Dear Cong Tou,
葱头，
1
Cong Tou, three years ago you sent me a handwritten letter and a book about loneliness.
葱头，三年前你手写了一封信，还送来一本关于孤独的书。
It was a small, thin volume, and I never finished it. Not from lack of interest—I'd already been living its ideas for years.
小小一本，说来不厚，却没看完。并非不感兴趣，应该说，我已践行里面的理念很多年。
Loneliness feels more like an objective descriptor to me. When we count people we say "one," and loneliness is just another way of saying that—one with psychological and emotional coloring instead of mathematical.
孤独更像是一种客观的限定词，就像说人，人们会用“一个”，而孤独不过是“一个”的另外一种表示，一种非数学而是心理和情绪上的表达。
My loneliness started at birth. As the fourth child, an "extra" one, I had to be hidden and wasn't allowed out to play.
我的孤独要从出生开始算起。由于排行老四“超”着生出来，所以得藏着养，也不让出去玩。
That's what my older sister told me—I have no memory of it myself. I only remember once crying as I crawled over the threshold begging for food, and that the grapes we grew were so sour they made my teeth fall out.
这是老姐告诉我的，我对此没有丁点记忆，只记住有一天哭着爬出门槛要吃的去，只记得我家种的葡萄特别酸，掉牙那种。
By comparison, Jiang-ge's super-birth story was more exciting: he'd run at the sound of a tractor, afraid the family-planning people would catch him.
相比之下，江哥的超生经历就有意思多了，他听到拖拉机声就跑，生怕被计划生育的人逮着。
For many years after, I mostly played alone—drawing, making wooden boats, reading Why Things Are, dismantling watches, radios, even a weather instrument that fell from the sky. Pure self-entertainment.
往后多年，我很多时间都是自己玩，画画、弄木船，看十万个为什么，拆手表、拆收音机、拆天上掉下来的气象仪，自娱自乐。
I've even wondered if loneliness is my one real talent. I handle it effortlessly, almost never feeling rejected or misunderstood. I was born an observer detached from the crowd.
我甚至在想，如果我有某项天赋，孤独应该算。与它相处我毫不费力，几乎感受不到被排斥的不适和不被理解的孤单，我简直就是一个脱离人群的天生观察者。
Early loneliness was pleasant solitude. After adolescence it became the way I sensed my own existence—something called "I."
早年的孤独怡然自乐，少年之后的孤独则令我感知到自身的存在，一种称之为“我”的事物。
I spent a lot of time on that: feeling my psyche—its timidity, vanity, inferiority, indulgence, desire, anger, calm, impulse; feeling its reason—memory, understanding, inference; feeling its spirit—freedom and limits.
我花很多时间做这件事，感知自身的心理，他的拘谨、虚荣、自卑、放纵，渴望、愤怒、平静、冲动，感知他的理性，记忆、理解、推理，感知他的精神，自由、局限。
Thanks to my family's love and to this self-exploration, my mind turned out remarkably healthy.
得益于家庭的爱，也得益于对自我的探索，我的心理出奇的健康。
2
These past few years I've tasted a deeper layer of loneliness: from having a self to gradually entering no-self. A feeling of dissolving and merging into the outer world, sensing the joy and suffering of this world, its vastness and smallness, its being and nothingness.
这几年来，我从孤独中体味到了更深一层，从有我渐入无我。一种化开了我融到外部世界中的感受，感知这世间的喜乐和苦难，它的辽阔和渺小，它的存在和虚无。
One day I imagined myself melting into all things. Every elementary particle in my body has a history of over thirteen billion years, sharing the same origin as everything else. I am all things, all things are me. A wave of emotion rose from deep inside.
有一天我想象自身融为万物，如我身上的每一颗基本粒子，全都有着一百三十多亿的历史，和这万物同源同体，我即万物，万物即我，我有一种由内而外的感动。
The random evolution of the universe granted me this brief life and enough neurons to build consciousness. I'm content to feel, within that consciousness, breathing in unison with the material world.
随机的宇宙演化赋予了我片刻的生命，给予我足够的神经元建立意识，我很满意在意识中体会到与物质世界同频呼吸的感受。
I never studied meditation, but later learned that in certain moments of meditation the "I" dissolves like smoke.
我没有学过冥想，后来得知，冥想中某些时刻，也有“我”如烟一般化开的感受。
Sometimes while walking my mind is empty—no judgment, no praise. Light from the street hits my retinas, noise passes through my body, scents good or bad stimulate my olfactory cells. Signals travel inside me as if I were just a node, connected to the world by light and electricity.
有时散步脑袋空空，了无批判和赞赏，任街道的光打进视网膜，让嘈杂穿过身体，由芬香或恶臭刺激嗅觉细胞，感知的信号在我身体内传导，仿佛像一个节点，以光以电连接着世界。
I disdain shallow consciousness, yet I allow myself to enter it.
我鄙夷浅意识，又允许自己进入浅意识。
3
The theme of "I" isn't finished. So far it's mostly been "what am I." There's still the part about "what do I want to become."
“我”的主题这还没完。前面的探索大都是关于“我是什么”，还有一块主题是“我要成为什么”。
Early last year my ex and I shared our personal growth maps. Like me, she'd spent years understanding herself. Now she's moved on to exploring "becoming"—territory I haven't entered deeply.
去年年初，我和前女友分享各自的成长坐标。她和我一样，花了很长时间了解自身。如今她进入到了新的地方去探索“成为什么”，那是我没有深入的地方。
Today I think "becoming who" is a fuzzy topic. We can perhaps find someone to imitate and shape ourselves after. With or without a model, becoming someone really means what you do. A person is shaped by their actions, not by the pictures in their head.
如今我认为，“成为谁”是一件模糊的主题。 我们也许能够找到一个模仿的对象，从而塑造自己。不管有没有一个参照的对象，成为谁，这其实是意味着做什么事情。 是一个人所做的事塑造了他的形象，而不是他脑瓜里的想象。
As for the drive to act, I don't understand passion or the faith that sacrifices everything to a cause. Those questions hang in my mind. Yet from direct experience of things I seem to grasp pure beauty, goodness, truth. My intuition says they are part of the answer.
而做事的驱动力，我无法理解热爱，无法理解献祭给某种事业的信仰，这些疑惑悬挂在我的意识里。但是，似乎我又从事物本身的感知体验中，理解到纯粹的美、善、真。我的直觉说，它们是答案的一部分。
Passion and faith are like ghosts—everyone talks about them, few have seen them.
热爱、信仰这种情感，就跟鬼一样，人人说却没几人见过。
From a physical view, all human concepts can be decoded into electrical signals and molecular interactions. But the decoding isn't reversible; that kind of analysis doesn't tell you how to produce passion or faith.
尽管从物理的角度看，人类一切的观念乃可以解码为电信号和生物分子的相互作用。但是解码不可逆，这样的分析不足让人知道如何塑造出热爱和信仰。
4
I don't know what I want to do with my life or what I'll manage to accomplish. Those are very concrete things that usually take countless unutterable days to shape.
我不知道一生想干什么，也不知道能干成什么。它们都非常具体，往往需要花费大量无法诉说的日子去塑造。
One long-term goal I do have: so far the most successful thing I've done is sustain an intimate relationship—two years and still in the honeymoon phase.
先说一件我已有的长久目标。截至目前，我能说得上算是成功的一件事，就是经营了一段亲密关系，持续了两年还在热恋期。
I want to stretch it out—no marriage, no certificate, no ceremony—just pure emotion keeping it alive until death. Walking the tightrope naked, without legal or formal protection.
我想把它延长，不结婚、不领证、不搞仪式，纯靠情感维持一段亲密关系，而且争取把它延长至死。抛开所谓的法律或形式的保护，裸走钢丝绳。
Marriage is just a shell. Plenty of people hide emotional failure behind it. So I've decided to discard it. At bottom, I want the feeling to be pure—and pure enough.
婚姻到底是个壳，应该有不少人撑着婚姻的幌子掩饰自己的情感失败。所以我决定抛开它。本质上，我的目的是想让情感纯粹起来，而且要足够纯粹。
My dad asked if I'm sure. Ha, I'm confident in myself and in Lingzi, but not in life. That thing rarely follows my script—pretty annoying.
我爸问我，你有把握吗？哈，我对自己和灵子都有信心，但是对生活没有，这玩意通常不按我的设想出牌，挺讨人厌。
I told Lingzi she's always free, and so am I. Even if we have kids, she's free to come or go.
我跟灵子说，她总是自由的，我也是。在这个过程中，她可以决定自己的去留，即便有孩子，她也是自由的。
If at death I can look back on one long, stable, intimate relationship, I'll be content. If it lasts half a century, nearly perfect.
如果到死的时候，全然拥有一段长期、稳定、亲密的关系，我想我会很满意，如果它能持续半个世纪，那就几近完美。
5
Cong Tou, I'm posting this reply here instead of sending it directly, and I won't forward it later. I like it hidden like this. If you ever see it, just think of it as the day the time-postman finally delivered it.
葱头，这封回信就发在这，没有直接发给你，也不会再转发。我就喜欢它留在这，藏着。如果你有一天看到，那就当做是时间邮差终于送到的日子。
In my memory we only had two deep conversations. The first, years ago, when you were in love and happily describing how it felt.
在我的记忆里，我们只有两次深谈过。最早的一次是很多年前你恋爱了，欢喜地描述着自己的感受。
Later I blabbed your secret to Jiang-ge—my big mouth, and he happened to have a crush on you then. Sorry about that.
后来我把你的秘密透露给江哥，怪我大嘴巴，也怪那家伙那时对你有了好感。这多少得说一句，对不起。
The other deep talk was a phone call a few years back. I only remember you saying that once on a bus you zoned out and suddenly found the world so beautiful.
还有一次深谈是在前几年的一通电话里，如今只想起你提到有一天坐车，出了神，发现世界好美。
Yes, wasn't it?
可不是嘛。
On your wedding day I was in Nanjing.
你结婚那天，我在南京。
It snowed heavily—pure white, as clean as sunlight, as light as wind.
那会下了大雪，如此洁白，和阳光一样纯净，如风一样轻盈。
Stepping on it felt like walking on piles of free powdered milk.
踩在上面，就像踩在大量不要钱的奶粉上。