My birthday is in winter.

On December 9th 2005, I was born.

It was “the best day of my life.”

I love to feel, and my life allows me to experience things, to touch the water bottle next to my bedside, to see the beautiful garden outside my windows, to smell the slightly strong candle scent in my dorm room, to hear the loud exploding sounds of fireworks, to taste spice from all over the world, to interact with people, to have genuine conversations, to travel, and to be myself.

I experience devastation, anger, and helplessness very often, and music helps me cope.

Honestly, I am glad to be where I am,
“Right now, I'm just happy to be alive.”

Spring, for me, is ephemeral. Spring is a rush of ecstatic feelings that won’t last - but I wish it would stay forever. Spring was before high school, before worrying about colleges, before all pain. Spring is an infant-like, innate happiness.

Spring means putting on headphones, traveling to my favorite french concession coffee shop in downtown Shanghai, and immersing myself in 70s Japanese jazz while sipping perfectly brewed coffee.

The song - カーリーとキャロル - from Shigeo Sekito’s album (the world ii) perfectly epitomizes such feelings. Every time I listen to the exquisitely constructed melody with woodwind instruments, I am dragged through space and time, to my hometown, to where I was born, and to where I grew up. A few years ago, this song brought me pleasure. Now, this song brings me much more than simple pleasure; it brings me a feeling of home and a desire for my family to reunite again.