K.J.
Isley

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Allow me to introduce myself. 

First, I hate any small talk that begins–What do you do for a living? 

Not because I don’t understand the questions function. I do. Really.

Though I used to hate small talk in general, I’ve realized it’s a safe place to begin for people. A jumping off point where they can test the waters of you before they decide whether to take a swim. 

But this question… It’s the sort of thing that should be easy to answer, and, for me, has always been difficult to explain. 

I hate biographies. Writing them at all is my least favorite part of the delightful fiction writing game. 

Why is it that we have to ‘know’ the author? You’ll learn more about me by any given fiction I choose to write than a million technically accurate words about myself. What we do is so much less interesting than what we are inside. 

Maybe it’s better to tell you about the lost years. 

Or more specifically, I guess, a moment I was lost, and decided to claw my way back toward life again. 

I do love a good redemption arc. 

My most recent arc of redemption was about six years ago in 2019. 

I went for a two month hike on the Shikoku 88: A Buddhist pilgrimage walking between temples spread out across the third largest island in Japan. 

I wrote letters there. 

First a few. Then more. Then the writing never stopped. 

What follows are snapshots, captured in real time, of the beginning, middle, and end of this walking journey that made me decide a lot of things. Among them: That when people asked me “What do you do for a living?” I would not be lying if I answered, “I’m a writer.” 

Because whatever else I am or do, writing is a bigger than average part of what I do to be alive. 

*

Week One

I am sitting in a rest stop, looking out a window at the sea. These days, the past few years or so, I have felt somehow that I do not appreciate the world the way I should. The way it was meant to be appreciated. I remember what it is like to do so. I know what it deserves. This includes people, moments, the smallest object that can be observed, or the biggest. 

Everything. 

My life in the last few years has been comprised of stunning, glaringly bright moments where I have experienced all the beauty and perfection of what is. But I have also experienced these moments as pain. 

I have run from the beauty because of this. 

In the running and hiding, there is a dullness. I have known this was not correct, but I have not known what caused me to keep shying away. 

I think I do not believe I deserve this beauty. I think that the pain comes from that. 

So now, I am experiencing the pain. I am trying not to move towards or away from it. I am trying just to sit with it and make friends. 

I find that this creates a great deal of emotion. I cry a lot and it’s difficult for me to know whether the emotion I feel is positive or negative. I only know that it is big and complex. 

I only know this: embracing it allows me to see the world around me again. 

It’s also embarrassing. But what isn’t?

*

Week Four

A few days ago, I made a choice I didn’t know I was making. It made the day both beautiful and hard. 

If asked, I would have chosen a different way. 

Somehow, through ignorance or inattention, I turned what should have been a 20-kilometer walk between Japanese temples into a 38-kilometer walk. 

It was the scenic route. Gorgeous ocean views all the way.

But when I saw a sign that said 13 kilometers to the temple and then a lot of walking later, another that said 18 kilometers, my heart sank low. I spent the next two hours thinking that there must be a mistake. 

There was not. 

My ankle had been threatening to give out beneath me and this extra walking did not help. I could only tape myself up with duct tape and walk on. 

That single choice, made in ignorance, meant I had no other. I had to walk the extra kilometers or build a stubborn house of sticks on the sidewalk and live there from then on. 

I met some wonderful old ladies in transit that made the whole thing worth it. 

Three of them, in a rest hut near the water on the sand. 

They ushered me in as if it were their living room and prepared me a little feast.

Sweet sticky rice and chocolate. Bananas and hot tea. 

We sat together in the late afternoon sunshine, laughing and clinking our teacups together, gazing out at the restless waves.

Most of my decisions in life seem to be like this choice I made to walk 18 extra kilometers, injure my ankle, and take tea and chocolate on the beach.   

*

Week Eight

I sit in the silences and the noises that make up the life of temples. The loud bell of luck captured for later, the smaller bells of rapturous prayer. 

Chanting and more chanting. 

One person alone or a hundred together, depending on the moment that is captured in the amber of these words. 

The water running from fountains. The wishes floating in the air. 

I marvel at the green well-kept spaces and worship in front of the ancient stone. 

At this particular temple, there is a deity that, it is said, will grant your wish for a small contribution and a ladle full of water poured over its head. 

There is a fortune place–A tree to hang the bad luck fortunes on. 

If you leave them hanging on this holy tree, the fortune is negated and you may ask for, and hopefully get, a better one next time.

Last night was a different kind of holy–though also the same–just heavier on the silences. 

I climbed to the top of a mountain pass, with the messages of Japanese school children telling me to keep smiling and not give up scattered through the trees marking my way. Then I came out into the air. 

There were benches at a lookout point inviting anyone who reached the spot to sit and take in one of the most breathtaking views imaginable. 

The forested mountainscapes of Japan are hard to describe. A patchwork of different colors and textures that leave no room for anything but infinite delight. 

This mountainous treescape skirted a jagged coastline with a few tiny islands dotting the bay. Like a miniature sculpture of Japan itself as seen from the sky. 

I sat there for longer than I knew I probably should have, then sent a wish out onto the wind for a good place to sleep and set out walking to look for it.

Rounding the bend, I realized that I had already found it. A shelter in the trees, set up as a refuge.  

There was a small tatami matted room with a futon rolled out on the floor. 

I busied myself lighting candles and incense at the altar in thanks for this wonderful thought, put here at some time before, so that I, and people like me, might find it on weary nights like the one that I was promised to be out in, if I hadn’t found it there.

This is every day. 

Every day feels like magic.

*

So Dear Reader, 

this is my inside self. This is what coming back to life feels like for me. This is what life feels like.

This is what I wish for every person I meet. 

When I write fantasy, I am writing worlds that express the connections I feel in this one. 

The small and big magic I experience every day I’m fully alive. 

I find myself feeling, lately, that we are losing something. We are losing a quality of living, a quality of life, that is utterly common and increasingly rare. 

I don’t want us to forget that each of us is a universe, worthy of intimate attention in every moment. I don’t want us to lose the words for what we are losing. 

Aphasia on a global scale. 

It makes me want to speak in my crippled fashion, in places where people might be searching. 

My name is K.J. Isley. I am a writer. It’s nice to meet you. What do you do for a living?