A Change of Plans

Japan is her idea. A way to reconnect. A second honeymoon, even though we never really had a first. Only eighteen when we married, it wasn’t in the budget. Besides, in our situation, we had more pressing matters. A couple of kids having a kid. But then we didn’t. In a way I don’t think we really fell in love until we were comforting each other over the loss.

We didn’t try again for a couple of years. Happy years, the way I remember them. But the next time it happened the sorrow seemed to push us apart instead of bringing us closer together.

She joined the Church after miscarriage number three. She did her best to get me to go with her, but my attendance was spotty, my devotion even more so. It wasn’t the people, they seemed nice enough. I just didn’t find any answers there. Maybe I was asking the wrong questions, but the building felt as hollow and empty as her womb.

I sought solace in a different way. Long hours, weeks spent living out of a suitcase. The punishing grind of sales, rewarded with quarterly bonuses and awards banquets held in smoky barrooms that tend to turn ugly as the liquor flows into the night. My willingness to forfeit a personal life for a professional life does not go unnoticed. The youngest regional director of sales of in company history, I try to placate her, and maybe myself, that it will all be worth it in the end.

And then she proposes Japan.

The trip is organized by a group at her Church. Each year they go somewhere new. Italy. Greece. Israel. And each year her friends return and we listen to their stories and admire their pictures and purchases and she pretends to be so happy for them. They ask us to join them, but we tell them of the plan, our plan, that more hard work now means an earlier and better retirement later. Free and unencumbered, young enough to still enjoy it, we will have it all. But it eats at her. I know it does. So I relent.

We spend our first night in Tokyo. To me, the city is beautiful, a futuristic forest of metal and glass and neon. I understand its tempo, its pulse, the hurried existence of its citizens. I love how the city straddles the edge, teetering between ragged chaos and an ordered, almost military-like structure. I feel safe in its frenzied cocoon.

She does not.

She wants tradition, history. She wants cherry blossoms and wooden temples, tea ceremonies and tranquil gardens. She wants to feel the past. She doesn’t understand that the past is littered with pain and death.

Or maybe she understands it better than me.

The sun is barely up when we drive south and leave Tokyo behind. The trees glisten in the early morning light. When we arrive in Kamakura, the air is already hot and thick. Swarms of mosquitos buzz about, as do the crowds of people at the great Shinto shrine of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. I find a place to sit in the shade as the rest of our group scales the stairs to the Senior Shrine. I long for the central air conditioning of our room. When they descend, I look at our itinerary. One more stop. The Daibutsu at Kotoku-in.

We round the corner and I see him. He sits nestled in the hills. Humble, yet profound. Open and ready for whatever the universe brings. He is not afraid. He is not happy, or sad, or angry. He just is. And in his shadow, just for a moment, I too, catch of glimmer of what lies beyond the mysteries. It changes everything.

The truth, in all of its simplicity, is laid bare before me. Everything I know is an illusion, the life I have created is nothing but a series of calculated distractions. The fancy clothes, the newest gadgets, the Best in Sales plaques that dot my walls, all are mere band-aids, failed attempts to cover the gaping wounds in my soul. The overtime I put in at work is not a sacrifice to get ahead, rather it is me trying to avoid the unavoidable. I know that now.

I cannot run from suffering, I cannot escape it. It is inevitable.

I see her standing a few feet away, studying the great statue with reverence. It hits me that someday I will lose her, and she will lose me. Instead of terrifying me, I realize that I am okay with this, that I have to be okay with this. That if you are not willing to let your heart be broken, you cannot love. And a life without love is worse than death.

I walk up behind her and put my arms around her. She’s startled by my sudden affection.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

I smile at her.

“Yes,” I say. I pull her closer to me and kiss her. I kiss her like I used to when we were eighteen. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t been this good, in a long, long time.”

“Wow,” she says, and she means it.

Together we stare up at the giant bronze Buddha. I feel an electricity between us that has been long absent.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she says. “It’s hard to believe that it’s been here for over seven hundred and fifty years.”

I look at his face, calm and serene. I wonder how many others have stood in just this spot, how many others he has shown the truth to, how many others he has saved.

“It’s… It’s magical. I can’t really describe it.”

The tour guide announces our departure. Our group starts to shuffle away, back to the bus, back to the city that suddenly holds no appeal. We turn to go.

“Thank you,” I say, mostly to her, but also to him.

She looks at me.

“For what?”

“For everything. For not giving up on me, on us. For bringing me here.”

She squeezes my arm.

“You’re welcome.”



Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Rob Gregory

Anatomy of the Inhuman Heart (Tales from the Academy)

Ren became an orphan and a soldier in the span of twelve hours.

It started with the bright white light of her tablet, the notification a signal flare arcing against a starless sky.

Groaning, she tapped the blocky red letters and closed her eyes. He’s forgotten about the time difference again.

Ren settled back into the covers, the comforter warm and soft against her chin. She felt sleep embrace her, but the call light cleaved through the darkness.

He meant to call someone else.

She pressed the red letters and rolled onto her back. Anxiety gnawed at her, ground away her desire for sleep and Ren found herself grabbing the tablet and tapping away until her father’s face was there, washed with worry and fear.

“What’s wrong?” Ren asked, and a dozen possibilities turn over in her mind. Her mother, her siblings, his job. But Occam’s Razor has no place in war. There is no room for simplicity among hatred.

“An attack,” her father said. She slid her fingers against a slender glass tab and activates a wider, brighter screen across from the bed. Ren saw images her mind refused to reconcile.

Her country. The iconic snow-topped mountain. A mushroom cloud. Cherry blossoms fluttering in a radioactive breeze.

She slid her fingers again. Light left the room, save for her father’s face, small and weak with its own darkness.

“But you are not in Tokyo,” Ren choked, knowing what he would say.

“It is not just Tokyo.”

“Tell me,” she demanded. She listened as he explained what the news outlets will spend weeks covering in detail, with bold, colorful interactive maps and graphics: analysts standing in the middle of renderings of Kyoto Ground Zero and Tokyo Ground Zero, anchors charting the bombings across Kyushu and Shikoku. Damage dealt by China, all pretense of positive relations smoldering.

With her father, it was black and white. He stayed home, sick with flu, and he could not get in touch with her mother and sisters. He has tried to use the locator app, but — and he would not look at her as the words spilled out in a sob — no user connection.

“Leave,” Ren said.

“It’s too late.”

“They’ll come,” Ren insisted, though she isn’t sure who “they” are and when and how they will arrive. “Someone will come. International aid, survivors’ camps — ”

“Ren,” her father met her eyes. Across a war zone that did not exist yesterday, across an ocean, they saw each other for what they are: a father and his favorite daughter, a dying man and a survivor.

“No,” she said. Her jaw trembled, oscillating between rage and mourning.

“I called to say goodbye.”

They spoke for another half hour, until the signal ended — tragically? Mercifully? Ren can never decide.

Ren looked around the room, Spartan with its single large screen. She felt like a caged animal, breathing stale air and circling, ready to attack. When she unlatched the door she felt cool freedom, tears drying into streaks of salt on her cheeks like war paint.

Ren tallied her losses. She tallied the losses of those who could not.

The recruiting office buzzed with jingoistic rhetoric, electric currents of pride and racism pulsing around her. Ren wanted to shake the men, women, and children who glared at her.

She remembers learning about the internment camps during World War II and how magazines published ways to tell Chinese and Japanese people apart. There were buttons with big bold letters: I AM CHINESE.

Ren considered making one of her own, one that might light up with flashing neon letters, lowercase in the style of the microblogs and pop journo sites: i am japanese-american!

Or better: i hurt, too <appropriate emoji>!

But not what she felt, never the words she wanted to scream at them as they stared and hated and judged: I lost something, and you want only to gain.

When her turn came, she signed on the line and enlisted like the others.

                                                                                              ***

The campus sprawls over forty acres, though Lieutenant Colonel Chisholm assures them additional funding has been approved to purchase more land, build more facilities, remodel staff quarters. Nervous chuckles ripple from the new recruits, men and women responsible for the success of the Academy and its progeny, like this place is a living organism.

They walk into the main building, a massive umbrella sculpture of fabric and seams welcoming them in shades of orange and vermillion.

The heart of the Academy, Ren thinks. It feels like her own: ripped open and inverted, rearranged into something macabre. It beats not to sustain life, but to avenge the dead. Vessels that once constricted and pumped blood have been fashioned into spikes pulsing poison.

Ren tastes bile and the room swims before her, the heart of the Academy throbbing, pounding in the atrium. She hears the blood rushing in her ears and it sounds like the drums of war. She breathes long and deep until she feels weightless, drained of the fever that boils her blood and makes her see red and hatred everywhere.

Temper your rage.

                                                                                              ***

“I like your hair. Not many women going for the traditional crew cut.” Desh’s mouth spreads in a delicate grin. It’s different from the too-wide garish smiles the others have given her, the words of a compliment betrayed by the ticks of the disingenuous. Ren decides to trust this man, even though her CO warned otherwise.

“Thanks, but I think I went too extreme. It needs to grow out. And I kind of miss my bun.”

“Did they tell you why I was here?”

“Reporter for pop journo site New New Republic,” Ren says.

“I’m writing about the success of the Academy, getting perspectives from different people in the trenches. We’ll give everyone pseudonyms. Lieutenant Colonel’s orders,” Desh says. “Tell me some things about you. Give me a sense of Specialist Ren Mori.”

“I manufacture murder,” Ren says, “and I try to live with that choice.”

Ren looks at Desh, who has sad, dark eyes like her father did. She continues.

“Some days are easier than others.”

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Wind Howl Hold Steady

The road runs beside cliffs that look like someone cut them with a giant celestial butter knife. Down and drop to rocks and waves of death. What possesses you to do it? To take the wheel and jerk, to take the plunge, to wave the white flag? Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away.

When I first told him that I didn’t believe in ghosts, he said, “Well that’s too bad, because they believe in you.” When I replied that I was curious how he knew such things, he came back with: “Because they told me.”

His wisdom lifts up into the warm air and is whisked away, shoo fly don’t bother me, by the wind. He waves goodbye to it and we continue down the road. I ask him to tell me more about the ghosts of Cliff Road. “Well, first off,” he replies, “First off, they are all happy.”

“No hauntings on Cliff Road?” I ask.

“No hauntings on Cliff Road,” he reiterates. “It’s because they all want to be here. They all want to be dead.”

“They all want to be ghosts?” I ask. “Suicide?”

My travelling companion nods his head. “Affirmative,” he mutters. But then he reverses course, back it up, back it up. A little further now.

“Actually, no,” he says, “I guess if you think about it they probably hate being ghosts just as much as they hate being alive. That would make more sense.”

“Maybe they wanted to be ghosts to haunt people,” I say, “And that’s why they kill themselves. The grass is always greener sort of thing.”

My companion has a deep beard that resembles the forest that flanks Cliff Road, and he scratches it constantly. He’s scratching it now: “I grew up here,” he says. “Funny thing about growing up.”

I believe he will continue, but when he doesn’t I’m not surprised. He appears to be that sort of fellow.

“Like, here, here?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “In the region, though. Not far away.”

“Is that why you’re here? To come home?”

“No,” he says. “Have you ever heard of Aokigahara Forest?”

I don’t reply.

“It’s a forest in Japan,” he continues. “People go there to kill themselves.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Well,” he begins, “I guess their life isn’t all that great. They say suicides go up during the holidays, but I read somewhere that was actually an urban legend, and that suicide rates actually stay pretty constant throughout the year.”

There is a beat of silence while I wait for him to catch up.

“Oh,” he says, “Right. Why do they go to the forest?”

His voice trails off gradually, more and more after every sentence, disappearing until he’s nothing but mumbles.

We continue walking in silence, thumbs out. Books in a bag slouched on his shoulders; romance and Dharma Bums and half-smoked cigarettes. You’ve seen it all before.

There is a fog rolling in, not uncommon to the region. The warm, moist air from the land encounters the cool waters of the Pacific and sparks fog – Mr. Gardner taught me that in sixth grade, probably the closest I came to a mentor.

I saw him again when I graduated-Gardner; his son was in my grade. He was awful. Three months out from a divorce he surely knew was coming. Drunk on scotch and self-pity.

“We are all atoms,” he slurred at me. “Buncha’ protons and electrons circlin’ like a hurricane the eye of our nucleus. Carbon pullin’ us all together, fusin’ us with one another and the world we inhabit at large. Until the sky and stars are made of us and vice versa.”

“Goddamn fog, man,” says my companion. “Gives me the creeps.”

“It should,” I say and finally, finally, finally he looks at me like he really sees me. Finally, he seems to know.

What happens next will take some time, but I’ll savor the moments as his face contorts slightly, before the naturalistic display of toughness. No fear, his chin will try to say – but it shakes. I want to pat his head and whisper the truth. You can’t escape fear.

“They go because they’re called there,” I say.

“What?”

“The forest…In Japan,” I whisper. I know he can hear me, I don’t have to raise my voice. “I asked why they went there to kill themselves. Of all the places, why there?”

“I mean,” he stutters, “Nobody really knows. It’s probably because it’s like the cool thing to do now, you know? Like if you’re going to do it, might as well do it here?”

He looks like they all look about this time; like he wants to run away but can’t. His body is even angled away from me, down the road toward the bend, into the fog.

“No, you’re wrong,” I smile at him. “They’re called there, just like they are to other places. Golden Gate Bridge…Beachy Head…Mount Mihara….Aokigahara Forest.”

I pause for dramatic effect.

“Here…” I finish, “Cliff Road.”

The young man looks around. He is on the verge of weak, puny tears.

“Who?” he asks, “Who calls them?”

“All of us,” I reply. “All of us that came before. The more the merrier.”

I laugh and he begins to cry. Poor boy. He looks through the fog and sniffs and wipes tears because he knows what’s out there. That’s what so beautiful about it; he can’t see it but he knows it’s there.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes.

They all apologize. I apologized. There’s no shame in the fear you find at the end of the road.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I was sick. I was so tired and there’s just…there’s just everything…”

He trails off again. It strikes me that, really, he’s just a child. The beard made him look older, but the sadness and the designation and the pity show his true age.

“You’re not here to stop me,” he says.

I shake my head and say, “On the contrary…”

“Why?” he asks.

He cries deep, hard tears and his body convulses. All like the rest, all the same.

I shrug. I am void of this pity. I am tired of this show.

“Are you going to finish this?” I ask. “Or am I?”


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Angela DeRay

After the Storm

The first frost came early that year, hardening the alluvial mountain earth – with it, soon after, the first winter storm. That meant the main road that cut through the mountains and out of the town was closed early, though it was at some point every winter. So Arata waited.

Time’s forward progression no longer felt like a certainty as the harsh frost froze everything it touched. Arata waited without any assurance that waiting would bring her any closer to realizing her plans. She sat patiently in the quiet of her living room watching the smoke snake out of her neighbor’s detached kitchen. Now and again, a huddled mass could be seen rushing from the kitchen to its attendant house with an armful of steaming food. She thought how curious it was that a detached kitchen, an antiquated and inconvenient architectural design, should still exist. The days and weeks and months passed and Arata continued to sit and wait. There was nothing else left for her to do.

Then spring came.

The winter weather had finally broken and the heavy curtain of cold lifted. The transformation was sudden. In a matter of days, the accumulated snow gave way to a dramatic explosion of green.

Arata gathered her worn suitcase, one her father had given to her before she went off to university, which she had prepared months before that first winter storm. Bits of dried faux leather flaked at its corners, revealing a layer of thin foam intended to mimic the suppleness of real animal hide. Memories of her father soon occupied her mind and she thought of how she had always despised her name. She was older now, but still carried a harmless resentment towards her parents for having given her a boy’s name.

At her doorway, decrepit suitcase in hand, she turned to look at the house where she had raised her family. She had always been, first and foremost, a mother and the house was her domain. From where she stood, the living room to her right and the hallway leading to the two bedrooms to her left, she could see the small kitchen, gently illuminated by the early dawn sunlight, just beyond the foyer where she had spent so many hours of her life. The pots and pans were suspended over the narrow gas range from a rack now caked in hardened grease. The pantry adjacent to the range was stocked with a healthy quantity of dried and canned staples. Arata wondered if she had left any milk in her refrigerator and contemplated checking, but then decided that it didn’t matter.

Arata pictured her children’s bedroom and the bedroom she had shared with her husband, the closets storing decades’ worth of clothing. In the foyer itself, a family portrait sat atop a candlestand table, welcoming visitors as they entered the home. Arata checked her watch and closed the door behind her, leaving it unlocked as she left.

The virgin spring air was cool, a remnant of the long winter. Arata made her way slowly to the bus station on the other side of town, both to enjoy the fresh air and because the slight hitch in her gait forced her. It was early yet, so the shops were still shuttered. She smiled politely at the handful of proprietors getting ready for the day’s business.

“Good morning Mrs. Sato. Going on a trip?” Mr. Yoshida asked.

What was this?

Arata shared the bus into the city with just one other passenger, a young woman dressed in traditional Japanese garb. She regarded the young woman’s beauty and wondered why she was dressed so formally before turning to her own translucent reflection in the clouded glass. Vanity had once been her greatest weakness. Even now, having been humbled by the passage of time, she took quiet pride in her girlish appearance which so often fooled those who attempted to guess her age. Only her hands, with its deep folds and dark blemishes, gave any indication of a life long-lived.

Arata took the sleeve of her thin cotton sweater into her fist and wiped away the condensation on the bus window, leaving a trail of water droplets in her wake. For a brief moment, she could see the world outside with a level of clarity possible only in contrast, but the early morning air quickly shrouded the glass pane with a new layer of fog.

Her right arm was propped against her seat, her left rested atop her suitcase just lightly enough to ensure it was there. The bus was at an incline as it climbed the unpaved mountain roads, still soft and moist from newly melted snow, the trees a continuous blur of green. She wasn’t running away. No, that would imply a shirking of authority or obligation – but there was none of that left, her children and her husband having passed. Doubt was all that was left. This was something different. She wondered if her motivation was even relevant anymore.

There was a past and a future, maybe. But there was no present.

As the bus entered the city proper, the mountain clouds that had clung stubbornly to the bus and the dreamlike miasma that had encapsulated the vehicle, dissipated. The unruly ride of the rural roads gave way to a dull hum of paved highways. Arata wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep during the bus ride, but when she opened her eyes the world had changed. She turned her body towards the bus’s panoramic windows with a childlike enthusiasm as she saw the urban landscape come into view. Her heart beat headily.

As Arata stepped off the bus, the urban din immediately flooded her head, but the discordance played like a wonderful orchestra to her. The grey of the city was a curious novelty – even the green of the trees were darkened by the shadow of the imposing skyscrapers. Perhaps here she could disappear. Perhaps here, her solitude would be a blessing. This was the present now.




Written By: James Mo
Photo By: Becky Lee