#1 I exist here and now. However I’m often overwhelmed by painful memories from the past and anxiety about the future, and I don’t feel as if I’m ‘truly’ living this moment. It feels like I’ve lost my way in an empty presence, regretting the past that has long gone and worrying about the future that doesn’t even exist. Every second of real time just vanishes in a tick, and everything in this society moves in an avalanche. I am stunned. We are given no time to genuinely feel and appreciate the world. We are just swept along in the torrent to lose ourselves and head toward the same direction. In the midst of such chaos and anxiety, it’s in fact difficult to understand what I really want. I'm at a loss to even think about it - I just want to escape from these disturbing emotions and be at peace. #2 A village in a distant country that I’ve never been to. The village I happened to come across in a photo had nothing unique about, nor something remarkable. Yet it was a very tranquil and peaceful street that just grasped my uneasy mind. I felt like exploring the place more deeply, so I searched up the village in Google street view, and found out that it was a village inside the city of Durango, Mexico. The village was neatly arranged with single-story buildings that looked like Lego blocks, and the house buildings were very plain and even looked unfinished. They also gave off a sense of emptiness. However each house was painted in a different color from one another, and they quite harmonized. Looking at the village neatly organized by various colors, my mind began to tidy up and I started to explore the village through the map in the manner of a child addicted to a game. The multiple scenes and random people captured by chance in the map view… The more I roamed around, the better I figured out that the village was ‘nothing but ordinary’. The quietness, tranquility, and serene colors of the houses soothed me. Every person I encountered seemed relaxed. I do not know what they were doing, where they were headed to, and what were their unspoken circumstances, but calmness was all I could sense. Whenever I feel unstable, I travel to that village once again. I’ve never been to the actual place, and I suppose that’s what makes the village an ideal place to me. It is rather too ordinary to fantasize about, but living in the world where everything is in excess, I say that such ordinariness may be something to seek for. And I think that’s enough for me now.