Staying in after hearing noises miles away but thought they came from the next room, when actually they were always in the back of the mind. The street outside on a Tuesday isn’t as busy and every 30 seconds in Tokyo is a long time but they pass. Bicycles and their drivers slow enough to make those meek sounds and carry a brolly at the same time whizz past the lights, the shops, the waiting crossers at traffic lights. They mount and pile up those sounds, like slivers of light through PVC slide doors as the cars in-between the bikes ease around to their own homes. Senses of the movement of a city drifting are in those sounds, each one closer to the end of the night, end of the day.
I’m only a man with fears like you, still feeling amongst everything in a big city like this and yet it had been three days since I had had a proper conversation with anyone, It had been planned all along, the distance yet having a camera to get close all helping to process maybe a years troubles and thoughts of what it’s like to be fearful and to let a bigger than me city calm me in all the noise and noises seemingly from next door.
Get into a taxi with just a location on a map and the driver talks to himself with your phone in his hand and says he knows where, you’ve spoken to someone. Nothing epic but you’re on the wrong side of the city and tired and need to get to bed. The city again winds up as you move and another bicycle sides up at the lights another umbrella and the pattern is mesmerising and beautiful and I’m delirious with this. But the sounds in the next room come back, it’s okay, they’re not actually there just a reminder of your size, how big you think you aren’t. Click. His face dead ahead with a slight smile, it’s not their way to steal your trip or your money, maybe he can’t say it but senses the sounds, knows the lonely and is the help thats just needed, brings you home.
Then you remember the job you have. something in-between a fearful dog and a wizard. Inside the car is immaculate with classic Corolla curtains on the windows all those Japanese taxis have and it’s your personal machine. Black leather and clean lines, chrome and white gloves. No fucking American TV screen to tell you that it’s a must to respect our city because when you land in Japan the respect is there already, He talks to himself again, the taxi driver like all cabbies do, swearing probably at the traffic.
The eyes are dead out the window taking everything.
Wouldn’t the biggest fight, battle be within? So he sits flying across the wide streets in the rain and does battle, battle inside and out in the world with weapons that are useless like the pile up of those pointless whispers from next door, useless gains in this particular game and then it slows down getting to the side street beside the bed, the small room with a lamp and tea and another quiet finish. Fighting over for another day. Leaving the car, the door closes itself. These advances say so much about a society unlike crap places that think about the lonely and struggling. He’s a shepard now looking out the window after giving me change, talking again and he’s concerned, looking and concerned for this soldier, lost and tired and battled.
Laid out. The night does its thing without you, takes no notice of your slumber no matter how heroic you think you are or could be and you know it like the black it is. Your feet dream about the taking of the place, tipsy and spent. But speeding away with no resist is the ageing body. Dead, Laid out. Cut and quiet.
Stay Calm 