loss and gain

Thursday something momentous happened: I accidentally deleted a whole day's worth of photos. That night we had just discovered Yu Kuhan, the rad 24-hour internet cafe (located in the Wao Cube building, a self-described "Neo Synthetic Culture Space," and my new favorite place in Japan), and I had been trying to upload pictures to flickr.com. First of all, I should tell you that all the computers we have been using so far in Japan are in Japanese, which makes all the programs just a little harder to use. Plus, the computers have all been PCs, and Maya and I are both Mac people. So, apparently in Windows OS, or at least Japanese Windows, or at the least the Japanese Windows I was using that night, there's a button in the software where you view pics on your digital camera that deletes all the photos on the camera. And it does so without the little "Are you sure you really want to do this?" warning box that usually pops up when you're about doing something major, like, oh, say, delete all the fucking photos on your camera. Nope, one click, and everything's - poof! - gone. So, yeah, I accidentally clicked this button, and watched as the thumbnails of the whole day's photos instantly vanished.

"I think I just deleted all our photos," I said, half to Maya, half in shock to myself, and then explained to her/myself what had just happened. And amazingly, bless her soul, Maya, instead of instantly ripping my head off (which is pretty much what I felt like doing to myself, if not commiting Harikiri then and there with my swiss-army knife's corkscrew), stared at the screen for a second, stared at me (and perhaps seeing the utter horror and remorse on my face), said calmly, "That's alright, babe. They're just photos. Just because we don't have the pictures doesn't mean we didn't have the experiences, which is the most important thing." She explained that one of the books we had gotten about taking around-the-world trips had even suggested that you try to take less pictures and go out sometimes to explore without your camera, since the camera can become such a barrier between you and the native population and authentic experiences. She also pointed out that we hadn't even been allowed to shoot most of the truly awesome things we had done that day anway.

It was true. That day we had gone to the Sanjusangen-do Temple which contains 1,000 golden lifesize statues of the so-called Thousand Armed Kannon. It was a jaw-dropping sight - literally an army of figures, which had been handmade over a 100 year period, lined up down an endless hallway, each statue subtly different from the last. And photography inside the shrine was strictly forbidden. Here, however, is an official photo that gives you a sense of how insane the sight was:



Then we had made the long climb up to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, a sprawling complex of many different shrines and pagodas. But perhaps the highlight of that visit had also been uncapturable by photography. Under one of the main shrines, we walked down these stairs into a winding basement path of complete darkness - you couldn't see your own hand in front of you - guided only by a handrail of large prayer beads along the lefthand wall. This led you eventually around a bend to a dimly and magically lit spherical stone that seemed to be floating in mid-air; you were supposed to touch this, make a wish, and then spin the stone slowly clockwise. Then, as legend has it, your prayers will come true, and you could follow the beads back out into the sunlight. In the words of Maya, it was "fucking awesome."

While there, we also visited the nearby Jishu-jinja Shrine, the "love shrine." There we saw the "love stones," two sacred rocks placed 18 meters apart - you're supposed to walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed, and then your romantic wishes will be granted. This might sound like a daunting task already, but what amazed us was that the courtyard between the stones was full of other tourists, which made the challenge all the greater. Still, after observing a number of giggling Japanese high-school girls completing the blind walk, Maya stepped up to the plate, and with a little guidance from me ("Left! Left! Right!"), completed the trek. Among the many other rituals that you could partake in at Jishu shrine, Maya also took part in one involving pieces of rice paper cut into basic Gingerbread Man-like shapes - you write your troubles on one of the paper pieces and then drop it into a sacred vat of water - once the paper dissolves, your troubles are supposed to go away.

But what has made my trouble, my guilt, my sadness over deleting all our pictures from Sanjusangen-do,Kiyomizu-dera, and Jishu slowly dissolve (though I'm still occasionally haunted by the flashing mental image of a photo that was lost) are Maya's rather disarming words of wisdom. Deep into Thursday night we talked about why we are taking this trip and it's not about collecting pictures, or being the typical tourist and hiding behind a camera; it's about the life-changing, priority-shifting experiences we hope to have, and the lessons we hope to learn - and maybe this accident is meant to be one of those lessons. I had been getting too wrapped up in trying to take pictures of everything, trying to capture for posterity the ultimately uncapturable instead of focusing on the here and the now, and, in particular, soaking up the Buddhist go-with-the-flow spirit that Maya apparently had absorbed far more than I, considering her superior ability to let go of those photos. I thought about the main character in Fight Club and how in the beginning of the book/movie, his apartment and just about everything he owns are blown up, it turns out, by his own alterego, Tyler Durden, in order to free him/himself from his own possessions. It makes me think that maybe my Tyler Durden deleted all those photographs.