December, 2010

I've been so tired these days. Working, studying and travelling back and forth in the cold without knowing when the train will come in heavy snow days.

As usual, I think I'm a happier person than the crowd in the stations, rushing toward trains after announcements from somewhere. They even served coffee and tea for free to compensate for customers. I also took one, something tasted sour but just to keep my hands warm. There were lots of people with luggages heading to the airport. I heard a man talking on the phone saying he's on the way; or else the next flight would be tomorrow morning. In this very ordered country (the Netherlands), when there's a fault in the system, everything becomes a mess. Perhaps people in developing country should think of their advantage, there won't be lots of things bothering since they already have mess every day. This is not Icelandic volcano, but somehow, it reminded me of people, who cannot get on planes, to be at home with their family. Or just whatever reason, they have to stay in a foreign country, in the cold, with their plan destroyed.

Sometimes, I wonder where should I be to welcome 2012. Perhaps the best thing is to be with family, in my warm country. I missed a lot the 'coolness' of the winter in my hometown, when my mom had to take out the winter clothes from the big closet. We don't have heater in Vietnam so you have to wear sweater or anything, at least two layers of clothes every where, every time. I remembered the happy days when I stayed on my parent's bed, with the blanket that made you cold when you touch just it, reading books. I remember the days when there was water all over the city, when my father had to take me to my high school. It was warm getting back home, having food in the kitchen with the amber color.

It's funny that sometimes I cry because I'm tired, mostly mentally tired. It's normal to cry when you miss your family. Or just that sometimes, I'm tired because I don't see me with a free soul, that I have to be attached to work, study or sometimes just be attached to this world. Yet, to me it was beautiful to cry for others. I don't know if I will ever forget the days in the forest, somewhere in Arnhem, I had the urge of making my best providing the opportunity for the children. If it is to live for others, to me it's always worth it, and so to live meaningfully, joyfully and beautifully.

somewhere in 2010

It's end of October, soon to be winter. It feels cold and chill getting out of the office.
Sometimes I still recall the first day when i was back in Vietnam in August. I no longer hung around dowtown (district 1) to live in the richness. I slept in a fourth-floors house, a decent one, near 'kenh Nhieu Loc'. My boyfriend grew up in the area where he made friends to all kind of people, someone even living in prison now. Somehow it is just me that I refuse to see the other angles of life. To me, life had been pink, had been everything that positive. I still can't write much about some rare moments.

It's funny; the more I get older (not mature, I dare not say), the more I don't have any opinion of things around. Since things will change, or my opinion will change. I still have no experience to make conclusion out of existing things and the existence.

Four years ago, at this time around, I used to write a lot, out of love, out of sadness, out of my own observation and feeling. It was a luxurious time for me.
Jazz makes you swing, jazz makes you do not think about other things, if you only listen to it.

Delft, September 2010

I was in Delft yesterday, one of the rare days which is not in the weekend. It was nice that I walked alone, not taken on a bike by my boyfriend as usual. It was a bit chill, not very cold indeed. It was like in Hanoi when the city is going to the winter, but not really. Hanoi gives me a better impressions of the coldness, without wind but something go slowly but deeply into my body. The coldness here is much more, of course, if it's winter. But something that we can live with, something that only lingers on the skin. The wind can hardly go deep inside, unless it's a storm.

There were not so many people from the station on the way to the bridge. It's right in the city. There's been a lot of people in this country, unless it's Amsterdam. I remembered the day when we were back here, from Vietnam and Singapore. We were happy indeed since it's peacefulness, it's the place where we don't need other people look at to feel superior, to dress up but something that we can feel deeply inside, what we are and how we can be happy, on our own.

Delft was bright yesterday with the amber light. It was enough to see the city. It was much more than enough to see the big Old Church. It's always there even though it's not straight. At that time, when I saw the church, felt the air, it was like I was in 'the girl with the pearl earrings'. People were passing by. They are on a bike, or on foot. There was a car helping me to realize that I was not in the seventeenth century with Vermeer anymore. I had felt happy, thinking I was in a book. It's been quite some time ago when I'm not busy to feel happy with myself.

I feel lucky that happened once in a while.

old friends

And then, suddenly one day I realize how far I have been away from my friends. Just one day I heard that she's been engaged and is going to get married soon, the one who appears to me to have no change, and all her life is like a lake, with no big waves. How far I had been aware myself that some of my friends are no longer friends, after high school years till now, 7 years. Sooner or later, it would be 10 years, with no difference. But in 3 years, people may have changed very much, and love and marriage sometimes only needs a few months to make it happen. Didn't I realize that I have been away from my friends, sharing nothing, hearing nothing from them while managing and living my own life? When I was younger, a few years ago, I was glad to be in the open world, to make more friends and to know more people. Now, suddenly what matters is the closed friends that I had. The ones whose houses I dropped by almost every day to go to school together, whose I ate breakfast at her home, whose house I had to stay over because of the floods, whose I know their families, parents, grandparents, cousins,...

I blamed them for not keeping me posted with their lives. They probably don't know my life either, and the ones whom I have concern about. Now, I seem like the person who doesn't have that much growth and change, watching my friends and their lives going by, disconnected.

Am I no longer the person they can share their lives with. Standing in Herengracht, I wonder if we are still the same, because they no longer share or know my life. Distance, with its unawareness divides people apart, or just they themselves go further away from each other. I questioned my life being here; yet now and here, it is my life, the life that I am aware of my happiness when I'm alone, or when I have someone to hang around with. Here and there, it is perhaps my life and different lives that are different. Somes are destined to be there, some are born to go, detached or connected, life keeps going.