BONUS: Exposure

In addition to featuring my short story Terra Incognita,  Ruminate Magazine also invited me to write something on the issue’s theme of exposure for the “Last Note” section in the back of the magazine.

This was one of those pieces that wouldn’t come out when I tried, and I just had to wait until it smacked me upside the head. Honestly, writing sometimes feels more like being a conduit than a producer.

Exposure - Laura O'Gorman Schwartz

 

Terra Incognita

Very excited to announce my short story Terra Incognita received Honorable Mention in the 2018 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and has been published in the Fall 2018 issue of Ruminate Magazine! The theme of this issue was “exposure” and my story is about the impact of a new map arriving in a small town in Flanders in the 15th century.

Yyyyeah, this is one of my weirder ones.

The old map had congealed to the wall, taken on its texture. There was no removing it completely, so they didn’t remove it at all, just pinned the new map on top of it, bottom corners loose and still curled from the roll it had slept in. Word ambled down the street and the neighbors came to see the new face of their country. Big-cheeked Hanna, spackled with flour. Blonde Ria with her skinny husband. The young, curly-haired brothers Isidoor and Thomas. Erik, old and bearded. The very pregnant Juytken. Pretty Jo, the town’s white flower. Philip and his two flunkies – a gang formed in boyhood and cemented by adolescence. A few others. The tavern seemed embarrassed to be so full in midday, caught in the light. Perhaps it was this unusual combination of time and place that dampened their spirits and lent the rosy new map a poisonous sheen.

The town wasn’t invested in books. With no library or school, with the sea far to the northwest, the old map had been a rare window into the country beyond their fields. For some, it had been the only window. Ivo the innkeeper had won it over a decade ago, in a card game with a sailor in Antwerpen in 1504. Ivo hadn’t felt old yet then. Hanna hadn’t been married. Ria’s youngest was still alive. Erik had yet to be widowed. The map had hung above the bar since. It softened with them. The colors lightened. The words gently bled. The tiny ships on the painted waves of the Germanicus Oceanus contracted into strange ink creatures. Over the years, the map ceased to be, or perhaps never was, a representation of their country; in the townspeople’s minds, it was their country.

And in the span of a short morning, the world they believed was aging with them had been replaced with a crisper, more vibrant version. Borders they had come to think of as blurred and gauzy became impenetrable again. A black line squiggled down and around the land, marking the edges, trapping them inside. Even the eternal northwest waters had a new name: Maris Germanici. Hanna and Ria joked and scoffed. As though you could change the name of the sea! More startling, their familiar country was crammed with at least twice as many cities and towns as before, nests of calligraphy punctuated by circles and corralled by weaving roads. The old yellowed map had been spotted with its share of settlements, but the names had long been demoted to decorative details, a pattern for one’s eyes to roost in while a tankard was drained.

Thomas buzzed about, investigating the musty adulthood of the tavern, new territory for the 12-year-old. He tilted his head back to take in the map.

“Have all those towns existed all this time? Or are they new?”

The innocent question was a stab in the ribs of the gathered adults. They didn’t know. As before, Ivo had dabbed a spot of red paint on their town. But the comfort of knowing precisely where they were on the Lord’s green earth had vanished. How could anybody feel found in a crowd like that?

“The old map was better,” Ria declared, blonde eyebrows pinched together. “This one has errors.”

Ivo had left his duties to his overburdened wife in order to preen amongst his neighbors. Though a regular traveler out of town, he hadn’t acquired the map for geographical guidance; for that, he preferred the compass of his own memory. The map drew him for another reason. The warm palette and dark lines, the chocolatey curls and perked ends of the letters, the mellifluousness of the incomprehensible Latin maxim that crowned the frame – the entire composition was pleasing. When his gaze sank into it, a panting horse into a cool river, he felt that his heart and his mind were connected. Closer than connected. That they were the same. Just as black dots on rich paper could also be a sea. Both the sailor’s map and this newer one climbed inside him and stayed there. Art, however, was not a well-trod topic in their town and, if asked, Ivo would have said that he couldn’t say a single word on the subject.

He rounded on Ria.

“This map does not have errors. It’s just more recent.”

“No,” Ria insisted. “There aren’t that many towns.”

“How would you know?”

“It’s common sense. Look at how crushed together all the names are. Are we really supposed to believe there is no countryside in our country? Look outside!”

“I bet the mapmaker invented some towns so he could f-feel important,” Philip asserted, juvenile ego tripped by jitters.

Ivo set his jaw and folded his great arms. Had he known the phrases artist’s interpretation and not true to scale, he would have used them. As it was, he could only sense their unarticulated truth.

“Perhaps you could put both maps up?” Hanna submitted, picking at the dough drying on her knuckles.

“No, I won’t have an out-of-date map on my wall.”

“It was fine for the last ten years and suddenly it’s out of date?” Philip asked with a huff, glancing over at his lackeys.

“We didn’t need a new map,” one said.

“We didn’t want one,” the other added.

“This is my tavern and it’s staying.”

“It’s a disgrace!” Ria snapped in a tight voice. “It’s— What proof do you have that these towns are real? You have no right to spread errors, maybe even lies, about our country.”

She had been like this in childhood too, Ivo remembered. Her temper and tears erupted if you changed the rules midgame, if you told a story differently than before, if you abandoned the plan. Her heels were forever dug into the earth. Ivo pitied her husband, a man who was clipped around the edges and crumpled in.

The argument continued, heating the pub to a stuffiness only enjoyed by the passionately angry or by drinkers on a winter evening. Hanna attempted to placate Ria, but Philip’s gang was teething, hoping for a real fight to chew on. They followed up on Ria’s flares with handfuls of fuel. Younger and slimmer than the other men, curly-haired Isidoor kept both his tongue and his little brother in check. Beautiful Jo was still entranced by the new map and paid attention to none of them. Erik stroked his greying beard and held the door for the waddling Juytken. Age serving youth. Near-death serving near-life.

Blue skies on a market day meant a busy street. Children in filthy smocks brandished sticks and screamed their games. Straw baskets filled, townspeople who had heard the gossip gravitated towards the inn. Erik helped Juytken out of their path.

“You ought to return home. Walking around in your condition is dangerous,” Erik said.

Juytken nodded. The fingers not curled under her pregnant belly were fiddling with the sleeve of her linen undershirt. She studied the knobbed hand Erik rested on his walking stick.

“What do you think of the map?” she asked.

“I’m too old for it to make any difference to me.”

“The world around us changes so quickly. Ten years and the country has been completely redrawn,” Juytken mused, eyes lowered. “How can I know what sort of place my son will grow up in?”

“Take it from me. Some things don’t change.”

Juytken gave him a smile and made her way down the street, layered skirts skimming the earth. Erik monitored her until she turned the corner. Youth cannot believe what Age tells them to be true. It won’t be real until they have aged themselves. But he was correct. Some things didn’t change. A pint of ale will always improve a meal. A new map will always cause an upset. A young wife filled to the brim with life will always be a blessing. It was the natural flow of time. Juytken’s son would be his third grandchild. She was downriver from her mother’s pregnancies and from Erik’s own wife’s, the last of which took her from this realm.

The road east shrank, became a path that bordered the farms. Escorted by his wooden cane, Erik’s steps were unhurried. Sheep bleated and moved as one away from the fencing. Clouds dragged a net of shade across the green fields. And he was an old man wandering after his thoughts, recalling how his wife’s right leg had a slight limp that made her shy. When she died, the priest assured Erik that such a good woman was unquestionably with our Lord in his Kingdom. It was a comfort to hear and it was what Erik repeated to his children, but he was embarrassed to discover that he was unable to imagine his wife in heaven. Erik was never a man for daydreams or fantasies, and he simply couldn’t place the image of her anywhere but home. Since birth, she had fit her years comfortably into their town, a small circle of which her and Erik’s house became the center. Even attending church or walking to the market spurred a frenzy of preparation. Her impatience to return to the cauldron, the cradle, the clutter of half-woven garments, often snipped conversations with neighbors short. A frequent and amicable patron of Ivo’s, Erik had found this tiresome. After her death, it troubled him. How could a woman who had burrowed, body and soul, into this patch of earth, a woman who had never followed the road east beyond the farms, traverse the long journey to heaven?

A chilly breeze slinked through the expanse of sunshine. Erik held his wool cap to his head and listened to the rustling trees. The new map spread itself out in his mind, the precise lines, the four tiny trees, and he was delighted to see a figure on the butter-colored paper, barely more than a dot, traveling through the copse, away from the red heart of their town. The roads were so neatly marked. The rivers. Finally, they both had a guide. The path towards the borders – of the country, of the sea, of the entire map – was distinct yet crossable, even with her uneven gait. After a pause on the edge, she stepped off into an ungraspable realm, a kingdom of faith hidden in the thin air. The thought lightened Erik’s bones and his feet. Sunlight swept across the grass, like satisfaction. Joy, even.

The quarrel at the tavern swelled and receded and swelled again. After failing to douse Ria’s blistering hisses, big-cheeked Hanna – whose heart pounded whenever voices were raised – retreated to the bakery. Young Thomas’s question stalked after her, clinging to the hem of her kirtle.

“Well?” Her husband asked, sweating.

She circled the loaves of bread, retied her apron, shrugged.

“Ria thinks it’s fake, that there are too many towns for it to be a true map.”

“No reason to change what works,” he said, shrugging back.

Grunting, he opened the oven grate and withdrew a pan of hot and fluffy koekjes. The aroma of butter mingled with the brusque smell of charcoal and the autumnal scent of chopped apples resting in a bath of spices. Hanna hunched over the table to pull and knead the dough for appelflappen, massaging it thin with her chubby fingers, loving strokes she had learned years ago, when she married both a man and his trade. No reason to change what works. A recipe can be played with a little – raisins added, perhaps – but the ratio of flour to sugar to fats had long been determined. Like the name of the sea.

“Hanna. Why are you crying?”

“I’m sorry. It’s frightening.”

“The map?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a painted picture. That’s all.”

“I feel small, as though I was a mouse all along.”

“You’re certainly not the size of a mouse,” he chuckled, belly jiggling.

But she didn’t smile. In front of her gaze hung the circle of their village, a droplet once buffered by empty space, now swept up in a swarm. All those towns filled with strangers. All those roots unearthed and bared to the sun. Names for things that didn’t need names. The more men stuck pins into the land, speared it with titles and dimensions, the more it would bleed. A pile of cake ingredients was not appetizing, couldn’t they see that? It was only the whole, the elements combined, that made something sweet and wonderful. Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great. To fear a gnawing appetite for knowledge was humanity’s earliest lesson and still there was this vulgar reaching for higher and higher branches of the tree. One did not inherit the Kingdom of God by dismantling and renaming His creations. Nor by following any ink-sodden map.

If their dear country could erupt in a sudden wealth of new details, like the distant hills sharpening after a storm, then what other unknowns lay hidden, ready to pounce? Insignificance wormed into Hanna for the first time since girlhood and her hands trembled. She could be crushed by so much, all that she couldn’t see and didn’t know. It was one thing to feel small and humble next to the unfathomable glory of one’s Savior, but to be trampled underfoot by unknown armies from unknown cities, the human unknown… Her shoulders rose in a fear that set the Lord’s Prayer rumbling over her tongue.

Its familiar rhythm lulled her back into her work. Dough, apples, sugar. The formulas and measurements, the simple causes and effects, formed a landscape she knew intimately, one she could find shelter in. She would hold to the mystery of faith, the recitations of recipes. Give us this day our daily bread. Warm water and warm milk so the rolls rise properly. Add the flour a tablespoon at a time. And deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hanna wasn’t the only one ruffled by Thomas’s question. It roosted in his elder brother Isidoor’s mind, noisy, feathers and droppings coating his contemplation. Which did he prefer? That other towns had lain cloaked in mist all this time? Or that they had sprung up out of the earth like weeds in a neglected kitchen garden? Ignorance or rapid change? Hoping to avoid the notice of Philip and his drudges, he gave the map his full attention, fluttered from town to town, forwent space and time to touch on all the borders, run down the canals, and pause in places that resembled the names of people he knew. Canegem. Tempelmare. Dadisele. Trechyn. Gendt, of course. Antwerpen. He’d like to see Antwerpen. Just once. Just to peek at the crashing flow of life in an international city, the Italian sugar and Portuguese pepper, the Spanish gold and American silver, the scholars and the sailors in combat with uncertainty. Just to walk alongside men who saw the coast as a starting point instead of an end, who entered into long affairs with the unknown.

And after seeing the worn and weathered faces of these men, Isidoor would be glad to come home. He was sure of it. How little the void attracted him, the opaque waters, the days flung wide open and blinding, especially in comparison to his work, his mother, his brother, the pleasant possibilities and manageable problems he would have here. Thomas, though, would become the type of man that the bottomless sea, with its promise of sugar and silver, would seduce away. Isidoor could only hope that she wouldn’t take his brother’s life as payment for his curiosity.

Isidoor’s eyes descended from the heights of the map to Jo’s pale and freckled face, which glowed in the half-light, framed by a wheat-colored linen hood. They had only spoken two or three times, nodded to each other at the market – her hands separating gourds and cabbages, his full of upside-down and baffled chickens – but for Isidoor she was a clearer map to his future than any. He could see, though, that Ivo’s new atlas held her fast. She seemed deaf to the clamoring newcomers, to Philip’s exaggerated posturing, to the squabble that ended with Ria yanking her husband out the door. Was Jo dreaming of travel, too? Of Gendt or Antwerpen? Of an adventure they could hold up years from now and see their reflections in? It was as though she was having a conversation with the map, a dialogue he didn’t understand and so could not interrupt. He resolved to wait for the right moment.

Philip shouldered past Isidoor, his flunkies trailing him out into the ripening midday. Sounds from the market rushed through the opened door. Isidoor ought to return to the poultry stall; Thomas would need help hauling the sacks of feed. They couldn’t linger any longer. But tomorrow would come, no matter what was drawn on any map, and Isidoor would wash his face, tamp down his curly hair, and ask Jo’s father if he could marry her. His heart quickened at his resolve, but Jo still didn’t look his way.

Before his wife reeled him back to his obligations, Ivo too observed Jo, puzzling over her fixation on the map. She had never granted the old one more than a glance. Her parents and siblings weren’t the sort to chew over these things. He left her in peace. Girls’ fancies were marshes too murky to ford.

At the altar formed by the map and the bar, Jo paled and blushed, hid her flooded eyes and sudden smiles, embraced the storm and then the calm. So. There was no definitive version of their country, of the world. There never would be. If the old map was fallible, a temporary reflection, then the reign of this newer one must be equally precarious. The truth, so fixed, so obvious, could change. It all depended on who drew the map. And really, anyone could draw a map, could sketch the world as it was true for them. A local shepherd’s survey of the land would differ from a foreign merchant’s, but neither would be false. They would simply see with different eyes, sculpted by different lives. Could the truth ever be reached then? Certain atlases might approach it, breathe down its neck. But even if the truth were somehow captured, fully contained in inked borders, one felled tree would change the face of their country into a different creature. And what of other maps, other guides, other truths? All those laws and facts, decreed by God and nature and men and mothers? What makes a lady, what makes a cake, what makes a life… Were they transient too?

“Jo, oughtn’t you get back to the market and help your mother?” Ivo’s wife called over an armful of cleaned linens.

One foot on the stairs, she cracked her neck and waited in vain for a reply. She was unsettled by the… lust, she’d have to call it, in Jo’s eyes. If her parents had any sense, they would get that girl a husband soon. Everyone knew pretty things were a danger to keep around too long. White flowers could be poisonous.

Soul still full of the map, Jo left the tavern and turned down the familiar street, its dips and curves long memorized by her feet. This road and this market, seemingly permanent fixtures in the landscape of her life, were really just one of many roads, one of many markets. In the burn of the late afternoon, the shops and stalls and houses took on the hollow echo and weightlessness of a traveling troupe’s set for a play. It was all manmade, wasn’t it? What was right. What was wrong. What was possible and impossible. The corset of certainties Jo wore – marriage was her next step, children were a woman’s greatest love, churchgoers went to heaven, cities were sinful, the sea was monstrous – loosened. She couldn’t think of what had prevented her from wriggling her fingers into the knots and undoing them before. Fear of not adhering to the world as mapped by someone else? Jo smiled. Maps could be redrawn.

At dawn, Jo’s mother would notice her absence but think little of it until a canvas bag and supplies were discovered to be missing from the pantry. Under a field of clouds yet to be ploughed by the sun, Ivo would be woken by caterwauling and bangs on the inn door. Jo’s red-faced father and inconsolable mother would thrust their distress onto Ivo’s broad chest, hoarsely damn his new map for bewitching and spiriting away their white flower, who had spent the night talking nonsense about walls not being walls and truths not being truths. They would push past Ivo, hearts like torches aimed at the map, but be brought up short at the bar, their bonfire of anger left flickering in the wind.

The new map would already be lying in a froth of paper on the floor. Ivo would feel the bright shreds as keenly as though it were his own flesh in pieces, and he would groan upon noticing a long peel of the old map, thought to be permanently wedded to the wall, uncoiling to the floor in a limp arc, a casualty in the attack on its successor.

END

Learning to Listen: Traveling to Nepal’s Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu to spend time with yourself

In their November 2016 issue, Om Yoga & Lifestyle Magazine published my piece on the beautiful Kopan Monastery:

There is no shortage of yoga poses that require practise and concentration to get right (crow, handstand scorpion, frog), but rarely do we think of savasana as one of them. Much looked forward to after a tough class, we often sink into savasana the way we settle in for a nap, and while corpse pose is a time of rest for the body, it is also intended to be a time of meditation. But meditation doesn’t have to mean the difficult task of totally emptying your mind. Just as there are various forms of triangle pose, there are several approaches to savasana and meditation as well.

Trish O’Gorman, a yoga teacher who has taught Kundalini in the United States for over a decade, decided to deepen her meditative practise by taking part in the 6-day “Open Heart, Clear Mind” course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal this past summer. Taught by Ven. Kabir and David Marks, the course was aimed at beginners and offered, as stated on the website, “guidance and meditations on the essential teachings of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the different ways to develop the mind so as to find balance, clarity and inner peace.”

I’ll admit that the idea of a meditation course sounded like an oxymoron. Wasn’t the point of meditation to do…nothing? I joined Trish early on her final day of the course to learn more, but I would have to wait to hear her thoughts on the experience. The participants, who were mainly from Europe or the Americas, had vowed to remain silent for the entire length of the course excepting discussion group and Q&A sessions. Nevertheless, she confided later, she and some of her classmates had taken several excursions to a nearby coffee shop to chat.

Located on a hilltop on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Kopan Monastery is lively. Built in 1971, it is a monastery in the Tibetan Mahayana tradition and home to over 300 monks, lamas, teachers and workers. Visitors are welcome to stay for as little as an hour or as long as several months. As Kopan is also a small school, monks of all ages can be found chanting, meditating and debating philosophy. On clear days, lush mountain ranges emerge from the clouds, revealing green valleys below. A cadre of lazy, friendly dogs roam the picturesque grounds, which include a meditation hall, gardens, a library and dorm-like accommodations.

The day’s itinerary was simple and straightforward, and began with a meditation session before breakfast. The silence I had expected, but this was my first experience with a guided meditation, where a teacher gently urges you to contemplate certain subjects/questions and to envision images, such as the Buddha on a lotus or light filling your body. Guided meditation, also called analytical meditation, is one of the more accessible forms of calming the mind, as it is a more familiar method of structuring and managing your thoughts. While Kopan also coaches on the differences between and strategies to practise silent and structured (chanting) meditation, analytical meditation was the most common during this course. I felt this would be helpful next time I entered savasana at the end of yoga class; instead of the usual struggle to completely empty my mind of thoughts, I could instead select a prompt (like a quote from a spiritual text or a question about how to live with wisdom) and concentrate on contemplating it deeply.

Upon the completion of the meditation session, the participants were released from their silence. Breakfast was boisterous in spite of the spare, plain food provided by the monastery (all vegan, of course). It was clear that Trish and many of the other participants had developed strong friendships over the week.

While teenaged monks in gangs loudly debated Buddhist philosophy in the courtyard, we returned to the beautiful meditation hall for a dharma talk led by Ven. Kabir. Unsurprisingly, for the participants’ final talk, the focus was on how to carry the lessons of the monastery with them and continue following the path after leaving Kopan Hill. Not a rigid lecturer, Kabir welcomed questions and quoted Thoreau and Pablo Neruda along with the Dalai Llama. He highlighted how the modern world challenges our ability to remain in touch with ourselves, and spent some time illustrating how practicing Buddhism is ultimately reliant on self-confidence and on working intelligently with ourselves. What resonated most strongly with me was the discussion on how meditation was essential to reconnecting with our inner selves in a world that constantly tries to pull us out of ourselves by engaging and often overwhelming our senses – touchscreens, headphones, visual media, instant alerts, foods engineered to be addicting. Meditation, like yoga, is all about coming back to the breath and being in the moment.

According to Trish, throughout the course, the dharma talks and guided meditations were quite Buddhist, which could be a guide or a detour, depending on your spiritual or religious preferences. For the first two days, Trish felt at philosophical odds with the monastery and even considered leaving. She wanted less focus on Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist doctrines and more exploration of the personal approaches and benefits to meditation. But then things started coming together, she said, particularly in the discussion groups. It all came down to motivation and intention, and how to direct one’s energy towards leading a life of kindness, compassion and wisdom.

Though the remainder of the final lecture centred around Buddhism’s Six Perfections, the lessons were universal and vital: how patience is a balm for anger, how to be generous to ourselves in body and mind, how we set up barriers between ourselves and others. Dharma is about investigating the self, learning to approach not only yoga but our daily lives with mindfulness, and about taking responsibility for our own happiness and our own suffering. Yoga and elements of its underlying philosophy were referred to often, such as karma and samadhi, which you may have heard in passing in a class but which the teacher likely didn’t have time to explain in depth.

Afterwards, lunch was provided and with it, the 6-day course came to a close. Had this been one of the earlier days, lunch would have been followed by two hours of free time and then four 1-hour discussion groups focused on different topics provided by the course leaders.

When asked how she had found the course beneficial, Trish noted that for her, much of the course reinforced what she already knew and practised, specifically the power of adding structure to personal meditation:

“Kundalini is one of the few forms of yoga that regularly incorporates meditation and chanting, but for the other forms of yoga, the monastery’s practises and guidance could be very helpful, especially as the entire point of yoga is to prepare the body for meditation. Doing yoga without meditation is like baking a delicious cake but not bothering with the frosting.”

When we talk about taking higher level yoga classes, we usually think about more challenging arm balances and deeper backbends, so why not take your savasana to the next level as well? Next time you lay your hardworking body onto the mat for its rest, practise guiding your thoughts to contemplate a concept like compassion or a question about the nature of your own consciousness. You may be surprised by how far you can travel through your own depths.

The Temple of Great Virtue

On March 25, 2017 the adorably-named Thoughtful Dog magazine published my short story, The Temple of Great Virtue:

The full name of the place was 1 Night 1980 Hostel Tokyo, the entrance on a clean backstreet two dozen blocks north of Ueno Station. Elsewhere, the areas of Ginza, Roppongi and Shibuya were flaring up, gardens of light and taut gushes of activity, but their vivacity didn’t reach this far. As evening settled in, life bowed and retreated inside, leaving the bright sentry-like vending machines the lone observers of the two girls (or were they women now?) circling the building in search of the hostel’s sign: “1980” in black on a glowing white square. The salaryman’s colors.

Kira dug her fingers into the shoelaces and then the heels of her sneakers, stepping out of them into the economical lobby, too small to complete a full cartwheel in. Clarissa followed suit, eyes flicking to Kira for cues. The girl (Kira wouldn’t call her a woman) behind the counter stood up and the Japanese greeting Kira intended to say emerged in English, to align with the straight brown hair parted dead center and the not quite American accent. This would have been Kira’s first chance to exhibit her language skills in front of Clarissa, a demonstration of how different a world this was from the tri-state area and how necessary Kira was, but no matter. There would be ample opportunity. It was enough that Clarissa was eyeballing with trepidation the ticket machine that loomed in front of the check-in desk.

“Where are you from?” Kira asked, though the girl was probably as sick of that question as she was.

The girl’s wan smile, the way she didn’t look up from their registration forms as she replied, “Canada,” confirmed this.

“But I’ve lived here a long time,” she added, as though by emphasis alone she could more fully fasten herself to Japan, loosen the roots of Canada from the soil of her identity.

“How long?” Kira asked, curious and friendly, an expat herself.

“Five or six years,” the Canadian said, her face a theatrical struggle to recall the number.

Kinkaku-ji, Kyoto

Kira had lived in Singapore for nearly as long, but didn’t say so. She handed over her passport and wondered if the Canadian realized yet that Japan was not a country prone to adopting its admirers, that she would be forever spoken to in broken English and permitted to make social blunders the Japanese would eviscerate one another for, that her stint here was cute but would always be considered temporary.

“Why are American passports so garish?” The Canadian asked with a snicker, holding Clarissa’s open at the full color photo and the illustration of a bald eagle.

Clarissa didn’t laugh, but Kira did and pulled out her other passport.

“At least the photo is better than the Irish one. Black and white. Like a creepy mug shot.”

They had to pay cash, the Canadian said, disengaging from her check-in booth to identify the appropriate buttons – raised and analog, marked with room types and number of nights, which clicked pleasantly when pushed. But first they would each need to feed the ticket machine ¥6400. Clarissa goggled at Kira. She had forgotten to exchange her dollars at the airport, had assumed she could do that anywhere. As though Tokyo were Disneyland, a series of smooth paths lined with entertainment and convenience in equal measure. Kira shrugged, offered to cover them both, but then found she was short. As the Canadian explained with impatience that a 7-Eleven two blocks over had an ATM, Kira inserted seven ¥1000 bills and retrieved her tickets and change. The Canadian looked askance when Kira handed over a ticket for a big towel along with the one for the room.

“You don’t need the big towel. You get one as part of your amenities kit. You get a fresh towel, body wash, toothbrush, etc, every day.”

“Everyone?” Kira asked.

“It’s only for female guests.”

“Why?” Clarissa asked. “That seems sexist.”

“It’s not sexist. Most of our guests are male, so it’s an incentive to encourage women to stay here. But I can’t check you in until you’ve both paid,” she said with a huff.

They walked through the quiet, humid streets, getting lost almost immediately as Clarissa hadn’t listened to more than the beginning of the instructions. Kira hadn’t listened at all. She hailed a passing businessman in his fifties, who was quintessentially accommodating and pointed them in the right direction. Kira picked over the magazine rack, chanting dumbass in her mind, happily unhelpful as Clarissa realized she would need to overdraft her account. In response to her comment on how silly it was that her $200 was useless, Kira said nothing.

At 28, Kira felt barely adult. It was a role she could assume but which retained the sensation of a memorized act. However, next to Clarissa, three weeks her senior, Kira’s adulthood shone with authenticity. Despite a yearlong boyfriend, Clarissa still exuded the air of a virgin, stammering in surprise when Kira told her they would need to be naked at the hot springs in Hakone. It was a challenge to imagine Clarissa having sex, but unfathomable to envision her attempting seduction. Clarissa still opened her mouth and let burps out at will, unaware that following with an “Excuse me” did nothing to cancel out the disgust that pricked at Kira (and, Kira presumed, others).

“You see her, what, once a year for a lunch when you’re in the States. I don’t see why she deserves ten days all of a sudden,” Eóin had reproached when Kira admitted to reconfiguring her week solo in Japan to accommodate Clarissa’s proposed joint vacation. “At most, she deserves a weekend. What has she ever given you?”

The question resurfaced in Kira’s mind as they made their way back, Clarissa celebrating every correct turn with excited yips.

“I think you’re one of the only people I know who walks faster or at least on par with me,” Clarissa said.

“Huh,” Kira replied, out of breath from keeping stride with Clarissa’s gait, which approached a run and rendered the living, foreign streets mere scenery.

But that’s how their friendship had gone since freshmen year: Clarissa oozing over the depths of their closeness and similarity of feeling, while the grit and texture of who Kira really was vanished in Clarissa’s watercolor portrait of her.

Back in paper slippers in the grey lobby, they obtained Clarissa’s ticket and then waited with amenity kits in hand. A vending machine was wedged between the reception desk and the elevator.

“Gerolsteiner,” Kira laughed, pointing out the bottles. “My German friend used to import that stuff and drink only that because she thought the water in Singapore made her hair fall out. It’s horrible.”

The Canadian leaned back in the check-in booth.

“So bad,” she agreed.

“And my friend would make me drink it every single time I went to her place.”

The Canadian rolled her eyes. Kira suspected that they could become friends, considered inviting her out for a drink.

The sixth floor was: ‘Women’s floor only. The violator will be prosecuted.’ The moderate space had been divided into slivers of hallways and the compact capsules they were to sleep in, each with only a curtain for privacy. Farts would be shared. Their closets lined one hallway, their bunks another. The toilets were in one room (unlocked), the showers in another (locked). The ritual activities, performed alone in a certain order, were to be uncoupled and rearranged and coordinated with others. The sleeping room smelled, a mix of socks and mustiness, as though the few windows hadn’t been opened since the hostel’s namesake year. Kira accepted it, knew she could put up with it for a few nights.

They dropped off their things and returned downstairs with their sneakers in plastic bags. The Canadian had come around her desk to demand in firm English that a huge red-cheeked Chinese woman remove her shoes at the door. The woman wheezed, baffled, mumbling about the bag she had left here earlier. Kira and Clarissa ducked around them as the Canadian, zealous as any convert, advanced on the woman to insist again that she take off her shoes. Tottering with her heels hanging out, Kira remembered that they had to hand over their closet keys before leaving. She held hers out to the Canadian, who scowled and took the crumpled plastic bag. The key hit the floor with a bounce and Kira scooped it up.

“Oh,” the Canadian said, taking the key.

But Kira knew it was too late. She had been relegated to the class of guests who mistreated the Canadian, and now ranked among the locals who tittered at the Canadian for acting Japanese and the drunk men who tried to wheedle their way onto the sixth floor. Kira doubted the Canadian had a procedure for appeals, even if the misinterpretation was hers, and the possibility of friendship extinguished into smoke.

Akihabara’s ice white fluorescents only drove Clarissa’s jetlag in deeper, so dinner was quick, with Kira doing most of the talking around their bowls of udon noodles. When they returned to the hostel, the Canadian replied to their calls of goodnight with a tight-lipped smile. For the remainder of their few days in Tokyo, she was absent, her place at reception taken by a languid Japanese man. Kira was once again stuck with Clarissa on an island of English, where Clarissa seemed to suck up all the resources, spraying her conception of Japan over the living country. It fascinated Kira how Clarissa was incapable of eliminating herself from her observations. Everything was made relevant and relative. It was bearable though. Kira’s relish at Tokyo’s familiar bustle, its brisk autumn stride, plus the afternoons she begged for herself, all countered Clarissa’s disbelief that an Asian country could be so similar and yet different to what she knew.

“They have women-only subway cars? Why?”

“Well, you’ve seen the crush of the commutes. Some men use that to grab a free handful.”

“Wait. Really? But the Japanese are so quiet and polite.”

“You really think what you see is all there is?”

“Of course not,” Clarissa defended, producing the right response without bothering to examine it deeper.

The parks and gardens Kira had fastidiously starred on Google Maps were a pleasant and disappointing green. Kira wanted to propel the friendly, lingering summer out the door and bask in the chilly, fiery solitude of fall, which was in its adolescence, the trees only just gilded around the edges or bejeweled with a few leaves the color of pomegranate arils. By peppering Kira with questions on Japan, Clarissa attempted to mask her impatience as they strolled. A nice patch of green was not Instagram-worthy. Hakone was though. The mountains, thrusting up around a cold blue lake marked by enormous red torii [1] were festooned with a few bolts of orange, the maples and oaks. But most of the landscape was still drawing in the deep breath that preceded the aria of color to come in November.

In Singapore, placid in unending equatorial heat, Kira was starved of seasonal shifts, the adagio of trees. Her frustration clawed at her ribcage, pulled at the corners of her mouth. Not only had she been robbed of the release of autumn but she had to endure Clarissa’s repeating, “It’s so pretty. It’s so beautiful. Look at how pretty the water is.”

It turned out they wouldn’t have time to visit an onsen, for which Kira was grateful. Observing Clarissa fuss and fret over stripping nude, as though her naked body was anything of gravity or note, would have been exhausting.

“Do you think you’ll ever live in Japan again?” Clarissa asked on the bullet train to Kyoto, reeling Kira out of her book.

“I wouldn’t mind it, obviously. But Eóin’s job is the main factor that determines where we live, so.”

“It’s still so weird that you’re married.”

Kira and Eóin had been married four and a half years.

“I’m still so sorry that I couldn’t come to the wedding,” Clarissa continued. “But, you know my friend Kristen’s wedding was literally the day before, so there was no way I’d have been able to fly to Ireland in time, and I couldn’t not go to Kristen’s wedding because she’s been like my best friend since third grade and I was one of her bridesmaids. I would have been her maid of honor but she has a sister, so, duh it went to her.”

Kira, who had heard this several times in the past, nodded and allowed her gaze to sink back to her novel.

“Oh my god, did you ever see the photos from Kristen’s wedding? Did I show them to you already?”

“I saw a few on Facebook a while ago,” Kira replied with reluctance.

“It was so beautiful. It was held in—”

As Clarissa retrieved the photo album on her phone and rattled off as many details as came to her mind about the wedding of a person Kira had never met, Kira gave an audible sigh. That and her still-open book ought to have been sign enough, but it wasn’t. Kira wrote off the rest of the train ride. At least she had another can of Kirin Chuhai Lemon STRONG, even if it was a bit warm by now. It seemed impossible to Kira that Clarissa had never deduced that their burgeoning camaraderie had stuttered to a halt by second semester of freshmen year. Kira had confessed to a long struggle with depression and Clarissa had stated that she didn’t believe depression was real. Kira hadn’t been angry at the time; she had been charmed, glad her friend’s emotions were too shallow and sun-warmed for oil spills. The anger came later, as Kira observed that she was being replaced by a watercolor of herself, and it rotted through the entire foundation of what Clarissa perceived as a solid friendship.

It was Kinkaku-ji [2] that broke it, cleaved it with a resonant split. Both halves were held in place only by the decreasing pressure of Kira’s grip. Dulled but still gaudy under a moist grey summer sky, the temple was cosseted by polluted streams of tourists, busload by busload quickening the tide and thickening the crowd around the shining, gold leaf-slathered, must-see sight that Kira had seen four times, most recently a year ago. And because of Clarissa she had once again paid the over-priced entry fee to be honked at by Chinese men, bumped aside by bulky Americans, and trampled by classes of Japanese schoolchildren in identical hats – in short, she had been demoted to a white tourist in a country she had explored, studied and lived in on and off for two decades. It all grated against her skin, breaking her open and making a mess. Her fingernails scored pink moons into her elbows.

“I see what you mean about it being touristy but also something you have to see,” Clarissa commented in between chomps of Pocky. “There’s a museum we could walk to that’s fifteen minutes from here.”

Kira could barely speak. Her irritation shot out of her in jagged arrows. The Insho Domoto Museum of Fine Arts was an egoistical several floors that Insho had designed and devoted to himself, but his work was lovely enough that Kira could forgive him. What she couldn’t forgive was Clarissa’s compulsion to slap the label ‘beautiful’ over every painting, scroll and sculpture, as though she had qualified the pieces and put each in its box, dumbing down the elegance, complexity, technique and history to a trite word. The urge to lash out was battering Kira’s bones. A sticky oil well pushed up under her skin, seeping through the seams frayed and torn. She planted herself in front of the massive strokes of black calligraphy, soaking in its ink and movement too long for Clarissa’s interest.

See? Kira wanted to say. There are things you cannot see that I can. Important things. Gorgeous things. Have you figured out yet how limited you are?

Creation. That was what the character meant, but the literal definition was only part of its soul. Kira’s eyes flooded and spilled over, a jittery laugh lodged in her lungs. She wanted to peel herself, pare down to Creation alone, slop over the floor, leap up and dance in an ardent attempt to perform Creation, the inky core that suffocated and birthed and screamed and breathed, was clean-edged and roughly ended, the sun setting and rising in the same movement, the orgasmic terror-knowledge that even as you paint Creation, you are finishing it. You will cease to create. Have you figured out yet how limited you are?

Kira made raw excuses to Clarissa and escaped into an afternoon she had claimed for her own. Honeyed sun lathered the streets in thirsty light and she just about fell into the cool quiet of Daitoku-ji [3], a Buddhist complex of temples, halls and tea houses too somber and entrenched in history for the busloads of tourists. She sought out the shelter of Zuihou-in [4], curling up in front of the Zen rock garden she had fallen in love with in college, which last year Eóin had declared the most beautiful place he had ever seen. Eóin was often puzzled by Kira’s compass of emotions, her infatuation with the feel of a place, her swooning over the colonial elegance of the Raffles Hotel as well as the writhing, plucky sprawl of Kathmandu. He appraised a location on utility, efficiency, potential. Beauty had moved him to words only a handful of times in their seven year relationship. Kira would die before exposing such a place to Clarissa’s cheap, freely given approval.

There was the breeze and the leaves, the clack of the wooden memorial boards in the ancient cemetery. Kyoto and all it meant to visitors, UNESCO, Instagram was held at a distance. Kira sat for an hour with the coarse sea of stones, the sharp rocks and vivid moss overlaid with shadow and sun. It was barely enough. Decision made, she unfolded her stiff legs, trembled out of the temple grounds and into a convenience store for several cans of Kirin, drinking one on the way back to the hostel, gulping down the rest as she charged through maps, cross-referenced Shinkansen stops with kōyō [5] destinations, and pinned down Sendai with a thump of her heart. She booked herself a hotel, not a hostel, and packed like a thief frightened of being caught.

At 5:30pm, Kira sat at a wooden table in the warm, ground floor café. They had planned to meet at 6:00. Kira picked up half a pint of amber ale, Kyoto-brewed, and drank in nervous sips, her torrential pulse begging her to leave the speech she had typed out on her phone and memorized as a note instead. There was still time. She could still get out. Clarissa would be mean. She would have every right to be mean. With measured breaths, Kira hardened and steeled herself for reproach, fury, accusations of impossible selfishness and broken promises. Alcohol unfocused her gaze and her mind whipped up retorts and defenses, polished an arsenal. Clarissa’s flippancy about mental health. Her revolting burps. Her smothering subjectivity. How delicious it would be to smack Clarissa with the truth that Kira had never intended to invite her to the wedding and that only the coincidental timing of Kristen’s had prevented this fictional friendship from concluding then.

Clarissa skipped in, five minutes early, and launched into a summary of her afternoon even before she plopped down at the table, blind to Kira’s anxiety and to her suitcase. Kira let her talk. She was reminded of the last day of spring break freshmen year. Clarissa was supposed to drive them both back to Boston University, but she had been late and so Kira was fortuitously still home when her family received the news. When Kira called, Clarissa answered the phone with a deluge of excuses and recounted in extensive detail the errands she had completed and had yet to complete before she could pick Kira up. It was several minutes before Clarissa realized Kira had been repeating her name and Kira was able to tell her that her grandfather had died that day; she wouldn’t need the ride to Boston.

Finally, Clarissa finished replaying her every step and the thoughts that accompanied them, and asked how Kira was.

“Not great, honestly.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I need to be honest,” Kira began, as planned. She was aware her words sounded practiced but she didn’t care. “I originally booked a trip to Japan to take some time for myself and I thought that traveling with you while taking a few hours to myself every day would be enough, but it’s not. I feel like you may have noticed that I’ve been getting more frayed and impatient, which is not your fault. I’ve been overextending myself for months now. I had fun exploring Tokyo with you, but I now need to head out and be on my own for the remainder of my time here. You’ve gotten the hang of how the trains and things work, so I really believe you’ll be fine. Here is the itinerary I put together for Osaka and the details for our hotel reservation. It’s too late for me to cancel, but this should cover my half.”

Clarissa watched her stutter through this speech with a steady, dark gaze that flicked to the documents and ¥10,000 note for a mere instant.

“Wow. Okay. Are you sure? I mean… Is there any way we can make this work? Like, you could take more of the day to yourself and we could meet at dinner?”

Kira shook her head, eyes sopping. The noise of the café swelled with accented English, anonymous extroversion, the smell of beer and reheated croissants.

“Okay,” Clarissa said softly. “Can I hang out with you while you pack?”

Kira gestured to the suitcase and Clarissa’s disappointment betrayed her dashed hopes of talking Kira out of it. Every moment this conversation went on was physical agony for Kira. Air was cotton in her mouth. Her stomach jerked back and forth. Escape. Escape. Escape.

“I’m, uh, going to catch the 6:55pm back to Tokyo,” Kira said, rising unsteadily.

“Can I hug you goodbye?”

“Of course,” Kira said with a wet laugh, jumpy that the lash of anger hadn’t appeared and waiting for it still.

“It’s okay,” Clarissa murmured, pulling back to look Kira in the face. “I understand. It’s important that you take care of yourself. This isn’t the end of our friendship. Who knows? It might even be good for me to travel around on my own too.”

Shame burned Kira’s cheeks. With a duck of her head, she said thank you and goodbye and good luck, and stepped out into the velvety Japanese night. Her face screwed up with tears, she walked to the wrong bus stop, but refused to retrace her steps across the bright, lit window of the hostel café. Kira would switch to the right bus at the next stop, rather than risk Clarissa spotting her, thinking Kira had changed her mind and rushing out, delighted. For Kira to correct that misconception was to illustrate her own incompetence, at directions and as a friend, and embarrass them both. Though that sloppy, ugly scene was avoided, humiliation dogged Kira through Gion, awash in shops and shoppers, and sat with her on her suitcase on the platform at Kyoto Station, the trains delayed in a nation where tourists will tell you the trains are never delayed.

Safe in the speeding Shinkansen at last, Kira felt soaked through. The dark windows offered only her reflection cut through by the occasional strip of town. Clarissa’s kindness had gutted her, though Kira was so grateful for her understanding. But the joy of being rid of her was irrepressible. Kira was happy now, relieved, and she knew that made her awful. She was proud she hadn’t apologized.

She spent the night in Tokyo, explored museums in silence the following morning, and then hurtled herself north, far from the haven of English. Her cheeks pinking in the October sun, she gorged on the cascades of red orange perfect yellow green racing over the valleys and mountains of Tohoku, all of it gushingly alive on the brink of barrenness. A firm step up would have sent her soaring. Kira laughed out loud, submerged in a wooded trail taken at her own pace. Isolated and clarified in the landscape of a country she knew and loved and knew would never belong to her, ‘Creation’ resounded through the caverns of her mind as the biting gusts of winter twisted and broke stems, all that impermanent beauty dropping to the earth.

END

[1] A traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine
[2] The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
[3]The Temple of Great Virtue
[4]A sub-temple of Daitoku-ji
[5] Literally translated as red leaves, often used to refer to the annual viewing of autumn foliage