JOY The road leading to the Kanagawa Prefecture Library in Yokohama is steep and passes by a sculpted couple dancing on a pedestal. Ah, dancing. One of the joys in life. In my younger days, I danced cheek-to-cheek with the women whose company I enjoyed. “Dancing is like dreaming with your feet,” Constanze Mozart (1762-1842) …
Woman Among the Bushes
Rodin’s Meditation The radio announcer warned of the approaching typhoon, but I was determined to get out of the apartment. For five solid days, I sat glued to my desk chair and humped over a 300-page manuscript. Painstakingly, I went line by line to root out misspelled words, ill-positioned semicolons, dangling modifiers, and other miscreants …
Tammachi Park is a brisk fifteen-minute walk from my apartment in Yokohama. I often walk through it on my way to a supermarket. Once in a while, I sit on a park bench and read. When I grow weary of reading, I observe vignettes of life unfolding in front of me. A mother watching her …
“Meet me in Bashamichi,” my friend texted me. He wanted to introduce me to a restaurant he recently discovered. “Where in Bashamichi?” I texted back. “In front of the sculpture.” “Sculpture?” “The one in front of the coffee shop.” A telling commentary of modern life when we refer to coffee shops as pinpoints on maps …