Chatwin and Bucky
“I saw Bruce at the bar over there.”
He pointed out of the window.
“He was on his way to the USA from China, but he stopped off in Japan. He was extremely knowledgeable about history and geography, and he liked Sake. I remember he was into Russia at the time. Why did he go to Patagonia? You might know this but Bruce knew a lot about Japanese Haiku. He read ‘‘The rode to north’’ by Basho and thought that if Basho went to the North, he should go to the South. He had another reason that makes sense to me. A long time ago, his grandmother kept a piece of skin of the animal which resides in Patagonia. He kept this story in him all his life, so he wanted to see that animal.
After we had left the bar and were waiting for the last train, Bruce asked me what I do. I said that I am a researcher of regional studies and working on Buckminster Fuller. I added that I had translated Fuller’s book. Then he said,
‘‘Oh, Bucky. I know him very well.’’
The train came at that moment and he hopped into the carriage.
‘‘I have a lot of things that I want to say about him.’’
Before he finished his phrase, the door closed.
A few days later, I heard about his death. Even now I still think about what Bruce wanted to say about Bucky. I am so curious about his last phrase that Bruce is always alive in me.”
Strawberry kidnapper
The door of the bar was designed to slide so as not to jut into the narrow street and hinder passage. The bar was as compact as a tea ceremony room.
A fat bartender welcomed us. The whole space was like folding furniture with six seats. The kitchen was slightly wider than the bartender’s waist.
On the table, there were strawberries in a glass. They held a strong presence like burning red flowers in the dark forest. ‘What shall I serve?’, the bartender asked.
I mentioned about the burning red strawberry. He sent a gentle look to them and suggested making a cocktail with them. He carefully took two strawberries, removed the leaves and cut them into pieces. With his presence, everything in the kitchen looked small, within his hands, the glorious strawberries looked even smaller. He poured all the different secrets into the juicer with strawberries, and switched it on. The chunks jumped and turned into translucent liquid of a flattering rosy face. Then he poured the rosy liquid and Champagne into a tall glass. Fine bubbles slightly whitened the colour.
With one sip, the bubble and scent of the strawberry blew up in the mouth like a balloon. As I was moved by the rapture of the strawberry transformation, he walked out of the kitchen and opened the hidden shelf behind me. There, he took one flat box with shining strawberries lining each other like ruby. He added them to the glass and placed it in the table so that it looked like a flower again.
Next moment, the door violently opened, and two men came in. As soon as they saw the strawberries on the table, they ate them in two bites. Then said, ‘give us a beer’.
Kiss with beak
Like a work of Origami, the grilled sparrow looked very flat and small. Legs and feathers are folded tight. Somehow, it looked symmetrical as it was pierced by a bamboo stick in the centre. It was so flat and brown with soy sauce on the green rectangle plate that it reminded me of a shadow play puppet.
It was a specialty of that yakitori restaurant but I almost missed it from the menu. Maybe I unintentionally avoided eating the participant of every morning scenery; the sparrows on the roof.
I held the stick and started with a first bite from the leg. The bone was helplessly thin so it was crispy enough to crunch and swallow, like a small fish. The shadowy sparrow began to disappear from the bottom.
Then the head remained. The head was small like an almond and the beak was triangle and sharp like a rose thorn. It was pointing to a certain direction like an index but did not know where it meant. The tiny round head was quietly swinging in the plate. There, the sparrow was present.
‘I cannot leave this here’, I thought. I kissed the beak, bit it and mashed into pieces. The triangle was duplicated in a small scale in my mouth. Then the round head came into my mouth. It was so round that it momentarily danced into my mouth. However, as it hit the teeth, it exploded. Next moment, the darkness spread into my mouth just as sparrow flew out in the midst of night. The night was so deep that I could not even see the shadow of sparrow flying. Now that the presence of sparrow spread in my stomach, I saw the darkness of space rather than the darkness of night.
Soil and bubble
It was a cold day. It did not snow, but everything was frosted in the chestnut forest. Underground, the soil was warm, as warm as human body temperature. It contained liquid and was drifting like the waters of deep sea.
A man was driving a tractor towards the chestnut forest. Driving the tractor was just like caressing the ground. As he drove, he tried to remember the bump of existing earth. It was turning into dusk, and the man slowly stopped the tractor in the forest. He took his hands away from the wheel and lay down with his eyes closed.
As night came, the climate underground began to change. From the surface, amber liquid came out. You would not hear the sound of the movement but you will see liquid climb up the trees. It was like the flow of tree sap upside down. As the liquid touched the air, it puffed and turned into a yellowish bubble. The bubble was warm as it brought the temperature of the soil. It looked as if it was breathing.
Now the liquid ascended along the big wheel of tractor and aspired toward the darkness of night. It repeated the action of climbing, puffing and setting and covered, or ate away, the tractor. The driver was still there. The amber liquid went into his ear and nose, and it slowly penetrated into his body. He slept even more comfortably with the warmth and softness of the bubble. Eventually, not only his body, but that entire part of the chestnut forest was covered by yellowish bubble. In this way, the inversion of the ground and underground began. The underground become the ground for the new world to be built on.
Coil up mountain
The sleeping bag was perfect. It completely covered me. I made sure that I covered my face before I dived into sleep in a tent in a winter forest on a freezing cold night. The group of people lay inside next to each other in order to keep warm. All of them were covered in a sleeping bag. As they fell asleep the sleeping bag turned into cocoon. I felt the breath of the next one through the web. I heard the air come in and out. The people did not make any single motion. They were like a dead animal. It felt like a relief, to be in a cocoon tightened by its own web of silk. The limited space made me feel even more comfortable. Inside the tent was very dark, and I could see nothing. I felt the thread of the cocoon started to tighten. Then I fell asleep.
As the day broke, I noticed the colour around me, although my eyes were closed. Next moment, I realized that the cocoon had completely disappeared. The colour was blue. It was the blue plastic of the tent.
I opened the zippers. The tent was covered with several layers, so the zip zip sound of the zipper yelled for a while. When the entrance opened, I stepped out and heard the frost break under my feet. It was a very fine day. The sky was so bright that it was hard to keep opening my eyes. I saw a mass beside the tent. It was an accumulation of rope. The rope was as thick as my waist. It was so big that it looked like a living creature, and it was coiling up to the sky. I walked near to it. I pushed it but it did not move. The frost melted and the ground was very mud by this time.
Ship on the air
‘I used to work on that construction site.’
The taxi driver pointed out the direction with his chin.
‘That was exactly where I worked before.’
It seemed to be under the construction site beside the road in the mountain. On the other side of the road was a green cliff. There was no one working there except that the sun was busy lightening up the dry golden soil of bare ground. Plastic red tricorn signs were placed around the empty space and gave an alienating contrast to the landscape.
The car went along the winding narrow road, which was made by chipping off the mountain surface. The village was vanished, far back. The same scenery continued. One side of the car is mountain surface and the other side is cliff. Below the cliff was a total green hole and over there was shadowy mountains. The hole looked like a natural coliseum and the centre stage was a rice field. The green of the mountain spread its arm and held the entire forest in its generous hole. The tree breathes. The rice field swings.
The driver chose the word carefully when he talked. His words occasionally contained the local dialect with a strong accent.
‘I was working there. One day, after having a lunch, I decided to take a nap on the site.’
The car was just about to go near the under construction site. It slightly dropped the speed.
‘I woke up from the nap and I saw the mountain over the road. It was a very fine day. I could see the lines of the mountains very clearly.’
He talked very slowly.
‘Next moment, I saw a tiny ship going between two mountains. I wondered what it was. I kept seeing it. The ship went slowly from one side of the mountain to the other side.’
I looked out of the window of the taxi. The mountains were covered by frosty clouds covered by the vivid orange powder of sunset.
The taxi driver continued. He talked about the humble miracle of his life, as quietly as he talked about his everyday breakfast.
‘It was the ship floating on the ocean. As it was such a fine day and the air was extremely clear, I saw the horizon between the mountains. You know, from here, the ocean is far from land.’
The hovering image of the ship in the air was clearly burned in the memory of taxi driver.
Midnight triangle
If you want to test your balance, go to the midnight triangle. You sit on the round chair and the tiny table is constantly swinging in both sides. It’s good to camp on the hilly asphalt. With a sip of beer, you feel the nice drift of the balancing chair and table. Dance as you listen to the music which howls in yourself.
The midnight triangle is found in the dense city. There, the street is fabricated in full-speed and with a force beyond imagination. Asphalts are uneven and rough, which creates a wild landscape. Feel the bumps when you walk. The straight lines of streets go in every direction, south to north, west to east, here and there and up and down. Lines stretch out in layers of grid and it cuts the midnight city into pieces. All the activity eventually creates millions of fragments of triangles left in the ground.
You see the stream. The stream of red light with the empty sign. Taxis line in the street and move in one direction at walking speed. Red light and rear white lights are the only regulation of the light in this space. The stems of buildings line up along the street edge and each of them emits an irregular pattern of neon light in every direction. The conflict of the lights generates a sound of silence.
Beside the chair and table is the triangle Chinese diner ‘LEE’. A man cooks here at the acute angle. People eat outside. Once you order the soup, you have to be responsible not to slop it in tilted table. However, if you stare at the bowl of soup, you can be momentarily liberated from the unbalanced landscapes. Liquid shows the only trustworthy level in this place.
You eat in the gap of buildings surrounded by the stream of taxi red light and wild hill of asphalt. Then, listen carefully. You hear the echo. The sound of folk hitting the plastic plate when you serve the triangle dumpling. No one in this city will listen to it.
Be careful not to be brutally cut your fresh into pieces. The acute edge of lines goes and cuts the city without break.
Kitchen runner runs with sorrow
At the far end of long kitchen, there was a small square of sunlight. A woman was running in the kitchen, from the stove for Tempura and into the square sunlight. She left the pan cooking the fish, opened the fridge and closed it, then went down to fetch a bottle of Sake and came back all the way to check the pans on the stove. She was wearing basketball shoes, good enough for a decent athlete.
We sat at a table for four. There was a TV above it. We had watched the marathon by the time the woman came to our table to ask for our order. We knew that she cannot stop just like that. She was constantly talking about something. It was obvious that she just wanted to let all her physical parts be put in motion.
‘Have you decided then?”
She asked, and before listening to our answer, she added.
“Sashimi is not good today. People just order Sashimi without thinking but it is not always good, you know. When it is not good, then don’t think about it and order a cooked one.’
Not many people were aware that the fish market is closed on a weekend and there is no fresh fish.
So we ordered one cooked alfonsino and two mackerels. The woman agreed. She repeated the orders three times and each time, she made mistakes.
“Don’t mention many fish names, it’s confusing.”
Five seconds later, she apologized for her being in a bad temper that day.
She went back to the kitchen and started running again. It seemed that she ran without necessity. She ran with chopsticks, small dishes, ladle, and radish, orange, eggs, and then with sorrow. The sorrow was salty. It seasoned cooked mackerels with miso sauce in shining translucent brown colour and added a tint of bitterness of weekend.
Lunatic tables
As I put in a 100 yen coin, I heard the white plastic balls pour into the bottom of the table. I pushed one ball to the slot, pulled the bar and hit it. Then the white ball came out and went by depicting a moderate arc, dancing as it fell down between the pins and was eaten in the black hole. Unlike the cunningly shining Pachinko ball, this white ball was big and solid like a moon.
Behind the Tsutenkaku, the artificially gothic tower of Osaka taste, whose architecture with gadgets in its facade is famous, there is a space with a horizontal view. Tables are placed in many rows but only four people were seated at the table. The only person standing in the space was an old miss who takes care of the boxes of prizes which obviously are boxes of snacks.
If Pachinko exists to let people stay alone in the midst of roar of glistening balls, density and oppression caused by the machines standing like a loud wall, then this white pinball machine lets people sit together to see what the neighbors are up to.
Next to me was a young man. He was hitting the ball without stopping. As the white ball was drained in the hole with the number 15, then another 15 balls emerged from the top. The sound of splash and fall continued like a loop. ‘Don’t stop’, the man said without seeing me. How festive, I thought. The fall of the white ball is now like a howl with joy. The sound gets louder and the speed goes up, my sight is completely overwhelmed by the view of the rectangle table. In the moment, one white ball jumped out of the table and bounced on the floor. It went along the channel of floor and fell into the drain of the street. It fell down down down through the bottom of the ground and the next day, it became the moon in Brazil.
Blackness of blue
A road went through in the middle of the island. Most of the island was covered by grass without any presence of human beings, except that the height of the grass was that of a fully-grown man.
The road divided the grass field into two. I walked, and as I walked, I knew that I didn’t intend to. I was directed by someone. The further I went, the more strongly I was directed. I stood in the middle of the island and felt the wind. I was completely buried in the grass. I could not believe that the journey would end.
Suddenly, the road slightly curved, and I could feel the wind with plenty of sea water. Now the white of the ground started to contain the black of the rock and I stepped on the black scar. Beyond the black scar was a sky. Bright blue.
Near the edge of the cliff, one old woman was kneeling down facing the blue of the sky. Her white hair was swinging with the salty wind. She was surrounded by grey smoke from black incense sticks. The sticks were long like sticks. She held a dozen of them like a fan. The wide fan dispersed the wide smoke and the wind brought scent of herbs. I heard her chanting. She stood up and dropped one of incense sticks over the cliff. I went beside her and looked down. The sea water was far down, and it was aqua blue with drips of black. I instantly made out what the black was. It was the incense stick that transformed into a black manta, which waved and swam down and up like a black ink. The manta for a moment swam around. Then it dived down to the jet-black deep sea without sunlight.
Published in TANK Magazine, issue 50, Summer 2010.