Journeys, not Made

When I was 12, my violin teacher entered me to a competition. I was required to play an etude, a 10 minutes, non-stop entanglement of 16th notes. I worked my ass off for months, but it was beyond me. I’ve never, ever, finished it without a stop.

The challenge came at a very bad time. I was in the middle school for the first year. My long hair was practically shaved off to a crewcut, as required for all boys at that age in Taiwan under martial law. I was depressed, and I was constantly sick, and my stomach ulcer was about to be diagnosed in a few months. I shouldn’t be loaded with another mission impossible. But what was a meek 12-year-old to say about his fate?

The day of the competition was approaching and my hopeless practices went on. Did my teacher give me tips to practice, like what Olive gave to her cello students? Slow down, or placing emphasis on different notes? The hopeless attempts turned mindless. I was so, so fucked.

And then, a miracle.

I suddenly came down with something nasty. High fever, body ache. Eyes felt like popping out from their sockets. Coughing my lungs out. Nose running 100m dash. I was a poster child of influenza.

And I didn’t have to play. Instead, I was hospitalized for a week.

…like I didn’t have to present my work in Cincinnati, right at this moment, at Society for Photographic Education. Well, not entirely like it, because one came with a sigh of relief and the other is an utter disappointment.

“It was good that you didn’t play,” the teacher told me afterward. “It was soooo scary. So and so(my friend who was lucky to be taught by him, too) almost peed in his pants.” Wow, and he was talking about the guys that played well; better than I, I think.

I dodged a bullet.

Strangely, as years went by, this competition which I did not play in, formed a memory in me. I could clearly see the spotlights, so strong on the young musicians, that the beads of sweat on their forehead glistened. They played, some well and some lousily and they were applauded, enthusiastically or doubtfully. They came down the stage, greeted by nodding parents or chilling silence. I have had these visuals in my head, as if I was there.

But I wasn’t.

Like right now, I’m picturing the hotel conference room in which I’m projecting images of Pilgrimage of Light. I explain how my projector was designed and put together. I demo a projection by enveloping my audience in Andromeda galaxy, and I take a photo of that. I thank the crowd and offered all of them this image. They applaud.

But this is not happening, because I’m Covid positive.

I’m barely coughing. No fever. No bone crashing ache. No eye trying to pop out of the eye sockets and my nose’ staying put. Not like the horrible flu I had 46 years ago. Maybe there is such a thing as pay back time. Dodging a bullet. Taking a bullet. Forgoing an opportunity. Dodging another bullet.

The emotion, the situation that I didn’t get to experience. The people, the exchange with whom that didn’t happen. The names that I won’t know and the stories that I can’t tell. Or maybe I still can.

The journeys that weren’t made.