An old monk once told me: coursing through our veins is not blood of our own but a confluence of those who came before us, our parents, their parents, and their parents before them; a map that traces the intricate, rhizomatic connections of time and of kinship.

Our skin, our covering, a blemished parchment, bears the marks of the mishaps of our life. Our cracks, our chips, our scars weave our malleable tapestry. And on these landscapes of imperfections, peaks and valleys emerge between the folds. As our flawed hands reach out to touch, they unveil the expanses of our misconnections. Yet, these gaps of inadequacy are not empty. No, within them flow salt and water, sweat and love, labor that nourishes, embraces, and sustains.

But how do we measure the spaces between the folds of our skins, count the drops of sweat shed, or measure the love bestowed? How do we quantify the unquantifiable? In Vietnamese tradition, a ubiquitous poem that every child knows echoes a potential answer: Công cha như núi Thái Sơn, Nghĩa mẹ như nước trong nguồn chảy ra, or, A father’s toil is tall as a mountain, a mother’s love is an unceasing aquifer.

In Vietnamese tradition, every family meal commences with an act of simple servitude: a child takes empty bowls, fills them with rice, and offers them to their parents. This performative ritual reiterates and brings to physical form the invisible connection between labor and love. And as the child cradles the bowl’s flawless porcelain surface, their imperfections etch their stories onto the impervious surface, momentarily imbuing it with their shortcomings. Sweat seeps and flows like rivers, painting a map of gullies, confirming the temporary connection between the giver and receiver.

Blue and white porcelain bowls are objects of my childhood memory. Adorned with mythical mountains and endless rivers, these bowls bear the images of fantastically perfect landscapes. Yours, and mine, too, are landscapes, spun not from pigments of fiction but from the links that bind us. They are the topography of our embraces.