INTRODUCTION
Yesterday I grit my teeth and rode the Greyhound until midnight, then I plodded my feet on Route 99, committing them to Ohio. In the dank dusk, halfway dug out from dusty pockets of town, a wizened man sat on the side of the cement. He and I gaped at each other for a minute; I noticed that he held a buzzing kerosene light, his eyes were heavy with grey, his beard was too long. “I want to resolve the heart in conflict with itself,” he told me as another moth died in his handheld flame. “I want to have a drink,” I told him, and so I followed him to a pub in a Ghost Town. He held his lamp up to flick away the phantoms and I watched the clear golden liquid seep down his hand. Trailed him to the edge of the cavern and I stopped, almost stepping over a young woman. She skulked by her beer, so I asked her what was wrong. – Nothing. Except when she opened the locket on her chest and palmed the man on it, ran her finger over the archaic brushstrokes, did I recognize the engraving “AUSTEN” as rusted and the beer as two months old. No wonder one skulks. – I looked down, and suddenly mine was gone; uncupped from my hand; “it is a thought experiment”, says the unsmiling face from above, pale and vein-swallowed. “Society shackles us all. This beer is yours, but it may be mine; are these new strange definitions not bondage?” Except the woman before him wrenches my beer from his hand, and flings it away demanding: “what do you know of bondage?” Her white headwear is a defiant flag. I heard the crows caw from afar. It was then I saw the man with his knuckles on the table, his face an arrow ready to be fired, his eyes like his whiskey – glazed, pale yellow. “All I’ve ever wanted was to plant this little grain,” he was saying, his coarse black hair already to his shoulders. “Because one day it’ll grow to bear grains of its own and another day its children will have children and one day my grain will be enough to feed an entire nation, for one day, perhaps, we can all have a grain to eat.”
Two miles down the road, a pair of headlights sear the dark, timelessly setting its searching eyes. I sat for hours on the alcohol-drained pavement beside the whizzing flies, and I walked the rest of my way back to Montpelier.
Before dawn breaks, Faulkner is back again. The kerosene is as good as gone – he stares me in the eye, his beard another flag in the wind, and utters words that slam me like a 1960s pearl-white Ford automobile. Another grain ruptures the ground. “The past is not dead. It is not even past.”
空旷的街区，昏黄的路灯。一把破碎的影子，和那辆深夜不知从何处驶来的摇摇晃晃的巴士。我慢慢合上手上的历史教科书，淹没在杂乱的时间线里，脑海里不断浮现的，不只有枯燥的年代表、复杂的人物关系和冰冷的陈述，“1957年，……”。混沌中，那辆破旧的巴士静静地蛰伏在路口，似乎在等待着它的归人。
我曾在许多时刻坐上空无一人的末班车，从口袋中掏出一个小小的上世纪笔记本，在枯黄的页面上留下一个又一个笔迹。依稀记得文学老师提醒过，具像化，描绘，比喻，叙述。尘封多年的那个1957年的傍晚在我笔下倾泻，流淌到老旧的巴士中化为了一滩金色，抖了抖身子，重新活过来了。那时的街道名，汽车颜色，行人的衣服，我甚至都能看到；深夜的纯粹中，发动机搅碎黑暗的幕布，一声声拨动着我的神经，我的内心开始躁动、震颤，视野中不断闪过的门牌号令我晕眩。躺在新北街33号前的老黄狗快睡着了，耳朵轻弹着一群嗡嗡的苍蝇；阿尔及尔大道上披着黑色风衣的男人又抽了一支烟；别处，一个青衣妇女抱着篮筐，蹲在传说中前往西贡的蜿蜒小路边。这些人似乎不曾知道自己生活在历史之中。他们的举动，自发自觉，无关对错，甚至难说利弊，只是一个普通人在时代洪流中的顺应或是选择。但他们的故事应当被写下来。
窗外的景色旋转着飞离，惊鸿一瞥，看不真切。巴士在深夜中跌跌撞撞地前行。若我是一只飞鸿，我定徘徊许久，然而我是这宏大土地的一部分，而时间也不会在月光中为我停留。在卧室的青灯下，我找到了一本红皮书，整整齐齐地躺在我床边。我发现这是一集故事，名称是简单的《1957》，里面却谱写着许多形形色色的人在当年不同的命运。而当我随意翻开书的一页，竟看到这样一段话：
“那些亘古不变的情感，在我、在你、也在他。这些情感在某一刻击中我们，那千百年间心跳的共振使人感动，使之成为穿越时空的钥匙，也使得我们透过历史的巨镜：看见一群普通人与时代相向而行时，微不足道的伟大；也看见一群普通人在家国与个人的抉择中，掺杂着的私欲以及对平凡的幸福的渴望。
这是活着的他们，也是活着的历史。”
Welcome to The Greyhound Journal.
