life is a garden: oct 9-16

life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching

🌾 return to “life is a garden”
🗓 return to “months”

catskills / return2 real life

ty adriana for putting it together, ty aurora for having us, ty chantal and caroline for becoming new friends, ty yena for being the best lap dog

ty world for being beautiful

this big rock with moss made me miss my grandfather10/13/25

last quarter moon in cancer
weather is stormy, a proper turn away from summer

memories of my grandfather find me everywhere while i am out in nature. the thought of him tugs my heart in both directions of warmth and melancholy. moss on the stones, i softly cry. every mountain is a portal. every path leads me back to what i’ve always known.

i started missing people in a big way very early in my life, which may explain my sentimental disposition (the only other explanation being that i am just a big weenie.)

a simple crunch of a leaf transports me to picking shiitake with my grandfather. i felt most at home with him.

today, i miss him so much. i am thinking about him as we take a sudden, violent shift into colder, shorter days.

i wonder why i am thinking of him so much today. i wonder why we think of anyone at all. as much i love my humanness, there are days i grow frustrated and burdened by love. even the lover struggles to love sometimes!!

i used to never have an answer when asked who i’d want to sit down for a meal with, dead or alive. they say, it could be anybody. i used to not know how to answer. i thought that maybe i’d have to pretend to give a shit about a famous person to seem smart.

i had shut down the soft spaces of my heart that allowed myself to miss anybody. it hurt too much to know they were gone. now, i feel brave enough to say that i’d love to see my grandfather, even just for a brief meal. if i could sit with anybody, dead or alive, i’d give it all to spend a moment with him.

my grandfather ran a successful lumber business in my hometown, kitakyushu. apparently, he sold wood shavings to weyerhauser. he used to ride a harley-davidson, way before i was born. he loved to tango, which also was happening before i was born. he was eclectic and loved to drink asahi super dry, maybe too much. he used to smoke until he quit, which led to him scowling at anyone who smoked around his kids. he once raised a coffee tree to produce just enough beans for one cup of coffee. he took care of a chicklet i brought home from a carnival. he named the chicklet piyo-chan. he got so sad when a cat got into the cage and ate piyo-chan. he was a man of projects.

its difficult to imagine what he’d think of me now. climbing a tree on sunday, it occurred to me that perhaps it didn’t matter. i was seeking approval from a man who was already dead.

he lives on in my heart. sometimes, for a split moment, i forget he is gone. i look at a big stone and think, he’d love to see this!!

if i spent a day with my grandfather, i’d want to show him my ceramics. i started touching clay long after his passing. he didn’t even live to see my first wheel-thrown objects from when i was twelve!! i wonder how much of me you can really know if you’ve never seen my ceramic objects, how much of me you could know without knowing my practice. maybe he already knew.

i wonder what he did know of me, if he knew i’d become the freak i am. he used to give me massages on my head to “become smarter”. i watched golf and the stock channel with him. it all went over my head. he threatened to never visit if my mother moved us to hawai’i. he stuck to his word.

he is my main collaborator. i memorialize him through his spirit that lives in me, meeting him in the house he built and objects he left behind. he lives in everything i do. that is the nature of love, i think.