editors' note

There are two takes on the work in J Journal’s 29th issue. In one we travel, from the red dust of Australia to 1940s Nagasaki, from a fertility clinic in Beijing to Cambridge’s well-appointed suburbs, from Patna, India, chokingly dry along the Ganges, to plush boardrooms in Lima, Peru, and from Art Palm Beach to the backroads of Alderpoint, California, and what we get in all this movement is life beyond the checklist of sights. The adventure of travel is always more than the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. It’s the surprise encounter waiting on line for a baguette (or a naan), the human more than the monument. It’s what happens on the street. Then there’s the second take, and that too is what happens on the street, the grief and loss and love. The justice in this issue is rough, from true grit drug life to the marshy uncertainty about whether to live. There is loss of brother, loss of son, loss of home, and we’re
wondering if the concentration of grief comes to these pages through the filter of COVID.

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Adam Berlin, Jeffrey Heiman

New York City
May 2022