HAIKU: THIS MORNING'S MT.FUJI

This morning's white-capped Mt.Fuji

boldy bisects the sky --

underfoot frosted grass, sprouting for its own peak.

APPROACHING A LIFE

The homeless folk around here go down by the banks of the Tama River to die. That's what I thought. You don't see them often, but they do come out at odd times, usually underneath a Sunday afternoon's blue-sky veil. On the gray-gravel path a bicycle lazily leans against its own kickstand in a teetering balance that must last all through the night; a path made of tiny grooves in dark land leads away from the small scattered rocks and forms its own makeshift route that heads down to the dirt and cut grass arranged with what might look like some love; a few tattered green tents do their best to spite wind. I noticed all this gradually, in stages, on early-morning runs before work, when I'm still sleepy and dense. (This is my excuse.) Over a couple of weeks I started to put it all together, my own puzzle in pieces: the bike; the trail; the tent. I had thought they were all random, disconnected fragments of life that somehow collect and decay without any form or possessor.

One random morning I suddenly realized that these rusted old relics, those stone trails and ripped tents, were somebody's treasured, true things. Not talismans, but utilitarian gadgets that enabled some sway. I almost felt satisfied, the way one does after figuring out how to hook up the net after an hour full of false plugs. This was their home -- those two or three rough-looking dudes I'd seen the Sunday before last, talking in short static bursts, a warm weather laugh they'd seemed happy to share with no one each other. That was the first time I'd seen them. In the charcoal-sky before dawn, they must stay snug in their tents. I actually felt warm with my insight, like a child laying down on the living-room carpet while the sun through the window heats up his small grin.

My smug thought turned to: snug? Can a homeless person ever feel snug? I remember camping trips with my father, my dark blue sleeping-bag zipped up tight, the rain on the canvas a pitter-patter of beats that lacked a strong central rhythm. That rain was trying to arrange itself, I knew, into something consistent, almost an arc, but it was erratic, and I knew that because it lacked conscious motion it could not even recognize that this route would lead only to sad drips and slow streams of slight water. The rain always sounded that way, full of persistent dumb sorrow. It wouldn't get in. It couldn't get in. Our tent had no holes, no leaks or slight rips. I was, to be sure, snug. I doubt the homeless folk were. Snug, I mean. I had a home to return to, distant but soon. These dudes were down there for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. I could beat the rain because I was already awaiting my exit. Homeless folk have nothing but entrances, and the rain, dumb as it is, can sneak through those every time.

Sometimes I thought: I should talk to them. Give them a bit of levity before they decay and get old. Allow them to josh with a foreigner, a raw bit of good mirth. They might get a kick out of me. A tale to tell. What the hell. Who can stay alive by themselves down by that stream for so long? Death could come for them at any moment, now that winter was close, their small camp no respite. My awkward dive into small talk might just give them a slight sense of chaos -- the 'gaijin' who came down for a chat and stayed for a drink. We all need that one bit of mad joy.

My dumb idea. One black morning I once again ran right by the bicycle, counted the stones on their path, caught a glimpse of the tent. I realized: At any point they could simply sneak away on the bike, take a jaunt for the day, find their way back down by the trail, and then crash for the night in their tent. Listen to the Tama River rustle and merge. Perhaps this is what they did, daily. The same way that I awake to my work and skededalled home when it's done. I had always assumed that they came down here to die. Now I wondered if they, like myself, were simply approaching a life.

THREE SORTS OF JAPANESE BEFORE SUNRISE

First was the young man sprawled out face-up on the sidewalk. Staring at the stars, if he had been awake. Almost like an accident-victim, his contorted shape skewed in the pose of a man falling through air. Arms windmilling in vain, even more pathetic because his limp and spare parts were aligned on concrete. A late night, last night. More than enough to drink for one man. Best to rest on the ground by the side of the river. One can do that here, without fear of harassment from police or pickpockets. Just let them lay.

Next is the white-haired middle-aged man in a shirt the same shade, seated snug in his van, his trumpet stuck to his lips like a candy so sweet he can't bear to let go lest the sweetness dissolve in cotton-candy thin vapors. I can hear the music, his music, even through the shut door. He's not very good, is what I think. Ashamed at the thought. Who am I to judge? I played that same trumpet in high school a few decades ago. Whoop-de-do. Was even worse than him. Never once got up before sunrise to practice, let alone in a truck. There is something quite sad about soft music trapped in a car. On the road, in motion, the radio's frantic mad blare -- that's one thing. Live music practiced before work, by a man in his van. Windows rolled up. Wife at home, sleeping snug. Sneaking in a few beats before breakfast, and the lengthy train trudge into work. That's something else.

Finally: the old man strolling backwards, his strong arms rising up and then down as his path meandered behind him. What did he hope to find, walking this way? Was he trying to reverse the years in some awkward form of retreat?? Always looking ahead, but each step, receding. I've never tried it. Walking backwards for more than ten steps at a time. Takes a certain kind of confidence. Knowing that you won't be tripped up by the path that waits past your own sight. He's rewinding himself, is what I thought. Somewhere, miles away, if I just watched his slow shuffle, I'd see him gradually become forty years old, and then twenty, and then five.

They seemed almost placed there. Plucked for my own amusement and awe. I had a mad thought, as I slowly jogged past them. One of those thoughts that one has when sleep is still a cousin to dreams. I would pull the young sleeping drunk man up by his arms and slap him awake. The middle-aged musician, I might knock on the window and bond with, sharing stories of trumpets and spit-valves only waiting to be emptied. The old man walking backwards, I'd join for a small chat as we both briskly walked back to where we both started out. The four of us, together. I'd convince them to join me. We could escape this whole world before the sun even knew what was up. Go on the road. Put together some sort of a show. People would pay a few thousand yen to arise before dawn just to watch us meander around endless wide sprawls of river. I'm not sure what they might get out of it. Maybe what I did. Bemusement. An odd intrigue. Even some kind of small, morning joy.

VISAS

The cook at the little Indian joint right across the tracks from Nakano-shima station asked me if I could get him a Canadian visa. This was while he was making the nan that I had ordered just a moment before. He had arrived here three years ago from Bangladesh. I told him that I knew a Bangledeshi fellow who ran an Indian place not unlike this when I lived in Phnom Penh. I don't own this, he said. I'm just a cook. When I asked where he lived he smiled a sad smile and pointed to the floor up above. Travelling thousands of miles from his wife and three kids, all for the grand goal of schlepping his way through the day in a little restaurant the size of a halfway decent living room. Waiting for that sweet bread to bake, he told me that he wanted to go to Canada, with the visa via me, if possible. Could I do that for him? I smiled and nodded. That's what I do when I don't know what the hell to say. I don't know what you do.

Same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Philippines. A cab driver, hearing of my frigid home country, politely asked if I could sponsor him for a Canadian visa. This was after thirty seconds of small talk. Can you get me away from here, is what he was saying. Essentially. You are from a place that has money, and I have no money, or not enough, so please: Give me a break, pal. I smiled and nodded. (You know the deal by now, right?)

Two different countries, a few weeks apart, two different workers working gruelling, shit-paying jobs, and the same request offered to an embarrassed Canadian. One was cooking my food; the other was taking me around town.

Thinking of it in those terms, I feel an odd pinch of shame. As if they are my slaves of some sort. Cooking for me. Driving me here and there. A Bangladeshi. A Filipino. Catering to a rich Canadian.

Of course, I'm not rich (except compared straight with them, and so maybe I am?), and while the Bangladeshi cook was asking me to get him to Canada I said a little soliloquy to myself -- that I, too, am far from home, working in a strange land to pick up some small coin. Didn't work, that interior monologue. I don't know much about Bangladesh, except that it's far, far from the Mayberry-like childhood I once knew and loved. It's also poor, an offshoot of Pakistan, and crowded with millions of folks even more poor than this chap. (I also learned from this gent that Pakistan and Bangladesh are not the closest of friends. Bangladesh and every other country? No problem. Bangladesh and Pakistan? Let's not go there.)

I took my nan and paid him and said goodbye and didn't mention the Canadian visa to him again as I headed out that small door. Same way I didn't mention it to the taxi dude a few weeks ago in the Philippines when I stepped out of his car. Everybody wants to go somewhere, I tell myself. I can't carry on my shoulders a weight I will drop. I can't give you an entrance to my homeland when my own exit is cloaked in these shifting small doubts. Such are my internal whispers when asked for a leg up. (We all have to tell ourselves something to make the day fair.)

THAT LONELY LIST, SO RICH AND INCLUSIVE

As far as I can figure out, the only real reason to read anything that anybody's ever written is to either a) learn something new about the human condition that you've never quite conceived of before in exactly those terms, or b) nod your head in recognition at a finely-tuned observation, one that you've long held for yourself, but that you never suspected others, too, might find valuable, even precious.

Here's a paragraph from presidential historian Doris Kearn Goodwin's memoir WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR, a coming-of-age story combining her bittersweet memories of both baseball and a Brooklyn youth:

...The Rockville Centre Public Library became one of my favorite buildings in town. When my mother weasn't feeling well, she would send me to the library with titles of books she wanted to read. Since I now had a card of my own, I took great pride in checking out her books as well as mine. In those days, each book had a sheet glued to the last page on which the librarian stamped the due tate and cardholder's number. It was possible to count how many others had read the same book. I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others; it made me sad for both the author and the book when I discovered that I was the only one to take a particular volume off a shelf for months or even years...

I've never been to Rockville Centre Public Library, of course, but I may as well have, for I, too, used to greedily scan that final sheet of paper glued to a book's lonely last page in my high school library at Laura Secord Secondary School. I could see into the past via that card's (usually) lonely list. I, like Ms.Goodwin, also felt a little bad for the author and book, but I was more interested in those that had read it, who'd held it, who'd sniffed its small spine and drunk in its great musk. (If you don't sniff books upon reading, frequently and with no shame, you're not a real reader to me. "You're dead to me, Fredo," as Michael Corleone tells his brother in THE GODFATHER PART II. Fine, I'm not that intense about it, but still: You should snort books. I used to believe that Country Time Lemonade was the nectar of the gods, but I think the smell of books, either brand new or quite old, comes close.) Names of students I'd never meet, now middle-aged men, were still right there in red ink, forever fourteen. Once, I even stumbled upon the name of a family friend who had attended my school in the early years of the Seventies. There he was! Just a kid, like me! He had held this same book in his hands, checked it out, thumbed through it on the bus before I had even been born. Years later, at age seven, upon learning that I, too, played the clarinet, as he did, he would give me a private lesson in my backyard. Years later, at age fourteen, I would flutter the pages of a book he had held in his youth. And in those ensuing decades, only five, six people had taken out this book. It had sat there, miserable.

Where were they, I wondered? Those kids, just like me, who had checked out this same tome? Did they make it intact into adulthood? Had some of them been lost in car crashes, or had they flunked out of school? (I couldn't decide which was a scarier fate.) Were they happy? Did they still read? I imagined choosing a name at random, looking them up in the phone book, giving them a ring:

"Hi, you don't know me, but I'm a student at Laura Secord, just as you once were, and I happened upon a copy of (INSERT TITLE HERE), and the flap at the back states that you checked this book out on February 21, 1974, and I'm wondering: Do you remember this book? Do you remember this school? Are you happy with your life?"

I never made such a call, of course. Didn't have the balls. What a weirdo, they'd think.

But I still think about all of those books that I checked out of that library's narrow walls. Are they still there, rimrod straight at attention, with that sheet of small white glued so tightly in back? Is my adolescent scrawl still quite clear? Does any teenager pick up a book I once read, look at the back, even fleetingly, and wonder why, in the early nineties, I, a mere name on a list, wanted to give that ragged paperback book a fair chance? Does he or she wonder where I, a complete stranger, am in my life, and if they, too, will make it that far?

BURN BABY BURN

Is there greater proof of our own finite span than a sunburn's red sting? Skin in itself, we rarely give it much thought. The occasional itch. The glance in the mirror each morning, to double check our two chins. A scab here and there, that subtle scrape and its bite. It's our own overcoat, old and unwanted. Just there, really. Only when the sun reminds us once more that we're nothing but flesh do we groan with dismay: Ah, death -- I now feel thy sly touch.

For if we are honest -- and who wants to be honest, but what the hell, let's tie one on -- the pink burn that delights is but death's lazy doorman. Surely the hesitant tilt of our head when we've kissed the sun far too long is some kind of indifferent guide to the underworld that awaits when the coffin's lids creaks its way shut. Think of it: If death is the absence of life, the destruction of comfort, a blackhead extended outwards in round steady cycles, then what better prep can we have than a slap to our skin that makes life itself but a chore? Sitting, showering, bending our knees and looking left and now right -- good God, what a pain, after a sunburn's first night. You start to resent being awake. Being aware.

The sun. The light. Give me some cold, a soft soothing touch that might still sway with a swoosh all that lies underneath. No deal, boss. No stroking here; no relief. You will crash on that couch with a groan and wish the black to come back. No more of light's brilliant booth, its cozy niche in the corner. Just give me the black, straight up, and let me be the rock.

These thoughts take me back -- a few centuries, even further. For who can imagine what it must have been like to endure such a sun when the shade had its home at the base of a tree? And only the tree? Think of that shade! What an oasis it must have seemed to the mad and the dazed and the sun-drunken pilgrims! I can go inside with some air-con, and french-kiss its cold tongue. What relief did they lack! Can I call them my own brethren, if I've not felt that red mark on each moment of time?

Perhaps there's still hope. I can discover what they might have known. Some tricks. Approaches to life, even. I could lay out on the grass, shirt off. Underwear whipped at the sky like an archer's last arrow. Quite nude. Let the sun brand itself on my skin. I could lay there for two, three hours. Two, three days. Build up some kind of resistance. Let the hurt hurt so bad that it must do nothing but morph. (Can one feel pain for so long that it becomes ecstasy's final spurt? Are they cousins, in fact, agony and great bliss?)

Quite soon I could be as red as the sun when it sets on an early spring eve. Callused, I'll be. Nothing could hurt me anymore. Impervious. Pain as both antidote and elixir. My sunburn's covert role as the lazy doorman of death might keep that door half ajar, trying to coax me to enter. Instead, I'd just lay there, sizzling.

PEOPLE -- INCLUDING YOU, YES YOU! -- ARE A STRANGE LOOP

So exactly who is the 'I' who is typing these words, and, while we're at it, who is the 'you' that is scanning them now?

These are the questions that Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of Cognitive Science, delves into in his fascinating, kind of comprehensible book 'I Am A Strange Looop'.

To give you a taste of what he dishes up, a slight diversion:

Recently, while browsing through the new arrivals rack at my local video shop in the not-so-bustling suburb of Ookurayama, I came across a new documentary about The Doors, narrated by Johnny Depp, entitled WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE. I reminded myself to pick it up, either this week or next, and give it a go. As soon as I saw the DVD box, an enormous amount of memories and associations spiralled throughout my small brain. Not all of it conscious. None of them momentous. But mention 'The Doors', and what happens next?

A poster of Jim Morrison hanging in one of the Craddock twins bedrooms in Ridgeway, Ontario. (I can't remember which twin.) I must have been nine, ten. The music a backdrop. The Doors slightly different than my usual musical fare of The Monkees. Darker. Hinting at aspects of life that would remain somewhat suspect. Finding a copy of his biography, NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE, in a friend's basement in junior high. Reading about his life. Reading another book about him by the drummer, John Densmore. RIDERS ON THE STORM, that one was. Years later, the film. Oliver Stone's flick. Me, a film nut. A Stone nut. Anxious to see it. Shattered when THE ST.CATHARINES STANDARD, in its Thursday night edition, reveals that it will, in fact, be rated R. Me, fifteen, too young to look old enough to attempt a sneak-in. Vacationing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a few weeks later, and disappointed once again to see that it's rated 'R' down there too. Catching up with it on video. Watching it a dozen times, probably. The music, the energy. The pulse. Eventually putting it aside. Life. Not thinking much about The Doors over the years. Hearing about this documentary on some film site a few years back. Seeing it at the video store. Noticing that it's narrated by Johnny Depp. As much as I loved THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER film as a kid, I wonder: Why is Depp appearing in a Lone Ranger flick next year? Good grief. Reminding myself: Rent this documentary.

All of this, from a one second glimpse at a DVD's cover.

Now, again, this wasn't all happening at a conscious, shall we say 'readable' level, but think of the neurons that fire when a name hits your brain. I say 'The Doors', and you probably have SOME kind of connection to the band, however slight. You may have heard of them, vaguely; you may know of them, dimly. You may be obsessed with them, or you may not give a shit. But that information is nevertheless stored...somewhere. You never think of it, is all. (Or so you think.)

Hofstader's book gets into the strange paradox of life -- that all of our actions are determined at a microscopic level too small to examine, with neurons and cells that make up who we are, and yet, ironically enough, we live life on the macro scale, not the micro. We eat, work, fight, fart, smile, love and groove on the surface. Because we have to. Because we don't know what's going on down there. Because we can't live life as a reaction to bio-chemical processes. We're not built that way. (Even though, come to think of it, we are, actually, built that way. It gets confusing.)

One of his most intriguing arguments has to do with the notion of a lifeform's ability to, in essence, identify aspects of life, and itself, and those relations between life and itself, and how that has a bearing on the size of its, for lack of a more concrete word, soul. A mosquito, say, doesn't have much memory, or reference -- it ain't thinking about Jim Morrison's arrest for indecency in Florida as it's buzzing around, looking for blood. A cow just chews, mostly. It probably doesn't remember yesterday's cud, or tomorrow's chance of rain. A dog or a cat has a slightly higher level of memory and association and capacity to love. Who we are depends on our ability to associate, reference, compare and reflect.

(He's hinted at this notion in regards to life, in fact, NOT beginning at the moment of conception, as there's no self-referential self existing at that particular point in time. There's no THERE there, essentially. I don't agree with him on that one, but that's another argument, for another post.)

It's one of those books, 'I Am A Strange Loop', that gives you a little bit of a jolt. A literary tilt-a-whirl. (That should have been the tagline on the back, no?) It's also one of those those mathematics or science books that I'm always suckered into buying, with the assurance by the author in the introduction that this isn't one of those HEAVY, specialized books, no; that it is, in fact, one for the masses. And the prose style is so fluid and enjoyable that I'm three pages into a chapter when I suddenly realize that I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Luckily, that's a small portion of the book. The greater portion does a remarkable job of illustrating the billions and billions of unconscious, sub-atomic connections that are forged by the cells underneath the sense of self that we wield.

(Did I say 'self'! Ha! Hofstader hints that the self is nothing more, in a sense, than the accumulation of cells, likening it a massive stack of envelopes he once yanked out of a box, convinced that the hard blob he felt in its centre was a marble stuck somewhere down, only to realize that the accumulation of all those paper envelopes created the illusion of hardness. All of our cells, all our synaptic firings, all of our collected connections, make us think there's a 'there' at the core of our core. He also articulates what I've always wondered for years: Why do we love our favourite things? No, really. Why is chocolate my favourite flavour of ice cream? Well, I like sweet things. Why do I like sweet things? Well, I just do. Eventually, there's no answer. It's a mystery. And if the things we hold most near and dear to us, our loves and our lusts, remain a strange septic brew, then what hope can we have to know anything well at all?)

It's interesting, is all I'm saying. This notion of connections, and links. Think of you, sitting in your chair. This may be the first time you're reading this blog. You may know me quite well. You might be bored to your gourd and wondering why you're still reading. You may have no interesting in brain surgery, or The Doors. You may be stifling a yawn, listening to Ben Folds Five in the background, thinking of a test you must take in tomorrow's wee early hours. Your crack is itchy. A billion neurons at play, right here in this moment.

I don't know what it all means, and the older I get the more I crave and draw an odd satisfaction from the questions, not the answers, but books like this one at least give me the go to give life a small poke. This morning, as I walked to the train station, the sky in its dawn was a little bit gray, mixed with a nice medley of pink. Not sure what that was all about, but it looked mighty fine.