Japawkward

Walking in silence through the rice paddies under a moon that was full 2 days ago, but looks just a bright, like it is sticking around to be the last man standing at the party, I fall behind the crowd of us because I am looking at the stars thinking that THIS is my life, wondering how this is my life, feeling that life is ineffably beautiful. I think about not pulling out my camera, the moment is all too encompassing. Its too dimensional - from the stars in the sky fading away into the moon light, which reflects off the shimmering flooded rice fields, to the shadows of Japanese roof tiles peeking above the hedges, and the movement of us passing through.

We are a new tribe. We are appreciative of our differences and the fact that we are now so similar because we, in all the people in the world, live on these islands that are magical. And we are, at 4am, walking through a sleeping fishing village to get to our boat and one by one go home to our own islands. 

My legs are hard from the journey to a shrine built on a speck of earth that faces away from everything else. It was built when Constantinople was the biggest city in the world, when a plague killed half of Europe, when the Arab Expansion began and when the Vikings went on their first raids. (obvious shout out to wikipedia) My mind is swirling with the hearty revelry of company and dance parties and bob marley in an old traditional japanese country house, saying what we already know, that everything is gonna be alright, especially right then.

There are so many little details that color my life, to add into those sentences. Like rocking to Wagonwheel out in the garden watching the coal get hot for the bbq, barefeet and practicing my squatting as the sun sets. Or too many of us dancing on tatami, ducking our heads a little if we cross over into the other room, where a table sits shrouded in the room light, awaiting our gathering like much shorter Japanese people did for the last 120 years.

Or that on the way to the shrine, we took a small boat that cut through giant waves like modernity through the traditional Japan, without changing the flow of the ocean. Or the abandoned island and its priests house with counters two feet high in the kitchen and sandals still perfectly lined up at the edge of the tatami, with crates and crates of sake and beer bottles intended to be made into something new, but now forgotten. Life chanced a much different path.

In some way we have all forsaken the city life. We are learning something that only we think is a secret, but has actually been knowledge for all of history. To feel the earth. To know it’s where our food comes from. To feel the rain. To know its power. To not have things and know they don't matter. To not have people and to know they are a gift.

In some ways I have felt too young for this, but in other ways I feel like I didn't learn these lessons young enough.

I am not sure if I could have learned these lessons if my life was not islands. Not only the mindset that you are separate from what is going on, but the daily visual reminder of the great and powerful sea that must give you permission to go see it, mean that if I am to look, I am too look inward more. . From its stormy green potion to its calm cold blue, here, the ocean is one big magical mirror.