Perhaps heat is not the antithesis of cold but rather its antagonist. Imagine, if you will, life as an element -- a brazen force of nature that emerges from an existence unknown to even itself. Alternating its state as a less-than-sentient-being with a powerful, driving extremity that precisely, almost diligently slaughters all in its path like a laser run amok. Heat and cold, light and dark, wind and snow: all arbiters of our own daily temperments. We enter into their extremes not against our will but rather against our better judgement. A sane person would do everything in his power to exist in a realm where conflict is minimized. Instead, we step out into that darker world only to hurtle down jagged slopes with hunks of wood strapped to our legs. We swim into filthy water to rise above it on equally fragile chunks of timber. Nothing stops us from pursuing our own entry point into ego and the bottomless desires of our rather bland consciousness, where 'fun' and 'folly' coexist as equal partners in our endless quest for the novel that is new without being disturbing. Is it any wonder that I wonder about nature's fiercest forces doing battle with each other while we frolic amidst their raging skirmishes, as if the elements themselves were mere obstructions to our own eventual, inevitable, entitlement?
Put another way: the rain looking at an umbrella. Would the rain, if consciousness were contained within the DNA of each and every drop, tremble in senseless fear at such a device, or would its individual droplets of laughter reach such a hysterical level of uncontrollable mirth that the collective sound of a billion raindrops laughing in unison shake our sense of nature itself? Think of it! A storm execretes its forceful, prideful burst of water. We attach a flimsy barricade supported by metal (or plastic! ) as a kind of cone which will keep us dry so as not to stain or soil our precious leggings. The same rain that falls on the top of Mount Everest and eventually sinks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where it floats around inside of sunken ships where wartime skeletons lay so still, also must bounce off of the top of a Japanese schoolgirl as she rushes to meet her friends at McDonald's. Can we blame rain and wind, air and snow for getting bored with the frivolity of our lives! Even the elements need some lusty sexual thrust to their existence on this earth.
Which I is why I see such natural, ostensibly benign forces turning against each other -- heat resenting cold, snow sneering at sleet. Each imagining the other to be weaker in texture and frailer in tone. One can glimpse daily battles in the sky, the ground, the ocean, the field. Where apples fallen from trees have not fallen, but been pushed. (Bland brown bark fiercely jealous of the shiny red that glows so bright.)
I fear that a certain apocalypse is arriving on a daily basis. (Or perhaps it has been here since the first ray of sun angrily forced its way through the most stubborn of clouds?) One that humans, in all our useless egos, will not even suspect, let alone detect. We watch the night ram the sun into submission and think: Of course -- such is the way of life. Fall sucking summer's sweet nectar dry makes us mourn our own lost weekends, but what of summer itself? Who mourns for its complete eradication? When the wind whistles at my window tonight, I will wonder if it is taunting or pleading.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
MUSES
Even nature has its muses. The weed looks up to the flower. The flower admires the tree. The tree, with all its many-branched attempts at pseudo-superiority, secretly feels inferior when glimpsing the occasional plane soaring past what had once been thought of as its own private, ultimate height. (The tree is not aware that the plane exists separate and above from nature's plan. Faced with such knowledge, confronted by that metallic evidence, who could guess if an oak would topple with the unfair indignity of it all?) Even the sky sometimes seems to want something more. Can it spot outer space a world away? The creativity of the cosmos finds itself at work in the ego of the plant and the dirt, the grass and the twig. One supports the other like a teammate who covertly desires the better player's place on the team. Secretly one suspects that the strange, melodic hissing one sometimes hears in the country at night, spreadout and sourceless, is actually an accumulation of nature's envy, each blade of grass and drop of water diligently moaning against the burden they equally share in each other's growth.
Monday, July 19, 2010
MYSELF, MIRRORED DIM
When I was in high school I wrote a story about a shadow that steps away from its host and forms a life of its own. An entity that created havoc in the lives of all who dared cross its murky, ephemeral path. Much carnage ensued. Perhaps. The details are vague, and, dare I say it, shadowy in my mind. Adolescence itself often becomes a shadow from our past that cloaks itself under the black weight of its own dimness. What matters is that the shadow was evil, as shadows are often assumed to be, much the same way that a snake is a source of slithery dread, no matter how indifferent it may actually be to our nervous human lives.
Yesterday in the dazzling sunshine of a Japanese afternoon I spotted a shadow on the street, silently, blatantly stalking me, reminding me of that tale written long ago. Suddenly things became halfway clear in my memory, the way that a car at night is lit -- but dimly -- when one opens the door and sits near the wheel. I remembered my fourteen year old self walking down the long street that led to my house, the night dark and moon-free, passing under streetlamps,
seeing my shadow brilliantly lit against the night. Such a spooky sight! Thinking of it now, decades later, a country away, in daylight in place of night, only added to the eerie distance that lengthens our lives.
I suddenly felt oddly at peace with that shadow. After all, it had kept me close and held me tight for years on end, when much else had fallen aside in the inevitable refuse of time. Day or night, it slinked by my side. What could be ominous about such a loyal, cordial companion? Had its mere darkness given rise to the bigot lying at the base of my soul? It was but myself, mirrored dim. Faceless, featureless, a sideways-thin cutout that never bled solid. A benign reflection of what I always was.
But I felt my fourteen year old self's thoughts clattering around the container of my skull. Such a shadow was not to be trusted. Darkness visible led to darkness tangible. The black without mirrors the black within. There is a reason why we fear that which we cannot touch. Run!
Picking up my pace, I almost believed it could be left all behind. I could outrun my shadow, leave it gasping and panting on the sizzling grey pavement. Slice it in pieces by my quick narrow strides. What was key was what was impossible: to not check for its presence. By tilting my head and moving my eye, I was affirming its existence, and we all suck on the teat of affirmation, shadows included. As soon as it spotted my eye looking left, its force would increase with confidence and glee. I had to stare straight ahead and hope it would fall. By the time I reached my small place and shut tight the door, took off my shoes and wiped down my brow, the shadow was gone. Artificial illumination left nothing but a bulb's blatant glare, yellow and welcoming. I knew that if I stepped outside even then, the shadow might be waiting, but I was sure I'd left it to die on the street like a dog. I opened the door, a little, a squidge, to quickly glance at what might be left. I shut it before seeing anything. Some things are risks not meant to be broached. Soon night would be here and the shadow would have less places to rise.
A handful of streetlamps line the road near my home, but I would not walk under them that warm summer night. Shadows know where we walk, and prey where we move. If I was inside, and still, the shadow would fail. My high school self was right. Shadows are not to be trusted. Tomorrow I would have to leave the apartment once again, but if it rained through the night the clouds might still serve as the sun's moving buffer. Outwitting the shadows is a game I can play.
Yesterday in the dazzling sunshine of a Japanese afternoon I spotted a shadow on the street, silently, blatantly stalking me, reminding me of that tale written long ago. Suddenly things became halfway clear in my memory, the way that a car at night is lit -- but dimly -- when one opens the door and sits near the wheel. I remembered my fourteen year old self walking down the long street that led to my house, the night dark and moon-free, passing under streetlamps,
seeing my shadow brilliantly lit against the night. Such a spooky sight! Thinking of it now, decades later, a country away, in daylight in place of night, only added to the eerie distance that lengthens our lives.
I suddenly felt oddly at peace with that shadow. After all, it had kept me close and held me tight for years on end, when much else had fallen aside in the inevitable refuse of time. Day or night, it slinked by my side. What could be ominous about such a loyal, cordial companion? Had its mere darkness given rise to the bigot lying at the base of my soul? It was but myself, mirrored dim. Faceless, featureless, a sideways-thin cutout that never bled solid. A benign reflection of what I always was.
But I felt my fourteen year old self's thoughts clattering around the container of my skull. Such a shadow was not to be trusted. Darkness visible led to darkness tangible. The black without mirrors the black within. There is a reason why we fear that which we cannot touch. Run!
Picking up my pace, I almost believed it could be left all behind. I could outrun my shadow, leave it gasping and panting on the sizzling grey pavement. Slice it in pieces by my quick narrow strides. What was key was what was impossible: to not check for its presence. By tilting my head and moving my eye, I was affirming its existence, and we all suck on the teat of affirmation, shadows included. As soon as it spotted my eye looking left, its force would increase with confidence and glee. I had to stare straight ahead and hope it would fall. By the time I reached my small place and shut tight the door, took off my shoes and wiped down my brow, the shadow was gone. Artificial illumination left nothing but a bulb's blatant glare, yellow and welcoming. I knew that if I stepped outside even then, the shadow might be waiting, but I was sure I'd left it to die on the street like a dog. I opened the door, a little, a squidge, to quickly glance at what might be left. I shut it before seeing anything. Some things are risks not meant to be broached. Soon night would be here and the shadow would have less places to rise.
A handful of streetlamps line the road near my home, but I would not walk under them that warm summer night. Shadows know where we walk, and prey where we move. If I was inside, and still, the shadow would fail. My high school self was right. Shadows are not to be trusted. Tomorrow I would have to leave the apartment once again, but if it rained through the night the clouds might still serve as the sun's moving buffer. Outwitting the shadows is a game I can play.
Friday, July 16, 2010
OBSESSED BY IT ALL
Imagine a man obsessed by collecting it all. 'All' being everything. 'Everything' being the sum of everything that has yet to be subtracted from the earth. He would wander the deserts to be found all over the globe, putting tiny golden grains in jars made of glass. Enough deserts to dry one's soul and make millions of mirages your endless true friend.
Once the deserts were emptied and the land made but barren, he could turn to oceans and rivers, seas and lakes, ponds and streams and the water from faucets. There is a limit to everything, he believed, and if he was patient enough, such beliefs would prove true. Once all of the water was put in tiny plastic bags, dwarf-size in heft, he would stand under the heavens and wait for the rain. Eventually even clouds got tired of unleashing their spew. He would outwait the weather until the weather gave in.
Pennies and peacocks, aspirin and insects, malted chocolates and craven husks of corn all twisted in shape. These, too, he would put away. Eventually, there would be nothing left but his body himself. He would turn inward. Attack the cancer that ravaged his soul. Stop those cells from dividing. Destroy them at their desperate true source.
And when the cancer was gone, he would wait for its return, its comeback, its ascent from oblivion into where it once went. Peeking into all its familiar haunts like an exile come home, he would nab those dark cells with the force of his will.
Deep inside of himself he feared this would fail. Everything physical could finally be held, but cancer itself seemed devious and sly. A shape-shifter whose intent matched its cunning black skill, ephemeral in scope, limitless in style.
Once the land was all empty and the oceans all dry, he knew the limits of failure would render him still. Immobile. Almost paralyzed. For failure was what the disease would bring forth, a tangible spring from which all else sprung high. He would have to put his physical tools to the side to begin, focusing only on the psychic descent which would let him take hold. If he could dwell in those spots where cancer was born, allow himself a comfort that others would flee, perhaps he could dig up what noone yet dared. The one single cell from which all cancers split. In a jar in his room or a room in his mind, in which all could come see, to mock and to jeer.
Once the deserts were emptied and the land made but barren, he could turn to oceans and rivers, seas and lakes, ponds and streams and the water from faucets. There is a limit to everything, he believed, and if he was patient enough, such beliefs would prove true. Once all of the water was put in tiny plastic bags, dwarf-size in heft, he would stand under the heavens and wait for the rain. Eventually even clouds got tired of unleashing their spew. He would outwait the weather until the weather gave in.
Pennies and peacocks, aspirin and insects, malted chocolates and craven husks of corn all twisted in shape. These, too, he would put away. Eventually, there would be nothing left but his body himself. He would turn inward. Attack the cancer that ravaged his soul. Stop those cells from dividing. Destroy them at their desperate true source.
And when the cancer was gone, he would wait for its return, its comeback, its ascent from oblivion into where it once went. Peeking into all its familiar haunts like an exile come home, he would nab those dark cells with the force of his will.
Deep inside of himself he feared this would fail. Everything physical could finally be held, but cancer itself seemed devious and sly. A shape-shifter whose intent matched its cunning black skill, ephemeral in scope, limitless in style.
Once the land was all empty and the oceans all dry, he knew the limits of failure would render him still. Immobile. Almost paralyzed. For failure was what the disease would bring forth, a tangible spring from which all else sprung high. He would have to put his physical tools to the side to begin, focusing only on the psychic descent which would let him take hold. If he could dwell in those spots where cancer was born, allow himself a comfort that others would flee, perhaps he could dig up what noone yet dared. The one single cell from which all cancers split. In a jar in his room or a room in his mind, in which all could come see, to mock and to jeer.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
ON THIS STAR AND OTHERS
A pink the pink of a girl's summer dress unfolded itself across the sky just before five, and I couldn't help but wonder if otherworldly beings in alien civiliations look at their own morning skies and think similar thoughts. One would hope that not all extraterrestials are slimy, slithery green monsters intent on the destruction of all races absent their own; if other worlds have life (as I suspect they must), then such lives must reach for emotional heights as high ourselves, no?
Unless, of course, their intelligence has yet to reach our intimidating levels of insight and comprehension, which a scan of the evening news programs will tell you is neither a level nor low, but a little of both -- random facts spewed by pretty people whose content we grasp but whose meaning is unclear, swayed by whichever advertisers are aiming at the particular demographic that this network covets so fiercely, like a perpetually greedy child on an endless Christmas morn. Aliens beyond the edges of our own universe may still be slinking themselves out of the ocean and onto the beach; they may be bacteria splitting into other, uglier cells. Not even being able to dream of the day when they, too, can dress up so well to sell stuff so bland.
Easy to imagine the opposite -- that their souls have grown past the point at which ours have plateaued. Scienticially, they may have already solved the problems that vex us still; spiritually, they may have found their own spirits alive and intact, or determined forever that no soul exists.
Or perhaps they are more like us than we would like to consider. Something in between a crayfish and a celestial angel. A being that lies on the beach and stares up at the stars. One that wonders if anyone else is out there, up above, and, if they are, if that should change what they do down there, on their own daily tread.
Imagining the daily, domestic life of alien reverts the mind into sci-fi cliches -- ray guns and warp speeds, flying saucers and squeaky voices. Attempting to enter their inner lives takes an imaginative leap of logic and faith that is equal to the endeavour one would have to do to fully understand your neighbour next door. (Almost impossible!)
Should the day come when our ritualized,televised morning awakens us to the flat, high-definition sight of an alien aircraft landing in Washington, much will be made of missle defense and ploys being planned. What do they want? Why are they here? All legitimate, even essential questions. I will think different thoughts, remembering the sky from this morning, its pinkness so bright. I would wonder if similar thoughts are common to all, on this star and others.
Unless, of course, their intelligence has yet to reach our intimidating levels of insight and comprehension, which a scan of the evening news programs will tell you is neither a level nor low, but a little of both -- random facts spewed by pretty people whose content we grasp but whose meaning is unclear, swayed by whichever advertisers are aiming at the particular demographic that this network covets so fiercely, like a perpetually greedy child on an endless Christmas morn. Aliens beyond the edges of our own universe may still be slinking themselves out of the ocean and onto the beach; they may be bacteria splitting into other, uglier cells. Not even being able to dream of the day when they, too, can dress up so well to sell stuff so bland.
Easy to imagine the opposite -- that their souls have grown past the point at which ours have plateaued. Scienticially, they may have already solved the problems that vex us still; spiritually, they may have found their own spirits alive and intact, or determined forever that no soul exists.
Or perhaps they are more like us than we would like to consider. Something in between a crayfish and a celestial angel. A being that lies on the beach and stares up at the stars. One that wonders if anyone else is out there, up above, and, if they are, if that should change what they do down there, on their own daily tread.
Imagining the daily, domestic life of alien reverts the mind into sci-fi cliches -- ray guns and warp speeds, flying saucers and squeaky voices. Attempting to enter their inner lives takes an imaginative leap of logic and faith that is equal to the endeavour one would have to do to fully understand your neighbour next door. (Almost impossible!)
Should the day come when our ritualized,televised morning awakens us to the flat, high-definition sight of an alien aircraft landing in Washington, much will be made of missle defense and ploys being planned. What do they want? Why are they here? All legitimate, even essential questions. I will think different thoughts, remembering the sky from this morning, its pinkness so bright. I would wonder if similar thoughts are common to all, on this star and others.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
THE SEA AND THE PLAINS
Into our room the two of them enter, the young one and the old one both babbling away, our past and our future united as one. At first one blames the room's poor acoustics for what little is heard -- low, muffled, indistinct tones, like notes on a piano that's slowly being tuned. Gradually comes a strange sort of relief when it is clear that neither the room nor, more importantly, oneself are at fault for this lack of comprehension. The others themselves are speaking much nonsense. (Oh, how good it feels to blame someone else!)
The boy is not more than two, if even that, and his words are a motley mixture of the real and the fantastical, one syllable guffaws giving way to extended monologues only he seems to get. (And how he so clearly enjoys revelling in his own private realm. His laughs and his giggles splitting his own tiny words into two, three, even four separate parts, so that what finally emerges is a nonsensical stream of spittle and sounds.
His much elder comrade in nonsense fares not so much better. The child's high-pitched patter is substituted by the elderly man's guttural grunts, but the pitch is the same, and the pace is as quick. It is as if the old man is eager to get it all out, clarity be damned. He, too, has bubbles of spit playing games on his mouth. There is a melancholy undertone to this sloppy style. Surely he must know that what he says is not being heard; his eyes' vacant gaze suggests a deep inner wound. A long life of dialogue replaced by a monologue -- is that wound enough?
The boy doesn't mind. Something within his young sensitive mind unconsciously goads him to keep spouting forth blab, for good or for ill, at that age who cares? Eventually, all will laugh at his witty few words. Months and years of conversation await, and soon all will know what you say and you mean.
From my privileged vantage point at the side of the room, looking at the old man, I glimpse no similar voice whispering in his tired mind. While the boy is thinking thoughts that have yet to take root, the man's firm foundations of belief and intent have already been uprooted. (Time will do that, no?) He is scrambling for words that have long passed away. What's left are mere fragments that can't mesh as one. While the boy is continually adding, something, everything, is being subtracted from the man's aging soul. He would think this a tragedy if he were aware of its indifferent intent, but his mind is a mold of the sea and the plain. Raging waters are replaced by the quietest, widest flatland, like the prairies he once drove through while heading out west. Words can't help but drown in that water and get lost in those fields.
Still. In this spare room, amidst such unlikely companions, can another, larger force be detected? For words are but hints of what hearts truly want. Perhaps this underlying desire desire for communion can tell us what sloppy speech obscures.
Let me out! the boy shouts.
Let me in! the old man pleads.
A primal, potent need to be heard by both that must come from somewhere near.
Let us leave this room quietly, while they're still chatting freely. I'm sure they will part, and only one will remain. (I won't dare say who, but I'm sure you can guess.) We'll shut the door softly, and tiptoe away. Soon that young boy will start to make sense, and most of that innocent infant charm will be gone. Before long that old man will stop speaking for good. The words will have faded forever.
Perhaps some cosmic exchange is at work. The young feed the old with their knowledge and letters. In return, what is given so freely must now pay its price. A psychic system of bartering that makes humans flow. Energy exchanged never dies; it merely changes form. One withers while the other grows tall.
If we walk down the hall at a slow steady pace, we might just hear an electric undercurrent beneath their strange words, the strike of a spark that spreads a fire both will set.
The boy is not more than two, if even that, and his words are a motley mixture of the real and the fantastical, one syllable guffaws giving way to extended monologues only he seems to get. (And how he so clearly enjoys revelling in his own private realm. His laughs and his giggles splitting his own tiny words into two, three, even four separate parts, so that what finally emerges is a nonsensical stream of spittle and sounds.
His much elder comrade in nonsense fares not so much better. The child's high-pitched patter is substituted by the elderly man's guttural grunts, but the pitch is the same, and the pace is as quick. It is as if the old man is eager to get it all out, clarity be damned. He, too, has bubbles of spit playing games on his mouth. There is a melancholy undertone to this sloppy style. Surely he must know that what he says is not being heard; his eyes' vacant gaze suggests a deep inner wound. A long life of dialogue replaced by a monologue -- is that wound enough?
The boy doesn't mind. Something within his young sensitive mind unconsciously goads him to keep spouting forth blab, for good or for ill, at that age who cares? Eventually, all will laugh at his witty few words. Months and years of conversation await, and soon all will know what you say and you mean.
From my privileged vantage point at the side of the room, looking at the old man, I glimpse no similar voice whispering in his tired mind. While the boy is thinking thoughts that have yet to take root, the man's firm foundations of belief and intent have already been uprooted. (Time will do that, no?) He is scrambling for words that have long passed away. What's left are mere fragments that can't mesh as one. While the boy is continually adding, something, everything, is being subtracted from the man's aging soul. He would think this a tragedy if he were aware of its indifferent intent, but his mind is a mold of the sea and the plain. Raging waters are replaced by the quietest, widest flatland, like the prairies he once drove through while heading out west. Words can't help but drown in that water and get lost in those fields.
Still. In this spare room, amidst such unlikely companions, can another, larger force be detected? For words are but hints of what hearts truly want. Perhaps this underlying desire desire for communion can tell us what sloppy speech obscures.
Let me out! the boy shouts.
Let me in! the old man pleads.
A primal, potent need to be heard by both that must come from somewhere near.
Let us leave this room quietly, while they're still chatting freely. I'm sure they will part, and only one will remain. (I won't dare say who, but I'm sure you can guess.) We'll shut the door softly, and tiptoe away. Soon that young boy will start to make sense, and most of that innocent infant charm will be gone. Before long that old man will stop speaking for good. The words will have faded forever.
Perhaps some cosmic exchange is at work. The young feed the old with their knowledge and letters. In return, what is given so freely must now pay its price. A psychic system of bartering that makes humans flow. Energy exchanged never dies; it merely changes form. One withers while the other grows tall.
If we walk down the hall at a slow steady pace, we might just hear an electric undercurrent beneath their strange words, the strike of a spark that spreads a fire both will set.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
PICTURE A BOY RIGHT OUT OF ROCKWELL
Picture a boy right out of Rockwell, American in tone, Japanese in technique. Scene from the street, sitting at his desk, the window his frame. A child's messy plan sprawled out in front of him: pastels and pencils, papers pens. The bare, skeletal, fragments of a mobile something-or-other yet to be built. His tongue sticks out of his mouth in that form of universal concentration that spans across cultures and must be implanted within us from above upon birth.
Somebody should be painting this, I thought, walking by, glancing quickly. (Staring into anyone's home is an oddly intimidating moment. One feels somehow responsible for an open window and a desk too close to the edge of outside. Especially in Japan, where everything is at odds with itself and each other, people and buildings bisecting each other until humanity merges with train lines in flux.)
Would Norman Rockwell have been up to the task? That essential chronicler of a midwest America that may not exist? Or, it it ever did, such a time and quite the place it must have been! One where innocence at play and adults at work somehow coexisted in a common sense of balance and trust. To extend such a midcentury metaphor of decades gone by to the Japan of today seems somehow strained, mostly because an atom bomb from the forties inevitably enters any discussion of America and Japan, no matter how long one changes the topics and forces one's smile. (There are, after all, only so many topics to talk about. Even the trivial has its depths, eventually.)
Everything is amplified by these streets and this place, where American soldiers work less than a mile away from that little boy sketching his future with the chalk of today. Mere decades okay a big bomb went kaboom. It's not unreasonable to conceive that relatives of this budding artist or engineer felt their bodies burn quickly and their life slip away in such an explosion. And it's probably certain that Rockwell himself, or those from his clan, fought and died against the relatives of this selfsame child.
Oh, the reckless complexity of the past! Let it all stay dead and done, if you please. Let us watch a boy do a Sunday's good deed without considering all that has come and all that will follow. When Americans still occupy a land all its own, such concerns find their way to the front of the line. Race, and all its mysterious, ineffable irrelevance, makes me wonder why some are born here and others there. Why decisions decided by people long dead still make us sit up and look at her skin.
For now, I'll let the boy be, and let the questions of nations lay nestled in newsprint. If Rockwell had verve, it was in the life of the faces he drew with such care. They had a life beyond what we could imagine, and so does this boy I saw for a second. Even as I write these words, he is probably waking up and getting ready for school, downing his juice and packing his bag. The past has no concern for someone so young. He will step out of the frame that he does not know exists and enter his own little world of school play.
Somebody should be painting this, I thought, walking by, glancing quickly. (Staring into anyone's home is an oddly intimidating moment. One feels somehow responsible for an open window and a desk too close to the edge of outside. Especially in Japan, where everything is at odds with itself and each other, people and buildings bisecting each other until humanity merges with train lines in flux.)
Would Norman Rockwell have been up to the task? That essential chronicler of a midwest America that may not exist? Or, it it ever did, such a time and quite the place it must have been! One where innocence at play and adults at work somehow coexisted in a common sense of balance and trust. To extend such a midcentury metaphor of decades gone by to the Japan of today seems somehow strained, mostly because an atom bomb from the forties inevitably enters any discussion of America and Japan, no matter how long one changes the topics and forces one's smile. (There are, after all, only so many topics to talk about. Even the trivial has its depths, eventually.)
Everything is amplified by these streets and this place, where American soldiers work less than a mile away from that little boy sketching his future with the chalk of today. Mere decades okay a big bomb went kaboom. It's not unreasonable to conceive that relatives of this budding artist or engineer felt their bodies burn quickly and their life slip away in such an explosion. And it's probably certain that Rockwell himself, or those from his clan, fought and died against the relatives of this selfsame child.
Oh, the reckless complexity of the past! Let it all stay dead and done, if you please. Let us watch a boy do a Sunday's good deed without considering all that has come and all that will follow. When Americans still occupy a land all its own, such concerns find their way to the front of the line. Race, and all its mysterious, ineffable irrelevance, makes me wonder why some are born here and others there. Why decisions decided by people long dead still make us sit up and look at her skin.
For now, I'll let the boy be, and let the questions of nations lay nestled in newsprint. If Rockwell had verve, it was in the life of the faces he drew with such care. They had a life beyond what we could imagine, and so does this boy I saw for a second. Even as I write these words, he is probably waking up and getting ready for school, downing his juice and packing his bag. The past has no concern for someone so young. He will step out of the frame that he does not know exists and enter his own little world of school play.
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