Dispatch № 75: Fleeting Escape

Sand below us, water in front of us, the great mountain sitting huge in the blue haze to our right.

Dispatch № 74: Loud as Flowers

You feel you are swimming in a saturated, soporific concoction of apricot, honey, and hypnagogia, with undercurrents of the autumn sun’s penetrating warmth.

Dispatch № 73: Zones

My old apartment was simple in this way. Leave your shoes at the door and that’s it. No other changes to make

Dispatch № 72: For a Limited Time

Soft stridulations waft like lithe wisps of wood smoke on the gentle evening breeze, the crickets calling tenderly under the waxing crescent moon.

Dispatch № 71: Troublesome Gaps

While it is entirely possible that, by the time we visit again, new buildings and businesses will occupy those spaces, it is also possible that they will remain empty for a long while.

Dispatch № 51: Communal Waters

Third places are important, but some are disappearing, public baths among them. This is one aspect of Japan’s declining social capital.

Dispatch № 50: Ode to Fuzz

Because my cat is my most-requested topic

Dispatch № 49: Hushed

In relative terms, it’s a cacophony, and it seems so because it has otherwise been so tremendously quiet that minute sounds are magnified.

Dispatch № 48: Lineage

Long after the baby has grown into a man, he sits on a bench in a park in Japan, ten thousand kilometers and thirty-nine years from Lubbock.

Dispatch № 47: Still Smitten

I was single, but really didn’t want to be, and as we were leaving a while later, a thought bubbled up from my subconscious. Wouldn’t it be something if I wound up with her?