Written By Maren
May 29, 2021, 10:22 p.m.(7/23/1015 AR)
I contemplate the twilight. I have always loved the night's kiss to the drowsing sun, the labors of the day flowing seamlessly into the blossoming energy and creation of the night. Where the embers struck to light the evening lanterns or bonfires appear almost magical, dancing beauties in their own right. It is a time between worlds, and the time that when I honor my beloved ones lost to me that I have sent the missives on the water, candles flickering in their small boats, until the water claimed them.
I remember the first days of remembrance on a shore that felt wrong, smelled wrong, even the light of the awakening stars was all in the wrong placements. I am no longer ashamed to admit that the gusts of salt wind dried tears of fear and grief and loneliness on my cheeks as I sent light and boats for my brothers, knowing that I could not send letters. Would not see the familiar and distinct script of each of their hand in return. At first they were sent out of longing. As years went on, apology for dishonoring tradition. As more years went on, they were a bridge, a hope to instill some feeling of kinship and interest and connection in my daughter for a place and people that it seemed impossible she would ever meet.
Now my feet rest on familiar sands, though it is my body that feels wrong, grown older and weaker where the feet that once delighted in walking the water's edge were young and strong. It seems strange that I survive, without the ones I missed so much, as lost to me here as they were in Weijin. Sometimes our journeys mark us in a way that will not allow our full return, even if we never truly arrived at the first destination. And I must accept that it is not just me that wanders this in-between place, but I have my greatest treasure travelling her own roads within it, in a very different experience than mine.
Tonight, on this familiar and strange sand, with my present and memory veiling the sea calling to me, and the most beloved of cities behind me, I will send another little boat and light of remembrance to someone lost to me forever, across the waters. On this day of your birth, Beloved, how I yearn for just one more time to be greeted with your smile and your caress as the sun rises. But I also am buoyed by knowing of the lives we helped to shape and all the fledglings we nudged to take flight. Our joy in taking from the fires of our passion and our determination a spark that may grow into just what the greater world will need someday, if that is where her path will lead her. I think every day of the gift of being able to at least touch the lives of my nephews, nieces, and their children, knowing that you had a hand in it as well. Selfishly I wish that you were here to meet them as well; but I understand it was not your path. I believe the mark of greatest love to be the ability to take strength in the time that you hold it in your grasp, and to not dishonor it with the inability to keep moving forward along one's path once like all things in this life, it is reclaimed. Set free.
But still, Beloved. I cannot promise that there will be no need for the soft hand of the summer sea's wind to brush away tears. Of joy, for the very ability to stand here, now, certainly. But also of solitude. Uncertainty. Grief that lessens but surely will never truly disappear. And hope, that the strength that you helped build in me will allow me to build more, love more, guide more until my last breath. That, I think, is the legacy of love. May I help give that, to those yet remaining to me.
I remember the first days of remembrance on a shore that felt wrong, smelled wrong, even the light of the awakening stars was all in the wrong placements. I am no longer ashamed to admit that the gusts of salt wind dried tears of fear and grief and loneliness on my cheeks as I sent light and boats for my brothers, knowing that I could not send letters. Would not see the familiar and distinct script of each of their hand in return. At first they were sent out of longing. As years went on, apology for dishonoring tradition. As more years went on, they were a bridge, a hope to instill some feeling of kinship and interest and connection in my daughter for a place and people that it seemed impossible she would ever meet.
Now my feet rest on familiar sands, though it is my body that feels wrong, grown older and weaker where the feet that once delighted in walking the water's edge were young and strong. It seems strange that I survive, without the ones I missed so much, as lost to me here as they were in Weijin. Sometimes our journeys mark us in a way that will not allow our full return, even if we never truly arrived at the first destination. And I must accept that it is not just me that wanders this in-between place, but I have my greatest treasure travelling her own roads within it, in a very different experience than mine.
Tonight, on this familiar and strange sand, with my present and memory veiling the sea calling to me, and the most beloved of cities behind me, I will send another little boat and light of remembrance to someone lost to me forever, across the waters. On this day of your birth, Beloved, how I yearn for just one more time to be greeted with your smile and your caress as the sun rises. But I also am buoyed by knowing of the lives we helped to shape and all the fledglings we nudged to take flight. Our joy in taking from the fires of our passion and our determination a spark that may grow into just what the greater world will need someday, if that is where her path will lead her. I think every day of the gift of being able to at least touch the lives of my nephews, nieces, and their children, knowing that you had a hand in it as well. Selfishly I wish that you were here to meet them as well; but I understand it was not your path. I believe the mark of greatest love to be the ability to take strength in the time that you hold it in your grasp, and to not dishonor it with the inability to keep moving forward along one's path once like all things in this life, it is reclaimed. Set free.
But still, Beloved. I cannot promise that there will be no need for the soft hand of the summer sea's wind to brush away tears. Of joy, for the very ability to stand here, now, certainly. But also of solitude. Uncertainty. Grief that lessens but surely will never truly disappear. And hope, that the strength that you helped build in me will allow me to build more, love more, guide more until my last breath. That, I think, is the legacy of love. May I help give that, to those yet remaining to me.
Written By Maren
Sept. 6, 2020, 10:05 p.m.(12/22/1013 AR)
With nearly every wandering, a new memory is brought forth. Some leave the heart aching, but many bring a bubbling of mirth that is hard to contain. When I saw the young lords and ladies dancing this evening, I remembered the game that Lady Rosehips and I used to play whenever there was a ball, to see how many times along the pass I could make her partner's eyes turn my way, or vice versa. An innocent game, though I cannot say it didn't ever end up in a flare of temper. Though one thing I can say is that, Lady Rosehips, being of much more ample...charms, than I, was a very fierce competitor for the gaze indeed.
And another one whose journals I dare not seek out, not yet, to know if she too is gone. I will, when I am brave enough. But tonight, feeling the warm glow of a fine wine, and enjoying a cooling walk after the press of so many excited partygoers, perhaps once I got to the lonely part of the streets here and there I might have danced in her honor, and smiled to hear her triumphant laughter in the autumn night's wind.
And another one whose journals I dare not seek out, not yet, to know if she too is gone. I will, when I am brave enough. But tonight, feeling the warm glow of a fine wine, and enjoying a cooling walk after the press of so many excited partygoers, perhaps once I got to the lonely part of the streets here and there I might have danced in her honor, and smiled to hear her triumphant laughter in the autumn night's wind.
Written By Maren
Sept. 6, 2020, 2:32 p.m.(12/22/1013 AR)
This morning I greeted the dawn as once I did daily, before an altar made not of human hands and effort, but the relentless work of sun and tide, wind and rain. Weighed down not by heavy garments of mourning, but of something more light to capture each movement, the fan spinning up clouds and mist around me. If there was just a little more saltwater amongst the roll in of the fog and dew, I think it matters little. Even in motion, the autumn cold can still grab rudely at limbs, trying to arrest the steps. Just as it absorbs the heat from the sun, so too does it absorb the chill of the night, little knives and hidden rough stones to make fire bloom upon the sole. But to feel the first light of morning touch one's face, veiled in the waves and ripples of silk, is almost like the touch of forgiveness and welcome after a night apart. The whispered promise of another day to begin anew. When at last I fold my fan and make my bow, the wonder rushes over me, as I see my feet on the sands of home.
And I wonder, in time, if there will be others to dance the greeting with me one day, even here.
And I wonder, in time, if there will be others to dance the greeting with me one day, even here.
Written By Maren
Sept. 5, 2020, 7:48 p.m.(12/20/1013 AR)
Though I thought that I cherished quiet, once upon a time, and I do still enjoy that stillness especially at the night's most beautiful hour...I find that I greatly miss a very busy household, and my students.
I do not know if this was the same elsewhere, but regardless of the young people of promise that stayed for a time under Zixin's instruction or mine, within our household they shared meals at our table, helped with the every day tasks that come with living together, and until she grew too old for such things there was not a few times where some could be caught playing games with and suffering the endless questions and curiousities of our little daughter.
And while most who flew on strengthened wings to meet whatever next bend the path would take them, some precious few did return now and then, both as friends and honored artists and warriors in their own right, but also bringing their children once they were old enough. I have but one treasure of my body and blood, born of love and sacrifice, but many jewels of the heart.
I did not expect that I would miss them now as much as I longed for my brothers and family when I was taken in my youth.
Better to turn that ache into movement. Forward along the path, as always, until the next fork in it. Just as I will once more dance and dream stories onto canvas, I will receive with gratitude new jewels of Arvum, I hope. Just a few steps further down the path of embracing this new life.
I do not know if this was the same elsewhere, but regardless of the young people of promise that stayed for a time under Zixin's instruction or mine, within our household they shared meals at our table, helped with the every day tasks that come with living together, and until she grew too old for such things there was not a few times where some could be caught playing games with and suffering the endless questions and curiousities of our little daughter.
And while most who flew on strengthened wings to meet whatever next bend the path would take them, some precious few did return now and then, both as friends and honored artists and warriors in their own right, but also bringing their children once they were old enough. I have but one treasure of my body and blood, born of love and sacrifice, but many jewels of the heart.
I did not expect that I would miss them now as much as I longed for my brothers and family when I was taken in my youth.
Better to turn that ache into movement. Forward along the path, as always, until the next fork in it. Just as I will once more dance and dream stories onto canvas, I will receive with gratitude new jewels of Arvum, I hope. Just a few steps further down the path of embracing this new life.
Written By Maren
Aug. 29, 2020, 7:22 p.m.(12/6/1013 AR)
The fog of travel has still not left my mind; this voyage back to the lands of my birth has been the first time that I have had my feet upon a deck of a ship since I felt the one a lifetime ago break apart beneath them, and myself cast into the void of cold dark seas, accompanied by shouts and screams. I will not deny that is what I heard each night in my dreams the first week of sailing, waking with the taste of salt and blood upon my tongue.
But by the time we were on our second sail of this journey, with a new crew and a brief time in the port so that I could send my letters, some of what I remembered being so thrilling as a young woman returned; the feeling of the salt spray against my skin, my hair set in a frenzy. The captain was kind as well. A woman from Bravura, she said, along with much but not all of the crew.
Our first task upon embarking was to visit Mangata's shrine; the captain was kind enough to allow our chests to be held on the ship until their next sailing so that we had time to secure lodgings. Here we met some of the lords and ladies in the throes of the more carefree times of life, I think--with so many possibilities and pathways spread out before them. And then it was onwards towards the inn, and to send word to the Captain.
It is hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by the familiar sights and sounds and scents of a world a lifetime away and from which hope had dimmed of ever returning. This land is not strange, but I think it will be some time before in my heart I do not feel a stranger now. And harder still the sliver in the heart that is opening my eyes in the comfortable bed and reaching out to find the other side empty, my arms still aching to hold my love between them just one last time.
I do not yet know the fate of all of my brothers, or how much in the way of my kin, their children and perhaps even children's children remain to me, or if I will come to know them as I longed to do over the years--though I have no doubt that they thrive still, it is and always has been our way. But semi-stranger though I may be, this time I from the start I am not alone. The life of a foreigner is never an easy one--sometimes I wonder if it was the best choice to offer this path for my daughter now, and one that not even I can fully understand, with one foot in two different streams.
But we are here. A new path to find. I pray that I have chosen the right one to journey here. But I am more sure than ever, from the moment I stepped foot on the docks, that this truly is home, whatever I might make of that this time.
But by the time we were on our second sail of this journey, with a new crew and a brief time in the port so that I could send my letters, some of what I remembered being so thrilling as a young woman returned; the feeling of the salt spray against my skin, my hair set in a frenzy. The captain was kind as well. A woman from Bravura, she said, along with much but not all of the crew.
Our first task upon embarking was to visit Mangata's shrine; the captain was kind enough to allow our chests to be held on the ship until their next sailing so that we had time to secure lodgings. Here we met some of the lords and ladies in the throes of the more carefree times of life, I think--with so many possibilities and pathways spread out before them. And then it was onwards towards the inn, and to send word to the Captain.
It is hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by the familiar sights and sounds and scents of a world a lifetime away and from which hope had dimmed of ever returning. This land is not strange, but I think it will be some time before in my heart I do not feel a stranger now. And harder still the sliver in the heart that is opening my eyes in the comfortable bed and reaching out to find the other side empty, my arms still aching to hold my love between them just one last time.
I do not yet know the fate of all of my brothers, or how much in the way of my kin, their children and perhaps even children's children remain to me, or if I will come to know them as I longed to do over the years--though I have no doubt that they thrive still, it is and always has been our way. But semi-stranger though I may be, this time I from the start I am not alone. The life of a foreigner is never an easy one--sometimes I wonder if it was the best choice to offer this path for my daughter now, and one that not even I can fully understand, with one foot in two different streams.
But we are here. A new path to find. I pray that I have chosen the right one to journey here. But I am more sure than ever, from the moment I stepped foot on the docks, that this truly is home, whatever I might make of that this time.
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