This coming Tuesday, I will share the first in the set of 12 issues of the Winter 2024/25 collection, S P A C E | ‘The Way’. Inspired by Bashō, in part.
Poetry.org describes the poet, here. ‘In his late 20s Bashō moved to Edo (now a sector of Tokyo), where he joined a rapidly growing literary community. After a gift of bashō trees from one student in 1680, the poet began to write under the name Bashō.
‘His work, rooted in observation of the natural world as well as in historical and literary concerns, engages themes of stillness and movement in a voice that is by turns self-questioning, wry, and oracular.’
I like this.
Wherever you go, there you are
I had this quote on my email signature for a long, long time. I think the attitude of just going, knowing you’re always somewhere different from where you just were, and heading to yet another spot that’s going to be quite apart, even more, around the turn, solidified for me when I was in Kyoto.
I was always bicycling around in those days, being a student, being at times uninclined to go to class, and being with my Minolta X-375 almost all the time.
Drifting about, looking into things, looking around them, some red streamers on my handlebars, the green solid frame of the secondhand bicycle still ashine in my memory, I rode about, not quite planning it, most of the time. Kitayama Dori, and then, whatever came next. Those days, I had these big ideas and dreams about life, the possibilities therein. What I could do with mine.
Getting the idea started with an invitation
The students I had studied alongside in Kyoto, they were amazing folks. They were, I found, gathering in an informal reiunion. That was something that was set to take place at the end of the summer of this year, and, me, getting emails about this, was super curious about that. Where did everyone go? What were they up to?
While I have (thankfully!) kept in touch with a handful from those days, meeting in cities like Palo Alto or Seattle or Twin Cities or even Tokyo, I thought and thought about how it would work out for me to make the trip and be part of the reunion festivities. For a week or two, I deliberated. I would go. I woudn’t. But: a reunion. Isn’t it fun?
Then I remembered my 10-year high school reunion. What it felt like to be like, ‘What are people going to say, oh, no. will I be judged?’ How it cost a bit to go, as I’d made the trip to the US from southwest Ireland, which was where we’d been living at that time, to get to the high school and see some old familiar faces. Randomly, on TV not long before that, Grosse Point Blank came on. It was ‘a sign’ that I should go. This makes me chuckle, now; I was younger, then, so I made choices in this kind of way. Not so, this time.
While for the Kyoto-classmates reunion I very much wanted to be there and seriously considered going, the thing is, I live in Phnom Penh. This is not anywhere near New York, which was where it was going to be held. The email list was giant and, so, I reached out to a few, here and there, to catch up, 1:1, which is, to be honest, more my style. This seemed to do the trick, like, it felt like I rekindled old ties. I liked that, and recognized, maybe that was enough.
Then, I thought, maybe this. Maybe I can go to Japan again. Make a new memory, forge a different experience. Maybe go back to Kyoto. Maybe ride around on a borrowed bicycle. Same streets, way different time, and most certainly, a markedly different me.
The design of The Way
Researching that idea led me quickly to the simple fact of Overtourism in Kyoto, and I knew I didn’t want to be part of the problem. I did want to go to Japan, though, somehow.
Flights were really abundant from Phnom Penh to Hanoi and then Fukuoka, and deals were on, at the time of my booking. I wasn’t sure how all that was going to flow. I hadn’t been anywhere since covid started, not really wanting to be in crowds or on public transport, but, somehow, this idea to design and go on a countryside route through Japan started to ‘take’, as we say, sometimes, in this industry.
You get the concept, and then, start sketching out what happens when you look at ways to realize it. It was starting, in early September, seeing the possibility of it really taking shape just as I was sending my ‘Wish I could join you’ emails to the organizers of the reunion in NYC, I began to get kind of excited. Like a student, again.
With this jazzy twinge of possibility lighting up something that hadn’t been touched for all the years since covid started, I went back to Japan.
Connexion
But ‘The Way’ is also inspired by those whom I met, too. Everyday conversation, everyday movements. I can share what I found out when talking to those people whose paths crossed with mine, in snippets. We were talking, a lot, sometimes, or a little, others. In Japanese, always. This was the thing that made Atelier S P A C E | Japan different from past adventures through, say, Finland or Viet Nam or Thailand. Language is a thing you can learn and when you do, you can connect. More meaningfully. Deeply, not superficially. That checks out with the purpose of making S P A C E, and so it was to Japan, that, this time, I went.
The poetry, photography, and essay collections ahead will perhaps allow readers a small window into what it felt like, to go, to go for a while, and to get lost a little along the way. Welcome to The Way.