The sun shining behind the trees at Taburazaka.
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Friday, July 23, 2004
Monday, July 19, 2004
Isn't it Unfortunate, Don't You Think?
If you are a young twenty-something who has just lost the chip on his shoulder, the first two things that may pop to mind when asked to remember the mid-1990s are angst and thick flannel shirts. Musically speaking, it was an age marked by Dr. Marten's and Seattle garage bands, lyrics littered with excess-fuelled faux depression and bad poetry. Or perhaps you were a victim to the incessant whining of Britpop melodies and clean guitar riffs peppered with prozac. The 1990s was the decade angst became a consumer commodity.
Slowly, as the years went by, like a creeping spider on a heroin-stained wall, we began to see a lot of the accumulated pessimism switch sides on the gender scale. Coupling with a hateful breed of 'girl power’ mentality, it would later spiral catastrophically to create an angry slew of self-righteous femiangst singers. It wasn’t long until we were surrounded by an entourage of fair maidens strumming to 'outrageous' and 'honest' lyrics, all of them charged with the spite of ten thousand scorned Medeas.
Between these women, the name Alanis Morrisette springs up faster than a psychiatrist's recliner. Her tawdry ballads of unlove hit a nerve with the millions of teenage girls who, up to that point, had not found a proper outlet for their crushed dreams of romantic crash and burn. What is more, it is thanks to Alanis that a whole generation of young people do not understand the real meaning of the word "ironic", as wrongly evoked in her catchy yet most unfortunate song of the same name.
You might be wondering where I’m going with all this. You see, be it irony, opposition of terms or just sheer bad luck, I cannot help but imagine the recent events in my life would make perfect fodder for an Alanis Morrisette song. I fell off the stairs at work and, well, you can imagine. A big cast, a swollen left foot, ruined holidays, the whole caboodle ensued. Not only that, but the cruel Morrisette-branded irony resides in that the fracture was a product of my own attempts to watch out for my right foot, which had been stupidly stung by a mukade centipede the day before. So, on Friday I was confronted with two sadistic choices of movement: either on a painful, swollen black foot or on an itchy, swollen red foot. The tragicomedy was priceless. A bit like your local priest telling you that Jesus actually hates you.
Fortunately my itchy foot has almost returned to its normal dainty size by now, after a weekend of bouncing up and down on crutches and riding the occasional wheelchair. And since my other foot is broken, the company has lent me the company car to use whenever I want. How could I let such an opportunity pass?
A new world of unseen vistas waits out there. Besides, no matter how remote, how backward or how desolate an area might seem in Japan, there are always hidden things to amaze and confuse the unwary, usually taking the form of a temple here, some ruins there, or a Pachinko parlour a bit further up the road. The possibilities are endless.
The Japanese countryside –what is left of it, at least- is daubed with a distinctive kind of beauty. The rolling landscape of the Aso range looms impassive under picture-perfect clouds, their moving shadows cast on brightly coloured mountainsides. It is then when Japan shapeshifts into a beautiful Irish meadow, conjuring deep green from every corner. Moments later the illusion is replaced by that of a lush Patagonian island, its low hills marred by forests and wind. A glimpse of England. The shade of towering cornstalks and scarcely placed buildings become a suburban desert in the North American south. If you look closely enough, myriad destinies lurk beneath the verdant hinterland of Japan.
But the nostalgia only lasts for a second. If you look closely again, you begin thinking that Irish hills are lower and that the light here is too intense. You remember the grave hues of Patagonia are different, deeper, not as bright. The English prairies vanish. In between the cornstalks you start wondering how narrow and winding the roads are, how well marked everything is -and all in Japanese, too.
The truth is that American, Irish, English, Chilean or whatnot, there is always something else flickering, candlelike, in the background. It is the rural chaos amidst urban order. It is the cruel savagery of intensely apologetic drivers. It is a rain cloud in the shape of an Ukiyoe girl, or an inviting but impenetrable bamboo forest. A landscape so alienating and contradictory, yet so alluring at the same time.
And here I am, faced by contradictions of my own. I finally have a car to go wherever I want, yet I cannot go. I am forced to stare passively from the other side of the windshield, my faithful crutches keeping me company on the passenger's seat. The scenery winks coquettishly, luring me in like a hungry Siren whose appetite lasts only until the end of the road; soon after, the landscape becomes a zealous guard who straightens an arm and rudely orders me to halt. I cannot tread on the woodland beyond, and I cannot climb the inviting rocks behind the trees. I can never know the inner secrets of the forest. Tachiiri kinshi. "How Japanese," I cackle to myself with resignation.
But life goes on, and the landscape soon forgets that someday I will walk again. Only then, just when its doors have been opened, the mountains will remain stoical, unreachable in the background, calling from afar like a damsel in distress, ready to offer her voluptuous graces as a prize. Alanis Morrisette would definitely call it ironic. I just call it unfortunate.
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