September, the 28th. Riverfire Night, my last.

A moment was unfolding right before me. The spectacle of a night I told myself I would trade my nights for. A year-long wait now a minute away, the closest I’ve ever gotten to see it.

I would have liked for this to be it: the defining moment. The one I’d been hoping for. And that I’d be the person I was hoping to be by it.

But here is a moment, come unfolded before me: the night sky alight with the explosion of coloured embers; the whole city amassed at its feet as they have been for hours just to celebrate this. Here is a moment, us sitting in the grass, picnic mats our cushion, the coveted front seats on the stretch of the river bank, one of the best views of the night then ours for the taking. Here is a moment, a girl, enchanted, eyes glistening, heart racing, looking up to the celebrated of the celebration and witnessing, in its unfolding, the wonders of a moment.

And how, in the entirety of this one here, nothing is like what I had hoped for it to be.

I am still not the person I had hoped to be by it.

And then the moment passes.

Hushed. Breaths held in its wake before the applause comes in; the audience a riot of laughter and conversations while they shift in place, hustling and packing - all this the commotion of slipping back in to life as is.

And it is these moments that become unfolded: starkly different, in the face of what had once been. Nothing so definitive about them. Ephemeral. Mundane, even.

And yet we fall into the motions of it all the same. Letting ourselves be carried by them - moment by moment by moment. Clumsily, sometimes, with a tumble and a rush to get to the other side. But otherwise with a leap. A fearless leap; a jump taken just to be embraced in the depths of it all.

I would like for it to always be the latter.

To look at each moment before the fall and want to jump in. To be in the front seat watching the spectacle of them as they happen - the defining and the mundane. To be carried in the depths of the many wonders of each and every moment right as they come unfolding before me.

---

this is the fourth Riverfire Night I had the opportunity to witness. I had written two different accounts of my experience with Riverfire night for two years in a row now. this being my last one, I felt like I owed it to myself to make the most out of the experience. so I wrote a third.

but the night (and the day leading up to it) didn't live up to my expectations - I didn't live up to my expectations. writing about it was much harder than I thought it'd be: it took me a while to come to a place where I could look to the experience and find something meaningful to write from it. a few other things I thought would also be momentous happened within that time frame - all of which did not turn out the way I had hoped. but funnily enough? I was okay with that. I was more than okay, actually. I was content with the experiences I had as they were. I was content that I was present and living in the moment of them happening, rather than just letting them pass me by just because I was wanting more from them than what they had to offer.

and maybe that's all I need sometimes: to be able to live in the moment as it is even if it might not be going the way I want it to. to let myself be present in the seemingly small moments for the sake of actively participating in my life. I might not look back to the big events in my life in the same exact way I had hoped for them to turn out but I would like to have something to look back to all the same. that can be enough for me, over not having something to look back to at all. so this is how I hope to move forward: embracing each moment as they come and as they are.

speaking of what it means to embrace each moment that comes by, big or small, christy's video hits the mark exactly. she shares the sentiment and expresses it beautifully in her video.

How about you? When experiences don't turn out the way you had hoped, how do you best move forward?

With love, Iween

🎕

I got a fortune cookie the other day that said to “keep waiting for the right moment”. 

I hadn't known this at the time, but waiting for the right moment for me looked a lot like making rounds in plant nurseries and flower stores, trying to find a perfect potted one to bring with me.

For a week, my watch has been left ticking away two hours behind, and I’d leave it sitting on my shelf that way instead of setting it right. And until a few days back, I’d left my bed unmade throughout the day, knowing I’d crawl right back in to it come midday. My suitcases are still sitting in my room, reminding me of the time I had left them there the whole semester the last time I was here because “I would be back home soon enough”.

Just a few ways I’ve been rebelling. Just a few ways I’ve refused to settle.

Little did I know that the Sunday a week in to the semester, I would be buying myself a plant.

It almost would’ve been a bonsai, a stunner I couldn’t hide my awe for. But caring for her was complicated, the shopkeeper tells me. Wires, pruning, shaping and the like. I want to jump right in, I think. But I’m setting her down on the cart where she came from again, thinking that I’m ready for her, knowing well that I’m not.

It also could’ve been an orchid, one with a promised bloom come Summer’s day. She’s a delicate one, but also tough, with shoots that have sprouted already. I’d have a flower over the next few weeks, I think. But she needs repotting, needs a better home to cozy into and so I walk away.

The one I end up carrying home in a tiny cardboard box at the end of the day of looking for something I hadn’t known I was looking for, is an African Violet. Ready a water dish and fill it in once a week to care for her, the shopkeeper tells me. I think of the patterned pink dish I have in my room, waiting for a purpose. And this little plant, with a sweet white flower peeking out and another one on its way, might just be a perfect fit for it. I’d like her for the semester, I think.

And it is a semester long that I’d have her for. And I'm looking at her and I'm realising that a semester is not too long to go, now. But it is just about the right amount of time, I think, for her to settle. 

The right moment, I think, for me to try.

I'm a ways away from settling and finding my footing again, but the Sunday I went out with a few friends for market food and finds and came back with a plant to care for, was a start. And I cherish metaphors on flowers and on how we can, similarly to them, grow. So coming back from our little trip, with bonsai's and orchids and African violets in mind, I wrote this piece and found that my search for 'the right flower' was in so many ways, alike to my searching for the right moment to feel at home with myself again. (A song I've been loving for a while comes to mind as I write this).

My African Violet has since bloomed another flower, but I'm still learning my way around the best way to care for her and help her grow. Along the same lines, I'm learning my way around the best way to care for myself and help myself grow, too. What stage would you say you're in right now, in the way of a flower's stages of growth?

Are there are any flowers for the taking that you would like to share, too? Stories or videos or quotes that you feel are related to this piece? Share them with me in the comments; I'd love to hear from you!

With love, 

Iween

🎕

What an odd thing, strength is. Many times over, I had to reacquaint myself with it. To how it looked on me. To how it felt. And nearly each time I did so, it was here.

Here, at the end of a parking lot's cul-de-sac, where a set of concrete stairs lead down to a park overlooking the river; here, where the stairway is shouldered by patches of green with benches sitting lone under the shade of towering fig trees awaiting the hearts that come along occasionally in search of a little bit of quiet in nature's company. 

I was one of the looking hearts. And it was here that I came to at the end of the day that I had spent alone in my room, pouring over notes scattered over the bed, to come out and find in the mail a freshly delivered package of a blank-paged book, a set of stickers and in their midst a note that would later be opened and read and loved and kept, folded into the pages of a hefty journal and creased from countless revisits and rereads.  

Strength, I had learned that day, at this quaint riverside park, was many things that came in many different forms. And they were no more a stranger to me than this park was. Strength, the park and I: we were all, by then, very much acquainted with one another.

I just hadn't quite realised it yet.

It was here that days before a looming deadline, I had cried on the bench, feeling hopeless and ashamed, pleading for things to turn around. It was here that the day I turned twenty-two, I had sat curled into a ball in the rain, wishing the thunderstorms and promised rain-clouds away. It was here that I came to at the end of long, busy days and at the start of slow, lonely mornings.

These moments, little did I know, were moments that strength came through for me: each time emerging differently, redefining itself as something new but soon, not so foreign to me.

In the days before a looming deadline, strength was to fall short and to surrender to tears that were long held in and let, at their falling, a chance to put my trust in Him and to see clearly again. In the day I turned twenty-two, strength was watching lives play out at the other side of the river where a lady ran for thirty minutes and ferries merrily made their way, even in the gloom, even in the rain. At the end of stretched out days and the beginnings of slower mornings, strength was to breathe, to slow down and to be still.

Strength was to cry, to let go, to live, to live, to live.

And it has always been there within me. Sometimes I am only a park, a moment, a breath away from meeting it. 

With love, Iween

🎕

My sister held up my shoes and looked at the pair of them curiously; head tilted, an eyebrow raised. "They're really light," she said, tossing them so that they landed on the tiled floor by my feet. 

"Of course they are," I said, smiling as I put them on: black and white checks fitting snugly around the yellow-beaked penguin socks that I wore.

"Light as if you're walking barefoot," Babu said from the side, looking at my shoes in the same wonder that of my sister. 

I walked on my toes, and offered her a curtsy. "Or like a ballerina," I said, an image of young me in a baby pink tulle tutu springing up in mind.

Light like a dancer, nimble and filled with grace.
Light like I'm floating, moving weightlessly through space. 
Light shoes-

"To keep my steps light," I whispered and the words sat settled before me, fitting snugly in the space of the moment, like the pair of chequered shoes wrapped around penguin-padded feet - a reminder to myself to always choose to step lightly on these uneven ground.