A Strange Tale of Porridge and Parka

I wrote this story to somehow stop the stirring of a certain tale and be able to start a newer path. In this story, may interest or not, holds a ripened phase of humanity. Its end was protesting. 

Six months ago I moved to this place in Setagaya, on a quiet residential street called Sakuragaoka. The apartment was originally rented by my obasan who used to work at the Tokyo Metropolitan Umegaoka Hospital until she and her husband decided to move to Boston. It was a fifty three square meter one bedroom flat with a loft detail and its color was that of the rising sun. It has big white windows that reminded me of a lovely little hotel in Rue du Rocher. And on mornings while I sipped my coffee, with the inevitable coldness of those huge strips of glasses, I watched little kids play. Their laughter echoed. Their hands flapping, like wings of birds on flight. I loved it when they do that…and I always loved to think that so was Hajime. 

I met Hajime on a day that can symbolize the start of spring. It was quite a cold morning so I put on my knit button-up-the-front parka over my gray Uniqlo t-shirt, an old Calvin Klein pants I received as a gift from my mother a few years back and a pair of polka dot Converse.  I decided to make an early visit to Atsuko-san who owns a small but decent restaurant just a five minute walk from my apartment. Normally, I don’t eat breakfast. I gulped a mug of hot coffee and that would be fine for me until it gets to lunchtime. But since it was a perfectly cold yet sunny day, I saw it as an excuse.

I chose a table at the corner of the restaurant as I waited for my okayu. It was very early in the day and looking around I saw the place wasn’t a bit full of people; just an old couple, a mid-forties man in a gray suit and two teenagers talking about cats. Definitely, few were eating their first meal of the day. I drew a number of fictional characters on the table napkin in front of me as I let the haze of time passed by; two of those were Yuki and the Sheep Man. 

My okayu arrived fifteen minutes later. A gangling server named Ichirou-san was kind enough to tell me that okayu or rice porridge has been a traditional and staple breakfast in Zen temples for centuries. He said it consisted of short grain rice, green onions, sesame seeds, and umeboshi. 

“Arigatou.”, I said cheerfully to Ichirou-san practicing my Nihongo, instantly grabbing my spoon.

I was ready to chow down my porridge when I suddenly saw this person. It was a great wonder why I did not notice him earlier. His dark brown hair was a bit messy. He had a familiar sense of an almost utmost arrogance in him and even from afar I knew he was wearing a black long blazer from the latest Yohji Yamamoto fashion line. He reminded me of a young Joe Odagiri. 

He was looking straight back at me. He had a fresh pair of knowing eyes that hide under his eyeglasses; eyes that were so calm yet so distant like the bottom part of an unknown mystical ocean. 

A few seconds later, the person got up from his seat.  He was carrying a black leather school bag and a medium sized blank canvas and was now heading to me. I racked my brain to think of a form of escape but failed on all of my attempts. 

I vividly remembered my feelings then. I was apprehensive and a bit giddy, trembling, like the stem of a sunflower looking for its light on a lazy windy afternoon. I was back on my hey days as a teenager experiencing the infamous infatuation phase of her life. It was dying and living at the same time, feeling the warmth of the first rays of sun on a summer. It was being engulfed in flames of an unknown cosmic belt. It was strange…it was beautiful. 

“I assumed you have your rational basis for spending the beginning of spring in this little restaurant with a good serving of porridge”, he said with a distinct accent.

It took me a few seconds to answer back. “None at all,” I replied. 

He smirked. “Mind if I sit here?” he asked. 

“No.”

“So maybe I can also assume that you have your rational basis for spending the beginning of spring in this little restaurant?” I asked him, sarcastically.

“One can always assume anything. It’s inevitable. Same way as the acts of any gods.” He told me, dreamingly. He looked outside the window.

I didn’t know what to say. 

Silence….deeper form of silence.

I gave up. I grabbed my spoon and started on my porridge, not minding the presence of a strange man in front of me. The clanking sound of utensils felt like an escape in that muted labyrinth of awkwardness. The porridge was a fluid sign of guidance. I was surprised it was tastier than ever. 

“No really, I just happened to see this sweet looking restaurant. And well, it just happened that I enter.” Then he went off. I was stunned. That was too sudden. 

Hajime, his writings I found on a table napkin.

That was what really happened on that moment…casual but deep like a walk on the cold sand by dawn; simple yet leaving a mark. Something was clearly awakened inside of me. Then and there, I knew I wanted everything so bad; the spring, the chilling coldness that run deep inside my parka, the porridge, that and of different kinds…him.

And just like that and with every early morning that followed, I walked the five minute walk to Atsuko-san’s. I will wear different parkas, eating porridge on that exact same corner table like yesterday and the next yesterdays. 

And him, he was always there with his different shades of coat and then I, I would wait, waiting and waiting until he finished staring at the vast emptiness of space between us and until he came back to his mortal senses as he pushed back his chair to go straight to me. We would talk about our parents and how far we are from home for his were in Okinawa and mine was a long plane ride away, his post graduate application to Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, my attempt of getting into Bunka and we could ask any questions from Akky to Tokyo places we wanted to see together until every early waking morning turned into lateness, grey sky into a bright shot of noon, and as we finished listening to the entire Bruce Springsteen song collection of Atsuko-san’s husband. By then we can go so that we can see each other again on a different place and of different time.

Hajime and I will meet. Night or day, in an atmosphere of different blurriness and proportions, we always came. In places like Shimokitazawa, in its numerous café and music outlets where we discussed adolescent funk, pathos, and Bob Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde, we sang different rhythms and notes of moonlit conceptions. 

But sooner or later one of us must know. But you just doing what you’re supposed to do. Sooner or later one of us must know that I really did try to get close to you.

And in Akihabara, the field of autumn leaves, we satisfy our dozen kinds of hunger for anime and retro video games. Our favorite characters may have changed overtime but not us. We were, then, still under the emotional blinding lights of the city and the rhythmic humming sound of train tracks at Suehirocho Station not minding the fleetingness of life. 

Whatever the season was or whatever time of the day, we never failed. In Tokyo’s modern day vibe with its resonance for old infinite sadness, we silently laughed. Certainly, this was true the night we went to the top of Tokyo Metropolitan Building. One can see the narrow and crowded streets down under. We both hide our smiles. Nevertheless, I knew then we can see in our minds the little strange movement of our lips. 

“It can’t be helped”, I heard Hajime occasionally say. 

I should have attempted to clasp his hand. With the biting bitterness of a low temperature, it was rationally acceptable to do. I didn’t. I, instead, put my cold hands inside the secret pockets of my faux fur vest. It was warm. It reminded me of our home on the tropics and on the country side. I looked at Hajime, his face white with luminous streak of neon lights. 

“The coldness, trapping you in an infinite nostalgia.” he murmured as he put his arm around my shoulders.

“There can be comfort in that kind of infinity.”  I answered, my gaze starting to lose focus.

I don’t know if it was because of that biting coldness and unbearable comfort or a certain imaginable 1920’s jazz musical ensembles that came playing inside my head or a magical potion slipped onto the porridge we ate at a nearby street stand before going to the top of that building or the cheap sake we quickly finished in a few number of gulps as we decided to go home that we end up at my apartment, standing on a reluctant screaming ground near the big white windows, taking off each other clothes, listening to our almost invisible fast breathing. 

It might be love or the simple iconic desirable lust but it was warm and he was glowing and me, I was bleeding and I was succumbing to the pain. 

Sigh. I closed my eyes. I reached for him. 

And in the middle of frost with a wafting fragrance of freedom, on a place of non-conformism surrounded by oftentimes gray, dull, and oddly inspired buildings of Post-War Japan, beside this man, I seek out for a specific type of persisting familiarity. None, but I told myself, this might be strange but this may be home.

I opened my eyes on an aching light from the sun. I can hear the laughter of children on play, their voices echoed as their feet formed the sweetest thud on a patched wet pavements. From where I was lying and with my body feeling sore, I can imagine their hands like wings of birds on flight. I loved it when they do that…and I loved to think that so was Hajime. 

Hajime.

He was not there. He was not anywhere. He was nowhere to be found. 

There was no sign, nothing just plain nothing like a certain secret someone told to the swinging bamboo portrayed in a certain story, gone with every whoosh of wind. And I was hearing George W. Bush then. You’re chasing a moment. You’re chasing a poof of air. 

There was only me and the pile of my clothes and the big white windows and the expected silent sound of lunacy I was hoping not to hear.  

And just like that and with every early morning that followed, I walked the five minute walk to Atsuko-san’s, I wore my parkas and I ate different porridge on the same corner table like yesterday and the next yesterdays hoping for that distinct magical scene when I will find him and he will find me.

But he was never there nor his different shades of coat but I wait and I waited and waited until every light entering the glass window forming shadows to its old wooden frame were put to sleep, until every part of my body died from numbness of infinite longing, and until Bruce Springsteen grew tired of singing as he was replaced by John Lennon and as Cobain took Lennon’s place. 

I waited. I gave up and so was I think.

…

A couple of weeks ago before I came back home, I went to this place in Koto-ku, at an art gallery to see Hiroshige Fukuhara’s pencil, black gesso creation Through a Break in the Clouds of Night. 

I know then, that if someone was brave and patient enough to stop and stare at my humanness, I was a picture of sophisticated radiating lightness. My auburn bobbed hair reflecting the great promises of days, my face which was matte finished, showing no sign of undiscovered necessary haste. The color and softness of my Miu Miu duffel coat was that of the cherry blossoms falling and letting go, embracing the thin layer of my ‘thrifted’ short spring dress. The commanding sound of my floral print high heel platform shoes on the ceramic tile flooring of the gallery’s sixth floor hallway sent  a thrilling yet soulful sound to anyone’s ears as I walked. 

I was a few stretches away from Fukuhara’s exhibit when I caught sight of an undreamt sense of prosaic apprehension. I saw me or someone like me painted on a medium sized canvas. Head up, face a bit confused, a bowl in front of her. There wasn’t much to comprehend. It was just one hell of a portrait, I strongly persuade myself but I know it wasn’t just a portrait and it wasn’t hell of a one; there were lots and there were lots of whom I believe was me. And in that moment, I was drawn paradoxically to an unknown place. I faltered, I gave in and there he was…and there was she.  

“A Strange Tale of Porridge and Parka, the exhibit my dear.” said an old woman, her face a mirror of memorial time. 

“Is he the artist?” I asked, innocently. 

“Yes.” she answered back, smiling, her eyes bright.

And her?

She is his wife. 

…

PS: For K. Tan, for us entering and devouring the never mundane universe of art and of our so-called lovers, and for our aggressive dreaming and not so falsely guts of giving all for an attempt at Tokyo U.