The road is ever winding

hope all is well and amazing and splendid for you

have a lovely day/night!

okie by

Hi hi

I don’t post often but I always enjoy seeing your content pop up on my feed. Going through some days but it’s going to be alright.

Hope your days are full of hope and happiness

How can you climb with fear of heights?

Ok so I think my great great uncle had a protagonist halo

Never met the guy or anyone from the Japanese side of the family (which I didn’t even know existed until a few years ago??) but yeah my perspective has been changed significantly

- Bro was the eldest son of the first wife, but wanted to pursue his own interests in MATHS

- DISOWNED by his father when he did not come home from university to take up the lucrative family business

- ran away to Japan (which was ruling Taiwan at the time, so he had at least some knowledge of the language)

- got found by a SAMURAI???? Who then took him in and supported him???? And yes samurai were warriors but they were also nobility, somewhere around the equivalent of a baron I think

- said samurai found out that bro was extremely talented in maths, said samurai then asks him to tutor his daughter in maths

- he and said samurai’s daughter FALL IN LOVE

- they get married as cherry blossoms bloom 🌸🌸🌸

- the rest of my dads side of the family hardly talks about bro bc he was disowned and also possibly because my great grandfather was born to the second wife

- but somehow my grandfather stayed in contact with them??? And goes to visit that side of the family in Japan sometimes and takes pictures with the blooming cherry blossoms?? 🌸🌸🌸

- anyway TLDR; disgraced and disowned eldest son runs away to pursue his passions and is sponsored by nobility, falls in love with the noble lady of his sponsoring house, they get married and live happily ever after underneath the cherry blossoms 🌸🌸🌸

dreamer, mother teases as i beg a kè more before waking

the comforting tides of sleep recede after one last halfhearted tug

i'm sad to see them go, my mind stranded in the harsh waking world once more

that which i dreamt of slipping through my grasp like water

but i cup my hands to hold the very last precious drops

and feel my hands close around the smooth bamboo handle of a paintbrush

which i'm certain i did not own before

dreamer, mother admonishes as she hustles me to work

my imagination won’t fill our bellies, no matter how many warm and fragrant bāozi i dream of

and even if we could afford to buy ink, we can’t eat pictures painted by it

she has a point, so instead of asking her where the paintbrush came from

i leave to catch fish for our dinner and the market

these waters wink at me, told by their kin of my predicament and laughing at it

cold in both amusement and temperature in the dark before dawn

only the tickling of the bristles hidden up my sleeve to tell me that the brush is real

dreamer, i can almost hear mother sigh as i'm entranced by sight of the horizon

the sky lightens in anticipation of the sun, color coming to the world as it begins to rise

in that magical moment of beauty i imagine sailing to the edge of the world where the line of the sea meets the heavens

bottling the nascent hues in a gourd vessel to capture the pigments

but i have no boat and can only stay on the shore, waiting in the shallows for fish to bite

still, i take the paintbrush from my sleeve and dip it into the waters

an impulse, a longing, a dream

strokes that will fade in less than a shíchen on the soon to be sun-warmed ground

as i paint in the dirt with nothing but water, my hands tingle in the chill of early dawn

dreamer, mother laughs as i tell her that what i painted came to life

i could scarce believe it myself, even as i saw the frog i painted leaping into the waters i used in place of ink

and yet now i'm sure, as i lift the brush and paint for her a single bāozi

she stares as it becomes real with the final stroke, picking it up with trembling hands

when i urge her she takes one hesitant bite, then another

it is warm and fragrant and real

it can fill our bellies

i'm already painting more

i'm a real painter now, i tell mother, now years later

my work is bought for no small amount of taels these days and we have enough money to buy all the brushes and inkstones and pigments i want

i still keep the magic paintbrush tucked into my sleeve

sometimes i still wake up before the rooster calls the sun into the sky

to sit on the shore, even though i have a boat

watching colors bloom into existence where the line of the sea meets the heavens

imagining myself sailing to the edge of the world, bottling the nascent hues into a gourd vessel

dreamer, mother smiles