You won’t see this

Algorithms and scraping.

Data points and AI serving you only the best of isolation that it can provide.

You won’t see this loneliness being screamed into the plethora of pages and apps.

Being reduced to a number, we will never see each other. If I had a use, I’m used up.

You’ll never see the constant call for a connection that goes unheard.

Some call it dead internet theory, but I feel we lost ourselves long ago, only seeing and seeking those that validate what we choose to force the images of ourselves to be.

You’ll never see how tired we are. How exhausting it is to work so hard for not even a passing smile, or only to see a smile someone has aimed at themselves.

Drowning in an infinite sea of voices that refuse to say our name in the present. If at all, they only say our name in past tense. What we were. What they used to love about us. No one reaching for a still warm hand.

Never mind.

You’ll never see this.

A Metallic Ting

Memories are distant and impulsive things. Tom, I remember your basement. I remember spending the night there and working on a fort in the woods. I remember riding bikes and attempting to ride down a plank from the barn, where I fell and my feelings of nervousness were valid.

I remember the musty smell of the basement but also the feeling of slight comfort knowing your family was wealthy by comparison. I know others badmouthed you sometimes but I was fine.

I remember the pool, which I found lavish and completely out of reach for me, and how sliding down the slide was exhilarating, at least until I hit the dry patch and felt the burn of the summer heat.

Memory will eat all of us. We live in that space, with what ifs and possibilities control our minds. There’s a billion of them, full of regret and joy that we with to return to.

Salisbury Steak, Myst, and Loss.

The mind is a beautiful, awful thing. While I recently was watching a play through of a Myst game, I had a realization that was more distinct than most.

Growing up, I had a close friend. Someone I trusted and felt fine with sharing the awkward and equally uncomfortable aspects of growing up. I still carry memories of their house, the forts we made and the names we gave them. One spot, in a piney tree in and adjacent woods, was the leisure spot.

I remember how sad he was when in grade school, a girl didn’t show up to dance with him. I remember a spelling bee when I was in the lead and he alluded to how God had helped me find the answers. I remember a time when (upon eating a candy that was shaped like glue) and we got reported for snorting it (again, which we didn’t do), we had to write an apology message during recess.

I remember the hunger craving the cheap Salisbury steak and how I always wanted another can of Josta soda. I still do. And how going to a convention with his family, I tried bear jerky, alligator jerky, and several others. I remember the cold pizza for breakfast before a day at a theme park where I didn’t want to ride the tall rides.

Playing Myst with him and seeing the early internet. Listening to a recording of George Carlin and finding the offensive language fun and shocking. His family having a hot tub, and his moving away as we talked of Nintendo 64.

I remember these things clearly but I also remember drifting apart. How when going swimming at a riverbank with my cousins, he tried beer, and seemed focused on just having access to such things. Most of all I remember the moment of realization that a friend didn’t want to be with me so much as the things around me. I remember that loss.

It’s a terrible feeling to feel like an extra piece in someone else’s chase for satisfaction, and I stopped calling them. The friendship eventually dissolved over time. I don’t know what happened to them or if we would have stayed close had I followed the same vices and thoughts. But I still remember that distinct pain of not being wanted, and it’s stuck with me, though I’ve grown to understand personal wants and needs

Simulacrum

I stand here

myself and another

distantly trying to whisper words into your ear,

trying to dry the tears from my eyes

I try to cement the feeling of loss

into some monument of memory

so that whoever stumbles upon it,

with their idle tasks buzzing in their head,

will know that there was a heart there,

a feeling and a life that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Capgras syndrome replaced us all,

bit by bit and day by day.

A lack of action erasing the actions we took,

and a single action immobilizing us.

We struggle to know,

when we lift a finger to point at the sunrise

or a bird landing in a tree beautifully silent,

that our choices have meaning and weight.

That ache

when the wind stops and the world is muted,

is reason for us knowing the worth of it all.

Where we see the light through branches,

and know the peace

of silently touching someone’s head

to comfort them,

we find our honest reply.

Slow Walk into Spring

I love seeing the small signs of seasonal changes. Perhaps the most refreshing of these is when trees begin to sprout again.

Every season has its own unique feel to it. While not here yet, the smell and feeling of cooler morning air on my skin before a hot summer’s day is the one I find most nostalgic.

Ghost of Autumn

The air keeps holding on to the faint edges of summer. The spider lilies, their vibrant shade of lipstick color that signaled the rains and change of season have withered. Fragrant olive blossoms, with their pungent aroma have begun to sneak their way out. Fall is both coming and here.

It slowly begins pulling over us like a blanket being pulled up upon us, until it finally, coolly covers our entire body.
The daytime hasn’t yet realized the season, but the nights, with their crispness and aroma carries with it the scents of a home cooked meal after a long day and the leaves that have forgotten their home upon the trees.

Even on foreign soil, fall brings to mind the nostalgia of holidays with family that aren’t here. It reminds me of hot apple cider with pungent cinnamon. Faintly, I can smell the first snow somewhere that was erased by the cold fall rain that came before anyone even woke in the morning.

All these moments of nostalgia are coated with gratitude. As much as I miss the smell of decaying leaves and wood from where I was born, I have become to be more comfortable and loving of the signs of fall locally. Both are a part of me now, neither more worth than the next.

I have seen it

Though the thoughts of initial desire and panicked infatuation have drifted away, I still see many of the signs of my love for it.

The feelings have changed over time and my relationship to this country has grown and faded in differing ways. It has aged like a wine. It matured and developed into an equally distant and uniquely irreplaceable part of me.

I fell in love with the people, the peace of the rice fields and the soft smell of smoke from a fire burning somewhere. I still hear the sounds of summer, the calming embrace of fall and the silence of a winter day. I still love the early morning before sunrise where the entire world is just beginning to stir to life.

Small details have replaced the imagination I had when first moving here or from trying to get here. I have become a part of it, despite a certain remoteness to much that is happening.

I find on the ground a lone coin or a child’s shoe and find some joy in it. Even the routine has become a comfort.

I can give parts of myself or more to help in small ways the sense of something that exists here. I am happy to, it is necessary to. It’s been said that kindness requires much less effort than anger, and I have grown to feel that more and more.

So while my connection to Japan has shifted from wildness to a calm path, I can still see it.