#015: sober/清醒(qīngxǐng)
在深淵裡清醒地望向藍天/Looking at the blue sky from the abyss
being sober in the world of mortals
The first sentence of Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman started off with a quote of the madman, ‘Tonight, the moon is very bright.’ The bright moonlight embodies two sides of its symbolic meaning, sensibility and sobriety versus madness and lunacy. Staying sober, sensible, and practical in the world of mortals can be at times intimidating and unsettling. The madman reminded himself to be careful and question everything. Consequently, even the stare of the dog of Chao’s at him seemed malicious.
人間清醒
魯迅的《狂人日記》中狂人的第一句話，「今天晚上，很好的月光。」開啟了序篇。明亮的月光帶著雙重意涵，一邊是理性與清醒，一邊是癡狂與瘋癲。身在世間保持理智清醒且務實有時挺嚇人的，也挺讓人不安的。狂人提醒自己要小心並且對一切抱著懷疑的態度，也因如此，就連趙家的狗看著狂人的眼神都似乎懷有惡意。
White moonlight & saudade
The bright moonlight is also used in Red Rose, White Rose, by Eileen Chang to depict a the male protagonist’s relationship between two women. This famous quote goes like this:
Maybe every man has had two such women-at least two. Marry a red rose, and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is "moonlight in front of my bed." Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart.
—Red Rose, White Rose, by Eileen Chang
To put his state of mind in a nutshell, this idiom says it all: ‘The grass is always greener on the other side.’ Originating from this famous quote, the white moon light (白月光; báiyuèguāng) is now often used to refer to the people or objects which one cannot attain but yearns for deeply and helplessly. This sentiment resembles a Portuguese word, saudade. It is a melancholic longing, a deep and bittersweet emotion, ‘a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist’.
白月光與苦中帶甜的思情
張愛玲的《紅玫瑰與白玫瑰》中通過皎潔明亮的月光來比喻男主人公周旋於他生命中兩個女人之間的情感糾葛。這段耳熟能詳的描述如下：
「也許每一個男子全都有過這樣的兩個女人，至少兩個。 娶了紅玫瑰，久而久之，紅的變成了牆上的一抹蚊子血，白的還是「床前明月光」；娶了白玫瑰，白的便是衣服上的一粒飯粘子，紅的卻是心口上的一顆硃砂痣。 』
—張愛玲《紅玫瑰與白玫瑰》
男主人公的心態，總歸一句話：「得不到的才是最好的。」「白月光」一詞的出處就是從這段話來的，現在常用來形容人對於嚮往、憧憬但可望不可以及的人事物的情懷。葡萄牙文裡有個和這樣的思情能夠相對應的詞，「saudade」，指的是一種惆悵的渴望，一種深層的、有苦有甜的情緒，「一種對某個也許甚至不存在的現象的一種模糊、不切實際的一廂情願。」
To act in accordance with conditions
Being in this mortal world full of temptations and information overload, remaining sharp and sober can guide us timely through times of confusion and chaos. We may have a better understanding of what the current conditions are like and how we may feel about them, and then we act in accordance with these conditions, following the flow. Being sensible and sober can also bring us to stay calm when we realize that we are involuntarily and inevitably drawn with the current to a place where we do not wish to be.
隨緣
在這個充滿誘惑和資訊海量的花花世界裡，保持敏銳的直覺、人間清醒可以在亂世迷失時適時指引我們，更了解當前的情況與自身預期的感受，於是隨緣，於是順勢而為，也能在當我們意識到身不由己地隨波逐流時，保持淡定。
References 魯迅的《狂人日記》https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/狂人日记 Zhang, Ailing; Kingsbury, Karen S (2011). Red rose, white rose. ISBN 978-0-14-197050-9. OCLC 931694306.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rose,_White_Rose_(Eileen_Chang)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20161118-the-european-country-that-loves-being-sad https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170126-the-untranslatable-emotions-you-never-knew-you-had