Some Very Small Things

Walking north from home along Matsuyamachi-suji, you enter a part of Osaka that looks nothing like what most people imagine. The whole way, you pass one temple after another — they were moved here from all over during the shogunate era, so the authorities could keep an eye on them more easily.

These temples are quiet. Almost no one goes in or out. Inside their grounds are rows of gravestones. The temples and the apartment buildings sit along the same street — people live right beside them, and so do the dead.

I’ve been thinking maybe that’s just how it is: death isn’t somewhere far away. It lives alongside life.

The cut flowers at home withered. The pea shoots I bought at the supermarket stopped growing. In the corner of a wall I found a tiny baby spider, already dried out. I took the flowers out of the vase and threw the pea shoots away. The spider was so small it weighed almost nothing — wiping it up with a tissue felt like brushing away a speck of dust.

These things are all so small that when they happen, there’s hardly any need to tell anyone. I go on living, and bit by bit, I keep losing small things.