中秋节快乐

I love the mid-autumn festival, the mooncakes and the myths, the lanterns and the lights... Mooncakes and lanterns mean get-togethers, doing the same things you've always done as a child, because tradition decrees it so. And I like it that way. The wave of nostalgia, easily recalling memories of night strolls and scavenger hunts back in Rosyth, playing with candles with cousins who have since grown distant, dragging out the tiny round kiddy table to assemble matches and candles and lanterns and mooncakes out in the garden with my grandpa, my parents, and later my brother. It's that odd, homey feeling that these seemingly unrelated occassions bring. Almost like national day. National day makes me think of my grandpa, too.



It's different now, most part of it, but the feeling still remains, that little tug of sweet familial warmth. I still find delight in lighting candles and pulling up the sides of the paper lanterns, watching them glow and flicker prettily in the moonlight, in a collective row. I think my mum likes it, too-- she's the one who hangs them up in position and stands back to admire her own masterpiece =) And it really is very pretty, once everything goes up.



It's quieter this year, as it has been in these couple of years, yet, clearing up the remnants of the paper lanterns and candles alone in the dark, after the noisy little one took off to bed with mum, I thought it quite lovely, still. Sitting alone out in the quiet garden, noises from the living room TV an insignificant mumble in the background, scraping bits of wax off the chairs and watching the last candle flicker in the cool night breeze, you get the incredible sense of present-ness. The here, and the now. No longer, like it is with all of us, every waking moment of our lives, what's next, what do I have to do now, what comes after this, but... a quiet, slow pause, unhurried... what is, now, what is, still-- just pausing, and being. How often do you ever get to do that? To feel yourself in the present, and not shoving yourself towards the future, or wallowing in the rosier memories of the past?

But I digress. Must move back to the topic at hand, and round it up so that I can go off to bed ^_^


Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, people =)