Tag: dailyprompt-1912

In the winter of 2017, I stayed for a week in a small apartment above a used bookstore in Shimokitazawa. The kind of place where time collects in the corners, and the lampshades give off a light so soft it feels more like memory than electricity.

The owner of the shop was a man named Aki. Late fifties, maybe early sixties. He never said. Wore two watches but never checked either of them. I asked him once why.
“One’s for the time here,” he said. “The other’s for the time I wish it was.”
Then he smiled, like he knew how strange that sounded but had already made peace with it.

Each morning, he’d open the shop at ten, put on a jazz record no one else could name, and brew coffee that tasted slightly of regret—bitter, but warming in the right kind of way. I liked watching him from the mezzanine above, where I’d sit with a book I didn’t intend to finish and pretend I wasn’t listening to the music.

On the third morning, it happened.

He was sketching something in a thick notebook by the register—shapes that didn’t make sense, loops and half-written kanji, a pattern only he understood—when he accidentally knocked over his coffee. It fell with a soft clatter, the kind that doesn’t interrupt the jazz but suddenly becomes part of it.

The liquid spread quickly.
A dark, quiet ruin.
Over the counter, across the pages.
It soaked half the book before he even moved.

But here’s what struck me—
he didn’t flinch.
Didn’t curse or scramble for towels.
He just sat there, watching the stain grow.
And then, very slowly, he tore out the wet page, folded it once down the middle, and placed it to the side.

Then, with the same pen he’d been using, he turned to the next blank page and began again.

—

I asked him about it later.
If he was frustrated.
If the sketch had meant something.

He shrugged. “It did,” he said. “But maybe this one will mean more.”
Then he poured us both a new cup of coffee and added,
“Most people think the day is ruined when something spills.
But sometimes, that’s when it really begins.”

—

I think about that moment more than I care to admit.
How calm he was.
How certain.

It wasn’t about the mess.
It was about what he allowed it to become.

We’re so trained to brace for what might go wrong.
To predict the detour.
To armor ourselves with worst-case scenarios.

But Aki taught me that ruin isn’t always failure.
Sometimes it’s invitation.
A strange, sloshing kind of grace that breaks what was never quite working
so you can start the next page cleaner than you thought you could.

---

What I Learned from a Coffee-Stained Page

• The world doesn’t end when your plan dissolves. Sometimes it begins there.
• The things we try to salvage might not be worth saving. But the space they leave behind often is.
• Spilled coffee, a missed train, a closed door—they’re not just obstacles. They’re quiet directions.
• What goes wrong isn’t always wrong. It’s just different. And sometimes, that difference leads to something you wouldn’t have dared draw on your own.

—

I never saw what he sketched on the new page.
But I think that’s the point.

It wasn’t about the drawing.
It was about still drawing.

About not letting the spill stop the hand.
About trusting the next page
even when the last one drowned.

And I think, maybe,
that’s what Yhprum’s Law really is—
not a promise that everything will go right,
but a quiet faith that even when it doesn’t,
you still will.

moonlight through the can—
not much changed that night at all,
but something softened

—

It happened in Kyoto.
Late spring, just past midnight.
The city had gone quiet in the way only Japanese cities do—
still glowing, still humming,
but holding its breath like it didn’t want to wake anyone.

I had walked longer than I meant to.
That kind of wandering that doesn’t feel like getting lost,
just… drifting.
My head was heavy with the usual things—unfinished decisions,
half-formed regrets,
the kind of quiet inner commentary that sounds like worry disguised as thought.

I stopped at a vending machine,
lit up like a small shrine in the dark.
And that’s where I met him.
Older. White linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow.
He looked like he’d stepped out of a different time,
but he just nodded at me like we’d been passing each other on this street our whole lives.

We stood there for a moment in silence,
just the two of us and the low buzz of fluorescent light,
until he pointed at the can I’d just dropped into the tray.

“Good choice,” he said. “Not too sweet.”

I smiled. “Didn’t think much about it.”

He looked at me, really looked,
and then said something I didn’t expect.

“That’s the trick though, isn’t it?
We never think much about it—
until we do.”

—

A Stranger’s Kindness You Don’t Forget

He didn’t stay long.
Just got his coffee, bowed, and disappeared down the street,
like he’d only stepped into my life to drop off a single sentence.

But it landed.
Something about that moment…
stuck.
It wasn’t what he said, really—
but the way he said it.
Casual.
Unforced.
Like he wasn’t trying to teach me something,
but just happened to know what I needed to hear.

And I’ve thought about that sentence often since.

The choices we think are small.
The paths we don’t realize we’re already walking.
The thoughts that drift in quietly when we think no one is watching.

Most of the time, we are on autopilot.
And then, suddenly, something cracks open—
a stranger, a sentence, a silence.
And we realize:
we’re already in the middle of something important.
We just weren’t paying attention yet.

—

Floating Is Not Falling

That night, I walked home feeling different.
Not lighter, exactly—
but softer.

The world didn’t shift,
but something in me had.
A loosened grip.
A breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

It reminded me that I didn’t need to “have it all figured out.”
That I wasn’t late.
That being human isn’t about having answers—
but about carrying questions with a little more grace.

We’re all just ghosts in borrowed bodies,
drifting through constellations of memory and meaning,
trying to choose the right drink from a glowing machine at midnight.

And somehow,
that’s enough.

—

Wabi-Sabi in the Unexpected Exchange

There was no profound outcome that night.
No revelation.
No life plan redrawn.
Just a soft, strange connection in the dark.

Wabi-sabi lives in these moments:

• In the crack where two strangers meet without expectation.
• In the words that weren’t planned but landed like a gift.
• In the kindness that doesn’t ask to be remembered, but is.
• In the silence that follows something real.

—

So if you’re wondering whether you’re floating or falling—
if you’re unsure whether this moment matters,
or whether you’re still “on the right path”—
stop for a second.
Take a breath.

You’re here.
The vending machine is humming.
The night is listening.
And someone—maybe a stranger, maybe you—
just said the right thing at the right time.

Let that be enough.

You’re already floating.
Just don’t forget to notice how light you’ve become.