2 November, 2024

On this day in 2022, I was just one excruciating day away from finishing a 300-odd km walk across the top of Spain. You might know it as the Camino de Santiago.

Along the way, every day, I published pop-up newsletter called A 600 And A Scallop Shell.

A mash-up of memoir, travelogue, and photo essay, it was a way to collect my thoughts and share a perspective from a moment of presence in an otherwise chaotic life.

And that’s what I’m gonna do here, starting now, if you care to come along.

3 November, 2024

A warmup of another kind today: I joined Aidan for a 10km walk through the fields to the north east of his house. This is the first walk of any length I’ve done in a long time, the first that might be considered some kind of preparation for the series of long walks I’m about to do, and I’m doing it just two days before those walks start in earnest.

The reality is: I don’t really like walking. I was not born a walker and it remains to be seen whether I’ll die one.

4 November, 2024

My head is full, tension starting to tear ever so gently at my temples, the type of feeling the reminds me of jet lag, even though I’m only two hours removed from home and have been on the ground four days now. I remember: I haven’t taken my meds since I’ve landed in Japan. That would explain — unfamiliar surrounds, new bed and those two hours time difference aside — the trouble sleeping.

5 November, 2024

“Heavy!” the host of our ryokan offered, smile on his face, pointing to me and making a movement that was somewhere between picking up a box and taking a shit. I’d just returned his bicycle with a flattened tyre, exhausted legs and an overwhelming desire for coffee that wouldn’t be satisfied for another couple of hours. I forced a laugh that was more chest than belly as I took off my shoes and swapped them for slippers.

6 November, 2024

One of the reasons I’d set my self the rule around no social media, no news and no email was so that I might avoid hearing of the outcome of the U.S. election. If it didn’t go the way of the folk I love and — by extension — my way, I’d be none the wiser, able to continue in my little Hinoki-scented bubble. As I type that line, I realise just how naive I was and, in some respects, just how selfish a wish that was: “Please, allow me to deny your reality while I walk through the mountains of Japan!” it seems to suggest.

7 November, 2024

The shoji are rattling gently in their frames as a cold wind rustles up the valley, rocking our washing from side to side in an open window. I’m sat cross-legged on a futon under unimaginably harsh light in a room that smells of the cigarettes that have been smoked in here since the 1960s. And, my God, I really wish I could take a shit.

8 November, 2024

For those that were wondering, because I know you were, success came my way. Although I should warn you: one pink pill was too few, and three — you might say — were too many. I’m still waiting for the promised improvements to my complexion, however.

Also: fuck me, I am dog tired tonight. A good tired. A tired that comes from an early start, good walking, good conversation and serendipitous stop for coffee with an Ayu fisherman and his wife.

9 November, 2024

What does it take to believe in magic?

Is it the sobs that started deep in my gut as Chicquitita started playing in a cafe in Kii-Nagashima, at first unexplained and then explicitly tied to my childhood joy at listening to ABBA on repeat in the living room of my parents’ farm?

Is it my heart breaking as I witness someone experience a heartbreak of their own, or the way life-long defences can crumble with, seemingly, nothing more than a gentle gaze?

Or is it, that time I was undergoing psychedelic therapy in the Netherlands, standing on some psychic precipice, wracked with fear and shame and then falling only to land — cradled lovingly, all-knowingly — in a giant web of stars?

What does it take to believe, therefore, in a god of some sort?

10 November, 2024

Here’s the thing about heartbreak: contrary to popular belief, I’m learning that it does not entail taking your heart and breaking it — or having it broken — to pieces.

No, for me heartbreak is what happens when an ossified outer shell — one that’s been built up as a protective layer in response to some previous hurt — cracks open and leaves our hearts just a little bit closer to the surface. And the closer our hearts come to the surface, the more love can flow from them, and the more love we can receive.

This is how I began to make sense today of the seemingly-absurd idea that heartbreak is something that I might actually want to welcome in to my life.

11 November, 2024

First things first: I need to address the four-fruit sando. This combination of the most nutrient-deficient white bread you can imagine, whipped cream, and a few pieces of fruit — kiwi, pineapple, mango, and tangerine — should be a gustatory abomination. Friends, I humbly submit that it is instead a revelation, a silky, chewy, sweet symphony of all that is bad about convenience store food in Japan, and therefore everything that is also good. If you come to Japan and don’t try one, you’re missing out.

12 November, 2024

Craig Mod, the inspiration for this newsletter and, indeed, this entire walk has talked about the incredible untapped potential of Owase, the city in which we start our day.

As we walk to a cafe for breakfast, a quick visit to pay our respects at the shrine behind us, I find it hard to see what he’s talking about. So much of the city is shuttered — so much of it reverting back to rubble — that I wouldn’t know where to start its rehabilitation. That said, you could do a lot worse than making sure that our breakfast stop, a Shōwa-era cafe called Iso, stays open for generations to come.

13 November, 2024

Belly full of Mos Burger (and fries and ginger ale) and a kissa fruit parfait, I’m feeling fat and happy. Between 21.52km and 1190m gain in elevation across 6 passes, I managed to burn 3559 calories, so — excuse me for a moment — I fucking earned it. As I lie here thinking about what to say, it’s not unimaginable that I might later slip out to a Family Mart to find more food.

14 November, 2024

Matthew died last night. I found out over breakfast in some roadside kissa completely bereft of charm except for the kind woman running it. Bette Midler was singing The Wind Beneath My Wings as I read the news and announced it to Kalia. She apologised and I began to chuckle: there was nothing to apologise for.

20 November, 2024

I surprised myself a few days before the end of our walk by asking Drew if I could write something as well. An unexpected delight has been watching desires, questions — and every once in a while an answer or two — arise from somewhere deep in my system, unmediated by my head.

When we discussed this trip last month, I had mentioned how grateful I was to go with someone who was happy to document and photograph so I could just let myself be carried along by the journey. It’s been fascinating to experience an entire day of not-always-easily categorizable moments, and then watch it get tidily summarized into a coherent story.

9 December, 2024

It’s taken me a while to get here — this last post of Ise Does It — because things always do after a transformative experience. A pilgrimage, like a psychedelic journey or a retreat or any other act that might bring you closer to something bigger is always just the beginning. It’s a rock dropped into a pond upon the surface of which the ripples will radiate for weeks, or months, or maybe even years.

I’ve dropped a lot of rocks over the past 5 years. Felt myself get close to something. And I’ve kept searching too, driven by a desire to discover how the universe comes together and what my role within it might actually be. I feel like I’m finally getting towards an answer.