“Kiss a birthday,” my mom said over the phone. It was raining and my headphones were doing that thing where they skip the song you’re listening to, or hang up on a person at will—so I pressed my phone to my ear with one hand the old fashioned way, and held up an umbrella with the other. “Kiss. A. Birthday.” She said again. Kiss. Keep it simple. But without the last ‘s.’
For the last year or so, I’ve been struggling to define what is real and not real; pulling petals from daisies and asking them what they mean. In January, I seriously considered being mapless. What would it be like to have no digital impact, to not be impacted by digital? To disappear from everything I’d gotten used to here, where Social Media and Productivity and Work is considered God and Queen and Mother to many, if not most of us. I can still hear the softness in A’s voice when he said to me, “sometimes we need to shake up our thoughts.”
I want to go to the mountains,
I want to go to the sea,
I want to go to a place where no one knows me,
I want to be lost among the people who speak a language I don’t understand at all.
—Takuboku Ishikawa Romaji Diary and Sad ToysIt’s entirely possible that I’ve been in a place “I don’t understand at all” for too long. When I first moved to Japan I was content to know nothing because I knew that being here would teach me something. I was more comfortable, in a naive sense, with being misunderstood because it was easier to give others the benefit of the doubt then. At 22, being let down didn’t feel so permanent. Even though it did. There was always something coming next, next, next. And almost everything seemed salvageable.
The first thing I remember about coming to Japan were its sounds, particularly the ones belonging to the city. I stumbled my way through Tokyo Station alone and sweating, clutching the piece of paper that would lead me to my hotel, then my dorm—I did not have a working phone—and I believed that everybody in a suit knew the world better than I did. After all, they were in suits. There were trains ringing, shoes clicking on the floor, announcements in a language I didn’t understand. I doubt I knew how my body was feeling. The only thing it knew was that it had to push itself through people and onto a train car before the doors could close onto it.
My birthday is today. Kind of. Technically my birthday is on March 26th in Japan due to the time difference. I planned a party for myself this time. I did this on purpose because I watched my birthday turn inside out last year.
I didn’t fully understand and still don’t understand how—and maybe that’s the point I’m meant to grasp. These memories are painful and unburied now that they’ve been given more color—more truth but not the whole truth. And it would be nice to just be free of them, but I don’t think that’s how this works. Vivid things live louder until you really see them. But what if you’re only given some of the colors? Not the whole thing, never the whole thing. The truth of others is in a half-finished painting, a full picture they won’t let you see.
“Kiss a birthday.”
“A what?”
“A birthday, you got to kiss it.”
“Okay, so, what if I just said fuck this to all of it.”
“Is it enough?”
“I don’t know. What if I just stayed home.”
“Is it enough?”
“I don’t know what is enough. What if I wrote a letter to March?”
“Will she write back?”
“I don’t know. I’ll start with a beginning like Dear March—so it won’t seem like too much or too little.”
Dear March,
will you stay for long?
i saw your suitcase by the door—the yellowing tag with your name
when you came last year
you were different
now, here you are
teasing warmth
like flames on a beach
are we allowed to melt
in this tree you’ve given
do we melt with you on this day
i feel like there are two parts of you
one warm and one cold
you are so
joyously restless
in trying to define yourself
the birds busy themselves
with the thought of you
flowers rehearse
imitating their mothers
reaching only for the sun
thank you for the wind, the wild, and all the color
when i take off my coat
i fall out of love
and remember warm beginnings
the smell of them
i take off my coat
and it is okay to be without
I chose four photos to display at my birthday party tonight at Rhythm Cafe—a small bar with blue walls, red tables, and a very kind owner who DJs, and may have known Diana Ross. Four photos was all the yen I had left.
I went to the printing shop on Thursday, the only day of the week they are open. The director had long hair and glasses. Her voice was calming and she wore mostly beige. We talked about how much of a border to give the photos, breathing space for pins if it comes to pins, and whether or not it was raining outside.
After the photos were printed, they were gently put into cardboard casing and wrapped in several layers of plastic to protect them from the moisture swelling outside in the clouds. The director told me that one of the photos was “ephemeral,” especially because it had been taken a year or two before; showing symptoms of things that haven’t happened yet. I pointed to one of the half circles in a photo on the screen, then to the shape of the moon in another photo neighboring it. She smiled behind her mask as if she’d already seen.
There is a sense of time, repetition, and not knowing. Real, or not real? This is what I told the owner, Mr.K, at Rhythm Cafe later that night when I dropped the photos off. “There’s blur.” I said. “わからない感じがすること.” “I will frame them.” He said, to my surprise. I felt weightless. The way you feel when someone removes a burden you didn’t know you had. “And then I have to think about where to put them.” He said, looking around at the blue walls adorned with paintings. I thanked him, and donated the photos to the bar, to him, to God maybe, without thinking.
That’s when I called my mom in the rain with my umbrella, and she told me to just kiss a goddamn birthday. I realized it was the first day of Ramadan, and I hadn’t eaten all day, like last year, but this time by pure green coincidence.
The four photos for today’s exhibition / birthday. Pre-order a print by sending me a message via email, or IG. Subscribers of Swallow can respond directly to this entry in their inbox :)
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Photos are A4 | 210 x 297 mm | 8.3 x 11.7 inches
¥ 8,500 (Roughly 65 US dollars).
Local and international shipping available, and not included in price, let’s chat about your map :) For Swallow founding members, a print of your choice is free.
Kiss a birthday blurb
“Back online.” I never left, I am a JPEG. Not immune. Plugged in like a warm bath. Swipe for JPEG, JPEG, JPEG—they were once RAW. Connecting to my roots in a floral pink dress I once wore, so I wear it again, but in Gold—It’s spring and I am no longer five years old. 1996 with orcas on cakes. Thank you mom, thank you Gaga. Am I still a real, real thing? 32, hi. My mom told me to "keep it simple.
わからない感じがする わからないことって？ 日本語で合ってないかも 何度生き返ったこと 文はぐちゃぐちゃけど、 まだ続けるga, 理解できないことについて話す最良の方法は、 私も完全には理解できない言語で話すことかもしれnai translation: (copy and paste into a translator of your choice for varying results).
"Kiss A. Birthday." You did it just right. Happy DAY!
Your descriptions, your sense of time and reality, your poetry, your questions--they all combine so eloquently. And I love how you come full circle! Happy Birthday!!