[Essay] Residual Snow
I remembered something.
There was a dictionary kept on a large bookshelf in my grandparents' house. I asked if I could use it, but my grandmother wouldn't nod.
My mother called my grandmother stingy for that.
And so, we laughed a little.
It shouldn't have been a special memory.
Looking at the photos of snow, swings, trees, and houses left in my camera roll, I don't know why such a memory came back to me. But, thinking about it now,perhaps my grandmother knew that by opening that dictionary, something would be lost.
Everything I touch breaks.
Shinchosha, June 2024, p. 39
Why did I decide to keep this photo? I imagine myself standing there.
What was I thinking as I looked at them?
When I do that, I remember that it was a park where there were always pigeons, but that day there were none, that I couldn't hear the voices of children playing outside, and that I was simply captivated by the whiteness of the snow, thinking it looked like a fluffy futon.
Still, the reason I decided to keep this photo was, for me, nothing more than a part of the activities that pass by somehow. It is strange that things that remained for some reason and things that I, of all people, chose to keep, are floating around me as the same result, even though their respective processes must be decisively different.
I was living that winter.
My body, my heart, were certainly there. And they are no longer there. What do the things that were there, that existed, tell me?
The me of today is living in a season past the peak of the cherry blossoms.
What does that mean?
In that way, I always fail to grasp something, somewhere, or someone, and I can never live the same way I did back then. I cannot maintain the same state. It's as if I am becoming a different person.
I leave behind fragments of myself.
I think that act might also be the act of breaking me and turning me into someone else.
Scrape, scrape, I shave myself away.
Not for anyone else, but for myself.
In other words, it is the process of a person ceasing to be that person.
[Omitted]
Old photos, old friends, faded letters—these things can remind you that you are no longer the person you once were. That the person who lived with those people, the person who liked this, the person who chose that, the person who wrote such things—that person no longer exists. People travel across vast distances without realizing it themselves. The novel becomes familiar, and the familiar, even if not strange, becomes something uncomfortable, like clothes that have become too small.
I am no longer the person I once was.
I remember a dictionary.
I remember a series of words.
And I am looking at the photos left behind.
I try to feel what I remembered just as I remembered it. I try to accept what was left behind just as it was left.
The more I do so, the more I see my own otherness. The things left behind capture the process of me ceasing to be me.
My sensitivity and body, scenery and experiences that are no longer here. Even though they are certainly left there, no matter how much I reach out, I can never reach them.
It seems that only goodbyes are life.
Yet we always forget to say goodbye to ourselves.
The me who took this photo knows nothing about the me of today. He doesn't know my worries or thoughts, that I am writing this text, or the music I am listening to. On the other hand, the me of today remembers him, the one who took this photo, at least to some extent.
Even so, I cannot touch the past me (who seems to have gone astray). The same goes for photos. The same goes for words. The same goes for you.
We have no choice but to always love that distance.
I wish I could just touch that one piece of snow left on the film. No matter how much I trace what I have left behind, I cannot meet myself. The things left behind do not become signposts; rather, they make me lose my way.
If I cannot touch them, what is the point of leaving them behind? If we cannot express our hearts with all the time (body) left to us, what is the meaning of what exists now, existing?
I ask myself (what I was). All we can do with what is left behind is to ask. In them, only the room to ask is left, standing all alone.
For some reason, I remember the dictionary again.
I remember the dictionary that must not have been opened for years at my grandmother's house.
I remember the words.
I wonder if we don't have words in the true sense. The words, emotions, and scenes in our hands spill out from the wrinkles of those hands, one by one, drop by drop, every second. Is that why I wanted the dictionary? Indeed, a dictionary is like a dam for words. Words are stored there in abundance, enough to be sufficient.
What kind of words were left inside that dictionary that hadn't been opened for decades? I wonder why my grandmother wouldn't let me touch it.
When I picked up the blouse again, I lost that memory. The two cannot coexist. The disappearance happened in an instant before my eyes. I sometimes hear stories of murals or remains that were miraculously preserved. They were buried and sealed, protected for hundreds or thousands of years without being exposed to light. When exposed to fresh air and light, they immediately begin to deteriorate and crumble away. Acquiring and losing sometimes have a more intimate relationship than we think. And there are things that cannot be moved and things that do not allow for ownership. There is also light that cannot pierce the atmosphere and scatters.
"Acquiring and losing sometimes have a more intimate relationship than we think. And there are things that cannot be moved and things that do not allow for ownership."
I start to think that it's fine to remain unable to touch the snow in the photo or open the dictionary, but then I stop and think, "Is that really so?" If I could have touched it, if I had touched it, what would the snow have lost? What would the dictionary have lost? What would my grandmother have lost? What would I have lost?
For example, do the footprints left in the snow mean a loss for the snow? When the dust on the dictionary was wiped away, did my grandmother remember something? If I had touched the words inside, perhaps the me of today would not have existed.
As expected, only the question drifts and does not disappear. Even so, or rather precisely because of that, we must not give up on asking.
There are indeed questions in this world that can be answered correctly not by giving the right answer, but by asking the question properly.
I ask the snow left behind.
I ask the dictionary that was not opened.
I ask those of us who have gone astray.
I lose my way.
And while losing my way, I am left behind in today.
The footprints of me becoming a different person are left in the snow, one more time.
2026-04-18 "Lingering Snow"