SWHYB 1.1: Whirling thoughts

I was taken aback when the secretary of the physics department said that a Mr. Yamasaki from Japan has left a message for me. It was a cold December afternoon in T., too cold to let myself slip into the nostalgic palace of molded memories. I had left Japan roughly seventeen years ago and after a couple of years of occasionally forwarded mail and phone calls, mostly over silly unfinished business, the connection between me and Tokyo had, finally, come to a standstill.

Thinking about it, I recalled the name of a Mr. Yamasaki, who was given the task of picking me up when I first arrived in Narita airport but besides exchanging some pleasantries on our way towards the city of Funabashi, I had never talked to him again. In my five years of stay in Japan, that is. So, it had to be a different Yamasaki.

Ms. Sunshine had neatly written his contact information on a piece of paper, which she passed over to me, while pointing out, in her ever so charming ways, that she had just made fresh coffee. I held my eyes for a second too long on her cute, brownish complex, face and thanked her. I got her out of my mind as soon as I was out of her door. We are far more likely to be susceptible to outer suggestions and marketing traps, when we are not focused, not paying attention. That much I knew.

I walked down the stairs to the math department. Bunch of students were waiting for me already.

 

 

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“December”, I thought, sharing a partial view of the right plane wing among clouds. If I had to pick one thing that I liked about central Japan, it was the winter. Not too cold and without snow, it appeared like an extended autumn. Many decades ago, when I was a mere school boy, waiting at a bus station, an old woman, with very wrinkly hands, had approached me.

“You are an autumn soul my boy”, she said, grabbing my check playfully, the way a grandma would do, and giving me a couple euros, to buy something sweet for myself, as she put it. “An autumn soul”, I had repeated, “neat”.

Only, it wasn’t. It contains a lot of pain. But, as someone, far more intelligent than me had said one, there are two types of pains in this world. One that hurts, and one that alters. An autumn soul, as I was soon to discover, was forever fueled by pains that alter. How much altering would happen, though, was directly proportional to the amount of autumn inside us.

These thoughts passed on my mind, as our plane was hovering over Finland, ready to leave Europe behind, for an older world. I stood and walked towards the toilets. Both were locked and waiting, unconsciously, I had put my forehead on one of the inner walls of the airplane, that divided the passengers’ section from the back, where food was stored, and the fly attendee like to sit and gossip.

Instantly, I started having some visions. Faces. A picture of them. High school. The picture on my brain was flickering with tension, jumping between existence and non-existence. Then, it was replaced by a herd of swallows dancing at dusk, flying in circular paths.

And then, once more, but this time, separated from the rest, one face, a smiling one, reappeared. It was S., my high school sweetheart, with whom I was once engaged to be married. Things had gone south and we had parted ways, but she had nevertheless occupied a key role in my life process.

Just, as she had disappeared, that late June evening, she disappeared from my vision, replaced by a peaceful dawn. And I could have sworn that, just like that evening, she had left behind her flagrance, in the air.

“O genki desu ka?”, someone asked. “Genki desu, demo choto tsukarete imasu”, I answered. The women seemed to be caught in a surprise, not quite knowing what to do with this strange looking white guy answering with fairy competent Japanese. We chatted a bit more, and as the two toilets opened up almost simultaneously, I got on the one on my right and she occupied the other one. Just a few hours ago I was watching Avatar at a cinema in Germany and now I was heading for Japan. The reality of it, just hit me as I splashed some water on my face and went back to my seat, putting on my headphones. Lana’s Tomorrow Never Came, was playing. I checked again. It was December, 2009./*54745756836*/