The Shop That Might Exist

cedar scent drifts in
dust settling on an old shelf
light moves without sound

There’s a street in my head that I can never place on a map. It could be in Europe, or somewhere in Japan, or somewhere in between. Cobbled, narrow, the kind of street you only find after getting lost. I don’t go there often, but when I do, it’s always late afternoon. The light is low, heavy in the way it falls.

Halfway along is a door. It’s not an interesting door. The frame leans slightly to the left. The paint is chipped. You could walk past it a hundred times and never notice. But I’ve stepped inside.

It smells faintly of damp wood and tea that’s been steeped too long. The shelves are uneven, not by design, just from years of standing there. Nothing is arranged in order. A ceramic cup with a crack that looks like a thin bolt of lightning. A fishing knife from Kyushu, the blade dulled to the point where it’s more memory than tool. A noren from Takayama, its colors faded by more than just the sun.

None of these things would sell for much. But I know exactly where each came from. The cup from a rainy morning in Naples, when the streets felt like they belonged to no one. The knife from a shop that only opened when the owner felt like it. The noren from a woman whose hands shook when she painted, but whose lines never wavered.

I don’t imagine customers coming here for bargains. If they come at all, it’s because they see something they can’t quite name but recognize all the same. The object itself matters less than the path it took to arrive.

It took me years to understand that the same rule applies outside of any shop. People spend their lives trying to be the best at something big, something crowded. But the space that’s truly yours is the one built out of the strange mix only you could have arrived at—places you’ve stood, skills you’ve stacked, moments you’ve carried without realizing.

In Basel, I once saw a man in his seventies repair a cracked enamel bowl at a flea market. He told me it had been in his family for decades, used for holding Christmas cookies. He didn’t repair it to sell it. He repaired it because it was still useful. That’s the kind of thinking I’ve tried to keep. Not polishing things until they’re unrecognizable, but keeping the marks that prove they’ve been used.

Shinjuku gave me another reminder. I bought a second-hand jacket there once, from a shop wedged between a bar and a shuttered video rental store. The shopkeeper didn’t say much, just wrapped it neatly and nodded. It fit perfectly, but more than that, it carried the weight of whoever had worn it before. I never learned who. I didn’t need to.

Maybe I’ll open the shop one day. Maybe it will stay in my head. Either way, I’ve already been stocking the shelves, even if I didn’t realize it. Every place, every object, every conversation leaves something behind. The trick is noticing when it’s worth keeping.