I wrote a list of the characteristics that my perfect man should hold. I received some comments about it. While I was reading them, a strange feeling invaded me all of a sudden: the feeling that nobody ever would take my list seriously, that no human being in this country could ever take my words seriously, that I live in the absolute wrong place.
Since then, my smile has faded.
“Lauchan, 99% of the things suck, dakedo, let’s live for 1% of joy!”
Could anything ever give me a brighter gleam of hope?
It was the most amazing thing. A huge distance had been shortened, two sleeves of a sweater met when it was folded. He folded it. I could not see, but my right ear was suddenly filled with a noise I had only seen on tv. “Irasshaimase—!” again, and again, and again. A street market in Ueno. The real street market in the real Ueno in the real Tokyo in the real Japan in real time! The one and only love of my life standing in the middle of the hubbub, a hubbub I long to dive into… Could he picture my awestruck face? Could he picture the silence reigning in the dark living room while that street in the future was ever so lively? Nigiyaka… that’s the word for what I heard, for the mystery that leaked through the lines over the ocean way up on the mountains into my brain. Meanwhile, in the past, birds still dream of flying higher, water slides down the drain pipes, striking them with sounds that remind me of a steeldrum… Shizuka.
Some minutes away from now, birds will come back from their bluer skies, sit on cable spiderwebs, and start a conversation we tend to miss. Drowsy people will pour into a red bus, stuffing it with sneezes and hot breath. I will walk among my own kind of “irasshaimase.” Nigiyaka. He will ride a train into the rice fields that saw him grow. A familiar house will stand alone in the middle of a land that has belonged to them almost forever. The drone of crickets will whisper “oyasuminasai.” Shizuka.
You see us smiling; only will our hearts imitate our faces when our watches are set in the same time, when we stop living in a world of antonyms.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
—Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl’s Love Song
You’re fading, fading, fading, and slowly you become a mere product of my crooked imagination. Are you still real? Should I go to sleep to see you again?