Taiko is saving my life. 

I would love it if I could practice two to three times a week. I would love it if I could return to my little apartment in Nariwa, return to Bitchu Taiko, spend some time with my old team. Reminisce. Play. Be lost. 

I miss Japan. I miss the time and the space I had there, in the middle of nowhere, to disappear. To study a new language. To be a foreigner. To pause and consider who I wanted to be.

I would drive myself to Taiko practice, along the main road in town beside the Takahashi river, at night, in every season. Along icy roads in the winter. With the window open in the summer. When I arrived at the middle school auditorium where we practiced, I was met with a loud chorus of hellos. We would unload the drums from the closet. Warm up. Practice our songs. Play for a few hours until blisters and callouses formed. 

I began playing Taiko, as a form of escape. To escape my loneliness, to escape from the responsibilities that awaited me at home, to be fully present rather than fret or worry about my future, my career, my relationships. It grounded me and was profoundly healing.

Makoto Taiko, the group I just joined, is excellent. It has been twenty three years since I’ve played and to my surprise, my body remembers.

I leave each practice happily exhausted. I love the drills and the physicality of it all. It is wild to feel the entire room echo and crescendo like that in unison. There is nothing else like it.

I’m grateful that for two hours I am fixated only on movement and sound. It is a source of comfort for me during what feels like such a tumultuous time.

I’m learning how to use my core, my breath and the movement of my entire body to strike the drum. I’m learning how to remain fluid. Learning how to keep going even when everything aches.

A friend once shared a photo of a cup that fell and shattered into pieces. To this I replied, all is not lost. I showed him a picture of a bowl, repaired. The cracks were painted with a layer of gold lacquer, holding all the broken pieces together and creating something new.

This was the memory that came to mind, when I saw Leia wrapped in a towel, in the passenger seat. When I put my arms around her and buried my face in her neck, I fully expected to feel the rise and fall of her breath – but there was nothing there. Everything, was lost.

It was wishful thinking. Her body was only warm, because of the sun. Her eyes still open, because she died by the window while barking at squirrels and our neighborhood cats. Death is brutal, final. I have wondered now, for days, where she might be. Is she by the window still? Is she wandering alone, wondering where we are? Does she feel, abandoned? Does she feel, at all? 

Grief is like love. It follows you like a shadow. Is with you, always. You wake up to it’s presence every morning. It’s there with you at night before you sleep. Relentless.

When I’m strong enough I can control these inevitable waves of emotion. Stay afloat long enough to reach the shore. When I’m not, I find myself engulfed by them, caught inside what feels like multiple storms. 

Every time you allow yourself to fall in love with a pet or a person, you risk being broken by them. 

Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer, is real. I believe deeply in what it represents, I have to, to move forward. All is not lost. Our scars can tell a beautiful story.

No matter how broken we are, we can emerge stronger.

No matter how hard it is to love, we must.

You are outside
taking in
the last of the sun,
fully yourself.

In the embrace
of a world
where the sound
of your breath
is the only rhythm
you know.

This is where
you will find me –
inside that gentle
rise and fall.

Clearing a path
for your next move.
Leading you
to a formation,
millions of years
in the making.

Waiting
to be named.