“Oh, look how beautiful the sun is shining through the trees!” I said, drunk on the last golden light of evening glowing through the golden leaves of the ginko trees.
“There’s a word for that,” she said, with a little smile of knowing.
“Oh, is there?” I said. And paused. “Do you remember what it is?”
“I don’t,” she said. “But I remember reading it in the book.”
The book is “Otherwordly, words both strange and lovely from around the world,” by Yee-Lum Mak, with charming illustrations by Kelsey Garrity-Riley. I read it tonight in the bath (it is a very short book).
KOMOREBI | (noun, Japanese)
the sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees
This brilliant autumn is making my heart ache the way the wild, wide open spaces of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho made it ache this summer when we went out West.
It is an ache that makes me want to cry, I am so happy. An ache that makes me want to stare forever at the beauty I behold.
It is an ache of sehnsucht — literally “see-searching,” in German — “a yearning, a wistful longing.”
It is an ache of echoes from the future.
It is a longing that, one day, will be fulfilled.
