|
|
For them and you, her moving to the next station at the age of 18 is like the weather drops to minus Celsius degrees in the middle of a tropical summer. It shocked her world of friends - the naïve guys and girls enjoying their 18th summer with life turning plans, overflowing energy and dreams. They are not prepared to taste this kind of flavor. It is overwhelmingly bitter.
You suddenly want to be in your island to trace your thoughts into words and craft the words onto the sand. You stand there, not like a coconut tree, but an oak of harsh accumulated heaviness. You feel like all the words you craft into the sand make the beach thicker and heavier. All the thoughts you press onto your heart weigh your whole body down and prevent it from standing up in a straight and vigorous shape. You stare motionlessly at the words on the sand wishing to let go of all your inner bags of sand. The electrical current rushes from your head to your toes and all the way round. Mysteriously, the waves come and take away with ease everything it could reach and grasp from the sand. Zig zag, rough, and variegated, your words on the sand are disturbed, destroyed and carried away piece by piece. Your black balls keep staring motionlessly as if the blood frozen in your vessels. Not frozen. You are just being crippled under the affect of the dizzy intensity of the blood rushing and electrical current.
Suddenly, you find yourself jumping in the frightful violent waves. As your back turns red in the blazing hot summer sun and the whipping of the waves, you rest your back on the old retiring waves near the coast, letting yourself floating on the edge of the colossal navy blue carpet. Another moment, you stand up on your bare feet, spread your thin and firm arms, swallow the ocean breath into your throat, stretch your chest against the wind from the open sea, your face rising up to the bright sun. Your whole body swims in the ocean of lights. Like an immeasurably high coconut tree, you stand up straightly and vigorously.
June 30th 2003 - To Phuong
She can not move anymore. Your girl friend returns to bed. It is a new bed, not the one she used to be pampered at nights by the sweet dreams of friends and day gossips, of guys with red roses or he, whom she never met, with long black hair, making his prince charming walk in a summer rain. It is not the bed she used to be scared in, by nightmares of black beasts in teacher clothes or mommy with green ghost eyes scolding at her for coming home late. She is lying on a strange and random bed of hospital. It is a white bed covered by a white sheet, on which she puts a white pillow. She doesn’t wear her silky pajamas of eye-catching, sophisticatedly mixed colors. Instead, they put her in a white gown. White is the favorite color of doctors who are oddly faithful to the love of cleanliness. White is the scary color of separation, blankness, emptiness, zero, and shock for the visitors like you. She would have loved white color. She dreamt to be a doctor and strived to get a scholarship to fly her life to magnificent Paris where she would make herself an educated woman. Her name would be changed into Dr. XYZ followed by this and that degrees between the two brackets. In the white blouse, she would cure human’s physical pains and kill away moaning and screaming of broken spirits. She was living a beautiful summer dream. Her summer dream could be a life time magic. Or her summer dream could be a showery rain. That kind of rain showers quicker than anyone could ever imagine. It ends when it has just started. Unfortunately, she is not chosen to see the magic. Fortunately, she is settled with the sweet flavor of chocolate. Unfortunately, she wished she could taste more flavor, no matter how disgusting or terrifying it might turn out to be. In two days time, she will have to go, the doctors tell her mom. She will get out of the bed and maybe she will float. What sacred thing would she bring into her journey? Not her glasses, it would remind her of stressful of schools and late nights sitting up working for a broken dream.
Her friends, the boys and the girls and you, too, will continue their journeys. Everybody chooses his road. All the roads are different. She has her own road too. The only difference is she doesn’t choose it. But they won’t say her road is shorter than theirs. It is just that she will spend less time at this Earth station to spend more time at her next XYZ station longer. They are destined to stay here longer. But their gravity is not endless; they will be floating, one day. Everyone must get on their train when it comes.
You walk out of your bed and immediately caught in a chilly breeze. Yes, you hear it, a chilly breeze! In the middle of summer! A chilly breeze like a metal arrow shot onto the smooth honey skin – so smooth and hot the kind of skin baked in the tropical solar oven, attacks your sensation of touch. Trembling uncontrollably, you look no better than a frightened little chicken experiencing its first winter out of the warm shell. It is not winter yet. Nature’s making a fool of you in the middle of summer. A sly switch from 35 Celsius degrees to a 28 of the same standard could blow you into this state of shock. Shocked, certainly you are. Life is a bar of chocolate. Naive, greenhorn, baby faced, you are unready to taste other flavors of it other than the easy tasting yet boring sweetness. Well, it is not true. You did taste bitter chocolate. You are ready, but not to do it alone. But its time you got out of your bed and put your two feet on the floor. The room floor of summer is as bare as your feet. Your favorite Guatemala carpet was returned to its tranquil retirement in a box full of other winter stuffs, in your sister’s room which is no different from a storage. You feel the ground on your feet shaking a little bit. It scares you. Earthquake in your home? Weird, this is not Kobe! Or is it the electrical current that makes it shaking? Whatever it is, thanks to gravity, you are not floating.
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Ha Thi Lan Anh
This user has not written anything in his panorama profile yet.
|
Comments
jst appreciation mandira rana | Sep 11th, 2008
tht ws some heartwarming writeup....thanks for putting it online....prayers to you!
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
