The light in the leaves

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“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.

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“There’s a word for that,” she said, with a little smile of knowing.

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“Oh, is there?” I said. And paused. “Do you remember what it is?”

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“I don’t,” she said. “But I remember reading it in the book.”

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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).

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KOMOREBI | (noun, Japanese)
the sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees

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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.

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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.

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It is an ache of sehnsucht — literally “see-searching,” in German — “a yearning, a wistful longing.”

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It is an ache of echoes from the future.

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It is a longing that, one day, will be fulfilled.

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