My "Stone" Complex

120 steps west of the mountain, across the bamboo forest, smelling the sound of water, like singing, I am happy. Cut bamboo and walk along the road, and see the small pool below, the water is particularly clear. The whole stone is at the bottom, close to the shore, and the bottom of the rolling stone comes out, which is a mountain, an island, a mountain and a rock. Green trees and vines, covered and twisted, staggered and brushed.

-Liu Tang Zongyuan's Little Stone Pond

I remember reciting this "Little Stone Pond" when I was a child, but I just thought it was strange and awkward. Isn't it just a stone? Why is it worth spending so much ink to describe? Later, I slowly learned that the complex about stone, like the complex about wine, was a label of ancient literati in China.

Ancient literati liked gardens. After resigning and retiring, I always like to find a quiet place, buy a few acres of land and draw a paradise of my own. Literati private gardens are also called "landscape freehand brushwork gardens". Water is easy to handle, and a pool or stream can always be built by opening canals or digging wells to divert water. What about that mountain? This usually requires the use of stones.

Not only in gardens, but also in ancient literary works, there are many stories related to stones. For example, the birth of the Monkey King in The Journey to the West, the boulder turned into Baoyu in A Dream of Red Mansions, and the petrochemical gang in Water Margin can be said that the stone culture has penetrated into every corner of China traditional culture.

Gradually, with the increase of knowledge and experience, my collection and understanding of stones are also increasingly rich: on weekends, I will visit the local cultural fair and choose a few favorite stones to take home; When buying books, you will pay attention to the recently published collection appreciation books, and walk into the colorful stone world through reading; In my spare time, I wipe my favorite collections with a soft cloth, then carefully oil them and maintain the stones; When traveling, visit every mountain, see every strange stone and experience the soul of the stone from its specific artistic conception.

What makes people intoxicated lies in the rich cultural connotation and noble spiritual character of Kistler, that is, its personalized charm-Kistler is faithful and does not follow the trend; Stone is calm, not frivolous; Simple stone, not putting on airs; The stone is quiet, not noisy and impetuous; Stone is indifferent, and there is no vain and beautiful name; Stones last forever, don't give up halfway; History, who does not rely on the old to sell the old ... As long as you have a clear heart and a speculative heart, you can feel these spiritual qualities of the strange stone, thus inspiring the soul, improving the character, and living the purpose of nourishing the heart, cultivating the nature, being happy and inspiring.

Strange stones are speechless, but their shape, quality, color, grain, essence, spirit, meaning and rhyme all touch people's senses, give people a unique psychological feeling, touch the heartstrings and shock people. For example, among the four famous traditional stones in China, Lingbi stone is rough and clingy; Taihu stone twists and turns round, tactfully delicate; The stone is sparse and beautiful, exquisite and colorful; Kunshi is crystal white and exquisite. Large fossils in modern new stone species have bright colors and smooth skins; Painted pottery stone glaze is pure and honest, simple and quiet; Yellow wax stone is golden and rich, and feels warm and moist; Malachite is covered with green velvet, bright and shiny; Gobi stones are varied, strange and lifelike; Agate stone is jeweled and elegant; Changjiang stone has rich patterns and rotten lines; Yellow River stone painting changes, simple and dignified; Wood fossils have weathered Cang Sang, like wood and jade; Rainflower stones are colorful, colorful ... It is really a collection of the essence of heaven and earth, the beauty of mountains and rivers, the essence of the universe, and the cleansing of the common heart. It is extraordinary and beautiful!

Stone is the source of artistic creation. Musicians play melodious and touching music with bells made of Lingbi stone; By mastering the expressive skills of rocks, painters create magnificent and profound landscape paintings; Sculptors use stones to create unique, novel and exquisite space art; Writers use stones as materials to create well-known masterpieces; Landscape designers use rockeries to reproduce the famous mountains and rivers in nature in gardens; Architects use stones as materials to build simple, elegant and beautiful buildings ... The aesthetic and cultural values hidden in stones are inexhaustible.

Because of my "like", stones are divided into two kinds: good-looking and bad-looking. Because of my love, the world is slightly unbalanced. Fortunately, my "like" power is too weak to affect the real world, at most affecting my preference for a stone. Take Taihu Stone as an example, it is muddy but not dirty, clear and rippling but not demon, straight through and not crawling. The traditional way of tasting is "wrinkle thin and leak through". Wrinkle is vicissitudes, thin is rough, leakage is reasonable, and penetration is delicate. The white appearance symbolizes noble character, elegant and straight without edges and corners, and symbolizes the ancient code of conduct inside the outer circle. It can be said that the ancients' love and appreciation of stones is a kind of belief and a self-portrayal. As the saying goes, "Scholars think more, and the stone can carry poems, endow them with aspirations and enter their paintings."

I like stones, especially those that are still in nature. Whenever I walk alone on the high river bank in the gale, I look at the moving golden sand dunes on the other side, and then at the deep blue bottomless sky in autumn. I watched the translucent full moon hanging on one side of the sunset for a long time, deeply believing that there must be a secret about stones there. I began to look for beautiful fragments at my feet ... No matter in the wilderness or in the mountains, I always met a stone that I could sing with my soul. I didn't ask for anything from it or walk with it. I know that this ordinary stone has a more magnificent and rugged experience than any mortal in the world. I almost imagined that it was shattered in the great earthquake in the flood era, and I watched it be hit by seawater for hundreds of millions of years. After the seawater dried up, it was buried by mudslides for hundreds of millions of years. ...

There are countless stories about stones. Each stone has its own unique story and past events, and each stone can bring you different feelings. Find a gap in the stressful life, take a walk in the garden, have a look, find the stone you like, understand its story, touch the historical imprint, and take a photo together, which is also a relationship with the stone.

For me, collecting stones is a pleasure: all kinds of stones give me infinite reverie, and I have gained and accumulated knowledge in geology, aesthetics, history and other aspects in the process of looking for collections. The most rare thing is that because I like stones, I gradually have a somewhat tough "stone temperament" in my bones. The stones, large and small, on the table and on the windowsill remind me all the time that it may take a long time to live like a stone and polish and shape yourself constantly under the tempering of time and life, but as long as you persevere, you will one day become a unique self and present the most beautiful posture to the world.