A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

What is seventy years? For a worker bee producing honey, it’s more than 560 lifetimes. For a buffalo plowing a field, it’s perhaps three—if it is not slaughtered prematurely. For a person, it’s almost an entire life. In a history book, it’s probably just a few paragraphs. But in God’s plan, it’s an instant, the blink of an eye.

The living can’t control their own days, but the dead are not thus bound. After death, the soul is no longer limited by time, space, or unexpected events. The soul’s world has no boundaries. To the soul, the entire universe and all eternity are just a thought away.

Time is a strange thing. It washes away the outer skin of solemnity and reveals the absurd nature of things.

War is one world, and peace another. Each world has its own door, and they are not connected in any way.

Facing death is a form of bravery, but so is facing life. I had to live to see the day when my knife would be of use.

Diligence clips the wings of cleverness, allowing it to stay firmly on the ground. Persistence grinds away the sharp edges of cleverness, not allowing it to take shortcuts through things. Cleverness thus clipped can more fully penetrate the nature of things.

To the person who is leaving, the attraction of what lies ahead is greater than what lies behind. Recollection is something that is left for later.

As soon as her voice appeared, all the other sounds immediately fell away. Her voice could stop the turning of the world. It was the sound of heaven, crawling from my ear into the tip of my heart, washing away all the filthy things I had seen, heard, and smelled over the past twenty-three years and making me as pure as a baby just emerged from its mother’s womb.

Much of what I said that night went straight from my heart to my tongue, bypassing not only my brain, but even my throat. Only after traveling some distance did they turn back to slowly find their way to my brain.