#2: Small Japan Memories

When I drive north out of the town into the countryside, driving my tiny blue car along the two-lane highway that curves along a lake, no one knows who I am or where I came from. I am out for a drive and that is all. Wherever I go, if I do not talk, if I nod at the right time and smile with my eyes, I will seem to everyone as if I have lived here all my life.

At the roadside convenience store, I microwave the hamburger steak and eat it in my car. I recline in the driver’s seat. A dream comes, something about a body of water, then a definite scene of longing: I wade into clear water, a child among children. I wake to the evening sky, purest blue, the plastic container from my dinner empty on the dashboard.

Ten p.m. at the school. All the teachers are working – on what? – in an office painful with overhead fluorescent light. These people have families, I think. Don’t they miss their spouses, their couches, their laughing little children? One woman smiles, looking on her phone at a picture of her orange cat.

A space heater: electricity running through metal so hot it glows. Shades drawn against this winter morning. Dry grass rustles against the sliding glass door. Nothing but time, a day left undone, light yet to rise overhead then fall back down the far end of town. I want this long hour forever.

We, the weeknight train riders – businessmen and businesswomen in beige coats, handbags on their laps, heads down in sleep; a mother with heavy groceries; an old man with thick glasses on, pocket-sized book in front of his face; the high schoolers, in dark uniforms and colorful scarves, talking – we are immensely lonely. Loneliest of all are the teenagers, who know little about what comes next. They sit across each other, bent forward in interest, recounting the day, with hard days to follow.