Beautiful sunny days

Of all the journeys you've been on, the freest feeling is probably standing at the top of a high slope. The sea on your left, hills on your right, and in front of you a long, endless road with wildflowers blooming white on both sides.

You remember the slight chill of the morning. The mist hasn't lifted and the sun is only just peeking out from the clouds. The sky over that road is wide and high, stretching far into the distance. You feel like a grain of sand in all that vastness.

Beautiful scenery. Beautiful sky. A light breeze and now and then a drizzle. But sad.

The saddest feeling is speeding recklessly down a long road without knowing where you'll end up, or who will be waiting. Deep down you know there will be no one, just road, trees and sky, and yet you still want to keep going. Saddest of all is the empty seat behind you. Sometimes you just wish someone were sitting there, holding you tight, or telling you to slow down, that going this fast is dangerous.

Such an ordinary thing to say, yet some days you'd give anything to hear it, and no one says it. You just go on. You just go on and listen to the wind singing all along the way.

Everyone wants to roam, you think, but everyone is also waiting for a companion. You know how sad it is to stand alone in front of a beautiful view with no one to share it with. Sometimes you take out your camera and snap a few photos to post when you get home. But a camera can't capture the soul of the sea, the trees, the leaves, the wind. A camera shows you the facts. It can't tell you about the dozens of kilometres it took to get there, can't smile, can't give you the smell of grass still damp with dew or the sun starting to pour onto the road. You have to go to feel those things. You have to live them to keep them for long. Beautiful photos, neat frames, only show a part of it, never the whole.

Often you want to go, on a long trip. But you're afraid of the emptiness behind you. You turn around and there's no voice, no warmth of another person, just a strip of sunlight running from the top of the pass to its foot, down to a wide, empty lagoon. It feels like heading towards no one, towards being alone.

What if, just what if, something happened? Probably no one would know you had ever existed. Or you would stay forever in some nameless place, while sun and rain changed the seasons and your name sank into oblivion.

You don't want to travel like that. You long to ride with crisp laughter behind you. You long for days of walking hand in hand down a wide, empty road. You long for a tight hug from behind on stormy days by an unfamiliar sea.

But so what if you long for it. You can't expect too much of the present, or carry the present into the future. Life is a long chain of one thing after another.

Maybe you'll go again. Alone, probably. Or, with some luck, you'll join a long journey with a group of strangers. It won't feel the same as sharing an old motorbike with someone from the past, but at least it won't be sad, and you won't be alone.

The sun is still out. You keep going. Behind you is still an empty space, golden with sunlight. But at least you're not alone. That is enough.

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Phong, 14 September 2022
First published in Vietnamese on Phong is writing. English translation for this site.