All But Words

We were walking down the streets of the 11th in Paris on a sunny October day. It was the second time I saw him, the first being our date in Seoul. I was staying with him in his small apartment on Rue de Reuilly.

I’d just started learning French, so when we passed a bookstore I suggested we go in. “Librairie is not library,” he said. I rolled my eyes and said of course I knew. Inside, I brushed my hands over books whose titles I barely understood. The place had a French vibe of… je ne sais quoi. Maybe it was the staff in the brown checkered shirt, curly chestnut hair, and golden glasses, the perfect hot nerd. We exchanged a secret look of shared appreciation.

I had no idea what I should buy. Maybe Le Petit Prince. “I haven’t even read it. I had a nightmare about it in kindergarten,” he said, before asking the hot nerd for it and any other beginner recommendations.

The staff, all three of them, went into a helpful frenzy. They were all mobilized to search around the store for the much anticipated le Petit Prince (how can they not have it in the storefront). Moments later, the hot nerd handed me, le Petit Prince.

“Par carte ?” I asked timidly. Hot nerd looked at me with a small, amused surprise. A bien sûr, some wrapping, and a merci beaucoup et bonne journée later, hot nerd smiled so widely he almost clapped. We were so amused we burstsx into laughters. “I told you French people can be friendly!!” He said as we walked out of the store. 

In the months after, I stumbled through the book, sending him so many j’abandonnes that it became our inside joke. I read about the pilot, the alien prince, the proud rose, the fox. And “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”

Five trips to Paris later, Christmas is around the corner again, and it’s been more than a month since we parted. It’s been a sweet year with France for me, despite the sorrow. 

The writer parted with the prince, and the prince said, at the end of Le Petit Prince, when he smiled in his little planet:

Et ce sera comme si toutes les étoiles riaient… Tu auras des étoiles qui savent rire.

As if all the stars could smile just for you.

“There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.”

– Robert Frost, the Oven Bird

I recently bought a poetry collection. I thought it’s a rite of passage to really understand English, which has replaced Chinese long ago as my main language of use. But to be very honest, I really struggle to understand many of the verses there – as a non-native speaker, the beautiful construction of poems may always evades me.

There is this one though, that resonates with me (maybe also because it’s just easier to understand). It captures the melancholy towards the lapse of time. The oven bird singing of the departure of spring – oh what to make of a diminished thing! It’s from the good ol’ Robert Frost, whose poem “the Road Not Taken” was selected into the Chinese textbooks in my junior high.

I recognize that there is this tendency in me, a tendency to be melancholy, to be pensive, to be lost in my thoughts – sometimes too much so. It could be a good thing really, as some framed it as “the positive trait of being able to appreciate nature”. I try not to romanticize this version of myself, but who can resist to be sad when there comes another fall we name the fall?

What follows this is also: I’m about to embark on a 4-week trip to Asia. I’ve been to Japan already twice by now, spending over a month there, and I’ll be spending 3 weeks more this time. What’s weird, however, is that I am feeling anxious, with the supposed excitement in the past absent. I know it’s because of the autumn sadness, the recent ending of a relationship, and the question looming over me – what do I want my life to be?

It’s a question my therapist posed today as one to think about when I walk in the Kyoto temples. The situation is rather exacerbated by her increase in therapy fee, though. The bare thought of ending this therapy relationship doesn’t help.

It’s of no use to ponder this question too much, as there’s never an answer. It also takes time to figure out – it’s a journey that cannot be accelerated.

All these land on why I’m starting this blog. I really want to write more, to tell more about my stories – the stories in my head about my family, my relationships, my immigration journey, and my life.

So here it is: it’s the start of a journey.