Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Blue T-shirt Hajime
Blue T-shirt Hajime (jpoldmixon)
From The Daily Sujimoto Wednesday, July 14th ・
STUDENT ATTACKS CLASSMATE WITH KITCHEN KNIFE
WAKAYAMA ・A middle school boy is reported to have stabbed his classmate yesterday, the fourth such incident reported following the tragic death of eleven year-old Ai Nakajima in Nagasaki just three months ago. The incident occurred after school hours when fourteen students stayed behind to clean the classroom. No teachers were present at the time. When the student made fun of his classmate's haircut, he was shoved to the ground and afterward thrust the knife at his classmate, police said. The knife grazed his classmate's neck and he immediately went to the school nurse on his own to seek treatment before being sent to a hospital for further care. The student claims that he only meant to threaten his classmate with the knife and that . . .
Instructor: Recently, such stories seem to be fairly common in the news. As the article mentions, it was only three months ago that an eleven year-old was killed by her classmate for allegedly writing something bad about her on the Internet. My question is this: Have these stories become more prevalent in the news because juvenile crime has become a hot topic, because the number of incidents being reported has increased, or because the actual number of cases of juvenile crime is increasing in Japan?
Student 1: Yes. I think the number of cases increasing. When I was in school days, I never knew everyone who did such a thing - brought a knife to school. (Motions to Student 2)
Student 2: I think so, Yes. It is more common these days. But I think this is because of parenting.
Instructor: Because of parenting? Ok. I understand, but can you explain that a little more? What exactly do you mean?
Student 2: Japan was - Before Japanese society was community centered. Like the villages. Everyone took care the children. The children would listen to any adult, and if a child did something bad, then adults would scold them. But today - Today Japanese people are afraid to yell at him if he is someone else's child. Or maybe they are afraid the parents will come and say, "Don't yell at him, he's my child, not yours." . . . Or the children. The children don't listen to adults if these adults is not their parents.
Instructor: Alright, that's a good point. But hold on a second ・do you mean to tell me that in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, Japanese society was communal? Like the villages before the war?
Student 1: Of course. Student 2 : Mmm. Yes. Japanese society is not like this these days. These days people don't know their neighbors. Maybe if they hear some noise next door, they just ignore it. They don't do everything.
Even in Japanese, I can tell the weatherman is delivering his extrapolated guestimates of typhoon thirteen in the same that's-the-way-it-is tone that is the product of repressed feelings over the fact that no one takes him seriously and that everyone relies, quotes him, on a day to day basis for information that dictates the answer to every who what when where why which how question of the following day. It's a plea for help - a please take me seriously or please keep tuning in. Or it's just a big fuck you - it passes the Korean peninsula, progresses at a slower pace back toward the Japanese archipelago, and even though this overly simplified picture says the thing's gonna hit five hours due north of my viewer's area, well - you know, these things can change direction on a dime, so even those of you in Osaka should take every precaution necessary. That's how they usually translate it, I think, "take every precaution necessary," and just as I'm about to tell Frankie this exact phrase, she pops off the sofa and flings open the door to the balcony. I can hear her muffled curses and stomping around outside. She opens the door again and walks through our little T.V. room to the living room. Not five seconds later she passes me again and is out on the balcony with muffled curses, rattling the coat hangers and racks of laundry set out to dry.
"I can't find your blue shirt," she says. "I just looked up and realized I can't find it."
"Umm. ? It wasn't on a hanger, did you put it on a hanger?"
"I put it on a hanger. Wait - did I put it on a hanger? Hold on, lemme look." She proceeds to circle the tiny apartment, pulling her pink t-shirt up to reveal her midriff in order to cool herself off a bit. She pops her head into the T.V. room a few seconds later and says, "I found your shirt," with a confused expression. And no wonder.
She leads me to the living room window and points below to the roof of the adjacent building. "So, It somehow flew off of the rack, made a one hundred twenty," she does the math on her palm, "maybe one hundred thirty or forty degree turn around our apartment, and then fell on that roof over there."
"Fuck. ? Did you ・um. Maybe you should・ She puts her palm flat on my stomach and looks me directly in the eyes. "I'll get it back, don't worry."
I had intended to tell Frankie, who for the past two and a half weeks has been complaining that her life resembles that famous Samuel Beckett number, that it was, you know, just a blue t-shirt - I could get another blue t-shirt - with a hand on her shoulder and a "no worries," expression. But suddenly I was able to picture her standing at the head of a long mahogany table, the lights at a somber level as she stands poised, the meeting point of the lines of perspective that pass unseen through all of the tiny little flags representing the origin of each head-of-state seated at the conference to end all conferences, watching intently with entrenched brows and wringing hands as she punctuates her strong, flat delivery with the occasional laser pointed direction to the screen just behind her:
"It's six thirty four. That gives us about an hour - maybe less - before the sun goes down. The shirt is still on the hanger, so we need some sort of fishing rod to get it back up. I was thinking we could do it from the third floor stair well, but with the wind blowing across the building at this speed, we'll have to go from the living room window." Here she looks out of the window with an intense look at the horizon. It's a look from a Hollywood movie. I'm not sure which one, but I'm sure there's one helluva budget for special effects and it's quite likely that Aerosmith has a ballad on the soundtrack. Without returning her line of sight to me, she turns toward the bathroom and starts rummaging around in the cabinets underneath the bathroom sink. She emerges with 30 meters of string intended for culinary purposes wrapped around a piece of red cardboard to serve as make-shift spool. She mutters something about a hook at the hundred yen shop and begins pacing back and forth between the front door and the living room window. She's tapping the string on the make-shift-spool in the palm of her hand like that laser pointer I was thinking about earlier when she does an abrupt pivot turn on her right heel to face me and says, "Are you ready for this?"
I have no idea. Am I ready for this? I am, again, inclined to say, "It's a blue t-shirt, Frankie. Let it go," but then I'm somehow in the movie too, and I'd rather just go back to the droning Japanese weatherman, but it's too late. She's gets another wire hanger from the closet in the T.V. room and begins to pull the triangular base into an elongated oval, leaving the hook at one end untouched. She then folds the stretched-out base over four times, shortening the base to a jumble of different ovals roughly the same length. Duct tape is then wrapped around the base to consolidate the different ovals into one, "and to add weight," she says as she ties some elaborate system of knots around the exposed wire at the base with the culinary string. Without further ado, she opens the living room window and throws the modified fishing line out of the window. As the wind carries the hook far to the left of her target, she eyes the parabolic curve between her hand and the shirt below.
"Mr. Bass sits in his Kelpy room," says Frankie.
Still at a loss, I ask, "Mr. Bass?" but she only says, "Mr. Bass. The Descendents." At this point I notice what I guess to be a thirty something couple who have paused, grocery bags in hand, just before entering their apartment in the building past the one on which my blue t-shirt remains the subject of a dubious reconnaissance mission. The male half of the couple leans an extended arm over the balcony to draw attention to Frankie's measured withdraw of the make-shift fishing line as the female half, always prepared, flips open her cell phone to attempt a quick shot of the scene. "It's somewhere in the stack of Cd's by the futon," she says. "I need some motivation music." And it's a good thing that I realize she's talking about Mr. Bass because she doesn't wait for me to reply before asking, "What time is it?" and answering herself with the line still dangling out of the window, "Eleven minutes. Maybe forty till sundown."
"You want a beer," I ask, and mutter, "I need a beer," on my way to the fridge. The CD is somewhere in one of the five black cases sitting around the futon, and I haven't even put the thing in the player before she's asking if there's any beer in the fridge and demanding that I turn it up a little. The little boom box is now wailing about Mr. Bass, and Frankie has apparently missed a shot or two in the meantime because she's tying two of those tiny, plastic figurines that come with the purchase of Japanese sports drinks just above the mangled coat-hanger-turned-hook, "to add more weight." In synchronicity with the hook's plonking on the metallic roof (again, to the left of the currently beyond-salvage blue t-shirt), there is a single knock on the door. For some reason or other I look at the beer in my hand as if it is responsible before discovering my next-door neighbor outside with a bushido smile and a short bow.
She starts off with lowered eyes and I don't have the heart to interrupt her for a full twenty seconds before I say that I don't speak Japanese very well. Her look tells me that she wants me to believe that my poor study habits are, after all, her fault - the fault of all Japanese people, perhaps - so she begins to make a motion with her hands that looks as if a flower is blooming out of the side of her head. I am, of course, confused. And luckily, so is the kid who has just run up behind her, his head cocked to the side in a gesture that communicates confusion in any language. He, then, takes his cue and begins to say something or other far too quickly to me, but doesn't get very far before my next-door neighbor explains to him that I speak absolutely no Japanese (which is not what I said, I thought, I do speak some Japanese, but - ). Of course, he pays no attention to this, and, continuing in a much more animated tone with whatever he was saying before and a finger pointed toward the roof of the adjacent building, explains to my neighbor why the music is so loud. I imagined what he said to go something like this:
You know someone's t-shirt is stuck on the roof over there? So there's this foreign lady throwin a piece of string with a waded-up coat hanger on the end out of the window to try to get it. That's why the music is so loud.
In any case, Frankie is now asking who it is, I'm telling her it's the neighbor and some kid, and the two outside aren't budging an inch. The door is still standing open and I'm wondering if I should invite them in or something, but then I think that they'll probably refuse and the woman from next door will probably call the manager as soon as she gets back in, so I've got to keep her in this liminal state between the manager and my living room until Frankie hooks the T-shirt. And I can, I swear, speak a little Japanese, but the only question that comes to mind right now is, "Was work busy today?" Frankie yells something about, "Twenty seven - damn she's sinking fast!" and the kid, somehow or other, convinces the woman from next door to follow him to the stairwell, where he continues his explanation of the scene. Propping the door open with a house slipper so as not to make the neighbors feel unwelcome, I return to the living room window to find the couple across the way has multiplied by three. A man two floors below has his head out of his own living room window and is turning his attention between Frankie and the t-shirt. As the light is, in fact, fading fast, she asks me for a flashlight and another beer. I explain that I'm pretty sure the neighbors were complaining about the music, but Frankie seems more concerned with the fact that the flashlight isn't helping at all, "we'll have to give her a cake or something," she adds before telling me that turning out the lights inside could help. It doesn't.
What transpires from there is what appears to be the man from two floors below (room 307, maybe) gauging whether or not he can toss his body-harnessed terrier onto the roof of the adjacent building in hopes of retrieving my blue t-shirt for reasons that Frankie claims to be "highway robbery." Truth be told, the gap between the two buildings is little more than two feet, and were our apartment on the second floor, I could reach my arm out of the window and touch the facing wall. The only problem with Mr. 307's idea is that the light is worse down there than it is from our height. And who should come to Pochi's rescue (Frankie pronounces the name in a way that suggests "Pochi" is an insult to the terrier) but the voyeur sextet in the other apartment complex. One of these brilliant minds has either picked up Frankie's signal of stress or has had the auspicious sense to drag a full-on cue beam out of their apartment and aim it at the helpless t-shirt on the roof between our buildings. Frankie, giving the hook line and sinker another go, nearly lets the line fall on the leaping terrier below.
"Four feet," she says in defeated disbelief. "I'll be damned if Pochi didn't clear that gap with a foot to spare," and putting her free hand on her hip with the string still waving in the wind out of the window, "But how the hell is that dog gonna get back over?" "The body harness," I say, taking a long drink from what's left of my beer. "Pochi," I say pointing to the terrier shaking with an expectant look at his owner in the window across the way, "has been fitted with some sort of baby harness. There's a cord there," I start to say, but she's interrupting again with, "I'll be damned." Pochi takes some sort of cue from his owner and gets the shirt in his mouth, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. He sort of looks blankly around him every once in a while and eventually totters to the edge of the roof. Frankie goes on about how Pochi has had enough and is through taking this shit from everyone. Goodbye world! But that's not the case. Instead, it's most likely the owner is realizing that he planned the thing all wrong and that despite the harness idea, because of the given angle at which their intercessory cord stretched, he didn't have the leverage to pull poor Pochi back up to the window from whence he came.
The t-shirt drops, the cue beam swings to the left and finds the kid who was at our door a few minutes ago traipsing casually over the rounded shingles toward Pochi - toward the blue t-shirt. "Shit," says Frankie, still not bothering to retract her line. The kid puts out a cautious palm toward the dog, Mr. 307 can be heard shouting something or other at either Pochi or the kid, and through delicate negotiations between the triumvirate, the dog ends up in the kid's arms, the t-shirt in the dogs mouth, Mr. 307 squeezed on a ladder between the two buildings, and Frankie's upper torso out of the living room window waving alternately at the trio below and the sextet with the cue beam across the way.
Instructor: Anomie - a state where society ceases to care for its members. Do you really think Japanese society has gotten that far? Imagine that you hear a noise next door. Would you go to your neighbor to investigate?
Student 1: Me? Oh, no. No, I wouldn't. I don't know. . . who my neighbors are.
Student 2: No. I think I wouldn't - I think they want privacy. I don't want to take their privacy.
From The Daily Sujimoto Wednesday, July 14th ・
STUDENT ATTACKS CLASSMATE WITH KITCHEN KNIFE
WAKAYAMA ・A middle school boy is reported to have stabbed his classmate yesterday, the fourth such incident reported following the tragic death of eleven year-old Ai Nakajima in Nagasaki just three months ago. The incident occurred after school hours when fourteen students stayed behind to clean the classroom. No teachers were present at the time. When the student made fun of his classmate's haircut, he was shoved to the ground and afterward thrust the knife at his classmate, police said. The knife grazed his classmate's neck and he immediately went to the school nurse on his own to seek treatment before being sent to a hospital for further care. The student claims that he only meant to threaten his classmate with the knife and that . . .
Instructor: Recently, such stories seem to be fairly common in the news. As the article mentions, it was only three months ago that an eleven year-old was killed by her classmate for allegedly writing something bad about her on the Internet. My question is this: Have these stories become more prevalent in the news because juvenile crime has become a hot topic, because the number of incidents being reported has increased, or because the actual number of cases of juvenile crime is increasing in Japan?
Student 1: Yes. I think the number of cases increasing. When I was in school days, I never knew everyone who did such a thing - brought a knife to school. (Motions to Student 2)
Student 2: I think so, Yes. It is more common these days. But I think this is because of parenting.
Instructor: Because of parenting? Ok. I understand, but can you explain that a little more? What exactly do you mean?
Student 2: Japan was - Before Japanese society was community centered. Like the villages. Everyone took care the children. The children would listen to any adult, and if a child did something bad, then adults would scold them. But today - Today Japanese people are afraid to yell at him if he is someone else's child. Or maybe they are afraid the parents will come and say, "Don't yell at him, he's my child, not yours." . . . Or the children. The children don't listen to adults if these adults is not their parents.
Instructor: Alright, that's a good point. But hold on a second ・do you mean to tell me that in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, Japanese society was communal? Like the villages before the war?
Student 1: Of course. Student 2 : Mmm. Yes. Japanese society is not like this these days. These days people don't know their neighbors. Maybe if they hear some noise next door, they just ignore it. They don't do everything.
Even in Japanese, I can tell the weatherman is delivering his extrapolated guestimates of typhoon thirteen in the same that's-the-way-it-is tone that is the product of repressed feelings over the fact that no one takes him seriously and that everyone relies, quotes him, on a day to day basis for information that dictates the answer to every who what when where why which how question of the following day. It's a plea for help - a please take me seriously or please keep tuning in. Or it's just a big fuck you - it passes the Korean peninsula, progresses at a slower pace back toward the Japanese archipelago, and even though this overly simplified picture says the thing's gonna hit five hours due north of my viewer's area, well - you know, these things can change direction on a dime, so even those of you in Osaka should take every precaution necessary. That's how they usually translate it, I think, "take every precaution necessary," and just as I'm about to tell Frankie this exact phrase, she pops off the sofa and flings open the door to the balcony. I can hear her muffled curses and stomping around outside. She opens the door again and walks through our little T.V. room to the living room. Not five seconds later she passes me again and is out on the balcony with muffled curses, rattling the coat hangers and racks of laundry set out to dry.
"I can't find your blue shirt," she says. "I just looked up and realized I can't find it."
"Umm. ? It wasn't on a hanger, did you put it on a hanger?"
"I put it on a hanger. Wait - did I put it on a hanger? Hold on, lemme look." She proceeds to circle the tiny apartment, pulling her pink t-shirt up to reveal her midriff in order to cool herself off a bit. She pops her head into the T.V. room a few seconds later and says, "I found your shirt," with a confused expression. And no wonder.
She leads me to the living room window and points below to the roof of the adjacent building. "So, It somehow flew off of the rack, made a one hundred twenty," she does the math on her palm, "maybe one hundred thirty or forty degree turn around our apartment, and then fell on that roof over there."
"Fuck. ? Did you ・um. Maybe you should・ She puts her palm flat on my stomach and looks me directly in the eyes. "I'll get it back, don't worry."
I had intended to tell Frankie, who for the past two and a half weeks has been complaining that her life resembles that famous Samuel Beckett number, that it was, you know, just a blue t-shirt - I could get another blue t-shirt - with a hand on her shoulder and a "no worries," expression. But suddenly I was able to picture her standing at the head of a long mahogany table, the lights at a somber level as she stands poised, the meeting point of the lines of perspective that pass unseen through all of the tiny little flags representing the origin of each head-of-state seated at the conference to end all conferences, watching intently with entrenched brows and wringing hands as she punctuates her strong, flat delivery with the occasional laser pointed direction to the screen just behind her:
"It's six thirty four. That gives us about an hour - maybe less - before the sun goes down. The shirt is still on the hanger, so we need some sort of fishing rod to get it back up. I was thinking we could do it from the third floor stair well, but with the wind blowing across the building at this speed, we'll have to go from the living room window." Here she looks out of the window with an intense look at the horizon. It's a look from a Hollywood movie. I'm not sure which one, but I'm sure there's one helluva budget for special effects and it's quite likely that Aerosmith has a ballad on the soundtrack. Without returning her line of sight to me, she turns toward the bathroom and starts rummaging around in the cabinets underneath the bathroom sink. She emerges with 30 meters of string intended for culinary purposes wrapped around a piece of red cardboard to serve as make-shift spool. She mutters something about a hook at the hundred yen shop and begins pacing back and forth between the front door and the living room window. She's tapping the string on the make-shift-spool in the palm of her hand like that laser pointer I was thinking about earlier when she does an abrupt pivot turn on her right heel to face me and says, "Are you ready for this?"
I have no idea. Am I ready for this? I am, again, inclined to say, "It's a blue t-shirt, Frankie. Let it go," but then I'm somehow in the movie too, and I'd rather just go back to the droning Japanese weatherman, but it's too late. She's gets another wire hanger from the closet in the T.V. room and begins to pull the triangular base into an elongated oval, leaving the hook at one end untouched. She then folds the stretched-out base over four times, shortening the base to a jumble of different ovals roughly the same length. Duct tape is then wrapped around the base to consolidate the different ovals into one, "and to add weight," she says as she ties some elaborate system of knots around the exposed wire at the base with the culinary string. Without further ado, she opens the living room window and throws the modified fishing line out of the window. As the wind carries the hook far to the left of her target, she eyes the parabolic curve between her hand and the shirt below.
"Mr. Bass sits in his Kelpy room," says Frankie.
Still at a loss, I ask, "Mr. Bass?" but she only says, "Mr. Bass. The Descendents." At this point I notice what I guess to be a thirty something couple who have paused, grocery bags in hand, just before entering their apartment in the building past the one on which my blue t-shirt remains the subject of a dubious reconnaissance mission. The male half of the couple leans an extended arm over the balcony to draw attention to Frankie's measured withdraw of the make-shift fishing line as the female half, always prepared, flips open her cell phone to attempt a quick shot of the scene. "It's somewhere in the stack of Cd's by the futon," she says. "I need some motivation music." And it's a good thing that I realize she's talking about Mr. Bass because she doesn't wait for me to reply before asking, "What time is it?" and answering herself with the line still dangling out of the window, "Eleven minutes. Maybe forty till sundown."
"You want a beer," I ask, and mutter, "I need a beer," on my way to the fridge. The CD is somewhere in one of the five black cases sitting around the futon, and I haven't even put the thing in the player before she's asking if there's any beer in the fridge and demanding that I turn it up a little. The little boom box is now wailing about Mr. Bass, and Frankie has apparently missed a shot or two in the meantime because she's tying two of those tiny, plastic figurines that come with the purchase of Japanese sports drinks just above the mangled coat-hanger-turned-hook, "to add more weight." In synchronicity with the hook's plonking on the metallic roof (again, to the left of the currently beyond-salvage blue t-shirt), there is a single knock on the door. For some reason or other I look at the beer in my hand as if it is responsible before discovering my next-door neighbor outside with a bushido smile and a short bow.
She starts off with lowered eyes and I don't have the heart to interrupt her for a full twenty seconds before I say that I don't speak Japanese very well. Her look tells me that she wants me to believe that my poor study habits are, after all, her fault - the fault of all Japanese people, perhaps - so she begins to make a motion with her hands that looks as if a flower is blooming out of the side of her head. I am, of course, confused. And luckily, so is the kid who has just run up behind her, his head cocked to the side in a gesture that communicates confusion in any language. He, then, takes his cue and begins to say something or other far too quickly to me, but doesn't get very far before my next-door neighbor explains to him that I speak absolutely no Japanese (which is not what I said, I thought, I do speak some Japanese, but - ). Of course, he pays no attention to this, and, continuing in a much more animated tone with whatever he was saying before and a finger pointed toward the roof of the adjacent building, explains to my neighbor why the music is so loud. I imagined what he said to go something like this:
You know someone's t-shirt is stuck on the roof over there? So there's this foreign lady throwin a piece of string with a waded-up coat hanger on the end out of the window to try to get it. That's why the music is so loud.
In any case, Frankie is now asking who it is, I'm telling her it's the neighbor and some kid, and the two outside aren't budging an inch. The door is still standing open and I'm wondering if I should invite them in or something, but then I think that they'll probably refuse and the woman from next door will probably call the manager as soon as she gets back in, so I've got to keep her in this liminal state between the manager and my living room until Frankie hooks the T-shirt. And I can, I swear, speak a little Japanese, but the only question that comes to mind right now is, "Was work busy today?" Frankie yells something about, "Twenty seven - damn she's sinking fast!" and the kid, somehow or other, convinces the woman from next door to follow him to the stairwell, where he continues his explanation of the scene. Propping the door open with a house slipper so as not to make the neighbors feel unwelcome, I return to the living room window to find the couple across the way has multiplied by three. A man two floors below has his head out of his own living room window and is turning his attention between Frankie and the t-shirt. As the light is, in fact, fading fast, she asks me for a flashlight and another beer. I explain that I'm pretty sure the neighbors were complaining about the music, but Frankie seems more concerned with the fact that the flashlight isn't helping at all, "we'll have to give her a cake or something," she adds before telling me that turning out the lights inside could help. It doesn't.
What transpires from there is what appears to be the man from two floors below (room 307, maybe) gauging whether or not he can toss his body-harnessed terrier onto the roof of the adjacent building in hopes of retrieving my blue t-shirt for reasons that Frankie claims to be "highway robbery." Truth be told, the gap between the two buildings is little more than two feet, and were our apartment on the second floor, I could reach my arm out of the window and touch the facing wall. The only problem with Mr. 307's idea is that the light is worse down there than it is from our height. And who should come to Pochi's rescue (Frankie pronounces the name in a way that suggests "Pochi" is an insult to the terrier) but the voyeur sextet in the other apartment complex. One of these brilliant minds has either picked up Frankie's signal of stress or has had the auspicious sense to drag a full-on cue beam out of their apartment and aim it at the helpless t-shirt on the roof between our buildings. Frankie, giving the hook line and sinker another go, nearly lets the line fall on the leaping terrier below.
"Four feet," she says in defeated disbelief. "I'll be damned if Pochi didn't clear that gap with a foot to spare," and putting her free hand on her hip with the string still waving in the wind out of the window, "But how the hell is that dog gonna get back over?" "The body harness," I say, taking a long drink from what's left of my beer. "Pochi," I say pointing to the terrier shaking with an expectant look at his owner in the window across the way, "has been fitted with some sort of baby harness. There's a cord there," I start to say, but she's interrupting again with, "I'll be damned." Pochi takes some sort of cue from his owner and gets the shirt in his mouth, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. He sort of looks blankly around him every once in a while and eventually totters to the edge of the roof. Frankie goes on about how Pochi has had enough and is through taking this shit from everyone. Goodbye world! But that's not the case. Instead, it's most likely the owner is realizing that he planned the thing all wrong and that despite the harness idea, because of the given angle at which their intercessory cord stretched, he didn't have the leverage to pull poor Pochi back up to the window from whence he came.
The t-shirt drops, the cue beam swings to the left and finds the kid who was at our door a few minutes ago traipsing casually over the rounded shingles toward Pochi - toward the blue t-shirt. "Shit," says Frankie, still not bothering to retract her line. The kid puts out a cautious palm toward the dog, Mr. 307 can be heard shouting something or other at either Pochi or the kid, and through delicate negotiations between the triumvirate, the dog ends up in the kid's arms, the t-shirt in the dogs mouth, Mr. 307 squeezed on a ladder between the two buildings, and Frankie's upper torso out of the living room window waving alternately at the trio below and the sextet with the cue beam across the way.
Instructor: Anomie - a state where society ceases to care for its members. Do you really think Japanese society has gotten that far? Imagine that you hear a noise next door. Would you go to your neighbor to investigate?
Student 1: Me? Oh, no. No, I wouldn't. I don't know. . . who my neighbors are.
Student 2: No. I think I wouldn't - I think they want privacy. I don't want to take their privacy.
Friday, August 06, 2004
In August, The Messenger
In August, The Messenger
(jp oldmixon)
A boy of nine or ten absent mindedly twirls the net and pole thrown over his shoulder. He shifts his weight from side to side, the gray rocks crunching, sliding beneath his sandals. In the clear, plastic box at his feet, two fat shapes buzz and jitter against each other. He raises his eyes briefly to the green cherry tree and lets the net drop to his side. The cicadas' rattle swells.Do you think he'll pull their wings off, she asks, neither removing her attention from the boy nor waiting for Les to respond before saying, He will. He's a boy. That's what boys do.
Les turns the corner of his mouth and sucks on his Seven Stars. The boy lifts the box to his eye level and wanders toward a group of pigeons a few feet away. Just beyond him, a tired face balances a rusting bicycle with one hand and tosses breadcrumbs into to the tottering circle of pigeons. There is no connection between these images, thinks Les. They'd make picture postcards, he says out loud, if you could separate them. But together they really don't make much sense. The boy, the pigeons, the homeless man. Too abstract. Junko, paying little attention to the remarks, says, I think he's going for the pigeons next. He'll need a bigger box.
You think he's following the sound, asks Les. And Junko, of the pigeons? Yes, the pigeons - NO, not the pigeons, the cicadas, says Les with a half smile. You think he follows the sound or just walks around eyeing them in the trees? Junko opens her mouth to answer, but the rush of thirty wings from the gravel to the sky cuts her off. The boy drops the net at his side and turns his neck to follow the abrupt, mid-flight changes in direction. Junko stands up and turns to Les, Definitely needs a bigger box, she says.
The two crunch past the boy and onto the wider, brick path that leads to the temple's central garden. She lets her hands swing at her side, he lifts his index finger in reaction to the brief encounter. The cherry blossom, she says, only blooms once a year. Lasts only about a week, you know. A weak smile finally surfaces, and she spreads her hands before her in explanation: that's Japan, she says, perfect love and beauty in one week, then an entire year of emptiness, sorrow, regret. Sometimes I think it's really the rest of the year we like. The love and beauty, it comes and goes - the heartache: it's like hearth and home. He cocks his head to look at her, Don't kill the messenger, he says. She raises a confused eyebrow. Les draws on the cigarette and returns his attention to some point ahead. She moves next to him, gently brushing up against him with her hip to guide him off of the brick path, onto a narrow, white rock trail that wanders into the temple's central garden.
Everything is waiting for me in Adele, says Junko. She looks at the white gravel path and glances at Les. A job, Michael, my friends - I have to go back. Les nods and looks through the trees at the pond below, I know you do. And Junko, in a matter of fact voice, I don't regret anything. I don't even feel guilty. Now she tilts her face toward him. No - Neither do I, says Les. I don't feel guilty at all. I guess it all seems - perfectly natural . . . to me. God, that sounded - I feel like I'm fifteen, he says with a smile.
Nowhere near it, she says and points to a brown bench to the left of the pond. Water lilies, massive and bright pink, cup supplicating hands to the clouded sky above. The turbid green or brown of the water spreads in tiny concentric circles that relax into the placid surface as soon as they appear. Is it raining, he asks. Her eyes unfocused on the water, I don't think so. It's the coy. The mosquito hawks. And he nods in distracted agreement.
What's your middle name Junko? The question comes like a promise, or a secret. After all, he thinks: every good romance begins with a secret. But she shrugs, I don't have one. Your last name? Nakajima, and she playfully asks, why? So I know how to find you - but the answer doesn't come, disappears before it surfaces, and all he ends up with is, I don't know. Just Curious. And, of course, she doesn't pause long before, what about you? McMullen, he says. Perfectly common name. There must about a million Les McMullens out there. His eyes follow a coy close to the edge of the pond. He wonders what Micheal's last name could be.
It's fiction, he says out loud. That's why people like it. The year of sadness and the week of beauty. Everything in a week of beauty. But the lines aren't that clear. The lines are never that clear. But look, he says, in fiction you draw the shapes yourself, you make the story - there's nothing vague about it. In fact, it's perfectly clear. It's so easy to understand that everyone buys it. The year of sadness begins at the exact point in which the week of beauty ends. And why not? It's so easy. So clear cut. But it's not like that, he says. It's pure fiction. That cherry blossom (pointing to the summer green of a nearby tree) is pure fiction. She looks him in the face and smiles. He smiles too - I know what you're going to say. But she laughs anyway and says, Don't kill the messenger.
(jp oldmixon)
A boy of nine or ten absent mindedly twirls the net and pole thrown over his shoulder. He shifts his weight from side to side, the gray rocks crunching, sliding beneath his sandals. In the clear, plastic box at his feet, two fat shapes buzz and jitter against each other. He raises his eyes briefly to the green cherry tree and lets the net drop to his side. The cicadas' rattle swells.Do you think he'll pull their wings off, she asks, neither removing her attention from the boy nor waiting for Les to respond before saying, He will. He's a boy. That's what boys do.
Les turns the corner of his mouth and sucks on his Seven Stars. The boy lifts the box to his eye level and wanders toward a group of pigeons a few feet away. Just beyond him, a tired face balances a rusting bicycle with one hand and tosses breadcrumbs into to the tottering circle of pigeons. There is no connection between these images, thinks Les. They'd make picture postcards, he says out loud, if you could separate them. But together they really don't make much sense. The boy, the pigeons, the homeless man. Too abstract. Junko, paying little attention to the remarks, says, I think he's going for the pigeons next. He'll need a bigger box.
You think he's following the sound, asks Les. And Junko, of the pigeons? Yes, the pigeons - NO, not the pigeons, the cicadas, says Les with a half smile. You think he follows the sound or just walks around eyeing them in the trees? Junko opens her mouth to answer, but the rush of thirty wings from the gravel to the sky cuts her off. The boy drops the net at his side and turns his neck to follow the abrupt, mid-flight changes in direction. Junko stands up and turns to Les, Definitely needs a bigger box, she says.
The two crunch past the boy and onto the wider, brick path that leads to the temple's central garden. She lets her hands swing at her side, he lifts his index finger in reaction to the brief encounter. The cherry blossom, she says, only blooms once a year. Lasts only about a week, you know. A weak smile finally surfaces, and she spreads her hands before her in explanation: that's Japan, she says, perfect love and beauty in one week, then an entire year of emptiness, sorrow, regret. Sometimes I think it's really the rest of the year we like. The love and beauty, it comes and goes - the heartache: it's like hearth and home. He cocks his head to look at her, Don't kill the messenger, he says. She raises a confused eyebrow. Les draws on the cigarette and returns his attention to some point ahead. She moves next to him, gently brushing up against him with her hip to guide him off of the brick path, onto a narrow, white rock trail that wanders into the temple's central garden.
Everything is waiting for me in Adele, says Junko. She looks at the white gravel path and glances at Les. A job, Michael, my friends - I have to go back. Les nods and looks through the trees at the pond below, I know you do. And Junko, in a matter of fact voice, I don't regret anything. I don't even feel guilty. Now she tilts her face toward him. No - Neither do I, says Les. I don't feel guilty at all. I guess it all seems - perfectly natural . . . to me. God, that sounded - I feel like I'm fifteen, he says with a smile.
Nowhere near it, she says and points to a brown bench to the left of the pond. Water lilies, massive and bright pink, cup supplicating hands to the clouded sky above. The turbid green or brown of the water spreads in tiny concentric circles that relax into the placid surface as soon as they appear. Is it raining, he asks. Her eyes unfocused on the water, I don't think so. It's the coy. The mosquito hawks. And he nods in distracted agreement.
What's your middle name Junko? The question comes like a promise, or a secret. After all, he thinks: every good romance begins with a secret. But she shrugs, I don't have one. Your last name? Nakajima, and she playfully asks, why? So I know how to find you - but the answer doesn't come, disappears before it surfaces, and all he ends up with is, I don't know. Just Curious. And, of course, she doesn't pause long before, what about you? McMullen, he says. Perfectly common name. There must about a million Les McMullens out there. His eyes follow a coy close to the edge of the pond. He wonders what Micheal's last name could be.
It's fiction, he says out loud. That's why people like it. The year of sadness and the week of beauty. Everything in a week of beauty. But the lines aren't that clear. The lines are never that clear. But look, he says, in fiction you draw the shapes yourself, you make the story - there's nothing vague about it. In fact, it's perfectly clear. It's so easy to understand that everyone buys it. The year of sadness begins at the exact point in which the week of beauty ends. And why not? It's so easy. So clear cut. But it's not like that, he says. It's pure fiction. That cherry blossom (pointing to the summer green of a nearby tree) is pure fiction. She looks him in the face and smiles. He smiles too - I know what you're going to say. But she laughs anyway and says, Don't kill the messenger.
