Light on water creates a string of shimmering pearls. You try to get closer to catch their movement, but all you see is your own reflection intertwined with shadows of aquatic creatures. A cloud descends, swallows water pearls into its embrace, and cradles by the gentle sway of light. One spring day, clouds fell asleep, and water’s reflection on the high mountain melted the snow, leaving behind a mottled trace of a river dappled with sunlight.
As the snow melted, it left behind puddles, the puddles assembled to be a lake. Lake became the mirror where the mountain clouds could look at themselves once more. A silent circle holds countless invisible stories through the passage of time. Water is the eye of nature.
Ink is the concentration of personal scattered stories, hidden behind a veil of treasure. Diluted on paper, these stories gradually reveal themselves, whole or only slices.
Early artworks may have been painted by the ocean. Darkness in the deep abyss carries breath of a soul, while hands of the waves etch salt minerals. Walking along shallow shores, you will encounter countless round stones with random patterns that change over time, never the same.
Children pick up these pebbles looking like seashells. An old person gazes at the stones, imagining the ages they have witnessed. No one asks about the meaning of silence.
The stories told by ink in human hands are in contrast not so contemplative. Like a stone that stirs water, the moment we recount our feelings, we do with trembles of a teenager confiding with a secret hollow tree. The amount of live stories revealed are decided by one’s bravado.
Stories in this collection are all so ordinary when I began writing on the main topic, I felt it would be better left unsaid. Consider this the end of all ramblings, here we begin with the body. Regardless, the body will still be brief, and the conclusion will still circle back to ramblings anyhow.