Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m guessing we’re in for another brutal emotional pummeling, as we return to the painfully well-observed drama of Journal With Witch. The show has so far offered up a pair of poignant, intimate character studies, observing an unlikely duo who seem united less by their tangential genetic bond than their fellow pilgrimage through a great, forbidding emotional desert. For Asa, this desert represents the grief she still cannot name, a feeling too immense to look at directly, yet which nonetheless marks her as apart from the carefree high schoolers and confident adults surrounding her. For Makio, this desert is her personal fortress, the barricade of sand and stone that has shielded her from the unhappy truths of an isolated adulthood.
Back when Makio first suggested Asa start a journal, it seemed like that might have just been the idle, unconsidered advice of someone out of their depth in offering true consolation. But now, it seems more likely that Makio was sharing her own survival strategy – to transmute to the page that which is intolerable to the mind, and thereby exorcise her demons through the alchemy of fiction. We all develop our own coping strategies for handling life’s disappointments, but Asa’s presence is forcing Makio to reexamine the routines of her life, and ask once again if she is happy settling for what is simply comfortable. Let’s see how our desert wanderers continue to shape each other as we return to Journal With Witch!