Diario de chao7

It's the end of year. When getting some age, years went slower.

When growing up, people said I have talent, especially in the area of identifying plant and insects. Though books told us to be modest, I don't deny in my heart. This continues even until 2020, when I was sitting in a roadside deli waiting for my dinner in a small town in Sichuan, i was acompanied by this photo of never-seen Swertia in my mind. I said "well, since you are from west of Sichuan and you are Swertia, I will just google Western Sichuan Swertia and see if I can find you". This turned out to be another one of my one shot goal!

For many times, I answered this kind of moment with a simple smile. Life is a swirl, just like what the galaxy looks like, it blindly carries you anywhere and for all the time, the supernova called talent is in a completely different way of shiny.

I admit, acknowledge and accept it. In addition, I got students now. I start to see them being praised as talented. I start giving out my praise of talent, and still, I'm being praised by my parents. I won't say how I see myself as being "talented" now, I won't even describe the feeling, since it is too subtle. But when I praise my student being talented in any subject in and out of biology, I feel both shy and excited. For them, and probably for me.

Of course for nature, I still feel ever close as my childhood innocence. But "talent", too, not complete but at least some. It could start from vanity, especially during teenager years. And in my 30s, it is like candy bars. I have passed the age of savouring them. But I swallow, and enjoy their sliding though my heart.

And it's always so sweet as early years :)

It's always both joyable and scary looking at old collection.

A tribe in Africa put a wooden statue of their old chief next to his grave, And the statue starts to wear year by year, that goes with his memory around his people. And when the statue is completely unrecognizable, it's the time his people forget him.

I feel this little tale is poetic. Not because it shows the power of time, but it shows the harmony between memory and time. The two are not fighting, they just quietly follow each other.

When i say this specimen carries this and that memory, it's a typical nostalgia. When I say this specimen follows his /her time, it's a metamorphosis of perception.

This also applies to people and other passing-by around you. But when pinned on a clean background, a stage is set, and drama is just there observable.

Enjoying dancing, my love.

We had this new parking structure since beginning of the year. And recently i start to see empty pupas everywhere on the pillar foot, and today... wow!

I didn't know she has such a bad English name, i don't like it to be honest. In China, we simply call her "yellow verge" (which i also don't really like).

It goes back to 2000 when I was brought to an rural area of our province by my parents. It was an autumn afternoon and we were sitting on the back truck of some motor vehicle going along a country road. Golden sunshine through the woody surroundings, ,,, and,,, then ,,,, this beauty "yellow verge" just fly across the road that we have just passed, and disappeared on the other side of the wood, 5s. Short enough if you are not a nature fan, but long enough to stun a boy who has 3 years old being a collector.

I don't know how to describe the feeling, she was just went immediately to the top experience of sublimity so that the shock is hardly speaking of a collector but sort of life education and world view. How could something being so beautiful?

2000, that's the year I went for three insect collection trips, after the first in Shandong and second in Zhangjiajie in 2000 summer, and this one. It's even a banquet for a professional collector. Since i started being a nature fan, my parents had taken every of their chances to take me around when they have a meeting or conference somewhere else. My grandparents, too, they capture bugs when they are in the long line in front of restaurant or even in the bathroom....... When I am looking at any of my old collections, these are all things that come to my mind.

Let alone the old childhood smells, kitchen and garden, face and voice of relatives, and how they have been doing till nowaday. These are the things that slowly rising to my mind, light as a piece of nocturne but mellow like evening ocean tide.

I know people here love nature for different reasons, and whatever creature you like and liked, fit into different places of your life cabinet. Some people start young but end early, some start late but continue to death. Some for money, some for showing off, some for hobby and company. For me, though scientist life now has stressed and tortured me who started off dreaming as being a pure collector for a life, I have seen these lovely insects and plants as not only a hobby that kill plethora time of a dull adult, but a nearly intangible relaxation goes deepest to resonate the blood, and even more, a toast to old time and beloved old friends, forever.

That autumn, at the end of trip, we finally got one sample of "yellow verge" taken by my dad, only one. Skip all the excitement. It is so intact that I didn't even try to shape it into the standard posture, for the fear of possible lesion. (We didn't have soften equipment before fixing it into shape back from trip) Five years later, during a check and cleaning, one of antenna was stuck off accidently and later on being glued on. (We lost a lot of specimen that sad year) Add another five years, I became a freshman of bio major. And then, somewhere in time, when people just keep moving on and lose track of time, my grandma said goodbye forever, and their old apartment garden abandoned, and I have been not living at home for more than a decade.... So many things and so little imprint...

Now on the pacific coast, drinking besides a yellow nightlamp, I believe my only specimen of "yellow verge" is still sitting in the hometown box somewhere in dark, soundly.