commovente:

tiny snippings from my grandfather’s autobiography

“around that same time, a number of strange events occurred in our home. i have a vivid memory of one in particular. each time our family wove cloth, we would take the snippets of thread from the spinning wheel and save them in an earthenware jar until we had enough to make a bolt of cloth. the cloth we made from these snippets, called yejang, was a special cloth used when a child in the family was getting married. one night, these snippets were found scattered all over the branches of an old chestnut tree in a neighboring village. they made the tree look like it had turned white. we couldn’t understand who would have taken the snippets from the jar and carried them all the way to the chestnut tree, which was quite a distance from our home, and then spread them all over the tree. it didn’t seem like anything that could be done by human hands, and it frightened everyone in the village.” 

“when i was a child, i had the nickname ‘day crier.’ i earned this nickname because once i started to cry, i wouldn’t stop for the entire day. when i cried, it would be so loud that people would think something terrible had happened. people sleeping in bed would come outside to see what was going on. also, i didn’t just cry sitting still. i would jump around the room, injuring myself and creating an uproar. sometimes i would bleed. i had this kind of intense personality even when i was young.” 

“my personality was such that i had to know about everything that i could see. i couldn’t just pass over something superficially. i would start thinking, “i wonder what the name of that mountain is. i wonder what’s up there.” i had to go see for myself. while still a child, i climbed to the tops of all the mountains that were in a five-mile radius of our home. i went oeverywhere, even beyond the mountains. that way, when i saw a mountain shining in the morning sunlight, i could have an image in my mind of what was on that  mountain and i could gaze at it in comfort. i hated even to look at places i didn’t know. i had to know about everything i could see, and even what was beyond. otherwise, my mind was so restless that i couldn’t endure it. 
     when i went to the mountains, i would touch all the flowers and trees. i wasn’t satisfied just to look at things with my eyes; i had to touch the flowers, smell them, and even put them in my mouth and chew on them. i enjoyed the fragrances, the touch, and the tastes so much that i wouldn’t have minded if someone had told me to stick my nose in the brush and keep it there the whole day. i loved nature so much that anytime i went outside, i would spend the day roaming the hills and fields and forget about having to go home.”