Essay

Coordinates Puxi, inner ring Z community.

During my stay indoors, I moved the sofa in the living room to the window of the north wall. During the day, I sit on the sofa and watch the scenery outside the window. Occasionally, the sun can shine on me. At night, I use the sofa as a bed and turn off the lights. Or I can see the stars and the moon, or I can see the clouds moving. At first, birds could be heard day and night.

At the bottom of the building is the iron fence of Zhongshan Park. A large, thick and tall French phoenix tree is facing the window. I stand on the seventh floor. The top of the tallest buttonwood tree is higher than mine. When I first lived at home, the plane tree just sprouted. Through the branches, I can see the tall buildings in the distance and the amusement facilities in the nearby parks, and I can also see the yellow leaves under the trees and the golden plate with eight claws (an evergreen plant) that is evergreen all the year round. Gradually, the leaves grow day by day. Now, the French phoenix tree has already become a green curtain wall in front of the window. I will never see the distant world again. I can only see the birds in the dark tree gap and the dark clouds hanging from the treetops.

I am a bird watcher, and the epidemic has limited my steps. I had to set up a telescope indoors, listening to birds singing with hard ears to the buttonwood in front of the window, accompanied by nucleic acid detection day after day.

There are fewer birds in the Woods than in the wild. The largest number of sparrows, in droves, twittering. Occasionally, because the distance is close, the window is open, and the sparrows all over the treetops suddenly gather together like dark clouds, and at the same time they will hear a "poof". Turtledove likes to fly from the tree to the roof on the fifth floor under my window. Sometimes when reading a book, I suddenly hear the cry of "Goo Goo Goo Goo ……". I stood up, put my face on the glass and looked down. Sure enough, I saw two turtledoves chasing and frolicking on the eaves of the building, like a dusty middle-aged uncle, teasing a good woman. The bird with a black body and a yellow beak is bigger than a sparrow and smaller than a turtledove. It is called a blackbird. The call of male blackbird is long and tortuous, while that of female blackbird is low and short. When I was a child, the common Chinese Pulsatilla in my hometown was called Chinese Pulsatilla in Shanghai. It is slightly bigger than a sparrow, with a white feather the size of a coin on its head and an olive green body. Pulsatilla's voice is loud and sweet, like a melodious flute, which makes people never tire of listening.

In the past, outdoor bird watching, I went wherever I wanted to go, and I looked at it as I wanted. What I felt was the agility of life, the singing of birds, and the agility and naturalness of nature. However, it's different now. Now, limited by the epidemic, I can't stay at home, and I can't help but have a desire to fly, even jealous of them. Lying on the sofa at night, imagining each other across a wall in the dark, but having such different experiences, I can't help dreaming.

One night, I dreamed that I was wearing a big white N95 mask and carrying a box of apples bought by the group, walking hard on a slope of 45 degrees, sweating profusely and having difficulty breathing. I walked with difficulty, and suddenly my foot slipped and stumbled, and my body lost its balance. A box of apples fell to the bottom of the slope.

A middle-aged uncle picked one up and I said it was mine. He replied disdainfully and threw it back. The children bent down to pick up the apples and put them quietly in the box in my arms ... When I went uphill again, I heard birds singing in front of me. Looking inside, a white-headed stork is lying on an erect sign with a huge digital word "5" written on it. While I was wondering, an ambulance with a flashing blue light and a sharp horn galloped towards me.

I woke up from my dream and couldn't sleep anymore. What does "5" mean? Does it imply that the epidemic will end in May? Why do I have such a dream? I look forward to the end of the epidemic.

I thought I would be fine if I didn't go out, but the reality is beyond my imagination. On April 17, a positive person was inexplicably found in the building where I lived. Usually, once a positive case is found in the community, it will be transported immediately, but in this case upstairs, the list of "transshipment" notified by the property group is "none" every day, and the list of remarks is "serious illness". Later, I learned that this is an old man who had a kidney transplant not long ago. Because of professional nursing and medication after operation, his family did not agree to go to Fangcang Hospital. He lives on the top floor and doesn't correspond to me. He doesn't need sewers and flues.

Since then, I have lived in the same building with the positive patients (25 floors apart). For the first time, I deeply felt that I was so close to the virus carrier that I could take the same elevator and breathe the air in the same corridor, which was close at hand. Zen tried his best to think about how to cut off all possible connections. However, he is already indoors, and all he can do is to plug the indoor floor drain, don't open the window again, and don't give viruses and aerosols a chance.

The telescope won't work unless I open the window, so I have to look out with my eyes wide open against the glass. I saw turtledoves, blackbirds, Chinese Pulsatilla and, of course, sparrows ... I saw their beaks open and close, but I couldn't hear the sound. Accustomed to the singing of birds, I suddenly became uncomfortable, my thinking began to be confused, and I often had incredible hallucinations. The hallucination virus is coming at me every minute. When I answer the phone, I become vacillating, afraid that the radio waves are not clean.

Human medicine has put out infectious diseases from generation to generation, but it has ushered in one infectious disease that is more difficult to deal with. Now this Omicron virus has become more cunning and pervasive. Even if the house is made of steel and cement, it doesn't feel like a fortress and is vulnerable to virus attacks. When I was a child, I was deeply impressed by the word "man can conquer nature". It seems that human beings struggle with nature and win every time. Now I feel that there is a bigger sky outside.

Under the epidemic, the house became a completely closed box, and I became a bird in the box. The real bird is free outside the window, but I am locked in a box. In this sense, I am not as good as a bird.

I saw the stream of people doing nucleic acid downstairs, sparse, like a row of ants crawling slowly. Since the house upstairs was infected, we stopped going downstairs to do nucleic acid and instead tested it ourselves at home. My little grandson lying on the window glass with me suddenly shouted, "Quiet! Silent! " Silent is his playmate who lives in another building. They haven't seen each other for almost a month. "Silently! Silently ... "The little grandson kept shouting, waving his hands as he shouted, and there was no response to the silence downstairs. The little grandson cried and said, "Don't talk to me, keep your voice down!" " "I held out my hand and held my grandson in my arms. I said, "Don't cry." However, my tears failed to stop.

The sky is blue. On the top of the tallest French phoenix tree opposite, some birds are jumping freely. I diverted my grandson's attention, pointed to the treetops and said to him, "It's almost May, and we are not far from the day of freedom."