Sublime

vicissitudes

Contrition

Forget about readers, I barely have friends. I’m still in the same apartment with the slanted, peeling walls and the same overbearing afternoon sun, surviving off the same minimum wage job, working full time for not a whole lot more than 100,000 yen a month, and still writing and writing, with no idea whether it’s ever going to get me anywhere. My

For you, beloved I walk the fields in springtime Picking wild greens As snowflakes fall and fall on The sleeves of my kimono Emperor Koko (830–87), from the Hyakunin Isshu