pair of plastic sandals. What's that saying. It's not a good man until he reaches the Great Wall. He stood on the beacon at Badaling and thought, hmmmmm, well, well, I'm not just as simple as a wizard, but as marvelous as a good man wizard. Terrific. Amazing. I'm so happy for you, Dad.
Many of the photographs taken on the Wall have been printed in color, and they lie frame by frame behind the clear plastic film of the album. My wizard is still young, his skin finally tanned, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes staring off into the distance, much like he is posing as a "visionary".
Far-sighted. The Wall is a dragon. My wizard rides the dragon.
And by then, he was in the midst of a hot and raging time. Gradually changing into garb the same color as the others, unconsciously chanting the same slogans, he held his fisted arm high in the air, like a nameless branch in a forest of trees. Just as he closed his eyes to rest for the night, the coordinates of his feet had been replaced by history to order a place. There, before he could regain his senses, he had to leave the city where he grew up and go to some mountainous region to learn how to be a farmer. On the train he was surrounded by equally young men and women. A few were the same wizards he knew. They exchanged affectionate glances with each other.
Not much thought was given to it. Where the train was rumbling off to.
My wizard. The dad who was tall, his palms spread out to show his bony knuckles, stood in the field from then on with his pants up. Locusts circled around his legs. That's when he realized he didn't have a spell that could drive the locusts away. And, he didn't have a spell that could make the water stretcher lighter, much less know how to change the direction of time. No wizard had ever been able to change time.
[5]
Do not say that the candle of resistance need not pour,
Life still grows on the river of years.
[6]
His planned capitals and walls. His orchid-colored clover flowers that bloomed beyond the world. How, how he wanted to be a soldier. Holey eyes and a life of experience. His love of sports of all kinds. So it was good to be a soccer player. Being a swimmer was good too. Playing ping-pong was good too. It's good to be a high jumper. Going for a run is good too. Anything can be a bright hope for the future. People say, "So-and-so, the player who is so-and-so, like God's help". That's not divine assistance, that's all sorts of arcane powers in the pocket of my wizard father.
Once they were about to take him on a different journey.
But then he was plugged in to farming, and went to bed early at night, tired from the kerosene lamps. He even forgot that he could make the light less smoky. Gradually, gradually, he forgot the past. He was about to go into the earthly mortal world at the suggestion of the gods. The starlight running in the sky, the wind and water flowing darkly underground, all gradually, gradually went away from him.
The spine softly collapsed into a curved, tired arc.
He began to smile and silently put away the white robes of his past. His right hand was always tucked in his pocket out of habit to avoid using out his spells. There were no more spells. Only a small dirt path through the mountains that had been traveled for several years. Only a pile of college textbooks he had hidden by his bed. Only a beautifully sharpened and clear pencil. Only his first thoughts that gradually tightened and changed. Only a pop song that he secretly hummed in his heart.
Humming in the heart.
[7]
Many, many years later, he married a very gentle woman. Raised a very different daughter. Took the three of them back to the city. Bought a house, got a car, changed a few jobs, clenched his brow over a lot of dilemmas, and stayed in the city of his birth for five, six years. Until a few years ago, he had been on the run for stability. Often traveling south and north for a month or two at a time.
There was something nostalgic about the experience of stepping through the sea of clouds in his youth as he sat on the airplane. And in the eyes of the air hostesses, he was already an old enough guy. Though still tall in stature his face was reddened by the sun. But they still bent down again and again to fasten his seatbelt.
In fact, he wanted to say, Actually, that thing is not necessary, I am a wizard. But he finally just nodded, "Thanks, I forgot." Slowly, taking sips of orange water.
Like a child, Dad likes things with heavy flavors for physical reasons. For example, he prefers orange water to coffee. This sounds as if it doesn't have much to do with wizards anymore.
It was. He was slowly losing his straight body and youthful skin, his lush black hair, his strong, powerful walnut-biting teeth, cracking them with a small hammer instead, picking out the meat piece by piece with his presbyopic glasses. He has lost his passion and robust stride, and rarely wears traveling shoes anymore. When he went to climb Mount Huangshan again, his right foot was injured and couldn't bear the strength, turning it into a problem for the whole family, so he had to share his luggage with my mom and me, and move down slowly and helplessly step by step at the back of the mountain road. He lost his bad temper and became a gentle and soft person. Different people changed the names they called him, sir, uncle, uncle, would he hang his head in chagrin at the first person who called him grandpa? No one called him lad, comrade, and wizard any more. He also lost his sharp head and clear memory. Unconsciously, he asked me many times, "Where were you yesterday?" .
I went to the cinema yesterday to buy you a movie, Dad.
[8]
He held a freshly cooked carrot custard and fed it to my mouth while holding my head. Humming a babbling song. The dad I saw then. From my pupils I saw the glow that adorned his head.
He was tidying up the vegetable patch in the backyard.
He was changing my diaper. He had just gotten to one side when he was caught off guard and I "poisoned" him again.
He was taking his exams and taking care of my sick mom and me, running up and down the path like an angry lion.
He traveled far and wide, from this place to the city to buy me an Astro Boy toy.
The remnants of a wizard's aura spread through his back, which still retained the rigidity of a young man.
Daddy had all but forgotten those first romantic catchphrases. Everything to do with blue skies and white clouds and birds and deer. What he was laboring over were spells on how to tune back into the city, recipes on how to make his daughter less susceptible to fevers. Day after day, day after day, he silently drew pictures in his mind, and when he slept, his body was like a curved mountain. Finally came here.
[9]
Walked to the second half of the life of the wizard, already more than half a hundred. But he was the only one in the family who could fight a bucket of pure water up to the water fountain in one breath. My mom and I applauded oh-so-happily from the sidelines. He was the only one in the family who knew how to restore a TV set that had lost its picture. He was the only one in the family who knew how to get from so-and-so road to so-and-so road, and my mom and I were listening to a book. He was the only one in the family who could tell what kind of bullet was this and what kind of gun was that in the National Day parade. He was the only one in the family who knew that there was a large open grassland outside another distant city. The green spreads to the endless places.
It was in the first half of your life, when you stepped on the clouds, went there, right.
He had forgotten the mnemonic for the clouds, he had forgotten the key words to make the flowers open earlier, but he practiced the magic that the water pipes would no longer be clogged, he memorized all the first aid for dangerous situations, he followed the math textbook for his daughter's homework, he had to be the last pillar of support even when anyone was feeling lost and despairing, never wavering, never hesitating, resisting the responsibility on his shoulders that with No amount of magic could alleviate some of it.
Entering the second half of life of the wizard, wearing his short-sleeved T-shirt carrying his bag, every day I drove me out of the house and then pick me up home, driving, after all, is not the same as flying, not with the sleeve of the wind can do, so he was not too skillful in the end, in the car is serious and scary. I didn't dare talk to him then, and could only see the small half of his face by the mirror. His eyes.
In his deep, dark eyes. An ocean of silent silence.
Dad.
You brought me into this world with the greatest of mana, and that was perhaps the last time I remember holding your wizard's cloth robes and following you from a chaos.
Dad.
Even as time rolls in chaotic winds and clouds, you are still a full-fledged wizard. You'd hold a baby's fingers in your right hand and they'd look at you and suddenly laugh out loud.
Daddy, don't get old. Papa, do not be sick. Dad, stop suffering. Dad, become happy. Dad, I love you. The last line in my stolen magic mantra, "Hassilda mai, mai mai oh yi" - "Daddy, I love you."