3/1/26

This year has only just begun, and yet I already feel like I’ve sneaked ahead a few times, collecting several small highlights.

There are a few more highlights from the end of last year that I want to write about on their own.

But for now, I’ll start with last night and today.

While they’re still warm. While they still carry sea salt and the scent of fruit.

Last night I was home alone, and I started painting.

It had been a long time since I’d sat that quietly, slowly pressing emotions out of my body, a little at a time, and onto the paper. As I kept painting, I realized I wasn’t really painting what happened. I was painting what I felt in that moment.

One of the paintings is for Lucy.

It holds our New Year’s Eve, the way every being has different sides, the fireworks, so bright, so extravagant, and also those thin, hidden undercurrents of emotion beneath it all, sometimes surging, sometimes quiet.

It’s also about how I see her.

Sunny.

Sincere.

Radiant.

Warm.

Like a beam of light, so gentle and steady that you don’t even have to try, you just naturally want to move closer.

I keep thinking about how we met. It was at a party at our mutual friend Uli’s place. A friend’s kid pulled her underwear over her head like a hat. Everyone laughed, and then the moment passed, like those things usually do. But Lucy and I laughed for, I swear, twenty whole minutes.

And then, just like that, we became friends.

So fast.

So obvious.

It still makes me laugh just memorising this moment.

Yesterday afternoon I saw Lucy.

We found a place to sit and we talked properly, slowly, like we both had time. She told me about what she’s been feeling on her recent travels, and as I listened, my eyes got unexpectedly wet.

I didn’t rush to respond.

I just listened.

Later we gave each other a big hug.

Not a polite one, a real one, the kind that brings you back into your body, back into the present.

When I got home, I ended up talking with my roommate, I can barely remember what we talked about in the middle of it all. But at some point the topic turned to intimate partners, my doubts in myself, and he suddenly looked at me and said, “Shikin, you’re a really complete woman.”

“You have an open heart,” he said. “You’re hungry to explore. You have an adventurous soul. You’re free. You’re effortless. You carry so much love.”

“The way you look at the world is artistic and delicate, you’re always creating, even when you’re just cooking. Give you half an hour and you’ll come up with a hundred ideas.”

“And the way you talk to plants, you’re an artist already. Your work is deep and beautiful.”

“You reflect. You’re funny. You’re real.”

“And you are so, so much more than just pretty,” he added. “You have too many qualities to count.”

He paused, “Now listen, if you ever choose to have a partner, it has to be a man who is truly secure in himself. A man who knows himself well enough to stand beside you without you shrink yourself to match the other. A man with whom you will be nurtured. A man with whom you will keep expanding.”

I didn’t know what to say while he was speaking.

The feeling was strange.

It wasn’t the thrill of being complimented.

It was more like someone gently pulling you out of your worst spiral of self doubt and saying, I see you, and you are not as broken as you think.

I felt so moved.

And so grateful.

Honestly, my roommate and I have been talking a lot lately.

Really a lot.

One day we talked until after midnight, and then, on a sudden impulse, which was honestly only my idea, we got on a motorbike and rode up the mountain to Mirante del Pedrão to watch the sunrise.

While he was putting on his helmet, he looked at me and said, “Shikin, you know you’re really crazy, right?”

I laughed and said, “I know. You are too.”

He paused for half a second, and then said, “You’re right.”

Anyway, last night we got impulsive again, and decided to go with his friends to an electronic music concert. Before we left, I pulled out every last thing in the fridge, his leftovers and mine. Vegetables, beef, spring onion, ginger, garlic, whatever was there. I threw it all into one pan and made beef and veggie stir fried noodles. That feeling of taking care of life before stepping out felt so grounding. We ate, and then we went to party.

It was at a bar called D Edge. I heard it started in São Paulo, and then they opened one in Rio too. The lights kept flickering. The bass felt like it was knocking from underneath the floor. There were so many people, and the air had that thick, sticky texture that only exists in a big city after midnight.

And I was high all on my own.

No alcohol.

No friends or men.

Nothing.

Just me.

I was truly dancing for myself.

People flirted.

People came close.

But that night I only wanted to give my body to the music, to the rhythm, to that freedom that needs no explanation.

My roommate watched me and laughed like he could not believe it.

He said, “You’re just drinking water, and you’re having more fun than so many people here who are taking drugs.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

We danced until six in the morning.

When we finally got tired, we left.

Back in our neighborhood, I checked the time and said, “It’s six thirty. The weekend street market nearby should be open, right? Let’s go see.”

It was still raining outside.

My roommate and the driver both tried to talk me out of it. They said it was way too early, that the market was probably still setting up, probably not even open yet.

The driver pointed at a row of stalls in the distance and said, “Look. There’s only coconut.”

And suddenly I blurted out, loud and proud, “Yes, I like coconut!”

My roommate looked completely defeated.

The driver laughed, but he still drove us over and dropped us by the market.

So there we were, wandering through a local street market in the rain. The ground was covered in water. And yet the fruit stands looked almost unreal, their colors so bright, like the rain had washed everything cleaner, sharper, more alive.

We bought a lot of fruit.

On the walk home, I started picking up flowers and leaves again, like a child who simply cannot stop. And then I saw an enormous snail, slowly making its way along the side of the road.

It was not rushing at all.

And it would still arrive.

Back home, I took a shower and collapsed straight into sleep.

Today I saw Gui and Shanti.

They were at the beach.

From far away I spotted Shanti sitting near the tide line. I felt so happy seeing her, she had already left for Minas Gerais and said she would only come back in March. We were not supposed to have another chance to see each other before I return to China, but suddenly she came back to Rio for one weekend, like the sea deciding to give me one more hug.

We hugged, and my heart softened right away. The ocean wind carried salt. The sand under my feet was a little cool. In the distance someone was playing football, someone was running with a dog, and the voices selling popsicles and coconuts floated through the crowd. It felt so everyday, so Rio.

I have always felt there is something precious between Shanti and me, a kind of sisterhood.

Not only the loud, sticky kind where you are always attached to each other, but more like a quieter kind, the kind where you know the other person is holding you in their heart. The care, love, and attention she gives me makes her feel like an older sister I met too late. We love so many similar things.

A way of living that stays present.

Finding beauty and magic in tiny details.

Learning to give ourselves love, and learning to give love outward too.

Sometimes we are talking and we both stop at the exact same moment and laugh, like we just understood the same hidden joke.

Later Gui and Shanti danced on the sand, and I sat nearby writing.

My pen made a soft scratching sound on the page.

Every now and then I looked up at them and thought it was so beautiful.

Later Shanti and I met in the water. There was not much sunshine that day, but the water was warmer than I expected.

She handed me a nose clip.

She showed me how to play in the water, how to put my face under, how to spin in the water, how to dive down hard and pop up on the other side of a wave. I copied her.

At first I was a little clumsy, then we started spinning in the water, dizzy, and when we came back up we laughed like two little girls. We laughed like the world had shrunk down to only water and light.

At the same time we felt like two fish.

After that, the three of us began contact improvisation in the water.

The feeling was so magical.

The water takes away part of your weight, and you can be held without effort.

Underwater it is quiet, only heartbeat and bubbles.

On the surface there are waves and laughter.

We come close, we touch, we drift apart, and we come close again.

No explaining, only feeling.

When a wave comes we roll with it together.

Our bodies get pushed away and then returned.

That flow is not skill.

It is trust.

Trusting the water, trusting each other, trusting ourselves.

Later we caught waves together.

I succeeded three times.

In that moment you get lifted by the wave, like the world is pushing you forward.

Sometimes Shanti and Gui held me up together.

I lay in the water drifting around like a leaf.

Then suddenly a wave would come, and Shanti would use her hands to send me onto the foam, like she was handing me to the sea.

So much trust.

So much love.

So many beautiful wishes.

So much presence.

The sea was warm that evening.

The sun sank slowly in the distance.

The sky deepened little by little.

We floated there.

At certain moments I had a strange illusion, as if the three of us had become one.

Or maybe it was simply that we were all so present that the boundaries felt less important. We blended with the waves, with the sunset, with everything around us.

And sometimes we each did our own thing.

I danced and sang in the water by myself, sometimes underwater, sometimes above the surface.

My underwater singing sounded ridiculous, and I laughed at myself.

So many times we thought we were about to say goodbye.

Shanti said she needed to meet a friend, but the friend did not reply.

I needed to meet Lau, but her bus was delayed.

So we said goodbye in the water again and again.

Each time it felt real.

We hugged, we said see you.

Then the plan still did not happen, and we laughed and returned to the water.

That kind of repeated goodbye feels like wave itself.

You think it has ended, but it has not.

The sea always gives you one more wave.

In the end we really did leave, but the three of us left together.

We bought popcorn.

It was warm in our hands.

Our hair was still wet, our skin still carried salt, and there was still sand on the soles of our feet.

We walked, we ate, we laughed, we sang, and then we took the metro together.

When I got home I was exhausted.

I took a mango from the fridge and brought it into the bathroom. It was cold, and in my hand it felt like holding a small tropical heart. I took a hot shower. Steam rose quickly, the mirror blurred, the world softened, the edges became less sharp.

I ate the mango under the running water.

The first bite burst with fragrance.

The sweetness was direct, full of life.

Juice ran from my lips to my chin, down to my chest, and then the hot water washed it away. Hot water moved over my skin.

Mango juice moved over my tongue.

I could feel the texture of every chew.

The fibers of the fruit pulled apart gently under my teeth.

Sweetness and a little bit of sourness took turns inside my mouth.

In that moment I was not rushing.

I was not thinking about anything else.

I simply stood there, breathing, taking a bite, pausing, letting the flavor stay.

Letting my body know she was being fed.

For that simple feeling of being alive.

Water ran over me.

Juice ran over me too.

I felt cleaned.

I felt nurtured.

I felt softened by sweetness.

I am too sleepy.

I am going to sleep now.