Cosmic town

　　I can’t reveal the key information about Cosmic Town, because once it is said, everyone will know where it is immediately. A few years ago, he had a barbecue with a few friends, and he said something while drinking: “You know, whoever has gone to the cosmos town.” When he realized that I also lived there, he had A subconscious gesture of covering his mouth means he said something wrong and shouldn’t. In fact, it’s not necessary. Those of us who live in Cosmos Town don’t usually like to say that we live here. Everyone likes to remain anonymous. Maybe there is a feeling in our hearts that we mistakenly think that we are “Knights” who are far away from the rivers and lakes.
　　Why is this place called “Cosmic Town”? Isn’t it a popular saying now, everyone loves to make fun of the cities they live in, such as “Magic Capital”, “Imperial Capital” and so on. There is a talk show contestant named Li Xueqin. She said that her mother believes that “the end of the universe is in Tieling”, and Tieling has become an important place in the universe. We can’t say that the end of the universe is here, let alone that the center of the universe is here, but one thing is certain, the town is a speck of dust in the universe (maybe not even dust), but There are too many people who can’t stand it, and there are too many people living in it, so there will be many opinions, and it will be messy and chaotic. A “cosmic town” can unify the interpretation and calm down disputes.
　　I lived in Cosmos Town in 2016. I have been here before, from a certain city area less than 20 kilometers away from here, driving a car, with two children, to the arcade here to play video games, one hundred yuan and two hundred coins, and play happily. After a whole day, I was tired from playing and had dinner before rushing back. Quandang went to the countryside for a vacation. I never thought I would live here in the past, but someone suggested it. Around 2004, they said that the house price here is cheap, 800 yuan per square meter, zero down payment, and the developer also gave 2,000 yuan in vouchers. I sternly refused, saying, who would go to a place where birds don’t poop.
　　Ten years later, in 2014, my son, whose academic performance was not very good, failed in the middle school entrance examination (it had nothing to do with me often taking him to play games), and none of the public high schools could get into it. They all went to the No. 7 middle school in the neighboring county to ask, and they said that this score was impossible to ask. I had no choice but to go to a private school. Private schools also required scores. During that time, I took him around to “take the test”. When I came to the Cosmos Town, it was during the process of “taking the test” that an elder sister who also took her son to “take the test” told me to go. Cosmic town, there are some schools there that are particularly good, you can go to the school without looking at the scores. So, in the fall of 2014, I drove my son to Cosmic Town and drove away.
　　Unexpectedly, in 2016, when my daughter was promoted to primary school, she also encountered difficulties. It was not because of her poor grades that she could not go to school, but she encountered other problems. With the previous experience, this kind of problem can’t help me, go, go to the universe town, become your brother’s alumni, use good grades, and make my family ashamed.
　　My daughter moved her car. This was a big deal, so I started to buy a house. At that time, the house price in the cosmos town was the highest in history. The numbers in the bank card that I had accumulated for ten or twenty years were all cleared, and I had to borrow another ten years. At this time, the universe town is no longer a problem that you can’t look down on, but a problem that you can’t afford to buy without a loan. In the fall, my daughter went to elementary school, and we settled on the northern edge of Cosmic Town. Those of us who are marginalized have a characteristic. We like to walk aside when we walk, and we like to stay aside when we choose to live. We have come this way for decades.
　　There is a Long Island in New York. In the 1920s, the west end of Long Island became a wealthy area. Many luxury villas were built and filled with powerful people, celebrities and rich people, while the east end was messy and dusty. Feiyang is the domain of the bottom people. Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby” in the background of New York City and Long Island at that time. When I lived in a cosmic town and drove on a road where I had to turn on the car’s air conditioner to stop the smell of earth, I couldn’t help but think of this novel.
　　Across the wide coast, Gatsby at the west end often stared at the lighthouse spotlights from the east bank at night. He felt that the light line was like the fiery eyes of his ex-girlfriend Daisy, who he thought about day and night. Coincidentally, there is also a river between the Cosmic Town and the city next door. The only difference from the situation on Long Island is that the cosmic town on the east bank is eight kilometers long along the river, and there are many tall buildings built. Milky Way. The West Bank is a sleepy village.
　　The row of houses built along the river satisfies the desire to “live next to the river” written in people’s bones, even though the river has almost dried up in more than ten years, it can only be regarded as a wider stinky ditch . There are European-style and American-style houses, but there is no Chinese style. The names of the communities often start with “Victoria”, “Manhattan”, “Century Rome”, etc. People who come here for the first time will mistakenly think that they have entered the United Nations.
　　The row of high-rise western-style buildings with foreign names is the face of Cosmic Town, opening to the west, smeared and powdered, as if showing something. To the east, it is the true face of the cosmic town. The road is full of potholes, the isolation fence is crooked, the electric three-wheeled rampage, an average of three traffic accidents a day, and occasionally a donkey cart can be seen. …The magic of this town is that walking into it is like walking into a certain city in a sci-fi movie. The characteristics of cities in the 1234567 tiers can all be found here to varying degrees. , so it has an inexplicable charm, inexplicably attracting so many people to take the initiative to defect.
　　More than ten years ago, I visited a director friend who lived here. He was one of the first residents of the small town to live in. In the huge community, his home was in the last row of high-rise buildings. He bought the top floor and climbed up the spiral staircase. It was a church-like attic. In the attic, he showed me a movie that he had been filming for several years and had not yet obtained a public release license. The movie was about a particularly literary love story that happened in the countryside. The combination of Gatsby, after reading it, I feel particularly trance and melancholy.
　　Cosmos Town is a place with a lot of people. During a special time period of the day, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as crowded. But after living in the universe town, people seem to become very self-conscious again – they don’t like to party (including dinner parties), they don’t like to talk, they don’t like to connect with others, and they don’t even like to say that they live here. Everyone is lazy. , The way you love someone. Sometimes when I meet someone outside, I accidentally reveal my address when I talk, and I usually make a phone call. It turns out that you also live in a cosmos town. Such a scene is often repeated when the two parties meet a year later, as if they hadn’t seen each other a year ago.
　　In Cosmic Town, you don’t find friends, and friends don’t come to you, so living here you have to adapt to being a stranger here all the time. It’s a stranger, or it’s okay, everyone acts according to known and established rules, abides by principles and boundaries, and maintains politeness. The result of this kind of indoctrination, I prefer to believe it is the former.
　　Once I went back to the town from the next city, it was around 6 pm, which is the peak time for people after get off work to return to the town. When I turned from a small road to the main road, I drove about 200 to 300 meters and came across a bus stop. I usually pass by here on the premise of ensuring safety, but I don’t know why that day. I released the accelerator a bit, and the car tended to stop slowly, so I saw several people beckoning to me, and through the window glass, I heard them shouting from a distance, “Master, Cosmic Town, are you going? ”

　　Carpooling was popular in those days, and the empty car could join four people, just enough to pay for gas and tolls back to the town. There are people in the town (black car drivers) who take over such work. Of course, more people who live in the town help each other. They must be thinking of me as a carpool driver. I parked the car and released the lock button. The four people had a clear division of labor, opened the door very lightly and skillfully, and closed the door with a suitable force. During this process, the three young men politely asked the only one The young woman sat in the passenger seat.
　　Everything is aimed at efficiency and less fussing, and everything is to save time. This is the fine style of Cosmic Town. It was also my first time to become a carpooling master, and I was a little excited and a little inexplicably sweet – I could finally serve the townspeople. But there was an inevitable panic. First, so many strangers got in the car at once, which made him uncomfortable. Second, he was worried that the car would be checked on the way and treated as a black car illegally soliciting customers. Now that they have come, they are safe, and everyone is in the car. What else can we do except deliver them safely to their homes one by one?
　　I turned down the temperature of the air conditioner (it was summer), turned on the music on the USB stick in the car, and it happened to be playing a Bob Dylan song that I liked. To avoid disturbing the passengers, I turned the volume knob to low volume. turned a half circle in the direction. It was very quiet in the car, and even a little embarrassed, so I asked, “Where are you all going?” The four of them reported the name of the community one by one. Yes, they were all on the same road. By the way, the girl was talking about the name of the community. Afterwards, I asked, “Master, how much is the carpooling?”
　　I said, “No money.” I don’t often leave the town, so there are very few opportunities to be a carpooling master. I have the opportunity to pick up passengers who live in the same town. It’s fate, how can you ask for money? These are my mental activities, unspoken. But the three words I said “don’t want money” obviously made them feel uneasy. There was a little bit of agitation in the car, but it was quiet again in an instant, and no one spoke any more.
　　Four small town people, when they got off the car, threw money at me one after another. At first glance, it was the ten yuan banknotes prepared in advance, which were put into the storage box of the armrest in the car. I only said three words “Really. No.” Shut up. Because if they continue to talk, maybe they will treat me as a monster, and never owe favors for things that can be solved with money. This is one of the rules of the town. Only when the last girl got off the bus, she said that she had no change to scan my WeChat. I said that I didn’t need it and I didn’t bring my mobile phone. She laughed and said, “Master, you are so nice, goodbye.”
　　I have also been a passenger of others. . It was the first year I lived in the town. I came back from a business trip and dragged my suitcase in the next city to get a taxi home. At that time, it was the most popular time for online car-hailing, and regular taxis didn’t know where they were going, so I also used the online car-hailing software to order an order. I stopped by my side and the driver was a female driver. I didn’t know what to do for a while, but seeing that it was getting late, I had to bite the bullet and get into the car.
　　The female driver is a good-looking woman, what a good opinion, she is the kind of person who you think she will not be a star but is often mistaken for a star, and she is used to being complimented like this. She was wearing a semi-professional and semi-casual dress, and there was a delicate handbag in the passenger seat – that’s all I could observe, and it would be rude to continue to observe, so after simply confirming the taxi information, I started swiping my phone in the back seat of the car.
　　It takes about ten kilometers to go back to the town on a highway. The sunset in the evening is beautiful, and the images reflected in the rearview mirror are smaller and smaller city buildings. Or it was too quiet in the car to make the female driver a little uneasy. She called the phone on her mobile phone and said, “Husband, I’m on my way home…” The social rules stated that if a woman is in front of strangers It’s usually a veiled warning or a friendly reminder when you start talking on the phone.
　　So I thought I couldn’t be silent any longer, so I put down my phone and looked for something, starting from why she drove such a good car with a ride-hailing passenger, to which year did she live in the universe town, etc. Questions that can be asked without being offensive. When the car arrived at the cosmos town, she was completely relaxed. She felt that the passenger in the back seat was an honest person who was not good at words, so she showed the carefree nature of a Northeasterner. When I asked her to stop at the traffic light, do not pass the intersection. When she was in the middle of the night, she said maliciously, “I’m afraid that my daughter-in-law will see a beautiful woman taking you home, right, haha.” I hurriedly got off the hill and said, “Well, that’s right.” I said, “I’ll give it to you. Scan the QR code on WeChat to pay the fare.” She said, “No, I don’t rely on this, I just want to take someone back to the town by the way.”
　　Having lived in the town for a long time, I know that there are many people who are considered to be traveling here, and they are directors , screenwriters, editors, journalists, freelance writers, poets, film critics, painters… Slowly, we also have a chat group called “Cosmos Town Foodie Group”. There are not many people in it. A familiar old friend, or an old friend of an old friend, unfamiliar but known by name. After the old friends came to the cosmos town, the contact was not very close, which is fine.
　　The “foodie group” doesn’t live up to its name. They gather at most three or five times a year, and most of the time they go to the house of a friend who works in a TV station to “play the autumn wind”. For a while, the “foodie group” was very lively, because a poet in the group said that if it’s okay, let’s start writing poetry and play. If you write more, you can crowdfund and publish a “Cosmos Town Poetry”, and you can do it in the New Year. At a New Year’s Eve recitation, this proposal caused a commotion among the “foodie group”, and those who had written poetry and those who had not written poetry began to act. During the busiest time, I woke up every morning and the first thing I did was not to go to the toilet and wash, but to pick up my mobile phone and write a poem, as evidenced by my works:
　　Cosmic Town 7 kilometers
　　from south to north / several traffic lights , a few restaurants / people walking on the avenue of the cosmic town / a few
　　people in the summer rainstorm / the cosmic town was surging into the sea / I got off the highway / the car was drifting in the water / people were like teenage pie,
　　like the fear of inner / afraid of the small universe Town/My old friend comes out of the footwash/Thinking of a tough ex-wife/Crying like a child
　　The third time the cosmos town was dug / no matter how wide the sewers / can’t hold the arrogant heart / we were talking bad about the cosmos town by the river / after another cigarette / silent,
　　the cosmos town is in the river East/With it/The prodigal son who can’t find a home/You can pretend to be an angel/Look at your hometown. There are many stories hidden in
　　this lame poem. First of all, “Go to Taipei to watch the rain in winter, and go to Cosmos Town to see the sea in summer”. it is true. One night it rained heavily. At twelve o’clock in the middle of the night, I got off the highway and entered the town road. This legend flashed in my mind, but seeing that there was not much water on the road, I walked forward with the mentality of giving it a try. As I was walking, the water was getting deeper and deeper, the rain was getting bigger and bigger, the wipers were no longer useful, and a yellow car in front suddenly stopped in the water, so I could only reluctantly park in the back. An arrogant truck rolled over the water, and the big waves splashed on the cover of the machine, and the engine stopped.
　　The whole street is full of turbulent “sea water”, the street lights are still flashing, but no one can be seen. I can feel the car floating, like a boat, twisting east and west, such a heavy iron guy, floating in the air. The water actually looks like a paper boat. Calling a tow truck at such a late hour is basically impossible, I flipped from the driver’s seat to the back seat, and planned to spend the night in the car anyway, so that I wouldn’t drift along the “sea” to the Pacific Ocean. . When I was lying down, my heart was extremely calm, ten times calmer than the mentality in daily life. After all, it was a cosmic town, a cosmic town, a very suitable place for experiential people to live. Later, someone knocked on the glass window, which was tantamount to the spacecraft encountering a crisis in space. Someone was knocking on the porthole of the spacecraft, and I was saved.

　　As for the poet’s story, it’s like this. He was suave when he was young. After getting married in middle age, he became a good man ten times better than a good man. Er was obsessed with it, and he always took it out and beat it from time to time. He was not tall, and his status in the family was getting lower and lower, until his daughter-in-law attacked him for the Nth time, and he shouted: “Let me Why is the door closed for people to enter and exit, divorce!” Who knew that Zhengzhong’s wife was pregnant, he went out of the house and was swept out of the house.
　　When the poet was just divorced, he was very broken down. In order to comfort him, we increased the frequency of gatherings, in order to let him use wine to drown his sorrows and get out of his sadness. I don’t know if he really loves his daughter-in-law, or if he can’t help but get into the drama too deeply. He often repeats his love-hate relationship with his daughter-in-law again and again after drinking a little wine. : “You, you have been trapped in love for a lifetime, suffered for a lifetime, you are old and old, and you are free when you leave. Accept your fate.” Unexpectedly, after hearing this persuasion, the poet shed tears.
　　Suddenly one day, the poet returned several dining groups, poetry writing groups, and carpooling groups in the cosmos town. The reason was that he had a dispute with another friend who wrote poetry, and he wrote to another poet. The work raised some criticisms, but the other poet did not agree with his criticism, so the two of them quarreled. First there was a quarrel in the group, and later on the circle of friends, to block each other and delete the matter. A few months later, the poet called me and said, “Why don’t you set up a bureau, I just got divorced and was in a bad mood, so I really shouldn’t be childish.” “Drinking wine, everyone was drunk, and all their grievances and hatreds were eliminated, and great harmony was achieved.
　　When I first lived in Cosmos Town, this area was still a bunch of lonely blue glass commercial and residential apartments. After a few years, the bridge across the river in the south was finally opened to traffic, and the highway in the north was also open. The land that will continue to be deserted is like building blocks, building a commercial block with large supermarkets, cinemas, cafes, bakeries, etc.
　　During the few months I was waiting for this block to open, a strange thought came into my mind: I have to live well, to see this block officially open, to have a cup of coffee and watch a movie, so make sure to live Can’t be surprised. During that time, I was very careful when crossing the road. I not only looked left and right, but also looked back and forth, to make sure it was safe to pass.
　　This is the first time in my more than 40 years of life that this kind of life was spared. The motive for it was actually for a mere shopping mall that had little relationship with me. I had to figure out the mystery. After thinking about it, an idea that emerged surprised me – I’m afraid I’m not in love with this place, the universe town, right?
　　When you fall in love with someone, you risk being hurt by the person you fall in love with, like my poet friend. When you fall in love with a place, there is a very high possibility that you will be imprisoned by this place, lose the energy to continue running, no longer have the idea of ​​tossing, and just want to lie down without strength in this place – this place, it will become It’s your “hometown” in another sense.
　　Do I really think of the cosmos town as my hometown? I really don’t see myself as an outsider. When this idea was in a vague and ambiguous state, I went around and told many friends I met: “Tell me a joke, I regard the small town as my hometown.” After speaking, I couldn’t help laughing. , and then my friends laughed along with me.
　　When I really returned to my birthplace and lay in the warm embrace of my hometown, I thought of the cosmic town and felt that it was really so far away, as if it were on an alien planet.