Saturday we took Maomao on a trip. It was a gorgeous day outside the window, as the bus made its circles around towards the mountain top. When the bus made another turn, the oceans below sprung into view. You can look into so far in the distance where the clouds dissolved into a veil of mists even though it’s a perfectly sunny sky, and when the sea held in its blossom such a blueness its became an entity living and breathing, a kind of transparency that is so substantive, so indisputably existing. I pointed out for Maomao a yacht that was cutting across the surface of the ocean with spreading white waves like an intentive stroke of water color that soon dissipated into the fibers of the canvas, and found he fell asleep on my lap, holding on to me with his arms and legs like a baby koala sleeping on a tree trunk. I instinctually stiffened my posture, and looked out of the window again. I silently breathed the scenery into me, encompassed it and internalized it, understood it, and pressed it into Maomao’s mind through my chest where he rested his chin. He will see the vastness of the ocean and sky in his short nap, internalize it and understand it. And in my mind I played Beethoven’s cello sonata, let a shudder washed over me, and thought what a miracle that Beethoven had anticipated this moment, when we are together here. And I also remembered Rilke:
We can go this far, this is ours.
The gods can press down harder upon us.
But that’s gods’ affair.
Wang Maomao 