do you think I have forgotten

Some photos from our wedding in Bordeaux. Endlessly grateful.

xoxo, vivian

recalling things we never did

Last week, George and I went to the Angelika to go see Before Sunset, a movie I had never rewatched despite having seen Before Sunrise at least half a dozen times since I first watched the full trilogy when I was still in high school. It's funny how the media we encounter for the first time at certain points in our lives become such a formative part of how we see the world. That same weekend, someone at a party asked me what my favorite books are, and I found myself rattling off titles I read from around the same era as my first Before viewing: late high school, early college, that time before I felt like I was really living my own life so much as planning what I wanted my real life to be like, thinking it hadn't quite started yet because of all the experiences I hadn't had. 

Before love, there was Before Sunrise: this movie was the framework for my conception of romance years before I ever fell in love, and I measured every spark against the conversational chemistry between Celine and Jesse ever since. I realized while watching that even though Before Sunrise was the movie that led to a decade of me chasing the most sparkling conversations I could possibly hold, Before Sunset was the one with the line I always thought about in the moments when those possibly life-changing conversations were unfolding: "When you're young, you believe there will be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times." 

Before Sunrise is a fantasy of serendipity. What if life really was that brilliant, that you could just meet a beautiful stranger on a train and stay up until dawn talking and falling in love? You never want the moment to end, and maybe inside your head it never does. The ending of the original film is naively hopeful: we won't exchange contact info but meet me here again in six months, and let's see then what happens next. 

Nine years pass. 

I have mixed feelings about sequels to works I love, especially when it's not clear that the author or filmmaker intends for a sequel to follow in the first place. There are some sequels I refuse to read or watch because I consider the endings of the original works to be perfect. Even though I watched the Before trilogy in short succession the first time I saw the series and I knew the subsequent films were faithful to the characters and spirit of the romance between the two, I held off on rewatching Sunset and Midnight because I was afraid it would ruin the magic of the first film for me. For most of my twenties, I wasn't ready to witness the ensuing cynicism and stilted politeness of a second encounter nine years after the original fantasy was left unfulfilled. I suppose I also waited nine (ten, eleven, twelve) years to fully appreciate the fantasy of second chances presented in Before Sunset, and that crucial passage of time has made me love this movie now even more than the first. 

Before Sunset opens with a Q&A with Jesse at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, where he answers questions about the book he wrote based on the night he spent with Celine in Vienna. He wrote it for her, really, and in the crowd, near the back, she appears. The sequel spends the next 70 minutes—tracking almost exactly a real-time match to the limited time Jesse has left in Paris before he needs to catch his flight and go back to New York—acknowledging what that night meant for both of them and how it's shaped who they are now, all those years later.

During this rewatch, I was struck by the way Before Sunset captures the feeling of after: what happens after a promise made was broken, and how do you reckon with the fact that you're never the same after your heart breaks the first time? All those subsequent heartbreaks trace the same fault lines from the first break. Celine and Jesse gradually move from conversation about big-picture issues to reckoning with what that night in Vienna night together did to each of them as they wander through Paris. Both of them slowly admit to having replayed that night in their heads over and over again and spending the intervening years searching for that original feeling and wondering if maybe your most cynical self is right: you're only romanticizing that moment because you never had a real chance to find out if this love is real or just some fleeting thing.

And yet Before Sunset says maybe you do get a chance. Maybe the dreams and terrors and second thoughts about all your other life decisions have been leading you to this afternoon, when you only have an hour before the flight to try and say everything you've held onto for the past decade because life is short and what are the chances? More than anything, the conceit of time is what drives the tension of the first two films: it let's you imagine the what-if fantasy of a single day changing you irrevocably. A single day can break your heart and break you open, and isn't life about living moments like that to savor every last second in the moment, before your time is up?

We are reminded throughout the film that Jesse is on borrowed time and that this golden hour before sunset is suspended from his real life. He has a driver waiting outside and a plane to catch. In the end, does it matter if he and Celine are still madly in love with each other all these years later when he has a wife and kid to go home to? Can love ever be enough to propel you to change your life in all the mundane ways, or is it only beautiful and precious because it's wrapped up in the fantasy of romantic idealism?

These are questions for the final sequel, I think. But it may take me another nine years for that rewatch.

xoxo, vivian

veni vidi vici

Here's a quick photo diary of my long weekend solo trip to Rome in February. This was my second time visiting Rome and my to-see list is still regrettably long, although that's my fault for getting sick on the second day of the trip. I know it looks like I managed to see a lot during my time there regardless, but I have to say that my tendency towards overexertion (particularly when I'm on my own) was probably what exacerbated a head cold into a full-blown fever in the first place. It's taken me months to get around to publishing this post; I came back fundamentally questioning why I wanted to travel so much at all, because at the time it felt like I was doing it for the wrong reasons. It took until my wedding trip a few months later for me to recognize the right ones—a story for another time.

xoxo, vivian

everywhere you go you take yourself

Here's one last photo diary to wrap up this year. I shaped a lot of my 2024 around China trip plans, spending most of my time off from (and even a couple weeks at) work in China; even then I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I'm still mulling over my thoughts about China, so maybe I'll save those for another post. After Seattle, Beijing is the city I've spent my entire life revisiting; it never really occurred to me to find out what sights I hadn't seen yet the way I more methodically map out the places I want to see in cities I don't belong to. I still spent time with family, but this time around, I had a lot more time to myself to wander on my own or meet up with friends in different parts of the city. 

The photos here are from my October trip to Shanghai, Qingdao, and Beijing; not pictured: Suzhou, Nanjing, Hong Kong, and other parts of Beijing and Shanghai from my April trip with George. I don't have any film photos this time around because I was so afraid of frying my film from all the X-ray machines that my bags have had to pass through. I want to shoot more and be the subject of more photos in the new year: more portraits, more travel mementos, more snaps of day to day life. 

More to come. See you then.

xoxo, vivian