Strolling along the space between spaces in Okinawa, Japan
As if I had traveled too much the past few years, the Universe decided I would go on a long travel hiatus where I hibernated at home for almost 5 years, COVID and all. So when my good friend invited me over to hang out in Okinawa for a few months, I jumped at the chance and bought a flight ticket almost immediately. As luck would have it, tickets were readily available and I could cherry pick my dates. We decided I would stay for 2-3 months, until just before she delivered her baby.
She had moved to Okinawa a few years back, deciding with much certainty that mainland Japan, where traditions run strong, wasn’t suited for her. Both her husband and her met while they were living overseas, having gone through the whole liberation-from-the-Japanese-culture-of-hard-work-and-responsibility, rite of passage. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl and this she definitely wasn’t.
Bonded by a ceaseless desire to see the world, as all Japanese “graduating” from the culture is wont to be, both of them embarked on a working holiday adventure, where they toiled away in various countries including New Zealand, Canada and the USA, learning English on the fly and widening their horizons with each new job they found—half with wide eyed wonder and the other half with a sobering reality of how hard life outside of Japan is, contradictorily. After a five year stint overseas, they both decided to return home to settle down in the laidback and idyllic city of Okinawa. At least it wasn’t as traditional as the rest of Japan was. And this is where they decided to have their family.
Of course things were different for us this time round, as compared to when we were carefree girls of summer in our youth. Being heavy with her first child, we couldn’t go painting the town red like we did in Tokyo all those years back. This time, we spent slow, leisurely afternoons together, hanging out at some new restaurant or even just reminiscing about the good old times. We referred to it as our “pulehabu days”—where we felt like we owned the world, even as we lived in a poor, less-than-ideal, zinc-roofed housing district, where many a homeless person lived nearby. This trip though, I was off exploring the city on my own as she couldn’t take to the physical activity.
On one of my many long walks—and I did regular 10km walks around town—I chanced upon a very simple and laidback scene, so straightforward that you would miss it if you weren’t looking. I was walking towards the beachfront, about 5 km away from her home, and had to pass by the warehousing area for the docks. There was a small, unassuming garden along the way, almost unkempt, where one part of it was filled with uncleared rubbish and fallen tree branches. The stone benches were inlaid with cracks, like it had withstood the weather for years and the pavement had uneven footing in some parts as if no one maintained it. You could see the years lining the garden facade, as surely as you would notice the wrinkles on an older person’s face.
As I was walking, I contemplated the story of this garden and wondered what tales it would tell, could I pick out its history from the ethers. Just as I was deep in thought, my eyes came across the most surreal scene that arrested my entire soul deep in its tracks—I wasn’t sure if I felt entranced by the stillness of his energy or the fact that there was a random old man in a less-than-manicured garden. He had greying hair and was sitting on one of those cracked stone benches; the tree branches shading him gently from the sun like lazy willows, while he sat in deep immovable silence, reading a book in his right hand, the well-loved pages slightly yellow. In the sweltering, midafternoon summer sun of Okinawa, the sounds of traffic floated behind us and the birds were fussing around, yet, there was hardly a drop of sweat on his face. He sat immobile, like a meditative statue; unmoving but silently existing in the aged garden.
At that moment, it was as if I was reading the pages of a haiku. I stood entranced, a conflicting flurry of emotions flowing and ebbing within me; every part of the scene from the trees blowing in the wind, to his hair, to his well-loved book and the stone benches underneath him, all felt as if they each were words lifted off the haiku itself. All book lovers know this feeling of being lost in the pages of a story. And this particular story I was lost in felt something like this,
Summer winds blowing,
The leaves are dancing freely,
Stillness lies within.
I often write to try and make sense of life. There is a point between when the emotions hit us and when we make sense of it. This I term it as, “the space between”, where neither emotion is jousting for control and certainty but both comfortably existing in a give-and-take fashion, like a dial from left to right to left. For most people, it is an uncertain spot to exist in due to a lack of clarity but good artists wield it as a tool to bring a kaleidoscope of emotions for people to explore. Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is the familiar feeling of bittersweetness, where one feels both sad and happy at the same time—like the sorrow of losing a loved one, but the happiness in knowing they are going to a better place. We want to grasp onto a feeling or a justification but we know it is better left as it is.
The space between is where I like to exist on most days. It keeps me grounded, in a very honest way, from the polarity of emotional highs and lows that life brings. The artists may wield it as a tool to express their artwork but I wield it as a tool to help me navigate the waves of life. Whenever I feel thrown off course, I pull out the space between from my survival toolkit. Releasing my need to be certain, I allow myself to float between the trajectories of the two emotional states, knowing that somewhere in between is the right balance point. I just need to adjust the dial accordingly until I get there. And there is something to be said about this, that the whole point isn’t about trying to get into the space between as it is about releasing control and our need to be certain. It is the surrender state that many people talk about but struggle so hard to do.
Because surrender is the exact opposite of doing—it is the moment when we let go and stop doing.
And so, when I saw the old man immovably sitting by the benches, reading his book in the sweltering Okinawan summer sun, it brought to mind the perfect manifestation of what it means to be present and to exist in the moment itself; needing nothing at all yet becoming everything that we always wanted to be—the existence of the present, the now. In the exact moment my eyes met his countenance, I knew I was given a precious gift in the form of a living haiku.
While deeply contemplative thoughts were flitting across my mind and my heart was moving dials to try to get into the space between, my feet continued walking forwards, knowing that if I had stopped to take a picture as I so wanted to do, the entire moment would be gone. And so, I held that feeling in my heart and walked along, saying a silent thank you to him for sharing this beautiful moment with me.
Some things exist better as memories.