-Capsule One: Strangers -

This really happened. I say this remembering that walls between fiction and fact are never as clear as we'd like them to be. In fact, more than most people, Beni (who is my co-star in this book) was fictional. He had lived a life that was of his own design.

We were both were facing big decisions when we met. Mine was whether or not to stick with my fiancé. His was whether or not to stick with the life he’d built for himself in Japan. Big decisions really require you to ask fundamental questions about yourself. Decisions that will define you for years are best made after scrupulously exploring who you are.

This book contains our wide - ranging scrutiny of identities. This final tally that will hopefully reveal, who we are and what we must do.

Fiction is always breathing down your throat when you are traveling. You can tell a stranger that you are a gardener or an international gold broker. Your story is as convincing as you make it. Traveling is always as much about unchartered identity exploration as it is about unchartered terrain. Distance makes a free-zone possible, where you can try on different masks.

In reality one does have a life history. But that too is a montage. Which parts do you emphasize when introducing yourself? How deeply do you go into your secrets? Every time a traveler speaks, she or he is subtly conscious of the fact that they might not be believed.

Traveling also facilitates the most perfect honesty possible. Telling strangers of your deviancy and regrets, is often easier than telling intimates (or those who might know the intimates).

That is why I can let you read this book and trust your feedback. It would be disastrous if my fiancé found out about the contents of this paper. Drugs and worse! Similarly, Beni will only get an edited version of this book in order to not hurt his feelings. [Note to self: Erase the previous line after finishing Beni version]. We will never meet.

Both of us were painfully aware that deciding what type of life to have and person to be is fatal. Your tombstone refers to what you did do. Very often life is strikingly either/or. The path not taken isn’t.

Japan is an amazing backdrop. Being in Japan allowed me to learn about being American. It is a known irony that one can never learn of their culture from their culture. One’s ways are “what people do”. One’s understandings seem to be common sense. From the outside, however, American idiosyncrasies become stark. To be in a country so alien is to encounter parables concerning nation (and self) on nearly every block.

When people ask me where I’m from, for example, I usually avoid the word “America”. The title “America” belongs to the whole Western hemisphere. We are rude, ignorant and

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arrogant to usurp it. In Japan no one understands “The States.” Despite all politically correct discomfort, you quickly learn to understand here (more than when home) that you are from “America”.

Being American, furthermore, is an unavoidable and prominent aspect of your essence. Leftist geo-political hesitations about unfairly usurping names have a kind of generosity that is foreign here. The idea of cultures as equals is a given in our thought. Fairness for all people is what we assume all cultures want. The Japanese assume, rather, a racial nationalist competitiveness. American universalist notions don’t translate. They aren’t common sense.

Gems of realization are to be found where peoples separate.

Rappongi is the area in Tokyo where most of what I intend to convey happened. Rappongi is well known as the section of Tokyo where foreigners party. It means “six”, “oblong shaped objects”, “wood”. But translation cannot be done with a dictionary. Like lives, words without context have no meaning. Without understanding the culture, there is no way for me to appreciate the physical and emotional resonance to “six”, “oblong shaped objects”, “wood”.

Go figure.

The buildings of Rappongi sparkle and the streets are packed. It is an international bizarre. French; Nigerian: Israeli: Americans: Chinese We are all united by the fact that we are strangers in a strange land. Debauchery and sleaze are the common coin on the surface of Rappongi. Marketing and anonymity tend to exasperate the exploding demand for such things. But a need to understand each other and find community as foreigners really explains the congregation. Rappongi is very popular.

There is a lot more conversation in Rappongi than material needs would justify. Talking provides imagined connections. For the conversation to be comforting, people minimalize explorations of differences. Isolation is also reinforced by the fact that most mainly speak with people who share their heritage. Being foreign is existentially terrifying.

Beni and I felt an urgency in exploring the walls of misunderstanding and the ways in which they encircle all of us. This urgency was mostly born of our both having important decisions to make. Finding the bedrocks of our identities didn’t only have abstract relevance to our lives. We also bonded via pride in our earnestness.

I was on a long and arduous search to find a bar where I might interact with some of this international scene. I had had a lonely drink at one promising sounding bar (where I spoke with absolutely no one) and was heading to another. My “Lonely Planet” guide book said there was a bar nearby where one could meet foreigners without being overwhelmed by techno music. Having a guidebook named Lonely Planet is ingenious. It keeps people dissatisfied and searching. Anyhow, I needed the goal. Being lost, I could ask strangers if they had any idea where it was. This provided a feint hope of companionship.

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As I turned right up to go up a hill, I had the marvelous fortune to encounter my future friend Beni. Beni said he had no idea where “Bar, Isn’t it?” was, but wanted to know what I wanted there. What was to be discovered. The description appealed to him. He could go for a place where one could hear themselves think. And he was gratified to find one of his age out and about in the fun district. Most travelers tend to be younger.

Beni is half a foot taller than I and looks like a school-marm. Thin as a rail, his round wire rim spectacles made his shaven face look intelligent and upper crust. He would not be out of place on a yacht. My years wear more obviously on me. Usually adorned with a goatee, my bulk is Russian peasant with early teen years spent working out. He where’s Waldo. I am Victor Mature.

How oddly our descriptions clashed with our characters. At least in my mind. He looks suave and refined and I look like a football player. Yet, despite his image, Beni prefers sex to books. Someday I will get the, “academic most likely to be confused with a truck driver” award.

Even our knowledge bases are backwards. I’ve spent years in academia, love the study of language and yet am nearly monolingual. Beni is fluent in five languages! He has the background to have all kinds of academic examples for insights even though he’s never sought them.

Originally I suspected that Beni was gay. This suspicion came partly from his tall thin frame, polo shirt and glasses. The confirmation came from his mannerisms. He had a comfort in his own skin that was very feminine. I realize now that I was falling into the trap of confusing the femininity / masculinity scale with the gay / straight scale. But as far as first impressions go, his body type, cleanliness and high-pitched raspy voice, seemed convincing.

It didn’t take ten minutes to know that he would be an interesting person to spend time with. He had been in Japan for seven years and was rather excited. He had just landed two really good gigs. Tomorrow he was to sign a contract to work in a University. That job would get him maximum pay for minimum hours.

That he had gotten this gig and that he valued it for the freedom it would provide both impressed me.

And he shined as he told me that he was also about going to go from being hourly to salaried for his weekend work of performing wedding ceremonies. A priest! My gay suspicion grew.

“The ceremonies are only twenty minutes, and then I can go. I do this about eight times a weekend and get paid a tremendous amount. Its too easy.”

“Are you ordained?” I asked, suspecting that he was.

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“Oh no! I found a website that said that anybody should be able to be ordained. I just printed a certificate from them and no one has ever questioned the legitimacy of my credential! It’s amazing. But I really put a lot of love and good intention into every ceremony. I don’t take it lightly.”

“Are you supposed to stay afterwards though?”

“No.”

“It sounds like in India where, if you go there you’ll see groups of wandering transvestites. They survive by attending weddings. Its just considered good luck to have a transvestite at your wedding.” I wondered if my India reference would impress him.

“Exactly. Its just considered up scale to have a white guy take part in the ceremony. I just say some memorized words in Japanese. After that I’m not expected to hang out at all.” His not even mentioning having been to India as being special was impressive.

“Wow! That is great. I used to live with a gay priest. He did gay wedding ceremonies. And since not a lot of people do those, he got a lot of business.” This statement served the double purpose of conveying that I had worthwhile conversation to share and implying that I was gay. If erroneously flirting was what it took to get a friend, I wasn’t entirely above the concept.

But when he asked what I was doing in Asia, I had to burst the bubble. I was visiting my fiancé in Korea.

He, like everybody else, was amazed that I could have a relationship at such a distance. And his voice conveyed no hint of diminished enthusiasm for talking now that my sexual orientation was apparent.

“I just got married!” He volunteered.

“Well congratulations.”

“Well it was just for visa purposes. I was going to have to leave the country and a girl friend of mine helped me out. Now I can stay regardless of whether we continue to live together or not. And in four years I’ll have permanent status. I’ll be able to do everything but vote and never have to worry about my visa again.”

“Wow. That is great. You’ll be like a citizen.”

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“I’m not Japanese though.”

“But legally, for all practical purposes…”

“In terms of legal working and paperwork status. Yeah.”

“That’s great.”

“Its great and its scary. This gig is too perfect. Citizenship and easy money. It feels like it may trap me. It may have already trapped me. I don’t know if this is where I want to end up or investing more years.”

“I can totally relate to the question of whether or not I should continue to be wed to this cush job. I teach history, psychology and philosophy in a high school in L.A. It is a great job, but I’m in my 7th year and I think that life should repeat as little as possible.”

“Teaching high school is a great job?”

“Totally. Our kids are great. We’re the 5th best high school in L.A. That’s why it is so hard to leave. I don’t know that I’ll ever find another school this good that lets me teach what I want.”

“Traps.”

“Gilded.”

Beni agreed to search for “Bar, Isn’t it?” with me. If it wasn’t loud he would come in and have a drink with me.

When Beni described himself as being American, he didn’t mention the fact that he hadn’t been there since he was seventeen. At first, using your early memories and location to describe oneself, when one is older and hasn’t been home in so long seems illogical. But travelers know the depth to which their country defines them. Reiterating our earliest times makes us an known commodity (to ourselves as well as others). At any rate, it was too early for Beni to delve into his convoluted history with me. I still got the standard “American” answer.

When I am asked where I am from, in detail, I must say “Los Angeles.” This never seems to sit well with me. Am I really of that city I left for so long again? Perhaps, being back in my original city my family is in gives me the mental luxury of being able to question my

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loyalty. Beni seemed to remember his American affiliation without question. There is a certain intimacy with which memories that are never to be refreshed are held.

While we talked we walked and asked for directions. In Rappongi direction giving, is backed by the fact that behind every certainty is a hunch backed by some vague beer drowned memory. Fantastically, random people with their more right than wrong guesses about where they think your destination is can eventually get you there.

“Bar, Isn’t it?” was perfectly to our liking. No one was there. At first we thought a comedy show was about to start. But it turned out that it had just finished. The only entertainment left were two guys getting their publicity stills taken on stage.

“That,” Beni informed me, “is a common comedy formula here in Japan. There is one straight guy and one slap sticker.” (All being metaphor, I’m not sure which I am in this tale : ).

Beni’s thought made me feel like I had just received a gift. Though not very important, that was the kind of insight that you can only get from a person who is a local. Learning the nuances of cultures and mindscapes is the delicacy that I travel for. It is why I cross oceans.

Speaking of straight and comedic men. When we got drinks Beni wanted water and I had a beer. They were 500 yen each. Japan is expensive. A four dollar water. Beni paid for both of ours without comment. I said I’d get the next round. I will never be even with him.

Without my asking he reassured me that though he didn’t drink he didn’t mind at all if I did. He was in Alcoholics Anonymous. But just for alcohol and smoking. He still smoked pot occasionally.

Beni was living the life of a nomad. That resonates with me. There is a romantic nomad tradition shared by Californians in my generation. We were raised in the post-sixties dream of endless choices. We anticipated the post-modern in that there were no limits of class or culture or obligation that applied. It is made extra romantic by the fact that one so free is excruciatingly alone in that they forsake the affirming, comfortable identities that society approves. It was enlightenment in that it had unlimited possibilities. This California lifestyle and dreamin’ brings adventure.

Yet, utopia also literally means “no place”. Not having a commitment or tie to something larger than one’s day to day existence leaves one with no accumulation. Cultivation of structures (be they religion, culture, country, history or relationships) pays dividends. Cultivation of such soil is a necessary precondition of our “freedoms”. Jack Kerouac found jobs and cars waiting wherever he went. You don’t reap what you sow, but what you sow and tend. That given,

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Sartre’s idea that making your story part of another story is living in bad faith, haunts me. He who would give up his liberty for security is lost. Golden cages are still cages. Californians dream of endless varieties of freedoms never lost.

I have known many people who live a faith based life. They care not for tomorrow and have many great todays. They are comforted by Jesus’ saying that the lord will take care of us. Less theocratically, they believe that the “universe will provide” for them. And, as often as not, greater things happen in their life than they could have consciously planned. For example, fate (accepting such a concept for now) led me to Beni.

___________________________________________________________

You yourself Tomerella are a great example of this. You probably don’t have two cents to rub together. But you are living your dreams. You’re really brave. My monk friend Friar Moose would be another example. By the way, he taught me the difference between a friar and a monk. Friars are homeless. Monks take shelter in monestaries (like a pope cowering in the “Pope – mobile”). California dreams are born of a deeper spiritual faith.

__________________________________________________________

Again, after having worked for six years, doing nine months a year of full-time teaching, I am in a pivotal moment. At 39, youthful dreams of cutting loose call me. They opine one last time or never again. I tremble at the destruction of the rocks that may greet me there. The sirens of country, history, culture and community also call me. Yet keeping the course year after year is like having a book with just one repeating chapter. Working a repetitive job is the ultimate existential death for Californians of my bent. Old habits die hard.

Was Beni to be an inspiration to destruction? Perhaps he would scare me back into the cage. At any rate, the musings of one who has unequivocally chosen freedom are always more interesting than one who accepted (not chosen) the straight and narrow.

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Capsule Two: Worlds We pulled up at one of the many empty bar stools surrounding small tables that sat

separated (in order to make as many islands as possible) in the middle of the vast wood floor. We did what most men who don’t know each other do. We spoke of our work. In courtship one first talks of one’s glories, not one’s issues. In our cases, we both had extracurricular creative projects to disclose. I think we impressed each other. I know we enjoyed talking with each other.

Beni was working on something I was not to appreciate the genius of until I actually heard it. That was probably because he discussed it in terms of business and not in terms of art.

“I have a fully produced book and CD that kids can learn English with.” He said with an intense squinting that made him look slightly unstable. “It has songs and dialogues and I’m working on the work book. It alternates. First a song then a dialogue then a song…Each dialogue, song combination covers particular areas of language.

The theory is that singing is speaking. It’s all making sound. The Japanese really have trouble with this. They learn the words and grammar and then don’t take that final step and speak.”

“It’s the same in Korea.” I added. “I taught there for 9 months.”

“Really? Neat. When?”

“Seven years ago. And I remember how hard it was to get them to speak. Because of constant testing, for them, it was either wrong or right. And they were afraid to make mistakes.”

“Exactly the same thing happens here. With my songs they will hopefully enjoy the singing and characters and will disassociate the whole thing with school work. All the characters are part of the lives of kids going to a high school.

Textbooks have that school feeling to them. Plus they are never looked at once they are finished. This CD is something they will use it at home long after I’m gone. It is something that can get the Japanese to speak.

Actually the entire thing should teach itself without me. That’s the goal.”

“Wouldn’t it not needing a human kind of put you out of business?”

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“Well that hasn’t happened yet. In the past I’ve played the songs and worked hard for them. But, this year at the university, I’m going to make the students almost exclusively use my CD and book. I want to make them independent of me. If I’m really strict about their following it, I’m sure they’ll be able to learn an amazing amount and develop that sense of independence that’ll allow them to use it without me.”

I’ve been told I can be really lazy with the kids, but I’m going to be really strict. These tapes aren’t just for fun. They will have to work the system. There will be practice sheets and they will have had to have memorized passages for each class.”

“So is this totally made?”

“Its recorded and packaged. But I’m still working on the workbook. That is what I have to do as we’re working through it this semester.”

“Is it just you on guitar?” Why do I have the sadistic tendency to destroy and belittle other’s accomplishments? I hope he didn’t pick up on it.

“No. I have a whole band. There is a female vocalist, a bassist a chellist and a drummer. I hired them and rented the studio time and made this product. I’m really proud of it.”

“Wow. What a lot of effort. I’d love to hear it.” I said somewhat relieved that spiteful condescension hadn’t sabotaged our new born friendship.

“Yep! Except the workbook, the product is done. It’s in several book stores, but it isn’t selling. Not yet. The stores aren’t pushing it. I’m sure it would do better if they only would market it for me. I went to one store and it was on the bottom shelf and almost hidden.

But if I can get it selling, it could be really popular. Because you don’t need to be enrolled in a school or arrange for a teacher to use it.”

“It’s the old catch-22, that it has to be popular to sell a lot, but you have to sell a lot before it’ll be popular. It sounds like if you don’t need to be in an institution to use it, a lot of people could potentially buy it. And if it worked it could spread by word of mouth.”

“That’s the idea. I’ve put the product out there. And the Japanese need it. They are a rich country and study a lot., but they cannot speak English.” Beni added punch to the last three words. “Unless they find a different way then what they’ve been doing, they’ll never learn English as a country.”

“It could foster international understanding. If it is self-teaching, it could be a real Rosetta stone.” His face seemed to indicate that he knew about the translating stone that gave us

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the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian. “The world is supposedly moving towards English. And to the extent that people want to be linked, your CD could make it so that we could all understand each other. Who knows, it could be helpful with international understanding and stuff. It could help stop them from bombing us again!”

“Well, that’s a little lofty. Anyhow, their culture is their culture and talking at each other wouldn’t stop them from attacking us. That’s my thought.”

“Yeah, when I taught in Korea, I always felt like I was aiding the enemy.” Eesh. I hoped I hadn’t just degraded his profession. Beni looked down reflectively for a moment, heightening my anxiety.

Dejectedly, Beni mumbled. “I’ve never thought of that, thanks for being honest about how you see it.”

“I try to push things into the lofty geo-political categories.” I said defensively. “That’s just my tendency.” Without that its just another language tape. Why bother? I completed the thought internally.

“But, either way, it’s impressive.” I continued the thread aloud. “It’s conceptual. I like it.”

“My real goal,” Beni continued unabated. “is just to get my product out there and then be able to live off of it. If people were teaching themselves and these things were selling themselves I could be free and independent financially.”

“Right now it’s not selling at all?” My motives for asking this were tawdry.

“It’s selling okay in a couple of cities. Best in Nagasaki and Kobe.”

“Nagasaki. That’s shows cosmic significance. More than others, they know the value of discussion or negotiations or mutual understanding. You know what I mean.” Then I swooped back down from my perch. “How many do you sell a year there?”

“Only about twenty a year. I need to sell about 2000 a year to be self – sufficient. That would get me about $20,000 a year. At retail I can make about ten dollars a sale.”

“Two thousand is nothing when you think of the millions of school kids in this country. You’d just need to get about…. 30 schools a year to adopt it at one hundred per school. Traveling could be a part of your work as you sell them in different cities. Then you could fly as you re-did them for other countries and languages.”

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“And translate the workbook.” He added to remind me of the workload. “And rerecord songs to address the particular needs of the different countries’ problems.

If it took off I would consider doing that. Now I’m just trying to get it bought here. I’ve thought about it though. I purposely made the vocal tracks different from the other tracks for that reason.”

“An idea without marketing is like a tree in the woods. It barely exists. I guess that’s how ideas are like people. Marketing, marketing, marketing.”

“You’re totally right about marketing products anyhow!” Beni’s puzzlement showed he didn’t fully get my sense of humor yet. “This product is self-teaching and needed. But I don’t know anything about marketing. That is the thing stopping my sales and your world wide revolution of understanding.”

I’ve written a book too.” I slyly mentioned quickly enough for the statement to be

ignored. “But you’re right. The marketing and publishing thing is really hard.”

“So you’ve written on too, eh? What’s it about? Your book.”

“I kind of hesitate to say. My book is really controversial.” I really want to alienate my new friend by getting into this topic. But it was too late now. The cat was out of the bag. I was going for broke.

“It’s an environmental manifesto. But you really need a lot of background before you jump to conclusions about the conclusion though.”

“Oh I won’t. I almost promise. Tell me what it’s about.”

“Well I start it, in the preface by saying it is like an inoculation against the ideas presented. It is a poor argument for an evil idea. That way when someone who is eloquent comes along with the same evil idea, they’ll be prepared to fight against their argument.”

Nervousness always made me extend the telling about the preliminary parts of my book before I couldn’t stall any more and had to announce what the end was about.

“A disclaimer is always important before you make an argument.” Beni remarked, revealing some droll humor skills.

“Yeah. Thanks.” My flat reply acknowledged his humor. We were building some rapport. It felt good.

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“The book then goes on to talk about the origin of consciousness. Ooohh. Heady topic!. It traces the long tortuous process of how our modern mind came about. Most folks don’t know that our way of thinking is earned and cultivated, not automatic.”

“Most people haven’t spent years in other countries. It’s beyond a gap in thinking. At some point, it’s a gap in feeling, seeing, in…everything. I cannot, no foreigner can, be friends with the Japanese. All my friends are ganji’s.”

“Ganji’s?”

“People from another land. After being told you’re not part of them many times, you realize that your community must come from outsiders.”

“Wow! That’s totally fascinating to me. I normally just talk about the distance between modern minds and ancient minds. I think, maybe I’m wrong, that that is an even way huger difference. They were totally insane, sort schizophrenic like until modern times.”

“Cool. So what is the shocker you’re so cautious about?”

“Well, once I establish intelligence as special, I show that we are not the last stop in intelligence’s development. Computers and machines are getting this special characteristic too.”

“I don’t know about that. But…? Long story short, hit me with it!”

“Hold on! We also need an ethic that will guide us as neuroscience re-engineers man and destroys his sacredness. That ethic is based on the ultimate value of intelligence, computer, human or whatever.”

“Intelligence?”

“Yeah. Intelligence.” I paused as he pondered. “Okay.” I launched as to not build more resentment through excessive intro or invite

further questions. “I conclude that we need to sterilize a lot of people to allow intelligence to survive.”

As I lead up to that sentence, I nervously checked his expression for some kind of shock. But he just seemed to continue non-chalantly looking at me.

“And of course I deal with Hitler because any book like this has to. But you have to read my whole argument before you can judge it.” I added in last minute defensive haste.

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“Well, I can see why people would be shocked. Genocide is wrong! Isn’t that obvious?” He said with what I imagined was a little predictable rise in ire.

“No...”

“No. It’s not wrong!” He shrieked a little when upset.

“No. Of course genocide is wrong! My no was the start of saying, “No. It’s not genocide.” No one would be killed. And it isn’t genocide, cause I’d count on it not being perfectly efficient or used everywhere. Some people would continue to reproduce. No one would be killed at all. Killing is wrong. If for no other reason than it isn’t conducive to intelligence. It makes people panic.”

“Oh. Sorry I interrupted.”

“That’s okay. But statements, out of context can be radically misinterpreted. That’s why I like to tell everything about this book slowly. Genocide is not only wrong, it’s inefficient.”

“Inefficient.” He said with a big grin that acknowledged my irony and sense of humor. “Still, I believe in mother nature and I think that eventually water and stuff will get

scarce and disease and the greenhouse effect will cause the population levels drop. We should let nature take care of herself.”

“We can do it that way. But it’ll be really messy and we’ll have wars and no intelligent selection about who survives And who would survive, doctors or warriors? Do you want to live in a world where there is famine and tough guys rule? Intelligence can do better. We’re supposed to be conscious, not lemmings. Humans.”

“No. I guess it’s better that we interfere in potential disasters.”

“The only question is who to choose.” I continued, throwing hesitancy away. Feeling quite professorial and confident on my own ground I continued my rant. “It isn’t feasible to do sterilization person by person. So we can just blanket all the earth equally, be random about it or we can choose where to do it. And, as you probably figured out, I’m pro-choice.”

I paused as we both smiled concerning my twisting of the pro-choice phrase. He was getting my humor.

“The discussion should be around discussions of which cultures foster intelligence best.” I continued with a seriousness that conveyed that the joking was over. “Which preserves the

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best of humanity sustainably. That’s much better than just blindly overpopulating ourselves to death. It’s more dignified.”

“Who is your target audience?” Beni asked half for himself, realizing that we have a common obstacle: Marketing our ideas and making them more than just private musings, chief amongst them.

“Everyone. I’d like to make cultures at least receptive to these ideas. Maybe people will be less outraged if it happens if they’ve heard the reasons beforehand. When I discuss these ideas with folks individually they see the need and compassion involved. But I need to break through that wall of political self-censorship that creates borders around what we can think as a society.

Ultimately, like a rogue scientist or group would have to hear about these ideas and do it with out government support. But to hear about it, it must be on the list of discussed topics. If something isn’t in the public discourse it isn’t an option. It won’t be considered. If an idea is not thought about, it doesn’t exist.”

Both of our projects had a commonality in that they created absolute self-contained worlds that were potentially transformative. His work could make him self-sufficient as it teaches self-sufficiently. It creates an independent autonomous teacherless learner. It can work without help from outside of itself. Mine includes a system of morals based on putting intelligence above the all too human. From the premises you could not logically escape the conclusion. Intelligence must intelligently defend itself.

The logic was self-contained in both projects.

Meeting Beni was a really neat happenstance. People that have the ability to create thought constructs are rare. When worlds collide, new ones are formed. We could have fun and great insights exploring worldviews together.

We decided to get falafels.

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Capsule Three: Impressions

Walking in Rappongi is a trip everyone should take once in their lives. It gives you the opportunity to explore your limits.

On the one hand, there are the delicious but mundane attractions that have always tempted man. Every ten feet there are Nigerians trying to strong army you into a bar or Chinese girls trying to sweet talk you into their full-body message parlor. “Hey. What you looking for? Come in, cheap beer. Why? Come look. Girls.” “Messaggeee?” “Where you from?” Now their arms interlocks with yours. “You want messaggeee?”

Extricating yourself takes effort, and the pitch doesn’t lessen as you become a recognized refuser. It just gets more friendly or whiny or somehow nuanced. The constant effort to entrap you by means of your physical needs bothersome in proportion to its being tempting and insulting. You wanted it. But weren’t proud.

Beni said he had a way to get rid of them, but he’d never tried it. So when the next girl approached him, he uttered the magic words and she flew. Checking left and right for traffic as she goes away. She left as though propelled away.

“What did you say to her that worked so well?” I asked in amazement.

“I told her that my penis is spent. I had been taken care of.”

“And the hand movement?”

“The hand movement backs up what the words mean, literally, the towel has been run out.”

“So romantic.”

On the other hand, there is a great variety of unchartered worldly characters to be encountered here. Asians, Europeans, blacks, Americans, rich and poor, in hot to casual, circulating together.

They are all going somewhere. Some are with friends, some headed that way. Some were doing what Beni and I had been doing, just wandering lost and waiting to get hooked in.

Individually these were neat folk. The endless potential combinations of them was interesting beyond conception.

All were declared to be here for the possibilities the million lighted signs that announced night clubs and bars in the area promised.

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When people go out they want stimulation. This is an escape from boredom that happens in art houses as well as whore houses. Something different and random would make the evening memorable. People’s inability to deal with life on its own terms, their seeking of something more is laudable. Doing it in the most predictable of ways is pathetic. I wasn’t sure that we’d get many valuable insights from the international adventurers in such a venue.

But Rappongi didn’t disappoint. Just nodding at the black men with that combination of “Hey we’re tight ‘cause we’re Americans.” and “I’m down with black folks and sorry about slavery.” looks was interesting. It was interesting because you realized right away that these men had never been to America. They were Nigerian and had no idea about the cultural background your look entailed. Certainly, their being black and totally alien made them people you could learn from. If nothing else, just nodding was an insightful experience.

If nothing else, the streets were full of red light promises that it could fulfill. What would you do in such a situation? If you have morals you are limited in what you

can do. There were many varieties of wickedness to avoided or explored here. If you have no prejudices, then you do not have the “you” to control the situation. You are whatever situations happen to “you”.

These are the streets that try men’s souls.

We found the street falafel stand Beni had been leading us to and I got a beer. Self-consciously, I sort of apologized for having another beer within 15 minutes. Beni gave me a really calming reassurance that he had no attitude at all about that. We shared histories of addiction. His with alcohol and all kinds of smoke. Mine with marijuana.

“Beer doesn’t imprison me.” I pleaded. “Every person has their drug that they cannot do in moderation. Mine is marijuana. It

controlled me for much of my young life. Then I went nine years without smoking it. If we wrestled it won. My actions became all about getting it. It was like it colonized my brain and turned me into one of it’s minions.”

“So either it had to go or you had to go. I understand that. Wow. Nine years. That is an accomplishment.”

“Was. I recently broke my sobriety streak. I am in the dangerlands again.Some friends and I went to Mammoth to snowboard. And one of them, Leo, was being

so selfish and mean and inconsiderate that I was really pissed. My resentment even fumed as we got out of the parking lot at the base of our mountain. I was pissed and trapped in this pissy mood when a hand came out of the van.”

“Johnny P. You wanna hit on some of this?” Leo beckoned me.“I did it. As soon as I hit it my mood inverted. I was so happy. The mountain was

glistening white and amazing. I couldn’t wait to get at the mountain.”

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“How about your attitude towards your friend you were angry at?”

“He squinted up at me as he put his boots on a little later and said, “You know I love you Johnny P.” And all bad feelings between us melted instantaneously.

So I successfully got out of myself and had a fabulous time.”

“One little hit can definitely invert the way you see things.”

“It is amazing.”

“And how has your control been since?”

“I’ve been near perfect at keeping that stuff away from me. Once in Brazil. No, twice in Brazil. Those were contained under the rule, no smoking except on foreign land. Then I did smoke once at my ex-principal’s. That was another exception to the rule.

“Watch out for those multiplying exceptions to the rule.”

“It hasn’t been a problem even without constructing elaborate rules. And anyhow, Beni, I’m glad that you don’t mind that I drink some beers.”

“Not at all. Alcohol and smoking are all I stay away from. I smoke pot sometimes. But cigarettes never again.”

Wow, Most AA people were allergic to all things that controlled their minds except for AA itself. I was really impressed that someone could go to A.A. and not become one of their black and white, god v. devil dividing minions. He was committed to A.A. but not entrapped by their dogma. To the extent that one is conscious of the reasons for one’s decisions, one is immune to indoctrination. Beni only knew how to create his own realities on his own terms.

Later, as we walked back from one of the several falafel stands in Rappongi, Beni stopped to talk with one of the street vendors.. And to my surprise Beni went into a fluent Hebraic conversation with him. I knew he spoke languages, but it was still sort of jarring to see him just open up in a foreign tongue.

Where as Beni was clean cut, this guy was hippy and had the long curvy hair and prominence of lip and nose that many Israeli’s have. He was selling what looked to be North African jewelry. There were also some Indian looking statues.

In the middle of the conversation he turned to me and asked “Are you Jewish?” I nodded with an affirmative mumble in response. They went back into speaking that incomprehensible language before I could explain that I didn’t speak any Hebrew.

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Right after we left that guy Beni said rather enthusiastically, “I thought you were Jewish! But you didn’t respond when I said ‘Le Chiam’ to you.

“I didn’t hear you. You said that in the bar?”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that interesting how you only hear what you expect to hear.”

“I thought you might be Jewish when we first met. But then when you didn’t respond to ‘le Chiam’ I figured you weren’t.”

“Beni, how many languages do you speak?” I asked out of being of uncomfortable with the topic and steering away from it.

“I speak five”

“Jeez!”

“That is how I have survived. When I was 14 my mother died. That fractured my family. I got sent to Israel at 16 and stayed seven years. I studied and studied before leaving to Israel. I began to think of language as my ticket and passport and I have been moving with it ever since. I’ve hardly been back to the United States.”

“Where have you been?”

“I spent Seven years in Israel and then went back to the America for school. And I decided to study languages. And since America is such a monolingual country, as a real white American I got scholarships to go abroad and study languages there. At one point I had two simultaneous scholarships. I went to France. I was there 5 years. Then I went to Germany for a couple of years. I spent a little over a year in Russia. But I never got good at Russian. I was four years in Spain…”

“Wow! You stay a long time in each place you visit.”

“To really learn a culture and a language you have to stay in a place a while. Like in Israel, I went there knowing some Hebrew. When people asked me where I was from I told them France. That way people would only speak to me in Hebrew. It got good pretty soon.

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“I’ve been”, I said, throwing down the gauntlet of competition (or at least trying to qualify to talk with such a worldly person as Beni), “…to West Africa, North Africa, South America (I was just there for the first time), Central America and Europe and lots of other places. But the place I like best is India. I stayed there three and a half months.

Other than that I haven’t stayed in any one place for a long time. Well…. I guess I was in London for 6 months and Korea for 9.”

“I came here because of the language. The grammar is pretty much the same as ours. I was going to go to China, but I figured the economy was stronger here. I don’t know if I made a mistake or not. The grammar of China is supposed to be really simple. But the sounds are intimidating.”

“Yeah. China is taking off. But they’re very cloistered There is more opportunity here. Things seem freer. Like I don’t think your Jewish friend could just set up on the sidewalk and start selling in China.”

“Oh, it looks like that huh? That guys been here for about 15 years.”

“Fifteen years!” I said in astonishment.

“Oh yeah. It isn’t at all what it seems like. That guy is actually a wealthy businessman.”

“A wealthy business man?” I parroted him again with fresh astonishment.

“Oh yeah. He has a Lexus and a really nice home. It’s a costume. He sells way more if he looks like a sort of gypsy type. People buy more from him.”

“Huh.” I said absorbing the reasonableness of the situation.

“It’s funny. People buy from him, in a way, cause they feel sorry for him. But he’s way richer than the folks that buy from him.”

“Damn.” That one took time to flush all the way down. Once down I regained my position as still being an equal source of worldly knowledge by letting him know that my premise still held.

“But, still, that does still prove my point. There’s opportunity here. In China the sidewalk is not free for the taking.”

“That’s another thing. There’s more control here than you think. He has to pay off the mafia to have that space.”

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“The mafia!”

“Yeah. The Japanese mafia control a lot of things. If you set up without permission they find you immediately. And, you have to pay for protection or split.”

“Wow really!? A mafia. A real working mafia.”

“Oh really real. They don’t fuck around. If you don’t pay and try to defy them you will die. It is their way or no way. Anyhow, my friend has long time relations with them. They really do protect in a way. No one will sell goods like him in this prime part of Rappongi.”

“Wow!” All of these hippy vendors were part of a brutal hit squad mafia organization.

“Have you been to Israel?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t like it. The kibbutz seemed like a cross between an old folks home and an insane asylum. Along with China and Cuba it is the third Communist place I’ve been. Folks were so beaten, that they couldn’t conceive of leaving. I remember folks who were eating the always white food saying to adamantly that they were going to escape. But I knew they weren’t. If you’re in your thirties and you haven’t escaped you won’t. So I left my kibbutz after filling up my floor six inches deep with plastic beads from the plastic factory I worked in and split in the middle of the night.

The first thing I did was get a falafel and coke a cola. These foods were my choice, no one bought them for me. And choosing Coke was a celebration of capitalism and freedom. I was glad to be out of there.”

“Why couldn’t they leave he asked?”

“When you are used to others making your decisions and designing your life for you, you lose the ability to walk on your own. Your muscles atrophy. These guys couldn’t conceive of finding a job and a place to stay and getting their phone hooked up and all that you need to do to get set up in the real world.”

“You must exercise your freedoms or lose them. And those kibbutz people had been sucked down into a system that smothered them like a loving mother. Their ability to be self-reliant and apart was gone. They were encased like a mummy. Kibbutz’s kill people.”

These statements accurately reflected my memories of the Kibbutz. But the only stressing horrors also kind of helped release my tension around this topic. Judaism is like there is a big monster that wants to consume me. For me its as physical as intimacy claustrophobic.

20

“My family was atheist and, as such, not traditional. My secular view of the enlightenment stresses the individual over the group. If Judaism was not a temptation, however, it wouldn’t bother me to talk about it.

I guess its like my project or Judaism itself. You have to beware of people and systems that have thought of everything for you. If their utopia happens then you’re trapped. You’re living another person’s dream. Not your own word construct.”

“Well,” Beni, finally interrupted me, “I really loved my years on the kibbutz.” He then paused and put on a more thoughtful and interior looking face than I had seen on him. A new facet to Beni.

“I had the power to leave…. I was in the Israeli military, ya know.” Beni continued after thoughtful silence in which he seemed to be deciding whether or not to open up this still raw subject.

“I probably spent too much time in Lebanon. I left when they wanted me to kill. I just couldn't hate other people. Its like you said. You can get trapped by these systems. Thank God I just was strong enough to just go.”

“Maybe it was your world travels that gave you the perspective that made you see how parochial, er local it was.” I feared being considered condescending, but didn’t was to use words that were above his head. It is a teacher problem. I went with ‘local’ without detection.

“Maybe. But I remember one moment in particular that really made me decide to leave.This man came at me and really wanted to hurt me physically. He was a Palestinian who

had had his son killed and his home destroyed by the Israeli’s. I have never seen or felt such rage. I sure he was going to kill me. His anger was unstoppable. Luckily, the man’s friends held him back and explained that this I, this particular young Jew had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t in uniform at the time.

I realized then that killing wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t hate this man. I cried a lot afterwards from just absorbing some of his rage. God I hope I never know pain and anger like that.

After that I quit. I left Israel and never went back.”

As we sat on the sidewalk and ate the last of our falafels, Beni made a stunning suggestion.

“Hey. How’d you like to do some psychedelics with me tomorrow night?”

“Wow!!! Yeah!! Cool!! Would I?!?! That would be too much and great. Is that possible here in Japan?” Oh my God, I thought. Wait until the fellas back home hear about this.

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“Oh yeah. There are places where they sell them on the street. They made mushrooms illegal, but there are other things. I think it is time for me to do this sort of thing right now. You’d make a good partner in the experience. We’ll stay up all night and explore and be free and wild.”

I was flattered and enthused. He showed me a capsule hotel that I could book for the next night and we agreed on a five o’clock rendezvous. My mission to find a places to stay and party close to the center of Rappongi had succeeded beyond my expectations.

I had made a connection.

We left each other on subway. While waiting two whore hot looking girls passed us. One of them, I thought, sort of turned and looked back at us with a slowness that showed interest.

At that moment I made a resolution. I was going to be bold with them and thereby close the deal with Beni. Hanging out with me would be more enticing as I was someone I totally wasn’t: a player. With all of my nerve I transcended myself.

“Hey! How are you? You’re dressed beautifully and it’s early. Why are you going home?” I spontaneously blurted with my nervousness showing through the rough segues in observations and questions.

To my total astonishment, they were receptive. Perhaps transcending my limits would lead to a new me. But it seemed, momentarily, as if I were no longer there. I wasn’t sure who the hustler that had replaced me was.

The requisite ‘where are you from, why are you here and how do you like Japan’ were quickly supplanted by more immediate concerns as we got on the subway. Nothing cuts small talk like the knowledge of the scarcity of time. Having different exits was about to separate us.

“We cannot go out. My friend is student. She must go home and to study.”

“But you can go out.” I said, knowing she’d refuse, and so risking nothing like having to spend time with her while appearing daring.

“No. I tonight start new job and I am tired.”

“What is your new job?”

“I am dancer.”

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“I thought you might be. You have such a hot little body.” Beni uttered going way past anything I could ever imagine myself saying to a woman. I thought it, but…

“Where do you dance?”

“The club name is ‘Climax’. Did you hear of it?”

“No. We were asked by many people to go in but we didn’t go in to any of those types of clubs.” My subtext was that I wasn’t like the other john’s. I was good and respectable guy. My upbringing means that I think that women want that and wouldn’t have sex for fun. I’m also programmed to believe that women will get angry with you if you are crude.

“We’d love to come see you dance though. You are so hot.” Beni said, completely revealing what had been implied in our conversation, no matter how uncomfortable. I was with the sentiment.

“Thank you.” Her response did damage to my categories of decorum and propriety. I am a sheltered nerd.

“Do you like striping?”

“I like dance.” She replied while doing some serious gyrating. “The mens look at me is strange.” My vindication concerning prudery was undercut by her too-sensual-for-public grinding she did while she made this statement.

“I think that it should be an Olympic sport. In Mexico, I saw girls that hold themselves on the top of the pole with their ankles and slide down in really beautiful and graceful ways.” I tried to demonstrate my complicity in seediness. Not a nerd. And though all laughed and enjoyed, my appreciation of stripping as an art was an obvious attempt at cleaning up of my image, to me.

We found out when she was doing her thing before she got off the subway and said we’d try to catch her show and maybe go out afterwards. I think she was attracted to Beni’s directness.

Beni seemed really hyped by the prospect of a guys night out with a hunter like myself. I had pulled it off. What a man won’t do for company. In faking I had confused myself , felt the exhilaration of growth and the fear of the unknown. How divergent can your self-image be from

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you actions before that image must bend. Who would I be if I ceased to be me? Did I want to find out?

Since climbing off the wagon (not falling) I had been struggling to integrate old habits into my new clean life.

Values tell us who we are. Borders and boundaries make a conscience. We are as defined by what we wouldn’t do as we are by what we do. Beni wouldn’t kill.

I have often been adversarial to those who laud their having an “open mind”. Study and reason comprise my well considered opinions and decisions. I have made my mind up. To not be “prejudice” can be interpreted as not having previously judging anything. Would one be proud of never having decided anything?

“If one doesn’t stand for something, one may fall for anything”, goes the trope. Of course we get our values from our surrounds. You don’t want to be proud of your

stands because you are stuck like a kibbutznick. Such people project their fear of certain actions into virtues. The measure of their resoluteness is the measure of their fear.

Perhaps the liberation that comes from anonymity of travel will help me cocoon into a new person. Did I wish to be free from restrictions more or was acceptance true goal? Would I pervert my beliefs or actions for that end? Perhaps an experiment of how far I could push myself into being that party animal we all dream of would be an interesting check-up in identity land . I suppose one must occasionally leave their comfort zone in order to say that they are really choosing what they usually do.

I pride myself on standing for thoroughly reasoned morals. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be seen as an unadventurous drip either.

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Capsule four: Borders

I woke up really enthused and hyped about my capsule hotel and my coming capsules of mind blowing.

The capsule hotel was in the ROI bldg. Upon entry to the front area, you had to take off your shoes. You then put your shoes in a locker and inserted two quarter sized coins. After removing the key from the locker you were to sit down and put on a pair of the numerous, blue hotel sandals. You could then proceed into the reception office space. When you gave the front desk the key from your shoe locker, they gave you the key to your locker. Later, when leaving, you return the key to your capsule and they give you the shoe key back. When you use that key to get your outside shoe back, you get your Japanese 50 cents back. Its hermeneutic.

At a little before 11a.m. I arrived at the hotel really needing to go to the bathroom badly. I violated protocol by going into the reception office space with my street shoes. Sometimes such strict codes and lines must give into nature’s demands. Fortunately, I was able to sneak behind a big planted pot undetected on my way in. Thankfully, I made it there on time. But as I crossed through the reception office space to get back to the shoe storage lockers, a considerable clucking was made. They saw me.

I will probably never understand the significance of shoes in the Asian world. There is a fair amount of protocol surrounding them. Protocols verging on ritual. The enforcement of boundaries over which they cannot cross seems superstitious.. Hygiene cannot suffice to explain this obsession. And the enforcement and emotional impact of transgression are too strong for it just to be habit. Every traveler, and perhaps most tourists too,have as an unstated goal understanding the words ,cultural rules and understandings of just this sort of hermeneutic.

Probably the best was to get a grasp of this world of shoe protocol meanings would be to diagram it. Alas, the meanings too numerous and nuanced for me to explore. Shoes crossing lines could represent disrespect to the establishment or a lack of class or aesthetic sensibilities. My problem in analyzing these possibilities is that neither respect, class or aesthetics carry the same nuances in Japanese as they do to the American mind in English. Manners are just another synonym for inauthenticity for us. We do not have the patience for the stranglings of such beautiful signs of cultivation. And class and poverty are not terms that come without their assumptions concerning the meaning of life and dignity and shame.

America assumes the romantic ideal of freedom. Conformity to rebellion’s dictates is our version of cultivation. Slapping a librarian makes more sense to us than elaborate shoe protocols.

Once I negotiated myself over to the hotel reservation counter properly clad and keyed, I ran into three harsh rules. A sign in English said that no one would be admitted to the facilities

25

who did not speak Japanese. The woman and two men behind the counter pointed to this rule to let me know that they didn’t want to let me in.

Having already checked out of the affordable and often sold-out hotel an hour plus away, this was an emergency. Somehow, I conveyed to them that my friend whom I had been there with the night before was going to be joining me at 5 pm. They remembered Beni from the night before and that he spoke Japanese. With the language hurdle of rule number one overcome, they let me in.

The capsules themselves are amazing. I shudder at their implications as I am calmed by their efficiency. They are approximately three foot by three foot wide and seven foot deep boxes with beds in them. If you are lacking for a visual, think of shower stalls lying down and stacked. Creepier yet, remember the mausoleums in which they put bodies in filing cabinet style drawers.

Outfitted with TVs, lights, radios, air conditioning units and smooth walls that paradoxically suggest an absence of limits, capsules are worlds you could live in without lack. Every thing a human being needs is there. Except for bodily functions, they are self-contained and need not be left. Just think, we’re only three tubes away from being totally storable. One in tube and two out tubes would do it. If they would then have one of those car washes that goes back and forth over your car installed for showers, we’d be ready to be sealed.

To be in a capsule is to experience a return-to-the-womb lack of differentiation that is hard to convey. Except it isn’t warm, fuzzy or biological. You feel as though you might be plastic. Biology ceases there. Yes, its exactly how plastic feels.

It is an impossible space. It has no cultural or ideological references. It is life sheered down to what would be required in outer space. As one of many identical bodies stored in identical rows and columns, you cease to be individual or human. Life support without reference to real lives. Mine is number 44. Third row from the bottom, five in from the left side of the wall.

Unfortunately, I have a tattoo. The tattoo is the logo of the band “Black Flag”. If you didn’t know, the Black Flag logo consists of four staggered vertical rectangles that look something like a bar code. The reason I called this fact unfortunate is that rule number two is “No tattoos.”

“The bars”, as this tattoo is often called, represent prisons and limits either mental or physical. They are an attempt to invert the all good that the capsule hotel and society represent into a muckraking expose of primitive emotion. My rebellion is not for this place. Tattoos are not placid. I must join them in the conspiracy of silence if I am to fit in here.

The night before, Beni had told me not to worry about having a tattoo. This rule is just to protect against mafia types. They are the only tattooed people in Japan. But I worried about it. Not only was the sign in English, but they had pictures of tattoos with red crossed out circles over them. There was no pleading ignorance. I did not want to get kicked out of my hotel and rendezvous site.

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Second to getting a capsule my goal was to take a shower. A guy that handed out towels could easily see the locker that they had assigned me. Changing without revealing my tattoo would be difficult. First I backed up the row of lockers to establish a natural pacing pattern. On the time back in which I actually took off my shirt and put a towel over my left shoulder, a woman walked past the row! How could she not know to stay out of the men’s dressing area? I asked myself with an indignity fueled by my nervousness over having just broken a rule and getting away with it.

My shower was Hitchcockian. Right across from the shower stalls the woman I saw pass by while I was dressing, and another, gave natural mud messages to two men on tables. Thus their intrusion into our sanctum of nudity was justified by their jobs. Oddly enough these women touching you was not seen to be sexual or sensual. For this reason their entrance into our inner sanctum of male nudity was not provocative.

Nevertheless, the women made me uncomfortable. If they saw my tattoo, they might get me booted. As strange as it was to shower in front of strange women, hiding was stranger. I showered with my left shoulder to the wall and wrapped the towel around my tattoo when I emerged.

Naturally, I desired to have one of these mud massages. But, there was no way of knowing if the women would have turned me in. At any rate, they didn’t see my tattoo. When I went into the saunas I didn’t remove my towel. As naturally as possible I kept it draped over my left shoulder when it wasn’t facing the wall. I’m sure this looked suspicious.

So this was what it was like to hiding and afraid of expulsion. I felt like a cross between a World War Two Jew and an illegal alien. I avoided detection.

The influence of their system on my internal state was profound. My actions and public identity were all meant to conceal. I would conform for the sake of housing. Was this too big a deal with the devil? No. I didn’t plan on spending much time there.

The third rule was that you could not be under the influence of any intoxicating substance. Thank God that only showed on the inside. I could conceal my insides for them and still do all I wanted. I could surrender without giving myself away. Appearances and reality could coincide in harmony.

I waited for Beni in one of the overly cushioned recliners that faced the giant TV in the lower level capsule hotel lounge. Unlike the other recliners, I wasn’t in a bathrobe. Hopefully, I didn’t detract from their perfectly reassuring environment. My suggestion of non-sterility and the need for movement didn’t seem to annoy anyone. They were oblivious. Serene in the assurance that their walls, rules and recliners would stave away the terror, they relaxed.

When Beni arrived an hour late, I told him of my tattoo ordeal. There was a delay in his University contract signing.

“But all went well?”

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“Yeah. Really well. I negotiated and got the salary and bonus structure I wanted. Negotiating isn’t part of their culture, but the bonus structure they offered didn’t make any sense. I explained why it didn’t, stuck to my guns and got what I wanted.”

Beni said he hadn’t realized that I had a tattoo! They might have kicked you out. Its not just mafia that they are excluding, but a feeling of elegance that they are protecting. They are drawing class lines. Relaxing country club gentility was their goal. Tattoos weren’t part of the sensibility they sought to cultivate. Good thing I went with my instincts on hiding.

Beni also said he really worried about his smell. I suggested he use my deodorant. He must have asked five times if that wasn’t going to violate my standards of hygiene. I didn’t have to let him. It was no problem if I didn’t allow it! When done despoiling by roll on, he gingerly wiped the deodorant with tissue paper as to separate off the top layer of deodorant. The mixing had been avoided. The unpleasant contamination had been sufficiently covered.

In order that we could get to know one another better prior to our excursion (and to get the recommended nutrition required before lift-off) we went to a Denny’s. Denny’s was chosen so that I might experience their version of our vision. He was into cultural expose. Our encounter was a blessing.

The décor was a perfect replica. The Japanese are noted for the ability to emulate. When Admiral Perry, the first Western invader, came to their shores, they begged 50 years leeway in order that they might give consideration to allowing trade. In that time they mastered our technologies. Copying is one of their primary survival skills.

I had originally planned to go to the Tokyo Disneyland. That is until I heard that it was an inch for inch duplicate of the one in Los Angeles. Wow!

In Asian art generally, innovation is not as valued as copying. To perfect a form that has already been repeated repeatedly is excellence. This is in sharp contrast to our constant revolution and rebellion at the past. This Denny served their need for replication and mine for the novel.

In my Denny’s replica it soon became apparent that books often vary from their covers. The first hint of difference was apparent when I looked at the menu. Apart from the salads, I had never heard of anything that they were serving. No “grand slam” breakfast here. The resemblance was purely superficial.

The waitress came totally clad in authentic Denny’s wear, gave us menus, poured us some water, spoke to us in Japanese and bowed away.

“I’m glad you’re here to translate.” I said with earnest appreciation.“Do you know what she is doing?” He asked with a somewhat insane gleam in his look.

“When she pours us water, she apologizes for it. She is saying that she is sorry for disturbing us when she brings us water. Can you imagine that. We should be thanking her, but Japanese do

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not take credit. They apologize for everything and are sure to always make everyone feel like… Like they are not responsible or the, how can I say it?… They apologize for themselves instead of taking credit and make you feel like you shouldn’t blame them.”

“Its like super defensiveness in advance.”

“Exactly. Its so weird. But they mean it. It is in all spheres of life.”

“But when a teacher teaches he doesn’t apologize. Does he?”

“No then the student does. It rides on the back of a constant hierarchy in which all relationships are boss to worker. There is no human warmth of equality. There is always this apologizing, groveling, servant thing going on.”

It crossed my mind that Beni had possibly been in Japan too long. He was fond of pointing out the ludicrousness of their habits. Perhaps the interest level had dropped because he pretty much knew everything. But if he really didn’t like Japan he shouldn’t be living here.”

.“Beni, are you just amazed by the Japanese culture or do you not like it? Is it interesting

to you or do you hate it?””

“There are good parts, but I’ve got to tell you, the Japanese are the meanest people I have ever known. “

“Oh!” I spontaneously protested. “But whenever I’ve been lost they have gone really out their way to help me.”

“Yes. But that is superficial. When it gets down to it, you are always Gangi.”

“You mentioned that before. And I’ve heard others use it. Is it just the word for “foreigner”?

“It literally means, "foreign land". But what it really means is you don’t belong here.”

“Yeah the Koreans are racist like that. They won’t let half-breeds into their public schools. They are nice, but wouldn’t let you marry their daughter.”

“Or even be friends with you. I worked at this one school for nearly two years. I worked my brains out playing music and singing with the kids. You know what they told me?”

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Normally I would have put in the rhetorical “what” here, but Beni was starting to get into one of his hurt and angry wind-up-to-a-diatribe moods.

They told me to stop wasting time with the kids. After years of passionately teaching there no one had ever taken the time to see what I was doing. Furthermore, they never asked me why I did what I did.” His look of pained empathy for himself was so over the top now that it created a little spontaneous revulsion reaction in me.

“Students, teachers, parents that had been in my classes never talked about what I had been doing with other staff members. There was no communication. Nor did they care to listen. When I tried to explain what I had been working on and what I was so passionate about, do you know what their response was?

I shook my head in an empathetic “No” look.“They said, "You are Ganji. Do your job. You are here to work. That is all.” That was with people that I had worked with for years. I had gone on canoeing trips with

them. There was no interest in my thoughts or care about me as a person. There was no communication.”

“It sounds like being “Ganji” puts you in the servant part of the hierarchy.”

“Its worse than that. It means that you are put in another separated category from “us Japanese”. And for them Japanese equals human. I don’t really mean human. I don’t know how to put it, but you are put into a separate category. No sentiment or human kindness or sympathy crosses that gap. Not only are you not a priority, but you are totally unimportant in the mission of the group. Owed no sentiment.”

You can ask any Gangi, do they have Japanese friends. They will all say no. You can go on boat trips and out drinking with them and think you’re friends. But there will never be any love there. They consider us inferior and as tools. They can be so cold it is monstrous. “

“That would fit in with these nice helpful folk’s behavior in World War Two! They were insanely cruel.

Right then the waitress came back. She took our orders and bowed at us as she walked away backwards.

Beni repeated, with fresh amazement, “She apologized again in Japanese for taking our order and the time it took!” Then with a radical shift in posture and voice he said as though he was revealing some really juicy hot gossip, “Hey she’s pretty hot isn’t she? She had nice breasts.”

Inside I was shocked. I don’t talk to or about women that way.

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The standard modern interpretation would be that I am a product of a repressive upbringing that said such talk was to be repressed. She is an attractive young girl. But talk of asses and tits just always struck me as indecent and gross. Sex is messy. I’d rather not discuss it.

For whatever reason, I had been never comfortable joining in the women ogling discussions. Awkwardly, I tried to play along. But I could feel a rift opening up between Beni and I.

“Yeah she is something. I think she is half black. She has nappy hair.”

Beni said that he didn’t think so and it hadn’t even occurred to him. I was sure that it was because he hadn’t looked above her neck!

When she came back he addressed her in English. She smiled one of those blushing beaming smiles that only Asian societies’ sense of shame produces on women’s faces. So enchanting. She immediately broke into black accented English.

“Ma daddy was in the service. Ma momma is from here.”

“So you grew up there?” I probed.

“Yeah. I only been here ‘bout two years.”

“How’s your Japanese?” Beni probed in his area of expertise.

“Not good. It’s comin’ along.”

“Your mother didn’t teach you Japanese?”

“She always spoke to us in English. Its funny ‘cause her English ain’t that goot.”

“What a shame. What a missed opportunity.”

“Yeah. Its alright. I’m getting’ it. You want anymore water or anything? I gotta keep working.”

“No we’re cool thanks.”

She bowed as she left!

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Beni immediately thereafter glared out with a nearly slobbering enthusiasm, “Asian eyes always predominate in interracial offspring. It makes the women so beautiful. I just want to eat them. Aum.”

Wow. Eesh. I am overly squeamish. Benny was a quality person, but he was capable of giving me that feeling of alienation that people who aren’t me often evoke. The feeling is that “Either I’m an alien or he is, but we’re not from the same world”. Deep down I know that I’m the alien.

The problem isn’t feeling self-conscious or less than proud about my prudish nature. I accept that that is who I am and its okay. Rather, I worry that others will not accept me for being the way I am. They might shun me because I make them feel self conscious. I usually try to reassure them with a little inauthentic leering body part reference of my own.

Later, as our comfort grew, we discussed such issues.

For the time being I just changed the subject. “In my classes I used to use an article about the L.A. Riots. You heard about those right?”

“Yep.”

“Many of the hostilities were between blacks and the Koreans that had liquor stores in the black neighborhoods. This article went over how the tensions were largely over differences in cultural expression. Black culture is really expressive. You come into a store with your hands held high for a high-five and you yell “Whassup homie?!”

In Korean society you always keep your hands at your sides. The Korean sees the black as out of control and animal like. The black sees the Korean as totally cold and inhuman. Communication is really important. It must be a trip for our waitress. She came from a boisterous culture to one of the most polite societies on earth.”

Even after we spoke in English, the waitress continued to bow before she left our table backwards and bowing. “I wonder how long it took before the whole bowing thing was just second nature to her. She knows she needn’t bow to us. We’re westerners. But it’s second nature to her now.”

“I don’t know.” Bennie replied. “Culture is really physical. Language and bowing and all of that stuff goes down to your bones. She seems to have it in her now.”

Despite our differences Beni and I could connect. We understood some of the same things.

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What about the greetings of the Black, the Korean and the white person? Words were not the only things that separated our languages. Affect separates culture’s experiential worlds. These differences in aesthetics meant that we inhabited different worlds at the same time we inhabited the same world.

Though not normally in my mind, contemplating the world space of the Japanese’s hierarchal categories fascinated me. Not only was having a hierarchy foreign to American English, but the categories themselves don’t exist in our culture.

What were the nuances were the feelings that they had towards each other. All white Americans wonder what it is like to have that authentic exuberance of the black man. What would it mean to have soul? But we rarely ask what is would be like to be totally formal?

Hurt feelings, riots, wars and even slavery could be justified on such vacuum sealed chasms.

Real translation is impossible. Perhaps the answer to the problem of culture is people like our waitress who is on both sides. Maybe, with explanation, the people in my capsule hotel could accept and appreciate my tattoo.

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--Capsule five: Relations—

On the subway over I noticed all of the people on cell phones.

Japanese girls are particularly obsessed with cell phones. They always seem to be checking messages or looking at pictures on them. They were rarely talking.

The men look at the pin-ups that they have made available on the tiny phone displays. Aren’t they aware that people were watching them look at these pictures. At their age these men are probably married too. No one will ever determine for sure if cyber-cheating is really cheating. I guess the Asian propriety of looking at such images was different than ours. Men looking at pin-up women might have been something akin to females leering at a vogue magazine spread.

I would be embarrassed to be seen looking with such sensuous intent on my face in public. To me, leering at an image of a woman is more embarrassing than leering at a real one.

I wanted to talk to Beni about the cell phone phenomenon, but the elevator phenomenon kicked in. It is rude to talk about people you see on a subway. It is pretty much rude to talk too much on a subway.

As we got off the subway, there was a couple with a stroller standing on the dock. “What a cute monkey.” Beni said to the baby in a half baby-talk voice. It was an

exceptionally cute child. Pangs of sentiment for the beauty of family momentarily stirred in us. “So sad that I didn’t have mine.” The thought was nearly accompanied by tears.

I as usual, my feelings quickly went to the geopolitical. Mom was Asian and Dad was white. I fleetingly considered the political and logistical difficulties of that. He hadn’t produced one of his own and neither had she.

“What a gorgeous baby you have.” Beni now more directed his statement at the Dad rather than child.

“Yeah. Shay ez..” Dad said with a strong English accent.

“How old is she?”

“She’ll be two in four monfs.” Said dad, looking proud and happy to have someone to talk to that wasn’t in his family.

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We asked for directions and he gave them in a peculiar way. “You’re going to be going… and den you’re going to be going…” The mood of the directions also showed him to be excited for us. His emphasis on the “you’re” conveyed a sadness at not being able to join us in his directions.

Beni thanked him and congratulated him and my feelings rose as we nearly jogged off in excitement. As I looked back I saw them stalled and not sure which exit to get out of. For that moment I was glad I didn’t have a family. Baby was nice to see. But running with the boys was funnerer for now. No stroller. No old lady.Nothing too important. All was a game.

It was finally fully Friday night, I thought excitedly to myself, as we emerged from the subway. I was nearly overwhelmed. Seemingly thousands of young party goers were crossing an intersection that went to a plaza in front of a super mall building. Never in all of my life had I seen such a concentration of people walking. It was more of a swarm than a crowd.

When the light signaled pedestrians to walk it was if a flood gate had been opened. In the background I could see masses of peoples walking through glass tubes that covered the outside of large glass buildings. It really is remarkable how easily we distinguish ourselves from all of the people that surround us.

I turned to see that the real action was behind us. Wall to wall night clubbers filled these sign blanketed sci-fi streets. The streets had the feel of hipterism that all alley do. They were streets with the feel of alleys. This was the party region called Shinjuku. Not only were the buildings sci-fi, but the people were in costume. We weren’t in California anymore Mr. Toto. Had the down-to-earth hippy thing ever existed here, it had been skittlized (made like the candy) and forgotten. Artificial colors and flavors abounded.

What did these modern day vampires want? Was this a psychedelic freak show or an orgy waiting to happen or just good clean fun? Anyhow, it was a spectacle. As part of the crowd we could just as well ask ourselves that question. We were of, as well as in the masses.

Beni moved out towards the belly of the beast. We went in the directions of the most lights and the giant TV. The TVs was probably two stories high and played advertisements that featured bands. How the commercialization of culture spreads. Still, the fantasy element of the local’s clothes didn’t express lifestyle as much as style life. The TV wouldn’t have flown in the youth scenes of my day. “Commercialism” and “sell-out” are old concepts. I don’t think they’ve been relative in America for a decade. Observing that the music industry is an effective “ministry of consumer programming” is no longer done.

It was almost hard to follow Beni threw the rapids of the crowd. But a bit upstream he paused at a street vendor. Oh my god! Street vendors had open suitcase types of set ups reminiscent of watch seller’s set up during America’s great depression. The difference here being that the sign on the inside of the open suitcase top read, “Legal Drug. Psychedelic Love Happy. Kaos International.”

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Beni directed me, “Let’s go to the next one. I know the guy. I’m comfortable with him.” As far as I could tell the assortment was the same. The case had many organized baggies. There were vials called “Pinky”; black bags that said “DMT” bags of pure crushed herbs of some sort, baggies of black powder and one with a silver foil in it called “Trip thunder”.

The proprietor of this small enterprise looked like an L.A. skater stoner. He had black hair with dyed brown highlights that intimated that he’d spent a lot of his time in the sun surfing. Authentically, he also had the requisite Levi’s and quasi military light jacket over his blue tee shirt. His was the only retro style outfit on the street that wasn’t iconoclastic.

Beni and he spoke in Japanese for a while. It was the only time I saw Beni not ask for information with confidence. Not demanding, he was a petitioner. He seemed to be trying to get a personal selection recommendation from a guy who had good things to say about each product. I wondered how deep his relationship with this guy went. It seemed like a standard salesman to customer relationship to me.

Finally we decided to go ahead exactly as had been planned. He got two vials of the clear “pinky” liquid. He had said I might want to only get one. But I went for the whole she-bang. $30 bucks each. Ouch. But this was for a once in a life time ticket. Mostly I was just wowed at my fortune of being in this unreal situation in Japan with such a cool guide and about to take a psychedelic.

“Okay!” I exclaimed as we had just given him our money and were now facing each other with two baggies each. “Which way and where?”

Needing liquid to pour pinky in, we went to a fast food joint. We got cheap burgers for cover and drinks for consumption and went upstairs.

The décor was cool. The world wide diffusion of icons in our age is amazing. Newspaper front pages each describing a Beatle adorned the walls. “John. The literary Beatle”, “George. The quiet Beatle”. The relation of these sound bytes to the Beatles as we know them was interesting. Each Beatle pretty much stayed true to their packaging.

And, shrunken to cuteness in an antiseptic future, was Jimi Hendrix upside down in a ball most definitely riding in a whirlwind of drugs and sound. Marketing had really done a lot to market this guy as anything but dangerous. Jimi’s lifestyle and energy were not things that you could passively consume.

I smirked at the Beatles and said a little prayer to Jimi. “I like the decoration. John really was the “Literary” Beatle.”

“We are the only ones here that have ever heard their songs. No one here knows what any of their lyrics mean. They are just images of famous Americans.”

We both smiled knowingly at the Americans part.

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“Even in the states, they only play certain diddies over and over. The heavy stuff doesn’t get on the radio. They have been controlled and made into just another easily consumed pop band. I’m not sure what they mean to our culture anymore.”

“Well their not just another pop band.”

“No. I’m not sure anymore. They just give smiles to people who enjoy their ditties.”

“Look at Jimi. What a maniac. Too bad he died from drugs.”

“Nah. He had to sacrifice himself to take us on the journey he wanted to take us on. There is no way he could have gotten to where he got to. Into that little ball playing backwards without going all the way.”

“You can’t fake that level of intensity, huh.”

“No way. Jim Morrison didn’t write “There’s a killer on the road” without knowing about it. He took himself on a real adventure. Boyce and Hart, the song writers for the Monkey’s, could never have conceived of those lyrics.” Boyce and Hart. I know too much about rock history

“I guess its only a shame that they died young to us half assed, slow livin’ old farts.” “That is why it is so cute that they’ve taken these real madmen pictures and turned them

into safe little icons. They are our connection with adventure we never have.”

“Well Jimi will live again in us tonight!”

“Righteous. My dose will be done with a toast to his burning chaos. But first though, though I know it’s only a superstition...I feel like taking a drug and then going to the bathroom is a waste. I’m going to try. I’ll be right back.”

Beni waved me off with a pontiff like movement of two fingers and a look like vomit was on its way.

I smiled and winked as I left. I guess he didn’t need to hear about my going into the bathroom before I did it. Before he took drugs.

The toilets talked in this establishment. When you entered the stall they spoke. And then the sound of a small water fall was heard as you sat n shat. Another fine cover up on our way to a clean clean world.

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No one heard or knew what was happening in there. When you emerged and your friend saw you, you could pretend that you’d just been for a leisurely swim. Maybe the water was to spare the listener from the sound. Who knows. Either way, it showed a schizophrenic approach to defecation.

The hot air hand dryer was folded over on itself as to create a two sided slot for your hands. Why hadn’t Americans thought of and adopted that? It was the first hot air hand dryer that had ever fully dried my hands.

Drugs in Japan. The Japanese had thought of everything. Clean and total. It made me comfortable and paranoid. Everything on this trip would be safe. I had nothing to fear but fear itself.

When I came back out Beni was ready to go in. His drug vials were empty. I got the last drops out of his and put mine into my drink. There was Jimi. Safely encased as Japanese fast food decoration. Were he here he would dose.

How is it that the Japanese allow drugs to be sold on their clean streets? I read my “Kaos International” baggie that the vials had come in.

They featured a declaration explaining how much they are opposed to drugs. Subtle. Warnings can make one sense their limits and then lunge desperately, desirous of that which may now be out of reach. It was as if there was a battle between the cultural desire to control everything from shits to zits and a counter tendency to entropy and the ugly truths about life and death.

I took mine with as sacramental an attitude as my atheist spirituality could muster. I was inviting this substance into the holies of holies, across the blood brain barrier. This was going into my personal thought machine. Grateful for all I had enjoyed in the region where imagination reins supreme, I reverently welcomed the stranger in.

Beni was in the can so long I started to worry about him. Had he been hypnotized by the sound of water running over pebbles? All I could do was wait.

Jimi and the lads from Liverpool were hung over booths completely occupied by girls with notebooks full of photograph stickers that they were manically showing each other.

I had been in a 5 story entertainment complex earlier. There I saw a floor of girls using photo booths. Always in costume, they would pretend to be other people and pose as if having the time of their lives. Now I had the rest of the story. These girls were posting the photo booth pictures in photo albums.

They would also stop and take pictures of their enjoying the pictures and send them to others via their phones. How bizarre. Were these supposed to be the real memories that cemented their relationships.

Not real memories, but pictures in costumes with shared smiles. This was the basis of their relationships. It was a big smile for the camera moment. They were smiling because they

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were supposed to be smiling. They weren’t doing anything that was fun except taking pictures looking fun.

All model’s smiles are forced. Weren’t these poses for the camera somehow false? When one pretends to be happy are they? The capturing of the moments of fun was the fun. Perhaps this was a new form of happiness. A greater happiness.

Pausing for a moment I thought I’d better get a name for these cards. After a little manipulation the words just came together, “Purest happy feeling stickers.” I liked it. It had a Japanese ring to it.

Fortunately, two dimensional images don’t talk and move yet. That could have forced them to include content with their pictures. I don’t think I’m being a curmudgeon here. I don’t see that pictures taken in costume, when received by the intended target, convey any substantive message. Just a feeling of fun. Another reason we’re fortunate that two dimensional images don’t talk and move yet is that if they did, unfrozen chards of glass would fly out of Jimi’s chaos moment poster and cut the cute “purest, happy feeling stickers” girls.

Will stickers of people you’ve never met suffice for a circle of friends? How about sending them to a computer photo exchange. The computer spliced together pictures of us. And wha-la! We are instantly really good happy friends with long shared memories. Petting your composite friend’s face’s image on a screen is nostalgia. Picture as tear jerker.

Americans are big into knowing, and somehow relating to our stars. Are these relationships any more real than the sticker relationships? Isn’t celebrity following just a lame relation to consumer items? For many of the outlaw rockers they tie us into a set of memories and attitudes we take pride in, but never really lived.

There is only one person that should have had a Jim Morrison poster: Jim Morrison. Perhaps you could existentially justify his band mates and his parents, if they’re still alive, possessing ones. People that are on enough drugs that they are open to the musical experience should have picture of celebrities like Jim Morrison. To me his songs were more than jingles.

Sticking stickers and sending costume pictures is a celebration of the surface beyond what an American could stomach. I’ve seen the “purest happy feeling sticker” booths in the States. But they’ve never caught on. People don’t realize how important they are supposed to be. Americans are too hung up on the real for that to be so important in a relationship.

Japanese pop runs deep. It is a reassurance. It is a digital way of feeling connection in the Tokyo matrix. Perhaps in this increasingly digital world, intimacy by quantity of stickers is the future. My loved ones are mostly remembered through images.

Still the mature me prefers real things to pop. How would I define real things? That is a good question. Is there a reason that having read a book is seen to be a legitimate memory and seeing a movie isn’t? Here’s a stab. Reality is something that is nuanced. It is better because it stimulates thinking and involves a variety of emotions. Celebrities don’t do that. Most movies don’t do both. Happy pictures cover more than they reveal.

When will America learn the lessons of Andy Warhol? When will I be able to enjoy my pop icons with no intimations of “real experience”? The stars of my generation were trying to

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communicate meaning. American idol corporate pop bands let us know that the meaning is the message. Who am I kidding? MTV jingles sold my generation it’s brands, outfits and outlooks on life. There is a logo tattooed on my arm, for crying out loud.

Yes, strife and confusion are signs of a life well lived. As much as I enjoy the pure superficial rapture of pop art; the rat – a –tat – tat of a Roy Lichtenstein war image for example, I cannot and I will not pay attention to “Hello Kitty”. It scares me. My 1960s American upbringing endures.

About an hour later Beni emerged from the can! I asked no questions. We went down stairs and decided to walk to the park for the start of the ride. I hadn’t been there, but Asia is known for having fantastic parks in the middle of their cities.

The parks were supposed to be big enough that you could be totally unaware that you were surrounded by city. The parks are there to evoke the quiet space of nature that was the necessary corollary to the urban jungle. I’ve always believed that if gang kids could see stars and nature they would lose their animosity in a paradigm shift.

The Japanese needed to see us inside the whole of nature. In contrast to our abstracted play ground parks, theirs really convey the magnitude of nature.

How does this tendency coincide with the pop glorification of all artificial? Perhaps it is in an overall level of belief in the value of the experience of the individual. Nature subsumes us. Shopping products fill our day. No need for a Western quest for individual realities we prize so much. Angst isn’t a big source of motivation in their lives.

But as with the affect of a native speaker of the black American dialect, I will never understand what photos, hello kitty and parks mean to them.

“Elvis impersonators congregate here during the day.” Beni informed me.

“Wow! How can they conceive of the cultural roots of Elvis. That is why I love the Japanese. They are pure post-modern pop. They are unconcerned about the real. There is no center. They seem to stop at the surface. No other culture could have invented “Hello Kitty” . She is a disassociative testament to vacuity. There is no product or story. Pure image. Pure pop.”

I don’t know how a people that are so dedicated to parks that integrate you into nature can seem to be so astronaut at other times.”

As we walked nature started to sway in her customary spirals. The silhouettes of large bonsai like trees violently danced in the wind. Shiva the destroyer as represented in a basic field of physics spread messaged the transparent veil from over our reality. She came in the form of whirlpools of wind.

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Beni had to keep reminding me to slow down. The persistency of my feet’s ambition often outstrips my minds’s ability to rein them in. Walking behind Beni was the only way I could remember to remember to compromise on our pacing.

“Do you see the wind?” I asked.

“No. But I see the trees moving. Is that seeing the wind?”

“They are connected.” I said with humorous intent.

“We are engulfed in the same wind.” Beni uttered without humor, as though talking to himself. “It’s nice to see wind. Its like breathing. I remember breathing. God its stormy like our insides. The shit is starting to kick in.”

“No doubt. I’m not only seeing, but having insights. Like that buildings deceive us into thinking that everything isn’t moving.”

“Right. Nothing is still. All things are being effected and worn by time in a dance of life and death at all times.”

“Scary. Its nice to be connected at another level.” I said partially out of the fear of knowing that I was going off on a trip with someone I barely knew.

“Dark does that. The cycles of night and day are important reminders. Night is especially important.”

“I often wonder how we are different from the people that had to endure the long night, without the option of artificial light.”

“They put us in a context of the infinite and the finite. They probably had less hope.”

“And less illusions about safety.”

“Right on. We are groovin’ together. Two minds chewing on the same awarenesses and thoughts.”

“Nice to be hanging with you bro.”

“Ditto. I’m glad we got hooked up.”

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“That’s funny, they are the only moving things I’ve seen in a while.”

Just then, while looking over a small lake under the moonlight, his cell phone rang. As he spoke to his friend about some business or other, I drummed on the bridge. My

drumming was patterned on the spirals of the dancing, breathing trees. He made a second call to Aya to tell her he’d be back in the middle of the night or later

and to not wait up for him.Drums and the ability to conjure fractals through them, are a dividend of a long term

investment in rhythm. I’ve played drums so long that it is burned into my essence. Pattern weaving is one of my great joys. I find it really calming. Perhaps it is reassuring because it reassures me of my having some special skill. Perhaps it is calming because it ties me in with tribes of old and the beats of the universe.

Beyond the concerns about pop art and Jesus and words and noise, was a heart beat of existence. We were all burning and dying like Morrisons to a flame. And my beat was the hypnotic flame that drew the moths in. It wasn’t a trap. It was an enlightenment.

Beni apologized for being on the phone.

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-----Capsule six : Intimacy ----

As we walked deeper into the park I asked if it would be okay if I took a seat.“I want to get grounded. Feel the earth.”

“Cool.” After much silence Beni asked, “What are you looking at?”

“The people on that sign have been moving. Its not that they are moving much. But this stuff is great. This is an interesting culture. They have a neat blend of old thought and new paths. I don’t really get it.”

“John?”

“Yes.” I replied tentative and afraid of what was going to come next. His “John” was definitely on the verge of asking permission to proceed.

“What do you think of me?”

Wow. What a direct question. It was uncomfortable. That wasn’t something that I had had anyone ask me in a long time, if ever.

“You’re a really admirable person.”

“No really. Do you think my life is on an okay path.” “I don’t think you know how spectacular you are or your life has been? You are able to

ask yourself if what you are doing is the most greatest thing for you right now. That is something that you’ve earned by seeing possibilities and going for it. Not everyone considers international options as real possibilities.

You are brave to be living without a built-in identity made out of a culture. Do you know what I mean? Most people they do what their society expects. They are comfortable and watch football and go to work and don’t question what they could be doing. You have definitely not gotten to where you are by blind accident.

“I don’t know. Maybe I think that I am getting comfortable. I used to be like that, but now I am in something because it is convenient and it isn’t really a good thing to do. The jobs will be great. My house is really in a nice neighborhood.

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But what am I doing for a seventh year? Is this where I want to make my stand and home? After 3 more years I’ll have all of the rights of a full citizen. Except voting…which I’ve never done anyways.”

“You’ve never voted anywhere?”

“No. I left the States when I was 16 and haven’t really been back since. Foreigners can’t vote anywhere. I’ve lived in so many places that I can’t make up my mind about staying here. I’m not really friendly with the Japanese, but this is a nice place and it would give me a pension. And, health care. And that is really important for when you get older. I just don’t know what I’m doing with my life. It feels like I’m not doing anything but getting by.

One of the other professors told me that I don’t have to teach anything. You can have them sit and read the text book and then give them oral exams. If you give them a lot of A’s you won’t hear anything from them.

But that would be boring. So I’ll work my work book and program really hard. But after a few years, it’ll be no sweat.”

“That sounds like a great plan.”

“I just wonder if I’m still here because its easy. Maybe my life is settling and I don’t know what that feels like. Where do you get your passion to just do a safe routine?”

“I don’t know. That’s a hard one. What is it for that you do such a thing? I guess one benefit is that you really can make roots there. You can stay long enough to feel enough a part of it that you want to vote or effect that part of the world. I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into America. I don’t think I’ve ever missed an election. In fact I usually work on them.”

“I’ve thought about going over to China. That is where I was thinking of going when I came to Japan 7 years ago.”

“If you keep teaching here you’ll get Summers off. You could go to South America during the Summers.”

“Yep. That’s true. But, I told you, just touching a culture isn’t enough for me, to really understand it you have to live the language. The Japanese aren’t my favorites. I don’t think that I could ever feel settled living amongst the Japanese. They’ll never let me be a part of their community.”

“As a foreigner you could never vote.”

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“Yeah, voting.” Beni said dismissively.

“How about the woman you’re married to. You guys live together, right?”

“We’re married and live together. But I didn’t ask her to marry me. When I told her about my visa problem, she just offered. I told her that we can do it in ceremony, and that’d be good enough for me.

Anyhow, she’s not the one. She isn’t the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. She is not someone I can naturally call pet names. She said she understood and that we could just be lovers. That that was enough for her.

So we got married and moved in together. Only now I’m sure that she’s starting to get more and more emotionally attached. She started to ask me where I was going at night and stuff. And we had an argument. And now she doesn’t ask, but I call her when I go out and… She’s getting more attached.

She is a resting place. Maybe I need to break free and look for that real one. I mean, it’s the same thing as my job. I’m pretty much just having sex with her because she’s convenient.”

“How long have you know each other and lived together?”

“We’ve lived together for two years and known each other for six. We’ve been good friends for most of those six.”

“Why don’t you stay and try to see if you could not make your relationship with Aya work. You guys have a lot of history. She sounds like a really good person who really cares about you. And you guys must know each other well. Maybe that’s enough. Perhaps your heavier love will develop as you get older.”

“When I wake up I’m not excited to see her. She knows it. I could never be in-love with her.”

“Such a fine line separates "Loving" someone and being "in-love" with someone. Especially unrequited love. It is one sided and so very sharp. And it lets you kill with a smile. It’s not my fault I love you. Or sorry I don’t love you. The devil must be happy.”

I gave him the advice I give myself. “I don’t remember much from high school. But I remember one guy that said ‘love is a choice’. Don’t you think you could decide to love her. I mean you’ll never find that perfect one. Maybe that is a myth. Maybe you should love the one you’re with. But if you wake up and give yourself that message that she isn’t the one you love, you don’t love her, etc. Then you won’t but if you try..”

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“I’ve told her and I tell her that I don’t love her and I could never love her. I mean, I love her as a friend. A lot. But, no…”

Ouch! I thought. He tells her that he could never love her. What a weird relationship. This man is awesome. He may be crippled emotionally or whatever, but he has the capacity to be brutally honest. If I could do that I wouldn’t be in the permanent quandary I’m always in. I’ve never been able to be honest with my girlfriends for fear of hurting them. The closest I ever come to honest is passive aggressiveness. He told her he could never love her! Ouch! Hot!

He continued right over my thoughts. “I mean I tell her why I go to Thailand. That is where I go for sex. She knows. But she’s asked me not to tell her that I could never love her anymore. I don’t say it anymore. But I don’t want to lead her on into hoping for something false. And the thing that’s bothering me is I’m having sex with her. And we have good sex. But is it right? For her? For me?”

“Maybe you can’t love her because you couldn’t love a woman that takes that much shit

from you! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. But you’re really brutal to her.”

“No. I’m just honest. I mean my father, he’s been married six times and now travels around with his wife in a mobile home, tells me that the problem is me. He says that I’m fucked up. That I can’t love. He says it’s not with the girls, but with me. But he’s one to talk. All of his many marriages were serious right? He tells me he’s really loved each one and the current one is the real one.

Maybe he’s right. But the way I see it, either you love them or you don’t. She isn’t the one. And maybe I’ll never find the one. I’m getting older. And now I worry that it will never happen. The more time I spend with Aya, the older I get.”

“I just think that that concept of the one” is a destructive concept. Love goes through phases. There is that “Love phase”. But that gives way to bills and the mundane. Then there is that deeper love of sharing a life.”

“She knows, and I know, that isn’t going to work out. John. Didn’t I tell you? I DON’T LOVE HER THAT WAY. God, you’re like a fuckin’ machine. “Couldn’t you lie to yourself? Just pretend and it’ll be true.” Eegads, what an attitude.

There is a “one” out there!” Beni responded emphatically and with confidence. “I had one and lost her. Now, she’s married and I’ll never get her back. But I still know that Aya could never be my partner for life.

So should I leave her? I don’t want her to feel bad. I do care about her. But being romantic with her is hard. And if she had a baby! That would be the end of my life.”

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“Have you discussed what you’d do?”

“Yeah. I told her I’d want an abortion. A baby would be a terrible thing, it would land lock me. I wouldn’t have any more choices. It would be a disaster. She says she agrees and would do it. But I’m not so sure.”

“If not, you and Aya would be stuck together for at least 18 years. And there is always a risk. I really believe that if you take that risk and you make a baby, you should stick together till its grown. The babies’ life is your responsibility. That’s how I’m conservative.

I think the two of you shouldn’t be together. Not if you’re not willing to raise a baby with her and you have no hope in staying with her. I mean you wouldn’t work this relationship lasting because you don’t love her. So there’s no long term hope there. Every day invested in the relationship is a day wasted if you’re not going to stay.”

“But, we do like each other’s company and we live together and…”

“It’s convenient. I’d just feel sorry for a child that came out of such an offspring. . Every time you have sex with her you are betting against a twenty year commitment.”

“Beyond that,” Bennie kept exploring, “I don’t know if what I’m doing with my life is meaningful right now. I mean am I just hanging out? Is there something else that I’m supposed to do?

I’ve thought about working on playing guitar with all my free time. I mean really dedicate myself to learning how to read and write and play properly. I made the CD. But I get stuck in the same patterns because I don’t read music. Right now I just diddle on guitar. If I read I could really build some really worthwhile music.”

“Working seriously on your guitar is probably a good idea. You need to invest in something. Just doodling, as you said, doesn’t get you anywhere. My drumming doesn’t improve because for years I’ve just putzed around.

There is something refined and beautiful about an old person who has really refined their craft. Someone whose put a lifetime into that one craft is really able to make exceptional music or art or whatever. It is a pure refined beauty.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Beni said with a small lift in pep. “Maybe I’ll just take this year to enjoy the comfort and the time the year allots me. I’ll dedicate myself to classical guitar, which is something I’ve been meaning to do forever. And I can work on getting my book looked at.”

“God. I am often filled with despair over the wasting of my life. I don’t know if life is supposed to have a meaning, but it lays heavily on me too. My book is meaningful to me. Most

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people find meaning in their relationships. But I’m not taking care of anyone. Like if you were taking care of your kids you’d feel needed. You’d have a purpose. But Soo Hee is away and independent. She doesn’t need me.

And, beyond finding meaning of it,” I continued, “my relationship is one of turmoil and anguish and just generally not very good. I have been with Soo Hee for 7 years. My fiancé’s name is Soo Hee. Soo Hee and I are separated by a lot of water. Literally! She lives in Korea and I live in Los Angeles.

These days when I tell strangers I hedge. I say 6. It sounds less ridiculous that I've been waiting for her for 6 years than 7. In fact it’s definitely coming up on 8 years that I’ve been waiting. It has been really painful.”

Oh my Gawd tommers, I have lasted typing for sooooo long. But now it is time to pee. It was a really commendable stretch of effort. It looks like this drugs and typing thing was a good gamble. I’m able to type after all. Okay. Returned from the head with slurpy and coffee! I love this place! The draft will start at this point from where the last e-mail left off. Thanks for reading further. John

“Why doesn’t sooni… What is her name?”

“Soo Hee. S-o-o space H-e-e.” I always hated spelling out her name. It made me feel the futility of us and the distance between us. The spelling was always done with a burning rage and indignity.

“Why hasn’t Soo Hee come yet?”

And the snare is that there is always one more thing before she’s coming. There was the rice farm lawsuit and her restaurant and waiting for her sister to get married and selling properties. And it seems that it just goes on and on and it seems that you can’t get off. And the whole thing seems like an obvious parable in that the more time you sink into it the more time of your life is spent alone and wasted. Except it’s not a parable, its my life that I feel is wasted.

The other night we were driving through a part of Seoul together called Itaewon. Its where the military and sordid people go for nightlife. I mentioned stopping and walking. The traffic was making our progress nearly non-existent anyhow. She said no.

“Why? So I could go chasing the cheap girls again? What was the Canadian girl’s name?” she asked. This tirade was a reference to the last woman I went out with before Soo Hee. Now the only thing that she ever mentions to me with a feeling of spite, Soo Hee had once driven me from club to club to connect with her.

I didn't remember her name. Soo Hee called her "The stupid girl" in a mean way. And why was she being so harsh on this girl she didn’t even know? At that moment I had to ask

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myself, what do I have in common with someone who uses the phrase ‘cheap girl?’ What have I done with my life?

That night I nearly cried out loud in our shared bed. Actually she was in the other room She likes to sleep on the floor with the air-con on when its hot. All of my thirties wasted and gone. On such a stupid dream. The last time I was free was that night I met her in Itaewon. That was it. I had been on a shelf ever since. “Oh the shame the indignity.” I finished mockingly melodramatically.

“I got really dramatic with myself. Like I thought about that my kids could be 6-7 years old by now. Instead they' are going to have an old dad.”

“You wouldn’t consider living in Korea?”

“No. Her English is better than my Korean could ever be. Anyhow, I’m not interested in Korea. There’s nothing there for me. They are racist against mixed couples and it’d just be way easier for us to blend into America.”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“This trip actually was planned after she for the first time ever said that she didn’t think we were as close anymore and suggested I be free. It had been ten months since she’d come seen me. And I am damn sick of it. But then we decided to forget our phone break-up conversation and see each other in person.

So, in my mind, this is a break-up tour. But I can guarantee you we won’t break up. We’ve been through so many confirmed break-ups. Then I realize what I’ve lost or she cries and pleads and we reconfirm our plans and I go back to waiting.

Thankfully,” I added sarcastically, “it’s just waiting for a little bit longer. Year 8.”

Beni just sort of contemplated in silence.

“To top things off, these days I keep thinking I want a family. And I am so out of touch that I can’t even tell anymore if I really want a family or I just want a way out that doesn’t involve rejecting and hurting Soo Hee.”

“If I stay with Soo Hee, I can't have kids. She has known that she was sterile since she was old enough to know what sterile means.”

"Oh cool. "Beni said breaking his silence. “ So you can put it in her over and over and never have to wear a condom or worry about her getting pregnant." It was a revolting statement.

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“God Beni!! Soo Hee is a remarkably strong and wonderful woman.” I shot, somewhat angry and defensive for that last slight to her honor. “She knew that from an early age and so had to think up how to survive in a world where women are only prized for their male offspring. Women friends in Korea don't refer to each other by their first names or surnames. They call each other "Mother of so and so."

If a woman doesn't produce a male, the husband is still allowed to get a second wife. Or if he likes he can send her back and not return the dowry. Soo Hee had to de-breast herself as lady Macbeth and find a way to fit into the male world. She has used her wiles to amass a fortune and position in a world with no place for her.

Putting it in her has nothing to do with anything!”

“Sorry.”

I only barely acknowledged this apology with a hint of a facial expression of disappointment. To get things back to the appropriate level of sensitivity, I made a heart felt statement.

“I think she might love me because I am the only person to whom she can be totally feminine. With me she doesn’t have to battle for position.”

“To be brutally honest, my thinking goes partially like this…She has money.” My discomfort with discussing this matter was evident by my momentarily positioning my pointed horizontal index finger along my closed lips.

“Our plan has always been for us to quit work and just travel. That has been our plan for years now. But since I met her I have traveled less than ever and do nothing but work and remain alone. Well, if I’m going to be working every year for the rest of my life anyhow, I might as well have a family.

The fantasy of endless travel and freedom is also a big pull for someone that has so little use for the mundane work world. But then again, maybe I’m getting older and it’s time for that childish fantasy of never having to work and grow up to end. Maybe part of a full adult life is taking on responsibilities. But then I think about working and struggling through twenty five years of hard labor to have kids that won’t even live in the same city as me when they’re grown and…. I don’t know.

Families used to be a much better deal. My families aren’t close. I don’t even speak to my sister. I have issues with family generally.”

“My family was torn apart by my mother’s death. I haven’t felt at home on the planet since.”

“Wow. That’s heavy.” Its amazing how loud pregnant pauses can be.

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“Okay!” Beni said insistently, to indicate that the funeral mood could pass. “By the way, it may not seem romantic, but I totally feel that geo political historical

thinking should enter into your life choices. Identity must be anchored on, cultural soil that facilitates economic strength. Without an infrastructure and a dependable system of law, utilities and economics, my secure bliss life is gone. Without this stuff YOU WOULDN”T BE YOU. When considering personal choices and values, someone prioritizing your substratum’s health is necessary for our survival.

And I’m not just avoiding my feelings or some such Freudian crap. Feelings are not the center of the universe. Our civilization didn’t advance on the basis of feelings. That’s a 1960s romantic think. Politics and economics are thought about by conscious thinkers. I am my country. I am the success of my history. And they, I. As personal as it gets.

“Well, values have history. They rise and fall with civilizations. I love my values. To not be able to put your values in a historical or economic or ideological context is to not be conscious of what you’re creating.”

“I guess that makes me unconscious.”

“Set free to find a new illusion.” I said lightheartedly, trying to take the sting out of the unintentional barb I had just walked my way into delivering.

Even with all of that going, I say if you really loved Soo Hee, it’s a done deal. All that cultural survival and economic shit doesn’t count. I don’t trust your logical love or any of that stuff you’re talking about. Relationships run deeper into you than any of that stuff.”

“I love her tremendously.”

“You’re full of shit.”

We’ve been together for eight years. What the hell? You don’t know how I feel or what I feel.

“Staying together doesn’t mean you love her. It doesn’t mean that you even ever loved her.”

“Well I do!”

“Fine.”

“I just also love other things like my civilization.”

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“That’s passion for ya.” He cut with ironic nasty biting sarcasm.

“Well, and it sounds to me like you could never love yours.” I said in a reflexive ad hominen attack.

He looked down like he was taking his chastening to heart. I hoped I hadn’t wounded him or our friendship.

“Yeah.” He said chillingly, “And I’m starting to have to drink to have sex with her.” And for the second time in the last ten minutes I sort of felt pity for poor Beni. Then he mumbled in a melancholy that scared me, “We’ve been going I circles in the park for a long time.”

“Well, we’re going in circles, I’m stuck at a fork in the road. But it sounds to me like you’ve hit a brick wall.” This was said with a soft tone of sympathy.

He didn’t respond to my statement.

I told him that the way out of the park’s look was to just take a straight line in any direction and make sure not to bend back into it.

“Of course that’s easier done in parks than in real life.”

“But which way do we want to go to get back to Shinjuki?”

“When we get outside of the park, we’ll be able to see where we are.”

Beni expressed disappointment. “You know I thought that we’d get higher.”

I told him that I thought it was a great trip. Really neat and as much as I had imagined. We had really spoken of issues that were important to us. And I reassured him, that I still considered our friendship solid and a happy thing even though we had had somewhat heated exchanges.

He temporarily raised his distracted head in the middle of his funk and looked me in the eyes. “No doubt. We have to disagree. I really like to see what other people think. Its cool. And I appreciate your honesty.”

“And me yours.”

“And anyhow,” he continued as his head slunk back down, “…I’m not saying it wasn’t a good experience. Its just that the last time I got much higher.” I took his disappointment at our evening personally. He suggested that maybe we should go back and get some more drugs of a

52

different type. His debating whether or not this was wise reassured me that his disappointment was strictly with the high. He wasn’t sick of me or us.

I agreed to do more with him if he wanted to. If you agree to a night out on the town with someone, doing this kind of thing, you do not bail out on them. Some relationship rules are simple.

Besides, regardless of rules, I was stoked to have a new continuation plan, goal and destination.

“Remember though, you shouldn’t compare the next high to what you expected or didn’t get or last time. Appreciate it for what it is. It’s like comparing what could be with what is in our relationships and life plans. It drives us crazy.”

“Okay, but what I took last time got me way way higher and tripped out. We’re going to do something different. A different one.”

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Capsule Seven: Silence

As we walked back to get round two of the drugs, Beni told me more about Aya.

Tragically Aya was raped by her father from the time she seven years old. It continued till she was 14 years old. He used to come into her bedroom in the middle of the night and force himself upon her. When she slept with her father and mother he would finger her in the same bed as her mother. Her father was washing her in the bath tub and washing out her vagina until she was 13.

“She isn't sure if her mother knew.”

“How on earth could the mother not have known. If she didn’t know, it was because she didn’t want to know. Even then, it would be impossible.”

“That’s what I’ve told her.”

“It isn’t normal for a father to be in the bathroom when his 14 year old daughter is bathing.”

“Thirteen. The bathing stopped at thirteen.” This correction let me know that Beni had heard about this situation often enough to where he’d incorporated into his life knowledge base. This story had become a part of him.

“Either way. Dad, Mom, Aya. They all knew, and should know that the others knew.” “The bummer is that Aya’s father had had a stroke at an early age. He was 52. It was related to his heavy smoking habit. He became a partially paralyzed invalid. He needed to be fed and wiped, but didn't say much anymore. He lived for 5 years in that reduced state of independence. 4 years and 7 months an 13 days to be exact.” The date rattled off as automatically as a mantra.

“And,” I said guessing the horrible rest. “Aya took care of him didn’t she?”“It’s the Japanese way. If you don’t take care of your parents… Well, it is darn near

unthinkable. There were no other children.”

“Thank god. Jesus what an unadulterated nightmare.”

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“That’s what I figure it must have been too. She said it was bitter sweet as she somehow still loved him.”

“Oh my god. Give me a break. Loved a man that did all those things to her?”

“Family bond is strong.”

“Not in my family. But there is an incipient connection that keeps us uniquely tied to each other. My sister has run away from us. She lives in France and never calls me or my father. But I’m sure that it still eats at her. I hope so. I would say I don’t care, but it would be a lie. As horrible as it is, I could see how she could still love him.”

“Its unfortunate that it wasn't all hate. It probably would have been easier if it was.”

“True that.”

“When he died Aya and her mother lived together, but they never spoke. They lived in a small apartment. The mother usually sat in a chair between the kitchen and the dining room. At least that's where she was sitting when Aya came home from her work as a librarian.”

“God what a perfect job for her.” I thought. Enforcing silence amidst all of those words.

“She cooked her food and did her laundry. But in all of the years that she lived with her, they never spoke.”

I understood intuitively, had Aya ever spoken to her mother again there would have just been screaming that deafened both of them. Why bother?

“Our place is the first place Aya has lived outside of her home. She didn’t tell her mother she was getting married or that she was moving before it was done. The mother was hurt that she hadn’t been consulted about the marriage. But she didn’t ask why.”

“So her getting you a visa wasn’t all about her rescuing you.”

“It wasn’t. Its hard to live with her. She has all of the silent places she goes to where she just withdrawals into herself and won’t communicate. I can’t reach her when she’s in that place. It does. That is a space that I can’t enter. I can’t. Even if she would talk with me about it, I could never understand the depth of her horror.”

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“I guess weak empathy is as close as we can ever come to feeling another’s pain…..Too lonely. I can’t know, but I know, that her silence is profound.”

“You can almost feel it. When she’s in that place, it’s a thick invisible wall. One of those total, “don’t talk about the elephant in the living room things.”

“Does she spend a lot of time in that space?”

“It happens pretty often.”

“Does it happen when you are affectionate?”

“No our sex life is great.” Wow! I said affection and he heard sex.

I finally understand why Aya was with Beni. There is safety in silence. Beni said that Aya never liked it when he told her bluntly that he could never love her. So

he didn't. But he still had to let her know that they could never love so that she didn’t get any illusions. On some level, that whole dynamic must have been very comforting to her. I’d be terrified to love too if I were her.

Now the only missing piece of the puzzle is what happened to Beni that he was drawn to such a relationship. Neither one of them could be intimate.

After a long silence, I blurted, “What an horrific story.”

“I only wish it was just a story.”

“I sure am glad it’s just a story for me. It gives new meaning to the phrase “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Jesus.”

The silence that followed my culminating emotive utterance made the last one look like nothin’.

“An appreciation is the silence is one of the main reasons that I am such a fan of India.” Broke the silence. As I said it I almost blushed with the realization of the irony that I was going to run away from the elephantine silence by eulogizing silence.

“Yeah? How so?” Beni said, cementing the decision to move on in the conversation and fully buying into the silent silence avoidance conversation provides.

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“India has a cosmological sense of time. We worry about the minutes. Geologists the tens of thousands of years. But the Indians measure time in Kulpas. A kulpa is like the time between the expansion of the universe, its contraction and next big bang. This cycle of hundreds of billion of years has happened hundreds of billions of times.

In fact the head God Brahma floats down the river. And every time he sleeps a lotus flower grows out of his belly button. Vishnu is always in the flower when it opens. And every time that Vishnu blinks, a new kulpa (think universe) is born. That’s every time he blinks!! There have been so many universes. And to take the immediate problems in the one you happen to be in now as incredibly important is absurd.

They don’t get worked up about their little stories in this little universe. At the same time their not taking themselves as the starting point of their reality, they are fully aware of the unimaginable magnitude of their cosmology. The awareness of the largeness of it all and their own smallness makes them tuned in to existence in a way we aren’t. American’s aren’t cosmic.”

“I’ve had the feeling of being overwhelmed by the size of it all. The Grand Canyon was one place. Its too awesome. It overwhelms you for sure. It’s indescribable.”

“Exactly. The sensible reaction to the grand Canyon, but to silently be awed.”

I did the little head roll, bobbing smile thing that the Indians do.

We both laughed. The heaviness had dissipated.

“Yes!” Said Beni not even stopping to appreciate the type of silence my story evoked. And just like every other person who ever hears about India he asked the mandatory question. “But don’t they have a lot of poverty in India?”

“If you’ve never been in a home it is normal not to be in one. They wake up as per the commute in Tokyo. The streets are lined with people. As the sun comes up, they shake their families up and walk off to their respective jobs. With India you must lose your categories. Banares is the city of death. People run through the streets with covered dead bodies on gurneys singing songs, hospices are full of people waiting to die.

When they burn bodies, smoke invades your nose. The heat from the fires is scorching hot. You sweat as if you are basting. In a city with this kind of consciousness, your dreams of living longer through clean air have no relevance. People are interested in being spiritually pure in order to go to the other side. India is a parallel universe. Your concepts of pollution and poverty don’t resonate the same way they do here over there.”

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“Every land definitely has a different feel to their people for sure. That sounds like an interesting place to visit.”

“Communication across cultural gaps is hard. But I really enjoy the Indian sense of silence.“ I summarized.

But it is a dangerous place too.”

“Crime?”

“No. If you don’t remember your life back home and to take it seriously, you could end up dropping out forever.”

“Oh. I also heard that they spit in restaurants and pee openly in the train stations in India.” Said Beni, again not pausing to enjoy silence.

“Not where I was.” I said with a sort of listless despondence of one who was not getting their point across.

“Did you know,” I grunted in a silly mock authority voice. “…scientists have found that over Ninety percent of what is spoken is either misinformation, disinformation or distraction?”

“They’ve also found” he added gleefully, “that the other ten percent. The other ten percent isn’t really heard.”

“Touché!”

“Japan is sort of a culture of silence too.” Beni continued, undaunted in his efforts to communicate. “In the office they pretty much have no ways to communicate dissent. Everyone must agree with the person above them. Tempered disagreement must be really hidden. You have to apologize and pretend that your statement is a question that someone might ask. And you have to be on a near equal power footing to even go there. Mostly you cannot disagree.”

“What a trip. Its like a Borges novel.”

“Who?”

“Some Argentinean writer. But if there is no room for dissent then you must just go with the group. There cannot be any individuals.”

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“I’ve met some cool ones overseas. But while they are here. Yeah. The system is them. And they take on its values and are really defensive about it. They are unified, like we were after 9-11, normally.”

“Is that what happens to all the brash loud, strident looking you wild dressers we saw tonight. Does the system grind them down?”

“Yep. They get ground down in the office. In important areas like family and work, dissenting is considered really unthinkably rude. So you keep quiet.”

As we walked I noticed a slow increase in the number of the brash young strident youth

we had been referring to. They were so outrageous it was hard to believe that they could be changed so quickly and efficiently. Enough social pressure to silence God!

“Hey, speaking of loud silence, I think our walking is starting to pay off. More signs and people means we’re getting closer.” I verbalized.

“Yeah, its just about 6 blocks more to Shinjuku.”

It was kind of comforting to focus on my walking and the lights and the things outside of myself. It required less internal effort. Then something I had to share popped into my head.

“Korea has a really horrible system of shame and silence too.I had a place in Korea where the girl next door had some kind of autism. She would

scream through out many nights. I thought there was a rape going on next door. The next day the family apologized to me.

The family kept this girl in the back of this house and padded the walls so that no one would hear. It was an unscientific view of a world that cared that made them do this! Their having an autistic daughter was the result of a transgression by themselves or one of their ancestors (may we always revere their memories). She was a deep seat of shame. No one was to know of her. You could choke out a God with silence.

I only caught a glimpse of her through the doorway a half dozen times. She was down the corridor with an old woman who had her arm around her. I wasn't sure if the old woman was being kind, or trying to hide the girl. I could see that they were very entangled. But of the few times we made eye contact and I tried to smile at her.. I tried to give her some warmth.”

“Oh Yeah. Your smile was to give her warmth?” Inquired Beni with his incredulity on his sleeve. “It wasn’t to reassure yourself that it was okay if you stayed away and totally ignored her plight?”

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“Ouch. I never thought of it that way. I think you’re right. It was to block it out of my life and mind and feel good about it. Oh so guilty and busted. Don’t sweat the big stuff, eh?”

A couple of blocks later, Beni announced. “I hate to look at my face. When I look in there I see an old man. Being 44 is hard. Women who I want to pick up on call me sir. My students call me sir. And when I think about it, I am old enough to be their father.”

Yeah, I know what you mean. Looking in the mirror sometimes gives me the creeps too.

“I read a good essay in an anthology about this, sort of. It was about a guy that had no head. All he knew for sure was that he saw from two holes. Actually, that and that there is a little fuzzy round patch between them.”

I said while demonstrating my cross eyed gaze at it.

“Your nose?” Beni ventured.

“Yep. His hands, arms and body were clearly also visible. But he had never seen his own head. There was an image that stared back from the mirror. But he could hardly believe that was him. Anyhow, sometimes I trip hopefully on my not having a head.

“Its kind of a sad image for me.“ I said by way of trying to make this answer sound like anything other than an evasion due to nervousness. “Two lonely eyes never able to see the head that they supposedly jut out of.”

Then returning back to Beni’s less than jovial vibe, I said, “And the bad part is that we probably don’t know just how old we look to others. For me

its not so much the fading ability to pick up girls. It is the slow silent shroud of death slowly making me disappear.”

“You sometimes speak like a poet. You maybe should be one.”

“Thanks. But it is true. When I look in the mirror sometimes, I think, “Who is that fat old man?” it scares me.

“Its horrible.”

“And as I don’t have any kids, there will be less and less sounds of life rejuvenating itself in my house. There will be more and more silence. That silence will more and more mock my words and I will get morose.

My old face represents the slow noticeable creeping up of death. It represents the futility of all I do and have done.”

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“That is pretty damn depressing.”

“Well my hope without kids is to add to the conversation that society has with itself. That would be a contribution that lasts. Only ideas and art last after a civilization crashes.”

“Is that right?” I gave him time as it was obvious he was thinking. “The people and the politicians are gone. But, what about the buildings? They last.”

“Well, I’m counting that as art. But someone, hopefully, collects their stories and the paintings and the literature.”

“What about the technology?”

“Yeah. I guess I gotta say that is part of ideas. But I guess I’m stretching it.”

“Yeah. And the language continues in words we use.”

“Language, again, I guess is ideas. I mean, I it’s a broad statement, but as statements go, it does help you separate the important from the transient. And, if not kids, I could at least contribute to the ideas of my civilization. Like with my book and all.

What an amazing act of national character that was.” I blurted after a moments agonizing silence.

“What?” He asked.

“That the people of Israel decided as a nation to revise and use a dead language. Because of this collective decision, millions now speak a language that had been silent for over a thousand years.”

“It had been totally dead?” asked Beni incredulously. I'm not sure if he was showing ignorance or subtly insinuating that I was missing some information.

“Yes” I reassured him. “It was dead.” Then realizing I wasn’t as sure as I thought, I hedged. “I mean, they brought back from being a language that scholars and priests used and made it the street language of a nation.”

“Eesh. The Word Judaism and meaning. Whether or not that word has any meaning weighs heavily upon me. I don’t know that it corresponds to anything or is just a meaningless word. Is there really a such thing as this quality “Jewishness”?

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You and me resonate as individuals, Beni, but I think just as individuals. I don’t think I have more in common with most Jews than with other people. In fact, I don’t even like most Israelis. They seem really gruff to me. Really macho Middle Eastern types.”

“Hey those are my friends you’re talking about.” Said Beni with a defensiveness that was only half silly.

“Sorry. But I don’t feel the connection. One of the only times that I felt connection to Judaism as something real was when I was

in a synagogue in India that was build in 500 b.c.”

“Wow. They have a synagogue from 500 b.c. there?”

“Yeah it’s supposed to be from that Babylonian exile. While there I saw a little Jewish boy stammer walk up to the aisle and kind of fall himself into a big open book. Wow. Study. That’s the Jewish connection. But, of course, many Jews don’t study at all.”

“I never do. That story is more amazing to me in terms of it going back to 500 bc. That’s cool.”

“Beni, did I tell you that I am the only real Jew or person with my family name left in my whole family. If I don’t have a kid my family line dies. That has been a source of discussion amongst family members a lot. My grandparents would like another generation of Presses and Jews. And I love my grandparents a lot. If I had a boy, I could see myself naming him Joe after my grandfather.

So if I don’t have a kid I will have killed not only my family line, but 5,000 years of tradition. To make things worse, I’m a part of the priestly Cohen tribe.”

“That is pretty harsh. I’m not the end of my line. My brother has lots of kids.”

“Should I end the story? My family story? Judaism? These things weigh on me. But, is it my story? Does it speak to me? Or is it only a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury….”

I paused to see if Beni would get the Shakespeare reference, but he didn’t. “Signifying nothing. By what authority is it my burden to carry? I really don’t believe in God or anything. I’m what I call a pain-in-the-ass atheist. It only comes down to culture to me.

Those without God only have only history as a connection. Those without history have only… their personal stories. Wow. I like that. That’s quotable.”

“Personal stories?”

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“You know. To make sense out of our lives, we can use God, history or our personal stories.”

“Yeah, I got it.” He said irritated at the assumption that he might not have. “What I meant is that family can give you a place for your identity to have meaning too.”

“Okay then. Only their personal stories unless they have family.” I said somewhat cowed.

“Right. You’re right. Thanks for pointing that out.”

“Sure. I mean you do have Soo Hee.”

“And Soo Hee is more real to me than Judaism or even a family name. What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“Shakespeare!” Beni uttered excitedly, proud to have hit a literary allusion.

“That’s for sure. My grandparents and history are real to me too. But the gramps will be dead soon and I could have an identity without a connection to culture. Could I? There’s the rub, (no comment) I don’t believe in identities without cultures. But I don’t need any more Judaism for my identity personally. I’m Western. Its really just a matter of whether I feel any debt or duty to continue the culture in the world.

And in terms of that spread of the intellect I was talking about in my book. Jews have kicked a lot of ass. And that kind of ass kickin’ is the maaaaaaandate of evolution.” I stretched mandate out to make fun of me. “Talk about your large contexts to fit into. Intelligence’s evolution. Universal meaning!”

“You’re a weird one John Press. Mr. Geo-Political.”

“Its like the problem that Hamlet had. Do you know the story of Hamlet?”

“No.”

“Amongst other things, Hamlet's uncle kills his father and marries his mother (the meats not barely cold from the funeral were used to furnish the wedding). And his father's ghost is telling him to take action and avenge his murder by his brother. And if that weren’t enough, there is an army marching against the kingdom. And he’s in charge of seeing that the kingdom gets defended.”

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Hamlet’s whole question though is, “How seriously do I take this play in which I am impressed in?” That’s what he means when he asks the famous, "To be or not to be" in this play. Does all of this stuff matter to him. Does is command him to act or does he care?”

“Oh. I get it. Well, what does he do? Does he do his duty?”

“In the very end he does avenge his father and kills all as he is killed. It’s a big blood bath. His last words are so beautiful. They are something to the effect of "If I have meant anything, once in a while as you go romping through your merry day, remember me. The rest is silence.”

Sooo beautiful.” The last two words were said in the voice of Soo Hee..Should I be responsible and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Or melt

into the world with Soo Hee?”

“Soo Hee or not Soo Hee. That is the question!” Beni chimed in.

We both laughed at that one.

“”Hey John,” Beni said in a contrastingly gently and tentatively. “would you come over to our house for dinner sometime? I’d like you to meet Aya. You could tell me what you think of her. Our house. My situation.”

“I’d love to.” I said while already feeling my usual reaction of worrying about my time being taken up. Despite my appreciation of India, My relationship to time is about as nervous as Westerner’s general relationship to silence. It is like a fear reaction of smothering and suffocation.

“Maybe tonight.”

“Sounds good.”

“Yeah. It’ll be neat for you. Its rare that a Japanese person invites a Ganji into their home. Plus she’s a really good cook.”

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CAPSULE EIGHT: Memory

After some searching, we wound our way back to our dealer’s stand and purchased another E-ticket product from Kaos International’s fine line of neuronal enhancers. After repeating the consultation ritual, Beni’s “friend” sold us some powder in baggies labeled, “Trip Thunder”. This stuff was said to take about an hour, make you a little nauseous and then fly you far and high for about ten hours. Daunting.

After consumption, we meandered into a fun little situation. Long story short, we went a Karaokeing (if that’s a word) with three women.

We actually had thought we’d be going out with just the two girls. But, as per my suspicion and chagrin, the wife of the owner of the bar where we met these women came along to chaperone. Auspiciously, it was the grand opening of her husband’s British style bar. So you’d think that she’d stay at the opening. Unfortunately, however, her husband had passed out from drinking and so she came along for fun and to keep us all separated.

“Country” was the translation of my companion’s name. She spoke no English. This has happened to me before. It is so awkward and draining to try to communicate with someone that knows absolutely none of your language. Talk about your walls. The only tidbits of English she spoke were tiny snippets sewn into the Japanese rock she sang.

Because Beni was able to communicate and I couldn’t, I went across the street and down a bit to a book store, to keep occupied. All they had were Japanese anime books. I could read none of them and immediately returned. By the time I did, the deal was sealed. We were going to serenade each other.

Neither Mine nor Beni’s were sure to be hot items on the open market. Their competitive edge was gone. His companion had been divorced. That is a huge disgracer in Japan. Besides that she had a tooth that looked like it had been replaced. My associate had a nice roundness to her body. But at thirty you’re pushin’ the late end on marriagability spectrum in Japan. She’d spent less time in bars than Beni’s friend.

All three were really nice and welcoming, warm women. They had nice souls and sang with spirit.

As was to be expected, Beni was too aggressive with his potential partner for my comfort. He said she smelled so good it was driving him mad. Demonology.

When I put my hand on the back of my charge a couple of times without a responding touch, I took it as a green light to ignore her. The cultural oddity of the songs and singing were more interesting to me than she was. My impression was that she was also more interested in singing. She and I dominated.

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Beni’s big number was “Alone again, naturally” by Gilbert O Sullivan.. The lyrics chronicle support system after support system failing the vocalist. The last one to fail him is God and then he is alone again, naturally. Cool song.

The girls only sang bad generic rock songs that were imitations of imitations of bad products of the American pop music industry. Perhaps there will be freer communication and total cross cultural understanding when American industries have standardized all musical expression. Anyways, I’m sure that’s the plan.

Though not my scene, karaokeing was really fun. I got really into discovering songs that were totally culturally inappropriate for Japan and then singing them. “White Riot” by the Clash would be totally incomprehensible to Japanese. So I sang it. “Young Americans” by Bowie, a British person’s imitation of the cultural stereotypes of America AND the first song sung by a white guy on Soul Train was another selection. And my personal favorite for the “most-odd-here” award, “Pink Pussycat” by Devo. The scoring system reported me as the least faithful imitator in our group.

These songs all reminded me of my youth. What a trip. Who’d of thought I’d have ended up singing those songs there at that age. When I was young these songs represented radical rebellions based on fresh insights that the bourgeois were too lame to appreciate. Now, old and jaded, I had no white riot left. My white population control book had replaced it. Young Americans faded with my sexual ambiguity and flirting with economic nihilism. And I finally realized that Pink Pussycat didn’t express alienation towards the power of women over us. It celebrated the hunt. I resonate with my first impression and was alienated from the modern interpretation.

I had become a different person. The old one was gone, but the songs remained the same.

Also as to be expected, when we parted, the girl who seemed obviously uncomfortable with having to constantly push away Beni’s uninvited advances gave him her phone number. The girl whose autonomy I respected and I exchanged waves at a distance. Women wanting men who are forceful is obviously a hold over from tribal times. Passion is a sign of the virility of the hunter.

When I told Beni about my observation, he said it meant nothing. People in Japan always end with “Lets have coffee.” But when you call you discover it was just a formality verging on a lie. He doesn’t call them back anymore and tries not to resent their need to lie.

Anyhow, long live memory lane. May songs always invite us back. Long live rock.

Emerging from the Karaoke, we were surprised to see how empty the streets were. We didn’t realize how much time had passed. People had rushed to make the last subway just as we had gone in. Post karaoke there was a great early morning feel to the area brought on by the nearly empty streets. Late night taxis scavenged, driving near us slowly. And a few recalcitrant people lingered in refusal to acknowledge the end.

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After Beni puked, we took one of the scavenging taxis back to Rappongi. Watching him gave me an empathetic sickness, so I pulled away. Driving on the wrong side of the road was fun. The whole evening had been really fun and really interesting. Our talk about identity and decisions was really cool. It didn’t resolve anything, it just seemed poetic and universally significant. Having been so long, I had given up on the new batch having an effect. And I was glad to be homeward bound. I felt very blessed for having had a chance to hang out with Beni. The coming doze was well deserved.

Rappongi had quite a few people in it. My first reaction to the realization that the party

showed no signs of stopping in this barrio was a claustrophobic reaction that I would now never get to bed. There was an angry resentment in my mind as I agreed to walk around for a while and maybe get a drink.

It lifted me with a jerk. My feet seemed to somewhat be off the sidewalk as a sort of heat and visual echo washed over me.

“I just got hit by a wave of high. It’s starting!” I said after recovering myself.

“I think I feel something too.”

“I don’t think, I know. Wow! This stuff is strong. Beni we’ve got a long night ahead of us.” This was said with some trepidation and thoughts of bed. But it was also said with the newfound awareness that I was in for an experience. That was a big positive!

As the buildings started to take on an air of bending it got harder to walk. Not that it was hard to walk, but it was hard to concentrate on my feet. Trip thunder was visually stunning. People became obstacles we needed to avoid as the buildings became more an object of concentration. Foreground the background and background the foreground. I had not been looking far enough back into the back drop.

Then without much visual change, the meaning of the buildings started to change. Everything was moving and nothing was differentiated. The entire sky line bellowed as if it were one big flag blowing in the wind. I realized that these buildings were a decision. None of this needed to be there. None had been before. It was as if man had conjured it as a social structure. I’m not sure if our buy-in to this social configuration came before (possibly collectively) or after the construction. But our assent is what allowed such shaped buildings to be the norm. If society agreed, or had agreed upon, a radical design shift, it would or would have happened.

Rappongi’s buildings were walls of cultural and mental hegemony. Imposing a majestic tribute to man and yet full of confinements, they are projections of some psychic limitations or

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givens in our natures. The sky was nearly gone amongst these monstrosities. Their gigantic solidity giving the impression of an unquestionable eternal order.

And yet how nimble they were. Each created as if out of dream stuff. They demonstrated that any shape that could be imagined could be manifest. They were also enforcers of a social order. Hyper-modern, plastic and yet decided. We will eventually molt out of these shells. Acknowledging he fluidity of the solid will inaugurate the next phase of societal possibilities.

“Beni. These walls could be anything. Do you see that?”

“Yep. Okay. John. I’m starting to rise too. I’m with you.”

“Their reality is like some limit of meaning. It is like the limit that grammar puts on our sentences.”

“Grammar is the key to communicating.”

“At some level. But look at the visuals. What do these buildings say without words? What is the meaning of this visual sentence?”

“Oh. I see it. Walls of walls with connection like a sponge.”

“Yes. You are high!!” I said laughing. “Like a sponge.”

As if magic Beni disappeared. He reappeared ten feet away at another one of his Israeli street vendor friend’s stands to tell him, in a near giddiness that could have been mistaken for boast, what we were doing. Waiting, tripping into my own world, and yet trying to convey subtle impatience, I was horrified. For a second, before I quickly pulled my head away, I saw what his friend was selling.

They were horrific, demonic exaggerated caricatures of celebrities. My reaction to them was of that of hearing a truth one could not bear to hear. Not cute. These horrific celebrities were as friends who ripped off their masks to reveal themselves as demons that had been laughing at you your whole life. My mind could not bear to think of the corporate structure. The waves of lame thoughts that had been imposed in the names of these horrible faces.

My thinking and body temperature were getting visual and systemic while at the same time undulating and warping. As we started to walk in a prolonged silence of awe, my shirt started to come off and go back on over and over.

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Out of nowhere Beni asked, “What does your tattoo mean?” Looking at myself I realized that I had my shirt off.

Boy. I hadn’t thought about the origin of my tattoo for years.

“My tattoo is a message sent to me from me a long long time ago.” As I relayed this I’m sure I made a face of a person looking back in time. My eyes were open, but not looking out. “When I was 19 years old I was in Junior College. The long corridors reminded me of a perfect hallway of the work environment. They were so clean and office like.

“The grammar of the building.” Said Beni, delighting in the application of our new concepts.

“Exactly. A young man doesn't know the intricacies of life too well. But he can read building. It is intuitive. The similarity of the construction materials, desks, the chairs, the paper work and fluorescent lights isn’t a coincidence. In my mind I was destined, by continuing to take classes, to work in an office.

I accepted my destiny. But I did not want to have a spiritual lobotomy. My fear was that I would just become a vacuous, T.V. watching, non-questioning, automaton. This didn’t seem like an unbearably horrible thing to me. It just seemed like the way things were to go. It would be redemptive though, if every once in a while I had a doubt. I remembered that there was anger and emotion and passion. Not everything was pretty around the world. I wanted to send this message to my future self. So I got a tattoo. A “Fly in the ointment" tattoo. My tattoo of the great band "Black Flag" Black flag means anarchy. And I still remember that there is a chaos behind the reality they present. Death bites at the walls of all clean. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Godliness is next to death.”

“Wow. It is a message from that hallway.”

“And that perfect lobotomized world never materialized for me. Maybe that’s cause I don’t watch T.V. But I’d probably know about pain and dissonance even if I didn’t have my tattoo and watched T.V. But I’m glad I have it.”

“Gives you some kind of awareness. An edge.”

“Ya. Wait a minute. Hold on. I think I just got this tremendous vision. This stuff is good. Bear with me I’m gonna try to get it out. Okay?

“Sure.”

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“We’ve probably walked around in the same circle now for about 4 times. But if we didn’t know, we’d never be able to break the pattern or have any idea that we could learn about things we’d seen before.

Once upon a time, mankind was like an animal. He ate drank and slept and it was the same day over and over again. There was no once upon a time, it was all the same day or pattern. There was no idea to accumulate things for next year. You can’t have progress without a sense of change. You can’t have a sense of change without a benchmark.”

“Like a baseline measurement?” Beni said proud of his knowledge.

“Exactly.” I said smiling because he was following me and so proud about his knowledge.

“Learning is not possible without memory. Maybe memory formation was the result of someone remembering where they had been. They may have made a mark on a tree. Then when they came back to that spot the next year, they could start to formulate a sense of before.

“Maybe that is why they call a “benchmark” a benchmark. Someone actually marked a bench.”

“Maybe so. When they had a system of cumulative marks, people would then tell about what happened when such and such a mark was made. Maybe that’s even how language got started, trying to explain things that weren’t there anymore. But had been there in previous years.”

“Then cultures would start..”

“Cool! I never thought I’d link my tattoo to the existence of civilization before. Its been a marker to me that has lasted through time. Thanks for your patience. I just all of sudden had a vision of history and place and memory.”

“No problem.”

“Did it make sense?”

“Yeah. I’m not quite sure how you got to cultures.”

“With historic memory, folks can plan and remember. They can learn from their mistakes (hopefully). And remember and seek change. So they told stories of the last time

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around their path. Maybe they made their stories have meanings to remember what to watch for on their circle. Perhaps they backfilled to the creation story of the first time around the loop.”

“Yeah. So culture came from elaborating on their trip around the circle their tribe did…. Okay.” Beni’s final utterance was to convey a combination of enthusiasm and puzzlement. I appreciated his enthusiasm.

“This can’t be an original thought, but I came to it myself and I haven’t heard anyone else point it out. But Beni, did you realize that every civilization is prefigured by a story.

Greece was the outcome of Homer’s Iliad. That book started their culture. People think the event happens and then the book is written. That’s the history way. But in reality, the book is written first and the a civilization comes about from it. The middle ages resulted from the Bible. Muhammad’s Koran came before the extensive empire. Heck! The communist manifesto and then The Soviet Union.”

“Huh. I guess you’re right. The story comes first.”

“I think it’s a rule. And like the marker on the tree, or a marker on this street corner, if you can’t separate the past from the present, you can’t have a story. All is just now. And to function, a civilization needs a story. Like a mind needs one.”

“What would ours be?”

The Bible. We’re an offshoot of a particular reading of the book. The puritans read it stricter and took it more personally than the Catholics (or anyone else I’ve ever heard of).

Such markers have huge ramifications. As our identity is based on who we tell ourselves we are. Right? When I ask you who you are you tell me your story, your history. And so cultures get their identity from the stories that made them up. Of course, the reading is important too and how does the United States read the bible today?”

“Scary. We’re kind of like a psycho – Christian.”

“Yeah. But I hope that we also see it as the mythological springboard for our culture. Like I love the way the Puritans read the bible. But that is appreciation at a distance. One of the big reasons I root for Western Civilization is that I’m invested in the story. If we or our civilization had no story then we wouldn’t have any motivation or direction would we?

Robbed of memory we would be have no story. If we had no story, no direction or motivation or reason we would be as unconscious as the whirl pool. Just spinnin’ . We would just bumble around until someone who had a destiny plundered us. They’d have a reason to. We’d become part of their remembered history.”

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“Sometime it seems that America is just spinning for the sake of spinning.”

“That is why remembering our stories is so important. Wow! I have another one. Let me tell you about while its popped into my head.”

“Okay. But first, do you want to go that way?” Beni said pointing to an Eiffel tower type of tower. “We could maybe walk out to that tower.”

“Yeah fine, but…”

“We don’t have to.”

“No. It’s fine. Its just that I want to remember my story. Oh shit. I lost it?!?! Damn. Where was I again? What was I talking about?”

“Something about stories being important for a culture. And memories and your tattoo as a marker.”

“Oh yeah! Thanks G-d I remember now where I want to go from here.Okay. We individuals need to see patterns to generate orderly destinations and goals.

Just as we know who we are by remembering the stories of our personal lives. And just as cultures cannot be born unless and until, they have an idea that there is more to life than a circle. It makes sense that that is how our universe was started.

Here’s the story of the story.Cosmically, everything was dark. All was still as nothing moved. There was no past or

future. So it could not be appreciated. No one had seen a different present or past vision to compare it with.

To do that required differentiation and the time it makes possible. Hence the big bang The big bang was a mark that made the previous distinguishable from the present. So it started time.

Then, in time, we could notice a pattern in the direction and rate of change we could imagine that there would be future. The past had been present and gave way to a future.”

“M-hm” Beni interjected to let me know he was listening without interrupting again.

“And just as with the person and my tattoo and our civilization, the thing that you must make to remember is a mark. The Kaballah says that in the beginning was the letter. Makes no sentence, but it makes a mark that has the potential for consciousness.

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Later come the other letters. And, then you can make lots of observations and write notes to your future from your past. You can remember. You can be conscious.

In the beginning was the letter. That original mark by God allowed creation of thought to evolve. Without thought to remember anything, the universe would be black/ not remembered and dead. Think about it. If humans didn’t remember, then all would just not be. No one would know. Got had to create us so that we could appreciate the mark and therefore, have consciousness and appreciate the universe.

And the letter was aleph.The marking is memory, it is life. Having language makes us conscious. Like my tattoo.

The stories that we tell require a past distinct from now. We do this with legend stories in the past. And the universe needed a temporal marker too, a time marker. And that was like the Kaballah primal letter.

All three fit with each other. I can’t believe all of that just boom, boom, boom, popped into my head”

Beni even starred at me with his ears. He was being very good. But I thought I could see a little impatience mixed in the upper lids of his eyes.

But realizing my roll was more important than his discomfort, I continued on. “If you don’t have a story or a center or judgment to compare yourself with, you cannot

be reflective. Your like the person going in the circle over and over who doesn’t even know it. You can’t grow. God can be the thing you judge yourself by. That thing that gives you self-awareness. But if you don’t have that, you have to rely on putting yourself in the context of history. A man without God has only history.” I said in my best corny triumphant documentary voice. “Some nation or other. A man without history has his family, as you pointed out.

“Thanks for the credit.”

“And a man without family has only himself. His own personal history. He’s the story. He has to remember where he’s been so he can think about growth.”

At this point, even I was feeling badly for having dominating the air for so long, and wanting to make him feel comfortable to speak freely again.

“Thanks for letting me rant. Sometimes I do that. I just go off. You have great patience. I appreciate it. Exploring those ideas was important to me. Sometimes they probably won’t make a lot of sense. I’m investigating new ground and my mind is very spun right now. So don’t worry about me if I don’t make sense. And thanks again for your patience.”

“That’s okay. Even if it’s kinda vague to me, I enjoy your enthusiasm.

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“This drug has the power of vision. Anyhow, I can’t believe I’m so high.”

“Me either. Its really smashing my head up. It is visual.”

I stopped in silent amazement, and pointed for Beni to notice. There were the same two Chinese massage girls we’d passed earlier again. As if on a mobius strip, we could walk off into any direction and end up right back where we started. We hadn’t even veered towards the Eiffel Tower structure. We’d just kept in circles.

Instinctively, the girls started walking towards us and instinctively I started to move away. Then I just confronted them. We don’t want a message. The tension underneath my statement had mostly to do with the fact that I was tripping and didn’t want to be fettered by their nonsense every time I went around this block.

Beni started to explain the drugs to them. Beni, Beni, only Beni would hit up on prostitutes in the middle of cosmological realizations. I guess female is where we all come from. And Beni was just as content as he was designed to be, fulfilling his biological destiny.

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-----------------------------------------Capsule NINE: “I”

When Beni finally decided that he had to break away, from the prostitute massage girls, I hoped it was because our conceptualizing was so interesting that their mundane offerings weren’t of interest to him any longer. I knew that it was just cause he felt my discomfort and was being a good friend by keeping me company.

Then, not for the last time, Beni gave me a really positive surprise, that made me feel guilty for expecting less.

“You used the Hebrew Aleph, like the Bible does for man. That is important. And I have something to add about that.”

“Cool!”

“I don’t know much about Kaballah, but I know about languages.”

“Yes. I’ve been wanting to hear some of what must go on in your multi-lingual head.”

“Going forward, and remembering backwards and all that stuff was needed for consciousness. I see that. But the language you do it in makes a huge difference too.”

“Explique me.” I said showing off a little bilingual Spanish flair.

The question is even below what you think. It is, how you experience your world, how you think of yourself. What you consider yourself is what changes in language. You see that wall over there?”

“Yeah. Right on! I lobe this subject. That wall.” Linguistics is a serious love of mine. I was sooo happy to get this lecture while high in Japan.

“Well in Japanese, if I want to say where I am, I have to describe it from the outside in. I wouldn’t say, I’m here by the bank. You’d reverse it and say, “In front of the wall, across the alley on stairs sitting my location. And that always tripped me out because it makes the person so little. By the time your done saying it you feel boxed in.”

“Yes. I’ve heard of this. That is why once you get into university in Asian societies, you don’t do anything. What is important is not you or anything that you might do, but where you are. And once you have that top university address, you’re set.”

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“Yeah. That’s evidence of it.”

“So. It’s not only important that language started the world, but that different languages created different orientations. You were created by a language. And the world you were in was created by that language.”

“The idea of you separating out of this creation story that you said with Hebrew. Probably wouldn’t come out of Hebrew and it definitely wouldn’t come out of Japanese. English is a very isolating language. The pronoun stands alone and undressed. It doesn’t imply its surroundings like other pronouns.”

“You’re like talking about the formality thing that happens in Spanish?”

“That would be an example. Others would be that in Japanese, you really describe things. Their words aren’t as invisible as ours, if that makes sense.”

“Totally.”

“Another would be that Hebrew says so little, that you need a context in which for it to be understood. The language doesn’t do well in abstracted settings. It takes place in a real situation. In Hebrew. The letters would have created the world and you would be a part of it. Or anyhow, they wouldn’t explain themselves.

Neither language will allow us to emerge from it. It defines us. We define it. Anyhow, English is an alienated from the world language. You have a blank word, “He” then you fill in the context.”

“Wow. So my language created my alienation. This sense of not belonging.”

“And freedom.”

“Why would my creation story have happened in Japanese?”

“Making a mark on a tree, in Japanese, can’t happen without the situation being included in your description of you. When you make the mark in the tree, the tree makes the mark in you.”

“Oh. I should know that. I’ve studied languages enough. I said totally when you asked if I understood because I’m really into studying this stuff. My favorite book about this sort of

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thing is this great book called “How Natives Think.” And it talks about the evolution of languages and stuff like this. Like there would be no abstractions at first.”

“No abstractions?”

“Like you from the environs. You would have to be describes as a particular entity in a particular space. As a particular man. Not abstract like mankind.”

“Yeah. Most languages do over describe the specific and don’t just assume your not mapped, free floating existence.”

“That’s why there are 15 number systems in Japanese. Is that right? That’s what the book said.”

“You mean like different numbers for counting food and counting trees and for different things.”

“Are there 15? I hadn’t counted.” Said Beni with a faint facial nod to counting.

“That’s what the book said. No general categories. All is specific. Until you have the marker for the last trip v. this trip versus the next distinct trip. The abstract came out of appreciating the looping of time. Wow. The book didn’t say that. We are cutting new hypothesis in the rug of time!

“Okay. How’s this one? How Japanese proceed from out to in might explain our different cosmologies. We are mapping weather patterns from the sky. Us looking at us from the sky is our source of world consciousness. Like looking back from the moon. But we are still the subject.

They have noticed a pattern amongst people relating to the stars. Chinese astrology. We are more affected by it. Millions of things stream through and gravity affects them all equally. We are a blurry streak passing through the stars. The stars are the subject. We are some kind of direct object.”

“ Nice visual.” I chimed in savoring appreciation.

“It might also explain why they have a race instead of a free floating God to unite them. Our words do not imply place or context. The Biblical God thrives on words and floats. In the beginning was the floating word and God followed. Asian religion stresses the unspoken. It is more visual. They are held together by their real racial group that they can see. Theirs is natural. Ours is crazy. Held together by some floating abstraction thing.

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“I can see it. I tell my classes, where as traditional Asian art consists of landscapes with small people (if any) Western art almost always features people close up. We don’t even have nature in our most famous pictures.”

“The language makes other things too.”

“Like what?”

“The hierarchical political system is in the language. All languages with formal and informal don’t have a lot of open democracy.”

“Japanese has a formality system like Spanish?”

“Oh yeah it does.” Said Beni, sort of chortling at my ignorance and reveling in Japan bashing, though without maliciousness. “Big time!”

“That’s why they are so militant and harsh.”

“So wherever hierarchical status language goes, hierarchy goes.”

“So the language your culture starts in gets your identity and political system with its grammar. So if one doesn’t have history or God or family or an individual story, one might find a place through their language.”

“Or their language places the you in its world.” Beni feeling like he was the teacher now. The superior, said. “ You keep wanting to start with the “you” again, not the context for the “you”.”

“Its not my fault. My language made me do it…” And I added after hesitation. “And made me altogether. I blame my language!”

“Earlier you said,” Erratically, like the weather, Beni now seemed to go into some sort of prosecutorial role. “That the Israeli’s are really unfriendly and not welcoming.”

“To me they weren’t.”

“That is because you don’t get the language or the importance of language.” There was a rage there that occasionally popped up in Beni. It didn’t scare me after a few

times. It was just an idiosyncrasy. “They are translating from Hebrew. Hebrew doesn’t have all

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of the cute little polite phrases like “Thanks” and “Please”. With Israelis all that stuff is assumed. We are closer than that kind of nicety will allow.

If I am your friend and I want one of your cigarettes, do I have to ask?” He asked more confrontationally than rhetorically.

“Well..” I equivocated nervously as if not sure I had the right answer. “I guess not.”

“No!” He said, slamming the lid on the question of which was the right answer. “You are friends. Friends share things. And when you take something you don’t need to

say thank you. I saw you take one. I don’t need to acknowledge it verbally. I know we are one and that you’ll get me back and that our bond is strong.”

“Huh.” I said, with more than a small feeling like he was trying to create a bond that was uncomfortably close for me. I always end up being my brother’s keeper and then getting saddled with the bill.

“So what seems like gruffness to you is really assumed closeness. There is solidarity in a silent favor that American contract system will never know. Once you get the language you can get to know a people. And once you get Hebrew you’ll see that the Jews of Israel are amongst the warmest people around. There are no little niceties, and implied pay backs in the language.”

“Huh. Neat.” I said sort of chastised and sort of digesting what I’d just learned.

“How close you can get to others is in the language too.”

“Wow. I haven’t thought of this in a while. When I was learning Korean, it always struck me as so weird that they used the pronoun “our” when referring to their wives. They would say “this is our wife”, when introducing their wife.

I thought about that, but I never took it to heart in such a way. Perhaps I should just use “we” all the time.

What do “We” think?”

“Japanese and Israeli too. Not only do the words make the stated identity, they permeate the silence between us. The boundaries of our identities can stretch to “we”.

“That’s the way it used to be, for most of human history, you lived and traveled as a group. Decisions back then wouldn’t have been individual.”

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“Israeli’s have a silent “we”. We take care of each other. And the Asian “we” is just a mask for group responsibility and not being an individual. I think you know the Israeli’s are strong individuals.”

“Okay.” I thought. “So this conversation is degenerated into one of linguistic nationalism.”

“But languages create these categories that divide us up. And that leads to division and war. Is there any way around this? To not just be warm to Israeli’s and seem cold to everyone else?”

“That’s one for America. America is unable to exist in a world with different cultures and opinions. We’re not even subtle about it. We either love or hate the other countries. And we love or hate them depending on how much they are like us.”

“Agreeing with us isn’t even enough. You must adopt our values and premises too. Be us.”

“Yeah I guess America is kind of phobic about being part of the world.” Though not a devotee of nationalism, I am defensive for my country. Attacks on America hurt me personally. But I continued in the spirit of disinterested inquiry.

“We are kind of like a machine that wants to make all other countries like ours. But our culture is the best. Democracy and rights are better than being controlled by tradition and superstition.”

“You’re really American.” Said Beni as though astonished.

“You bet! And I have accepted that there are different neat feelings associated with different languages and cultures. And those attitudes are important to preserve. But when push comes to shove. Yeah. I’m American.

And I guess I can’t get out of it. Our bible tells us that struggle for the individual is the best. And I have to accept that that is our meaning of life. Its like in our rock ‘em sock ‘em T.V. crime shows where the good and evil fight all the time. Stories are powerful stuff. The story is the moral. But its one I find familiar and compelling as the best model”

“It comes back to language too. Notice that the T.V. cop show has no historical context or social context either. Its just like English. Instead we get the battle of the separate adjectives. “Good” v. “Evil”.

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“For world peace, we ought to list categories and divisions and then we’d see how the world was organized and we could subvert the divisions by creating third possibilities. We could especially subvert the dangerous divisions and categories. The categories that lead to war.”

“But, our language separations are natural and real. You can’t dream things away. Your thing about having kids is a natural division. You either have them or you don’t.”

“Hmmn. What if a community raised them? Then a community would have them and “I” wouldn’t have a child”. I said putting the “I “ in quotes with my fingers. “That was the norm for tribal man.”

“Good one. Yeah, it’s a good idea, but people will always have war and divide from each other and hate each other. What will be the division between those who want to get rid of categories and those who don’t have such an agenda? What is the category between them?”

“That depends on how rigorously people cling to and can’t leave their categories.”

“You know that is too much for anyone but extreme intellectuals to consider. Our minds would be too crazy without categories. I have no idea how you’d get through a day. We just have to look out for the categories that we let rule us. The ones we don’t question.”

“That’s why I like my job so much. I get to spin tales. Sometimes I spin tales that I’m sure have the power to change the world. I feel like Napoleon after they captured him and locked him on a cage on an island. He made a lot of plans in that cage. I would love to make a one act play based on that.

Yeah, when I teach I feel like Napoleon pacing the cage, making plans for the world. And the scary thing is, is that I really believe words, more than anything else, have a powerful affect on the world.”

“Its true. They do. And us.”

“Napoleon’s words had a powerful effect on him.” With an enthusiasm that made me unable to appreciate that he was trying to remind me of our subtle discoveries about the influence of language on the self.

“He got off that island and fought another glorious battle. And his Napoleonic code reshaped the world. His words had an effect. The world is living out the dreams of just a few dozen dreamers. It would be great if I could get my words into our social discourse. Even without family, I could fall asleep content if my words helped shape or even save the world.”

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“Reshaping the world is sooo Western.” He said in a final attempt to get me to realize that I, in my madness, had forgotten that I was just a product of my language.

“So is the cyber-world. We made that. That has reshaped the world or is reshaping it and boundaries and communities and such. Isn’t it.”

“I guess so. I’m just saying that it is important to choose the language that you revolutionize the world in.”

“I really like the individualism and freedom that English and modern thought make possible.”

“Me too. But the alienation of being a total stranger is hard.”

“Hey. Is it okay to take off my shirt in this culture?”

“Not really. It’s not considered normal.. But that is the privilege of being a Ganji outsider. They aren’t shocked when you break with social custom. It reinforces their image of Americans as context free, like their nouns, and them as civilized, meaning accountable to the world.”

“Or at least their racist nation.” I said defensively.

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CAPSULE TEN : NATIONALISM

Right then there was hugely loud sound. It sounded like the first sound in the album “Berlin” by Lou Reed. Or, if you’re not familiar with that, it sounded like a hundred ice cream trucks songs starting up really slowly and jerkily.

We went running back towards where we came from to see what it was (or hear what it was).

Back at the main intersection, opposite where the “messagee” girls had been, the strange sound gave the impression that it was covering your auditory sense like a sight that exceeds your peripheral vision. It was everywhere, a blanketing without edge. But where was it coming from? The statue of the woman playing guitar? The store? The sky? Which building? Finding it went quickly from being a sport to being disorienting and disturbing.

Beni yelped, “Its coming from the buses!” It was then I saw what should have been obvious before. There were about five very black buses in the intersection. They each had extremely tinted black windows and mounted loudspeakers. Each bus had tinted windows and stark outlined Japanese letters on the side. Were they part of a promotion?

I asked Beni what they said. “Oh. Huh.” He said. “Wait.”

“What is it?” I nudged him. After another pause I reiterated. “What?”

“One says “foreigners get out”. And the other “Japan for Japanese” And…” Beni was a little confused. His brain seemed to be simultaneously taking the information and refusing to process the information. I had the same sensation. This wasn’t real. It was like something out of a movie.

He turned to a Japanese bystander. He asked her “What do the buses say.” She waved him off with a bending of the wrist that pleaded ignorance. With a little more tone he said, “What does it say on the side of the buses?”

She seemed embarrassed and did a reactionary snippet of small talk. “Where are you from?”

“America.” Then he broke into Japanese. After a brief exchange he returned with the information. “I was right about those two buses. And that one over there says “Russians go back to Siberia.””

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We stood for what seemed like another three minutes before either one of us was unstunned enough to formulate a response. And even then, only the phrase “What the fuck!?!” Seemed appropriate.

The strategy of this brigade of black buses was apparently to block the intersection, and either just cause a spectacle or get the masses to join them in chant. Exactly who was going to stop where didn’t seem to be diagrammed yet. The buses were starting and stopping jerkily in indecision. When one cleared the intersection it sped away only to return back where it had entered minutes earlier.

How to take this? Was this normal? Was this unreal? Two things were for sure: It was Gestapo and I was afraid. He said he'd not seen anything like this before. The bystanders were befuddled. The poor local traffic cop didn't know what to do.

It didn’t even look like the nationalists knew what to do. Who was going to stop where hadn’t been diagrammed yet. The busses were starting and stopping jerkily, in aggression and confusion.

I took this opportunity to ask Beni why he always addressed people in English when he knew Japanese. He first said something in Hebrew. And when I asked him what that meant, he smiled at my playing my part.

“Its a Hebrew expression meaning ”Why should I break my teeth? I guess the English equivalent is “Why should I stick my neck out. There is no need for me to go into my life story or make a big effort.”

As I said earlier, you learn pretty quickly here where you are from. When people ask where you're from you have to say “America.” There’s no choice. They don't get it otherwise. The States? The US? USA? I always feel badly when I say it because it technically names the whole hemisphere. But that is where I'm from. America.

This scene kept reboggling my mind. Over and over. “So let me get this straight. This brigade of black buses is part of a fascist civil

disobedience action.” Though obvious, I needed to ask this to reestablish communication and to try to get my mind to accept what it was seeing.

“That seems to be about the size of it.”

“Mind blowing.”

“Bizarre.”

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After what seemed like another fifteen minutes of sheer disbelief, I started in with the humor. “Beni. Is the music they are playing the theme from Godfather Three?”

“Actually, I think its part six.” There was a lot of relief in deflating the seriousness of this potentially horrifying sight.

"Oh no. I had this album. Its called “Italian music for Japanese nationalists".

“You haven’t seen anything like this before have you Beni? Is this something that happens sometimes here?”

“I have never seen anything like this before.”

“Then this could be history in the making.” I said with a tone of seriousness that such a realization required. “A revolution is being attempted. They are demanding attention and something’s got to happen.”

“But there’s no one in the buses.” Beni replied drolly.

He was right! There were silhouettes in the black painted windows. The busses were nearly empty! “Yeah. There’s only about three people on each bus.”

“I guess they figure that people wouldn’t notice amongst the swelling crowds of supporters.”

“But no one seems to be making any moves to join them.”

”People are just stunned. No one knows what to make of this.” “Its rinky dink.” I admitted. “But I’m still a little bit nervous. This is reliving the

historical moment. Do we face the danger like we imagine we would have back in NAZI Germany? Or do we run and hide like I’m thinking might be wise? We’re obviously white and those people hate us. We could get shot.”

“You won’t get shot.”

“No? Can you be sure of that?” I asked somewhat frantically.

“Yes. 100%”

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“How?!?”

“There aren’t any guns in this country. You can’t get them in. That’s why we’ve been able to walk around so late at night and not feel afraid at all. Have you ever felt afraid tonight?”

“No. I guess I haven’t and I hadn’t even noticed it.”

A pause ensued while we watched the busses. These buses were driven in such a jerky way that they resembled poorly designed mechanical cockroaches, stumbling blindly. With each loop they enmeshed themselves further into the intersection each time they went around the block. Each time they more brazenly drove as if the intersection were theirs. Each time looked more like they were going to park and not leave. Each time they moved on.

There was one traffic cop there. He didn’t have any idea what to do.

“When I was in Brazil, the police caught a guy stealing a tourist’s purse. They shot him in the ass. After he lay screaming for about 20 minutes they threw him in the police car trunk and drove off!”

I kinda of implied that I had witnessed this incident. I have a couple of stories where I imply I was there and I wasn't. But I did hear the commotion from my window. And I did hear the details second hand. Not quite sure why I told him this story.

“Their ideas are great!” I continued while pointing at the black buses. “If Japan stopped all foreigners & all foreign trade...yeah that’d be good.”

“They are poor and uneducated” was Beni’s reply.

As I said what I said, I was aware of the statement being a cheap contrivance to get some political correctness points. I had had sentiments of nationalism and wasn’t so quick to dismiss them. His statement was problematic at best. Should I bit my tongue?

“I guess, with no foreigners present, they could do transactions on-line.”

America is currently being invaded by peoples who have no share in whatever cultural community European-America had. My instinct is that there is only a certain amount of ideological rift a country can absorb. Only a few letters of genetic code make for down syndrome.

“I kind of get them.” I bravely ventured. “Sometimes cultures are delicate. For example India’s caste system means that everyone has a level in society that they have to stay in. And the caste system is the whole basis of their religion and society. So what was India to do when I

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walked in? What caste am I? I don't even understand defilement and pollution and past lives. Their whole system was destroyed the moment a foreigner showed up.

Especially an American foreigner.” There is safe ground in America bashing when one’s made a liberal truth transgression. “America's tradition is based on the hatred of olds and the old world. We don't care about all of that. What can we do with your resources now?

We are capitalist culture killers. Big Mickey Mouse culture killers. We’d turn the whole country into a collection of McDonald’s stands if we were given a chance. A million new freeway systems can’t be wrong. But I guess that all of those women working in fields besides their ancient field animals won’t be replaced too soon.”

“Anyhow, this isn’t India. This is a modern nation. I’d hoped that fascism was dead amongst modern nations.”

“Democracy seems to have triumphed. But it hasn’t really taken root in much of the world. Democracy screws India in a big way. The untouchables are out-voting the high caste Brahmin types. Good bye “top Brahmin”.

“Top Brahmin. Funny.” Beni acknowledged my joke with looking at me. I don’t think he was amused by my politics.

“Funny. But seriously, democracy totally undermines the whole Indian system.” And, of course the Japanese have always been pretty good at absorbing other cultures and continuing. They’re post-modern like that. But I can see how our individual based, sexual liberation, disobey your parents MTV trip is subversive to their social system. The Confucian thing.”

I still wasn’t sure what Beni was thinking. He was either entirely engrossed or not talking to me. “Hey. I need a drink, I’m going into the 7-11. Coming with?” His leaving, I surmised, meant that he wasn’t totally engrossed.

“Naw, I’m going to stay outside. I wanta see this. See what happens.”

Race and nationalism are funny things. The profusion of greasy old Italians doing sex tours has always bothered me. But now that I’ve seen old Asian men with beautiful young white women it bothers me even more. It might be training, but I’m afraid solidarity is genetic.

Five minutes later he re-emerged with a drink. “Has anything new developed?”

“Not really. I get the feeling that the busses are trying to create some stand off. That and they’re just being assholes and blocking traffic too.”

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Ambulance sized white vehicles with bullhorns mounted had now joined the parade. One was stuck and cursing the fact over their loudspeaker system. He tried to get out of his predicament by driving over a center divider.

He made it over, cursing and swearing at the guy behind him for not backing up. Of course the car hadn’t back up because it was trapped by the demonstration.

Just then one small ambulance sized protest vehicle with a loud speaker, kind of had to stop because it was going head first towards another car. Comically, the guy uttered some obscenities at the other driver. Then he made a jerky right, went over the road divider and temporarily stopped with one wheel still on it.

“He is just like a frustrated little bug.” Beni had more disgust than spite in these words.

“He is showing his personal issues that got him here so obviously that its embarrassing.”

“One of the greatest moments of my life was when I was protesting in people’s park in Berkeley. I was playing in my band in our acoustic street musician set up and about 60 riot cops in formation ran past us as we screamed wild fascist fighting screams. It was a great moment in my life.” I was trying to win Beni’s sympathy back. I think I had offended him greatly.

“Beni?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you speak Arabic?”

“I have to stay in a country about two years before I get the language. It isn't like sight seeing for me in the Arab world. I explained that. They will not let me into their lives. I’m a Jew. It is dangerous. I could be killed. It happens all the time.

Let’s get out of here.” He muttered.

After about three blocks of walking, we finally had the feeling that we weren’t being propelled by a desire to get away anymore. While we were getting our first calm breaths, a bunch of black guys, who were totally oblivious to the proceedings blocks away, tried to get us.

“Drinks really cheap. Women. Dancing. Do you like women?”It is amazing how quickly and subtly they work. They have about twenty seconds to do a

psychological profile on you. Are you worried about strippers or other hustlers? Do you want to dance? Can you be bullied? If they can get you to say ‘yes’ to nearly any question, they put

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their arms around you as if they were your friends. They use the friendly arm around your back to force you into their bar.

Their quick calculation and psychological responses couldn't be computerized. It takes a human touch.

I was getting into the mode of responding with anger. That is my tact. The angry powerful American. Beni took the tactic of treating the head of the group as an individual. He engaged him on a real level. The diffusion of tension was immediate.

Beni blurted it out “What is your name?”

“My name is Patrick. Please come inside and drink.”

“We’ve actually been walking around all night and are pretty spun. I don’t think we’re going to drink now. Can I ask you some questions Patrick. I’m curious about some things and I need to ask you.”

Patrick waved his friends away and they dissipated, like so many Shakespeare fairies, into the night. He had an intuitive sense that Beni was sincere and respectful. He seemed eager to talk to us. It was if he had been waiting on this corner for someone to acknowledge him as an individual. To ask him some questions as a person.

“I’m Beni, by the way.”

“John, nice to meet you.”

Black. His face was black. Only after the whole wind down from the hustle attempt did I even really look at his face.

One thing I learned by going to Africa, I kid my classes, is that the people there are black. They would cease to be puzzled or amused by this truism if they could see this Nigerian man. People say that black is the absence of color. Actually, technically, when all of the colors annihilate each other you get white light. But those who haven't ever seen a real black man don't know.

This man radiated black by way of purple. Purple is the color your eyes generate when there is a lack of stimulus. He was so black he was purple.

“This is kind of a personal question. I hope you don’t mind me asking. But, how much money do you make a night?”

By what assumed permission did Beni manage to run where angels fear to tread? My own theory is that Beni never questioned the propriety of asking direct questions. People are

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willing to share with Beni because he asks the hardest questions. There is no ulterior motive of fun or profit, no voyeuristic journalism in his asking. Pure caring. Understanding each other because we care about each other is the deep motivation behind nearly all non-bureaucratic communication. People being willing to share their stories with him, reflects that fact.

“I am really amazed. I wonder how you survive here. Being a non-Japanese is bad enough. But to be black. It must be so hard to make a living.” Bluntness.

“I can make from 10 - 30 dollars a night.” Patrick kept looking straight ahead like he was still busy searching for business. “That is on a good night. Tonight we’ve each made about 10 dollars and its nearing time to go home.”

“Do you get a commission?”

“Yes. A commission on the number of people that come in and buy drinks. We don’t get any money otherwise.”

“Wow. That is hard. Is it your only job?”

“No. I work in a factory during the day.”

“Wow. That is hard. Do you have kids?”

“We cannot afford children now. Perhaps in the future. Time is against us, we are aging, but we haven’t got the financial means to support them properly now.”

Patrick didn’t really have an accent. Rather he had a softness and pacing that made his speech distinctive. It had a textbook perfection that showed him to be academic, super fluent and a non-native speaker.

“Oh, so you’re married?”

“Yes, for thirteen years. And are you fellows married?”

“No. Neither one of us.”“Indecision about children has kept me off of marriage.” I was lucky to have the choice

without regard to finances.

“And you wife works?”

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“Yeah. She had a school. That is what she did back in the home country. Her degree is in pedagogy.”

“Mine too.” I chimed in for the first time. “How many students does she have?”

“Oh. About 12 right now. ”

“Wow. I’ve wondered, because this place is so hard on foreigners, but to be black here. I can’t imagine. I mean I know a lot of white Gangi. They get work just by being white. But you probably can’t get work teaching English.”

“No way. They take a look at my skin and there is no way I can work teaching English. So I have to hustle. This is the best money I can get right now.”

“Its not a bad job. I just admire your ability to survive here. That’s why I wanted to know how you did it. You probably speak several languages, huh. How many can you speak?”

“Five well. Six or seven proficiently.”

“Amazing. Patrick you speak six or seven languages proficiently and you can’t teach. Do you know what I do?”

“Teach English?”

“I’m a minister. And you know what sucks? I’m not even a minister. I showed them a piece of paper that I downloaded of the internet and they accepted it. They looked at my white skin and didn’t ask any other questions. That was enough!”

“..and we cannot get teaching work here!”

“So why did you come here?”

“Opportunity. You cannot compare the situation here and in Nigeria. The situation there is so horrible it is unbelievable. The cops will stop you and beat you up (even kill you), until you confess to something and pay the fine. It is your word against their’s. You can’t ever win.”

“And is there no way to stay and make your country better?” I asked thinking that the country gets worse when good people leave.

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“The presidents had stolen everything. They have houses and airplanes and interests in many countries. That is from selling the countries resources. There is nothing left. And the president lives on a fortress on the mountain. I cannot get within eight miles of his house. There are armed guards everywhere. If I got close they’d shoot me. No one would care.”

“The irony is,” Beni noted. “that you are free to go and come and he is locked up as a prisoner in his own country.”

“Yeah or we are all in his jail. He goes a lot of places. But you’re right. He must be careful. If I saw him on this street I would kill him. He had better be careful.”

“Oh my god. Patrick you should know about this!” I said excitedly. “I play music and my bass player’s mother was the secretary to the president of Siemens corporation, U.S. She received a letter from Nigeria. The letter explained that the Nigerian utilities folks had accidentally been over billing for years. They were embarrassed and didn't want to admit this mistake. It would look bad politically. So if Siemens would just hold the money, they could keep ten percent. The Nigerian official would get the balance later.

I held this letter in my hands, I wish I would have kept it.”

“Why? he asked amazed that I wasn’t getting it.

“It had the signatures of ministers on it. It was signed by three ministry heads. And... Oh.” I finally caught on and stopped myself.

Patrick acknowledged my revelation with a slight nod and look in my direction. “Everyone knows. These ministers live in compounds up in the hills. It is not a secret that they steal from us. No one can do anything about it. So I had leave my country. I worked hard and paid people and got my passport.”

“Why did you come here? You’d have done better in the United States. We aren’t so racist as here.”

“The United States won’t take anybody. The countries that we go to are Korea and Japan.”

“There is a community that will help you when you arrive in these countries?”

“Yes. And they are the only countries that will accept a traveling Nigerian. Koreans will accept you for factory work. But they are really cruel. Worse than the Japanese. They hit you and insult you and threaten to take your passport. They say they will send you back to the “Land

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where there are too many of you.” And that passport is all you have, so you put up with it. After some time there I managed to get a visa to here.”

“Wow! I’ve been to Korea a dozen times and never know they did that sort of thing.”

“They are cruel.”

“My fiancé is Korean.”

“My apologies. Anyhow, here it is better. You can work hard and do okay. Look at me. I am wearing a suit. I send money back home every month. I don’t make much money. But we do get by.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must get back to work.”

“Thanks. We’ve learned a lot.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

About 30 feet after our departure, I remembered my friend Olu. I worked with Olu from the ages of 13 to 17. He had always seemed like an insane cartoon character to me. He would speak of getting a hamburger in a restaurant and the other people looking at him admiringly because he had gotten a hamburger. Though he seemed like an old man back then, Olu must have only been about 23. I had seen him later in Jr. College. He was still loco!

Now, with an adult perspective, I could ask questions a 16 year old American would never ask. I never even asked him about his home country and why he left. His insane humor reminded me of my mother’s black boyfriend. Was he Nigerian in heritage too? I went back to ask Patrick. I told him of my history with this fellow and asked if he could identify the part of Nigeria my friend was from by name.

“His name was “Olu”.”

“Oh yeah! There is no doubt. Olu is from the West. That name is definitely of their language. That part of the country holds all the power. Our president is from that area. But they are lazy. And someday we are going to take our country back from those people.”

I was stunned. The moral and ending to this dialogue are so simple and obvious they defy belief. For that reason I nearly left the end of the conversation out. But I didn’t. So much for international understanding.

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“Oh the humanity.” I opined with sarcasm. “When will men ever stop hating others just because they are different. When will we stop blaming others for our misfortune and look at the man in the mirror?”

“When men stop ripping each other off. Men are stupid. Stupid black bus riding idiots.” He said this with a finality and fatigue of spirit that was endearing. Beni really felt for life. Suffering wasn’t just academic for him.

“That was great!” I told Beni, with an actual admiration and gratitude for his initiative that I thought might cheer him. “As my personal understanding gets wider I can put people in their political/cultural geographical location. I can rely on more and more perspective. I wouldn’t have ever thought to ask Olu when I was a kid. Looking back at my old thought I can really see growth. It’s like my amazement that I used to think that being in jr. college put you straight on the corporate career path! It shows growth.”

This statement had more than a little plea for absolution for my sympathy with the people in the black bus. This was done despite the fact that I believe that if all people are idiots we may have to stoop to their level of thinking to protect ourselves from them.

“I used to think 30 was incredibly old. Now I’m forty four. That shows growth.” Beni’s listfulness was frightening.

“Well some day before I die, I want to approximate the omniscience of God. God is like a fly. He can take in a million perspectives at once. And god uses his omniscience on all of the ultimate questions.. "Is there life after death?" "What is the universe made of?" But unlike the fly, there are no blind spots that he isn't aware of. There are no gaps to be filled between his categories.”

“I wonder if God actually hates thought? He would have to have a lot of sympathy to like us.”

“He can’t blame us for how we turned out if he created us. You can’t know what you don’t know.”

“But you can want to know it. You do that. Most people don’t.” Said Beni in negativity that went beyond being a devil’s advocate.

Beni and I sat down on a street corner and were silent.

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“What a trip this has been for me. This area is really full of lessons and ideas and differing levels of consciousness. Being battered around by so many differing levels of forces.”

“Where you are born and when you’ve born really do make you who you’re going to be.”

“I wonder if someone else went through the geography and times we’ve been through if they would think like us? Maybe even I the great reader omniscient reader am totally predictable in my beliefs.” I said in self-deprecating solidarity.

“No. Your thoughts are strange. Pretty cool.” That was nice to hear after that perceived tension over my empathy for the nationalists.

“Thanks. You’re a really neat person, Beni. You’ve really escaped the trap you were born into.”

“Thanks.” He said, unimpressed either by what seemed to be just a socially required return of a compliment or his life.

“How conscious is that guy picking up trash? He is doing his part. But is he doing it with a view towards his family? Towards the history of the great nation of Japan? Does he see himself as a part of the business sector? I wonder what his relationship to his hat is?”

The hat was covered with insignias.

“Or does he just go from piece of trash to piece of trash?” Was Beni’s reply. I shot him a look of disapproval for his negativity. He got my message and tried to make a positive contribution.

“The flag on the hat looks British to me.” Beni observed with all the insight that one can get from the grammar of visuals. But then he had to slip back to his reality. “The imperialist mother country British.”

“The colors of his hat does represent some history and social order. The colors in the corner of his hat insignia were probably the last remnants of a treaty that concluded a bloody struggle. It represents the reformed flag of 1893 or something. ‘Okay, there will be a strip in the flag for your separate region's traditional island space too.’ Putting a color from your colonized people’s heritage allows them to be integrated in to the greater story of the conqueror.”

“All flags represent conquest and oppression.”

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“Or order! Damn Beni.” I shot back kind of sick of his negativity.“You know what would be worse?” I added trying to be conciliatory after my outburst,

but with residual adrenaline born of anger. “And it’s probably true. The straps and colors and insignias on his outfit could just reflect a bureaucratic battle. They represent office and department consolidations. Joint management of previously separated departments. Efficient bureaucracy. Life realizing itself.

“I’m sure he doesn’t think of that.”

“But I’m sure he does think of himself as part of the country of Japan and its honor and some history stories back that up. He probably salutes the flag and thinks about the role street cleaners play in Japan.”

“Whatever he thinks, he sure is going about it conscientiously. Cleaning gives his life meaning. He could do much less. He is taking his role seriously.”

“Totally conscientious.”

“He's better not look outward though.” Beni said finally smiling a bit. “Look at how many thousands of pieces of paper trash there are!”

“He’d go nuts if he looked out and took in the eternity of the trash filled streets of Japan.” My remark paraphrased the obvious.

“One piece of trash at a time.” Beni, blurted making a psychedelic and cynical reference to A.A.

We both laughed heartily if not loudly. Our eyes were shining.

“You do need to define your boundaries if you are going to have identity and purpose. Too much space makes us insignificant. Dizzy with the fear of being nothing. Hopeless at the size of the task.”

I said bringing it back down to the seriousness I thought our insights warranted.

“Fences make good neighbors. Without them neither side has an identity as neighbor or at all. They’re just scattered people.” He said, sounding like me.

“Chasing trash.” Trying to interject a little Beni like humor into the overly serious discourse.

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“Hate of the other is how most cultures create their definitions and give themselves a bite size identity. That is how they avoid knowing that everything is futile and huge.”

“I guess we’ve seen some examples of that tonight. Just few blocks away.”

“And when you’ve genocided the other, you need to find another one to hate. It never ends.”

“You probably can never even genocide properly in the first place. There’s probably still going to be some asshole historian in some small unaccounted for university waiting to revise the history. Waiting to explain why the insignia is on the hat of the worker. Recreating the culture you tried to genocide.”

Beni’s eyes darting back and forth and looking at nothing let me know he was thinking. I waited for his statement.

“Imagine trying to recreate your identity from the ruins of Nagasaki. All relatives dead. All pictures gone. The university and record keepers dead. What a trip. Dead forever to the extent to where its like they never ever existed.”

“Still the city as a symbol is remembered. But you’re right. There is no final solution to the Nagasaki problem.” My humor sometimes goes beyond the limits of decorum. But Beni didn’t react. And I had a happier insight.

“Maybe that is why your book is selling well in Nagasaki. They might have realized the seriousness of words and communication. Death makes us aware of our commonality. It is the ultimate boundary that identifies us. We are the living.”

“Yeah. Like you said, we have to limit our scope to construct an identity. But death isn’t positive like that. Death kills all identity.” Talk about a party killer. What a thought. We sat as though sulking. But I was really happily enjoying thinking about our thoughts.

“Hey! Speaking of death and limits, I need to go back and get my ear medicine!” This unexpected outburst and emotion showed an elation for ear medicine never heard before.

I told Beni how I spent four hours in the dead of night, in the pouring rain, climbing from water pool to water pool in Brazil, with my friend Carl. We knew we were courting hypothermia, but we wanted to be on the edge crazy.

“When I got the ear infection, the Brazilians gave me butt kicking medicine over the counter. But it ran out on the plane and the infection came back. The American doctors gave me a weak medicine to avoid complications and a lawsuit. Finally I raised hell and got a good strong medicine out of the Americans. The prescription is almost finished, and my ear feels

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totally cured. I can hear again and there is no pain. But I had better finish the pills so it doesn’t come roaring back like it did before.”

I was happy to share a tale of adventure with Beni. But the real reason behind the elation was that I had found a reason to go back and sneak a moment or two in my capsule. Isolation from the world and its complications, with freedom to run amok in my own mind, in one of those trippy, clean, canvas-like capsules, was something I was eager to experience.

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Capsule ELEVEN: SimulationAs we approached the ROI building many black suited, white collar workers were

leaving it. Having been encapsulated and bought a new white shirt, they were ready to take the subway back to work again.

I was secretly obsessing over the idea of having moments alone in my capsule. Upon entering the building Beni helped guide me through moments of frustration with the shoe bureaucracy. A new arrival was at the reception desk where you exchange your shoe key for your locker key. They were trying to tell him that he couldn’t stay there. But he didn’t understand them. He turned to Beni and I. Beni started to help him. As the kid looked really frazzled and anxious and Beni would be able to smooth things over, I knew I had some time.

“So I’m going to go get ready. I’ll be down as quickly as I can.”

“Take your time. I’ll be enjoying the lounge.” I think Beni intuited my agenda. He is a generous soul.

“Thanks.”

I bounded up the stairs, opened my locker and headed for capsule #44.

For hours I had been thinking about how trippy it would be to be inside a capsule on “Trip Thunder”. The astro-cacoon would erase distractions and provide the sleek walls necessary to project on. Not to mention the fact that my body felt banged up and in need of a rest.

The white blank capsule walls were like an empty Rorschach. It immediately appeared to shatter into a thousand pixels. These amazing visuals were still pounding after eight hours. These imagined pixels could be tinted to imagine anything. My imagination, after all, was comprised of these pixels. I was totally pixilated. Visual delicacy. Ecstasy.

My visual rollercoaster ride went at a rapid pace. Images raced ahead of my interpretations by 15 - 30 seconds. My ideas tried to grock the visuals and their grammatical implications in a mad race to catch up. I never did. And, in some sense, my thoughts are still trying to catch up.

Images of Rappongi’s building’s detail pixilated into fine incredible sparkle that reminded me of Gustav Klimpt paintings. The individual pixels were reflecting and being used,

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it seemed, to make the buildings and sky into a monitor. All was electrical conductivity. The color on a few glass buildings in particular seemed to go decidedly purplish.

Pixels became circles. Circles turned into eyes. It was a face of a baby. It was watching a screen of fractals moving into each other. His little pudgy hand was pointed at it. The child was fully expecting to go into the screen.

We are at the end of an epoch. Japanese vending machines have a combination of mechanical and virtual buttons. The mechanical will remain until the generation that remembers them passes. I still hesitate when I push a new virtual button for the first time. But the baby will expect everywhere to have a portal to everything. The mechanical anachronism will fade into the virtual.

Touching may disappear. Commands on the go will start with the name of a part of the room. Capsules should intuit your needs, make communications and show and tell. Window will assume sunny days and flowers or personalized screen saver.

Walls that aren’t windows and our current still (non-moving) rooms will seem as a suffocating as sound-proofed clean rooms do to us now. Claustrophobic and unnerving. Dead walls are scary. Virtual is a better kind of reality. That is why the capsule is perfect. It isn’t a two dimensional space. I can fall into it. More real. Less physical. More mental. Free. Totally free.

As the wall was only limited by my imagination I flew into clouds. Into spirals of spirals and smaller worlds in details of smaller details I dove. Though fantastic, it was lonely. I needed a friend.

“Floor get Jim. Okay let’s fly!” Jim and I spoke of galaxies being the same as drains and the same as clouds of cream in coffee. Clouds and cityscapes flew past. Jim and I were aloft. You don’t need it to be filmed and projected. As the brain itself does, all may be simulated. Jim included. My reality that now comprised my imagination included.

What are the distinctions that separate the real from the unreal? The Japanese girl’s obsession with cell phones was the obvious place to look for the

juncture. Girls looked at girls on phones in their phones. On their phones were girls on the phones. And this diving sped up until girls started to jump into their own phones and the other girls followed.

With mental force that strained me, I slowed this spiral down. They in a line now became the lines in the body of subway full of emerging passengers.

Millions of workers and girls going in subway tubes where they are nervously and intently sending images that would make them human. But the sheer number of them made them non-individuated. The intersection of such masses and the individuals that imagine them defines humans. When they all imagine the same human, that human being imagined is a supra-human. We cannot have larger humans in the minds of the supra humans. As such the limits of us is up. The infinite smaller has no limit.

Baby reaching into the fractals could fall in infinitely. Would he ever see out of them?

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Baby’s attention was caught by quick images. They will foster the limit of its potential. Stories take too long. Verbal expression is a second rate citizen. Her brain will be wired for the faster more pliable grammar of visuals. For mass marketing sales you want maximum images per second. As with the 24 frames per second of film, the shortest you can see and absorb will be adopted. The ratio of quickness to understanding will be maximized. The future will shoot for ads that can grab you while you go by on a train. Jingle penetration before you can close a pop-up.

Messages are so important, processing and processors so measured, I’m probably already a product of the science of brain sensation mimicry. That is how I can finally see to the potential of manipulation here in this capsule. My brain boosting drug and blank white screen have made it possible for me to see what hallucination and manipulation of the two dimensional will allow. Projection is the flip side of reception.

7-11’s Japanese theme is “happy feeling”. It’s not only short, but it blurs the lines between verbal and sensual. As it isn’t a complete thought, it is easy to montage with anything. From coats to airplanes, mix and match is the theme of the new sense of multidimensional meaning via image. A blue elephant on a bicycle: Happy feeling. A man’s head on a frog wearing snorkel gear under water: Happy feeling. U.S.A. happy feeling. Free grammar lets fly.

Much word computer confused. Not it, us, (we must) adapt. Tutor. Show. To pay bill say “bill”. Use tutor, say “tutor”. To call Jack say “Jack”. Thus spake computer wall girl.

Dimensions of future: mass replication. Future: micron-managed, to the pixel, world wide and standardized. Precision control is

needed. When something doesn’t work in one store, it will fail in your 4,000,000 replicated. There are no small details on such a scale of replication. In the 4 million 7s (7-11s is too long), rounding the corners gets you to your item 0.037 seconds quicker. This gives every 23rd shopper time to buy one more item. Multiply the diff by 4,000,000. Replicated corners rounded to identical perfection repeated.

Sameness efficient. Difference confuse. All food under one jingle. Happy meal. All film under one jingle. Miramax; too long. Warner: Action! All communication under one company. See John. All consumer items in one portal: Wal-mart me chair. Fix sink; Music funk. Few word shop fast! Many word slow sales.

Sameness efficient. Endless replicated stores with no outside. Saturation. World as store. “Same always!” Repeated the baby as 11 year old, repeating the new “7 McDs” slogo ( ½ slogan, ½ logo).

Heaven built pixel by pixel.

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Now time buy cyber-sound rights. Words mine. All thought control. Virtual real estate will hold until words are totally gone.

Difference confuse. Sameness efficient. If “7 McDs” doesn’t adopt a product, it will not be viable, necessary or in existence. The Karaoke bar had all songs transferred to the “all available all time” server. No memory exists outside of the database.

Vending machines are open 24 hours a day. Use a mobile speed pass style item scanning device. Soon all “7 Ds” (Short for “7 McDs”) will be like gas stations are now at 3 am. One marginally awake person is all you need to run a business. Replace him with a virtual watcher. Then you’ll be able to just take and go. “Take n go”.

To imagine the future, ask yourself how many self-vending 7 “take-gos “per mile are

needed? “What and when 4 U!” “Happy feeling!”

To get ready for the future, try speaking with as few words as possible. “Us eat.” “Where?” “7 Ds!” “Car mine.” “#2 please.” “Pay.” “Now home.” “Tomorrow work.”

Future language books will have the words you should use in bold face. Hello. How are you? Good and you? Good. How Good Same. Lets go to the movies. When do you want to go? Which movie would you like to see? Okay but I’m hungry. Lets go out and get something to eat first. I really liked that movie. The acting was really good. When she turned out to be behind her own crime it gave me chills.

Try to generalize easy words. “Good” will work here for chills. “Good” and “Bad” can replace nearly every adjective of judgment. Eventually none other will be generally recognized.

Read the previous exercise without old words. (Just use the bold words).

To avoid confusion, use jingles whenever possible. These are fun and cover nearly all of your basic needs.

Everything is designed for profit and enjoyment maximization. I’ve noticed that 7s (Short for “7 Ds”) don’t have any food. They just have what has been experimentally shown to give you enough sustenance so that you’ll feel satiated, and “come back soon.” To imagine the future, imagine endless needs satisfied by the perfect products (followed of course, by the need for that again, again) enabling you to get back to work quickly.

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In this 7s dominated world, what will be our sources of identity? This question had often bothered me. But now I was in a unique position to explore it. Nothing focuses the mind like imminent death or capsules.

The efficiency imperative demands standardization. When everything is standardized, you won’t have any individual experiences. Your singing the 7’s jingle in a special way won’t help. There will be one store duplicated and you will eat mass produced, jingled foods. As an adolescent, your sanity might require you to stop being bothered by the fact that everyone is always talking about movies they saw.

In high school you might try to individuate yourself via choosing “independent / alternative” music and film. That is just another marketing device. Punky? You are a demographic. Every rebellion envisionable has been mass marketed.

When you pass a mirror and it turns out to have been an open door…

The question is, “Do you say anything that has not been mass marketed?” Are all of your thoughts the results of marketing campaigns? How much of what you talk about and the jingles you speak in now, is you?

How is it possible to make a pure utterance now? How much harder will it be after the standardization? Has “your look” been promoted? Where is the ghost in the machine? What differentiates us capsulites?

Perhaps that spontaneity of youth, that authenticity is the basis of the individuality.Children are a big demographic. The media hits hard early on with virtual games,

accessories and media tie-ins to your favorite shows. Hook ‘em while they’re young.Video games outsell films. Virtual time and space are more exhilarating. He’s playing a

fabulous opponent who is in Australia. Commonality is more important than distance on-line. His friends all play the same games.

“I remember you! You were the opponent I used to play “Kill City” against as a kid. We had many favorite “current links” in common. I’ll send you my most favorite recent movie links. Thanks for clicking by”.

Who would be clicking by though? What were the sources of identity in this schema?Are you clicking? Is it jerking your finger? Who is stimulating whom? For the game to

replicate itself it needs clicks. You are its nutrition and habitat. You are bark to its fungus. It lives. You mulch.

Anyhow, the button clicks cannot be considered an identity.

Work as a source of identity has always been problematic. You must fill a role. College is about turning yourself into a particular type of information processors. It is called a major. Being an accountant or doctor are specific types of information processing. “What line of information manipulation is your daughter in?”

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Both are now being replaced by the computer. But why should we be fixed, if we’re slower information processors? Identity encompasses the reason against being killed. It is of crucial importance.

Perhaps in the arts of cultural anthropology or perhaps history? Anthropology means that you see your behavior as representative of the group. History writers are processors that fill niches. Neither is a revolutionary role. Then sit in your office and publish.

Or maybe you could examine the marketing and markets. Market deconstruction shows perspective that makes for identity. The problem is keeping yourself out of the analysis. You have your own market identity from the card swiping you’ve done while shopping. Thankfully the market always has what you coincidentally wanted.

Anti commercialization Rebels on MTV are like just like Washington politicians against Washington insiders.

Ultimately who you know and share memories is what constitutes most lives.If technology separates, technology can bring together. All my children’s faces are on

my cell phone and screen savers. Sometimes they send me text messages and we exchange links. They become that voice on the other end of the line. When you have time “reach out,

reach out and touch someone.” Busy people just send e-mails. What do you base these human relations in this post-language, standardized, mass

marketed on-line world? Easily! Creative new trends and what’s hot will be instantaneously downloaded from the international business culture mill. There they can then be easily accessed to be enjoyed over more and more media by the people in the office, on-line and “in” your family.

Distance separating you, the only people you continue to know in common are celebrities. Soon you are delighting in your mutually shared programming. Intimacy becomes movie review. You can look forward to consuming those “coming soon’s” soon. Bonding through shared consumption. The family that blinks together links together.

She is wonderful. You should see it. Happy feeling.

We do get to construct our websites. That is the most common form of self constructed media now available. For their convenience, you can put your life history on-line for people to keep up with you. It is immortality. Most people however, use pre-existing profiles. Crisis of identity. What are you when you are just short pixels of text and image on a screen to someone?

I have been that to my best friend Tom for so long it is amazing. Soo Hee and I pretty much only talk on the phone. Websites reflect the lack. Friends edit their profile so much that it no longer seems it is they reaching out to someone. To the extent that we can be conveyed by a screen is the extent to which we have lost.

My website will survive me. It has all of my information. It will allow me to have the relationship with my great great grandkids I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.

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Perhaps affiliation with traditional culture is the answer. But that assumes a real past and a real outside. Praying on line. God on line. GOL. Once click away from… Apply those filters!

My vision is not a vision. It is reality in Japan. The workers I can now hear leaving their “by the night” capsules are on their way to enter capsule shaped subway cars and ride them into cubicles. On their way to work they will buy internationally marketed foods in replicated stores.

Japan has a cultural advantage in adjusting to the future. The individuation of the isolated inner self is of less importance to them. The Japanese tumbling out of the capsules just seem to have less angst about being undifferentiated. In fact, to look at these men, they seek it. Americans still have a need to be “real”.

And when these processors without a cause get to work, their computers will be as happy as a dogs.

Computers and workers are Co-workers in the truest sense of the word. Whether we use them or they us at this point is unclear. Perhaps that too is in transition. Bits processing bits that supply the bits with bits of information. When enough processing is done, the computer puts some digits on your card. Whatever you want is then available on – line. (Who has time to go to a mall any longer?)

Perhaps I should be asking the computer how it builds an identity in the mass age outside of mass marketed purchases. Computers have needs. Updates and peripheries. Can they shop yet? Have we given them that power? Then what differentiates our life patterns? As the economy at large, it breathes too. The business cycle is respiration. I am, and the others coming from here to the tubes am a pumping batch of red blood cells.

All night I have been haunted by an image. Now I’m in it. Inside each of the billions of blood cells is a capsule. In it is a man, shaven and naked. In every one of his billions of blood cells is a subway car full of people, being pumped. And on each of their cell phones there is an image of their spouse in a capsule. Each night they say goodnight from a capsule hotel and each night they modify their wives’ face as it appears projected on to the wall of the capsule a little more in order to approximate the universally desirable qualities of the anime.

“Computer, garters. Tan. Thinner. Short hair, no long.” Millions of dreamers dreams projected inside of the sleeping cells, on the walls. When is she gone? Before manipulation? Screened? Man is in trouble. Not in control and manipulated. You would always had to keep the original, lest you forget what she really looked like!! Hopefully she is on a website or she'll be forgotten.

She gets cosmetic surgery to approach this ideal automatically. This s a loving gesture. Flesh is morphable. Brains in vats being fed ideals.

To keep workers from having off-line affairs (they slow down efficiency) the computer decides to slightly alter each spouse’s features by two steps of permutations. Thus the humans are contented with what they have. Furthermore, when they go back home, they subconsciously

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notice the difference without catching on to the manipulation of pixel or cosmetic surgery. Shock and disappointment sends them back out into the world of offices and capsule hotels faster. Marketers are manipulating via product placement, lighting and jingle for profit. Why wouldn’t they manipulate other products for other economic goals? Will the efficiency imperative’s use of computers stop at the work and shopping center?

Huxley was wrong. The new calendar years shouldn’t be referred to as the “year of our Ford.” Years should be denoted B.F. or P.F. Before Farnsworth or After Farnsworth. Farnsworth was the first person to transmit image. People just consider him the father of television. He did no less than to sever space and time in half. Now there is a new more exhilarating world in the ether.

I am where my remote cam puts my body. Buckminster Fuller was one of the first people to travel 2,000,000 miles in a life time. I’m probably one of the last generations that will have spent more than half of their lives off line. I’m in the screen portal. The man leaves his capsule, gets in a subway. He finds his cubicle on his floor of his building. But that is only the physical setting. He then tunnels into and spends his day in cyberspace.

Talk about the grammar of architecture! The cubicle is designed to separate him out from the others. He is not to talk to them. They have their own cubicle. No. The focus of his day is to be the screen that is awaiting him. All the local extraneous noise is to be removed by those cubicle walls. If he needs to talk to anyone, he can e-mail them. Being productive means being on the other side of that screen.

The baby I saw reaching for fractals will not notice that the words “real” and “unreal” are missing when he’s ten. People’s most exciting memories happen at the movies. Remember the time that we went, “Let’s go, Hey! Go to Movies: AMC.”, (If that’s their jingle) it fun. We good times.

Life just is only art when “tough guys” who have never fought or hunted walk around with tribal tattoos. Where did the icons come from? Some terrible rock band / commercial. Viddy the Collective unconscious as repeated on screen part VII watcher.

Can the memory of the real not even be sustained by a Black flag tattoo? I must have really taken their marketing to heart.

There is nothing outside of spin and marketing images. After the bomb civilization won’t continue underground. It will continue, where it has always been remembered as being, on the other side of the screen. Did they get rid of the real world? What did that question, which haunted our ancestors, mean?

I am infinite electric light patterns being radiated through the net and scattered in portals that fly through servers. You are what you surf. The waves available are you. The earth filled with servers. I am a flesh-in-the box processor with links. A meat server, not a meat puppet.

To server man!“Haa ha ah ha!” To server man. At that reference to the one twilight zone program

everyone remembers, I pierced the silence of the hall of capsules I was in. The alien’s book is a

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cookbook! No one in another bunk would have any idea what that audible laugh was about. These sounds emanate from the walls of capsule hotel processors occasionally.

Oh shit! Capsule hotel! Beni’s waiting! I got out of the capsule, went down the ladder and hurried my way through the walls of capsules and the people emerging from some of them. I took my pills, brushed my teeth and hustled down stairs to him.

When I got there Beni was still involved with the new arrival. My face was probably a little blanched with panic from being startled at my being late. He gave me a little reassuring upward nod of the head. But he nodded with his eyes pointing to the new arrival to indicate I new not what.

“Thanks for the help man. I don’t know what I’d have done otherwise.” What a greenhorn. He was still frantic. That was the situation. “This place is screwed up. I’ve never this much trouble getting around in a country.”

“That’s no problem. It is a difficult city to navigate.” Beni was still reassuring him.

“How does that subway work? I just followed people’s leads. I don’t even know how I got here or where I am. It’s all in Japanese.” His demonstrations of weakness, I understood, were a clandestine please to take us with him.

“The subway is almost impossible to figure out. It has three levels that don’t connect or touch. Its easy if you speak Japanese.” Beni stopped himself mid-pontification. “But you did right. People will help you get where you need to go. Just look lost and they swarm.”

“And you’re set here right now. Isn’t that right Beni?” My words were mortar to brick sealing him from being a part of our trip.

“All checked in.”

“Yeah. Really thanks a lot for that.” He seemed like a nice guy. But he wouldn’t jive with the level of trip we were on. No time to explain.

“And after you get settled maybe you can take a sauna.” It was a final nicety I could offer him.

“They have a sauna?”

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“Sauna, showers, lounge, food. Its all here. If you have tension, this place is relax heaven. Just don’t violate the shoe protocol!”

Beni gave him one more reassuring salutation and, as my shoes were on by this time, we exited.

“Wow. He looked unhinged. Good thing you showed up to help.” I was thinking of my fortune at having met Beni as I said it. He had helped me with the same check-in process.

“Yeah! And the amazing thing was that the hotel was really happy to have him. The reason they have that no non-Japanese speaking rule is that they can’t communicate any of the rules. But once they had someone explain them they were really happy to have another guest.“

“Sorry I took so long. I laid down for a sec.”

“No problem. I was really happy to be able to be helpful, and it was really interested how happy the hotel was to have him. They were as thankful as he was.”

We complied with the forced silence expectation of the elevator as we descended. Once out on the streets we resumed normal communications.

I told him a little about my trip in the capsule. “It is such a trip here. All of these businessmen leaving the capsules and going off to work in their new shirts. I guess they don’t go home.”

“No, it isn’t rare for married couples to live in different cities from each other. There’s even a word for this arrangement. But work commonly does that to couples and it’s expected that the couple will just continue together separately.”

“So the cell phone really does become your primary point of contact with your loved ones.”

“Yep. But there’s a problem. Japan’s master planners thought of everything. Their system is really efficient for working. The man even has male bonding with the office trips to create whole, happy workers. Work is their primary affiliation. Mom is constantly involved in managing the kid’s schooling.

Its great. But they forgot to schedule in a time for men and women to get together. They have a declining birth rate. They’re not replacing their population and they’re not having sex.”

“That’s why they’ve had to bring in all these Chinese message ladies?”

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“Exactly. To service the men. And the Nigerians too. They service the Japanese women. As much as these black bus guys scream about foreigners, someone has to impregnate the women. The rate of mixed and unexpected children is up.”

“It must hurt the women. The guide books all say that local condoms are too small for us.”

“Some of them like it. But it works out perfect for me. They’re too big, the Japanese are too small, when they are available. And me? I’m juuuuust right.

I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll wait.” For the next 7 minutes I just stared at the confluence of my vision, the buildings around me and the marketing surrounding the items in the 7-11 he just entered.

“The rule used to be, if you want to tell if you’re still on a psychedelic, go to a 7-11.” I said to him as he emerged. “It is so clean , bright and sharp that any residue will be visually apparent. Now you can go into any building. They are all sterile and lit to where there are no secret places left. Everything has been made known. All private experience is public. I’m nostalgic for the non-marketed private space in man.”

“We still have our private selves.”

“What about you is private?”

“Well that’s private!” He explained, laughing at his irony.

“Really!”

“I dunno.”

“Well take Aya’s pain from incest, for example. There are films about that and government bureaucracies, even a self-help industry about that. It’s not private anymore.”

“You suck!” He was incensed as I had when he was crude about Soo Hee.

“Well. It’s not that it isn’t. Maybe that’s a bad example. But I just worry about this big machine taking over and marketing everything. Try to name something that doesn’t get the response, ‘Oh. That’s like a movie I saw.”

“Pain is real!” His indignation hadn’t diminished.

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“Well you’re right. And maybe that is why America spends so much time in Freudian self-help. They want something to be real. To be theirs.”

“Well, the experience of rape isn’t a gimmick.”

“That’s true Beni..“ I said to placate his anger. I stuffed the reference to Farah Fawcett’s burning bed movie.

This internet café’s rap music selection is seriously disturbing me. The words are making it difficult for me to have my own words. The attitude of rap is so angry.

…I just returned from asking the guy at the desk to change it to something instrumental. Eesh! Japanese music. Wait it’s off. American jazz! The inspiration for our national spirit and poetry via Jack. Perfect.

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- : CAPSULE TWELVE : - Spirit -

"Messagee?" You could get really incensed at these women bothering you if you weren't human. We had refused them at least 15 times this evening and yet they still didn’t get it. No means no. No?

I could get even more so because Beni kept talking with them after the requisite refusal was made. Though his language said, “I’m spent.” His eyes said, “I like you..” He could not avoid the flirt approach. They were getting their hooks in him through his weakness: any hint of sex..

“John. Please, what do you think?” He said as he walked backwards with one on each arm pulling him back towards where ever they were pulling him.

“Eh, Beni…” I thought it wrong that he would use the word “think” in such a situation. He was going. My only question was to join or not to join.

As I looked down into the hole at the head of my message table, the legs of it were pulsating with movement. If peaking was probably past its peak., this still table was the perfect place to see the remnants. The carpet had gone completely fractal and the floor was only distinguished from the legs and cross-bar by color. The lack of real criteria by which to judge separateness combined with an awareness of the inability to tell up from down.

Joyously, I enjoyed the feeling of soaring up into the clouds of dust.“How do I know. What is to stop these millions of fractals from falling down on me like

pixie dust?” I mused to myself. “What if a great wind took them? Would they reorganize into another assembly? By what great luck and effort are they combined as such?” My mind would probably impose an order. So was everything I recognized just in my mind?

“All of western history and technology has led to the ability to make and mold isolated types of metals. We know the strength and characteristics of all elements. How to recombine and how they will act when they do so. All mental imaginings are possible if the numbers check.”

All matter can be broken down into interchangeable parts: atoms. We can recombine these with enough precision to make anything we want. The TV is a result of calculated strikes of electrons (an atom part) hitting the screen. Whatever my little brain can conjure can now be made manifest. We can do everything with special effects and so we don’t even have to make anything “real” anymore.

I sadly wondered if this meant that there are no more mysteries in the physical universe? God used to present the world as a mystery. Divination and prophecy gave us purpose. After

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science, new discoveries were the big kick. Now everything has been found and all is checkable. Wherefore art thou inspiration?

Mankind’s last question is, “What do we want?” The physical.? The spiritual? How do we combine them? Virtually or really? Many of us have opted for programming in lieu of our own lives.

Suddenly I was aware of the woman digging her hands into my neck. “Please lighten your touch.” I pleaded. The body rubbing was distracting me from my thoughts and my enjoyment of the floor and my mind.

She mockingly turned her hands over and over on my back with all the strength of a wet fish.

“Is this is what you want?” She teased.

“No. Okay. Do it as you normally do.” I said out loud, muffling the “..and I’ll try to see my mind and hear my eyes despite you.” I was cowed by her mocking me.

Not having been brave enough to be pissy, I rationalized the massage as an opportunity to learn how to relax in a tense situation. “When all is done there are no goals. Perhaps now just enjoying life in and of itself, for its intrinsic value, should be the goal.”

The message could help me appreciate the body and it’s sense organs. That would be a sensual way to just enjoy what it is to have a life: To have a working body, to feel. Maybe I could find this appreciation via her message. Body as a point of departure for a meditation on life sans body. But all departure is mental and not physical. To be here now (like the famous Buddhist book demands) requires a defeat of mind for body.

But my preference is for mind. I’ve always felt a rough juncture between mind and body. Like a Christian I have considered physical things a sin and a waste of time. A massage on psychedelics was an interesting opportunity to explore this issue. Ground zero for this issue.

Has anyone ever enjoyed this reason for not being able to relax in the midst of a message? But enjoying the problem was not enjoying the massage. How could I just relate to my body silently? I was having anger at it's distracting "me" from my thoughts?

My isolation prevented me from communicating my dilemma with Beni. He was a couple of tables away, and not (I’m as sure of this as anything) wanting to hear my mental constructs. The mind body problem was not one of his. Listening to myself would have to suffice. I was again Capsulesque like (except for the constant rubbing on my back and issues of sexual climax and payment and such interfering).

“Screw it! I prefer mind. Fuck me that I’m not brave enough to just tell her to go away. The sensuality of the mind is much more subtle and extravagant than that of the body. Without

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mental appreciation, colors and shapes are just stupid. The body doesn’t even have awareness. Mind is what makes us conscious and makes us exist. I’m going to use this time to enjoy a mind trip.

“Mind discovered reality. That’s how Plato figured out that the world was made of triangles. He said that it was that it was the most basic shape that contained area. Triangles are the only shapes that can make all of the others. And, as all was geometry, God must be a geometrician and know about shapes. Logically, he wouldn’t have built the universe out of any other shape. It would be illogical.”

In chemistry class I learned about all the elements and colors having different shapes. Water is a triangle. H2O, the basis of life. Plato used thought to capture the nature of material world. And thought did it!

“Vision can only see the outside of things, no matter how small. Vision only sees surfaces. Only thought can capture the true essence of its own realm. Thought, via Plato, discovered what the eyes couldn’t see. Can eyes capture what the mind cannot?

No. Vision doesn’t make thoughts. Just ask a duck. Plato v. the Duck.

But even thought must have walls, or limits it cannot go beyond with thought itself. We can imagine the limits of knowledge, and that there is another side. But, by definition, we cannot know about things beyond our understanding; Only that they are there. I know that there are things I don’t know about.

So neither thought nor vision and senses can see beyond their domain. There is a limit at the periphery of knowledge and sight.

What about the thing knowing it’s own essence? Thought knows the inside nature of thoughts. Vision intuits what a vision is. Thought doesn’t intuit. To know thought we must think about it. Essence can we have thoughts about vision and visions about thought?”

Silence. Rummaging nervously like a rat inside of my own brain for evidence.

“Epiphany! Epiphany! Wow, what a head rush! I see it! All is shape. Light is in the shape of waves. Thoughts have shape you can see too.” This epiphany needs explaining.

I built a “thought cube”. In reality it is a model of a library made from pipe cleaners and library floor plans. Lines angled through the library model hit the floor plan in different places. I found the actual places in the library where the lines hit the floor plans of the model library.

I actually checked the books out and made the random book themes into arguments. No matter how disparate in nature, the book’s themes could be made to connect in a meaningful way. I wanted to see if I could do it. And my idea was that if you could move the line in an infinite number of degrees, you could make an infinite number of arguments.

I also wanted to look for similarities in all the argument structures.

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My problem was that I made the arguments into essays. Essays contain the same error, by analogy, that single sentences do. They are two dimensional. They go in a straight line.

That was my mistake. The Library model was 3-D, but my arguments weren’t! That was the epiphany. Thought spaces, like reality, are 3 – D!! Thoughts, sentences are in straight lines, essay style. But they are connected tangentially through subjects like “history”, “economics”, “personal impact” or “religion”. The nodes that connect sentences go out in different directions simultaneously. They don’t only have one entrance and one exit, like a word before and a word after.

Sentences are two dimensional, but understanding happens in a three dimensional context.

“When I get home, I’m going to make a 3-D model of thought itself!” My stream of consciousness was rushing faster. “If I make the general categories Styrofoam balls, I can connect them with pipe cleaners. The connectors will be like individual sentences! But the structure will have the shape of the mental world of meaning itself!!! 3 – D!

Three dimensions. Plato’s triangles. A pyramid.

Like all arguments there will be basis. They will be the bottom of the pyramid. The conclusion can be the tip of the pyramid. Materialism, history and economics will be the pase of politics. When I flip the model, politics, history and politics will be the basis of materialism.

I can spin it and see the shapes of different understandings! Conclusions coming out of suppositions. Suppositions then being turned into conclusions. And different connectors will form themselves of necessity. The force of connecting base and conclusion will manifest itself naturally. The shape of thought...

With a computer program you could put opposing views on opposite sides of the balls and literally look at things from different points of view. The strength of the ideas on the connecting rods would vary from light positive to very strong as you rotated the virtual octagon from tilted to upright.

Fractal appreciation. More subtle than all the rubbing in the world. Spin the model, instead of spin the bottle! The laws of thought manifest.

This is your thought. This is you thoughts on brains. How imperceptibly the thoughts run on the neurons. They connect in nodes of meaning. Thinking is staring G-d in the eyes. Does god have the same 3 – D structure of my thought structure and Plato’s reality? Naw. The thought structure needn’t have a referent to a reality outside of itself. It is us on the surface.

Ow!! Oh my gawd! I just noticed this sensation, turned around and noticed the massagee girl is standing on my back! Wow! Looking back down at me she waved with a

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gleaming glint in her eye. It was if she were acknowledging that she knew about and was enjoying my visions. Psychic and Physic. What a feeling. What a trip. She is standing on me!

Thoughts are like the substratum of life, but not it. Someone must be in the woods for the tree to be noticed. No sentients, no known universe. I’m glad that I have a consciousness to enjoy this backrub. And a back to be rubbed. It wasn’t unpleasant. I could relax and enjoy my backrub and think.

Mind and body... Mind and body… The important part about touch was the meaning. Without the meaning, touch is just such a simple sensation. So do the two compliment each other as well as interfere with each other?

Wow! Flashback to last week. Of course, the 1000 Hindu statues I had seen in a

Buddhist shrine. These statues represented the border of thought and reality. Where thought and reality intersect.

What a sight. Life size, individual brass statues on risers going back ten and across one hundred. They filled this huge long room.

Each of the 1000 statues had 17 arms and 21 halo beams coming out of their heads. I had counted. Each of the 17 arms held a different symbol. 17,000 symbols. 21,000 beams of halo light! Wow!

The rows and columns were the ten dimensions that quantum physicists now talk about. The arms and symbols were all the possible combinations that shape could take. And the beams reflected the fact that all was, at bottom, electro magnetic light!

The one thousand were all looking inward. None had their eyes open. It is this inward contemplation that keeps the physical world together as the running internal dialogue keeps our identities together.

In front of the 1000, fifteen more deities represented manifest action, rage and experience. They concerned the particular passion in a particular moment. They all had their eyes wide open and didn’t have any sense of stillness or inner reflection. They looked more alive.

The fifteen were action on the substratum of thought. The changing on the unchanging. They appeared to be completely oblivious to the 1000 deities making the substratum of reality. Like a person that doesn’t appreciate their society.

To contemplate all of the arm symbols and actions simultaneously would be to see all the facets of reality as it truly is in its completeness.

But that is to put it into words. And how do you get from solid shape patterns to word constructs. It’s just a short hop. I know I can get it. The structure turns and makes a whole in a sentence. But shape to word….

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“Hmnphd” I made one of those incomprehensible gaffumps to myself. It signaled a deeper understanding of something I had heard, but never really grasped at such a hands on level; “You can’t have moral action because moral is a word construct and action is a, a, thing”.” I concluded to myself heroically. They exist in separate orbits.

So there is no connection for our primary launching pad from matter to soul.

I get it! Perhaps the light talks. The it in itself talks. I’ll listen to the sound of structure…..Wow this place has electrical lights or something buzzing. Shhhh! So hard to not talk. SSSSShhhhh!!!!!! It’s mute. It’s mute. I can’t get from the physical shape of the world to words.

Maybe I miss it. Maybe it radiates like light and my meaningful pattern is like its. I just radiate light. Words are the means and my radiation like light is the end. I can never know, but I will always glow…. Hmmn. Bad pun. But we do shine on and on.

I mean it gets back to this. Is reading a book better than living a life? Is there more action in thought than action?

Yeah! Now I’ve got the proof that the contemplative life is better! The 1000 were contemplating the actions and possibilities of the fifteen active lives.

They enjoyed both Action and the thoughts that made them possible. The 1000 contemplators saw more. They looked calmer. They had seen everything now and just rolled the permutations of their symbols in their heads. What a ride! To see all perspectives simultaneously would be too much for us. But to contemplate is to contemplate the mind of an all knowing god.

More memorable things happen in each book than in several lifetimes. But, constant contemplation of books could probably make you smell like a used bookstore. And, for sure, life without any involvement with the world around you would be a waste.

On the other hand, action statues were only aware of one level of possibilities, action. And even then, only their own individual permutations that experience had shown them. They could probably barely learn from the school of hard knocks.

Ultimately I’m saying the contemplative is better. Thought can understand action better than action can understand thought. And when you have both you have choice. And having choice is one of the definitions of being alive. Those who do not choose are somewhat inanimate.

More being merrier, what we need for fulfillment is third perspective that appreciates both thought and action. Three perspectives. Two viewed and a viewer consciously choosing to view both. Plato’s triangle again! The superiority of the universal perspective is inherent in the nature of the universe

That is what God is! The viewing of the vantage point that takes in all knowledge and uses it to make choices.

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Wow! Spinning God’s perspective of perspectives and my 3-D thought models in my

head! Wow! What a pleasure. Stunning thoughts and back rubs too! How rich is life?

I wonder if physicists will ultimately find that there are 17 dimensions like the number of arms the statues had? I wonder if my model of understandings will have 15 nodes like the number of action figures in the temple?

“Hey. Wake up. Thirty minute over. You want more?”

“I’m not sure.” I didn't know if I did. Your friend is staying. Prisoner’s dilemma. They probably told him the same thing too.

“I want to see him.” After I made a stink about wanting to see him half of his head and arm came waving out

of his booth. I was pretty sure they hadn’t drugged him and just waved his limp body about. He had a thumbs up and mumbled something about “more”. I’m sure I heard it.

Would I stay? I'm enjoying having a place to relax and listen to my brain. I sort of wish they'd just leave me alone in the booth. The colors of the walls were as interesting as any cuming or back rubbing could be. Mind beats body for interest. I didn't want to leave Beni. The walls were swirling into each other so nicely.

But was I going to wait outside while he was inside? No way.

“You pay.” She said. When I got my wallet it was empty!!! Had I emptied it? When I pointed out that I had no money she curtly replied,

“You have credit card.” I hoped that that was a question or an assumption.

Panicked and claustrophobic, I struck out. “No way. You can't get that.”"Hey Beni" I made some disturbing the peace noise to subtlety get his attention 3 booths

down. He stuck his head half-way out again. “Beni. I have no money. It’s all gone.”

“Don't worry.” he said “I've got it.”

Still I was worried. Would Beni want me to pay him back? How much would this cost? With bad instincts I joined the whining backlash. This was turning out to be a really expensive evening. $60 on shrooms, $30 on cid, thirty here and a tab to Beni possibly accruing!

I tried to relax it was only money. Abstract numbers. They aren’t real! I longed for my relaxed detached psychedelic vision. I was on a beautiful high and having my back rubbed. My

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considerations concerning the infinite complexities of possible thoughts through time were not worth sacrificing to a consideration of numbers in my bank.

What if they had stolen my cyber identity?!? In this age, the only thing worse than a virus killing you was someone stealing your “cyber identity”. I’m not even sure what that means. For sure they could buy whatever they wanted with my credit card on-line. But beyond that, they’d perhaps have access to learn what I’ve done on line. Does that mean, in effect, I do have a separate identity that lingers like a missing shadow? If it gets out that I went to porn sites, no one will believe that my actions in the real world are my whole identity. I will be besmirched by a computer’s memories. Would they be considered my public memories? Following me through the net, trying to escape this shadow would be like trying to escape the watching eyes of God.

I guess I can no longer respect myself in the real world either. I never thought I was the type of guy that would do this message parlor sort of thing. I had become a villain. My cyber lies and fantasies had consumed my reality.

And if anyone found out I lost my identity in a message parlor, what little connection I had to people outside of the computer would be severed. Then all my moralizing would be hypocrisy. My crusading for society would be seen to be a hypocrisy. Then I would really be free and in panic of not being.

After tonight, no community would back me. No connection with a noble history will help me to sleep.

All I’d have left would be my thoughts or ideas. My connection in the world might come down to a sentence or two that might hold the momentary attention of a stranger. Thoughts that aren’t published are sold one idea at a time. You’re only as good as your last idea. Outside of family I guess that’s all you’ve ever had.

Now I had my thoughts disturbing my thought on top of my thoughts disturbing my body. I tried to use my mental powers to tell myself to relax. “Theft or no theft, there is nothing you can do about it. So relax.”

I was unable to.

Mental and physical entanglements can be brutal. The ability to control one’s thoughts is shaky at best. Great men never leave their homes.

This allows them to concentrate on the same problem for ever. I had not found my problem. I was traveling for kicks. My thoughts were not important parts of a larger whole. My accumulation would not resonate through the ages. All was in vain.

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When I was younger I took care of a man on his death bed who had nothing to say. His last ideas were all groans of annoyance. Not having ideas would lead to silence. And silence to banishment from what tiny tiny attention of others I had. I will carry a constant need to be interesting or die around like a Greek curse.

Oh well. If I was excommunicated from the real world, I could always join anonymous conversation groups and have sex with electronic images. Talk radio will always be my friend.

Death. Not liberating, but real. A confrontation with my own futile mortality. I felt the steely breath of death taking my time and my hope.

My lame-cunt imagination would love some silence now. My exchange of real intimacy and relationship for a transaction. No family could save me. I am alone in the universe.

Cuming was like death. Meaningless. Feelingless. I wanted to cry as she kept saying “Please do now.” In broken English.

OUTSIDE AGAIN!!! I relayed my identity theft fears to Beni in a much less elaborate way. He said that he always rolls up his pants and puts them under the bed. Never leaves them hanging on the wall.

“These places are notorious for getting into your pants, no pun intended”

“And wads! Pun intended.” Said I as we both smiled at our boyish silliness.

“My god” Beni said, with a little extra enthusiasm because he sensed my mood was dour. “I’m so glad to have gotten that done. Needing that release has been distracting me and driving me a little crazy all day and all night.”

“I am so glad I don’t have the bodily compulsion you have Beni. I can’t even relate. I mean. I don’t know what it is like to need that release.” My honesty was mixed with spite due to disgust.

“Yeah. It drives me crazy. I must find it or I can’t think at all.”

“I resent having the imposition of shitting and peeing on my daily life. I hate all natural things that limit and control us. I consider sleep the ultimate insult to my dignity as a free person All bodily requirements are impositions. It’s like Plato has an old guy say. Sex is like a slave driver. He was glad to have old age kill it.”

“Yeah. Ever since I can remember. Getting pussy has been a top priority for me. I’ve done awful things for it. I’ve lied for it. I need it every day. I guess I’d like old age to kill it. But old age isn’t getting rid of it. That is why getting older is a bummer. More and more I’ll probably have to pay for it.”

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Beni had left the disgust zone for the bizarre. The use of the word “Pussy” rattled me.“Or settle down with one woman?”

“That gets un-sexy for me pretty quickly. Who knows why?”

“It’s an evolutionary program that says that you should want to impregnate as many different ones as possible. You don’t have to wait nine months to get pregnant again. Variety makes for more offspring.”

“You’re so scientific. Sex just a bodily function that you resent?” Beni’s disgust created an uneasy reaction of pride in me. I’ve often wanted to be a robot.

“Without a spiritual connect, or a sense of play, to me the sensation isn’t different than rubbing your arm on a chair or something inanimate. I mean the feeling or sensation isn’t so tremendously much different.”

“For me it is way more intense and I need the release.”

“My penis demands attention too, but I wish it wouldn’t. Masturbation is better than sleeping with an idiot or going to the trouble of using whores. Both of those cause way too many complications.”

“I worry about disease. But I need it.”

“Sex is more of a vehicle to intimacy for me. So if it happens it is good. If not, I’m just as happy. A good conversation is just as good to me as sex. That in there was worthless to me.”

“I’m just the opposite. I can never have an honest conversation with women. I just talk with them because I want to fuck them. For me it is more efficient to pay them. I really don’t want a relationship with them. I need to cum. It is easy for me to have an honest relationship with you because I don’t have any desire to fuck you. That’s why all my friends are men.”

All Beni’s gay ambiguity had fallen. Too bad. I like ambiguous men. Straight men are dumber. Actually, that funeral had happened a while ago.

“It’s way better to pay for sex and have the relationship at home have less sexual pressure.” He continued. “Then maybe I can have a relationship with my girlfriend, which is sometimes hard, cause you’re right about that wanting variety thing. Sex with just one person can become boring really fast.”

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Beni put his finger to his lip and looked inward for the space of one inhalation and then tried to even the personal revelations.

“How is your sex with Soo Hee?”

“Our sex had been really good at first. She was one of the ones I could feel really great and free with. But she has gotten more and more restrictive. Now our sex isn’t something I lood forward to. She is always ashamed and struggling with decency issues.”

“Tell me about it.” Beni apparently had some experience in this department. “Everything is shameful.”

“We used to experiment a lot. Now that she knows what she wants experimentation is over. There isn’t spontaneity. She wants what she wants without variation. We take turns. That is not sex. Sex is not compartmentalized. Sex is supposed to be spontaneous and playful.

That’s why paying for sex seems weird to me. It has no emotional or play content. Its just a physical reaction. Like a sneeze. In fact the, quote - unquote, sex in their violated my feeling of self-worth.”

“Self-worth! Now you’re being dramatic.”

“Well maybe its just my upbringing, but I don’t like to use people’s bodies as objects. At least with porn I can pretend that they might have liked doing what they were filmed doing. Though having my body tricked by 2 – D images for the demands of my body is demeaning.”

“You really have a problem with your body. It’s like you’re afraid of it.”

“Those girls didn’t enjoy that. Sex against someone’s will is rape.”

“Rape!?!” Beni reacted with anger, “We have needs. They provide a service. And they don’t mind it. You’re denying your manhood!”

“If that’s manhood…Any reading of history will show you that man is man to the extent that he overcomes nature. We’re superior to animals and men because we can deny our animal natures. We are our minds.”

“Are you really even straight or what?!?!” Beni said with as much anger as disgust.

“Ouch, Beni. Name calling at that level?”

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“Sorry. I just can’t believe that you have been so talked into denying what you like. You know you enjoyed it!”

“That’s true.” I did and I couldn’t feel safe saying otherwise anyways after the gay attack.

“I just don’t like people judging me. I am a man, I don’t need to apologize for that!” Remembering himself, he became soft in voice with great apparent effort. “But I’m sorry. The gay name calling wasn’t right. I don’t care if you are. I’ve had lots of gay friends.”

“That’s cool. But we do have different levels of sexual drive or tension. I can’t imagine being disturbed during the day by the need to release myself.” The ‘myself’ was emphasized as my retributive putdown.

“You’re lucky I guess.”

After a moment where we intuitively both looked away from each other for a breath, I tried to make a light concluding remark so that we could move on.

“Well Beni, the Greeks had said that character was destiny. You may ride high, but if your character is of low rank, you will fall back down to your level. But tonight I think we’ve gotten a deeper corollary “Penis is destiny.” The real shapers of character is the second head.”

Beni smiled with the sides of his lips inaudibly. He was still a little angry. So was I.

Just then we were distracted by a commotion next to a taxi! A girl was struggling to not be pushed inside a taxi. “Oh my God!” I exclaimed as she wrenched herself away from the guy trying to put her in the taxi. “Oh my God! She just escaped being abducted.”

“No” he said. “You saw it backwards. He was pulling her out of the car and she was trying to get in. She wanted to stay and her boyfriend wanted her to go home.”

I guess the fact that she wasn’t running away immediately after showed he was right. But I’m still not sure who was avoiding whom. People are tricky.

My mind was now getting fairly covetous of an opportunity to write. That was my nearly physical compulsion that had to be let out. Would I be better served by going to my capsule for the night and seeing him tomorrow? How about now? If now, I’ll get a real meal and an escort that will keep me from getting lost. Anyhow, I guess the subway is just a larger capsule. I will the same opportunity to concentrate on the subway that I’d get in a real capsule. If it’ll save me getting lost and take care of my eating, it’s a winner.

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Capsule THIRTEEN: Body

“Ahh!!! Who sprayed me with a …”

As I was still figuring out that a huge rain had just opened up upon us, Beni yelled “Come over here! He ran towards an awning in front of a market and I followed in his wake.

Earlier in the week someone told me that a typhoon was supposed to be on its way. For the last two days the weather had been pretty crazy. The wind would rise to a small howl bringing drizzle. Then just as quickly it would steal away till the air was at a total stop.

I got a coffee crème drink and went outside to wait for him. I sat in one of the metal chairs a little dismayed, as the need to write was scratching at the inside of my skin.

My drink was one of those classic Japanese, 15 layers of packaging specials. My single serving drink in plastic had an easy snap-off lid and straw. The straw is wrapped in a little bag that folds over the top and has the slightest application of striped gum keeping it shut. You tear at the indented and perforated spot. Now you must unpack this miniscule straw. To save space, half of the straw is inside the other half. After removing a plastic ring you can pull the inside out. This also allows you to use the flexi feature of the thick part of the straw.

It was funny when faced with a system with that much detail and complexity, the American punches his finger through the whole thing and drinks. And so I did.

This packaging is insanity and control. It shows a really insane, craze, convoluted logical mind that follows instructions patiently. That’s an American breaking through their bureaucratic culture. Americans are anarchists, not too refined and proud of it!

Beni explained what I had just broken through. “I’ve been told that every one of those layers of packaging is a job. That’s why the

people of Japan pay more for products overloaded with extra packaging features. People willingly and consciously work their way through these things so that the jobs stay.”

Looking at my packaging, the doors of perception were wiped clear and I saw things as they truly are. What had previously been observations briefly coalesced into on big coherent sparkling vision. All the world is information.

The roles of the world managers became obvious to me. All structures systems divisible down to the last pixel + All configurations recombinable + numeric studies of behavior + a profit motive = All was controllably mentally and all was micromanagement.

Reality could become a putty as pliable as thoughts. Corporations could manage via machine. And all of our wants would be met at the minimum inconvenience. Numerical

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feedback told them what was hot and what to avoid. The feedback would be morphed into the perfect product. And you had a marketing manufacturing consciousness that served man.

Just as shifting my eyes to different depths of focus, the global mind could make different images and shapes come into view and turn. We needed drinks. Each of the flavors were kept distinct for maximum marketing. Distance between drinks was a factor in deciding the size of the drink. Flavor suppliers went into place as the weather changed. Plastics molded for the favored packaging. Feedback signals mean the package colors that sell are replicated.

The product was now in the hands of the global mass via their 7-11. The manipulation had to be tied to image for maximum satisfaction. Tying it into an existing marketing strategy put it in the global mind immediately. Drinking this was a fun experience, not just thirst quenching.

You then also had a man that served the evolving consciousness. As it served our needs, we had to consume what was provided. “To serve man”. The double entendre of the alien’s book title was featured on the TV show the twilight zone. They were not holding a blue print for helping us, they were holding a cook book.

“There is human packaging and product packaging. One day they would make a perfect variation of the drink package needed for each different levels of employment. This will be adjusted hourly to maximize our working, consuming and convenience pleasure. A perfect fit between our biological and economic needs and the global mind.

This place is so tripped out and digitalized, I bet that many of the world manipulators are right here in this neighborhood. They are trying things of the future out on the international crowd.”

“I wish I could find these world controllers. Maybe they would distribute my tapes. Wouldn’t it be cool if people worldwide said. “I need to learn French. Would you pick me up a Beni?””

“This weather is nuts.” I exclaimed as I took my sweater off again. “I heard that a

typhoon is coming”One minute I would be freezing and the next I was hot and lacking air. Always restless,

and never comfortable, I was nearly constantly either being driven indoors for warmth or back outside to get air. Alternately putting on and taking off my shirt had become unconscious.

Apparently the typhoon prophecy was coming true. This was like the proverbial buckets of rain we Californians have heard about existing in other parts of the world.

. “John. No one else has been dressing and undressing like you. I think your temperature

problem may be from inside you. It might not be the weather in the sky. Have you seen me or anyone else change clothes?”

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“Oh shit! God. You’re right. Huh. I’m creating weather.”

“Well inside yourself. We can’t control the weather yet.”

“Oh yes we do. That’s why I keep changing clothes and location. We are in charge of nature now. We live in a totally regulated climate.”

“Well outside of our environment, the larger nature we can’t control.”

“For the city there is no real differentiation between internal and external weather. Our heat is visible with satellites. Our actions has a significant impact on the environment. Our atmosphere is the result of early single celled organisms breathing. We are a part of the environment as much as the wind or water.”

For some reason I didn’t yet understand, Beni looked really angry and on the verge of bursting. I shut up.

“This typhoon has killed 19 people out where I live!”

“Really here!!??”

“Yes here!!”

“You usually think of that sort of thing as being third world. In places where the cosmology doesn’t emphasize trying to build a secure base in this world. One whose battle against nature is mostly about getting away after death.

Like every time El Nino comes to California’s coast not much happens to us and Mexico gets devastated.”

“Well it happens here too. Aya and I live in a very natural area. It’s a ways outside of the city. People there build their homes on the side of mountains. They live how they live because they’re poor. They can’t do a thing.”

“They should pave those hills. I think the Japanese want to be a part of nature. They don’t realize that we can’t escape nature, so we are free to manipulate it without fear of losing contact.”

Swept up in my thesis, I stopped paying attention to Beni’s mood or the gravity of the topic.

“We are always a part of nature even when we reshape it. We should be secure in the fact that we are a part of nature.”

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“Jesus John! Nineteen people are dead. Can you imagine that? They are in their house, trying to live their lives one minute and the next, buried in mud. People have to go through the mud trying to find their loved ones. It’s horrific. It has nothing to do with metaphysics!”

I hadn’t seen that insane glare in his eyes in a while. It scared me. I shut up

“Let’s leave.” Beni said with disgust.

“Okay. I’m going to step inside and get some water.”

“I’ll join you.” He replied downshifting from disgust to exasperation.

Our silent stare at the drinks in the refrigerator was suddenly interrupted.

“ ‘ello mates. ‘ow are ya?”

“Okay.” We replied in unison. Our lingering unease and hesitation must have conveyed a total lack of recognition.

“You saw me earlier when you was getting off the subway. I had a baby you said was like a cute monkey or somefing like dat.” His accent was still as strong as ever.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Glad to meet you again.” Grinned Beni. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw this expression and smiled too.

“Where are you coming from?” I asked while matching Beni’s enthusiasm.

“From work.” He said with a grin as chipper as either of ours. He did that English nod and a wink thing and reached in a grabbed a bottle of water.

“Hey, you got the good kind.” I jokingly said while pointing at his purchase.

“The cheap kind. Eh, ah huh.” He laughed. “For the long ride home. Sober up before seeing the missus. ”

“What type of work do you do?” Asked Beni, I think puzzled by it’s being 1:00 in the afternoon and the drinking comment.

“Bartendin’.”

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“Bartendin’, but..”

“I work at three bars, Golden Hat, the ‘ilton ‘otel and the Lion’s Brew. I leave the lion’s brew at 11 am. After the breakfast rush. Da Lion’s Brew has good breakfast, but I go elsewhere for breakfast.” He said as if to emphasize and get a laugh of appreciation on his silent humor. “Gotta get out, gotta get out.” He finished amongst our restrained laughter.

What a strange character he was.

“When do you guys stop serving alcohol?”

“Oh the alcohol never stops mate, the alcohol never stops.” He seemed to be nervously, reflexively spouting clichés in order to project an air of normalcy. Maybe he was normal. Scary thought.

“Wow that’s a lot of bartending. Do you like that?”

“Yeah I reckon. I do that and some straight waiterin’ in the morning;. I got a lit’ l one. So it don’t much matter if I like it or don’t. But I like it. Free drinks, free drinks, good times.” He snickered reflexively as part of his standard delivery.

” ‘ow ‘bout choose? What choo doin’ ‘ere? Ya teach?”

“Well I teach.”

“And you preach.” I added trying to be funny, but just inaccurately associating.

“Well, no. But I am a minister.”

“A minister.”

“Don’t get nervous. Not a real one. I marry people. I used to work as a bartender in France. But when I started coming for drinks in my off hours, it was time to go.” Beni said by way of hint.

Craig tapped his temple said “Thinking. I got you on that. Thinkin’ Thinkin’ you are. Smart that. Me I like a drink. I like a drink. ‘ow ‘bout you?” Said Craig bouncily switching his attention to me.

“Well Beni’s been here 7, but I’ve been here 9.”

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“9 years that’s a long time.”

“No. Nine days for me, seven years for Beni.”

We laughed. Craig evoked a jokey crowd. Craig, now as other times, laughed exceptionally loudly in step with his bounce.

“You got us bof beat on that one. Beat on that one ya do. I’ve been here 6.” And then he stopped to acknowledge gap that made his joke. “Years. Six years!” We all laughed.

“Well you’ve got a gorgeous daughter. She must be a lot of fun.” I said probingly, trying to get a clue as to whenther or not family was okay.

“Oh. Love its. She’s my litt’l angel.”

“She seems well behaved.”

“My litt’l angel.” He said with one of those smiling affirming head shakes and a beaming wink that only the English lower class can pull off, and conlcluded. “Right then. Well I’ve got to shop a bit more. If your ever in the area around party hours come into the Lion’s Brew. Good times, free drinks. I’ll take care of ya.”\

“Cool. Where is it?

“Around. Ask and people will tell you. Lion’s Brew, near Golden Gate. ‘ere in Rappongi. Good times, free drinks.”

I got water too. When we got outside we stopped to take in the outside world and start our consumptives. As we were doing so Craig came out of the store. Waving his extended right hand good-bye and walking backwards down the sidewalk, he shouted. “Lion’s Brew, near Golden Gate. Good times, free drinks.”

“He smokes.” Beni muttered with certitude as soon as he had fully turned around to continue going away towards home.

“How can you tell?” I said so awed by his certainty that I had no doubt he was right.

“You can see it in the way they breathe. That is the greatest addiction. It hooks you and you give your money (as in all addictions) but you give something worse too. You give your breathe. You end up on a street corner just smoking and just wanting more.

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They put up these billboards we pass, then you try one. Then you have to keep coming back like you’re on a tether or tread mill.”

“Evil.” I concurred.

“For them it’s a numbers game. For you it is your life.”

“Billions of dollars are being focused on where you make decisions in your brain. When I reached for the crystal geyser or the French equivalent in the freezer, that moment is when the seller must get me most. They've used up all the obvious lingual references to alps and France and springs. All of which sound reassuring and play into my split second decision as to whether or not to grab which one.”

“Advertising is important.”

“No. Yes. But now they are using Neuroscans, scans of the brain, to see where you are doing your are doing your impulse shopping. And we know that these decisions are made at a lower level of consciousness than we thought. You don’t use your mind exactly.”

“Well,” Beni said with the natural American impudence towards science and perhaps slightly hurt and defensive at the hint that he was being spoken down to. “Anyone whose addicted can tell you that. Your addiction plays tricks on your mind. The mind thinks what the addiction wants it to. You don’t need scientists for that.”

“No. But that understanding is what is so scary. We are figuring out how to control conscious minds indirectly like an addiction does, without your knowing it. Once we know exactly which part of the brain does impulsive stuff, we can find out what makes it give your conscious mind the orders.”

“Stuff like subliminal messages.” Beni said, scrunching his face and lisping a little.

“Exactly. If you could get the edge on that moment. If you could get people to consistently go for the French water in all 7-11s in the world, 100s of trillions would be won. The American water industry would fade to zero over night. Sales pitches that invade you mind more subtly than the street hustler's are where the action really is. Sales that happen between you and your own mind.”

After much more contortions of his face and a lip rubbing, Beni pushed his glasses up and postulated. “It kind of makes the fundamentalists seem like the last chance for humanity.”

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“How so?” I muttered with an idea of where he was going, but wanting to check. “

“Culture has always been a buffer against corruption. The idea of spiritual purity runs through them. They won’t stand for that. People will go into hiding. It could be like a holy war.”

“Cool idea. It could be like a book or something.”

“It’s true! Tradition gives you a value system outside of consumption. If your life is empty you have a void to fill. Adverts speak best to an audience that has nothing outside of consumption and fun.”

“And the advertisers spoke unto them saying “you shall have no gods before me. The efficient market requires that the global mind be unified and empty for fast slogan delivery and absorption.”

“Ha! Don’t worry religion won’t disappear soon.”

“God. Do I have to choose a side between the Global brain controllers and religious people? I don’t know which one is worse.”

On that note we both spontaneously rose from our seats and started walking again. Walking along, I joked, “If we could just get it to the programmers, my vision of your CD reversing the Tower of Babel problem could really come true. Everyone would be unity in language and knowing your face and name. That’d be rad, eh?”

“Rad?”

“Rad. Short for radical. Pardon the hometown colloquialism.”

At some point I became conscious of a strange distant sound. “Oh my God I think that sound is coming from the fascists with the black buses.” My excitement to see them again was obvious.

“Yeah. That has to be them, but they lost the music.”

“Maybe they heard our cracks about which godfather the song came from.”

“Ohh. The walls have ears.”

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“The Global Mind system can hear you no matter where you are. Their computers compile your suggestions and instantaneously implement them for your living pleasure.” I said with a voice full of sarcasm.

The sound of least 100 people chanting had replaced the music. The busses were saying something like go “Get the Russians out of our area.” And the crowd was replying with something like, “Send them back to Siberia”. We were walking quickly anxious to see the big demonstration.

The buses were now joined by a formidable police force. The intersection probably had 10 clusters of riot police, with about 30 young uniformed in each one. We should have guessed that the crowds replying were just recordings! The twelve busses and some 6 vans were still causing traffic problems.

“Well Beni, looks like isn’t time for the general popular nationalist uprising yet. Their isolationism hasn’t caught on with the mass market.”

“Yeah. But it seems the cops have at least taken their side.”

“Either that or their just enforcing traffic safety measures. Facilitating their staying while other cars go through the intersection. Maybe it is a more Tao way to diffuse them to not confront them.”

“Fascists aren’t subtle enough to get that message out of the cops keeping the traffic going.”

“Well, we’ve got to keep the trains running on time.” Beni smiled at the Mussolini reference.

Next to us was a special van with maps laid out inside. Gone was the lone confused transit worker. They've brought out the big brass and their head was in the open van reading maps. Look how old that dude is. And he is now getting to relive his WW II memories. He was probably too young to be a commander at that time. But now he can coordinate the taking of the traffic island.

As the off again, on again, rain started up again, the poor young kid riot cops all got soaked. We went ½ way down into the subway for shelter.

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One more squadron of police passed us on their way up and an Indian business man in a three-piece suit wafted up after them as if he was riding their wake.

“Wow!” He said as he stopped with us to look. Without introducing himself or asking about our language, he mentioned that the Russians had just taken some disputed property that the 1905 war hadn’t permanently resolved.

“Perhaps, then” I mused “this whole show is being put on by the government as a message to Russia.”

“I doubt that.” Said the stock broker.

“I don’t.” Said I. The stock broker was very matter of fact about this rebuke and continued. “There is no

media here.”

My eyes opened widely and reflectively scanned the crowd in disbelief that I hadn’t noticed. During our many protests back in the states we had always been keenly aware of the media presence and its importance in the demonstrations having any meaning outside of the protest area. We would consciously put on a good show for any camera.

“The Japanese won’t see it, let alone the Russians.” Continued the business man without needing to look away from the protest. “If it isn’t pro-government and pro-Japanese, it won’t be on TV. No one will ever know about this.”

“Mind control.” I spontaneously uttered.

Beni took it up a notch. “Country control.”

“The government and the Japanese people are the same thing.” The businessman said as if giving orders.

“Exclusively. Have you found your friends to be Gangi or Japanese and Gangi both?” Beni asked smiling as if he had already confirmed what he intuitively knew I doubted.

“Only Gangi.” He responded mechanically without taking his eyes off the confrontation that had been normalized. Beni nodded at me. Even with foreigners of different economic and status levels, the foreignness of the non-Japanese was apparent.

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The rain suddenly surged and I ran deeper down the subway stairs, without saying goodbye to the businessman as a hint that it was time to go! Looking up I saw Beni quickly descending right behind me.

Beni delivered the bad news as well as he could. “This subway line doesn’t connect with mine. We have to go about two blocks to get to mine.”

My impatience turning to grumpiness, I had an angry resoluteness as I said, “Well then, Beni, let’s just brave the damned weather.”

As we emerged, the rain stopped like it’s faucet had been shut off.

Running down an alley, a man had fallen over and a female was trying to pick him up. We grabbed him and pulled him out of the rain.

This couple had the American trashed exciting Gap jeans youth look down. He had an American flag and eagle brass belt buckle and his hair was long. He said he owned the bar we were standing in front of and asked us up for free drinks. This was the second drunk couple outside of a bar that claimed to own it. Beni said he thought both did.

When the guy said he was a music producer Beni pitched him about the CD. He got a card and the guy said to call him.

When they were done talking I shared my amazement with Beni. “That guy was such a Gap ad. When they dress like that they look like anime to me. Not

Japanese, not American.”

“The American look is the hippest. . The Japanese are really good at imitating.

“Maybe destiny led us to him. The rain let up so that so you could get into the global mind.”

“These are drunk Japanese. Their saying “call me” has no meaning. I have lots of cards from them.” Beni’s disappointed tone belied his history of disappointment of making that Japanese connection. Smiling with effort, he put the card in his wallet.

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Capsule FOURTEEN: Subway

Claustrophobic panic gripped me as if I were trapped in a hell in which I could never escape the memory of my sins. I felt that alarmed and busted. In front of the subway to Beni’s home, as if guarding it, were the Chinese message girls. Beni got that look in his eyes. Serious and enthusiastic, he nodded to himself and went to them.

I was expecting them to lash out at us in righteous feminist rage. But, even though they knew that we were going back to our place, and not potential customers, they appeared extremely grateful and thankful. They never stopped smiling as Beni’s final interview of them brought out more and more horrible truths.

It turned out that we were their only customers of the evening. We weren’t two of many, we were special to them. Without us they would have worked on the street trying to get clients all night for nothing. My assumption was that they would hate us and consider us evil exploiters. They said, again, how grateful they were. I was on the verge of feeling okay about using this service.

It gets worse. They were, as Beni had alluded to, Chinese girls brought in to do just this kind of thing. The sad part is that the promises used to lure them were true. They made way more money than they could make in China. Things were so bad in China that they had to sever their family and country ties for money.

It gets worse. Their families were glad to get rid of them. Their leaving meant no dowry had to be paid. Economic realism of this level must set in around starvation time. It is, thankfully, beyond the realm of my imagination. These are their views as expressed by themselves.

Worse off yet, for them, were the Russian girls. Community tale was that the Russians were nearly all university graduates. If they spoke a language other than Russian they could have real professional careers. My reasons to doubt this are conditions of my background.

The Chinese girls assumed they were getting good value on their potential. They had no future as they were just going to be married off anyhow. For them the sad ones were the Russians.

It gets worse. When the girls get here they must pay back the money that they owe for transport to Japan. Many of these women can never get free of the debt no matter how hard or long they work at this. Sharecropping.

It gets worse. Some of the girls that were working to get clients were way to old for the job. They looked like they must have been soliciting for their daughters. It gets worse. They have to sleep in the same beds they message their male clients in. Talk about pleasant dreams. Who knows? Maybe for them that is a pleasant dream. Perhaps we just made up the meaning of the word intimacy.

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Buying a ticket to go out to Beni’s house, I noticed that for an almost indistinguishable second, there is an image of a person bowing and thanking you on the vending machine screen. They only waste a fraction of a second on it. It is virtually subliminal. It must pacify people. It’s like trees on a suburban street. They don’t have a practical reason for existing. They are there to assuage some deep intuited fear.

Beni confided that he always stood back and looked around him on subway platforms. He had a bit of an obsessive worry that a madman was going to push him in front of the arriving car. When I asked him why someone would do this he said that he had no idea. No idea seemed to make this sentiment the opposite of deep. No backing, no reason. Just seemed so pleasen.

I thought he was going to say something else when the train pulled in.

My intention was to sit a ways away from Beni on the subway. But it was empty. And, as would be expected, when I sat down he sat down next to me.

“Do you know why I’m in A.A?”

I was getting annoyed with him. Perhaps that was because I was annoyed with myself. It wasn’t that I felt guilty so much, I did, it was that I could never claim to be pure again. Who was I? Moral authority? Maybe I had crossed a taboo boundary and was now a different person.

Beni was glaring at me intently?

“Wasn’t it smoking and drinking?” I broke away, from the inner to outer world, after getting my focus and remembering the sounds that made the words that made his question and reconstructing its meaning.

“Yeah. Because of the camaraderie and it helps me stay off of smoking and drinking. But I didn’t tell you why as in what happened that made me decide to join.”

“No. You didn’t.” I responded with a hint of “and I don’t care.” Maybe it was the drugs that made me a little irritated with him. It was all groovy when I was higher, but now I am getting tired. If I’m a different person now, is he the same person? Who are we? Who is he?

“ I used to smoke a lot.” He continued obliviously. “And one point I was in Thailand and I smoked so much that I nearly lost my voice. I had been smoking since I was 15, but this was a totally nuts binge.”

“Weed?” Knowing about neurons, I’d say that drugs prove we have a chemical soul. But are we just that?

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“Weed and cigs. I smoked to the point of near death.” Near death seemed a bit dramatic to me. But Beni was mostly talking to himself. He shook his head as though he had no concern over whether or not I heard, much less believed him.

“My best friend actually lives in India. That’s one reason I wanted to hear your view on the place. You and he are about the only people I’ve ever heard say good things about that place.”

“Sounds like an insightful guy!” I joked in the face of seriousness. Eesh more stories. Are we just stories?

“His name is Jay. He’s Jewish, and gay too…and a doctor. And he flew from India to Thailand to come heal me of my smoking illness.”

He seemed awkward in his awareness of the potentially politically incorrect nature of his description. “Oh yeah.” I remembered. “Beni is Jewish too.” He has permission to even make Jew jokes by way of identity.

“Jay made a lot of money in the stock market in like 1987 and was getting tired of it. He wanted something more. So he quit his job and started getting ready to just travel. Two days before he left…”

“The ‘87 stock market crash?” I interjected, enthusiastic with the hope of guessing.

“Yep. He lost everything.” His loss meant I was right! “So he went off to the cheapest English speaking country; India. After not much time he started doing medicine there.”

“Talk about making destiny out of tragedy!” Lives should at least make good stories. Fiction hopes to be Non – Fiction.

“Jay learned how to heal through energy and the application of touch. He can sense blockages and he operated on me. When he put his hands over my throat he said he saw black.” Black got emphasized as if the sound was to mimic the sound of wiggly mucous tar. “Jay messaged my Adam’s apple without touching it, for a while. His hands lightened the blockage and then I felt it moving upwards. And, it wasn’t just imagined, I gagged, choked, spit and coughed up a lot of black shit. I mean like a small baseball. It was gross.”

My incredulity went down and interest up as he described the tar coming up. What an image!

“Jay said that he had been bargaining with the forces to be, and that if I ever smoked again after that I’d lose my voice forever. And I cannot afford that in my line of work.”

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Bargaining with forces? Snide doubt came roaring back. Sometimes I feel like a watchdog for science. It’s not just intellectual, it’s emotional. Who knows why?

“I think that’s why a lot of people think I’m gay. My voice is kind of ripped away.” It was the first time that I noticed that he didn’t speak at full volume and did put a lot of effort into producing the sound he did make. That probably had subconsciously contributed to my first impression of him as gay.

“Maybe.” The word became a quick blush as I realized I had just let him know that I had thought he was gay. Many thought roads, came up and were shut down by me. Male rule #1, don’t talk about gay. Ironically, in retrospect, I think the main reason for my suspicion is that super virile men are so comfortable with themselves, that their posture can be very relaxed. Beni was extremely relaxed in his own body. I wasn’t only learning about me.

“Jay is having his own crisis now.” He continued. “He has been working in medicine in India for more than 15 years…about 20. Initially, he went to India penniless, as a sort of act of faith. And the universe provided. He got backing and financial support from a rich guy that heard about his work. But now he’s getting tired of living off of nothing and wondering if he really wants to grow old doing that.”

“I don’t see how, in good conscience, he’ll be able to leave the poverty that he cannot ever blind himself to again. But the loss of the backer could be destiny telling him its time to do something else too. Either way he’s the puppet. But my hunch is that conscience will box him into a trap. He can’t pretend to be ignorant of suffering now. That’s who he is.”

I rudely finished with “Slave!” under my breath. “I’m not sure. All I know is that fate does play a part in our lives. We get signals that

tell us what is to be. It does happen. There is energy in the universe John.”

“I don’t believe that the universe cares much for us, or that there are psychic plans for us.”

“You’ve never had a supernatural experience?” He chided, now playing the incredulous one.

“Well, one or two things. Once it was late at night. I was in San Jose, CA. And two guys were coming at me. One stopped me and asked over and over if he knew me. I repeatedly said no. I was new in town and we hadn’t lived in the same place at the same time ever. I was going to leave when his friend exclaimed, “John!”. I had lived with his friend in a hash dealer’s house for two weeks in Barcelona.

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The other was, the night my great aunt died in New York, my mother was shaken away. No one was in her bed. She called my Grandma to see if all was okay. Then she learned of my aunt’s death.”

“Then you have no choice but to believe that there are forces we know nothing about.”

“No. I have a choice. Those are coincidences. In a whole long life time there must be some coincidences. We don’t need the ideas of ghosts and an ether world. Those things rob us of our freedom. And what’s worse. Superstition’s led to unspeakable horror like the witch killing and the dark ages. I believe in the enlightenment and reason.”

“Your problem is that you want to control everything with your categories. You are afraid of life. You don’t trust. You think the universe is hostile and so you must plan everything.”

“Plan your work and work your plan. My grandfather says. Real freedom comes from steering yourself over a long time of your life.”

“You have some kind of neurosis that puts something between you and the decay of life. No one in your family dies because you’re afraid of death, or some such curse.”

“That is some of the most bizarre reasoning I’ve ever heard.”

“Life isn’t reason. It is a mystery. You cling to facts to shield you from people, or death or some kind of fear or hurt. Breathe, you never really relax John!” I suddenly became super aware of the tenseness in my body.

“Its going to be okay. Trust in the universe.”

“I agree, in the sense that I really can’t explain fully what my Mom said. And technically, I believe that we’re supernatural. We aren’t just like inert objects or animals. We have choices. Nothing else does. But we go beyond the laws of nature. So we’re supernatural.

But we’re not a miracle. Technically a miracle is something that breaks the laws of nature. And we can be totally explained by the laws of nature. We can explain all existence, and even our seemingly miraculous free will, with evolution. And we have evidence. We don’t need faith.

I’m free because I control me. Not fate or powers.”

“Good argument. It kept you from considering what I said. Your life is virtually trapped by your plans with Soo Hee” He was nailing me. “Life is okay one day at a time. No buffers,

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no addictions, no fears. Feel your despair once in a while.” He was getting into an intensity groove.

“Okay.” I said with the contrition of one who knows his excuses will just make things worse.

“And, I don’t care what you say to block up your world into a small controllable box. I know that there is life after death. Because after my mother died I could feel her lingering over me and looking down on me.” Beni was in intense peeking mode. “I know my mother is still out there and she cares for me.”

This was the only time that Beni got into one of his intensities where I felt physically threatened. He was in my face and fighting for the dignity of his mother.

My first reaction was feeling like guffawing (Half out of nerves and half out of the patheticness of his need for his mommy). But, how can I fight this man over the memory of his mother. His mother still loves him from the sky! Jesus. How creepy.

My silence said it all.

At this point I am checking out of the capsule as there is a Japanese theater show I am too see. It is a traditional play put on for tourists. I’ll write the rest and e-mail the total to you later. Wow. 17 hours in the booth!!

After minutes of awkward silence. I felt it was appropriate for me to pull out my pad of paper and do some writing.

“What are you writing?” Beni interrupted me with restrained politeness.

“I’m writing a book idea that came to me in a vision last night when I was high. But don’t think I’m channeling a demon or anything.” What a strange combination of humor and nervousness that statement came with.

“Why write it down if life has no meaning?” He was angry enough to go for the last word.

“I make meaning. My life is important to me, if no one else. But ultimately you’re right, ultimately, there is no purpose. If the universe burns out it burns out. All life leads to going underground in tubes just a little smaller than this subway car.”

“What are you going to call this book you have no reason to write?” Beni asked in his best attempt at civilly changing the subject.

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“Capsule. It’s going to have ideas that come out of pictures and go back into them. Its actually about six of our experiences. Each one will start and stop with the same image and in between I will completely exhaust a theme. Wow! I’m encapsulating the capsules on a subway capsule.

And, I’m grateful to you for having gone on this journey with me.”

“Yeah. I’m glad to have met you. I’m sorry I was angry at you for your point of view.”

“It’s what each of us sees.” We sat and chewed on that for a minute and tried to calm down. “Life would be really boring and stiff without the possibility of pondering the other possibilities.” We both passed up cheap shots and rested in momentary peace.

I stopped scribbling and shattering our record for longest silence, “Your life has been interesting. Don’t you ever write?”

“No. I don’t. I used to carry journals from country to country. But then one day I was reading one from when I lived in Germany and it wasn’t interesting or useful. They were written in bad German and mostly just exercises in language. And when it wasn't that it was the same old shit! 16 years later! Engaged in risky sexual behavior and worried about AIDS. Over and over. It is the same shit today.

Why write that down and keep it? It doesn’t change.That was a heavy day. I also realized on that day that all the scraps and pictures I carried

around weren’t for me. I kept them to prove things to other people. There are no other people. Either they believe you and like you or they don’t. It’s like that stuff you say about history and those who don’t have...”

“Those who don’t have religion, have history. Those who don’t have history have only their personal stories, or something like that. It’s a work in progress.”

I thought back on the irony that we had had a talk on the need for memory to progress and he didn’t remember it. I’m glad to say I then said what I was really thinking.

“You write in order to check progress. You should have kept those diaries.”

“I felt very liberated when I set that stuff on fire. Pictures, diary, everything. Life is incomplete and nothing will ever be perfect. Nothing is neat, all is messy. See John. Your life has been really together. You really want it to continue to be a nice story. I have been freed. People die. I don’t have to try.

Anyhow, I don’t need a photograph to remember what my mother looked like. It’s in here.” He said pointing to his head.

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Neuroscience tells us that the recreation of his mother’s image in his head is very inaccurate. But, we knew that I was hiding my rebuttal and he was hiding his enraged insistence. There was no need to dig that hole again.

Our stop for transferring came. When we switched subway lines I found a spot where we would be forced to sit across from each other. But he was as oblivious as he was relentless, “Hey don’t sit there. Just in the next car, there’s room for both of us to sit together!”

Not going after all our tension would be rude. Nah, that didn’t matter. I just didn’t want him to think that I didn’t care. I went.

“The Japanese are able to fall completely asleep and then wake up at their stop. It’s amazing.”

“You sure they aren’t just pretending so that they can shield themselves from eye contact with others.”

“No they aren’t faking. They snore and everything.” Beni seemed star struck with admiration! He sure could switch moods quickly.

“Perhaps they have evolved their brains to the modern demands of time and space. Maybe their brain can now subconsciously processes the different sound of their stop. Even their subconscious has adjusted itself to the machine. Power nap!”

I saw a sign I didn’t get on the subway. It was a sign of a female’s breast area. He head was cut off so that you’d have no way of knowing who she was.

“Beni. What is that sign about?” I asked with a finger extended.

“That’s referring to a campaign they had not too long ago. Not too long ago, when the trains were packed and the high school girls got on men would feel them up. The touching was everyday, like routine. Sometimes you could put your hand under their underwear and even put your finger inside of them.” He was creeping me out again. It sounded like he was describing his own actions.

“The girls didn’t want to make a scene and so were raped in the subway like this for generations. Finally girls started dragging the guys out and telling the police they needed to do something about this.”

“Wow! A breach of silence and protocol in Japan!”

“And it all started with one girl.”

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“Amazing.”

“They even came up with a word that is equivalent to unwanted touching. “Hatickwaya.” It’s a brand new word for them. It is on the poster above her.

“Wow. How brave was that first girl that stood up for herself? She escaped the box.” My having my mind boggled with admiration ran into an irony. “And now that it’s a government campaign, people don’t even dare try it anymore. Right?”

“Yeah. But it’s a major, major conscious effort. It’s not natural. You’ve got to understand that this whole society runs on the adoration of teenage girls.

“I couldn’t help but notice that there are young girl porno mags in every 7-11.”

“You can tell the junior highs from the high scholars because the later have lower skirts.” I’m not sure if that was an expression of disgust or a hot tip.

“The department of education probably regulates the libido of society inversely with the economy by adjusting the level of the skirts. Is that what you mean by the whole thing runs on oogling school girls?”

“No. It’s more like they live for the wicked desire denied to them. It is what fuels their dreams. Everything else is according to law. It is the one escapist free, anti-rules thought that they have. That is what I mean.”

“And then that perversion itself, kind of ironically becomes what fuels the conformity?” “Exactly.” He concurred.

“It’s pretty sick. The people with families that buy them must somehow disassociate these girls from their teenage daughters and those of their friends.”

“Or not”. Responding matter of factly. “It’s a society of silence. The perversity thing also helps them maintain, or rather sort of reinforces their code of silence.”

My head was still trying to chew and digest that one when he hit me with it again!“John, what do you think of my life?” I admired his guts in asking. I never had the guts to ask Beni the same question or any

other that direct.

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“Beni, my opinion shouldn’t be that important to you.”

“But it is. You’re a together person I’d respect your opinion. You’ve already told me off and I that makes me trust you. Be honest. What do you think?”

The truth is that I had originally seen Beni as a warrior. Someone who had gotten free of the traps of every day life and was living a spectacular one. And he had had an exceptional non-normal life.

The more he talked of his girlfriend situation though, the more I thought of him as the ghost of Christmas future. If I don’t have a family or a steady relationship, I will be as at loose ends as he. Lonely, unable to commit and getting old. With nothing to show for my efforts.

Not able to construct a total picture and uncomfortable with the idea of saying anything negative, I replied much as I would have when I first met him.

“You’re a brave and spectacular person.”

“You said that before when I asked you.”

“Yeah it is still true. But I think that you need to be careful about what you do with your life as you get older. You are sort of running from home. Home didn’t begin well for you. Now it is time to sort of make peace with that.”

“Wow. That was really honest thank you.”

“I might just be projecting as everything I just said applies to me too. I don’t know why I’m with a woman who isn’t there. Perhaps it is the lure of being able to be Peter Pan like forever. Part of the attraction is that she has enough money that we’d never have to settle down into a reality.

But I’m really willing to be hooked up with Soo Hee. I’m not sure why you don’t get tighter with Aya. Maybe the reason that you don’t is that she represents what steady family did to you.”

“You say that, but you’re never with Soo Hee. It’s easy for you to say untested in your safe relationship and then say you’re so open to intimacy.” His anger management problem was beginning to show. Then he backed off. I think I said a bit more than he wanted to hear. But it was true.

“I give Aya enough. I give her appreciation. I could never love her. That is just the way it is.”

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He repeated how it was expected that a woman in Asia cook his food and do his laundry. But he gave her appreciation. All she wanted was someone to appreciate her. That is all that she asked, he told me. And when we ate he did thank her often.

“Please John, when we eat tell her that you appreciate the food. She was a little unsure about having you over. She did it as a favor to me. She wants to please me. All that she asks is a little appreciation. Tell her food is good. It will make her really happy.”

I swore that I would. While all the while thinking how bizarre his relationship was. He could never love her. That was somehow secretly comforting to her. She could never love either. Her capacity for connection had been gravely burnt.

What was my damage that I was in such a distant relationship? Beni spoke of God knows what the rest of the way. I resentfully tried to get some writing in. At one point he again chided me for thinking ideas were more important that people. I nearly got nasty out of feeling entrapped and resentful. I nearly barked back that ideas are all we have. They last longer than people. But, even though I’ll probably never see him again, I’m glad I didn’t. I really appreciate the time he spent with me. He was a good friend.

Thankfully, the fingernail sketches of our experiences turned out to be enough. But every word I wrote in edgewise and in defiance of his speech, turned out to be very important (assuming this process and product is). And he didn’t resent my priorities.

On the hour and a half journey out to his place, the buildings started to get less pixilated. It was probably a combination of the buildings getting smaller as we left Tokyo proper and our minds tuning down.

He made a couple of more attempts to remind me to thank Aya. He was obviously a little nervous about the visit.

“Tell me what you think of her and my place. That is a reason I’ve asked you over. I’m really curious about what you’ll think of her and my home. I want your opinion”

As we went up the subway exit staircase towards his place he, in his natural gregariousness, reached out to a stranger with a real “Hi. How are ya!” In Japanese.

The guy shot back a curt look that conveyed all the anti-social, infringed-upon cantankerousness I had been feeling.

“Unbelievable!” was Beni’s reaction. “Only in Japan. I have said “Hi” to people in this country and had them reply with “Do I know you?” Too much. I often feel like these people are not part of the human race.” We hurried through the station as if running away from them.

“Being anti-social is the root of all evil and man’s inhumanity to man.” I shot back without revealing the rapture that identification with evil brings. The irony was that the thought

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that I was wasting my time when I could be in a capsule writing, made the sentiment of evil palpable and delicious to me.

Outside on the surface, metal blockades, bicycles and trashcans blown over by the typhoon were scattered on the streets that led to Beni’s house.

“Should we try to pick them up?”

“No. They’ll be okay. The city workers will come and clean it.”

“Anyhow look. Its all behind that yellow line.” A yellow line ran parallel to the sidewalk four feet out from the curb. “It has all fallen with in the acceptable level of anarchy formula. No fear. The cities’ thought of everything.”

_________________________________________________________________Immediately upon leaving the internet café, inspiration forced me onto

the steps to the subway out of Rapongi. As I wrote, in my small pad, a beautiful man girl approached me and just asked what I was doing. After repeating my story several times (he seemed really not to believe me or comprehend why a grown man would write),he finally got a handle on me, he checked. “Oh. Okay. So you’re going to write this and then leave the city.” When I replied in the affirmative, he just said “Okay.” In an exasperated tone, shook his head and walked away. That was the last person I spoke with in Rapongi

________________________________________________________________

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CAPSULE FIFTEEN: HOME

Walking to his house we went past a small prayer temple. It was a cute reminder of ancient cultural ties even permeating the community level.

It was a cute little town. It looked like everything in the town had been shrunken down. Like walking into Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, all the homes were plastic models. Perhaps it was just the contrast with Tokyo’s “no building under 20 stories” atmosphere.

Coming close to his front door I noticed the writing on the letters in their mail box looked like Soo Hee’s. In particular the fives looked like hers. The outside of his place had mobile home-esque aluminum siding façade punctuated by different doors. His door was the last one.

Upon entering I say his wife for the first time! She was a homely diminutive young Asian lady. She shook my hand and smiled that cute embarrassed Asian female smile. They exchanged polite kisses on the cheek.

The table was already set and the business of food was immediately gotten to. She served us stew, bread, tea, some salad and rice. What a feast!

From my vantage points, the house seemed to consist in two fairly large rooms (one was the bedroom and one the living room) and the kitchen / dining room. The rooms were separated by traditional Japanese sliding doors. You know, the kind with paper instead of windows. Straw floor mats covered the barren floors. It was, I felt, a very typical Japanese home.

After exchanging greetings, she bade me sit, and I did.

“Thank you. The food looks delicious.” I said opening my gratitude campaign.

“Thanks to you. It was last minute. I didn’t know if you guys were coming or not.” She replied with a touch of resentment, buried in scurrying.

Beni sat down to eat, but she kept serving.

“This food is terrific. After a long long, long day of trippin around, a good meal in a warm home is exactly what we need. It’s like going into a swimming pool on a hot day.” And with that compliment, she flashed me a big embarrassed smile and Beni was happy to see her happy. I was happy for both of them.

“Thanks you. You don’t have to eat the rice. The rice cooker broke so it isn’t very

good.” She was a real Japanese housewife. Service with extreme deference. It was the same cultural habit that drove Beni so crazy in others. I finally understood the reason for his personal annoyance. It made one acutely aware of the cultural divide. For them it might have been a sign of good etiquette. Americans just feel estranged by it.

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“No, the rice really good. Excellent. This really hits the spot after all of the adventure that Beni and I have had. I reaaallly appreciate it.” I laid it on as per Beni’s request.

“Thanks to you. It is funny the rice cooker has become the traditional way of making rice. I haven’t made it without a rice cooker in so long that I don’t remember how to do it. That is why it is dry.”

“You guys have a really nice place here.” That was truth. It looked like a really pleasant place to lounge.

“It’s a little expensive.” They both replied in unison.

“How much?”

After a checking to see which was going to answer this question, Beni revealed the sum. “$750.00.” After all of our devil-may-care madness, such polite small talk seemed extra contrived.

“That’s a deal compared to my place. Mine is like $1300 a month and much less cute with much worse air. You have a very nice home Aya. It feels very homey and warm.” At least the small talk could be redeemed by warm sentiments befitting a home.

“Your English is great. I understand you perfectly.”

“How about your fiancé’s English? Is it good?” Wow. Somehow someone had given her the rundown on my life.

“I wish hers was as good as yours. You speak really well.” In truth Soo Hee’s language could be really frustrating to me.

“I don’t think so, but I appreciate this award.”

“The bread is really good too. How did you learn to make this?” I recoiled as soon as I finished asking. I probably shouldn’t open up discussions that could lead to her past.

“The bread is store bought.” Beni chimed in, perhaps defensively.

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“Sheesh. It’s fitting that I can’t tell the difference between homemade and store bought. I have no home. The manufacturing sector is my wife. My wife, micro. When you cook, do you use a recipe or do you just know how?”

“I just know how.”

“Wow. It is really great. Thanks so much.”

“Thanks to you for eating it.”

We sat in a moment of awkward silence, mitigated by the imperative full-mouthness of eating.

Where had the outpouring of ideas gone? The combination of domesticity and diminishing drugs dampened the genius. I still had lingering resentment of having lost my opportunity to write while my mind was hot.

“Hey John. While we eat, let’s listen to my CD.”

“Oh Yeah. Good idea. I wanna hear that!” I said with an enthusiasm that conveyed the underlying joy at covering up the awkward silences.

The CD was an ingenious beyond my expectations. The production quality and execution blew me away! The whole thing was like a rock opera in that it told a story by bounding back and forth from dialogue to song and back again. Between the songs and dialogues there were be ambient sound effects that set the place and random snippets of conversation. As in a radio drama, you were transported into the scenes it depicted.

The over all plot of the epic was the relationship of his characters, Carrie and Aki. Aki is an exchange student from Japan. And Carrie is a transplant from San Francisco. Strangers in a strange land, not unlike Beni and I, they meet on a high school campus in Ohio. .

After listening to a sequence of dialogue and song, I exclaimed, “Beni, this CD is outrageously good. Its beyond anything I expected.”

“Thanks. I hope that the whole world of Aki and Carrie envelopes them.” Beni explained the intimate instructions on how to use the material. First just listen to the melodies. Then hum them so you can hear the vowel sounds and get used to making sound. Then, and only then, you add the words. This puppy was one tightly sealed hermeneutic. Even the mental states were included! It doesn’t get much more self – contained than that.

After they meet they ask each other where they are from. Discuss Ohio as a place to live and tell each other what they like in life. They then launch into a happy simple song. “Hi how

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are you today? I am fine. I like sunny days. I like the sunshine. I see you everyday I say “Hi” I like sunny days. We can play outside.”

“After hearing this I have faith. You could sell a lot of these.”

“I’m trying the best I can. But it’s frustrating.”

“Well, you need that mob factor. Once it’s popular it’ll be popular because it’s popular. Then word of mouth will sell it. It could catch fire. It really sounds professional.”

“And every song covers an important grammar concept. This one is about pronunciation problems. Dipthongs like “p.l.” together and the "D" sound are what they need. Their 17 worst pronunciation problems are in this first song. With the slowdown verse they can really concentrate on the sounds.”

“Ingenious.”

“How you speak is as important as what you speak. There is a guy in our A.A. meetings that speaks fluent English. There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“His pronunciation is so bad that no one understands anything he says.”

“Really?”

“Iwz leully tou.” He mocked the guy saying “Its really true” and I understood. “Is there anything more tragic than to learn an entire language, speak it fluently and not

have anyone be able to understand you? No one has the heart to tell the guy that they don't ever understand what he says. It’s tragic. They guy is spilling his guts out and no one has any idea what he is saying. Pronunciation is number one.

I’ve wanted to take the guy aside, break the news to him and teach him pronunciation, but it would embarrass him to learn that no one had ever understood him.

Furthermore,” Beni added without his characteristic gentleness, “I don’t really care about the guy enough to work on his pronunciation problems.”

Things were loosening up.Warriors adjustment to the home front are always difficult. Odysseus is our second oldest legend in Western civilization. He spends 10 years

fighting perilous and tempting situations to return home. But once back, immediately after

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dispensing with the rivals to his wife’s affection and property, he returns to adventure. Either the sea is his home or domesticity makes him nervous.

Beni would have to be the leader here. Not knowing her, I didn’t know what was or wasn’t permissible to say. My unusual tone must have been obvious to him.

Beni helped out a lot when he blurted out, “Man I can’t believe we’re still trippin off of this stuff.” We both rolled our eyes and made grins which warranted drool in fiendish goofy delight. “Its been forever.”

“Like 1 a.m. to 5:30 the next day. Like 16 hours.”

“That was after trippin’ for 5 or 6 hours before on the first batch!” I enjoined.

Aya finally spoke. “Let me see your eyes.” She was smiling just enough to signal some approval beneath the concern. But for me, women checking your eyes for drug effects is akin to a prosecutor collecting evidence.

“Yes Benjamin you are still high. Wow. What was that stuff?”

“It was trip thunder” He proudly announced. “Remember, I’ve taken it before.”

“Don’t forget the “Pinky”!” I chimed with enthusiasm. “Yes you still seem a little high and you have been gone for so long. You’ll probably

need a long hard rest a lot after such a long trip.” What?! Did she intentionally drag out the double entendre words? Do Asian housewives

think up jokes like that? Perhaps it was just my perverted mind. I really hope the implied hint that I should leave was just my imagination. Probably I’m just paranoid about her wanting me to split because of my history with controlling crazy women. Damned history is always creepin’ in.

“After such an excursion this is a really nice home to come back to. You have what seems like a lot of love around here. And really good food too. You watch out Beni. I might just stay for a long hard rest.” My dragging the words she dragged out worked. Aya’s shy laughing with her eyes, followed by the mouth covering that inevitably follows Asian women’s laughter, let me know that the double entendres weren’t just in my dirty little mind. She and I had had our first insider joke.

I wish that Soo Hee had Aya’s cavalier attitude towards things. She considers all drugs to be the equivalent of heroin or crack. It is a source of distance between us. It makes me feel like I cannot be myself in front of her. It is one of the things that convinces me our cultures and backgrounds are too divergent for understanding. The whole premise of this book would be a ground for divorce for her.

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Then again, if Soo Hee weren’t the strict over achiever she is, I wouldn’t love her so much. She was right about drugs being an over all bad for me. I love her for her constant achievement of her ideals of excellence. I can’t let her read this book.

Beni jumped. “Listen to this song!”

As all of the songs, this one was proceeded by dialogue. After Aki and Carrie meet, they go back to Carries’ place. Her mom makes them tea and cookies. Then the two girls go up to their room and sing the following.

“I say Hi to you. You say hi to me. I say nice to meet you and you say the same to me.” The chorus starts:“English is so easy sing this song with me. Are you hungry do you want something to eat?”

After listening patiently to the whole song I reported back. “Your CD is great! I love the blend of dialogue and music. It’s so conceptual and perfect.”

“Thanks.” Beni cautiously acknowledged the compliment.

“It’s weird though. It’s almost creepy how it just represents the bare minimal of experience and the most important stuff. Its like you took life and sucked all of the psychic terror out of it leaving only the clean surface. It makes me feel psychotic!”

“That is the strangest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“No. I really like it!” I quickly protested. “It would make a great basis for an audio art piece because it highlights how much of our lives are rote. After just a bit, you could start to put in the subconscious subtexts. Like when they go up stairs for cookies, we could listen in on their secret lesbian thoughts, then fears about grades and then all the books they didn’t read would come pouring on and talk of the economic structure and social manipulation and….

Before you know it, the whole thing would be filled with words.”

“Yeah. Yeah I get it.”

“Think of how many voices we keep out concerning terror and sex and hatred. You understand. Right Aya?”

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“Yes John. Strange idea. You are not a normal man.” I grinned, assuming that was a compliment.

Daring to kick start some fun Beni started with, “Aki and Carrie are entering their plastic death house.”

“Exactly!” I chimed now feeding off of his energy and the opportunity to be a bad and naughty child in a home. “Death trap of nasty capitalist plastic home is manipulated by the cookie!”

“The angry coooookie!” The cookie monster enthralled.

“Have you met my mother? Do you want to kill her?”

“Do you want to watch pornos Aki?” He said in a totally straight voice.

“Devil says do! Devil says do!” I channeled in a shrieking little girl voice.

“Don’t watch it mamm! No, Mamm. Joe Friday just the facts.”

“Mommy! Mommy! Porno chocolate cookie sauce Mommy!” I screamed in gleeful degenerate abandon.

Just then there must have been some silent communication because Beni gave me a glance that was intended to throw poison darts.

In a voice that was having trouble readjusting to normality, and with his eyes jumping repeatedly between Aya and I, he managed a sentence with strong overtones of seriousness and sanity. “Yes. I get it. I get it. That’s fun. But then it would be an art piece and no one would learn English from it.”

Beni was obviously worried that Aya not think him insane. Don’t worry about me dear dying chocolate covered reader. Go ahead and fill in the unspoken’s silent subconscious and the unspoken’s unspoken subconscious and the unspoken’s etc. to infinity in the margins of this book. That’s what margins are there for.

“Yeah. And, it’s interesting, at its extreme it would get so cluttered it would just become noise.” I felt guiltily re-exhilarated along with the pressure of needing to feel somewhat restrained and cowed as I added my hilarious ironic conclusion.

“We’d have to dampen that noise into background noise and then rerecord the whole damn dialogue over again.” I smiled and he didn’t.

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We retreated back into listening to his CD’s ambient dialogue.“Have you seen the new girl? She’s really beautiful.” “You think they’re all beautiful.” “No I don’t.” “Yes you do.” “No I don’t.” “Yes you do.” …into fade out.

Another song started and I interrupted. “I’d think having a guitar must have been strange to Japanese.” “The guitar seems to be an affront to the Japanese culture. It is this source of the individual voice, a weird animal in Japanese culture. How does it go over here?”

“They loved it and accepted it nearly right away. They put those little photograph stickers of themselves all over my guitar.”

“Photo – stickers! A perfect symbol of self and love.” My sarcasm immediately turned into self-consciousness over whether or not I was again being impolite to Aya. She was one of them, and not an abstraction.

“Excuse me.” Muttered Aki, as she left to clean in one of the other rooms. Perhaps she had had enough of our stereotyping and felt alienated from Beni. I’m sure he was a different person around me. Aya seemed to always have an edge of sadness about her. I hope it was due to my insensitivity and not her history.

The current Beni song had the following chorus:

"I have been to Africa, to Israel and Spain. I’ve traveled all around the world. People are the same.Mothers love their children as far as I can see.Everyone around the world is like you and me.”

“But what we’ve been saying about language and cultures means that that isn’t true. You said that the Japanese were totally alien to you.”

“I guess you’re right.” He said quietly.

“I mean there are some cross cultural similarities. But the uniformity is probably more true for females than males. They are domestic. Men are really different. Women are more similar across cultures, more interchangeable. They look after their kids.”

He shushed me. He didn’t want Aya, who was still just in the other room, to hear that.

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We listened in silent reflection, then Beni remembered himself. “Honey come back here.” He pleaded.

Aya came back.

From nowhere (the origin of most topics), Beni asked me with passion, as though it weren’t a diversion, “What is the first thing that you need when you first get to a new country? In the very beginning.”

“To be able to ask, “Where’s the terlet?”” Was an obvious first guess.

“No. More basic.”

“More basic than the toilet?” I shot incredulously while playing along. “You need to be able to find the hotel.”

“And to do this you need….”

“To know about the subway system. You have to be able to ask, “Where is this subway exit?””

“No.” He said in genuine frustration over my breaking the routine. “I can't believe you're not getting this. You need a map, to know where you are and how you can get to your destination! You need a map!”

“Ooohhh. Okay.”

“Grammar is the map to languages. All languages have a grammar.”

“Wasn’t the idea of grammar rules, invented recently. Like in the last century.”

“Yes. But grammar rules existed in real life before we codified them. People got teased for speaking differently back in olden days too.

Grammar is your passport. It is the deep structure that makes all languages the same below the surface. That’s why every song on this CD highlights one of the 8 fundamental concepts of universal grammar.

If you can express the eight forms in each language, you can express just about everything. Grammar is the key.. To start to learn without understanding grammar condemns you to second status pigeon language poorly learned.”

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“When I was in Korea I studied their language for two months. I memorized, via flashcards, every damn phrase. In the last week of the course, the teacher told us that there was a pattern to the endings. One was formal, one informal. One was always used in a question. We were stunned that this likable, competent seeming woman had waited that long to show us the pattern.”

“Exactly!” He exclaimed, in delight of my continuing small talk to cover the tension in his domestic setting. “You can memorize phrases, but until you get at the deep structural level, you'll never get it. You’ll never really see how the language holds together. Everything will seem random.”

“I guess the deep grammar structure is like life. You have to find the patterns in it. The grammar of buildings.” It was an old reference I’d hoped he’d remember. “Homes after homes after homes, are what people want around the world. That is the real structure. Homes are the real thing.

After I check out of my little space module capsule, I’ll return to my home. Some day I hope to have a home as nice as yours.” I said this to be reassuring, I think he took it as demeaning. She smiled.

“Aya.” I said making a move to take her out of her lethargy (she’d heard his grammar rap before). “I’m really impressed with your English.”

“Thanks to you again.” She said as Aki and Carrie found a girl from Chicago that didn’t know anyone at the school.

“Beni tells me you work in a library. How do you like it?”

“It is good.”

“I love libraries. I really love books. Do you get to read there?”

“Not enough.”

“I spent one month researching in the Washington DC library. Actually it was about the World War Two Army language program. There was a neat community of nerds there working on their projects.

It’s interesting to see what people investigate?”

“It is. Right now I’m a little frustrated with my work because I gets paid less than the men.”

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“Really!” I said incredulously. “Is this a government library? Can the government do that?”

“It isn't government, but it is the largest private university in Japan. So I’m a little unhappy about it.”

“Wow. Is your getting paid less because you’re a woman in writing?”

“In Japan women get paid less than men. It is law.”

“In the States you wouldn't even think of putting that in writing. Your butt would be sued. You’d lose the case in a second if there was documentation. Women would set the place on fire.”

Trying to put a happy face on Japan and make her feel better I added that, “This would never fly in America because the family in America is in terrible disintegration. Women cannot rely on men to be there anymore. Women must get equal pay if they are to raise the family. So she demands equal pay. In fact, in something like 40% of American homes, women make more than men.”

Any American woman who thought she might be being paid less than her male counterparts would sue immediately! Our families being so messed up means that we can’t pay women less.”

“We have an expression, it means that it is something you can't do anything about. So

why mention it.”

“You could of course,” I retorted” pull busses into an intersection and refuse to go…. We saw a protest today where people did that.”

“Really?” She said incredulously.

A song was playing about needing a rest on weekends from all of the getting up early of the week.

“That’s why Saturdays and Sundays. Are the days I love the best.”

Feeling like I made up the bus thing and was generally “takin a piss out of life” as the English say. She tried to pin me to real feelings and answers with a bit of aggression. Aya’s attempted break in to the real me started with asking me about my family.

I related my dilemma to her as the last Jew in my family line. I knew not being carefree about my relations would assuage her negative reaction to me. I told her that I really did have trouble relating to the existence of what was supposed to be “my culture”.

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“I’m not sure if Judaism is a real thing that I could take to heart. I don’t even like tribalism and groupings and stuff like that. I like individuals.”

“My culture, she offered in contrast, is inescapably real. I’m also frozen out at work because I didn’t go to the same university as everyone else. They treat me as an outsider. Life around here can be harsh depending on your group affiliation. You can’t even pretend to just be a free individual.”

“Beni and I have spoken about how controlling this culture is. It’s the opposite extreme

of our culture. Our American culture is really alienated. That is because everything is centered around the individual. No one has any place in it.”

I thought about how Beni had said that Hebrew has an assumed warmth that doesn’t exist in English. But I didn’t say anything about that because I didn’t want to emphasize the wedge language put between them.

“We have too little sense of culture. I guess that’s why I can really appreciate this nice home you’ve made where you and Beni can belong.”

“For me it is the opposite. I like having this as a place where I don’t have to belong. I can just be myself at home.”

Her statement expressed what I could have guessed was probably the case for her. Only I didn’t know that she had developed a sense of individual self to be unmolested. Being herself seemed to just mean resting from the wearying battles of life; the slings and arrows.

“Oh John, I really like this song. Listen to this one.” Its Saturday. Kari goes over to Aki’s house. Aki is lonely. Her parents are away and she

hasn’t spoken with anyone all day. You could hear the umbrella being put away as Carrie came inside.

“I miss Japan.” Aki declared. “Whenever it rains I think about Japan. I miss it. On rainy days my grandma used to always make tea for me.”

“When I ‘m sad I call a friend or think of some good times. Remember when we got the same sweaters?”

“Of course.”

“Remember. Whenever you feel sad, always give me a call.”

The chorus was about clouds. Some were white, some black, some grey. They saw different things in them. And sometimes they just won’t go away.

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“Again, Beni, it’s kind of creepy in that you seem to have all human experience there. High school students don’t need to use any more words than what are presented in these 70 minutes. Its like a complete representation of all life.”

“Ya think?”

“Yeah. Sadness, hunger, friendship, the trials of work and fear. They’re all in there. I think if you told non-English speakers they could only use words and phrases from this

CD there wouldn’t be anything in their experiences that they wouldn’t be able to talk about. You should try that in a high school. Only let them speak in English after taking your course.”

“Verbal direction, space, pronouns, degrees of disrespect. There are a lot of Japanese things that they couldn’t express. The whole mindset doesn’t really work in English .”

“Right. Well then definitely make them switch and it’ll brain wash them into our system of alienated, slacker, loner, equality.”

“John. Tell her your big formulation again.” Beni insisted enthusiastically.

“Well, I can try.” I said groggily. “Those without God have only history. …for identity at root.” I added to give her a clue as to what I was on about. “Those without history have only culture. Without culture you have only your family.”

“You forgot language.”

“Oh yeah. Those without culture have their language. No. Language would be in all of it. In America it would be the opposite of culture and community, in Asia, the heart of it.”

“Okay. So those without families…”

“They have only their personal stories. And at bottom that is only made up of language.”

“Wheh!” Beni exclaimed. “Something like that.”

“Not bad for two tired guys who did drugs.” Aya surmised somewhat uncomplimentarily, but not incorrectly. “Well, and I hope you end up having a home with your Korean girlfriend. You’ve been together for a long time.”

“Within an ocean of each other.” I barbed. This home scene was making me see the value in being nothing. I was feeling a little claustrophobia.

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“You don’t want anymore?” Aya asked, combining kindness and insistence.

“No. It was delicious thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.”

Again she thanked me for thanking her. Beni had a big compassionate smile over this war exchange of appreciation and kindly, reassuringly stroked her arm.

“No. I think it’s time for me to say good-bye.”

“Well, listen to the last song first.” Beni insisted.

It was a song about saying goodbye and how hard that was. It was subtitled for the friend he wrote it for.

“Goodbye my good friend” seems like the songs are finally declaring their independence and going away from being part a language CD to personal songs included in a language CD.”

“It is a personal song, for sure. But it is all about the past perfect. “Danced” ”Went” ”Rode” are all in there.” Genius.

Aya had started cleaning during the last song and continued to do so as I said my good-byes. As Beni and I left he handed me an umbrella just in case of storm.

Twenty feet from Beni and Aya's house, I exclaimed "O shit! I almost forgot. I want a copy of your CD and book.” He nearly let out the same exclamation. He went back in and got me one. I felt badly as I asked him how much it cost. He said it was a gift. The whole evening had been a gift.

Walking to the subway he thanked me profusely in a relieved and guilty way, for thanking Aya. “Your repeating how good the food was made it all worth while to her. She loves to be acknowledged and thanks for doing it.”

“Well it was true. The food was great. And after all of this talking and talking and walking and walking, a nice place to rest and a nice meal really hit the spot.”

“What do you think of our place?”

“Its nice. I felt really welcome and like it was a home.”

“Do you think she was attractive? Is she the type of girl that you’d be attracted to?”

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“Well. She isn’t exactly my type. But you know I think sex is more about love than bodily rubbing and she loves you. She’d be there for you, as Soo Hee would always be there for me.”

“Yeah. It’s just hard to know what to do.”

“Yeah. Love and decisions are as much about limiting your horizons as they are choosing something.”

“And, you never know what’s going to happen.”

“We’ll that’s true.”

“Besides John,” Beni beamed suddenly, “…you knoooow I love the ladies.”

“I know you do.” My laughing eyes and I replied.

When I was twenty feet past the turnstile, I turned around for one last wave good-bye. He shouted, “Call me tomorrow if you feel like it.” I wasn't sure if he was being polite or what. I never trust kindness. Maybe that is a reason I have so few friends. We had spent a lot of time together. Our good-bye meant something. Affection isn’t always a lie, a manipulation or act of distance management.

Minutes later as I was standing confusedly on the other side of the ticket gate, about to hit the head and not sure which track I was to get. His shouting “JOHN!” scared me.

I thought he had come back for his umbrella and gestured at handing it back to him. “No! That’s yours. Keep that. Track 2!” He yelled. “Get on track two. Oh and if I don't

see you tomorrow well talk on the phone, eh? Or maybe just see ya in cyberspace.” Those were the last words Beni ever said to me.

As I left the can and descended down the stairs I appreciated the small irony of my just seeing the last corner of my subway card speeding away at the very moment I arrived. I had just missed it.

Moments later I realized that I had had .almost made a huge error. I hadn't given them one of Michael "Friar Moose's" hearts of loving kindness! I decided to turn back around and deliver the hearts.

It was a struggle. But I somehow explained to the Station manager that I hadn't used my ticket yet and I'd be right back in just a short while to use it again.

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Unfortunately, I didn’t remember the way back to his house. I went down two mistaken freeway overpasses before anything looked familiar. Even then I didn’t know which road was his.

Finally, clue by clue and trial by error, I found their place. I remember the last clue of the series that got me to their home. It was the letters that had

the writing that looked like Soo Hee’s. My eager anticipation turned to excitement as I got to the mailbox. The corner of the letter with the five in the address that I had focused on earlier was still sticking out. The search was over. This was Aya and Beni’s home for sure.

Aya was really stunned to see me. I explained that I had to give her a good friend of mine's heart of loving kindness. Friar Moose gives them to cheap girls whom he truly loves. He had deputized me to spread these love hearts all over Asia with revolutionary intent.

“I would really have messed up if I didn’t give these hearts to such a loving and kind home as yours. You really have a beautiful home. Friar Moose would be really tickled to know that they reside in such a lovely place with such quality friends and family.”

Aya looked stunned, confused and really happy to see me. “Beni can't talk now, He is in the shower.” I could hear that through their paper thin

walls. “That is so nice of you. I actually thought you were going to spend the night with us in our home.”

“No. I’m going to go write and see about a ticket to Osaka. But thanks so much.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks to you for coming and being so kind a friend to Beni. And come back and stay with us any time.”

“Thank you. I’d love to, you have a lovely home.”

“Thanks to you.” She smiled.

Though she couldn’t know about it, I also later gave a heart to each of the message girls. I found them still working their corner near my capsule back in Rappongi.

Their also getting the hearts doesn’t cheapen the sentiment of having it in Beni’s nice home. They were doing all they could for dignity in a hard world. Theirs was one of the most crucial and environmentally sound functions in the Japanese world.

But their also getting hearts would probably tarnish their sentimental value (and ours) in Aya’s mind.

The message girls seemed to love them.

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I made my way back past the station guard who really didn’t recognize me until I showed him the ticket a new, by nearly rubbing it in his face. “How many white guys have come by here in the last 20 minutes?” I wondered. “What is this weird gap in your recognition about Mr. Station manager?”

I boarded the train bound back for my capsule. The rest of the day was silent picture taking.

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So Thomby, this is the final product of 18 or so hours of work!

The rest of the story is that they, fortunately it turned out (though I whined at first), didn’t have an overnight to Osaka. So instead of traveling, I tripped. After checking out of my capsule, I got drugs from the same guy Beni and I got them from before and headed to this cyber café.

Hours later I must say that staying here in this cubicle was a really good idea. I have gotten a lot of writing done here.

Now it is getting later in the early morning. Every time I stretch, I see less and less freaks like me still here. This place boasts 35,000 books. They are mostly Japanese-cartoon books. A lot of people are just sleeping amongst the books. I guess as long as they're paying hourly the management won't wake them.

There are few typists left clicking away. The guy in the next compartment has been working as long as I have. I wonder what he's writing about.

Honestly, I’m a little nervous that the risqué activity in this account will tarnish my image in your eyes. Hope it only increases our connection!

Love over the wires,

Johnny p.

NEW NUMBER: 626-590-6389 http://www.pressjohn.com

From: "john press" <pressjohn@hotmail.com> To: pressjohn@hotmail.com Subject: Re: capsule Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1925 17:42:08 +0000

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