Day 5 of the Trip

      This guy sitting next to me smells like what I imagine a 1950s kindergarten teacher must have smelled like. He's wearing Louis Vuitton everything and is matched in elegance only by his female companion. Then to my left is a porthole that is feeding me the quaint mountain country of japan. The two are heading into the same land of deep roots, unchanged if not derelict. And yet there they are, so different- "cultured" as some would say. Or maybe the similarities between the kid that grew up in the country and the city folk they've become just aren't as easy to see anymore... Life can do that. Gazing trough the smudged glass I can see the farm land was not born before its time but, rather, it was given by God himself. Peaks of all varieties protrude calmly outside with subsistence farm plots encircling them. Over the rivulets that split villages and trees there are children playing atop aging bridges. And grandparents walking down overgrown streets. And adolescents pacing around on phones. I can almost hear the conversations, the scolding parents, the cooing elders. If there is one thing that this trip has reminded me of, it is the importance of family. The cousins I see just as much as the multitudes that I don't. Great-great aunts and godfathers. The pieces that have built this wonderful life I live. Thank God and God bless.

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