Open-hearted joys 開開心心 № 13

Capturing the tiny details of my everyday mundane and the moments that weave poetry to my days.

Happy Friday, my loves!

Good books, bad luck, moods everything in-between; it’s been A Week™ in the Book Café. After a soul-tonic, relaxing Sunday in London with friends last weekend, I’m finally starting to feel my mind, body and self click back into order. While I love January, I’m not always in sync with the 1st for a full-on reset, and I’m sure many of us aren’t, to be honest. Perhaps it’s because Lunar New Year is en route and I am oh so excited to sink into our family celebrations and traditions for Chinese New Year. Or perhaps it’s just that a solid few weeks of hibernation do do you some good, just like nature intended.

Before I dig into my gratitude list for the week in hand, I wanted to extend some extra gratitude for the overwhelming love I’ve had on Sunday’s post – ‘Invisible Woman’ – as well as for this series, and my Iceland photos. I keep wondering whether to pull back from more personal posts here, but they’re a nice buoy amidst the bigger essays I share. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

There’s a lot to be said for appreciating the smaller, not necessarily finer, details of the everyday mundane. Here’s to another list of little, open-hearted joys, the moments that’ve brought and woven poetry to my days, this week.

一. The soft rustle of book pages turning. The delicate and distinct scent of book pages. The comforting weight of a hardback book cradled in your lap. The crackle in your mind as sentences become scenes, paragraphs become parry. Books are such magic.

二. After-work babble sessions with my sister. We’ve only got one more week of living together, and I’ll miss returning home from the office ready for a hot tea and the hot tea from one another’s days.

三. Moody, freezing fog hanging low and thick on the horizon.

四. Time with friends. We feasted on Chinese hot pot, browsed (and bought) books, chattered away, admired art, and had a grand time traipsing around London.

五. How deliciously unique every frost formation was during the cold snap. Sure, I might’ve been too cold to function (or take photographs), but it was just a delight to take a pause, crouch down, and admire how ice made a fresh rendition of each blade of grass, each succulent petal, each branch. (Even my windscreen wipers! There, I had to snap you out of the romantic nature vignette!)

六. Pasta for lunch.

七. Snug mornings with my dog, pottering around the house together.

八. Quietude. In a world desperate for our attention at every moment, it is bliss to simply sit in near-silence with a tea wisp-ing steam up to our cheeks, a fire gently crackling in the background, appreciating the stillness of time, even if only for 10 minutes.

九. My boyfriend is home from his trip!

十. The many, many conversations I’ve had with friends about TikTok, its ban and its immediate comeback. I’m not on TikTok but I was for a few months, years ago, and I am a staunch anti-TikTok person, not least for the attention span problems but also for the misinformation. Debates lately have included, ‘do we love TikTok more than we hate Trump?’. Hey, I’m not on there.

Share a joy from your week in the comments, and I’ll see you again next Friday.