It’s August 2023. I’m waiting for my receipt,
at a hotel lobby in Tanegashima.
I’m closing out 5 months in Japan,
pondering all the adventures I’ve had,
when I realize 3 minutes have passed
and she’s still folding that receipt.
3 minutes.
I climb down from the clouds to see and
regret only catching the finale.
The precision, the care, the mastery…
for a piece of paper that is certainly going into the trash right behind me.
She finishes with one final fold and crease,
then bows as she offers up the masterpiece.
It takes everything within me
to refrain from clapping.
I gently take it like it contains the secret of the universe;
Perhaps the theory of everything,
folded in three;
an instruction manual I never learned how to read.
—
How perfectly it resembles what draws me to Japan
and also what keeps me a guest there.
Japan.
A land where presence isn’t something people chase,
it’s simply where they stay.
A people,
who seem to innately have what we seek to achieve
with meditation and podcasts;
But what only lasts the duration of an incense stick for us,
is a part of their essence.
Half of me supposedly comes from Japan
but I guess I didn’t get that gene.
Little bug-eyed me,
head parked up in the clouds,
with too many dreams,
pondering about the meaning of life while it passes right by me.
Perhaps it takes generations of earthquakes and tsunamis
to bring that kind of clarity.
My mother has it.
She works at a grocery store in Yokkaichi,
a place with nothing special but her.
She greets the townspeople at the service counter
with smiles and laughter
that makes your heart sing.
The sick, the elderly, the blind, the lonely…
she finds them all and they find healing.
There’s no shame in making minimum wage at age 60.
Why would there be, when you’re witnessing miracles on the daily?
—
After work, we’d walk around the rice fields,
Recounting moments from our day.
As the fireflies and crickets came out to play,
I’d share the crazy thoughts taking up my head space.
One time I said, “Mama,
I’m truly processing death for the first time and you see,
I can’t fathom the fact that someday you’re going to leave.
If I see you one time a year
and you live till you’re ninety,
that’s only 30 more memories we have to share.”
Then mama just laughs and says “oh my dear,
isn’t that plenty?”
She cups my face with her hand and finishes her comforting speech
with, “don’t be stupid, just be happy.”
The wise words of my hero.
Simultaneously a blow and a comfort.
A recognition that life is absurd
so yearning to put its meaning to words
will assuredly lead to missing it.
I cannot bargain with death,
and ask it to spare a few more breaths
for me and my mother.
But I CAN relish in the bliss
of the time we do have
and stop wondering if this is it.
—
Knowing the wisdom of this
didn’t stop me from weeping
when mother waved goodbye
on the last night of my trip.
I still wondered if this is
the last time I’d see that smile,
all the while my life will go on, just a whole lot dimmer.
I still take shrooms and read existential literature
and set a yearly resolution to sit on a cushion.
I probably still
couldn’t take 3 minutes to fold up a bill
without thinking of my to-do list.
But despite all that nonsense,
something deep down did change in that trip.
I stopped seeking for truth as if it’s something to be found
rather than witnessed.
I no longer spend my time asking HOW to live,
knowing it comes to an end,
I just live
and live
and live
and end.
SEEDS 