Stefan, a migrant construction worker living in Brussels, is planning a trip home to his mother in Romania. In preparing for his voyage, he reconnects with local family members over gifted bowls of homemade soup, interacts with strangers, and discovers a revivifying commune with nature. This leads him to an unexpected connection with Shuxiu, a Chinese-Belgian bryologist studying the local moss.
In the winter of 2012, two famous American performance artists sat in anonymous hotel rooms on the West Coast, waiting to take the stage, and in a bizarre coincidence, over-dosed on the anxiety drug Xanax. One survived, one did not. The two individuals are Whitney Houston, who tragically died, and the author of this piece, who lived. Incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, the author began an arduous and experimental journey towards recovery. What is life, and why should we live it, having had it thrust upon us like the assigned reading of a baffling mystery novel, the chapters jumbled, the text often incomprehensible? In the thirty-seven years of life leading up to this event, we find a simple but elusive answer: Love.
