Midday sun - a memory

Sunny noons in life

Somehow I always feel that noon is the time when humans and nature have a strange connection. People are easily sad during the noon nap, people are easily happy during the noon nap. Noon is a companion, people can easily shed their worries in the impermanent emptiness.

How many ordinary afternoons like that are there in a lifetime? But the dream of a summer afternoon would never be complete without the sun calling out longingly on the kitchen roof, along the dike, hanging lazily on the red-ripe rivers, panting and filling a sail.

To me, the midday sun is like a country conductor who glides along, passionately playing his flute and kite, and sometimes like a talented artist performing an installation with magical shades of light and dark. Who says the midday sun doesn’t have a soul?

Just think, if on the road of life there is a time to hide your soul under a roof of a temple in a foreign land, it will not be a morning, a late afternoon but will be a quiet, sunny afternoon nap, full of anxiety like when you absentmindedly pour a glass of water. How can you not be confused? The noon sun, that is when the hustle and bustle of the homeland is rummaging through your heart.

Perhaps that is why the midday sun often evokes memories, hidden chains, footprints of people leaving, and strands of hair returning. The sun creeps into memories, scorches love, sings folk songs, rocks hammocks, the dry yellow sun of the homeland, the sun fills the mother's heart. Who can remember how many sad stories the sun has, how many joys the sun has, and which noon is a ridiculous noon?

There are times when I suddenly return to my childhood, the sun is so quiet, the sun is so impulsive, the sun hides in the noon so many times the sky is entangled. I breathe in desire, I drink in passion, I ripen the roads, no one knows, no one cares, only the noon sun silently accompanies.

If your noon sun is a peaceful rest, then the noon sun is still there, spending countless lives struggling in deserted alleys, on familiar streets, wandering the roads and fields like a debt of life without a word of complaint.

Crystals of the Sun

Every day the sun rises to the top of the sky, at noon it whispers burningly to me, I feel thirsty again, looking back at the colorful childhood. My paternal hometown is poor. The noon sun is as hot as the embers in my grandmother's stove, the salt fields of my hometown are as white and sharp as a steel knife. When I see my uncle carrying a rake to the salt field, I say something carelessly: It's too hot... My uncle turns back with a dark smile: It has to be sunny, if it's not sunny, the salt will cry. At that time, I thought salt was a difficult child, people had to cherish and coax it.

Indeed, I have heard the story of my brother carrying salt to sell, in the middle of a summer afternoon, he died of exhaustion when climbing a slope and had to dump some of the salt because he no longer had enough strength to carry. Oh the sun! Oh the salt. The noon sun burned into his skin but could not scratch a single painful wound.

May cuts sweetly into the sky, the sun from there bursts out muscularly. Quynh Thuan - Quynh Luu has long been known for the most salt fields in Nghe An, but is full of smiles at noon, smiles that steal the sun, smiles like the bitter salt on the tip of the tongue but secretly sweet and fragrant deep in the salt life.

For generations, Quynh Luu salt farmers have loved salt as they loved their own fate. The dry fields at noon are sharp with salt crystals, wind crystals, countryside crystals, and sunlight crystals. Even though salt has often been unfair to those who created it and suffered for it. People hold a bowl of rice and remember the sun, the wind, and the summers of the fields.

May is also the month when the sun grows on the salt fields of the poor countryside. At noon, the sun reflects on the salt fields, in the afternoon, the sun falls on the salt fields, and the salt workers pour their souls into the salt mounds that keep growing higher and higher, no matter how high, they are as small as the hills of their hard-working lives.

I was stunned when I suddenly thought of a kind of sweat crystal. Sweat crystal is also salt. Sweat crystals hurt the scorching midday sun, the shapes like smoke rising and blurring on the beautiful salt fields like a blessing.

In the midday sun, the salt fields in Quynh Thuan - Quynh Luu are like multidimensional illusions in space, shimmering with joy, like a large stage where the artist makes the most of the refraction effect. People have to strain their eyes in the middle of the salt fields, if they squint their eyes, their hearts will ache, the hearts of the salt life.

The story goes that…once upon a time, there was a king who gave birth to three princesses. He loved and pampered his children and always wanted them to affirm their love for him. He often asked his children if they loved their father, and what precious thing could that love be compared to? The first two daughters often answered that they loved their father like gold, silver, diamonds, like the sky, like the sea. Only the youngest daughter, the most beloved, answered: I love you like I love a grain of salt! The king was angry and chased his youngest daughter out of the kingdom. Then…

I read that fairy tale when I was a child. It has been in my memory, which has too many things to sort out until now. And so many memories of salt, of my coastal countryside with lots of waves, lots of wind, lots of sunshine. So when I hold that pure white and hard color in my hand, I remember the salt fields, the backs of people bent into question marks, the hats to block the bright sunlight, and salt, the sky-white salt.

The water of the ocean and the sun of the sky. Humans are as small as a dot in the vast space. Sweat pours down for the saltiness. Oh, how heartbreaking is the sound of selling and exchanging salt. Salt is considered the cheapest thing in my hometown. Sometimes one lump of rice can be exchanged for more than ten lumps of salt. The bitter, heavy taste of salt sinks into my morning dreams, because the people who sell and exchange salt are always the ones who wake up the earliest to go to many areas in the district.

How many times during the poor meals of my childhood, I was angry with my grandmother for stewing food, just a little bit of food but adding too much salt. How many times, she scooped up a pinch of white salt into her rice bowl to save the last braised shrimp for me. “You eat, I’m used to eating salted rice.” There was something both painful and beautiful when thinking about those grains of salt from the past. I cried to see that there was always a salty taste in my tears.

Where there is memory, there is love

So there, the noon sun is not noisy, the noon sun is not chattering, the noon sun is dozing in the middle of my childhood. Where did I dream, where did I go... that place where there is a patch of ten o'clock flowers, the sea sun bursting salt into the sky but the branches and leaves are still green, the pretty buttons are still purple.

Really, it must be sunny, sunny, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, steaming, or else the salt will cry. Salt is a difficult person to please, that’s why it’s salty. Don’t ask why it’s salty. There are my brother’s tears on the narrow roads of a thousand miles.

Funny, the midday sun is always associated with the dream of making a living. That is why the midday sun is a picture that the earth and sky paint with a thousand depths, where there is only silence. Who says hard work is not beautiful? The young ladies, the young men and women, the young people who crave virtual life. The sweet people who come to check in on the salt fields of my hometown, does anyone have an answer?

However, the midday sun is my friend. It helps my memories not to be damp, not to be moth-eaten, not to be foul-smelling whenever I remember the salt days, the salt life. Where there is sun, there is salt. Where there is salt, there is memory. Where there is memory, there is love.

The sound of a chicken tearing through the noon will make you startled. Where are you, past or present, future or just layers and layers of thoughts? I say, close your eyes and let the noon sun caress you, and listen to the salt sing on the fields of mirrors.

Honestly, I am an ungrateful person, because since I grew up, far from my homeland, far from the salty taste of the fields, buried in the cycle of rice, money, food, clothing, and fame, I have forgotten the noon sun and salt fields of my hometown. But when I suddenly remember to look for memories, they are still the same, fragrant like the sunshine, cool like the wind, the salt is sweet like a lullaby to the burning thirst of summer.

Who moves in the wind, who weaves through rivers and lakes, who smells in the trees and grass, who is in the darkness of light and dark, and me, can I melt into the sun? That midday sun. I don't want salt to cry... because in my blood and flesh there is the image of salt.

Fairy tales usually have happy endings.

The youngest princess returned with a basket of salt, when the whole kingdom was in trouble because people could not eat bread without salt. The king, lying on his sickbed, surrounded by many delicacies, seemed to be dying of hunger. The small grains of salt saved his life and his punished kingdom. Only then did he realize the heart of the youngest daughter... The youngest daughter was so smart and delicate. She knew the value of that seemingly ordinary grain of salt. She wanted to tell her father: People cannot live without a grain of salt, just as I cannot live without my father. Salt is so close to people!

Love the grain of salt to know that the youngest princess deserves the throne that the king gave her, because those who can see far and wide, who can hold great destinies, must be the ones who can recognize the value of small things. Love the grain of salt to know that true love is so close and simple. Love the grain of salt to know how profound our ancestors were when they told each other: Ginger is spicy, salt is salty, please don't forget each other! To understand why sweat and tears taste salty? To see that the sea water and sunlight have gathered into that pure white and hard-working grain.