Things Become Other Things

Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod is billed as “a walking memoir” and captures a solo hike through parts of the Kumano Kodō trail in Japan. It’s a reflective book, weaving personal stories through meditative steps.

I dog-eared more pages of this book more than any in memory. (In hindsight, folding a corner of paper is the worst way to save passages.)

My first fold contained an introduction to the concept of Yoyū and finding difficult forgiveness on the road:

The moment I felt that was like getting hit in the head with a basketball—a freakish pang, a dull ache in the skull. I almost fell into a bush. I was hyperventilating—realizing my heart had expanded in some immeasurable, beyond-physics way that hearts can expand, and in that expansion I had a new space. There’s a word in Japanese that sums up this feeling better than anything in English: yoyū. A word that somehow means: the excess provided when surrounded by a generous abundance. It can be applied to hearts, wallets, Sunday afternoons, and more.

From there I just kept folding more and more pages.

In fact, now I feel like reading it all over again — maybe this time with a highlighter or a notebook.