Two Clocks, Fuji in Snow, Déjà vu
Meeting my younger self
I discovered a library in Shizuoka City. I thought it would be a comfortable, quiet place to work. A long desk near a big window looked out into the nearby park. It seemed almost magical.
I entered the library and walked to the counter to apply for a card. After I passed my ID to the librarian at the desk, she froze and looked up at me.
“You’re already listed in our system,” she said.
I had an odd feeling of déjà vu.
I couldn’t remember standing in the same place before. But I must have stood in the same place, probably about thirty years earlier.
I had come to the same park, found the same library and walked up to the same desk, thinking it would be a comfortable, quiet place to work. I felt odd not remembering being in the library before.
But the experience was also comforting.
My younger self was drawn to this place. Thirty years later, I was again drawn to this place. Things that were important to me before—books, solitude, nature—are things I still value deeply.
This happened a few years ago, just before COVID-19.
I returned to the park outside the library today to share this place. There is an enormous clock in the park that quietly moves as the time passes. And off in the distance, you can see Mount Fuji if it is not overcast.
It is where I walk barefoot.
If you paste the coordinates 34.9887N 138.377982E into Google Earth (you can click the link, but you may prefer the application), you will be transported to where I stood when I took the photograph. It will look like this:
I loved this awareness John, “But the experience was also comforting.”