On Solitude: Last Dance
Study shows people tend to be more analytical and objective while performing tasks in their foreign languages. Therefore I’m writing in a foreign language so as to draw a distance between myself and my thoughts and emotions. My mother tongue is Taiwanese and Chinese. I’m proficient in English, currently learning Bulgarian and I speak like a three-year-old. Sometimes being unable to communicate is killing me softly but if you’re willing to be an outsider, you will get to see something special, something you can never see while busy swirling in the crowd, not just the surroundings but also about yourself.
Tsarevo is a strange little town. Somehow with eight thousand miles apart, I feel like home while being in Tsarevo. Home is a bittersweet concept; somewhere you long for but can easily get you hurt. I guess it must be the saltiness in the air. A smell so familiar yet can sting your eyes or coarsen your hair if you stay too long. I came from a city where you can never be too far from the sea.
I grew up listening to Wu Bai. If you don’t know who he is, let’s just say he defined what does it mean to be a “Taiwanese Rock Star”, a man who strums the electronic guitar with all his charms and sings with a poetic heart. He would sing about how the big glamorous Taipei city filled with concrete buildings overwhelms him, who comes from a small town. Or when you fall in love, you would dare to visit the graveyard at night because, with love, we become so bold. He would sing about foreign lands; how he would say goodbye to his loved one. He would sing about being a man of steel; how he would wipe out his tears when he turns around. Almost every song is a hit. That’s how I grew up: you charm the world with struggles and hidden tears; you turn them into something beautiful.
“A real observer must remain a foreigner in his writings.”
She smiled when our eyes met. She was in the backseat of a car, looking out the window when she spotted me. I was on the bus, covered with a mask. The temperature in Sofia city was high. She had nice blonde hair and a pair of funny glasses. She waved and I waved back; the kind of wave only children would do. The lights turned green and her face left my window. Moments like this always make me happy. I’ve been calling Sofia home for ten months; this is the longest I’ve been away from home. It’s precious because it’s new. So new that I feel like a child most of the time. It’s precious because I cannot re-feel it again. If you ask me what’s the best way to make out of your own way in a foreign city under a pandemic, I have to tell you a good solid seven years of solo travel definitely helps. People tend to ask me how do I feel about this new country, new life, new destination where I pin down on my taxi app to go home. I used to think it’s quite romantic to roam around the world, like Echo, one of my favourite writers, who made her name by writing her stories in the Sahara Desert. But now I don’t think romantic is the right word. If you read her words carefully, life in Sahara is filled with struggle and somewhat battered. But she collected them piece by piece and wrote them down. Just like how she collected her furniture to put in her tiny apartment and eventually turned it into an artistic harbour where you can call home. That’s the romantic part; even when you’re battered, you create something out of it.
I don’t know how to do many things but somehow I know I need to move and I need to write.
“There are times I feel like no matter how fast I run, life will always be faster than me that I cannot see every face clearly, I cannot taste their skin, I cannot feel everything. How do I feel, you asked.”
How can we measure life?
I’m collecting life and put it into words. The most powerful symbol in human history. How can we measure life? With moments when people remember the things you’ve said in a world where people talk too much and listen too little. Moments where your friend shouted at the party crowd to leave you alone because “she’s a writer” when you told her you really need to write something now. Moments when something turns you soft, your shoulders lower, your thighs untightened. Moments when she knows without you saying it. Moments when you’ve been looked after. Moments when a kid waved at you. Moments of kindness. Moments of humanity. Yes, I think that’s what it matters.
It has been a great year. I mean it. It’s not sarcasm.
People access dreams with occupations. They ask what is your dream and you answer with something you want to be. But life isn’t to be; life is being, full of dynamic. Because we have learned it the hard way that to be or not to be can change within a second. I don’t want to be anything; I just want to know how to maintain a life I like, how to know what I want, no matter what happened. The point is not to know who you are; the point is to know “how to know who you are.” There is something magical about writing. Where you can be as precise or sloppy as you want it to be. Where you can write a wall, a world or a war. By moving, reflecting, writing, adjusting, slowly, you put yourself down in recognizable lines. Step by step, you start to recognize yourself.
“At the end of the day, after the frustration has faded, tears have dried up, a mild warm feeling comes up from my heart and spreads to the rest of my body. How can we measure life? Maybe with this. When everything fades away, when there’s nothing left, you’re glad of having youself.”
It has been a great year. I mean it. I guess it’s out of necessity to move and write. When you need to chew on what you’ve seen and felt. When you feel like there’s something more to discover. I’ve written more than 60,000 words since I left. Some are nicely structured and some are mumbles but mostly because I was learning and I still am. I am learning how to deal with life and sometimes it can be overwhelming. But there are magical moments; moments that remind you why you’re being alive, why all of this worths something.
It has been a great year because I’m still alive and doing the things I love.
And I think that is all that matters.
