Here, now ( いまここ )

The moment I rediscovered what life is really all about was when I watched Perfect Days by Wim Wenders. Not on the first go, but on the second. Some things need to linger to make perfect sense. It served as a reminder that it’s not so much about what you do but how you do it. That routine doesn’t have to make you feel stuck. This world is cruel enough – to still see beauty in it is an act of resistance. I watched this movie almost exactly a year before the person I thought would be my forever crashed out and ran off to another country, leaving behind pretty much everything we’d built together. It’s funny how your body always knows even though you don’t want to listen. The psychological pains I was feeling months before, the sleepless nights, the shushing of my gut feeling. Nothing seems to matter if you want to make things work. 

I found myself in a limbo of disbelief and colossal grief and nowhere to put it. Once heartbreak hits you – no matter how often you’ve been through it – nothing makes sense like it did before. At least for a while. After months of feeling like a shell of myself, I needed to get my life back. I’ve been living in someone else’s head for way too long that I lost myself somewhere along the way. I’m not particularly a person who remembers the emergency exit, always has a plan B, or escapes when life gets tough. And still, I felt like I was living with a ghost, and in order to get rid of the invisible force, I needed to disappear until I felt like myself again. Solo traveling has never been an option for me. I enjoy sharing moments and memories way too much. But how do you reconnect with parts of yourself you’ve lost in the midst of emotional turbulence? Who am I when no one is watching? Life is a spiral, and I’m here to untangle it.

I booked a flight to Japan for a month and waited for the day of departure like a kid for Christmas Eve. The first week, I spent with my friend, a little emotional comfort zone, exploring Osaka, Takamatsu and Naoshima together. I was almost certain loneliness would creep in like all those ladybugs on my windows the moment I waved goodbye to him. It didn’t. Quite the opposite. With every day I spent in solitude, my mind started to relax more. With every morning onigiri in my various hotel beds, my body enjoyed being nourished again. I was relearning how to take care of myself, guided by the little yellow stars on my Google Maps. The feminine urge to danger zone the places we had once been together. Instead, I faced the possibility of emotional earthquakes. Having been with an avoidant made me want to be everything but avoidant myself. When I entered the tiny bar in Taito City, Tokyo, which we discovered by accident years ago, I sat down at the exact same spot, observing the quiet side street in front of me. I’m the main character of my life again, I thought to myself while sipping on my cold beer. An old man just walked out of the opposite sento, glowing like one of my Google Maps stars. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. It doesn’t take a lot to feel alive. 

As much as I consider myself a nostalgic person, the past is a place of reference for better or worse. When I looked outside my hotel window that night, counting the lit-up rooms (222), I couldn’t help but smile, living my own Lost in Translation sequence. Did you know that Sofia Coppola allegedly made this film in 2003 to tell her side of the relationship with now ex-husband Spike Jonze, who always had to work? Something I can relate to deeply. Ten years later, he responded with Her (2013), which is said to represent his side of the story. Fun fact: Scarlett Johansson played one of the main characters in both of them. These two movies are a meditation on the persistent feeling of loneliness within a relationship and post-breakup. A conversation from a distance between two lovers turned strangers. 

Life is a constant process of letting go. At least that’s what Co-Star told me the next morning. I set out on this journey to the other side of the world to find inner peace again. To sit with the discomfort in my chest. Instead of distracting myself with other people, I decided to feel it all out. To let the waves of memories crash against my body without tumbling. Did I find inner peace? In rare moments, without question. When I visited Kawai Kanjiro’s house in Kyoto, an oasis of calm. When I touched every stone at the Isamu Noguchi garden museum. When I sat down at Yoyogi Park on my last day, listening to the lullabies of crows circling over my head. I once read you should write down how you feel in moments like these, when happiness hits you like a slap in the face. So here’s a reminder for moments of misery:

The sudden hit of a scent you have almost forgotten. 

The sound of words you don’t understand but feel.

The first sip of a really good Negroni.

The absence of thought spirals.

The poetry of empty sushi plates.

The taste of my first strawberry and cream sandwich.

The evening sun on my face. 

The rain as my companion in quiet moments.

The touch of concrete.

The warmth from within.

The lightness of being.

The biggest lesson I learned on this trip is one about patience. Instead of walking past everyone on the escalator, I observed the rush hour unfold from the left side. Instead of searching for alternatives, I stood in line for what I didn’t know yet was the best curry I’ve ever tasted. I have been impatient all my life. When I want something, I want it now. Instant gratification numbness, the curse of my generation. But I learned to take my time and be fully present. There is a Japanese saying, 石の上にも三年, which sums it up beautifully and translates to “three years on a stone.” Even if a stone is cold, if you sit on it for long enough, it will become warm. It’s all about waiting a little longer for the things you deserve. 

One of the only moments Hirayama (played by Kōji Yakusho) actually speaks in Perfect Days is when he says the following to his niece: “Next time is next time. Now is now.” To find joy in grief is the final act of letting go. It means you really loved someone deeply, even though you couldn’t make things work. In the end, you can only meet someone as much as they’ve met themselves, and you did everything you could with the tools you had at that time. Now you know, next time you’ll know better.