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Everything here is decided; where to go, what to do.
Tokyo is too convenient, we don't need to think too much, just follow the signs, follow the people.
Every morning I take the same train.
If I take the same train everyday, I see the same people.
東京に住む魅力とともに、私たちは東京から離れたいという欲求があるのはどうしてでしょう。
ここでは全ての事が決められている、どこに行くべきか、何をするべきか。
東京は便利過ぎて、私達はあまり考える必要がない。
ただ表示に従って、人々についていけばいい。
毎朝、私は同じ電車に乗る。
毎日同じ電車に乗れば、同じ人たちにいつも会う。
endless, unwaivering straights
salt-laden, the world passed by.
we learnt to wait
to watch it all flow
fleeting monuments
where the houses receded
and the ocean came through
where the forest took the sky
nor here nor there.
but once there, we knew
the roll of the loose tawny pebbles
the evening amber upon peppermint leaves
the crunch of the summer lawn.
for all we shared, I return
beyond absence and silence
sensations awakened.
私達は運転していた
永遠に続く、真っ直ぐな道を
海岸の景色が動いていく。
私達は待つように学んだ
それらが流れて行く様を眺めるように
儚いモニュメント
家々が遠のいていき
海が近づいてくる
森が空をとらえるところ
ここでも、あそこでもない。
でもそこに着いた時、思い出した
ころころ転がる黄褐色の小石
夕焼け色に染まるペパーミントの葉
夏の芝生のザクザクいう音。
また帰るのは、多くを分かち合ったから
欠落や静けさをも越えてでも
感覚が戻ってくる。
Under the flicker of the soft, pre-dawn light we would load film into our cameras, and with the departure from the suburbs, watch our week fade off into lumpy grey-green pastures. Occasionally the train would pass through a lightly wooded area, where the land peeled away from us in steep rises lined with trees so slender limbed that even from such a distance, their sways and shudders could be felt.
From the station, frozen in timber beams, corrugated steel and dusty auburn bricks, we would pedal out through the underpass, through the hooded teenagers waiting for the hourly train to the city. We would search out the bakery, solace so early on another cold, windy morning.
A pair of black coffees.
A schnitzel sandwich with tomato sauce, toasted.
A pastie of potato, onion and peas.
The tables lined with tales of weekend football games and glossy images of last year's electronics.
The main street only ever went one way, so we would just ride off silently, past the shuttered shops and not long after, the trail of sleeping trucks, curtains pulled.
Beyond.
Beyond the confined, the closed, we traversed bumpy roads and trails winding through sparse forests, the softest green bundles of growth only just emerging after the summer firestorms. Dropping our bikes by the road side, we wandered deeper to find river beds filled with a thousand chemistry bottles, and paddocks with lonely ponies cantering back and forth, as they had seemingly done for eternity.
There were never any feelings of mediocrity, every experience, every length we travelled, every breath we took, was smothering in it's freshness. Under the most perfect pure grey sky, we were awakened to the country.
amongst shards of morning light
folded into the warm canopy.
This evening, I delay my ritualistic meandering, and roll to a halt by the road's narrow edge, folding forward onto my worn, partially rusted grey bicycle basket. Gradually, my gaze softens until the garish petals, the metal lattice and all that confines the lot, bleed together and I see only beyond, to a large cluster at the centre of the lot, breathing calmly in solidarity.
In the past, this lot had been the stage for a proud building, upright and geometric; warm and forthcoming; buffered from an articulately constructed garden. Vacated now for some time, it had since become the foundation, the figure, towards which all within the lot had seemingly been drawn towards. As though, in the wake of abandonment, and subsequent confinement; the lust for connectivity, for contact; and for assimilation had manifested to a point where the building existed as part of a collective form; having gradually absorbed, and been absorbed into, nature.
Within the erratic visual form, lay glimpses of the familiar. Beneath fallen trees, punctured silhouettes of walls (of rice husks and packed mud) yield creases and folds within which foliage, layered by time, has accumulated. Shards of slender branches jut outwards, wrapped in groping vines in varied shades of emerald. Trunks contort and twist, spiralling out of the ground only to re-enter and fizzle. Together, the most beautiful collective mass of constructed and natural forms, growing collectively.
For all the abandon, and withdrawal that the stiff fence speaks so loudly, the lot exuded a calm sense of life. I doubt not that in September, the air heavy with the dust of ten thousand cut rice stalks, that the dragonflies, brutally golden in the evening light, would have drifted in from the fields; hovering about and over the grasping foliage and shaded furrows. Nor that within the enclaves and floral cocoons that hover beneath the rolling green ceiling, a myriad of animals roam freely.
Now, as the sky licks the horizon's edge with auburn and ochre, I move off, contemplating the grandiosity I have been witness to. The brisk evening air drapes down upon me as I push up the longest, softest of rises, alongside vacant stoops and entranceways, framed by equally dark windows and walls. It is the same emptiness that is slowly shrouding this village, and innumerable others throughout the country. With the turn of time, as those who linger fade away, what will define the subsequent existence here in the country; will nature reclaim what we have constructed amongst it; or will it restrained, to look over the cold, silent homes that once were.
Earlier, standing in the kitchen waiting for my natou to warm, the linoleum slowly rumbled to life, and as the curtains gently swayed the fridge and shelves began to rattle more rhythmically. Then, in but a brisk moment, below a tilting and contorting room, the floor bounced towards an energetic crescendo. Outside, the power lines move in a pendular motion and within the sky that had darkened so fast, the reverberation of helicopter blades could be heard.
During my earliest summer-time weekends, I would ride waves on foam boards at the beach down from our house. Our tiny legs bearing no strength, we would wait for the waves to suck up behind us on the shallow bank. In a rapid motion we were lifted up and thrown towards the nearby shore. After long days floating amongst the ocean, it's movements became a part of me, such that laying on my bed at night, I could still feel the waves shifting about me, intermittently pulling and pushing at my body.
Although my room still shakes softly, the heart of the earthquake lay hundreds of kilometres away. As a tsunami sweeps through Miyagi-ken, and north-eastern Honshu, I wonder how the silhouette of nature's motion, as my young self experienced briefly, will linger within the local people's bodies, and hearts.
(Published on Crikey)
(Published on Crikey)
Through open doors,
I pedal slowly.
The roof rattles.
Maps with numbers.
On the ground,
on the tin roof.
I hear water.
Protons and electrons.
Families on mats,
others walk upstairs.
Boys in tiny suits.
Cascading news.
Peering at phones,
some call friends.
The gutters run.
The sky's reflection.
Spinning windmills,
sweets and tea.
Real rain.
Lanterns held by string.
Blossoms give shade,
did you feel it?
Gentle swaying.