Familiar little corners

Have a place to go and to remember

It was a small room with many glass windows overlooking Luc Nien Street. The street was just like a small alley. We often invited each other whenever we were happy or sad: "Hey, let's go to Luu's "den". There, there was a 27-year-old guy, who had been in a few relationships and was still single, opened a small guitar teaching and selling shop, ready to open the door to welcome us even at late hours. And under the warm yellow light, among the clutter of guitars silently hiding their sounds, we sat on the carpet, drank a glass of wine together and took down any guitar, and sang. Luu would patiently sit and play the guitar with a calm look, not looking at all like a typical 9X.

“Luu’s lair” gradually became a gathering place for “lost and wandering” people, wanderers, loners, or people who were too excited. A journalist for a major newspaper in Hanoi (where he was the chief representative in Vinh), a bank officer, an architect, a photographer, a political lecturer, a bookseller… All of them created a “warm and free community”. And anyone could find a “support” here. The small shop, a small corner with many glass panels facing the street, became a familiar place that if they didn’t come, they would miss it. Many people in the group, whenever they had work at night on the street, always wanted to “visit Luu”, and sometimes they came just to look at the instruments, to see the owner with curly hair leaning down next to the copper strings and under those small hands, the gentle or fierce sounds would sweep them away…

“The alley is sad like a sigh” - I don’t know where Luu got that comparison when he showed me Luc Nien Street late at night. “Look, it’s a long street but it seems like there’s only one lamppost that’s on at night”. “But I still chose it to rent a house there” - I said and Luu laughed: “Sadness and happiness are both familiar places, sister! Maybe I love sadness, love the small corner in my alley. That used to be my dream. A simple dream that was also far away…”

Luu is a boy from Yen Thanh, graduated from the University of Economics in Hue, then went to Ho Chi Minh City to start a career. Since his student days, Luu has connected and created the Du ca movement in the ancient capital of Hue. "Du ca" followed Luu to Ho Chi Minh City and back to Vinh, only because of Luu's strong desire to come to, live with and bring music. Giving up the banking job that his family had planned, Luu started with his passion from his childhood. Finally, Luu chose Vinh, because Vinh was such a familiar place to him even though it was not where he was born and raised. "Maybe because Vinh is so small, it is his hometown. Maybe because Vinh always has that familiar, warm, comfortable, and fitting look?" - Luu said so. And then, Luu's small corner became a meeting place, a meeting place, a place where we could come and express all our joys and sorrows, a place to remember when we are far away...

Love the city from every corner

So, my street has corners that, if we don't start from there, we will be confused about how to love this whole city. In an interview with Thao Van - the younger sister of IT Knight Nguyen Cong Hung, I was extremely interested in her thoughts about a familiar little corner where she still comes to sit every day, meet people and work: "Many people ask me why I can sit for hours at this corner, at this table. Simply because sitting here I feel comfortable, feel the safest, the happiest. I give up 5-star parties, holidays at expensive 5-star hotels and don't spend money just to sit here, drink this cup of coffee, because this is where I feel the happiest, with the happiest people."

More than anyone, I understand that. And I think, that is very important in my life!

I got used to Vinh starting from a corner of the stairs of building C1 (formerly Quang Trung apartment building), where I often stood there waiting for my only close friend in this city. The stairs had stains of stagnant water, the dull color of bricks and mortar, and the rough peeling of time. There, there was a tall green banyan tree with rough bark. I thought it was dry and skinny, dead in the cold season, but one morning it suddenly burst into green buds, giving me joy and surprise. I also got used to the small table corner by the window. There, when I opened it, I could see the bustling street below, see the fog, see the sunshine, see the green vông tree rubbing its shadow against the old lime wall. I also got used to the sad and happy intersections, got used to the morning coffee on Dinh Bat Tuy Street, Tran Quang Dieu Street to watch the sun rise over the mossy roofs, over the Western soapberry trees or shimmering in the glass windows of high-rise buildings.

My book-loving friend always chooses a quiet corner in Nguyen Tat Thanh park to sit and read when she wants to enjoy the weather as she always says. It is an old stone bench, under the shade of a banyan tree with its roots hanging loosely in the wind. She said she likes the feeling, after closing the book, of feeling the wind gently blowing up from Goong lake, of seeing the blue sky swaying above her head, of seeing the bougainvillea and hibiscus blooming for her.

My two other friends met each other at the corner of the coffee shop where they often went to every morning before going to work. Both of them had gone through an unsuccessful marriage. They thought that their hearts had run out of love. But then, the innermost corner of the table, where the door was usually closed in winter, one day opened with a bright smile from a sentimental and proud woman. At that moment, the man with so much suffering suddenly realized that he could still hold onto the wonderful things, or at least such things still existed in life. They did not say anything to each other, until the day they missed the empty corners at the table next to them every morning. The corners without a person, the whole city suddenly became deserted. They began to rekindle their love...

I often choose for myself hours to watch the street, looking deeply into every little corner. Maybe, you pass by there very indifferently, but it used to be a memory, an endless nostalgia of someone living in this street.

It’s strange how I feel when I’m drifting on the street, among the strange yet familiar crowd. Faces I don’t get to see, but I feel like I pass by them every day. We become familiar in the strangeness, attached in a loose, faint relationship. And it’s so warm when I suddenly stop at a familiar intersection, singing the song that I suddenly hum every time I pass by it as if it were my own.

This intersection, almost every day when I drive to it, I encounter a red light. Gradually, it becomes a habit, sometimes when the light is green, I habitually stop the car, causing some impatient guy behind me to honk a few times, at that moment I suddenly wake up, look blankly at the last seconds of green light, smile and then step on the gas. There are times when I absentmindedly follow an old song, forget which direction to turn, and then end up turning back to the street I just passed, absentmindedly inhaling the strong scent of milk flowers in the cold weather. There are also times, remembering an old winter, longing for the light that lit up in the late sunset of years ago at the corner of the old coffee shop, I turn my car around and go back there, even though I know that the shop has been demolished for a long time, the shop owner from the North has now traveled to the Western region of Nghe An. I have sat in that shop many times for several hours, when the city lights come on. If the old wooden table is still around now, it will surely have my signature on it. I wrote it on a sad afternoon.

Life is constantly intertwined relationships, where between strangeness and familiarity, between loneliness and integration, between happiness and sadness, reason and emotion, sometimes there are unexpected exchanges. But I always believe that everything that happens in my life is contained in the word "fate". Because me and these initially strange streets, me and these initially unfamiliar friends, me and music, with melodies that are increasingly becoming close in the soul, could slip away from each other if there were no familiar corners. Street corners, shop corners, table corners..., those are the places of convergence, intersection, and fate. As if in the countless seemingly parallel lines of lives, we met there and created intersections.

Thuy Vinh