As my last post for the year, I want to reference the past. Specifically, to a photo I found in an essay at the Japan Times, which talked about the many and varied ruins (haikyo) of Japan. Amongst the abandoned theme parks, industrial sites, temples, museums and follies, there are plain old family homes that are empty, abandoned. There are more and more of these as Japanese society ages and the countryside depopulates.

One photo in particular caught my attention, an empty room from a house that has been left, intact, just so, with all its belongings, at a time unknown. When I look at this photo I feel like an intruder, for it is as if the owners just got up one day, walked out and never returned. A low table in the foreground has books, a coffee mug, a bowl, a bedside clock reading 2.30. Stopped or not, I do not know. The wall clock, I notice, shows a different time. In a sense there is no time, in another, a blur of past and present and the near future.

Around the walls of this traditional, tatami-floored space are photos of family members, an ancient TV, knick-knacks and a cabinet full of porcelain. A floor fan sits squarely in the middle of the room, still plugged-in. Was it summer when the last occupant left? I squint to see more detail from the wall calendar, but alas, I cannot make it out. I am still the intruder, remaining in this moment of a life that has not changed within, though the people who lived here have gone, suddenly and perhaps, unexpectedly.



some things are haunting,
the spirits of this once-peopled place-
slowly, sipping tea.

If there is a time for reflection upon the nature of things, surely the unfolding of one year into another is one such moment, and we should grasp, tightly.

Happy New Year