From Moment to Moment

I recently met up with a friend of a friend—this sounds like a setup for a joke, but it’s not! A friend of one of my internet friends (“internet friend” sounds vaguely derogatory; I consider them one of my closest) was visiting Tokyo for an extended stay, and suggested the two of us meet up for coffee. "I think you'd have a lot in common," he said.

One of the nice things about living in Tokyo is that it’s a place that people want to be. Which means we get a lot of people passing through town, despite its distance from America and Europe. (This was how we were visited by a friend’s cousin before the friend themselves; or how I met a friend of a friend IRL before my friend).

We met at a coffee shop near where they’d been staying, one I’d wanted to visit but had yet to give myself a reason to do so. True to the recommendation, I immediately felt at ease. Sometimes, you meet someone and just click, you know? You can tell you’re on the same page. I had that feeling echo several times as the topic shifted to things I’d spoken with my fiancée or friends about, or simply things I’ve thought about repeatedly.

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We both spent a lot of time lamenting the state of the world, both in specific, and in general. Things are weird right now! In college, my closest friend and I stumbled into a phrase that has only proven itself more true over time: Things can always get weirder; and they will! It’s bizarre to live in the world of “prediction markets” & “AI.” The internet I was promised and tried to help build never arrived, or at least didn’t survive. Of course, this doesn’t mean there’s no hope. It just means for now it’s going to have to come from somewhere else, and like everything, we’re going to have to be the ones that create it.

We both started talking about times we felt “in tune”: in nature, at concerts, in serendipitous events. Eventually, we started circling around the idea of “moments of presence”: literally when you feel most present, most at ease, most yourself.

It’s a special feeling, one that’s certainly familiar to any meditator. But you don’t need to have a meditation practice to experience this. I think it’s the same feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater after seeing a film that moved you, or find the hours slipping away as you spend time with loved ones. It’s the feeling you get while walking your dog—standing in the sunset, after a day spent finishing a good book.

I don’t know why, but somehow I feel Tokyo affords me a lot more of these moments than I felt in America, especially ones disconnected from an experience with a work of art. People are just kind, open. They invite you to things. It's up to you to say yes. Often, I find myself wondering, like David Byrne, How did I get here?

A lot of life, maybe most of it, should be put towards maximizing these moments when you feel present.

Last year, I was out with my fiancée, just spending a lazy afternoon, when we wandered into Kanda Festival, one of the largest festivals in Tokyo. Tokyoiters don happi __ coats and carry mikoshi, portable shrines, throughout the streets; dancing and celebrating along the way. I started snapping pictures, until one of the revelers made eye contact and walked over. I thought he was going to say it was rude to take photographs, but instead he simply took off his coat and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure what to do, but he said, “ Go on, go help out ” with a smirk on his face. “Really?” I asked. He nodded. I looked at my fiancée and entrusted my camera and bag to her as I threw on the coat. Next thing I knew, he ushered my 6’4” frame under the front beam of the mikoshi, and I did my part.

There’s an I Think You Should Leave sketch where one of the characters says, “Life’s a funny fucking thing, isn’t it?” But really, it is.

That’s what I love about street photography. Mostly, I’d say I’m trying to capture something beautiful, but I’m also trying to capture something wonderous, something joyful, something funny. You might be surprised how often a single moment checks all these boxes. Often, it’s just something that makes me smile.

My fiancée always accuses me of laughing at her, but I’m just laughing at all of it. Life’s a funny fucking thing. There’s tons of it that makes me sad, frustrated, scared, angry. But there’s just as much that makes me laugh at something innocuous. Daily life is insanely bizarre, and hilarious (this is something Nichijou understands intimately; Nichijou isn’t funny because it’s such a different depiction of life, it’s funny because it’s exactly how life is). I laugh at myself, when I miss a stair, or daily when I hit my head on the cabinet door I myself opened. Life is a bizarre place, and if you open yourself up to it, you’ll find yourself in places you never expected.

A lot of life, maybe most of it, should be put towards maximizing these moments when you feel present.

After we left the coffee shop, I realized I had some time left before the next item on my calendar, and though it was a bit early for lunch, I decided to go get some sushi at a nearby shop. The sushi master, who was no less than 80, was slightly baffled to see his first customer of the day being a tall white guy (a slight unfamiliarity with foreigners is, in my experience, almost always a good sign towards the quality of a restaurant).

After making sure I understood this [was] a sushi shop I'd entered (that's what I came here for , I told him), he took my order (nigiri lunch set) and began work putting it together. His son gave me a hand towel and miso soup, and a regular customer joined us. The regular asked to switch to the game, coincidentally the Cubs / Dodgers game I was hoping to see. My excitement led me to tell them I was from Chicago, and I spent lunch chatting about baseball with two guys more than twice my age in a tiny sushi shop in Tokyo. Life's a funny fucking thing.

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