Tossing the suitcase into a corner of the room, I collapsed onto the hotel bed with my pristine white sheets, exhausted after a long day wrestling with work to reach this distant island nation. Phu Quoc, with its quiet sea. The waves murmured outside the window, a lonely bird called from a solitary corner of the sky, someone cast a net near the shore while a rock jutted out forlornly in the sea. In the corner of the table, Dido’s voice was singing about a “life for rent” – I haven't ever really found a place that I call home.
I gazed at the plain, white ceiling, barren, reflecting on whether its life was like the sea foam drifting to the shore, destined to vanish one day. Not old enough to contemplate vanishing, yet sometimes curious about what it would be like, knowing only that in the present, I deserve nothing more than I get cos’ nothing I have is truly mine. A telephone rang, the melody humming: Hold me, just hold me please don't ask me where I come from. It wanted to let the phone ring, to let the afternoon sun gently stream in, but its deeply ingrained consciousness forced it to answer because that was the life it had chosen and liked. Simple as that. The daily grind – such is life!
The scent of the sea began to drift into the small room, the distant, primal fragrance of a Phu Quoc that was once wild, now half-torn by tourism. My olfactory senses immediately brought the hotel name to mind: Hương Biển – Sea Breeze Hotel. A hotel intrinsically linked to the sentiment of an owner who did not belong here – not to this Vietnamese land – yet came and stayed, adopting me as a second home. And itself... where was its shore? – Sounds cheesy and nonsensical. Knowing this, yet why did its heart still feel... adrift?
I had traveled, visited the sea many times, but often the waves of the ocean made my heart sway when contemplating many things, outside the sunset dipping towards the sea gate. Not waiting.
I've always thought that I would love to live by the sea. To travel the world alone and live more simply. I have no idea what's happened to that dream. Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me.
Nothing left here to stop me, not even the lingering afternoon sun in the sea's melody. The fading light stretched the lighthouse's shadow long across the water, the lonely Dinh Cau Temple watching the birds fly by. Then the twilight sank behind, Dinh Cau melancholy in the fading afternoon, welcoming the rising moon, the wind catching the hair of a girl, making a boy dream eternally far away. Distant.
Then the lights began to twinkle at the sea gate, where the squid-fishing boats returned at night, transforming the mundane into entertainment for tourists. People delighted in the novelty of this activity, their laughter crisp in the darkness, only occasionally seeing a few small children with wide, round eyes, unable to grasp why these people were so amused when their parents struggled to do this every day just to get by. Strange.
I didn't want to sit indefinitely at Dinh Cau, staring at the solitary lighthouse long forgotten, standing alone as if imprinted on a faded photograph of time. A distant spot in the sky held a bright moon, dotted with a few stars, creating a serene and evocative scene.
I turned its back to the sea, letting the wind pull at me even though my footsteps were already lost in the shadows of solitude. I hated this deeply aching, melancholic setting reserved only for throbbing hearts. Sweetness was never for the lonely one.
A temporary life – or a borrowed life, I didn't know. I only knew that tomorrow I would return to the city, back to the crowds surging along a familiar road, so routine to me faded from memory unnoticed, only occasionally recalled and recorded by others. I would be the same.
I suddenly remembered the English nomad I met in Thailand. He carried his backpack across every path on this earth to fulfill his moments of ecstasy. A homesickness that spread across an ashtray full of butts, only letting his soul loose in moments of privacy. I liked the freedom I glimpsed in a stranger, from a distant European land across an entire ocean. I liked that freedom and let myself drift... normal as the waves out at sea, though knowing that someday it too must crash ashore.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét