Assigned Reading
Sometimes I wonder if I would read this blog if I wasn’t writing it. Would anyone read this if he didn’t know me, or is this just someone’s assigned reading, in one way or another? I write an awful lot more than my NBC contract requires, so I suppose this is more about me than them. This is the little-publicized pilot-season of a startup, online-only reality show featuring ten anonymous college students, so, assuming the readership is accordingly meager, I suppose this is more about me than you, too.
As I was weaving in and out of Jiyugaoka traffic last night, the rain pattering the hood of my smelly, sweat-stained Temple University sweatshirt, I decided that I am intimidated by the night. Morning light speaks to me in soothing tones of a day to be used, while its moonlit sister accuses me of misusing or, even worse, wasting a day that is now gone. It is a time for excitement and mystery for many, but, for me, night is biting and reminds me more of goodbyes and loneliness.
The Japanese sky managed to be a dark bluish tone, hushed by a moon, and decorated with a coral reef of offsetting grayish clouds, interconnected but so desperate to be closer still. The headlights of slippery black taxicabs revealed the rain that tried to sneak to the ground without being spotted, hidden in the cooling night air that fell from that cloud-adorned firmament.
The headlamp of my bicycle hummed along the edge of my slick front wheel as I hammered on my pedals, riding somewhere, my apartment the default choice of a mind wearied by too much. I decided that I am bored by these challenges. My habit of movement and welcoming new obstacles is habit just the same. Life falls into habit, but nothing threatens it more.
My thoughts floated to less troubling issues, like buying omiyage, travel gifts for friends, and how long I would let myself have under the warm water of a shower. I got to thinking about the winding roads of Tokyo and thought it odd that, when using the small frame of mind of my little body, the road I take home always appears to be going straight but, any map tells me, it certainly isn’t.
Would it be childishly overdramatic or, even worse, banal of me to suggest that that is troublingly similar to our own lives? In an existence of 70 years, a few hours, even a few weeks, is really too small to judge the direction of a life. I really cannot know now what my time here in Tokyo, Japan will do to my exaggeratedly meaningless existence. I don’t know if these words I am writing will be forgotten tomorrow, if ever read by anyone, or if they might help me, if they might help anyone. Hopelessness is just the time that separates your diversions.
I have learned enough about Tokyo geography that the only lost I get is in my own mind. In time, my apartment saved me from draining any more of my energy through directionless and unhelpful thought. I parked my bicycle, my sweatshirt a little darker, heavier and wetter, and forgot, if only for a while.
Jaa ne,
Christopher
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