Most mornings for me lately start with a playlist of Eric Nam‘s music. I hum as I cook, do dishes, pack lunches or walk around the house. The lyrics take me to places I haven’t been in a long, long time. They wake up parts of me that have been sleeping for decades. I imagine the speck of dust dancing in the air, getting swept up in the drift and circling into the eventual core.

I love words. I have always loved them when they come together beautifully transporting me across space and time.

Also lately, I have been drawn into the vortex of asian dramas. Korean, Mandarin, Taiwanese. The languages change, the words don’t make much sense but I feel the emotion, the nuances, the stories enacted on my screen. I feel things. I cry sometimes. Mostly though my smile stretches from ear to ear.

Of the ones I have watched recently, there was one particular scene where the man proposes to the woman. They are alone. There is an intensity to his eyes, a precision to his words and intentionality in body language that left me thinking. Growing up, I dismissed the idea of grand gestures in love wanting to believe that the life that came after the grand gesture was what mattered.

In the sameness that is the daily grind, the feelings that once felt overwhelming get buried, sometimes never to see light of day. The aliveness that once oozed out of every pore seeps out with each day, leaving a shell that is an automaton. So, when I vicariously live through characters on screen, I sometimes wish that I had gotten to experience that one moment of intensity, one moment of clarity, one moment of intention so it could have carried me through the rest of my life.