The Shape of What Remains » Entries
December 14-16, 2025
It has been my preference for many years now to arrive in Vancouver the evening before my flight. To sleep, wake refreshed before the main leg of my journey. Yesterday's delays meant arriving after midnight, in bed by one.
I had hoped for a direct flight. But those legs were discontinued about a decade ago. So my only option is to transfer in Tokyo.
A small group of ten or so missed their connecting flight to Australia. Annoyed at the inconvenience—small, compared to the perils of transcontinental flight.
My travels today are both singular and universal. Human and transcendental.
How strange and profound life is.
Shinichi is in Toronto this week.
I had hoped to see him again during this Vancouver stopover. A year ago around this time, we did catch up. He had a referral case for me from back in Japan—my first time back since the pandemic began.
He mentioned last year that he'd kept my journals from our days at KMU. Annotated them with his own notes.
They were too heavy to carry by suitcase. I didn't have money to ship them back to the States after graduation. He kept them as a keepsake of our time together.
Looks like that conversation will wait.
Not that I want or need to read them again. I imagine it would be embarrassing—my naivety, my lack of people skills. Painful, too—a reminder of how long I've been trying to have an impact on people's lives and the world.
Perhaps illuminating. Though I won't really know until I see them again.
But I am curious.
The cabin lights dimmed more than an hour ago. Most of the cabin is asleep.
These are the moments when the world seems in motion without me. I'm untethered to anything real. Frozen in time and space as a constant stream of people passes by.
I do my best contemplation in these moments. My mind fills with a strange mix of anticipation, excitement, anxiety at the prospect of a new case.
I doubt I can sleep any more than the 40 minutes I took earlier in the flight.
A cup of chamomile tea sounds perfect now.
I've stopped counting the hours left on this leg.
Here over the Berring Sea, I'm pondering: how can I best honor the lives and teachings of my late teachers and mentors? How can I do their wisdom justice?
They saw me for who I was and who I could become. Each one gave me gifts I can never repay. One—Blackwell—saved me from self-destruction by challenging me to expect more of myself rather than giving in to the darkness and absurdity of the world. She taught me that, regardless of circumstances, life is what you make it.
Their knowledge was never meant only as a gift for living my own life. It was meant to be used for helping others, especially now in a world that is increasingly toxic.
I'm certainly unsure. No more now than then.
Not getting any younger means having fewer and fewer chances to have a meaningful impact. I feel indebted to them. But the more time passes, the more I doubt I'm making any difference at all.
I do not pretend such wisdom as theirs. I can only do my best. And endeavor to continue.
Turbulence.
I think of Lucy Snowe crossing the Channel from Dover to Calais. Storm-tossed. Terrified and determined. How travel has changed.
The immediacy of the moment draws our attention, distracting us from what comes next. I remember having no idea what awaited me as a student nearly 40 years ago at KMU, just as Lucy could not imagine what awaited her at Villette.
Desperation and courage make strange friends.
I was desperate for self-discovery—for the self I had left behind in early childhood, hoping it might help me become who I was meant to be. Courage in that I was young, traveling on my own, no guardrails. My success or failure was completely in my own hands.
That is the beauty and curse of making your own decisions in life.
What awaited me was transformation. Just not the kind I was expecting.
Not just academic. Humanistic. Spiritual. Philosophical.
It made me who I am now. Or, at least, provided the compass to show the way.
Feelings of '91 echoing in me now. Randomly creeping into my mind. Some heartbreaks we get over in time. Some we don’t. We just find ways of pretending not to notice them, burying them deeper in the back of our minds. Only to trip on them later again by accident in the future.
Funny how the present is forever bound to the past.
The weight of years gathers. Memories pile up without instruction—life gives no clue or guidance as to how to manage them, process them, make sense of them.
Unlike fiction, life offers no storyline or character arc. It just is.
I find that both liberating and distressing. For the independently minded, life is harder because of the knowing.
I'm not trying to impose a storyline through this journal. I'm just using it to make sense of myself and the world. Honestly, I don't know what it will become.
I just have to trust—like my consulting—that some good might come of it.
Missed my connecting flight to Nagoya—Vancouver delay pushed me over two hours late. Stayed overnight in Incheon.
It's been over 20 years since I've been to Seoul. The airport at Incheon is bigger than I remember. Gone are the empty fields surrounding it.
A comfortable room and delicious meal awaits me. Then, a few hours of sleep until it's time to make my new connecting flight.
I've thought about sharing this journal with a few people—colleagues, acquaintances who might have an interest or curiosity. Perhaps break up the obscurity of writing in this space.
Yet I'm anxious how they may react. Would they react at all?
Silence is worse than criticism. Criticism at least confirms the work was noticed, that it was worthy enough to provoke a reaction. Silence would confirm my doubts—that I'm not having any impact on people or the world.
But reactions aren't my responsibility. I'm accountable only to the work itself—to this archive and chronicle.
It means going forward even when the world seems indifferent. I am defiant. It's about knowing your own path even when the world seems to deny it.
And so I resist the urge to share directly.
I've made this journey dozens of times. Both professionally and personally. I've lived half my life in Japan and half in America.
The number matters only to signify my connection and separation.
No two journeys are identical. No two travelers are completely unique.
I could take this trip a hundred times and each time would be similar but different than the other or the next.
I change. The world I know slowly slips away from me as places change and people leave or pass away.
All that remains are the memories.
Arrival at Chubu was smooth. A short train ride to my usual room and hotel in Meieki, my red bandana-branded suitcase in tow.
Clients await. New emotional escape rooms to investigate. The case is ambiguous—I never know the details until my first interview. New riddles demanding answers and attention. Effort and energy.
And I'm not getting younger.
Dean Bowman
Dean Bowman
Written by
