There are no kindergartens in the village. My reading career started directly from primary school, from aoe, 123, and from writing with a pencil. Pencils were scarce at that time, so they were especially cherished when used. They are used until they can't be caught by fingers and they can't be thrown away. We must find a way to take out the rest of pencil lead and use it. My pencils are all wood-colored vertical bars, which my father brought back from Dazhai. I bought one (ten) at a time. At that time, I was a local tyrant in the village, and I was inevitably proud for a while.
About the third grade of primary school, I began to use ink. Almost everyone in the same grade has a bottle of ink on his desk. A pen with an ink partner is called a dip pen-the tip of the pen is embedded in the top of the solid grip, and you can write the whole homework again and again by dipping a few words in ink. It is precisely because of the characteristics of dip pen that its intimate relationship with ink is determined. They are like a conjoined body, like a focus that never leaves Meng Meng. Where there is a dip pen, there is ink, and there is a dip pen. Dip pens have many disadvantages. When writing the first word, the ink is too full, and it is often written that a drop of ink drips along the pen tip onto the word being written. In our dialect, this phenomenon is called pen and egg. When a pen lays eggs, the words it is writing become dirty and invalid, causing the writer to scream-the pen lays eggs again, and the pen lays eggs again ... it sounds like his old hen laying eggs in someone else's henhouse. If you open the homework written at that time, there will be countless ink balls on a page, but the colors are different, such as pure blue, blue-black, and maybe red, which were left by the teacher when he reviewed the homework. I can't help giggling at the thought of the teacher's pen laying eggs. Dip pen is inconvenient to carry, and it is very slow to lift it up and down to write in ink. However, compared with pencils, people are still happy to use dip pens. First, the handwriting is clear, not easy to fade, and can be preserved for a long time (this credit is attributed to ink); The second is a status symbol, which shows that he has left the group of children and entered the ranks of senior students. Maybe this is the first time in my life that I long to grow up. The sign of growing up is a dip pen and a bottle of ink.
No matter how much I want to grow up, I am still a child. In my spare time, either you pinched me or I stepped on your foot and accidentally knocked over the ink bottle on the table, so the ink spilled everywhere, on the table, on the schoolbag and even on the clothes. It is difficult to wash off the ink spilled on clothes. In the days to come, I will listen to my mother's scolding, but nothing falls in my ears. How to play? There are always large and small irregular ink marks on clothes all year round, like stars in the sky.
Dipping pen is only a flash in the pan, and soon the pen will replace it as a new writing tool and a new partner of ink. Pen is also called fountain pen, and we call it fountain pen directly there. It has a belly more than a dip pen-a leather tube that absorbs ink. A new fountain pen should first wash the oil in the rubber tube with warm water, then put the whole nib into the ink (the newly bought ink should be shaken evenly), and repeatedly squeeze the rubber tube by hand until the rubber tube is full of ink. In the local dialect, it is called printing ink or painting water (change water when reading). Putting the pen on the tube can continue writing for a long time, which realizes the separation of pen and ink. I don't know if distance can produce beauty, but the couple don't have to stick together every day like those two brothers. This is the most convenient place to use a pen, and of course there are few eggs in it. But there are always accidents, and it says there is no water in the pen. What should I do? Borrowed it from a classmate. So both of them unscrewed the fountain pen, took off the pen cover, aimed the nib at the nib, and gently squeezed the hose with their hands. Ink drops flow from one's own pen tube to one's classmate's pen tube. Squeezing ink is like a doctor giving blood to a patient. This is a meticulous work, and it can't be sloppy at all. A little deviation, ink paste the table with one hand, dirty himself with the other hand, and laugh at others.
When wiping the ash, I specially read the instructions on the box: this ink can't be mixed with other inks. But I didn't care when I was at school. Sometimes you need it urgently, and you can borrow whatever you meet. Therefore, the pen color before and after the word is naturally different. Many times, the teacher mistakenly thought it was homework. Borrowing ink is a common thing among classmates. Some people don't buy ink at all (maybe they can't afford it), but borrow ink to do their homework, and this borrowing is Liu Bei's "borrowing" from Jingzhou. Think about it, is someone borrowing all the students at the front and back tables and not coming back? Is the borrowed student more generous than Zhou Yu, who never thought of getting the ink back? ! Even if one day they turned against each other and fought, the matter of borrowing ink was never mentioned. A hedge between keeps friendship green. I think it's right to add the word "ink": a friendship between gentlemen is as light as water. Unlike the eraser borrowed by the old wolf in "You at the same table", it has been mixed with too many complicated emotions.
But ink painting is not always a gentleman's demeanor, and sometimes it is used as a "gun". Between classmates, brothers or sisters who have nothing to say one second, turn against each other and deny their parents the next. If you can't beat the scolding, the weak will pick up the fountain pen and throw it at each other to vent their anger, so the ink will be left innocently and conspicuously on each other's face and clothes, which may lead to a truce and a step back. Perhaps the battle will be more intense because of this, and the roosters will find fault and wrestle together until the teacher appears ... I think if we switch time and space to the present, if we use more ink, it must be performance art, and if we practice it often, we will be masters of "splashing ink".
How long can a bottle of ink last? There is no concept at all, mainly depending on the number of times the owner writes and throws ink. In that era of underdeveloped materials, everyone still cherished ink. Only when dignity is trampled on and there is nothing they can do, will they splash ink in desperation and set out petofi's poem "Life is precious, love is more expensive, if it is dignity, then splash ink." After all, this matter is less, and more is to make the best use of it. At that time, mothers often used empty ink bottles to make kerosene lamps, which were available at home and used by children for school. The ink bottle is small and easy to carry, and the method is simple. After washing the bottle, add kerosene, then poke a hole in the lid and put on the wick made of cotton thread, and it becomes a kerosene lamp. If you make a wooden lamp holder with a wire lamp holder and then cover it with a glass bottle cap, it will be a mid-range lamp at that time, and the key is to keep out the wind (lanterns are more advanced windproof, which ordinary people can't afford). In the dark night or winter morning, if everyone carries a kerosene lamp to study in class and walks in a hurry, looking back decades later, it will be quite spectacular; There are forty or fifty people in a classroom. Everyone has a lamp on his desk. The sound of the book is loud and clear. Listening to the past and watching the past are quite touching. Kerosene lamps have a faint smell of kerosene. When I was a child, I always stubbornly mistakenly thought that there was a faint ink fragrance. Otherwise, how can the flame have a light blue light? In the era when there is no electric light, the dim light of kerosene lamps illuminates that era and also illuminates our tomorrow; The dim light of kerosene lamp, accompanied by the faint smell of ink and the sound of reading, floats in our memory forever.
Students of all ages go to study and sleep, but sleeping with kerosene lamps is probably a unique memory in the 1970 s. Because of sleeping, some people have permed their hair, some people have burned books ... When the hair is burnt, wipe off the burnt part, and when the book is burnt, borrow a classmate's book to read. At that time, students thought it was no big deal, teachers thought it was no big deal, and parents thought it was no big deal. At that time, it was not a problem not to go online and eat because of choking. So, it's time to light a lamp, sleep and read a book. Later, with the electric light, kerosene lamps gradually withdrew from the historical stage, and ink bottles were no longer preserved, but were thrown away after use, and their lonely black figures were often seen on the ashes.
The ink is still the ink used when I was a child, and the pen is not that pen. With the arrival of the new century, a new and more convenient carbon pen came into being, which spread all over the country almost overnight and became the main tool for everyone to write. Carbon pen no longer needs typing ink, and ink seems a bit lonely. Without those calligraphy lovers, I'm afraid Mo Xiang would really end up in the world. This was beyond anyone's imagination decades ago. Unexpectedly, computers and mobile phones have developed rapidly, and now words are rarely written. Those two bottles of ink have been idle ever since. I don't know when I bought it or where I ended up!
After the changes of the times and Qianshan, ink is not only the ink for writing, but also the name of knowledge and culture. So far, people in the village are still saying: someone has so much ink in his stomach that he knows everything; Whoever has ambition is to drink more ink since childhood. I was lucky enough to "drink" ink for several years before I was able to get out of the small mountain village and integrate into the city. For decades, ink painting has witnessed a period of my life and a period of my growth, from seeing whether a mountain is a mountain to seeing whether a mountain is a mountain. I will keep diaries, notes, letters, course plans, etc. Those years written with a pen are forever, because there is a soul of words, temperature and color. The temperature is only the temperature of body temperature, and the color happens to be the color of ink, including pure blue, blue black and black. ...
Look through it if you don't believe me!
Wednesday, April 29th, 2020