The person upstairs didn’t say that. . .

Here is a quote from Rat's first letter. I haven't seen anything better about it. . . .

1. Rat's first letter Postmark date: December 21, 1977

Are you okay?

It seems like I haven’t seen you for a long time. How many years have we not seen each other?

How many years have we not seen each other?

The feeling of time gradually becomes dull. It was as if there was a flat black bird scratching around on my head, unable to count past three. Sorry, I wish you could tell me.

Leaving your hometown city without telling everyone may have caused you a lot of trouble, or you may be unhappy that even you are hiding this. I tried to explain it to you several times, but never did. I wrote a lot of letters and tore up a lot of them. It is natural to say that it is a matter of course - it is impossible to explain things clearly to others if you cannot explain them to yourself.

Probably.

I have never been good at writing letters. Either the order is reversed, or the meaning of the words is completely reversed, and the letter will only make yourself confused. In addition, due to my lack of humor, I started to feel self-loathing as I wrote.

However, people who write letters well no longer need to write letters. Because you can completely live in your own culture. But this is of course just my personal bias. The so-called living in a literary spirit may be impossible to talk about.

It's extremely cold now, and my hands are frozen. They don't look like my own hands, just like my brain doesn't look like my own brains. It's snowing now, like the snow of other people's brains, and getting thicker like other people's brains (a play on words).

Except for the cold, I live quite energetically. How are you? I hope you don't mind if I won't tell you my address. It's not that I intentionally hide anything from you, you must understand this. It's just that this is a very subtle issue for me. It seems that once I tell you the address, something will completely change in me at that moment - I can't express it well.

I think you understand very well the things I express poorly. The problem seems to be that the better you understand it, the worse I can express it. There must be something inherently flawed.

Of course, everyone has flaws.

It’s just that my biggest flaw is that my flaws get bigger quickly as I get older. That is to say, it is like raising a chicken inside your body. The chicken lays eggs, the eggs turn into chickens, and the changed chickens lay eggs again. Can man survive with such imperfections? Of course you can. And that's where the problem ends.

I won’t write my address anyway. It's definitely appropriate, both for me and for you.

Perhaps we should have been born in 19th century Russia. I make a Duke of such and such, and you make a Count of such and such, the two of them hunt, duel, and are jealous, harboring metaphysical worries, drinking beer while watching the sunset on the shores of the Black Sea. In their later years, they were exiled to the Siberia, and died there. Don't you think this is beautiful and wonderful? If I had been born in the 19th century, I probably would have written better novels. Even if he can't compare with Tolstoy, he can definitely squeeze into the second rate, which is still reasonable. How are you? I'm afraid you'll always be stuck on something or other. It wouldn't be a bad idea to stop at Count So-and-So. They all have a 19th century feel.

But forget it, let’s go back to the 20th century.

Talk about cities.

It is not the city where we were born, but various other cities.

Cities in the world are really diverse. Every city has its own inexplicable features that attract me. Therefore, I have visited quite a few cities in recent years.

No matter which station you get off at, there must be a traffic island, there must be an urban traffic map, and there must be a commercial street, without exception. Even the dogs look the same. First walk around the streets, and then ask a real estate agent to introduce you to cheap accommodation. Of course, I am a foreigner in a small city and xenophobic, so it is difficult to gain trust immediately. But you also know that as long as I am in a good mood, I am quite slow in dealing with others. I can get close to most people in 15 minutes. In this way, the place of residence was decided, and the information about the small town was also obtained.

The next step is to find a job. This also benefits from the wide range of friends I make. If that's you, I'm sure it's going to be very annoying (it's annoying to me to some extent), but you won't be able to live there for 4 months anyway. In fact, making friends is not difficult. First, find a coffee shop or fast food restaurant where young people are concentrated in the city (no city lacks this thing, just like the navel of the city), become a regular customer there, cultivate acquaintances and ask them to introduce jobs. Of course, the name and resume must be properly fabricated. Therefore, I currently have many names and resumes that you would never think of. Even what I was like is often forgotten.

There are many kinds of work. It was pretty much monotonous, but I still had fun doing it. Those who work the most are gas stations, followed by fast food restaurant foremen. I also worked in a bookstore and worked in a broadcasting bureau. He also worked as a civil engineering worker and a cosmetics salesman. Pretty good reaction to being a salesman. In addition, I slept with many girls. Girls with the same name but different backgrounds are sleeping together, which is indeed not a bad feeling.

That’s it, it goes over and over again.

I am already 29 and will be 30 in 9 months.

As for whether this kind of life is completely suitable for me, I still can’t tell. It is not known whether the character of wandering around is common. Perhaps, as one person wrote, what is needed for long-term wandering is one of three personality tendencies. That is, religious tendencies, artistic tendencies, and spiritual tendencies. If neither exists, long-term wandering is out of the question. But I don’t think any of them are right for me (hardly speaking... no, no, forget it).

Or maybe I opened the wrong door but couldn't retreat. But no matter what, since the door is open, you can only go in. After all, you can't always buy things on credit.

That’s all.

Switch has already said (said?) that I feel a little self-conscious when I think of you. Maybe it's because you remind me of a more authentic era.

Also:

I am sending along the novel I wrote. It no longer makes sense to me, just deal with it appropriately.

This letter is express, so that it can be sent to you before December 24th. I hope you have a safe journey.

Anyway, happy birthday to you!

And

have a snowy Christmas!

The letter from the rat arrived on December 29th, which was close to the new year. It was crumpled and stuffed into the mailbox of my dormitory. There are two forwarding stamps affixed because it is sent to my original residence. But it’s not my fault. I have no way of informing you.

There are 4 pages written on the light green letterhead. I read it three times, then picked up the envelope and looked at the half-blurred postmark. I had never heard of the place name on the postmark, so I took out the atlas from the bookshelf and looked for it. From the letter, I guess it may be around the northern tip of Honshu. As expected, it is a small town located in Aomori Prefecture, an hour's train ride from Aomori. Looking at the timetable, there are five buses stopping there every day. There are two shifts in the morning, one at noon and two in the evening. I have been to Aomori several times in December. It was so cold that the traffic signals were frozen.

I showed the letter to my wife. She said, "Poor thing." Maybe she meant "poor people." Of course it doesn't matter now.

The novel has more than 200 pages of manuscript paper. I stuffed it into the desk drawer without even reading the name. I don't know why I don't want to watch it. For me, the letter is enough.

After that I sat on the chair in front of the fire and smoked 3 cigarettes.