Something in my heart

I first heard this song during my teenage years. Then I did not understand a single French word—I fare no better now—nor heed the Vietnamese lyrics much; nonetheless, “something” from the song attracted my short-pan attention. Perhaps, it was the nostalgic melody, typical of French chansons, the background sound, the young singer’s whispering narrative of a youthful, forgotten past and of a glorious yet uncertain future, or a little bit of all. Many years later, whenever I listened to this song, I paused for a few minutes constructing unclear images of my bittersweet years when I was ten.

Like the young girl in the song, I hurried through the growing-up process and longed for a glorious future; as uncertain as it might be, I would care less. Uncertainty I found indeed, but the splendor I discovered little if not any. I started wondering why. It took me more or less seven years to finally figure out the first piece of my “growing-up” dilemma: I was functioning or lack thereof in a framed and uncreative society, swamped itself with the deep-rooted, obsolete, inflexible, and foreign Confucius ideology adapted from the ancient Chinese. In most places I looked and most people I met, I saw another kind of problems in me, whether they are self-spawned from within or planted from without. Struggling to find my “place” in the world, I officially accepted my unchangeable traits which, by definition, contradicted in every sense with the aforesaid environment in which I operated. The only way, I saw, to protect my sense of identity and to survive whole was that I had to walk out of the nice-looking framed picture, albeit only on the surface, and carved for me a brand-new one.

It is not to say that I never “lived” before. The awareness of living began its shape during my college years at UC Berkeley, a school world-famous not only for its academic excellence but also for its liberal education, acceptance and honoring independence and uniqueness. One night, after finishing our class’ project, my project-partner and I walked out of the underground, air-conditioned room to sit outside on the pavement. I suddenly said, “You know, this is really life.”

As much contented by the new awareness, I was frightened at the same time realizing that until that moment, I barely “lived” or acknowledged that I was “living.”

“To live”, thus, has become one of the central life-messages I’ve strived to achieve for the past few years.

I don’t analyze my life and myself too much anymore. Why? Because I’m too busy living, I suppose.

Don’t worry about me since at the moment I am living grandly in a rented room on the second floor of a house at the feet of a mountain, looking down to the city full of star-light.

Among those starlight-watching nights, I caught a glimpse of myself; who knows? I might be the glimpse of myself in this world.

The following is the English translation of the song “Quelque chose dans mon coeur” base on the Vietnamese version translated by DH. To listen to the song, go to thanhda.com

Something in my heart

French

Vietnamese

Chut Vuong Van Trong Tim (Quelque Chose Dans Mon Coeur) – Kieu Nga

My parents still think of me as a little one,
but with friends, I grew up quickly.
Though we still hold each other’ hands,
something pulls me toward the future,
as I wander along with mellow melancholy,
in torn shoes and dirty jeans.
I crave for the clock-hands going very fast,
and wish I can let go many times.

Something in my heart,
foretells me of my destiny,
between the beginning minute of a mysterious sky
and the ending moment of a bygone innocence.

Something in my heart,
collapses an entire life.
of strange desires, of eager feelings,
and of panics I’ll soon forget myself.

I’d like to walk around the earth,
becoming another Ava Gardner,
carving my thoughts on the walls about hidden passions,
about the minutes and hours I only saw on movies.
I’d like to travel back to the past,
so in my mother’s lap, I’d cry.

Something in my heart.
When I sleep alone at nights,
alone in a city lies dormant,
there appear vanishing whispers,
telling a story of my life.

Something in my heart.