Nishi-Ikebukuro Inari

Right around the corner from where I used to live, but down some random side street I never went down. Occasionally you see these small shrines tucked away, someone's home or small business curling around and sheltering it. Intentional or encysted, the speck of grit around which the pearl forms. Or perhaps the speck of pearl around which the urban grit forms. And yet the urban grit is respectful enough to allow the gods some small modicum of space.

Funny to say, "where I used to live," weeks before "where I live" is about to become another "where I used to live."

From where I sit these days I see a shrine across the street. It's also used as an election station, so there are lines of people waiting in the finally dwindling flurries of snow today to vote. I can't participate in this particular democratic process, not being a citizen, but I like watching everyone else do it. A year ago, I would have commented that I enjoy the relative stability of Japanese politics - that it's reached some sort of equilibrium state - which is purely born of my imagination and ignorance. Like anywhere else these days (or perhaps simply always), Japan has its share of politicians which rely on anti-immigration rhetoric, but it seems like that's gotten a bit more traction lately.

Ah, humans.

I haven't been writing here lately.

I haven't been writing lately. No postcards, either. For a while I focused on scrapbooking. I had all of these physical artifacts, detritus that accumulated as I moved through the world, brochures and ticket stubs and stickers and stamps. Triggers of memory. Scrapbooking, for me, processes and refines and combines those triggers with the transcribing of those memories and feelings. But the accumulation of experiences and artifacts occurs at a rate beyond my time to reflect and process them.

And yet the creative itch needs scratching.

And I think this is stable enough of a platform that I can write something when I want without needing to re-build the tech stack or manage dependencies or blah blah blah (although I certainly do feel the itch to do that as well). So here we go. Another shrine, of days gone by.

Scritch, scratch.