Hi friends,
Happy Valentine’s day. I send you love in the form of a billet-doux.
If you love someone, why not tell them that?
Love, Love, Love,
X.Y.Zheng
Letter No. 23
J,
The deeds are done. I signed the contract.
Sitting at the coffee house on campus, I am watching youth evaporate around me: faces eager and tired, without one wrinkle or much doubt in sight. I looked at the building I will be teaching in. It is void of excessive beauty, and its brick wall will outlast everyone within this frame. And I took a deep breath to take it all in. I want to remember this moment.
The school offered me convenient housing options. I will be blocks away from the public library and the Morningside Park. A walk there one Spring afternoon would be lovely. Right now, I feel melancholy mixed with a low humming anger. Would all of this happen if you were here? Where would our life be? Would we have gotten married? Would I put on a dress and host a party? You are right: we will never know and we don’t need to. You’d give me that smug smile with the left corner of your mouth lifted. I miss you. I miss you always. Would it ever change? Would I want it to?
Melancholy is my natural undertone, and it became obvious without your presence. Step by step, I am walking towards you, and away from you. I feel it in my body. I am physically stronger. I have more emotional stamina to engage in challenging aspects of my project. I am building a rhythm, where the rinse-and-repeat tasks of being a working artist does not fill me with complete dread. Something is filling up my heart. I don’t know what it is yet.
A Chinese lyricist once said something beautiful about love (I am translating and adding my own interpretation) : Love is like the Fuji Mountain. It is always there in your heart. You can see it from afar. It is so beautiful and you want to move towards it. And you are scared, reasonably so; it is an active volcano after all. There is no right or wrong choice – moving towards the mountain, away from it, or staying where you are. Your heart forever yearns for that mountain because it is always there in your heart.
This is my way of telling you that you should learn Chinese so I don’t need to translate for you. Plus, we could read Tao Te Ching to each other. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Talk soon, my love. Your sister is calling me.
Hannah
