Thursday. Just as I was about to slip into a state of being totally oblivious to all the things that were weighing on my shoulders, "Return to Innocence" pulled me back to reality. Script to be written for the final presentation, readings about Kabuki to be finished before next Wednesday, one report to be submitted on Tuesday.
This morning when I went out of my room to do some laundry, I had a chance to look closely at what my balcony is like. I have lived here for more than a year, but have never cared to see what it is like. I noticed the gutter which was drying, the room doors lining very meekly and silently. Inside those doors lay many lives which encompass different aspects to mine - Japanese kids burning their time youth with club activities, frivolous girls' talk, making love, watching baseball, writing, reading. Sometimes I could hear the girls' giggling from the room next to my own balcony. When I was pondering over my balcony, a sweet-sour taste of lemonade crawled up inside me, twitching my every muscle and appealing my every senses. That sweet taste of summer hot. All of a sudden I realized this was what Happiness and Calm all boil down to - that serene feeling of going about your daily business, even though they are just paltry and hold virtually no meaning, no more than when the moon orbits the earth or when I tell somebody "I love you"; indeed, as paltry as the cosmic moving around in its eternal recurrence.
My stare smoothly travels over to the far-stretched sky above our building. Blocks of houses, concrete, banners, the newly paved road, all residing peacefully in their normal state, except this time they tend to exert a kind of stealthy, nonchalant yawn, tired from their morning sickness. The sky was not white, nor blue, but a little tainted grayish ash colour, the air is stagnant. I went about my laundry.
Episode 1: Drying clothes
Hanging one by one with the hangers. The stick was set in my balcony. And I didn't care whether someone from the opposite building, standing there on his balcony, was looking at me. I just went about my business. It was getting hot.
I became disturbed by some murmuring voice, seemingly coming from a girl, somewhere from the opposite building. I was totally indulged in my afternoon silence when something and someone was trying to break it.
Bullshit.
Episode 2: Know nothing, feel something
I knew nothing. I stared at my room, my eyes fixed on the white wall in front of me. Pieces of fabric - indeed it was sweaters and towels - hung loosely on the hangers, absorbing the smoke I was drawing from my nose, my mouth, the waves of white sulky smoke filled with menthol and stuff. This was so serene: I was amazed for the first time so far, at how this little 4.5 tatami apartment room could give someone such tranquility. The tranquility itself was not of an average kind: it was almost surreal, to the extent that my heart almost bursted in joy, in rapture, in revelation. I AM HERE, in this little space of mine (and is it mine?), feeling more content than ever.
Suddenly yet insipidly a kind of dizziness swallowed me up, the scene before my eyes turned awry, everything was swirling in a cosmic disharmony. Have I experienced hallucination or delirium? No, not yet, not any vision I could see so far. It was just a drunk feeling- I felt like I have emptied a bottle of Vodka. This little book on my right, this headphone on my left, The airconditioner going about tis daily business, the floor so lucid, the bottle of honey-lemonade standing in front of me, insolently and obstinately. I thought it was mocking me.
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