The Magic of the In-Between

by Sean McGrath (United States of America)

Making a local connection Japan

Masha & I met on a Sunday right outside of Golden Gai at Hanazono Jinja, an unobtrusive Inari shrine with a sloping oxidized copper roof. The sakura were in full bloom & the grounds were covered with the white & pink cherry blossoms that blanket the city during the warm spring months. I left my footprints in the flowers on my way to greet her. After the hello & before the goodbye, there was magic. We live for the magic of this in-between, the story wedged within the introduction to & the conclusion of. And our stories, for two brief weeks, they overlapped; intertwined. Japan became a familiar unfamiliarity; a place in which we both existed & lived. The Tokyo streets, one long time lapse of blurred colors & distorted pedestrian outlines, buildings pregnant with buildings, perfectly rectangular, shouting at the people below in attention-grabbing brightness, they became home. And on every corner, visitors, someone or some two or some twenty who pulled out his phone to reproduce the soul of these streets. Within this chaos – the almost incomprehensibly organized, safe, systematic chaos – we made the city our playground. Together, we came to define Tokyo not as the city itself but as a shorthand for our time there. Wherever we walked, the streets were bright, as if the sun never set; never even tried to. One long day keeping a promise to never end. And so, in the morning, we visited Golden Gai, a crunch of former brothels converted into hundreds of microbars. In the afternoon, we sung karaoke more for each other than for ourselves (but still for ourselves. Masha is a performer by career, by trade. I like to think of myself this way. It’s not even close.) And at night, we walked the hectic Shibuya crossing, tucked through alleys in Shinjuku, meandered down Dogenzaka, glassy with the remnants of an afternoon downpour. We dined in Roppongi, lounged in Yoyogi Park, people watched in Harajuku, talked thought experiments in Asakusa. “If you were certain that a relationship was going to end, would you start it in the first place?” Masha asked me as we walked along the on-ramp of a highway. The sky was bright because of course it was. Masha was drinking coffee. The cup was that shade of brown that indicates it’s made of recycled materials & is, itself, recyclable. To this day, I remember that cup. “I don’t think so? I mean, doesn’t that sort of loom heavy over the relationship before it starts?” "We learn so much from the time we spend together, & we are made up of the experiences that we have, both good & bad," she said. "Denying myself that experience is almost like denying myself the opportunity to fully live, ya know? It’s what makes us human, darling: our ability to emote, to feel pain, to feel love. To feel." It wasn’t immediate, but once she was no longer part of my definition of Tokyo, I realized: she’s right, Masha is. We carry other people’s impacts on our lives wherever & whenever we go. The effects we have on one another are often immeasurable. They’re also permanent. Every interaction we have changes us in some way; adds a layer – however small – to who we are & to who we become. Who are we to deny ourselves the opportunity to share & grow with someone, even for a short period of time? We are the sum of our experiences. Masha helped me realize that. Before I left her Roppongi flat for the last time, I leaned against the door, too weak to keep the sun from its rightful spot beneath the horizon; too inconsequential to extend the day any longer. “You’re giving me your necklace?” “To me, it represents the caution I must always take with anything I’m passionate about. I hope, to you, it represents the time we had here in weird-ass fucking Japan.” Masha & I, we were together in a place that was as temporary as it is permanent. And even after we had both been long gone from where we first met, as we traveled to opposite corners of the world & gathered up new memories, we remained with each other, inextricably linked by virtue of having met, however briefly, in Japan.