The world is full of people who leave the place they were born, only to survive and then die in a place they never expected to live. The world is full of people who live without purpose, without any relationships, without any stories, or many that no one cares to know, despite the constant progress of everything around them. Such people tend to appear the most often in America, and even more in New York, the place where the no-identity-faces gather, the embodiment of the splendid America, the image that represents the most solid but also the most easily shattered dreams.
I saw one of them on the first morning after arriving in New York right after stepping out of a concrete hotel on Twenty-fourth Street, heading towards Seventh Avenue. For a moment, I had the idea of doing something different from the drivers — that is, following the African man to his destination.
The previous night, the snow fell heavily. The snowflakes fell gently yet fiercely, floating through the night like magical creatures. The cold crashed on me suddenly as soon as I stepped outside, aggressively occupying all the corners in my body, sneaking into every inch of carelessly exposed skin. The cold froze on the skin, piercing my brain, aching with every breath. On cold winter nights like this, the best thing to do is to stay in a cozy room, drink a cup of ginger tea, and talk about everything — except politics, of course. Politics in Russia these days is taboo. Russians avoided the subject like a terminal illness. “War in Ukraine? No, don’t worry, we are fine.” They changed the subject. Except Varf Labec.
Ever since I was a child, I have always known that the world around me was much larger, that it was not limited to a small market, a moldering temple with a desolate courtyard, a solid church that I had not entered, rows of houses, schools, and a highway. That poor and ragged landscape never limited my imagination. I did not know how I got there, but I always knew that one day I would leave it. I knew I would travel to other vast places, reach the tops of mountains, dive to the bottom of the sea, and talk to people in every corner of the world.
I initially knew Emmy only as one of the friendly baristas at Lê Phin, the lovely little Vietnamese cafe in the East Village that I stop by nearly every day to work, meet people, and enjoy their exquisite pandan matcha lattes and coffees. As soon as we started talking, I realized she was intelligent, confident, and mature. She was actually a working artist dedicated to bringing more beauty into the world and chose to work at the cafe occasionally to learn more about the food/hospitality industry. As I became more familiar with her work, I found that I loved her artist eye, her color sense, and her approach to life and art.
While struggling to find contemporary jazz venues in Osaka, I stumbled upon Studio T-Bone, a venue supporting both live jazz and photography and decided to visit. Pianist Yukari Sekiya 関谷 友加里 and percussionist Naoto Yamagishi 山㟁直人 やまぎしなおと were improvising together. While I didn't manage to get to know them well on that occasion, I was delighted to spend time with the creative family members running the studio. A chance encounter months later unexpectedly brought Yukari back into my mind. When I reached out to her, she responded, and I've now learned what a deep and inspiring artist and person she is, opening the door to possible future collaborations. It was a powerful reminder that we can't always see right away why our intuition speaks to us. Sometimes, it may be setting something in motion far in the future or for a purpose quite different from what we imagine.
Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart died on June 9th, 2025. There have been a lot of narratives about his life and death, but less about his music, particularly his under-appreciated 1973 album, Fresh. True to its title, Fresh is lighter, more relaxed, and much more personal than any music Sly had written to date. It's also much funkier, as Sly had in turn embraced the deep grooves of the Bootsy Collins-era JBs of James Brown.
Photo © by Nguyễn Tuấn CườngThe first time I encountered one of Nguyễn Tuấn Cường's works, I found myself stunned before a canvas not characterized by richness, but by solidity. It was a painting of a bowl — an ordinary, creased enamel bowl — so realistically rendered it seemed to be living. Not polished, not idealized. It just was. Its rim chipped, its pale blue faded to something almost ghostly, the bowl rested ever so slightly askew on a darkened ground, emanating not surface light but a glow from deep within the layers of lacquer.
I don’t know why I came here. Waking at four in the morning, inside this airtight dormitory room with no windows, I can only tell the time from the screen of my phone. Below my bed, the Afghan girl is snoring softly. I imagine her bed, surrounded by piles of stuff hung haphazardly like a rumpled bed curtain. She’s been here for two weeks; the items hanging around the bed are a way for her to assert her attachment, her sovereignty, and to establish herself more firmly than the others, which currently consist of me, a Cambodian girl, and an Indonesian girl.
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the seminal funk album Parliament's Mothership Connection.
Photo © by Hiroki OtsukaOn my way from Kanazawa down to Hiroshima, I took a detour in Fukui Prefecture to visit Gotanjoji, a Sōtō Zen temple in Shoden-cho, Echizen City, known informally as a cat temple. I came for the cats, but I was also intrigued by the temple’s history, such as it is. While many temples in Japan are hundreds of years old, Gotanjoji was founded in 2002! Despite the temple's young age, its history dates back to the late 13th century Zen monk Keizan Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾, who was born in Echizen and was, I discovered, instrumental in opening Zen to women. Gotanjoji took it one step — or four? — further, bringing cats into the spiritual practice.













