I’ll level with you— I’ve been listening to a lot of western music recently. Frankly, you could say that I’ve been digging into country tunes. But those would be your words, not mine.

This particular title comes from Eileen Jewel— a singer I discovered while listening to a Dwight Yoakim inspired radio station.

Now, I know this doesn’t seem like earth shattering news to break to you, dear reader, but I am sitting on a rural Japanese island and country music is my auditory apple pie right now. I’m not going to suddenly drop into the depths of honky tonk, but hearing melodic baritones croon about hollers and trucks has a distinct measure of reassurance.

Another side of this has been my developing appreciation for the storytelling that’s within the genre of western music. I love the ballads and wry turns of phrase. If nothing else, I love a good surprise whistle or harmonica.

Imagine me in one of my classrooms— a Studio Ghibli score playing as school children go about preparing for lunch in their color coordinated lunch work attire. I sit at a wooden desk that’s often two sizes too small for me— and I have a jaunty tune about a half-broken horse wandering the desert. Or how troubles of the crossing the Rio Grande. All while I watch a coordinated effort deliver bowls of egg soup, rice, and assorted pickled vegetables to the other desks.

Those are the moments that I try to take in everything around me. I try to lower the volume of the song in my head at look at the students. Listen to the song playing over the intercom. Appreciate the views of the rain- misted moments in the distance. The windows are cracked open because of lingering fears over the pandemic. There’s a bite to the stubborn winter air— but it’s easing as Spring begins to break through its frozen grasp.

I sit there and appreciate the food— the difference of the scene as classes only eat with their own grade— and in my school— each class is small enough that they all stay in their own room. At their own desks. I sit there with them— in a free desk. And I take in their daily accepted ceremony— something they’ve done since kindergarten and will do until the end of high school. I sit there with them in that wide expanse of time as a drop of dew. My time here is not forever— some of them won’t even have me during the entirety of their Junior High career. I will roll off the leaf and find new soil to seize.

And so I chuckle— as I walk through town at a slow pace. A gentle meandering born out of the luxury of free time. I’m back to western ballads in those moments— at odds with the bevy of minor shrines and historic samurai houses situated in the middle of a tight neighborhood.

I laugh because this memory will play out like a distant dream in time. And so Eileen Jewel comes back to the forefront— as her voice reminds me I’ll be “Nowhere in No Time.”