Remembrance of Things Past: The Pond and Everything about It

The pond

The pond was built in the Qing dynasty, I don’t know what specific year. Some people outside of my town call the pond as a lake, but in Bai language, I can’t find a counterpart word of “lake”; we have the word “ben” for water bodies built by people, which literally means reservoir, and the purpose of building the pond is to hold water for farming use. Maybe the word pond is more suitable for everyday use and a little more poetic.

The pond is about 100 acres in area; in summer, when the water reaches the highest point, it can be 4 meters deep. It was told once the pond was built, my town became rich and it was one of the richest towns in our province. Many talented people in our town showed up those days. Time change, once an abundant place now becomes poor and isolated from the outside.

Water sources of the pond are diverse. One of the main sources is the streams originated from mountains in the east direction miles away. In spring, the water storage can be used up due to the farming time of the year. So, there had been built a system of four-level water supply pumping stations, pumping water from the Erhai lake. My village is located at the second level, and a pumping station was on the opposite side of the pond. When it pumps water, I can see the silvering water comes from a giant iron pipe, pours down into the pond, it makes a loud sound, it can be heard far away. There’s also a pumping station at north, where the way of water flow separates the village and the fields under the mountain. This water pumping station pumps water into a concrete ditch about 9 meters above it. I don’t know when were the pumping stations built, they must be built before I was born.

The pond is a few meters away from our house, only a country road in the middle. My village located in the north of the pond; in the east, there are fields and mountains; a peninsula sits at south; and a dam in the west, the main part of my village is under the dam. The dam of the pond is about 10 meters in height and 500 meters in length. The dam has two sluices and which are housed on each end, I never got into any one of the sluice rooms, they are still mysteries to me. When it’s farming time, the water revolving valve would be turned around, release water down to the ditches among the fields. The water torrents made whirlpools which sucked objects in. I always feared the whirlpools, thinking they could be deep enough to reach to the hell, and on the bottom of it were “water ghosts” waiting to feed.

Part of the pond is an area of fields in the east, it is covered by water from fall to winter. These fields are used to grow rice seedlings. In March, people plow in the fields, wet the fields, make field ridges, spread rice seeds and fertilizers, cover the ridges with the plastic cloth. Filled the gap between the ridges with water, and wait for the rice seedlings break the plastic clothing.

Due to the large water storage and the infrastructures, we don’t fear of drought; thus, the pond became the mother pond of the town.

Pond of paradise

There’s a shrine on the northeast of the pond, down the shrine are fields, these fields would be exposed from water in spring. On the south side of the fields, most of the year, water covered them. For several weeks, once the wet mud-like fields began to grow all kinds of grasses, the corn roots still in the fields as they were. After such a long time of being covered, the fields became richer and more arable. And after a few days of sunlight shining, fields near the shrine became sort of solid, those fields would become the paradise for kids.

At some day’s afternoon, we kids gathered together to play games we learned recently: actions from Hong Kong television series; teaming up to play football games; wrestling on the grass, the list goes on and on. The laughers sounded from the fields to the far away, the village became more vigorous at sundown.

The summer days were never boring, I had many friends to play with. At noon on a sunny day, we could borrow a boat from the pond contractors, excitedly jumped in the boat, rowing the paddles to the middle of the pond. The scenery in the middle was fantastic, there’s only water around the boat, I could see all sides of the pond better than ever before, felt that I was the king of the world, coming down from heaven and looking around my kingdom, and everybody respects me for what I did for good for the kingdom. Every time I paddled the water, the feeling of contacting with the cool water came to my fingertips up to my whole body, gave me a mysterious sense of force, thinking I must be destined to be a sailor.

There’s a convention in my village that if a boy could not swim before 8 years old, then he must be ashamed of himself. Learning to swim was enjoyable and dangerous to me. When I was 8, I still didn’t know how to swim, seeing many a friend swim smoothly even he was younger than me, the feeling was not good at all. But at last, I learned how to swim by myself, since then I loving swimming, it could take me to the unknown areas of the pond even the dangerous and very deep sections. I love the feeling of swimming, it likes I can fly up in the air, it gave me the greatest satisfaction. After we got out of the water, we always do some solarium on the dam. Because of the dam was sloppy, the main part of the surface was stone, we could lay down on the stone, stretching our limbs, closing our eyes, to enjoy the warmth of the sunlight beaming on us.

In summer, the east side of the pond would be exposed, the bottom of the exposed area would be full of mud. One day afternoon, we kids were divided into two groups to play a mud throwing fighting game on the east side of the pond. Each of the group dug a “trench” to protect from the mud hitting. My group was located on the east side, the other group on the west side. We were super excited to come out the idea of mud throwing. We lowering our body, grabbing mud, raising a little and throwing the mud out of the hand to the opposite group with all our strength, then fighting was “fierce”. We were laughing when hit somebody on the opposite group, enjoying the game voraciously. All of a sudden my head was hit by some rough and solid thing, I was sure it was not mud. I touched my head near above the temple area, the blood was dripping on my hand, at that moment, I was stiffened and scared. I called off the game at the moment, shouted that somebody hit me on the head. I was sure it was Dayinzui who hit me. I cleaned my body in a little pool of clean water, put my clothing on. I followed Dayinzui to his home, his mother saw me the wound on my head. She took me to the clinic on the village marketplace where the doctor cleaned the wound with H2O2(hydrogen peroxide), and he said the wound must be sewed to prevent the bacterial infection and to let the wound heal faster. I was astounded, I had never experienced such a horrible thing before in my life, sewing my head or any part of the body was gross and scaring I thought, I had only seen those scenes on TV.

When I looked around the clinic, it was very small and simple. It was a room of an old house, the front part of the room for examination and the other part for dripping. A woman was in the clinic, she looked like the doctor’s guest. She was watching the doctor conducting the operation on my head and talked a little when she found something interested her. The doctor first cut the hair around the wound area, spread some unknown plaster on it, then cleaned his suture needle by boiled water, and tied a thread on it. “This is going to be hurt,” the doctor said, “are you ready?” I said okay. I have no idea of hurt of such a horrible thing. He grabbed the needle by a pair of medical scissors, I could felt the force that the needle penetrated into the skin of my head. At first, the hurt was massive, and gradually it beyond my sense, I tried not to think about it. The woman on the clinic said, “The boy is tough, he doesn’t cry”, but nobody responded to her, it seems everybody’s busy on their own focus. A while later, the doctor said it was almost okay, just hold on a second. He tied the thread, cut it, he dipped some H2O2 on a sponge, cleaned sewed wound again. Finally, he put a bandage on the wound. “Everything’s done!” The doctor said. I relieved from fear.

Since everything was finished, I was about to go home. At that moment, somebody on the street told me my grandmother came to check on me (At that time, my parents were not home, only my grandmother took care of me and my brother). When I saw my grandmother with worrying looking and she made her steps hastily, my tears were coming out, I cried. The woman in the clinic said, “It is the grandmother’s seeing hurt the boy.” I did agree with the woman at that moment. Yes, I felt somebody I loved came to me to check if I was okay, the feeling was complicated, it twisted all the emotions inside and outside of me.

The pond in my childhood was such a lovely place that I can remember everything in detail related to it. The pond was the kingdom of my childhood, the place that was pure and real. Almost all the deepest memories of my life have connections to it. The emotions I had were real, and people around the pond were nice and decent. Even the horrible things happened to me were some of the best memories to recall.

Living the pond

In my elementary school years, Dewei and Huizan were my classmates and best friends, we often did interesting things together. After school, we headed to the pond, and swimming was the priority. Shook off clothes, jumped in the water, dove into the bottom, the cool feeling of the water took us to the heaven.

On sunny days, we prepared salt, pepper and a match for the after-school picnic. The water of the pond was really clean back then; there were many kinds of water grass in it. The pond was abundant with shrimps, freshwater mussels, winkles, and many other fishes: two of them where special for us, they called Zudiyu and Qinjiuyu in Bai language, I don’t know what they are exactly called in other languages, maybe in English, the fish names top mouth gudgeon and goby are most related to them. When I was very young, the food materials were not abundant, it was a big thing to eat meat for each couple of months. And for one reason that there’s not much nutrition in everyday food, so we swam for a purpose.

Dived into the water bottom, picked it up, and threw it to the shore once when we stepped on a shell. We were coated with mud, dirty as hell. We washed away the mud in some clean water, put the cloth on, and now, it was time to build up our cookstoves. Dug a hole by using a stick on the grass turfy bank, pulled all the soil out, and now it was ready to cook.

We prepared the shells, conch shells and small fishes. We were told that only the belts, the tongue and the eyes of the shell were edible, for others parts, just threw them away. We often didn’t take a knife with us those days, we broke some shell and made the shell’s shell as a sharp knife. Open shells with the shell knife, you can imagine that. For we didn’t have a pot with us to cook our “feast”, we needed to find some large and really fine shell as a pot. Once everything was done, the last thing was to add our secret ingredients in it—salt and pepper.

It seems there’s always “firewood” we could find. Sometimes we used dried corn-cob as fuel, and other times we picked up some dried grass instead. Lit a match, set the dried grass on fire, the flame popped up from nowhere, the thick smoke rushed from the newly built cookstove and ran into the sky, the view was like the country depicted in books. Once the dried grass or corn-cobs burned well, we put each one’s own shell pot on the “cookstoves”. I smiled in my heart each time I saw the water vapor lifted from the edge of the shell pot, seeing water boiling and making my secret ingredients up and down with the water was enjoyable.

The cooking time it took us was long, we talked funny stories to spend the time. Lying on the grassy bank, smelling the nature’s perfume permeated from the green grass, watching the white clouds going and bending in the azure sky.

The sunlight was going down on the west direction far away through the surface of the wavy water, the sky turned into the orange, the dark would come soon. The flames died, the water in the shell was disappeared, I could smell the delightful smells. Our feast was ready. The shell pot was hot, I opened it carefully, thinking I would spread the ambrosia all on the ground if I did something wrong. The food in the shell turned yellowish, I picked up a shell belt and put it in my mouth, the sensuous feeling could not be expressed. When we finished our feast, it’s been dark for a while. If it’s needed, I could light a torch and use it as a lantern to brighten up the way to home.

Frogs were singing in the fields near us; mosquitos were flying over our heads, sometimes they flew into my mouth, it was truly uncomfortable. The cool wind breezing around me and brought the refreshing smells of nature, a summer night could be awesome.

That was one of my days in the pond as a kid.

Stories about the pond

It was very long time ago, a man from outside of the town went by the dam one day, and he got sick after he got home. The cause of the sickness, according to my village people was that he smelled the fishy odor spread by the wind from the pond. People in my village suggested that to cure his illness he must drink some soup of seagrass with fish produced by the pond. He did as told, and in the next few days, he regained his health.

Once I heard the story, I thought it was a magic, people can be healed by things that made them sick. For me, the fishy odor of the pond is the odor of my village. The odor is with us for hundreds of years, it has become a factor of the community, with other factors, culture and personality of the people originated.

For many years, the water storage of the pond was sufficient, but with the population and hundreds of years of mud accumulation, the pond could not perform as it was. One day people in the village decided to deepen the pond, it was done almost twenty-six years ago, and I had no memories about that, I was just told by my family.

Every family in the village joined the deepening of the pond project and had a quota. The water was released completely, the bottom of the pond complete showed up for the first time for many years(I never saw the pond dried since I could remember). I was told that workable family members must contribute some. Of those days, people worked in the pond like farming, they finally made it. The pond had been deepened by almost 1 meter in average, in some areas even more. I can imagine how hard it was to do such an engineering, and I even respect more to the people who built the pond from scratch.

We kids were warned once some of us toss a stone in the pond and had been caught that, we would be forced to deepen the pond if we did that again. For many years, the “warning” continues. From this perspective, deepening the pond was a punishment for kids who did not respect the people who built the pond and people who contribute to it through hundreds of years.

The fishing time

When I was 9 years old, the pond was out of contract. That was the most beautiful time in my memory. On summer or winter vacations, we kids made all kinds of fishing tools: hooks, sinkers, floats and fishing rods, we made them by using everyday things. We made hooks of umbrella ribs; sinkers from fishing net sinkers; floats from the slippers; using bamboo as fishing rods. We could not make fishing lines, so we had to buy some professional fishing lines, or used PE (polyethylene) lines instead, for their strength and could be easily found in the neighborhood. We fished in the glove bushes under the sun until early evening, no other things could attract us more. Some days we got a couple of fishes, some days didn’t.

The pond under the sun seems peaceful, with some cool wind came from the west, moving the willow leaves, touching my face. The surface of the clean water moves around, forming waves toward the bank. Near the concrete bank, the grass under the water surface could be easily seen, a couple of small fishes playing around the grass. The water lilies were growing near the bank also, the fishes seem loving to push water lilies. After a rainy day, the sun was behind the clouds, the weather seems really comfortable, cool breeze spreading around, the willows around the bank shades the sun when it came out of the clouds; the water was bright blue. I put a fishworm on the hook, drop the hook into one of the holes among the water lilies, staring at the floats, wish to get a big fish, but most of the time was the top mouth gudgeon biting.

Fishing seems became a career for some adults of the village, they fish from early in the morning to the moon came out. They made their boats from inner tubes from truck tires. One or two inner tubes bound firmly under a plane with a rope. Bring their fishing tools, most importantly, a straw hat to prevent from sunburn; a bottle of tea was also necessary. Those people could fish in the middle of the pond for a whole day without getting out of the pond. They could catch a lot of fishes in some good day, they could sell them or cook a feast.

I remember it was in the Torch Festival, before sunset, my father also joined the fishing party, I thought it was interesting. My father got a fish that day, it seems that was the only day I had ever seen my father fish.

For the sake of the pond was out of contract. The pond kind of becoming free of charge fish dealer. For some poor people like us, we could use it as a source of protein intaking. In some days, if we got more fish than we could consume, then we had to eat fish for several days. But I never got bored with eating fish, still, I love eating fish.

Because of the fishing memories about the pond, fishing and fish became very special to me.

Contractors owned it

When I was 11, the pond was contracted to contractors from the west side of the Erhai Lake. It was said it was a good deal to the leaders of the village and the town, they could benefit from it every year. The contract continued from 2001 to almost 2013, and again the village leader got the contract since then.

From these years, we could not swim in the pond, because the pond was surrounded by iron wire. The contractors use the pond to fish farming, and they put too many fishes in it. Every day they feed the fishes with fish feed, due to the number of fish, the feed was very large. The water quality dropped to the worst point we had ever seen. I could see there’s a greenish oily layer on the water surface, and the water turned into the dark green from light blue.

Since the contractors controlled the pond, we were even not allowed to sit around the pond for resting. For the workers hired by the contractors watched us all the time, they were suspecting we would steal their fish if we sat around the pond. They had all kinds of “army” tools to track us down and beat us up. Each and every day, if someone was touching the pond water or walking around or sitting around it “abnormally”, they would pull out their telescope to watch you frequently. And in the evening, the workers took turns to supervise their “army base”. One of them turned on the searchlight installed in front of their camp yard, from left to right and up and down, to search anyone who was suspected to fishing or doing some damage to their property.

For those contractors and their workers were not very friendly to my village people, and the polluted the water, some people were angry about the truth that the pond was controlled by outsiders, and could do nothing about it. I once was told that some guy had a fight with contractor’s workers at some dark night, and he got electric shocks. The anger between us kids and the contractors was more obvious, we called the contractor’s workers as their lackeys.

An unpleasant event happened to me when I was 16. I remember it was a Friday night, I was sleeping, suddenly I was awakened in the blur when I heard somebody calling me, I shouted to reply. In the beginning, I thought I was dreaming, but I figured out it was real. After a moment, the voice started again, this time I heard it clearly, “Little lad, let’s go out have fun”, the voice sounded for a few times. There were three people I could tell from the voice when they were talking, the person calling me in the dark was a drunk; and one of them, I was not sure, was my uncle; and the other man I didn’t know who he was. At that time, I lived alone in the house; there’s no gate, only a door with two moving parts; anybody could get into the house. The house was very old, there’s a living room, with soil floor, dark with a solid smoke layer on the walls and the ceiling from decades of fire smoke accumulation; the mural darkness layer of solid smoke like scales of fish, it could reflect a little bright light when you carefully stare at the walls, like shining little flat black diamonds on the wall. There’s nothing in the living room except an old cracking four feet cabinet lean on the wall in the middle line of the room and a table near the bedroom door on the left, and an iron bucket under the table (we got water from a well outside for washing). The door of the living room produced loud squeaky sound when the drunk man kicking on the door. I was very scared, afraid of the man who would kill me with no consciousness in him; and for a teenage, such a “breaking into” thing was terrifying. I got up my bed, clutched the bedroom door, and crawled under my bed. I prayed to god to let them go away.

The drunk kicking on the door even harder. The man, who I thought was my uncle, said to the drunk, “Don’t kick the door, it was locked, let’s get out of here.” But the drunk seems deaf, the kicking continues. Finally, the living room door was taken down with screaming and loud cracking sound sounded. The drunk man continued to find where the direction of my voice I had produced. After a few seconds, his stumping steps were forwarding to the bedroom direction. At first, he was knocking on the door, to make sure there’s somebody in the room. I was terrified, kneeling down on the soil floor under the bed behind a card box, the air was stagnated. My right knee began hurting, I cannot breathe, my heart pumping rapidly. “Let’s go have some fun, lad.” the drunk shouted again, his voice became angry, “Open the door, I know you are there.” At that moment, I thought I would be killed or at least beaten up by the unconscious man. I was trembling, I couldn’t control my body, I almost laid down on the floor.

Again, the drunk kicking on the bedroom door. Because the door was latched up tightly, it was hard to broke in I thought. The sound got louder when the drunk kicked on the door each time, the force the door got transmitted to other parts of the door and to the wall and the ceiling, shaking the dust off on the floor. With the last kick, the latch had broken up when I heard the wooden latch bolt cracked into pieces and dropped on the floor. It was very dark in the room except there’s some light came from the window of the west wall on the other side of the door. The three men got into my room, found out there’s no anybody in the room, one of the conscious men told the drunk, you see, there’s no person in here. The drunk said, “I really heard someone replied to me when I was calling, he must be somewhere.” He checked on the bed, found nothing. At last, the drunk and the other two man got out the bedroom. Stumbling out of the living room. Thank god, they left. Until then I gradually regained my breath, the heartbeats slowing down.

About 5 minutes later, to make sure the crazy man went far away, I got out under the bed. I checked my knee, there were blood shades on the knee area, the blood thickened and sticking with the cloth. I rolled up the cloth carefully, some area of the skin was badly ripped off, the hurt was unbearable.

But that was not the end of the story. When I was still in a state of terrifying, a couple of people ran into the house and went straight into the bedroom. They wore police uniforms, at that moment, I didn’t know what was going on. They were four policemen. Without a word, one of them twisted me down the floor, I was hurt badly so I shouted very loud. My mind went to blank, why the policeman did that even I didn’t know what was wrong had I done. Finally, one of the policemen asked me angrily, “Where are the others?”, “I don’t know what are you talking about.” I said with anger and emotional mood. He said, “We were tracking down you guys here, you were fishing in the pond, am I right?” I told him I didn’t fish, I was sleeping before he came, I knew nothing about who and where the others were. I knew one of them, his name was Yanwei, he was almost 10 years older than me, lived several alleys up my family, and we had never talked before. Yanwei began to talk to me, “Then what’s wrong with your crashed down door over there if you didn’t fish.” I told him the whole thing happened just 10 minutes ago. With no result the policemen wanted, the man twisted my arms released me, he told me, “Whether were you fishing or not, you get to the police station in the morning, we’ll figure it out.” They went out the bedroom. Yanwei meanly said, “You cannot even take care of your home.” I dropped to the bottom of hopeless. I thought I had done nothing wrong that today, but what the fuck was happening to me, it was not fair. Why didn’t those policemen arrested the drunk rather than questioning me like that?

It was very late at night, I was totally tired of all the things happened in such a short time, I needed some rest. I didn’t sleep well that night. In the morning, I opened my sore eyes, the first thing I need to do was go to the police station. I went there with fear, there’s an office room with two paperwork like officer doing their work, one of them was female. I told them I was told to came to figure something out, the female officer lifted her head with a confusing look, stare at for a second, she said, “Just sit over there and wait”. For minutes, I didn’t get any response or any instructions. The man was sitting in front of a CRT display computer with Windows XP operating system, editing something important on the Excel sheet, printing something now and then, the printer on the desk sounded squeaky sounds. I was very embarrassing just sitting in a corner, the two officers talked to each other once one of them found something interested him or her, I was just like air in the room. I thought it was useless to sit in the room without any response, then I got out of the office quietly and left for home without saying anything to the two officers.

Many years later, I thought the police was had deals with the contractors, it’s the same in anywhere of the country. But anyway, except the control and anti-control scenes and unpleasant events, I still had happy times through the years.

Friendships

In my early life, my activities were almost constrained in the pond area. For children, the area was big enough to do anything they want. My friendships were all almost based on the pond area.

The friendships built at that time were firm and strong. We could do anything together, from playing video games to stay out in someone’s home. There were no true hostile situations among us though sometimes some of us got angry about something. I think the pure friendships are only existing in children, not adult life.

I remember when I was 11 years old, the VCD/DVD industry was booming. In my village at that time, only a small part of families had VCD/DVD players, and only one VCD/DVD rental room. Before the VCD/DVD industry, we watched cable TVs in someone’s family almost every day. The VCD/DVD industry brought us all kinds of movies, Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies and Young and Dangerous series, American sci-fi movies, etc. All of these novel movies poured into our lives, and the culture gap between the traditional and the new begins at that point. At the weekends or on summer or winter vacations, the pond was the secret rendezvous. We gathered at the pond bank, went to the VCD/DVD rental room to get some VCD/DVDs with fascinating covers on them, and hastily went to someone’s family to watch.

The friendships built in my childhood were almost based on the pond. The pond was the place to offer the space of responsibility free. I dare to say that I had the most precious friendships and wonderful childhood in the world.

The pond now

I left my hometown 12 years ago to went to high school since then the connections between the pond and me became weaker. The pond once in my real life becomes an illusion to me, sometimes it just exists in my dream. Every time I got home, it always just like that, with heavy fish farming, the eutrophication of the water makes the visibility really bad. In the past, people could wash vegetables in the pond, kids dove down into the bottom of the water, open eyes to see the sunlight beaming through the water. But that never comes back, the water quality keeps in low level, although there’s the Erhai Lake protection: the water sources of the Erhai lake are being supervised and all the sources of water pollution are strictly controlled, restaurants and hotels were closed up around it to have the clear water come back. I think the environmentalists had forgotten to improve the pond—one of the many sources of pollution of the Erhai Lake.

Though the dam of the pond was enhanced couple years ago, it is not lovely anymore. The well-formed ecosystem of the pond was totally fucked up. Many fish species disappeared, the eutrophication of water gets worse and worse, the lush willows near the bank had gone. In my childhood, when the winter was coming, the wild big white birds (the herons) came to the swamp area of the pond, walking in the bog and catching fish. Those birds were pure and beautiful, they are the angels of the pond; but now, I never see them as the old days. The water grasses and water lilies also had gone; the pond lost its lungs to clean up the water, and with fish feed and fish wastes spread into the water every single day, the water is smelly. All the signs have shown that the pond needs to rest, to restore its health ecosystem. Otherwise, the beauty of the pond will never return.

Due to the water pollution, people now don’t have many connections with the pond. I never saw a person wash vegetables or swim in the pond water for many years.

Every year, new babies will be born in the village, new people will come and live; people with good memories of the pond are decreasing, the elderly people die, they took the stories of the pond with them, the new generation will never know the mysterious and magical stories; grown-up people are leaving their ancestor’s place to make a living, then many of them will not return. The change of community structure, causing the culture of the village losing its stances.

The profits of fish farming to the contractors make them do harm to the pond and the villagers and the environment ecosystem of the town, not because they were lacking knowledge of environment protection. I wish one day, we can put those immoral contractors in jail, to let them deeply thinking about the ecosystem they had completely destroyed.

Conclusion

The pond in my village was built hundreds of years ago, it fed the people, helped people to get over poverty; the scenery of the pond was amazing, but it has gone. The environmental ecosystem of the pond was destroyed by greedy contractors. Under circumstances of environment protection context of the country or the city, the water quality protection of the pond still got no attention in the past couple years. Someone’s economic benefits always surpass the desire of the people, I wish if we can build a sustainable ecosystem to help the pond to restore its system, such that can we reverse the damage of the pond, the beautiful scenery of the pond and beautiful memories will pass to the next and the next generation.

For further thinking, the global warming consequences warn us if we harm the nature, it will cause disasters on us in return. The balance of economic development and environmental protection is an interminable topic in the 21st century, just don’t let the hypocritical politicians take over the environmentalists.

I write this article to recall my childhood times refer to the pond, and to think a little about environmental issues of the pond. Life is ridiculous, the place once we wanted to leave with any price, becomes the dreaming place we wish to get back.