Lost Beneath the Moon and Sun
In the darkness, I seek the good. I search for the light.
The sound of pouring rain woke me in the middle of the night.
I looked outside and could barely see it fall against the dark brown roof adjacent; yet you could hear it.
That endless, natural stream of sound which takes different shapes, notes, velocities — a healing symphony made of a single, piercing strum.
The rain continues to fall, and this is the state I write you in, one of peace and joy.
The season’s shifting.
The chill of night, the changing autumn leaves, the coming of Halloween and darker days.
It’s a gradual transformation — single days which build, nights which coalesce and constitute this beautiful experience we call a life.
There’s something ethereal, extraterrestrial, gritty, fantastic about Japan. Part of it is what we know from movies, books, the futuristic alleyways and flashing neon lights; the dreamy landscapes and unusual conveniences.
Being here inspires my imagination.
This country, it seems, has a unified imagination: there’s anime in government posters and on the train, and Pokémon is as part of the culture as Starbucks in the States or Europe. I love seeing Pikachu on the ubiquitous vending machines.
Each night, I exit the train station and walk through my Abeno neighborhood for about fifteen minutes.
I pass the same beer stalls and takoyaki stands, catching a brief glimpse, a second, maybe two, of the universe distilled. Then it’s gone.
I look at the moon. I seek it out, hiding behind the sky rises and apartments. And there it is, glowing amidst the hazy night.
I often feel lost beneath the moon, seeking under the sun. Perhaps I’m on a track somewhere, but I wonder about our human experience, what’s truly important.
There’s much I don’t know, that I’m uncertain about and fearful of. I’m often discouraged by how we destroy ourselves, and it saddens me that people must endure such pain.
I truly feel for people.
But in that darkness, I find something greater.
I seek the good.
I search for the light.
With the incomprehensibility of existence comes something magnificent: a chance.
A chance to match the insanity of our world with our own daring feats, to face that fear within ourselves and live.
People, above all else, fill me with hope. It’s the everyday people which I speak of, facing the mundane with the courage of a smile.
I don’t think it’s bad to be lost. We’re all lost in a way. All that matters is that you’re looking — for an answer, for some magic, for yourself.
These things intertwine.
Notice how certain things make you feel, how they change you, how they make you come alive.
In the moon, I find my inner kid. The moon is one with night, a welcoming light amidst the darkness of our human experience.
At least what we perceive as our darkness — our night. Yet the night, as opposed to day, is a darkness which we share.
It’s when interesting things happen.
It’s when our demons, our creativity, our imagination runs wild. The darkness connects us; not the us, which is clean and polished and grinding at the 9–5.
But the us which we grapple with, send out to explore the city, wrestle in our dreams.
The sun is light, love, warmth and energy. The moon, a stone amongst the cold dark space, becomes an object of fascination and study.
It’s really a guide, emitting warmth in a different sort of way, faith in the darkness, beauty to rely on when the world has come apart.
The light amidst the night attains a potency, a gravitational pull. We can gaze at the moon, observe its imperfections and craters, trust it to take us home.
The journey is the destination, ain’t it.
Caught in our limited worlds, separated by language and cultures and beliefs, divided by a single word or daring act. We’re all just souls beneath the stars. Drifting, lost, flowing with the river of our own perception.
To challenge that, to break the mold, to enter somebody else’s wandering eyes, the light beneath their moonscape — that makes it all worthwhile.
It’s a constant challenge to face the mercurial mind which tells us how to live. To listen to it when it says live; to challenge it when it says, hide.
In the darkness we seek the light, and it’s always there shining if we just look up.
If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll love my book Arrows of Youth
as well as my weekly newsletter, Citoyens du Monde.
