Those Precious Moments – Part 4
The days move quickly. As quickly as I can count them on my hands. Each finger is a day leading into the next. A day that rarely moves me, managing to pass me by without my knowing. Sometimes I like to stare at the clouds. Today they are a velveteen of greys. Ready to pore down on this little café. A café that holds my attention and hides me from the moving world outside. Here I write about the importance of existing. It must be important because it’s all I ever seem to write about. How I waste mine. How I sit in my café, writing about the world instead of living in it. Here is my world. Here is where time runs without me, skipping along with the sound of my pen brushing against the grain of my journal paper. Here I am lost with my words and my thoughts. My feelings. When I close my journal they continue to linger as afterthoughts. I buy another cup of coffee and return to my seat. I continue to stare at the people outside. Scenes of colours moving, existing, living to exist. I want to be normal like them. But I stop myself simply by being here. Here in this café drinking all day long, waiting for it to rain.
I think of all the people I have not met. Zush included. Of course. All of the friends I have made online. All of the friends I have lost through the grandeur of growing up. And like most landmarks, it is a grandeur hidden beneath the veil of time. A time that tries to put perspective on things, root things down into the ground.
When Zush writes about himself, he does so in a way I can never capture and tell. There is something bare and honest about it. That is the true power of writing. The message is clear. The intent free flowing and unpretentious. A kind of humility that hints at all kinds of possibilities instead of limiting them to concrete words.
As the wooden seat I rest on warms up from my unmoving body, I think about Zush in Shibuya, doing all the things he said. Experiencing all the things he experienced. I cannot put something like that into words because I cannot relate detail for detail. I have not been to Japan, and everything Japanese in my room has been airmailed. I am unsure if this is a true response to his latest blog.
All I can say for now is I am alone in a café, reading, writing, watching people and listening to J-pop. I must always listen to music. It helps cover the plainness of my world with an array of colours. Japanese music is a palate with a full rainbow. Beautiful in every kind of way. From alternative, underground rock, to formulaic – feel-good – pop.
Right now I am listening to –All for one and one for all’ by –H!P All Stars’, slightly high off the whisky I have added to my coffee. The song is a simple melody, the choir of H!P voices turning this keepsake into an anthem for the ages. The more I drink, the happier I am. After awhile I order another coffee, still determined to keep it Irish. I begin to write down the Romanized lyrics to –All for one and one for all’ in my journal and stare at the Japanese blankly. What does this song mean to me? I wish I had a memory like Zush, somehow connected to H!P in some way. But I don’t. And that’s ok. Maybe it’s not my time to go crazy in Shibuya waving around Morning Musume CDs. I’m just glad I know someone who has lived something like that.
I place my pen in my bag and retreat to nothingness. A state of mind where all I am is a process. A process of raising my hand, opening my mouth and pouring in the drink. I put on –Morning Coffee–. I think back to pockets of small moments in my childhood. Thankful that a song can bring back memories I hold dear to me.
Wu-san
[to be continued]