L. Navid Osbert (東京)
16 July, 2009
Even the cloud-dappled sunlight this morning was crisp and severe. There was an ache in my eyeballs just from looking at apartment buildings and houses, the horizon of my neighborhood and the expanse of sky over it. The focal muscles of my eyes haven’t been getting much use lately, I guess. The grocery store was full of people. There’s a whole world that just keeps buzzing away.
It’s not Monday. Also, you may have noticed that the sections of the Eiji Daitokai epic I posted last week and the week before came without any additional comments from me. As a matter of fact, I haven’t uttered a single word, nor written one, nor typed (but to transcribe the sections of the book) for thirteen days now. Haven’t been out in as much time. In Tokyo, in this day and age, you don’t have to go out to survive. Don’t even have to form words. Online orders consist of dropdown menus and clicking check boxes. Saved passwords, saved addresses, saved credit card information. It’s all allowed my mind to stay on receive mode, the bare minimum of output. Pizza boxes, sushi and ramen containers have become bricks in a garbage bulwark. I haven’t done any laundry either, but that isn’t so bad because I haven’t changed my clothes very many times. Something is bothering me.
It started as a faint pressure on my thoughts. It started when I opened the first box. It started even before that, I suppose, when I was considering this assignment. It started when they first contacted me. But until just recently it was wrapped up too tight with the mysteriousness of the documents, mixed in too much with my confusion about the half-finished research I’d taken over in the middle. Maybe it was with me on the Asian continent too, in Seoul and in Shanghai and in Hong Kong, in Bangkok and Singapore, in Ho Chi Minh City. Faint and nagging, wrapped up in the mysteriousness of the world I’ve woken up to and mixed in with my confusion about the half-finished life I’ve taken over in the middle.
Now, though, it’s not a slight pressure, it’s crushing and oppressive. The thoughts and feelings have had their time to grow and develop, and I recognize its discrete form even if I still can’t give it a name. It is quite distinct from simple unfamiliarity, from not being able to understand. In fact, it’s the opposite. With each page I turn, the sensation is formless and unmistakable: I am approaching something I know and have forgotten about.
Or somewhere.
Or someone.
I look terrible. Time for a shave and a bath.
