Day 2 - Toan

4 January 2009
Tereza

"[Tomas] suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost." 
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

"I don't learn love," she said, tracing her fingers on the wet tea bag hanging on to the rim of the cup. Too petite for the winter, she wrapped herself up in a brown silk scarf and a black jacket, both made for the winter fashion but too thin to keep anyone warm. There was always a trade off between comfort and style. She always chose style, and always style with dark colors. 

"I have loved, and love has hurt me, but I refuse to love differently. It is the way I am." She was the most stubborn girl I knew. She did not give into her instincts, even on that night when she let me kiss her beautiful breasts and run my hands over the sacred parting between her legs. I could never forget the feeling on my palm that night. Never had a girl emanate such warmth between her thighs without me ever touching her. And never had a girl refuse to kiss me when both her hands were finger-locked to mine, on the intimate space between her hair and my pillow. And thus she had never ceased to be on my mind. 

She knew me more than most women had ever known me. Knowing my dream, she made me a guitar pick that said: "Give peace a chance." Knowing my imagination, she bought me a blank canvas with a letter hand-written on the back. Knowing my taste, she sprayed her perfume on a page in our little shared diary. Never had I shared a diary with a girl, and never had I written as much for a woman. (Well, maybe except for another occasion, or maybe two, but those would be in another story.)

But she was stubborn. She didn't give in. However love usually needs a little bit of giving in, not as much to the other person, but to yourself. You give in by letting yourself fall a little bit. But uncertainty scared her, and I was too hard-headed to notice that. Two stubborn people were probably not meant for each other.

"Remember Tomas, you will always be the special sputnik of my life." 

After dropping her off, (yes, dropping yet another woman off on the second day of this 30 day journey) I taped the picture she gave me  to the wall behind my laptop. It was a photo of her in front of Monet's "Soleil Couchant" (Sun Set) in a Parisian museum. It read: "To Tomas, <3 tereza." 

She would always be the little Tereza, sent to my front door in a bulrush basket, in a river of soleil couchant colors. Soft and warm. And that was enough to make me happy. Time for a new love.

Phan, #2