Things To Do To Amuse Yourself Until You Die

From the rooftops of Tokyo...

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking it was raining and the clothes I had hanging outside to dry were getting wet. I sat up in bed and, listening to the stillness, I heard the definite pitter-patter of raindrops on the window, the trees, the pavement below. Yet when I went up to the roof to quickly claim my clothes, I found nothing but a chilly greeting from the wind, whistling its shrill laugh for having tricked me. Feeling that I might be in a kind of somnambulant danger of jumping off the roof at the wind’s prodding, I grabbed my workout clothes and plodded back downstairs, which upon arriving I found I couldn’t go back to sleep.

So I’m writing this. An autobiographical confession of sorts. Please bear with me.

A couple weeks ago I met a 42 year-old 5th generation Mexi-Americano from Whittier who looks 28 and tried to challenge me to a contest to see who could drink more on the street while attempting to pick up on Taiwanese hookers in the pouring rain. Normal Tuesday night in Tokyo. Though not really going any further than talking to the Formosan beauties beneath their wide umbrellas (because I don’t actually agree with prostitution- for myself anyway- and have, for the record, never paid for it) in order to get backstory for a short piece of fiction I’m working on, his- let’s call him Sancho- wherewithal proved more than suspect. That and any regional respect got thrown out with the rainwater when he ran off grinning sadistically without so much as an “adios” into the 3am downpour, leaving me alone with my snubbed Taiwanese princesses and their toothless pimps leering at me dubiously. Does that seem at least mildly childish to you? Taken out of context and out in, L.A. for example, we would likely be having this conversation in our 3rd street cardboard hovels ala Downey Jr. & Jamie Foxx in The Soloist amidst discarded needles and broken Ripple bottles…i.e. that kind of behavior is more akin to people without any kind of “Christian moral fiber” where “we” come from, yet over here, amidst all the neon and rain, the noodle joints and garter-wearing women, no one cares, or at least doesn’t pretend to. Is that a hint of something more or less?

So, Tokyo is great is the greater gist of all this, correct? As with everything in Japan, on the surface, yes, yet upon deeper inspection…

It’s interesting to note that I am one of the youngest of the group of people that I occasionally am lucky enough to hang out with in this metropolis of solitude. Almost all of whom are married and go out to what has become the “where everyone knows your name” Cheers-esque hangout on Friday nights to get away from wives and wind down the week hanging out with other Ex-pat photographers and roust-abouts, i.e. “the boys”. What is, on the one hand, nominally a photo collective of more than merely interesting individuals taking photos on the streets and in well-lit studios throughout the city, has, on the other hand, become a pub night where we all put our cameras on the table and talk about what we or other people are shooting or writing or planning, or what we would like to shoot, write or plan next given the opportunity. I speak for myself when I say that the ritual of it all has become commonly integrated into a lifestyle which tends teeters too much on the brink of normalcy for me.

Normal? If this be normal, then what would be strange?

Welcome to your future...

It makes me wonder, like PJ Harvey in her cover version of Peggy Lee’s 1969 original: “Is That All There Is?” I guess the whole marriage and kids thing hasn’t been sold on me, which makes the whole “love” argument a bit weak. But I’m not convinced, not yet. Having survived the Jesus-death-age of 33 I now know that the scripted human side of Christianity is bullshit and thusly want to give “it” another go, (“it” being “Life”), hence The Trip, which looms closer and closer. It may seem odd to you imaginary reader (as it does to everyone I talk to over here), but for me, the lazy thing to do would be to stay here with the crazy Tuesday nights, streetcorner drunks, prostitute interviews, where the lack of amoral judgment is The Way Things Are. Lazy because I don’t have nor do I need to have a job, I don’t have to work to support my lifestyle of writing, photographing, hitchhiking, shoplifting fine cheeses, running…it’s all so easy. But I need another challenge. Despite all the reasons I give to stay, I feel myself turning into Kilgore Trout.

So I ask myself what would be the opposite of lazy, or as a good friend puts it “maybe it all comes back to your fear of being normal?” So I ask myself, “How about getting back to all that good west coast Mexican food without the aid of the airplane and almost no cash?”

The reason I’m obsessed with my workout clothes getting wet, when during the rainy season for example I didn’t care at all, is is probably because I have this daily need to exercise and if I don’t, I feel bad. More than just physically feeling bad, I feel like I have wasted even more time than usual writing this bullshit out into the ether. So it’s a delicate balancing act, the writing (best done in the early morning light), the running (also best done at this time due to lack of people and the overall quiet of the empty windy streets), the friends who want to celebrate till too late (at my behest) and at too many fancy places (anywhere that charges).

I always told myself I needed to get out of L.A. in order to find a place where no one knew my name in order to actually get to the business of writing, so easily distracted am I. He who writes almost exclusively about single male characters who smoke and drink, Haruki Murakami, once said in an interview that young authors have no real clue just how much energy smoking and drinking take out of them (hangovers, feeling lethargic, procrastination, etc.), and as that’s not a problem for me anymore (not in denial, just well-managed…) I’d like to think I could relate his quote to just how much energy other people can ask of you when you are living within driving distance…luckily all the people I know here are married and (not really interested in seeing me too much…too many beers on the streetcorner in winter gets cold I suppose), surprisingly enough, I don’t really know any women, proven by the fact that I have tickets to an upcoming concert and no one but the aforementioned married brethren to invite along (one of whom has already turned me down). So I have time to write too long emails and autobiographical internet postings in the morning, eat fancy French cheeses and listen to Bill Evans’ entire discography…only after running 10km though…clothes again safely drying outside, to the chagrin of the calling wind telling me to jump.

Read about my cheese addiction {fullscreen}

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 11:56. It is filed under Blog and tagged with pimps, princesses, rooftops, The Trip, Things To Do To Amuse Yourself Until You Die. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.