For some reason I suddenly thought of this question: what would a rainbow on the sea look like?
Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about the sea a lot lately in my head (perhaps triggered by a netizen’s qmd, perhaps by an animated film I watched earlier, perhaps by some inner factor—I’m not sure), and then the day before yesterday I saw a pop-up QQ news item saying that a rainbow had appeared in downtown Beijing—that meteorological “spectacle” somehow brought them together in my mind.
When people are bored, they sometimes close their eyes and imagine themselves placed in some beautiful scene; I suppose others do this too? Anyway, I do this from time to time. Strangely, though, the images in my mind rarely feature starry skies or rain. What appear most often are lively scenes such as forests and grasslands, as well as tranquil scenes such as green mountains and secluded woods. In other moods, I also often find myself in some kind of wuxia scene, wielding a sword. Rain, on the other hand, appears least often—apart from the image of the eaves across from my childhood home when I recall childhood, rain has always seemed rather real to me. On an actual rainy day, I would feel it with my eyes and body, yet when I close my eyes I least often imagine a rainy scene.
Starry skies are rare too, and the sea is rare as well. In fact, I have almost never seen a truly brilliant starry sky in reality—the stars visible in Shanghai and Beijing can be counted on one’s fingers; as for the sea, I am ashamed to say that although I was born in Shanghai, the only time I truly gazed at the sea was in Qingdao, and at that time both my mood and the weather were unsatisfactory. Similarly embarrassing, my only hurried glimpse of the Yangtze River was also in Nanjing, even though both the sea and the Yangtze are right next to Shanghai.
There are two kinds of scene when I think of the starry sky: one is, of course, “gazing up at the stars,” where the starry sky is the whole picture. But if one is looking upward, the neck gets rather tired. Yet strangely, I seem not to be used to simply letting myself “lie down” in the picture. Except for the wuxia scenes that can be classified into another series, in all my scenes I am either sitting or standing—no other movement, and no motion; and I am always firmly on the ground. Probably the laws of physics remain stubbornly persistent in my fantasies, since I very rarely imagine myself flying or floating and the like, though that does sound rather interesting.
Another way of viewing the starry sky is to stand by the seashore (or sit on the rocks by the sea) and gaze into the distance toward the starry sky along the horizon. In this scene, what I am looking at is the starry sky; the sea merely provides convenience—it offers the broadest, most boundless view, allowing me to see the deep starry sky with nothing more than a level gaze. It also provides a little sea breeze and the sound of waves lapping, as a sensory backdrop beyond sight. As for vision, because my attention is focused only on the starry sky, I sometimes forget the sea’s existence.
In other situations, I think especially of the sea—that final destination of rain! And there is also the saying, “As fixed as the sea, as free as a small boat.” The sea represents an existence that is infinitely vast and yet concretely possessed of great power. Unlike the starry sky, the sea can be right beside us, and can even directly display the force that will swallow us up. For those whom even gazing at the stars cannot move to awe before nature, one should let them experience the power of a tsunami firsthand…
We say “sea-like abundance” and “please be magnanimous” (海量、海涵); the sea possesses a heart that embraces everything, and this is precisely one of the qualities of “the character of water” that I praise, and also the number-one theme of my philosophy of the starry sky: praise everything, embrace everything. But the vastness of the starry sky seems a bit too distant; the ocean is more intimate. To use the sea as a symbol of my “philosophy of inclusiveness” is the most fitting.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but whenever I think of the starry sky or the sea, it is always when I am feeling lonely. Perhaps people who especially like the blue sky, the sea, the starry sky, and such things are all lonely in their hearts, because those things are too expansive. Before an endless sea and an endless sky, one appears so small, so solitary. If a person’s heart is as vast as the sky or the sea, then in life he will not be lonely, because his generosity and inclusiveness will make him never hate anyone, able to forgive everything; no matter how many friends he has, at least he will not easily have enemies. Yet deep in his heart, in a certain sense, he will forever be unable to shake off the loneliness of existence. For although the broadest of minds can contain any other, it is hard for it to find a place of belonging for itself—where can one find a harbor spacious enough to receive one’s own anchorage? The sea can become a harbor for others, but it can only belong to itself. The sea can become the destination of rainwater and rivers, but what is its own destination?
I’ve strayed far from the point. I rarely write like this. It’s just that recently—being alone at school, and never opening my mouth to speak except when going to get meals—I’ve had more feelings than usual, so I’ll vent a bit through writing.
Speaking of rainbows, when I saw the news at the time, my first thought was: is it really worth making such a fuss over a rainbow appearing in downtown Beijing? But on second thought, yes, it is true that a rainbow is itself a kind of spectacle—otherwise the Bible would not have taken the rainbow as a symbol of the covenant. And for a city like Beijing to produce a “natural” spectacle is indeed rare; such modern cities are places where nature’s footprint is seldom seen. But if one wishes to appreciate and feel nature’s “spectacles,” why wait for a rainbow? Every flower, every blade of grass, every tree around us is a “spectacle”; the natural world is full of miracles, many of which are right beside us, yet we take them for granted and no longer find them strange. In the busy lives of urban people, how many can stop to admire the flowers, grass, and trees around them? Busy affairs leave people no time to pause even for a moment; only that rare and unusual rainbow can make “many Beijing residents stop to watch”… Are we really that busy? Or is it because we dare not stop, because once the busyness stops, all that remains is emptiness? People cannot find the meaning of life, cannot feel the beauty of life, and so they can only forget themselves through busy work; others wear away their time through indulgent entertainment. They cannot stop walking; when they are chasing nothing, when they are busy with nothing, all that remains is a sense of emptiness. Only when one’s own mind is not empty does stopping become a pleasure. Stop, and quietly feel those beauties, experience those marvels—“silent wonder”—only a person whose heart is full can do this. A person whose heart is full will still feel life’s richness and variety even in plain circumstances; whereas a person whose heart is empty must constantly seek novelty and stimulation, or keep himself busy with one thing or another.
Can one see a rainbow on the sea? My train of thought here seems jumpy; I rarely write articles whose thoughts jump around like this. Anyway, um, can one see a rainbow on the sea? I searched a bit, and it really is extremely hard to see. On the one hand, the “traffic” on the sea is far less than on land; on the other hand, because the water vapor above the sea contains a large amount of salt particles, the situation is far more complex than on land, and the mechanism for forming a rainbow cannot be exactly the same as on land. (By the way, I previously wrote an assignment analyzing the formation of rainbows; I just turned the document into images and uploaded them: but once science explains it, the rainbow itself becomes much less interesting. Still, one can transfer that sense of wonder onto the natural laws themselves, and besides, if you really saw a rainbow, who would still have the mind to puzzle over optical questions?) There are a few reported cases of sea rainbows, and their forms are indeed very different from ordinary rainbows. What might that scene look like? I long for it. Of course, I don’t especially want to go out of my way to see a rainbow; if I happen to see one, I’ll certainly be excited for a moment, but aren’t there many other things worth appreciating besides rainbows?
August 17, 2006
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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