yesterday

in kimono at meiji jingu
[gallery]

I'm tired and burnt both inside and out. When you left, I cried all the way back from Shinjuku station and pitied you the hour-and-twenty minute train ride to Narita. Of course, as I said when my eyes were dry and I felt stronger, there really is no use crying about it as it couldn't be helped nor is it really sad. We both have things we need to finish in our own places. This is where I live now, if just for the next four months.

Tokyo has changed me... and yet over the last twenty-four days it has changed for me. By opening the door to the outside world again, you created for me a sense of normalcy here I could not have otherwise imagined. And by exploring this country together-- a place so small and yet so different even just miles from this metropolitan center-- you have helped me understand (as best I can, given the fleeting time we had) the place I live.

We dove together the (frigid) tropical Okinawan seas. We watched the falling Hokkaido snow from the window of a night train and over the lantern-lit Otaru canal. We saw Tokyo from the outside across the bay in an Odaiba date spot. We slept side by side for twenty-three nights.

Yes, we were tentative and fearful. We each bore our own burdens through the roles of guide and guided on this journey. We fought. We sulked. I bit out at you from time and broke down in my own nervous exhaustion. Even in the short time we had together, I managed to take you for granted. But you opened me slowly, like a flower.

I found that though I have changed in the last five months, I still carry the exact problems and indecisions I had before I came here. They have not left me, but probably only because I keep them because I think I need them to survive. Though I said so on Wednesday, this does not make me a failure. You are right that I have grown stronger. You are also right that I should learn to see the good in things that I do and in where I have been.

We are not perfect. Nor should we be. If I at times find fault in us, it is not because we are failing but because we are human and because we are each our own. Even if you "need" me more than I "need" you, we still need each other.

After you left today, I bought myself two strands of orchid at the Odakyu Florist. I walked upstairs to the crossing and put a five-yen coin in the copper cup of the monk(*) who always stands somewhere beneath the eaves of the West Exit. I was crying. (Did he see?) I stood at the crossing and waited for the light to turn. Next to me, a little girl tugged on the hand of her mother and her father rocked the stroller where her sibling slept. Though tears were pouring down my face, no one paid me any mind. Not like yesterday. I thought, I am back to where I started. But something had changed.

Listen. I stood there, invisible in a city of millions, swept back into my singular, solitary, outsider status. But for once I didn't long to stand out, Super-Star. I didn't want another "day extraordinary" hiking to waterfalls or watching fireworks from onsen. I wanted the life of that family; just a quiet togetherness with someone who gives the balance that I am otherwise without.

You.

I have shrouded myself in illusions. I have played the victim to a game that I myself instituted. I have made you the whipping boy for affections that I accepted. I have always kept one foot in the door-- and I have done so for four years. Why? Perhaps so I could come here and find a way out if I wanted it. Perhaps so I could play both sides of the field. But there are no sides and there is no field. There are just ordinary people leading ordinary lives and striving to make something wonderful.

Thank you for making something wonderful with me.

I know you can't turn around and come back. I know (maybe hope?) we will probably never ride the Oedo line to Ueno just to miss the last train to Asakusa. I know (maybe hope...) we won't have to eat many more pickles for breakfast in our lives. But that's OK. I don't need you to turn around and come back. For the time being, I carry you with me. Right now I can look at your picture just beyond this computer and clearly recall the way you smell, taste and feel. With time, that feeling will fade... but that doesn't make me fearful. If you wait a little longer, I'll turn around and come back to you.

I promise.

(*) Or maybe he's not a monk... but it doesn't really matter because when I see him (as I have hundreds of times since that first photo I took of him in Shinjuku), I feel the same strange connection.