After the delivery rider pressed the remote doorbell, Sphinx climbed out of bed and walked to the control panel by the entrance.
I got up and went to the study. I watched the screen, opened the player, and thought about what to write for you who are reading this.
I had expected Sphinx to interrupt now and then. Fortunately, many things can be deconstructed and set adrift with time once they are written down. Even when they finally escape my control, I enjoy creating them.
If you asked what has changed most inside me over the years, apart from turning up the font size whenever I write, I would say I have learned not to control everything.
There are countless things I cannot control. I cannot make my age turn thirty in fifty minutes, nor can I make my sciatic pain disappear at once. I cannot control it, but I can at least try some exercise to ease it; perhaps, one day, this trouble that has accompanied me for about ten years will disappear.; perhaps, with time, this trouble that has accompanied me for about ten years will disappear.
There are too many things I need to care about but cannot control. The most important is artificial intelligence. As a programmer, I live in an era when the acceleration of technological development is itself accelerating. If I asked the version of me who had only recently encountered programming ten years ago to imagine this, he would never have guessed that my work would now look like this: technology alone no longer gives me as much accomplishment as before. On the way to implementing a feature or vision, my technical ability accounts for less and less; imagination and empathy account for more and more.
As for experience, they have always been there, growing alongside time.
I once joked that if I could no longer make a living as an internet programmer, I could distil my experience and give massages for enough money to get by. That thought crossed my mind when a former colleague said their shoulders felt much more relaxed.That thought crossed my mind when a current colleague said their shoulders felt much more relaxed. But for now, it is only a daydream.
Technology like GPT has genuinely helped me with many things: optimising the code of a laggy desktop pet years ago, rapidly prototyping various small games recently, and learning the craft of arranging and mixing music last month. I am grateful for this era, even when it sometimes leaves me at a loss.
“We call this daydreaming.” Sphinx came over after starting on the takeaway.
“I am only learning not to control.” I stared at the serif type on the screen and aligned it again.
When my thoughts wander , only hunger can pull me back instantly. I am a little hungry, and remember that I am close to finishing Persona 5 Royal. The collaboration between Arknights and the third game has made me much more interested in this series, and the first track I played at the beginning was the chillest song in the fifth game.
The player is now on “Auld Lang Syne,” appearing punctually at midnight as a signpost. Whenever I hear it, I see the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life in the sky and am deeply moved. As someone who cries more easily with age, I am beginning to understand that this feeling is different from the “I Remember” that just passed, and different from the “am 3:45” that is coming—though perhaps all of them are different from one another.
Not controlling my tears is the third thing I have learned over the years. I have temporarily forgotten the first and second; remembering will take time. They cannot have been terribly sad, or I would not have the confidence to live to this day like Xu Fugui did .
After asking Sphinx what food was left at home, I went to the kitchen, opened the freezer, and picked up a frozen cheese-and-beef roll. After opening the package and discovering that defrosting it would take twenty minutes, I went to the pantry, picked up the tonkotsu ramen (which would be ready in fifteen minutes), and put it back.After opening the cheese-and-beef roll, I discovered that defrosting it really would take twenty minutes. So I went to the pantry and picked up the tonkotsu ramen… then put it back. Eating more than ten dumplings at night really does make you hungry at this hour. I had not paid attention, and made even a simple thing awkward. Perhaps the second thing I learned is this: no matter how urgent things are, eat properly. I know I will soon forget it again somewhere, but at least I should not forget it during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.
Now that things have come to this, eat first.
……
After eating the cheese-and-beef roll meat, I hurriedly asked GPT to design the interaction above, showing you—half real, half virtual—the process of eating it.
The player moved from “Like Water Years” to “The Smiling, Proud Wanderer,” and I could not help humming—
I have walked through every view; today I finally know myself.
“Today I finally know myself” is adapted from chapter 119 of Water Margin:
I never cultivated a good fruit; I only loved killing and setting fires.
Suddenly the golden cord came loose; here the jade lock was severed.
Ah! The tide arrives on the Qiantang River. Today I finally know myself.
—— After writing some lyrics, I realised that forcing rhymes is a bad habit. Sometimes, to finish faster, it is an unavoidable compromise. After all, most of the time, finishing matters more than perfection.
Beginning and ending should be the first thing I learned.
Most of the time, life feels like countless ouroboros coiling around each other, beginnings and endings entangled. Trying to make sense of oneself inside them is extremely difficult. On a road without horizon and crowded shoulder to shoulder, I occasionally drop an anchor and struggle insignificantly, thinking that being alive is itself a meaning.
Sleep slowly approaches. “September” ends, and I think about how time runs through my fingers.
In fact, whether in the past or now, I feel that time passes very slowly. I do not think I have an exceptional memory. I am simply good at endlessly imagining and wandering like the daydreamer above, deceiving them and myself into believing that every day is extraordinary.
Looking back, my parents sometimes say, “Time passes so quickly.” Perhaps they are used to being busy; perhaps they have long known that only busyness can numb pain.
My hometown has never had snow, yet my memory always contains a place I have never seen with my own eyes. There, someone kneels in falling snow before another person’s death, facing the condemnation of a group of demons. Somewhere else, someone watches snowflakes, grows dizzy, and collapses, knowing the world has turned upside down but helpless to stop it.
Objectively, having the leisure to wander everywhere is a luxury. In my memory, my senior-year Chinese teacher was a remarkably luxurious person. In Chinese class he almost never followed the textbook; he simply spoke one thought after another, wherever it led. I did not find him particularly interesting—far less so than the maths teachers who taught me during high school—but I thought he was special. In the office he seemed always to be thinking alone, and anyone speaking to him had to repeat themselves at first. I must admit he gave me the feeling of a solitary traveller like myself.
Solitary travellers naturally carry arrogance, because they themselves are born out of arrogance.Solitary travellers naturally carry arrogance, because they were born from it. I stubbornly leave awkward expressions, obvious grammatical errors, and typos here only because Gemini, rather than I, discovered them. I use GPT to make them temporarily disappear (when you click), while preserving their freedom to return.
That freedom should be exactly the same as everyone’s freedom.
Almost twenty-four hours have passed. Since I began writing, I have gone outside, eaten, walked along the beach, and looked at the river. Time melted into day and night, and then melted into tonight’s full moon.
I used my phone’s mediocre camera to photograph tonight’s moon.
It looks like the sun.
Fortunately, today Hangzhou is not a “rainy day.”
Fortunately, among all the things I cannot control, I can still control whether I look up and see the same sky as you.
Thank you for playing. See you next time :) .
—— Made 2026.09.25