a new year

At this cusp in time when the old year fades into the new, one is oft to slip into wistful reflection. Many of my acquaintances and friends are getting engaged or married or having children and moving on with their "adult" lives while I seem to float about like a wisp of cloud not willing to settle. I am envious of those who have found the other half of their heart and who have settled into white picket fences but yet there is a part of me that throws arms wide out into the wind to be carried away by the whispers of lands unknown. I follow the piper. I choose the mountain.

This past year I fell in love with Paris and experienced the beauty of India. Ever since I was in grade school, I have dreamed of those two places. It was everything and more. And then on a day trip to Brugges I saw a field of daffodils. There are perfect moments in my travels that can't be captured exactly on camera but I remember every detail in the picture the mind takes and carry it throughout life... like the splash of flower pots in a dusty hutong alley in Beijing, the blue sky reflected in a still puddle in Tibet, the indigo sunrise silhouetting the trees in the plains of Kenya, riding a bus in the vast vast desert of Mongolia with a little girl asleep on my lap... And the daffodils.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such jocund company: I
gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And when my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

~William Wordsworth


Bruges, April 2009