One midday in my senior year of high school, it was a beautiful day with blue skies and sunlight that could shine in from the balcony of the hallway. My friend and I weren’t sitting comfortably paralyzed in the shadow of the railing, and it wasn’t just who led the way by exclaiming, “It’s a perfect day to die.” We all laughed; everyone wants to die sunny. Seriously, clear skies and perfect sunshine, most people would choose to die on a day like that if they could, right? I wonder, could it be that I, at that time, wanted to die in that very moment? Or perhaps, some part of me had already died in that moment. I told my classmate that when I die later, I’m going to bury my ashes in the earth and plant a tree. She said, “Then it will absorb you ……” I nodded and said, “Right.” I sometimes imagine that people I know would come to see me under the tree. Maybe I’ll be that tree, and if someone wants to cut me down, will anyone resist? Maybe someone will come who I don’t like, maybe they’re all dead. Maybe the people who come don’t know me and are just resting underneath me. Or maybe no one comes, would that be better? Maybe I wouldn’t grow well as a tree, would I have an inferiority complex? Would I blame myself for the fact that I couldn’t grow tall and big, even though my sanity knew perfectly well that it was probably just the fault of the environment, the soil and the rain? On Modern Family, Mitchell and Claire’s mom dies and becomes a tree, too. Mom’s new husband is just as “weird” as she was, a very stereotypical, metaphysical vegetarian. His interactions with the tree, while comical, made me think of my future lover talking to a tree. Oddly, I seemed to take it for granted that I would die first. Over the summer, my grandfather got a call during lunch that a family friend from back home had died. It was discovered after a few days because he lived alone, and by that time it stank and seemed to have worms, I don’t remember. He seemed to want to talk to someone, but I had never met the person and couldn’t say anything. So he called someone else, and I’m not sure what happened after that. It was only a few days after death that the stinking, long-wormed body was discovered, probably the least romantic way to die. I realized then that it seemed like I was imagining my own death like I was imagining a wedding, and even though I had never envisioned the existence of a funeral, I had always assumed that my death scene should be somewhat ceremonial. Even in my most depressed, suicidal phase, I wanted my death to be something that would startle my family, like slitting my wrists in the bathtub or hanging myself in the doorway. Just like not everyone gets a dream wedding, most people don’t get a perfect death either. I wrote a little novel called ‘Drifting’ a couple months ago, forgetting that I just wanted to write about what communication between humans would become in the future with rising sea levels and further technological advances. But perhaps subconsciously, I knew that people still have this method of death where ‘the body soaks in water and floats to someone else’s house’. The main character in the novel is partly a projection of myself – if I had seen that body, I wouldn’t have known what to do, and probably would have thought, “Tomorrow he’ll float away on his own”. Somewhat digressively, I don’t care much about other people’s deaths, and the reason for that is that I don’t care that much about their lives. Despite the fact that most people have such a blunt sense of humor when it comes to strangers, I can feel it, and it’s cold in my heart. I heard a tarot reader casually mention that the core of the ‘Queen of Cups’ is ‘cold’. Although this word is far from the mainstream interpretation of the ‘Queen of Chalices’, I could sense what kind of coldness the woman on the face of the card, softly looking at the magnificent chalice in her hand, has in her heart towards humanity. She has poured her imagination into her chalice, and she admires her work with modest pride and a touch of excitement. She would look at her children with the same care as if she were sculpting a work of art, which was perhaps the source of her ‘gentleness’. It was the same with strangers, she was familiar with how to sculpt humans, so she knew how to avoid hurting others with her actions and words, her not-so-warm concern and courteous reception of others came from this ‘carefulness’, like she didn’t want to break the chalice in her hand. Corpses are like broken chalices in her eyes, perhaps worthy of tears, but not worth looking at much anymore. Even though I’ve been letting myself try all sorts of activities and jobs that involve interacting with people this year, I’ve come to realize that it’s hard for me to make very strong links with people – I’m still afraid of people. In my imagination, there was the tree where I died, and a scattering of one or two people who came to see me, but no, not once, has there ever been a funeral with lots of people gathered around to mourn. In my heart of hearts, if there had been a funeral for me, I probably would have crawled out of the dirt in anger …… It’s hard for me to imagine how my parents would have chalked up my life, my views, and my orientations on stage, and how pissed off the people offstage, who really knew me, would have been. Oh wait, how did I subconsciously think I would die before my parents? Come to think of it, I had another very deviant thought – that people live to 40 and that’s pretty much it. Maybe I didn’t want to experience aging, maybe I didn’t have a lot of goals in life at that time, or maybe I didn’t want to have to resort to the strange dignity of being old …… Or maybe it was just that at that time, the old people I saw were more or less obnoxious. Before in a small bookstore and a grandmother chat, I can feel her rich experience, and not the kind of aggressive dad flavor. After that, I added the store’s WeChat, and every day I saw this old couple posting book reviews and book summaries in my circle of friends. Thinking about it, it seems more comfortable to live more days before death than to be buried in the earth. One’s thoughts about death are probably shaped by those around them, especially those closer to death. I still imagine myself turning into a tree after I die, and I even imagine entrusting my last wish to someone else. But I think the last wish or whatever is just for myself who is not dead yet. Before I die, I think about the beauty of my own death, and feel some romance, maybe that’s what it means. After all, after death, it doesn’t matter to me whether the body grows worms or gets soaked and rotted.