I am in kyoto and slow kyoto snow is wisping through the air, clinging to necks and napes. I am watching people walking through the wind, heads bent to the fray, I am here and this is happening. sushi passes by in front of me on a conveyor belt. I open the glossy glass window and pick out a few pieces and I am drinking superdry beer and I am eating miso soup. fishscale. there is a fishscale on the end of my bright tongue, shining like a fingernail, and I spit it out and it lands soundlessly in front of me. this is near the train station. umbrellas bob around outside like a goddamn dance and the beer is knocking against my brain and I see the waiter and I wave my hand. check, please.
on the train to nara. the only available seat is next to two graduate students, facing eachother, british boy and bright-mouthed american girl. 'and in some countries the boy will be blue and the girl will be pink? but in other places, that is different,' the guy says, grinning in dashing debonair. the girl laughs. for some reason.
'oh I know!' she exclaims. 'like, in germany, you always look for the pink phones. always. but it's different elsewhere.'
'so there's this international travelers language, and I was talking to my professor about it, and this place is so interesting because the language of travel here is completely different,' he says.
girl says: 'I'm thinking about getting my masters in something to do with museums, you know, 'cause it's so interesting? so I take it you travel a lot?'
'this is my ninth country,' he says proudly. this is my twenty-fourth country, but I say nothing. I listen to my bloody valentine and I watch them soundlessly coo at one another, her joyous mouth flapping, and they make me want to weep. I move to another seat and fall asleep.
in nara I rent a bicycle and pound my way uphill, to nara park. I feed biscuits to the shaggy deer that hoof their way around the ancient stones and mossy trees. I drink a bottle of sake and I get on my bike and I surge downhill, wind whipping at my ears, exhilarated. I am exhilarated. alcohol is my nearest, dearest friend.
I am on a subway in osaka. the unchoreographed dance of the subway sway, as people tilt and turn, a few steps that way, and back. everyone is text messaging on their streamlined cells, and I can't read the characters. 'OOOO-saka desu!' the voice overhead screeches. conductor? god? I watch a woman a few seats away pull her husband's shoulder down so that she can kiss him on the cheek. in a land where no one touches anybody, this is the sweetest thing I have ever seen. I turn away. let them have their moment.
I am lonely and I am crying. sights swirl by. fish markets, temples, shrines, stores. these images weigh on my mind, build up, weigh three million pounds. crush me. no one to share this with, this painful beauty, this agonizing realness. day by day. trapped in my five-sense prison, I look outwards, into the brown bright eyes of others, I try to connect. but my eyes are blue... here. people politely look away. I am on the subway and people grapple and grasp for hand-handles. I take a baseball cap off of the head of a man in front of me and I put it on my head. he does not turn around. put that hat back.
with their winged, roughed roofs, I see them...
believe in me. like destiny's child, I'm a survivor.
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