The train's rhythm was a lullaby of steel on steel, a relentless song that had long replaced the whispers of the wind in bamboo forests. Outside the window, a sliver of a moon, thin and wan, hung above the endless gray sprawl of a European city. A different moon, I thought, a stranger's moon. My hand traced the condensation on the glass, a fleeting touch of a world I was only passing through. It was nothing like the moon I knew, the one from the poems and the ancient scrolls, the one that had witnessed a thousand mid-autumn festivals.
That one, oh, that one was a painter's perfect circle. A luminous pearl spilled across the night sky, so full and so bright it didn't just illuminate the darkness, it chased it away, leaving the world bathed in a soft, ethereal glow. It was the moon from the poetry my grandmother would hum, the one about the lady in silk, her robes trailing like clouds, standing on a carved balcony. The poem my mother had read to me, the one about the graceful form, motionless, watching that same moon, lost in its light. I used to imagine her, this classical beauty, her face a perfect oval, her expression one of profound stillness. A kind of stillness I had never known.
My life, my whole life, has been a series of movements. A shift of weight from one foot to the other, a packing of bags, a one-way ticket, a new city, a new language, a new and temporary bed. From the quiet courtyards of my childhood home to the bustling, anonymous streets of London, the endless art galleries of Paris, the breathless verticality of New York. The wanderlust was not a choice, I think. It was a current I was born into, a restlessness in my bones that found the stories of stationary beauties in silken robes to be as foreign as the names of the streets I walked.
What did she think, that woman in the painting, that lady in the poem? A thousand thoughts on silent wings take flight. What thoughts? Did she dream of a world beyond the garden walls? Or were her thoughts as serene as her posture, as contained as the embroidered patterns on her sleeve? I would give anything to know. To feel that kind of peace, a peace that comes from being precisely where you belong, from a harmony between the self and the world. But my harmony is in motion. It's in the blur of city lights, the unfamiliar sound of a foreign tongue, the adrenaline of being lost and then found again. It's in the knowledge that every day, I am a stranger. A fleeting ghost in a place that will forget me the moment I'm gone.
I remember my grandfather's garden. A pond with lotus flowers. The soft lapping of water against stone. That's where I first heard the stories. Stories of scholars who failed their exams and wandered the mountains, finding enlightenment not in books, but in the solitude of nature. Stories of lovers who met under the full moon, their destinies sealed by its light. I absorbed these tales, not as a history, but as a blueprint for my own life, albeit a distorted one. The stories were about leaving, about not staying, about a path less traveled. But I misinterpreted them. They were about a spiritual journey, a return to the self. My journey has been geographic.
It's a strange kind of loneliness, this wanderlust. It's not a sadness that you can cry away. It's an emptiness that you try to fill with new experiences, but you only realize it gets bigger. You go to a famous cathedral, stand in awe of its towering spires, but you're just a tourist. You don't know the whispered prayers, the history of the families that built it. You eat street food, its flavors a beautiful assault on your senses, but you don't know the name of the woman who cooked it, or the story behind the recipe. You are always on the outside looking in. Always, always an observer.
I am the opposite of the woman in the poem. She is still, and I am in constant motion. She is rooted in a culture, in a place, and I am a leaf blown by a restless wind. I've been a student, an artist, a temporary office worker, a volunteer. I have had a hundred different identities, none of them my own. They were all masks, worn for a time and then discarded. And now, as the train rattles on, the sliver of a moon seems to mock my restless soul. It is a reminder of all I left behind, of a stillness and a belonging I will never know.
But maybe, just maybe, I am not so different from her after all. The poem says "a thousand thoughts on silent wings take flight." Maybe she, too, was a wanderer, but only in her mind. Maybe her body was still, but her spirit soared beyond the garden walls, over the mountains, across the seas. Maybe her stillness was a necessary cage, a way to contain a soul too big for her time and her place. Maybe my constant movement is just the outward expression of the same internal flight. Maybe we are two sides of the same coin: one bound, one free, both of us gazing at the same moon, and both of us dreaming of a place we can never truly reach.
The train slows, groaning into a station. A new city, a new name, a new beginning. I stand up, grab my bag. The moonlight through the grimy windowpane feels a little less cold now, a little less foreign. It's the same moon, after all. The one that shines on the lotus pond back home, on the old stone walls, on the silent woman in the poem. The moon is my only constant. My only home. And as I step off the train and onto the platform, I feel the familiar pull. The wind whispers a new story, a new direction. And I, the wanderer, follow. My thoughts, on silent wings, are already far ahead, soaring under the moon.
--- moongazer
