杏花疏影里，吹笛到天明

喜欢标题这句词已经很久了，一直用它作BBS上的签名档。这是我梦寐以求的生活。

周啸天的《宋元明清诗词曲鉴赏》收陈与义（1090-1139）的三首诗，竟没有这首词，令人不敢相信。抄录并评论如下：

临江仙

夜登小阁忆洛中旧游

忆昔午桥桥上饮，坐中多是豪英。长沟流月去无声。杏花疏影里，吹笛到天明。
二十余年如一梦，此身虽在堪惊。闲登小阁看新晴。古今多少事，渔唱起三更。

上片回忆往事，一群好友在饮酒作乐。具体怎么乐没有实写，但是从景色描写上看，是乐而忘返，时间拖得很长，众人并不觉得。结末两句，意态悠闲，雅兴盎然。1113年作者二十三岁就“登上舍甲科”，想来年轻时候是春风得意的很。

下篇写眼前。二十多年之后，1127年的靖康之耻发生了，北宋亡了国。孤臣的亡国之恨，作者在其他诗里抒发过，这里却并不明说，只是感叹人虽在而世事堪惊。后面几句置身事外，用史学家的口吻议论。看似洒脱豁达，其实无限酸楚。

Mardi Gras in Austin

一个多月以前就定下这几天来UT Austin出差，可直到今天我才想起Mardi Gras。下午四点多，我独自在阳光明媚的Austin市中心闲逛。大街两边满是酒馆，窗前的座位上已经坐了些人，喇叭里放出悠悠的爵士乐。小店朝街的摊子上摆满了花花绿绿的珠子项链。一时之间，让人疑心身在千里之外的New Orleans。

对了，今天就是理应狂欢的Fat Tuesday，不可辜负。

晚饭时抛下同事，自己去了一家日本饭馆。坐在寿司吧前，要上一小壶热的清酒，一边吃一边静静地观察周围的陌生人，满心怡悦。酒足饭饱，却不觉得撑，只有吃日本菜能达到这种境界。离开的时候我决定不坐车，走回去。清酒的后劲上来了，腿有一点发软。天还没有全黑，路上也还有些行人。路上有一段是一座行人和自行车专用的桥，跨过宽宽的Colorado河（不是最有名的那条）。微醺地走在桥上，煦风吹透了薄外套，不禁感叹“今夕何夕”？这条河是朝西流去的，又让人想起李后主的“自是人生长恨水长东”。此地水偏向西流，想来若能住在此处，日子也是乐趣无穷了。

走了５０分钟回到旅馆。良辰美景，唯缺庞庞。作文记之。

Affirmation of marriage vows

We all know that marriage is a big commitment. We all think marriage vows are sacred. However, we are not often reminded of these facts in daily life.

Then comes tax season. What can be a more sombering and tangible reminder of the strong bond of marriage --- than --- seeing our names printed together on the top of the joint tax return?

有星出水

光阴荏苒，小儿动星已两岁有余。每沐浴既罢，父母以双手扶腋下，擎出浴缸。近日以来，无赖有加。常俟方出水中，犹在半空之时，双足于吾身交替蹬踏而上，至骑坐颈中方休，顾盼得意，嬉笑不已。幼童身体软湿暖滑，捧于掌中对面端详，珍爱逾恒。叹二十六月生长不易；喜小儿伶俐略有智识；忧将来教养任重道远。一时之间，百感交集。天下为人父母者，其兢兢之心大抵如此也。

晏殊、柳永和晏几道

最近在读周啸天先生著的《宋元明清诗词曲鉴赏》。开卷不过三分之一，已经受益不浅。有些感想记录下来。

书里选录的作品是按作家排的，作家又大致按时间先后排。

晏殊（991-1055）的词我以前只知道“一曲新词酒一杯”的那首，原来的印象就是空灵。现在才发现他另外还有更妙的作品，也是浣溪沙，抄录如下：

一向年光有限身，等闲离别易销魂，酒筵歌席莫辞频。
满目山河空念远，落花风雨更伤春，不如怜取眼前人。

这篇很对我胃口，尤其是上阙。我从小时候起就痛感生命短暂，喜聚不喜散，最恨的就是一个人呆着。这就是为什么上自习的时候我一定要去图书馆，而不去小教室的原因。哪怕是坐在一群陌生人的中间，心里也觉得踏实多了。不过这好像有点跑题了。

晏殊的佳作还有：

槛菊愁烟兰泣露，罗幕轻寒，燕子双飞去。明月不谙离恨苦，斜光到晓穿朱户。
昨夜西风凋碧树，独上高楼，望断天涯路。欲寄彩笺兼尺素，山长水阔知何处？

他的风格是悠闲雅致的。他仿佛立足在高处，用怜惜欣赏的眼光俯瞰众生。用周先生的话说，叫“圆融平静”。

过了一会，看到柳永（?-1053）。我对他的印象也就止于语文课本上的一篇《雨霖铃》，还有他的词“只合十七八女郎，执红牙板，歌‘杨柳岸，晓风残月’”云云。感觉一般。这次又多读了几首，更是不喜。首先，他的词就像散文一样，散漫不工整，通篇读下来如新体诗，缺乏韵律之美。其次他用的词语浅白通俗，不用典故，不合我阳春白雪的胃口。特摘录一首作典型：

自春来、惨绿愁红，芳心是事可可。日上花梢，莺穿柳带，犹压香衾卧。暖酥消，腻云亸，终日厌厌倦梳裹。无那，恨薄情一去，音书无个。　　
早知恁么，悔当初、不把雕鞍锁。向鸡窗、只与蛮笺象管，拘束教吟课。镇相随，莫抛躲。针线闲拈伴伊坐。和我。免使年少，光阴虚过。

虽然怨妇心情写得逼真，但是这样的语言入诗，终嫌轻佻浅薄。有关柳永，有几则轶事不可不知，我按大概的时间顺序整理如下：

1. 柳永考进士不中，曾发牢骚作《鹤冲天》，有“忍把浮名，换了浅斟低唱”一句，（前面更是不堪，说什么“烟花巷陌，依约丹青屏障。幸有意中人，堪寻访。且恁偎红翠，风流事，平生畅。青春都一晌。”）三年之后得中，却被宋仁宗批上一句“好去浅斟低唱，要浮名作甚？且去填词”，将名字轻轻抹去。柳永便讪讪然自称“奉旨填词柳三变”，后来改名柳永，四十多岁方中。

2. 柳永曾作一首《醉蓬莱》献给宋仁宗，皇上看了第一个“渐”字便皱眉头，最后掷于地下。

3. 柳永以门生身份去拜见晏殊。晏公曰：“贤俊作曲子么？”三变曰：“只如相公亦作曲子。”公曰：“殊虽作曲子，不曾道：针线慵拈伴伊坐。”柳遂退。

4. 少游自会稽入都，见东坡，坡云:“久别当作文甚胜，都下盛唱公‘山抹微云’之词。”秦逊谢。坡遽云:“不意别后，公却学柳七作词?”少游曰:“某虽无识，亦不至是，先生之言，勿乃过乎。”坡云:“销魂，当此际，非柳七句法乎?”秦惭服。

从这些传闻看来，柳词流传极广，上至皇帝高官，下至平民歌伎，无不知道几句。不过褒贬不一，相差极大。像他这样放浪傲慢之人，低俗淫冶之词，吾甚不喜。

下面再接着说晏几道（1040?-1112）。他是晏殊第七子。前面看了晏殊对柳永那么不留情面，我不由得为晏几道捏了一把汗，生怕他才学不济，给乃父丢脸。惴惴不安地一读之下，竟是狂喜。原来小晏词风艳丽浓郁，却丝毫不涉狎邪。录几首如下：

彩袖殷勤捧玉钟，当年拚却醉颜红。舞低杨柳楼心月，歌尽桃花扇底风。
从别后，忆相逢，几回魂梦与君同。今宵剩把银釭照，犹恐相逢是梦中。

单看上阙，绚烂夺人；转到下阙，多情痴醉。此词真是神来之笔，令人反复吟诵不已。庞庞读后，评道：“公子哥儿”。

梦后楼台高锁，酒醒帘幕低垂。去年春恨却来时。落花人独立，微雨燕双飞。
记得小蘋初见，两重心字罗衣。琵琶弦上说相思。当时明月在，曾照彩云归。

看他写到小蘋时，思慕之情跃然纸上，但是却“发乎情，止乎礼”，比柳永的“师师生得艳冶，香香於我情多”何如？

小令尊前见玉箫，银灯一曲太妖娆。歌中醉倒谁能恨，唱罢归来酒未消。
春悄悄，夜迢迢，碧云天共楚宫遥。梦魂惯得无拘检，又踏杨花过谢桥。

此篇最后两句大妙，据周先生说，道学家程颐也看了笑道：“鬼语也”，意甚赏之。

我相信文如其人。这样推想起来，晏殊是个学识修养颇高，含蓄飘逸的人，却不免让人有些敬而远之。柳永是脂粉堆中出没的小白脸类型，不多说。晏几道出身书香门第，当是一名翩翩浊世佳公子。痴情深情有如贾宝玉，而能够自持，又胜于宝玉，令人心向往之。

Tax Nirvana

I started contributing to a Roth IRA in 2000. (Actually in 2001 for the year 2000.) About three years ago, I browsed a book about IRA in B&N. How someone can write a whole book about the subject I don't know, but I did find some facts that piqued my interest.

According to the rules, a surviving spouse has the option to treat the inherited IRA as his/her own. If the IRA is a Roth one, then there will be no minimum distributions at age 70 1/2.

Suppose every person first gets married at age 20 and lives to the age of 100. How does my system work? John at age 20 marries Jane, age 60, whose late husband, Jack, just passed away at age 100. Jane gets all of Jack's Roth IRA as her own, exempt from estate tax, and can immediately withdraw however much she needs, since she's older than 59 1/2. The unused portion grows without tax inside the account. 40 years later, Jane passes her Roth IRA account to John, who then marries a 20 year old girl Joan. As long as everyone involved exercises self control to keep the account from draining, the snowball just keeps rolling.

Imagine it: once money goes into that account, it kisses IRS a forever goodbye and grows freely. Isn't that truly a tax nirvana? Of course, then marriage would become just a legal means to preserve wealth as one best can, and an infinite number of problems will arise.

Well, there it goes, just another one of my crazy ideas.

录旧作

自识庞庞，勤习沪语。偶有习作，不敢自专。
（小鸭子者，实即狗也）

小鸭子乖乖，最欢喜吃螃蟹
硬的伊吃勿动，一定要吃软壳蟹

小鸭子去买螃蟹，我要拿伊夸一夸
一跑跑到威格曼，看到一排软壳蟹

小鸭子讲买三斤，店员听了勿开心
软壳蟹是论只卖，侬只鸭子拎勿清

小鸭子气得来，一沓钞票掼出来
格埃好买多少只，叫侬经理滚出来

经理一看骇一跳，哪能格能有钞票
小鸭子侬勿要吵，要多少就拿多少

小鸭子别苗头，花了钞票出风头
一千块买三打蟹，小鸭子今朝当冲头

小鸭子回到屋里厢，想想心里有埃慌
三打蟹我吃勿光，快点寻人来帮忙！

叮铃铃，叮铃铃，阿拉电话响不停
拿起听筒喂一声，鸭子讲，今朝名分定一定！

Don't Tell Mama

The other day I was reading a BusinessWeek article on my train ride home. The article told about a fancy ski resort that has quite a few extremely difficult trails, including one called "Don't Tell Mama".

My immediate impression at seeing the name, was strong disapproval. Why should anyone ski on a crazy trail that Mama shouldn't know about?

Then I laughed at myself. The force of nature is truly formidable.

When I was in elementary school, my home was on a hill. My school was at the foot of the hill. The usual path was a series of paved switchbacks. There was a shortcut, a number of steep flights of stairs. My mom had forbidden me to take that shortcut. I don't know what her concern was. (But given the later event detailed in the previous post, she must have been right.) I thought the rule ridiculous and broke it a number of times. I was seen by her colleagues and she threw a fit, made me promise to never take that route again.

I believe many people have at some point thought they would never be like their mom/dad, only to be startled at the uncanny resemblance later. I am among them.

Without my noticing it, my way of thinking has changed from that of a rebellious, foolhardy child to that of a worried, protective mother. Play the stereotypical role, think the stereotypical thoughts, feel the stereotypical emotions.

I can't say whether it is good or bad, but maybe this is how evolution worked. Maybe the transformation was favored by natural selection. What do you, my dear friend, think?

The Gravest Injury

Blog is such a great thing. I can now write excruciatingly detailed accounts of my life stories just once, and bore all of my curious friends to their collective tears. That is efficient and satisfying.

So today I'd like to tell y'all about the gravest injury I've ever suffered.

It was a Monday afternoon in October, 1987, not long after I started going to the afore mentioned middle school. I was on my way home from a day of school, walking with a friend. We had finished half of the 20 minute walk and got to the downtown area of our small factory town. There was a garden right next to the pavement we were walking on, separated by a fence.

Now let me try to describe the fence in detail. First, there was a low concrete divider on the ground, about a foot high and a foot thick. Upright tapering cast iron rods, painted dark green, grew out of it like giant needles. They are lined up in the center of the divider's top surface, leaving a six inch wide strip of concrete on each side. Now don't you say "that's just a normal picket fence!", it is much more vicious in my mind's eye.

I stepped on the divider and started walking on it. Standing on the divider, the top of the iron rods came to about the same height as my ribcage (don't wince). So picture this: I was walking facing forward, the fence was right next to me on my left side. I brushed against it with every step I took. To keep my balance, my hands held the iron rods as I moved forward. Think about the plane defined by the fence. Of my whole body only my left arm is over the fence and on the other side of the plane.

At one point I slipped and fell off the divider. No big deal. It's only a foot high. Didn't even hurt. I was about to walk on, only to find that my pink blouse was caught by one iron rod. Ugh! Mom was not going to be happy about this. I asked my friend to help me. We studied the relative position of the rod and my blouse for a long five seconds, and exchanged looks.

The rod did not only catch my blouse sleeve, it also pierced my upper left arm.

My luck was in. The hospital was just across the street. I told my friend to first get a doctor, then go tell my parents. She ran.

Soon some onlookers gathered around me. I was pinned there (no pun intended) like a deer caught by a trap, and they talked about me as if I couldn't hear them. Adults shaked their heads and sighed, a teenage boy joked with a girl; he asked her whether she'd like to be in my place. I saw and heard them all but felt nothing. No anger, no shame, no anxiety. I was concentrated on one thing: use my left hand to pull off one leaf from the shrub growing on the other side of the fence. I wanted to see whether I could still move my fingers. I could. I relaxed and waited.

The surgeon on duty ran across the street and came to my aid. He was young and handsome in his white lab coat. He examined my arm calmly. (I love calm men.) He held my arm on both sides of the wound, applied pressure to prevent excessive bleeding, and steadily pulled up till my arm was freed. We briskly walked across the street into the emergency room.

He sat me on a stool and started clearing my surface wounds with alcohol. I remember hoping that he would pass a cotton ball soaked in alcohol through my piercing wound, but he didn't. I looked squarely at my wounds. They were not too grisly. From the larger entry wound, I could see greenish blood vessels under the flesh.

My dad arrived. Now I got nervous. I thought he was going to scold me. He did not. He sat next to me, surprisingly pleasant. He chatted with me about unimportant stuff, till the doctor asked me to move my fingers for him. I sensed the tension in both men immediately. This was the moment of truth. But I had already known the truth. I obliged and they were relieved. I saw what the doctor wrote on my medical record. "Piercing wound 10 cm long. Finger movement fine".

Soon the doctor was ready to stitch me up. My dad discussed about anesthesia with him. The decision was to use none, my dad didn't want my head to be messed up (besides the arm). So I lied down on the operation table, watching every move of my doctor. The lighting was very bright. Every sight etched into my memory. The needle was smaller than a sewing needle, shiny and slighly curved. The thread was black, and looked no different from ordinary thread. A tiny drop of disinfection fluid precariously hang on to the needle for a second, then slided down the thread. The doctor used a small pair of pliers to hold the needle. When it went in, I felt pain for the first time that day. Somehow my brain was able to block out any distress signal my arm must have been sending. Three stitches for the entry wound, one for the exit wound. The doctor carefully aligned the skin and applied pressure using the pliers. He promised me the scars would be smooth and minimal. He didn't lie.

My mom arrived when I was still lying there. I didn't see her. She stood at the head of the operation table and fainted at the sight of blood. My grandma escorted her out.

The doctor put bandage on me, prescribed 3 tetanus shots separated by 15 mintes each, and told us how lucky I was. The artery wasn't hurt, or I might die of excessive bleeding in minutes. The nerves weren't hurt, or I might lose sensation/motion control in my left arm. The rod went through my arm on the right side of the humerus (upper arm bone). Had it gone through on the outer side, my arm was so thin that the flesh might have been torn apart. The scare talk went on and on. I wasn't impressed at that time. The gravity of the situation only seeped in long after the wound had healed.

I went home with my parents and grandma. I still felt no pain. People said the pain might set in that night. I did wake up at 1am that night, demanding a bowl of porridge. I was so hungry. Once my wish was granted, I sank back into dreamless sleep.

The date was October 19, 1987. Does it ring a bell? Probably just as I was going home from the hospital, the US stock market entered the Black Monday of 1987, experiencing the largest single-day percentage loss ever, 22.6%. Just thought you would be interested.

My arm healed with no complications. I didn't feel any pain in the whole process. It led me to secretly hope for a medication-free child birth some 16 years later. How wrong I was. But that belongs to another story.

I really enjoyed talking to all of you this way. So until next time, then.

Lunatic Rodent

Rodent just wrote another entry in his blog, annoucing their shocking decision of letting XT starting a new job in Beijing.

At our dinner party last night, I entertained everybody with a dream I had on Sunday morning. It was of Rodent jumping off a tall building (by mistake, or so I thought), and I felt that he couldn't survive. When I looked down with apprehension, he was dropping slowly, as if in a cartoon. He looked at me, smiled, and waved goodbye. He landed on a terrace a few floors from the ground and disappeared. I went home, wondering whether to break the news to his parents, and how to phrase it. I decided to hold off on this for a few days, and later, somebody vaguely told me that Rodent was alive, after all.

People were not amused. Rodent's smile looked forced. I didn't know then but today when I read his blog, I realized that my dream happened "independently" a few hours after he learned of the news himself. There is no way this is a pure freaky coincidence. In the 3+ years I've known Rodent this is the first time I've dreamed about him.

Once I had thought the Rodent couple had the most stable relationship in our friend circle. They had reached an equilibrium, where the chance of his finding a prettier wife, or her finding a smarter husband, was epsilon. AND they lived together.

Now with this extra information, I have to re-evaluate it. Suddenly it becomes the most shaky one, not just because of the two recent breakups Rodent mentioned. If their relationship were a stock, I'm lowering my rating from "strong buy" to "hold", and I'm being polite.

So what kind of a friend am I, speaking freely of my premonitions instead of being understanding and supportive?

A friend who has seen too many long distance relationships fail to stay naive as the Rodent couple is right now. I have yet to see a long distance couple who are content and happy with the situation, and my sample size is large enough to be statistically significant.

When I was younger I believed what romance novels told us, that relationships become all the stronger and more valuable for all the hardships they suffered. After I grew up I knew those are all wishful thinking. A relationships is like the piece of expensive discontinued china in our home. For the most time we let it sit safely in the showcase. We entertain only the best friends with it. We are scared of putting it into the microwave or dishwasher. God forbid if anyone suggests that we use it in the oven.

Now the Rodent couple is going to put their piece into the wind tunnel.

Oh Rodent, what should I call you? An incorrigible idealist? A saint? A fool?

A blog entry is like a snapshot, it captures the moment. At this moment, R and I are worried sick for the Rodent couple. We both feel that the family should take the highest priority and a few unfulfilled dreams are small prices to pay for a life with each other together, everyday. But of course, people have different value systems and risk assessments. What we could do is to express our concerns up front, and then shut up after their decision is made.

Hopefully someday later we could all read this entry together and laugh about it. What are the odds?

命题作文

Since I didn't know what to write about in my first post, I asked R to give me a topic. Noticing today's date, I casually mentioned that today happens to be my 28.5th birthday. With his acute sense for numbers, R was quick to point out that 28.5 = 9.5 x 3, and he wanted me to write about my life at 9.5 and 19 yrs old, respectively.

It's funny how I have to map the ages to the grades I was in to remember what was happening in my life then.

At 9.5 years old, I had been in sixth grade for a semester. Life was simple, and good. We were living in the residential area of No. 821 millitary factory, surrounded by sprawling farming lands. The nearest big city, forty minutes away by shuttle, is Guangyuan (广元), an important stronghold on the northern border of Sichuan province. Jialing River (嘉陵江), accompanied by the vaguely famous Baoji-Chengdu Railway (宝成铁路), enters Sichuan here. This is a city I know very little about, yet dutifully fill in all kinds of forms as my "birth place". Incidentally, it is also the hometown of the only female Emperor in China's history, Wu Zetian (武则天).

At that time, we had been living in the same two bedroom apartment for almost 9 years, and were to live there for one more year before my parents moved to Shenzhen (深圳). Our apartment building was on a hill, with a good view of Bailong River (白龙江), a large tributary of Jialing River. All the neighbors were my parents' colleagues, and all my classmates were their children. I went to the First Elementary School, there was another elementary school, the Second, where all the kids looked weird to us. As R poignantly pointed out, I felt no stress about the upcoming middle school entrance exam, since there was only one middle/high school. I was going there no matter what.

The most notable thing in my life then, was probably a note passed to me by a boy. We were classmates in the fifth grade, but went to different classes in the sixth grade. I vividly remember how he stood at the door of our classroom, but at an angle so few people could see him. I saw him. He nodded and signaled me to go out. When I did, he gave me this small folded note and walked away. I didn't look at the note until I got home later that day. I locked myself in the bathroom, read and re-read the note, then as all good underground operatives do, tore the note into a thousand tiny pieces and flushed them down the drain.

The boy was fair, chubby, smart, and mature. Just for the record, I sent him a note first, in the fifth grade. My note had been concise and to the point, and I had asked the kids sitting between us to pass down the note. I was not a secretive person.

Now several months later, I got a note back. It told me to concentrate on my studies, and wait for 14 years.

If a man dares to ask a woman to wait for 14 years, he would get slapped in the face. 14 years is a long time. More than 5000 days.

14 years was nothing to me. I was a little more than 9. I could not comprehend the concept of 14 years. So I felt nothing, no sadness, no despair, no indignation. I went on with life, and almost forgot about it. One year later, we left 821 and never went back.

I don't remember exactly when, but approximately when I was 19, I received a letter from him, mailed from the same university R went to. Life is full of small coincidences. I forgot what he said in the letter. One thing is for sure. He didn't mention the note. Of course. It wasn't 14 years yet. I wistfully thought about where I would be at 23 for a while. I forgot whether I wrote back.

My 19th birthday was probably the first one I spent away from my parents. It was the summer of '96, I had completed 3 years at my college, 2 more to go. Just a few months earlier, my good friend Enid had planted this interesting idea of "going abroad" in my head, and here I was, staying in the university for the whole summer vacation, and studying for GRE.

My decision to apply for grad schools in the US came as a nice surprise to my parents. For a long time they had been suggesting that and I wasn't interested. It got to the point where the only subject they urged me to study more was English. I angrily asked why they didn't want me to study more math and physics. This had become a sensitive topic at home. Suddenly one day I told them I was going to a GRE class, just like that. They were amazed. They had underestimated the influence of friends.

Life again was simple and good. When you have a direction in your life, you feel happy. Everyday we got up early, ate breakfast, and went straight to the general reading room in the New Library. Once we got seats, they stayed ours for the whole day. We would only leave for lunch and dinner, spending 10 hours a day in the library. When I couldn't take it any longer, I got up and wandered in the other reading rooms, returning a few hours later feeling guilty.

On the way to and from the library, we fantasized about life in the US. We could cook together all the time! How exciting! It is a pity that Enid and I never got to live near each other after we came here. Now she happily teaches in OSU and keeps putting off her plan to visit us.

19 years old was an interesting point in my life. I had no concrete ideas about what my life would be like, but I had a lot of hopes. I had no worries, no concerns. I had great friends. I had it all and I was blissfully focused on just one mission, to learn all the words listed in the Red Book.

序

“书当快意读易过，客有可人期不来”，诚人生两大憾事也。此时正应将种种杂感录下，博阅者一粲。因有此篇。