to friends lost (?) along the way

to k...

there is a video by radwimps that depicts the unlikelihood of relationships by the manner in which droplets on a car (fail to) coalesce and fall. although friendship, in my mind, has always been more of a "contained distance," or a kind of parallelism, i kind of see what happened to us as being similar to those falling raindrops: sometimes so close, and then mysteriously sliding away, with one following (in vain) the tracks of the other... or suddenly split apart by larger forces...

i think about you, and hope that you are okay. i know that i on occasion complained about the impending economic crisis, and how it would affect my family. in retrospect, i realize how selfish it was to even mention such things. i wonder how things must be for you, in a place with no ties or support.

yours is a different vision of life, ultimately, more urban and wise in so many ways. as a child, i was so blind and naive, and simply envied your life in those moments when i was allowed to glimpse it. living in town, sliding here and there by bus, it all seemed so "cool." to listen to the sounds of cars drifting past on a nearby freeway, for me, that was like being close to the living pulse of the world... it was not a lonely sound at all.

i failed to look closely, and see.

in all my life, even in those times when i seemed a world away and alone and adrift, i always had a sense that i was tethered, either by silver umbilical ties, or by the red cotton noose around my pinky finger. and, like a snail, i always carried my walls with me. looking at your life, or what i can glimpse of it, i realize that you have seen the wonder and terror of losing those bonds and shedding those walls. and again, initially, superficially, i envy that.

but ultimately, we have some common core. do you see it?

one of my favorite memories was one of our first. it was the first time i realized, with burgeoning excitement, that i had a friend. i was at your house in mililani, in your garage, playing with this hot wheels race track. and all around us, the rain was falling.

do you remember this?

i like to try to remember things (i am so bad at it), because in memories, sometimes we find that tenuous skin that held the world together. there's the illusion, before the bomb of time explodes, that everything will stay that way forever, that we will always be just so, in the right place, knowing we will remain friends for always.

in my heart, and from my side, i feel this.

and, wherever you are, i wish you well.

after i had clipped the vines that climbed
and wound up walls and the telephone pole
and deemed the job well done-
the wildness tamed and shaped-

i felt justified in leaving the compound
the church walls and routines that encircled me.

***

there is a karaoke bar across the way
with grey greek women in frescoes
and in the narrow street to the left,
are many more of the same type
of establishment.

i know those places only by the remnants left from
the parties-
the cigarette butts that i would
on occasion pick up in
the cold ash grey morning
as a sign of
daily devotion
and service to the world...

***

the sidewalks are made of interlocking shapes.
i marvel sometimes at how complete those tiled floors are,
even the weeds cannot dig their toes into the cracks.

if i follow them, will they take me
where i need to be?

(or where i want to be?)

***

there is an arcade along the way,
and kids younger than i
are all spending their parent's spare change
on pornographic games.

i shuffle in disinterestedly,
keep my eyes drifting
even across the shifting squares
of the dangerous places.

you cannot rest your sights
anywhere.

***

they say a bat may be blind
but knows its way
by sounding walls.

if its call never returns,
then does it hold its wings
in close,
the folded skin to echo
its lonely cries?

***

at a corner, the world
leaks to the train station
and people walking in and out
slipping away or slipping in
with all their strange dust
and tiredness and excitement.

there is no holding the world
in any one place.

if you are tired of yourself,
maybe you can take a trip
to someone else?

***

there are mountains with boulders in the near distance.
and before those are small apartment buildings.
life goes on in those tiny apartment windows,
like bees shuffling about in hives.
do those busy honey people ever stare out their windows
with their skinny compound eyes
squinting back at me?

would they see me, or i them?

or are we really blind
in a vast cave
screaming to avoid each other
and stay alone?

***

there will be times when i return to the trackless moments
i will seek a toehold in memories
but only find these souvenirs,
the clip of vines,
used cigarette butts,
patterns of sidewalks,
a mosaic image over frontal nudity,
the magnetic pull of metal tracks,
a distant woman pausing.

your eyes cannot rest anywhere.

bead girl

my wife told me a story about when she was a preschooler. "i remember that i wanted a pair of slippers. it was orange and it had all of these colorful beads on the part that went over the toes. i begged my parents so much that they eventually got it for me."

"on the first day i wore it to preschool, i was so proud of it. then, this friend of mine asked if she could take one of the beads from the slipper strap. i said yes, and removed the colorful bead for her to take. but then, her friend wanted a bead, and then the friend of the friend, and so on, until everyone in my preschool class wanted a bead."

"i remember feeling scared, but i wanted to make everyone happy. so i ended up giving away all the beads from my brand new slippers."

"when my parents picked me up, they asked me, 'what happened to all of the beads?' i was really scared, especially since they had gotten those slippers just for me. but i told them the truth, about how everyone had wanted a bead, so i had given everyone a bead. my parents didn't say anything about it after that. they didn't scold me or praise me."

"it was so weird."

and i remembered why i loved my wife so much... how she was so generous and giving. sure, some might see a touch of peer-pressure in her story, but i'd seen enough of her to know better. my wife is brave in giving, and she's intelligent in giving. she is "thoughtful" in the truest sense.

i felt moved to hold her then. "i have all the beads now," i murmured, "and the girl who gave them besides."

bumper car boy

little bumper car boy
keep roving round
i love the sound
of your laughter.

sometime after,
sometime after,
i may not hear it quite so often
or so free.

little bumper car boy
hit the world
and hit the road
don't brake or get old.

sometime after,
sometime after,
that rubber round your bumpers
like my embrace
won't hold you back.

little bumper car boy
pay no mind to sparks above
it's just a father's love
before he lets you go.

sometime after,
sometime after.

words are running slow. the mind is like a web of dreams that has grown slack. nothing catches. nothing accumulates into anything meaningful. i sit with fingers on the keys, waiting. the light from the unwatched television flashes with each scene change, shifting the shadows, making this dead scene seem alive. alive.

...

there are moments burned into the heart like a strobe light flash on a retina, or the form of a child in a hiroshima blast. they are meaningless. trapped, frozen in time, isolated from either progression into the present, or a tracing back towards a beginning. isthmuses, plateaus, rising out of the mists...

envoy and protector

the envoy walks the walls around the secret room of the emperor. he watches with dim eyes the blank and empty horizon beyond the forbidden city. aside from the comings and goings of the sun, the celestial repetition of the emperor himself, there is nothing new to see, and nothing to report.

nevertheless, the emperor must be entertained.

so, every evening, as the western sun casts red shadows across the ramparts, the envoy crawls, humble, to the screen separating his lowliness from the emperor, and in a voice bordering the audacity of speaking to a god, he tells a story.

there are laws against lying to the emperor, heaven on earth, but then again, the envoy has a duty to speak of the world to his charge, and maintain his spirits, that the heart beating within him remain constant, and the world continue its ceaseless turning.

and so, the envoy, his eyes blurring with the recounting and predicting, allows his tongue to wander, weaving tales from snatches of tapestried tales he had heard once, or never before, into a patchwork that he hopes will hold long enough to entertain the axis of the world...

such is his duty.

perhaps it is his failings as a storyteller, but the envoy has never heard the emperor laugh, nor cry, nor speak a single word. there is only a faint rustling breath.

and so, the envoy has never lit the signal fires, nor flown the flags. he has never sent a message out of the forbidden city to let the world know that the emperor is happy, and all may celebrate; or that the emperor was angry, and the war makers should gather and beat their shields; or that the emperor was sad, and the world should wear a funeral shroud. the world beyond the forbidden city operated as though without its heart, its center, its lord...

cold

in the coldest nights of that winter, curled up and huddled beneath a futon on smooth tatami, the dreams and recriminations would gnaw at my innards like hungry desperate rats.

sometimes i would wake up and know, viscerally know, that i was dying. the feeling revealed to me in dreams, that anxious clawing away, that was the truth.

i would lie in the darkness, my breath coming and going in whimpers, watching the shadows take on real forms, waiting.

everything would always settle, like a fresh mantle of snow, like the thick warm futon upon me. everything would pretend that the world was alright, that all would somehow roll over into tomorrow, for another shot at the scant warmth of a winter sun. and yes, i too would eventually feel those desperate dreams settle and die for a time, slowed and freezing like small clots on my skin.

...

there would be a cat that would at times visit me in my small room. sometimes on the coldest nights, i would hear a faint scratching sound at my window. a more superstitious soul might have felt unsettled at the sound, but at the time, i was more curious than anything else. i would, without hesitation, open the window to the blizzard outside. and in would pop the cat, whose name i would learn was debu, without so much as an excuse me or thank you.

i had bought a "cake-log" (one of those rolled up sugar cakes that looked like a log of wood) to send to some tenuous interest of mine, some girl in kyoto that i'd met briefly. thinking frankly of my chances with that girl, and pressured by the presence of my current guest, i would tear open the carefully wrapped package, open the box, and cut a sliver of the sugary log to offer to debu. debu would take a small swiping lick at my offering, glance up at me as though i were kidding, and then take a bite. a tiny nibble.

debu wouldn't eat much more of the cake, and i'd wonder (with mild regret) whether it was worth it to destroy my "gift of faint hopes" to share with her. she would gingerly walk over to a corner and lick the snow and wet off of her shiny black fur, not even looking my way. and then, as though bored by my company, she would go to the window again, look at me ("come on, you dimwit!"), and i would get up like some doorman caught off guard, open the window, and let her out into the storm...

***

dying is a secret thing. but then again, so is living.

***

there is a room on the second floor of the temple, a vast auditorium filled with metal lockers. within each locker is an altar dedicated to some loved ancestor, complete with a picture, and (for those with current and conscientious ties to the living) offerings of flowers and snacks. one day, it was my job to go through the altars to remove all of the offerings. after all, if we'd have left them there forever, things would stink up pretty bad, and we'd have an infestation of roaches and (gasp) rats.

so i would walk through that vast and ghostly room, opening individual lockers in the echoing silence, and putting all the flowers and snacks into a large garbage bag. sometimes, the snacks were barely recognizable, there was so much mold and decay on them. at other times, i felt tempted to eat something myself, the snack so fresh.

there's a lot of time to think in such a large room, and i would get to reflecting about how all of those pretty offerings were like the living, or the sentiments of the living, and how i was like some shabbily dressed reaper. i was taking lives, some long due for removal, and others - alas, what a waste - taken away before they could fulfill the sweet promise of their existence. the process was cold, unthinking- but it had to be done...

***

i must go on dying and living... sometimes, as in shawshank redemption, this dying living thing is articulated as a choice... at other times, it is something that we cling to thoughtlessly, because we have no choice... scrabbling with fingernails to this earth, swimming through a sea of darkness, praying that land or a sun will roll over the horizon...