The first thing I did when I got back to my apartment after being away for six weeks was check for signs of life. Unexpected growth or occupancy, especially of a mammalian nature. In the darkness, I saw something unexpected by the window, a pattern I didn’t want to see, a pattern that only nature could make. I braced myself and turned on the light. Phew, just the shriveled leaves of my succulent. Oh wait oh, oh, oh no.
I believe my plant is a kalanchoe fedtschenkoi, also called lavender scallops, also called 胡蝶の舞, meaning butterfly’s dance. I see it often around the city, the pink edged leaves apparently native to Madagascar. Poor dude had been thriving before I left and was now 95% on the ground as crunchy remnants. I knew I should have made a plan to help him survive the summer without me, but I was in a rush the last days, and so I leaned on a stupid hope that even in complete darkness, life would still find a way. I had, after all, picked a plant that’s supposed to be hard to kill. As that is historically the level commensurate with my ability to care for other living beings.
I whispered a woeful apology to Kal-chan and started cleaning out the crispy bits stuck in his matted roots.
“The mind is still coming to believe in how much rigor and richness can be found in a day,” wrote Craig Mod in one of his letters this week. Mod is a photographer who’s made a career of taking extremely long walks in Japan. For seven days, he’s walking in Tokyo, 15 to 20km a day, starting at daybreak. It’s quite a feat that he’s doing this in a season when the “feels like” temp is just-slightly-better-than-death °C.
From his Shibuya, Hatagaya, Kichijoji letter:
But the roads were great. I found a few ippon-ura — "one road back" — streets that were excellent and straight and bursting with morning life and curious little homes. The ippon-ura is a foundational element to our school of walking. That is: There’s almost always a better, smaller, more culturally varied, less trafficked road if you happen to find yourself stuck on some dour strip of highway. We’re like ippon-ura hawks, on the lookout for the best back streets. Never settle for anything less.
This has been on my mind as I started my first 9 to 5 in four years this week, as culture critic at The Japan Times. (That’s right, I buried the lede; that’s what happens when you don’t have an editor.) There are lots of things to be excited about. My mind is remembering how to listen to the city, to the pulse, to the everyone about everything. But I am also feeling the loss of time, the time I had each day to find rigor and richness, or for them to find me. I had time for endless ippon-ura, to make friends with individual flower buds, to check up on bushes. Sometimes, too, I’d stare into the void, and a minute would take an entire year to pass. For better or worse, every moment was a chance to find an absolute fullness in the nothing.
Look, freelancing isn’t for everyone.
Mod’s nightly dispatches have been soothing me to sleep as I put away the person I’ve been in Japan for the last three years, a student, a vessel for grammar and kanji, and a writer for hire, playing fast and loose with time, ideas, and metaphors. Many of my Tokyo anchors have fully up and moored in other waters, and I have some doubts about what’s ahead. But reading Mod’s letters I’m reminded of a specific kind of love. A city love ruled over me intensely in the decade of New York. It had me so under its spell that we ran an actual conference about how great New York was, and would roam the streets and internet in search of people for its stage. We listened, to the everything. The city love gave me something every single time, its rigor and richness, its screech and suffering, the shimmer and the heat.
Will I ever love like that again? It’s what we all want to know.
Life does indeed find a way. Sometimes more than one would like. The cockroaches are click-clattering all over Tokyo, including my kitchen. There’s no hope for it, if a country as clean as this one still gets infested every summer.
They breed. I talk to them. They scurry past. Years back, I briefly lived in the Catskills. When I arrived in summer, the house was basically a rave. Inside: mice, shrews, bats (a neighbor also had snakes), outside: crickets, bears, the raging creek. (Strangely enough we call this house the Roach Motel, even though I’ve never seen one inside.) The mice were partying and pooping everywhere, and there was no choice but to get rid of them. The process was horrible. Sarah Todd tells me about the mouse she had when she lived alone in the Berkshires. “Did you kill it?” “Thu, of course not! He was my only friend.”
I open the door and we make eye contact. I swear he looks embarrassed. Today I show mercy, but I know this can’t go on. I’m sorry, Mr. Roach. But your family’s gotta go.
Life is clamoring at my door. The tiniest gnats buzz by my light. A dragonfly sits on my laundry. The sun reflects off big yellow butterflies. The crow that occasionally sits on the roof opposite my window stares at me, majestic and sneaky as fuck. There’s Asian pears growing in the back that I’ve never seen before. So there’s hope for Kal-chan. In fact, he’s looking better by the day. I shouldn’t have doubted; if nothing else, the creatures of this house know how to survive.
Killing time
Congrats on the new gig! And good luck to Kal-chan 😊 🪴
"majestic and sneaky as fuck" I love this. My new vibe.