, Malaysia

Croissants don’t have to be croissants

The form repeats

By Kenny Mah

It comes and it goes.

Sometimes we are full of energy and verve, ready for whatever comes our way. Projects to launch and complete. Races to run. Mountains to scale.

Sometimes we are simply drained, ready to collapse. Projects are fantasies. Races are for others to run. Mountains can stay where they are.

Sunday morning. I’m walking back and forth, assembling my paraphernalia to brew coffee for us. You look up from your book, the one by a Taiwanese author who married a German. You tell me about her roadtrip with her husband to France. How in a small village, they discovered the croissant as it was originally made. Longer and less crescent like.

You love sharing bits of trivia with me. I never know if they’re entirely true or not but your passion makes them real for me.

I remember when we were in Buenos Aires, when we found the Argentinian version of croissants – the sticky glaze of a medialuna. Crescent shaped. But sweeter, sweet enough to make you ache with longing and loss.

Croissants don’t have to be croissants.

The form repeats, the delivery changes. From place to place, time to time. Just like energy and projects, races and mountains. Nothing is retained. Yet everything remains.

We are wherever we are at all times: here, in the now, but also elsewhere and elsewhen. We come and we go. We don’t stay in this world forever but time we have is never squandered.