Where Characters Are Born
Music drifts on the wind from the hill above.
A weekend of May festivities in Nice.
Red-and-white striped dresses. Flowered hats. Laughter echoing across the cobblestones.
Under the southern French sun, people sing, dance, and savor the end of spring.
When I opened the balcony windows, dazzling light and the fresh green of new leaves filled the room.
Looking out at the view, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
“Ah… I really am living now in a city overlooking the Mediterranean.”
Long ago, I once casually said something to my French husband, whom I had met in Hawaii.
“If we ever live in France, I’d love for it to be Nice.”
He smiled a little awkwardly and replied,
“Astronomy work might be difficult in Nice…”
And yet now, little by little, I am trying to draw the outline of my own story.
Perhaps it is less a grand decision than the feeling of finally beginning to listen carefully to a faint sound I had heard from far away for a very long time.
A childhood friend remembered something I once said years ago.
“Someday, I want to create a book with my own illustrations.”
I had completely forgotten those words.
And yet now, I truly feel that I have started walking toward that place.
Looking back, ever since childhood I was the kind of child who quietly observed the atmosphere inside people’s hearts.
The loneliness hidden behind smiles, anxiety, emotions too vague for words.
For some reason, I often sensed such things deeply.
Poppy is a character born from the sensibilities I had around the age of eight.
A child who seems both boyish and girlish — somewhere gently in between.
Poppy is not here to explain anything.
Poppy simply exists in the world: watching, feeling, sometimes pausing, and walking forward at their own pace.
A heart from the time when the world and the self had not yet become completely separate.
That childlike feeling still remains within Poppy.
And there is also another character: “the stylish grandmother.”
She is inspired by my own grandmother.
A woman who lived through war and illness, and who continued learning about life and the human heart throughout her years.
But the grandmother in the story is not someone who teaches lessons.
Nor does she try to guide anyone.
She simply exists there.
And somehow, just by being there, closed hearts begin to soften, and winds that had long stood still quietly begin to move again.
In this blog, I do not plan to write only about my work.
Life in the South of France.
The sound of French heard at the market.
The smell of bakeries in the morning.
Mediterranean sunsets.
Small emotions that suddenly drift into my heart.
And how the worlds of Poppy and the stylish grandmother slowly emerge from real life itself.
I hope to write about all of these things quietly, without separating them from one another.
Perhaps this is less an explanation of my work than a record of the place where the work itself is born.
It is still only a small current, just beginning to flow,
but I look forward to discovering where it may lead, as I continue placing words down little by little.
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