the rest of my life�



today i woke up relatively warm. i brushed three comforters, two blankets and a sheet to the floor, turned off my space heater and opened my bedroom door and was slapped across the face by the architecture of japan. as my skin rippled with bumps i ran downstairs to make coffee and jump in the shower. as i was heading to the door it happened. i�d feared it for awhile, but this morning my fears came to their ultimate fruition; their unfortunately wont, expected, no surprise at all - and seriously, what the fuck? - fruition: i stood in my home, the place where i try to carry on what i call a normal life, and watched as wisps of steam escaped my warm body into the sub-zero temperatures. it was a visual devastation.


as i drove to the bus stop (oxymoron? yes. time to explain, or vent rather? no) through the first swirls of snow i�ve seen in japan, i watched a man clad in winter hat, parka, and snow pants cross the road up ahead. i didn�t think much of it until he pulled down his pants and began to urinate. oddly enough, the first question that raced through my mind was why this man was peeing into the wind. only later did i try to comprehend why at 9 in the morning this grown man (not yet to the age of indifference or obliviousness) decided to pull down his pants in the driving snow and expose himself to me and the driver behind me.


the strange juxtaposition between the slate gray ocean and multi-colored sky caught my attention as i approached oi-cho. somewhere beyond the erratic snow and seemingly contemptuous ocean, a world of light blues, grays and whites danced and turned in the sun. a sallow curtain of clouds dominated the horizon managing to suppress the angry sea. i was certain the water�s hatred for shore had arisen from a jealous and fearful abhorrence of the sky�s immensity. how i dreamed of taking a row boat due west to be lost in that beautiful maelstrom.


obligatory greetings here, habitual responses there. i floated through the offices and classrooms as a spectator in someone else�s life. i watched children in shorts and short sleeves shiver and sneeze as they stepped through ever-open doors to the 2 inches of snow that continued to accumulate outside. i saw new ideas squandered by recalcitrance; status quo; obligatory greetings here, habitual responses there.


the sun peeked through perforations in the dense bamboo. these turned to evergreens as we let out on the north-face of the mountain, and back to bamboo again. the western sky remained a tumult of purple, but everywhere else dissension amongst the clouds. small cumulous puffs with delusions of anvils floated here and there like wide turrets. their bottoms showed ambitious anger in blue and gray, but their skyward rainbows betrayed all sense of ferocity. the bus wound around and around the hills and i couldn�t read my book; i wanted to know what would happened next.


do you like today�s yourself? i�d like to think so, but sometimes i just don�t know�