The autumn weather is glorious. The trees breathe in and out— changing colors as the energy reserves for the year change. The incense leaden air returns— the pest deterrent that makes me think of the Tibetan jewelry shops on Hawthorne.

It is my second year here.

In many ways, the changes feel obvious when I take a step back. But it can be hard to do, or rather, remember, as the ebb and flow of joy and melancholy can twist throughout the day like eager garter snakes.

I often think of the phrase “I know it like the back of my hands” and take time to study my own. To look at the pink crescent scar on the knuckle of my right middle finger. Or the pale vertical slash on my left thumb where I had punctured the finger doing who knows what. But I remember the skin bursting and my shock at my thumb bleeding. I remember cutting my knuckle open on the broken frame of a picture in a Westside house my cousin moved into.

In some ways, I feel gentler than before. More vulnerable. But I wonder if this time has been more akin to shearing than remaking. In childhood, I was a curious and sensitive kid. One just as likely to strike up a conversation with complete strangers as I was to watch in silence. In the moments I feel bristly, I know it’s because of unmet desires. And at times, it’s staggering to admit how simple those desires are. There is nothing complex to the combination of grief and loneliness that has visited me enough to wear impressions on my heart.

We would like to imagine ourselves mysterious. Complicated. And in fairness, there is a random, complicated aspect to humans. There are layers upon layers to be discovered or understood. And if you’d like to drive yourself mad— you can dig forever. Or, you can accept that sometimes things don’t follow the usual pattern. We act in ways unbecoming of our own self-image due to those embarrassingly simple explanations like wanting company or being confused.

There’s a golden light that shines in these autumn afternoons. A warm haze that makes the forests glow. You can look at the farms with their peeling side panels and rusty tractors. You can see the burn and dirt piles—the evidence of effort amid a more significant change. The rivers run drier. Weeds have replaced running water and grow high to make temporary fields.

I thumb through my pocket journal. The worn, flowery pattern whose hardcover front and back have begun to pull from the seams. There’s a dark texture to the edge of the notes. You can see where my ink-stained fingers have flipped through again and again. You can see the days I return to and those I do not. They are equal in their distance to this present moment— a moment now cataloged and will become past.

It is my second year here, and I will return at the end.

I doubt I’ll ever see another autumn in Tsushima. I’m curious if I’ll ever see another autumn in Japan.

The use of distance and time is the clarity it can provide. You gain a distance from what had been right in front of you. It's ironic, as I can see how these words could be used in the future to describe this experience I’m having on the island.

Uncertainty feels, to me, to be the nature of humanity. It’s the specter that looms at the edge of our minds. Of our lives. We build so many rules and restrictions for ourselves. We decree the way the universe must be experienced for it to be meaningful or to “count.” But who can claim to know any of that?

“And perhaps this is the final, most devastating truth. The gods care nothing for ascetic impositions on mortal behavior. Care nothing for rules of conduct, for twisted morals of temple, priests and monks. Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves— our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.” —Malazan Empire by Steve Erickson

I keep returning to this quote since I read it on the twenty-second of October. I’ve been mulling it over and over as I think how much of our lives are entangled with our devotions. And how the world would be if we could step back and whisper, if ever so quietly, “what if I’m wrong?”