We say “literally” when it’s anything but literal, and “LOL” when we are not really laughing out loud, but today I literally, for more than a minute, laughed out loud at the most endearing little story, which I just have to share with you. This comes from a Japanese author pen-named Nobunaga, who jokingly describes himself as a confused samurai wandering through America. He writes short vignettes of his adventures, replete with observations of our culture, which he posts on his website and also sells in several volumes on Amazon. At a time when our country is so at odds with itself, his stories remind me of the virtues, values, and quirks that hold us together as Americans.

Let me give you a taste of the joy. Here is the vignette he posted today on ‘X’ that had me in stitches:

I am a private person.

I carry my shame in quiet rooms.

Yet at Trader Joe’s, a boy in a floral hibiscus shirt looked down at my conveyor belt and exposed my raw, bleeding interior to the public square.

“Bro,” he said, holding up a package of frozen pork soup dumplings as though it were the Holy Grail recovered from Antioch.

“Have you had these? These slap so hard.”

I blinked.

I had picked them because I was tired and alone.

“I haven’t,” I whispered.

He leaned across the scanner. His eyes were wide with genuine, terrifying intimacy.

“Dude. Steam them for eight minutes, put chili crisp on top, and it will literally change your spiritual trajectory.”

He scanned my cheap bourbon.

“Oh, celebrating tonight? Good for you, man. You deserve it.”

I was not celebrating.

My landlord had raised the rent and my car was making a sound like a dying crow.

But under the warmth of his floral cotton gaze, I suddenly believed that I did deserve it.

He bagged my bread on top, as gently as a mother tucking in an infant.

“Any big plans for the weekend?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to confess my sins, my doubts, the cold dread that wakes me at 4 AM. I wanted him to absolve me.

Instead, I took my brown paper sacks and choked back a tear.

“Just resting,” I said.

“Hell yeah,” he replied, pointing a finger-gun directly at my sternum. “Rest hard, king.”

I walked to my car feeling as though I had been baptized in coconut oil and pure, weaponized California optimism.

     * For more from Nobunaga, visit https://wandering-nobunaga.com/discoveries/visit-japan

Wasn’t that delightful? The anecdote reminds me of something Matthew Arnold, the Victorian literary critic, said: “The world is furthered by having its attention fixed on the best things.” He went on to say: “With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the passions, the weakness of the spirit; with the storms of the passing time and with the great scourges of human life … authors may as long as they like go on making novels which harrow our hearts; but the soul says all the while, ‘You hurt me.’”

While writers of the era often wrote brooding and pessimistic material, Arnold believed readers hunger for upliftment–books that make their lives richer, more hopeful, more purposeful … writing that inspires and ennobles. If the anecdote reposted here struck you not only for the quality of its prose–if it touched something wholesome inside you that was longing to be fed–you know what Arnold means.

I, for one, side with Arnold.

 

Jessi Rita Hoffman … book editing by an industry professional