Departures

It’s been a marathon work week, and I depart Tokyo with aching hands, tired eyes, and a formidable to-do list that should keep me burning the midnight oil well into April… A lot happened over six days of non-stop meetings, and processing all that stimuli and all those conversations is going to take some time. It’s a little disappointing that my first visit to Japan was almost entirely spent in a conference room, but that’s the nature of business travel, and although I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to get out, I still soaked up a lot. The uniqueness of Japanese culture is too pervasive to escape, even if you’re spending all your time with gaijin. Still, it’s a bit disheartening to be in a place you’ve dreamed about for years, without the time or energy to explore it. But I suppose the temples and tourist traps and gadget fairs and cosplay gals are not going anywhere anytime soon, so I’ll just have to check them out the next time I come through...

In truth, I was unprepared for this week. There was a lot more work than usual this quarter, and after four months in laid-back Chiang Mai, the wake-up calls each morning got harder and harder to answer. The unexpected snow mid-week also made me realize how spoiled I’ve become by Thailand’s year-round sun. 3 inches of freezing slushy white snow coming down from the sky did a number on me, and choosing to walk to work that day without adequate layers left me hurting. It's rather passe to complain about the weather, and I try not to do it often, because honestly, who wants to hear it? And I’m not some poorly constituted wanker incapable of dealing with cold weather; I lived in Chicago for a dozen years and loved every minute of it. It's just that winter transforms my skin into something loud and ugly and painful. What's smooth and brown at its best suddenly turns leathery, red, scratchy, and rough like sandpaper, as if all the water has evaporated from my pores, leaving them parched and yearning for sunshine. When it happens, as I bundle myself deeper into my coat, I find myself hearing a deep voice from the ancestral memory that rises up from my subconscious and says, “hey dumbass, your blood’s not from around here. Go someplace warmer and eat some fried fish.”

Sigh... So I leave Tokyo with that voice still echoing through my head. As I get older I'm acutely aware of the fact that it's getting harder to adapt to new places, and harder to learn new languages. The people here are more reserved than in the other parts of Asia I've spent time in, and it was hard to connect with anyone on a personal level. That's becoming quite normal for these trips, though. I write not to capture the human connections and friendships that I've built, but to gather my impressions, so that I can revisit them once I make it back here, to remember what I felt the first time around. Because it's getting harder to remember... With that in mind, let me leave you with this poignant passage from the book Nicolas Menat gave to all of the delegates in our welcome pack. This is in the first few pages, and summarizes succinctly one of the reasons why so many of us write, even if it is of little use to anyone but ourselves... It's a compulsion... We fear the erosion of our experience...

 

“The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute-like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand-ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery…returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. “Wake up,” it says. “I’m still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I’m still here.” The kicking never hurts me. There’s no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. At the Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is why I’m writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Haruki Murakami – the opening pages of Norwegian Wood