4/4/25 April, Autumn

In the bustling part of the city, on Santa Fe Avenue, there sits an old woman smoking a cigarette and sipping coffee. Her face wears the traces of time—deep furrows in her brow, a sharp, guarded gaze. It feels as if life has never treated her gently.

I was on my way to the Brazilian consulate, as the bus slowed at a red light, I caught a glimpse of her, and something inside me softened. I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly aware of the chill in the air. Late summer, early autumn—or no, autumn had already arrived.

I always say that autumn is my favorite season because I was born in autumn. The season paints Xinjiang in rich hues, creating layers of life during the transition between seasons. The poplar leaves cling to their branches, swaying and dancing in the breeze.  

Yet, in my memories, autumn has always been about goodbyes. It signifies that the vibrant summer has passed, and I, too, must leave. 

As a child, I never understood:  

Why must people who love each other part?  

Why is my life always filled with farewells and distances?  

Why do I never find a true sense of belonging?  

I cherish those weekend moments—our family sitting around the dining table, sharing a meal. Sometimes I feel that I have a heightened sensitivity to food, also, a deep connection to food, perhaps because it has always been one of the sources of love for me.

Yet, even in these beautiful memories, I vividly recall my younger self treasuring those moments, as if knowing they were fleeting.  

So, even though I love the wistful hush of autumn, summer is when I come alive—untamed, sun-drenched, a little wild.

It’s barefoot mornings, skinny dipping, cocoa drinks, mango, laughter that tastes like sea, skin glazed in heat and coconut oil.

It’s hot—scorching hot, melting hot, feral, flushed, full-bloom hot.

Around this time last year, I dropped to 50 kilograms. Normally, I’m 56.

I didn’t mean to lose weight. I didn’t even notice it at first.

There was no goal, no mirror obsession, no voice telling me I needed to be smaller.

But something had shifted. Slowly, then all at once, I became obsessed with food—not out of vanity, but out of control.

A strict, almost compulsive awareness took over. I began monitoring everything I put into my body. If I craved gnocchi, I’d worry about store-bought ones being unhealthy, so I learned to knead the dough from scratch. If I ate fast food, my mind and body would reject it—stomach aches so sharp they sometimes led me to throw up.

I wasn’t chasing thinness.

I simply couldn’t tolerate what felt “impure.” Not just in food—but in life.

My body and mind were rejecting things, people.

Especially the one who crossed my boundaries.

The one I didn’t stand up to.

The one who made me realize how deeply I had abandoned myself.

For a while, I was angry at myself.

Angry for not protecting my limits.

Angry for letting those invasions happen.

Angry for letting someone walk into a space they had no right to enter.

That anger, I think, found expression in the only place I still had control:

What entered my body?

So I became ruthless about ingredients. Everything had to be "clean", "right", "real".

I wanted purity.

But more than that—I wanted a boundary.

One I could enforce.

One no one could violate.

And maybe, it was also about punishment.

Maybe somewhere in me, my inner critic had grown sharp.

Sun in Virgo, Moon in Sagittarius, Ascendant in Scorpio—I never thought of myself as very Virgo. My house has never been perfectly neat, my thoughts jump from branch to branch like birds, and routines have never felt natural to me. I’m not always organized. I lose things. I forget appointments. I’m chaotic in both tender and strange ways.

So for a long time, I dismissed that part of my chart.

“I’m not a typical Virgo,” I’d say.

But astrology isn’t always about appearances, deep inside me lives a relentless voice. A mind that doesn’t know how to rest.

A quiet obsession with getting things right, even there's no one is watching.

And that, I’ve come to understand, is the most Virgo part of me.

Virgo isn’t just about tidiness and to-do lists. It’s also about discernment. A nervous system constantly scanning for what could be improved, what might go wrong, what isn’t “clean” enough—in food, in feelings, in the shape of a sentence. It’s the silent and endless editing.

Virgo energy, at its best, shows up as care, devotion, refinement. But when unbalanced, it turns inward—into self-criticism, hyper-vigilance, and a quiet fear of being imperfect.

That voice—“This isn’t good enough,” “You should’ve known better,” “Fix it before someone notices”—lives in my head like a metronome.

Steady. Subtle. Exhausting.

My Moon in Sagittarius wants to run free, to explore, to leap into the unknown and adventures. There's something in me that craves movement—ideas, places, possibilities. I’m drawn to the whimsical, the spontaneous, the slightly absurd. That’s where my creativity lives, dancing barefoot on the edge of something wild and beautiful.

My Scorpio rising gives me a quiet radar for energy, for truth. I observe with depth and precision, and once I see something no longer aligns with my values, I can let it go—cleanly, without hesitation. I can be intense, I can be direct, and I don’t pretend to tolerate what I’ve already chosen to walk away from. There’s a clarity in that—a kind of freedom.

But my Virgo Sun quietly keeps score， tries to make sense of the mess, and to heal by perfecting.

And I’ve come to accept that all of these is just me—

not pieces to fix, but patterns to understand, to soften into.

So when the voice—whether it’s from within or outside—says, “You should be handling this better,”

I pause.

Before I start questioning myself, I remind myself:

You are handling it. And you have been, all along.

Mori once told me,

"You’re handling it exactly the way someone with your history, your nervous system, your grief, and your beauty would."

"You’re not broken. You’re not too much. You’re learning."

More self-compassion.

Less self-criticism.

When life feels overwhelming, when our boundaries have been crossed and our hearts are tired,

we sometimes turn to what we can control:

What we eat.

What we don’t.

What we cook with our own hands.

What we shut out from the outside world.

Now, I’m softer with myself.

I still care about nourishment, but I’ve let go of the harsh rules.

I’ll eat something sweet, or creamy and rich, when my body asks for it.

I stretch. I move. I sweat. I rest.

I’ve come to see my body as a little me—a quiet amiguita I need to listen to, love, and protect.

Not just discipline.

I still don’t like processed food—because food is energy, and energy is love.

But I no longer need to punish myself with purity.

I eat to enjoy, to connect, to nourish, to be present.

And sometimes, I knead dough not because I have to—

but because I want to.

Not out of fear, not out of obsession with invisible rules or imagined chains—

but out of joy, choice, and love.

Two years ago, around late summer and the beginning of autumn, I began to feel a quiet but insistent desire to build a sense of home—not a physical place, but an emotional ecosystem. A community of my own.

I started learning Spanish since I live in Argentina (though I paused after half a year). I opened my heart—to dance, to meet people, to try new things by myself, like forro or drawing or ceramics, to little trips. Also to connecting with people I like, people I admire. I began to understand that my body and my mind are my home. That the things and people I love, the practices that bring me joy, the passions that keep me curious—they are my family too.

In May of that year, my ex was in Buenos Aires. I wasn’t drawn to him deeply, but I was in a soft, aching place—and he was there.

So I told myself, maybe this is what I need, maybe this could work, maybe closeness could feel like home.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Looking back now, I see a younger version of me reaching out, hoping that romantic connection might soothe something deeper.

And maybe that was part of the learning.

It was tiring—for both of us.

We did what we could, with what we knew.

But not everything is meant to last.

And that’s a kind of grace too.

It’s all in the past now, gently folded into memory.

I genuinely hope he’s living a calmer, more grounded life. One that feels true to him.

And as for me—

I’ve come to realize that home doesn’t have to mean a boyfriend or a relationship.

Home is me.

Home is the version of me who wakes up to move her body.

Who sits still in the darkness to meditate.

Who listens inward and pampers herself with gentleness.

Who sends her friends poems or spontaneous 15-minute "TED talks".

Who laughs loud and deep, and cries like her heart is splitting open.

Who falls in love with flowers, strangers’ dogs, and cozy cafés.

Who talks to the trees and whispers to rivers.

Home is my support system—the way I hold myself, and the way others gently hold me, in their own ways. 

It’s built from many small versions of me—like the tentacles of an octopus, each reaching, sensing, feeling, holding.

My routines, my passions, the people I love, and the quiet way I return to myself again and again.

That romantic relationship of course didn’t last. But the rest of it—my community, my curiosity, my sense of aliveness—stood firm.

It still does.

I genuinely enjoy my life as it is. It feels full, rich, textured—with love, solitude, movement, creativity, and the little rituals that make me feel alive. I’m not searching, not waiting. I don’t feel incomplete.

And maybe that’s exactly what makes me feel so free. The love I long for isn’t meant to fix or fill anything, but to meet me where I already am—in motion, in presence, in wholeness.

If one day a new relationship arrives—not to complete me, not to fill a home I once craved, but to bring each other more warmth, more light, more love into his/my already living space—I’ll welcome it with an open door.

I long to meet my person—not someone who mirrors me perfectly (I don’t believe in that), but someone with whom I can share love, support, safety, growth, exploration, and creation. Someone to co-create a safe and sacred space with—where our inner children are free to emerge, to be seen, understood, accepted, and loved. A person who will witness the different seasons of my life, just as I will witness his.

The kind of love I once chased—intense, blazing, unstable, like fire meeting oil—was born from my romanticism, my idealism, and my lack of self-awareness. It made sense then. I didn’t know what healthy love looked like, and I didn’t grow up with many references for it.

Also, what I longed for was the story—

the intensity, the beauty, the tragedy, the thrill.

I wanted love to be dramatic, unforgettable, and full of feeling.

But over the years, I’ve been learning to meet myself where I actually am.

Unraveling my patterns, my traumas, my defensive mechanism.

Learning that love is a practice, requires patience.

I no longer believe that commitment means stagnation or that partnership requires shrinking.

Having a partner doesn’t make life smaller—it can expand it.

There’s still so much to learn, to explore, to uncover—

both in our journeys and in the ones we might choose to share.

But I’m not searching, before this person arrives in my life, I am, and will keep building my own home.

April. April.

In The Waste Land, Eliot writes that April is the cruelest month—mixing memory with desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

He was speaking of early spring, I suppose. But to me, those lines belong just as much to autumn.

Autumn—my favorite season, and the most tenderly melancholic. It speaks in the language of farewells. It is the season of partings, of quiet transitions. Of lives shifting softly from one form into another. It brings with it a longing to hold on, to catch something fleeting in my hands—yet the more I reach, the more it slips through, like breath on a cold morning.

I love autumn for the coats I can finally wear—elegant, embracing.

For the rituals of slow, deliberate cooking.

For the way sunlight falls, inviting me to close my eyes, to listen inward with music in my ears.

I love pomegranates in autumn, those little gemstones.

I love the scent of wood and earth in the air.

The golden glow in windows at dusk.

The gentle breath of chimney smoke rising like memory.

I love the hush of home.

And I love how, under the moonlight, a passing glance at a lit window can feel like a soft reminder—inside, lives are happening. Imperfect, tender, loud, or still. Stories I’ll never be part of, but somehow, I understand.

With You Said by Fontaines D.C. flowing through my headphones, the sunlight climbs up my spine. I am writing on the terrace, and spotted there lie two fallen butterflies, their wings thin as faded letters.

I reach for a clay pot to bury them, but the wind stirs—suddenly, those brittle wings spiral in the light, dancing as if they were alive again.

It reminds me of the story of the Butterfly Lovers—Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai—two souls whose love defied the weight of tradition, who couldn’t be together in life, and yet became butterflies in death. I read that story when I was a little girl, not fully understanding why people in love couldn’t be together—but aching all the same. Now, I wonder—perhaps that transformation wasn’t just about escaping or separating.

Perhaps it was a quiet reminder that love, once stirred into motion, doesn’t really end. It shifts. It breathes elsewhere.

Not just in presence, but in the whisper of wind against skin.

In the choreography of wings caught in sunlight.

Some connections don’t need definitions, or endings, or even bodies.

They linger—like the scent in warm autumn air.

What if the connection isn’t always about presence?

I’ve always loved stories—not just about romantic love, but also about adventure; a stranger’s fleeting life; the quiet strength in a grandmother’s walk; a conversation with someone I love; a feeling that stirs in my chest; a butterfly’s death—or transformation; a mountain with a hidden fairytale in its folds; even the ones held in darkness.

And when it is about romantic love, I’m often drawn to the ones threaded with sorrow, with longing, with a kind of fragile grace that lingers long after it fades.

There’s something in sadness that speaks to me—maybe because it’s beautiful, too.

I don’t think that’s what I want right now—but I’ll keep listening to myself.

Keep learning. Keep exploring.

Let things flow.

Let what’s meant for me find me—through a mixture of fate, and the quiet pull of my manifesting.

In the end, I pull back my hand.

I choose to let them go—to let their delicate bodies dance with the wind, carried wherever they’re meant to go.

Maybe their death yearns for this kind of effortless flight—the breeze, an invisible safety net, lifting particles of shimmering dust through the foliage, until, somewhere, within the veins of a new leaf, the outline of wings starts to take shape.

I think that’s enough for today.

The air has shifted; I feel the season tugging at my throat again. A little cough, the kind autumn always brings.

I’m heading out to have dinner with a new friend.

We’ll pick this up another day.

Talk soon.