"Nothing amazing happens here. Everything is ordinary. The huge factory that can be seen from our town, the Medical Mechanica Plant, all the adults got excited when it came here, like it was really a big thing. The white steam that billows out every day at the same time, it looked to me like smoke that signified some kind of omen. Smoke that spreads out and covers everything."
I stepped outside on a warm summer night at around 10pm. The last vestiges of light were gone. A swampy humidity hit my nose and I was instantly transported to the tropics. In the darkness, you could almost imagine the drooping trees in front of the condo were the outskirts of a tropical rainforest.
"Or like a panda with a mean face, or like sandals with pressure points drawn on them, or the smell of a blackboard eraser, or a Sunday morning where you wake up and it's raining. Well, I like him more than hard bread."
There is something entirely electric about the air on nights like that. Everything feels more alive, like a pulse beating through the atmosphere. You feel like you could reach out and hold air and in a closed fist feel it breathing. The comfort and convenience of just stepping outside is not lost. No coat, no gloves, no hat, no adjustment to cold or wind or dryness. The fireflies that danced around my thighs as I walked through the grass lit up repeatedly, and a pang of jealously at areas of the world where this was permanent, year round, hit me.
"At the time, I didn't notice the sirens that were coming towards us. I don't know where the lies end and the truth begins. I asked myself what I could do for Mamimi. I decided to stay by her side forever."
The fireflies were even thicker a few weeks later in July. Endless days of 90 degree weather, the sun beating down on black pavement during the day, the swarms of bugs at night. How alive everyone feels contradicts how slow and hazy it feels too. It seems possible to lie on the grass beneath the sun forever, listening to music, eyes squinting, faced upwards, the endless blue seemingly starting to bend and waver and melt. It's probably a trick of the long daylight, sunlight from 6am to 9:30 pm makes each day feel like it could last forever.
"You're Puss in Boots, the one who tricks the prince. He hides who he really is and pretends to be someone else forever. So in time he becomes that person, so his lie becomes the truth, see? He transcends the mask. Well, don't you get it? That's how he finds happiness. That's pretty good, right?"
The first time I smelled tropical air it felt like home. I can not explain this. I remember as a kid stepping out of a plane in Florida at age 6, breathing it in, and realizing it smelled different. Every time since then, wherever the world has taken me, any time that smell hits me, I get nostalgic, or wistful. It feels almost like something I need, I have to have, that not breathing it will eventually kill me. On summer nights I think back to sitting outside a hostel in Hong Kong as the city woke up around me, from 4am to 6:30 am, hearing the gradual crescendo of traffic and construction, the sun slowly inching up over the trees and skyscrapers. I once looked up if it was possible to keep a palm tree alive in Michigan. I can't remember when I decided I had a favorite type of tree, only that as long as I have been aware, that has been it. I used to wonder if I could climb them and look down on a beach from their tops. When I was older, I wished I could say as gracefully as they did when I couldn't keep myself still.
"Nothing can happen till you swing the bat."
Years ago I'd drive throughout town in search of something. I was never sure what. There isn't so much to see. Nothing amazing happens here. After decades the roads and buildings have all become familiar. Still, something about the warm air and dusk colors - orange and pink and purple hues lightly brushing each and every puffy cloud - loud music, windows down, made me think that even the most mundane locales could hold some beauty. But it wasn't enough. I made a promise to myself that I'd leave this place. I made a promise to live somewhere where the neon lights and sounds of the city stretched forever, possibilities seemingly endless, where feeling cold and overburdened with layers of clothing never existed, where night drives and walks were just another day, any day, any time of year. I was 17 when I promised myself that.
"By the time I realized it, I had already swung the bat. My palms still sting. I wonder if Haruko feels like this all the time."
As soon as the sun and warmth and dusk and fireflies are here, I am reminded that they will soon be gone. It's a perpetual sadness, that to enjoy something is to be reminded of its impermanence. Everything can be dragged down by a melancholic realization that it to shall pass. In winter, I long for summer to come. In summer, I dread winter. I feel the tug towards something that will not last either way. A lot of people would say this is some sort of intrinsic human condition, former posts on this blog certainly would, but maybe such a generalized point is largely without significance.
"When you're in a town like this all covered with smoke, you forget that there's a world outside. Nothing amazing happens here. And you get used to that, used to a world where everything is ordinary. Every day we spend here is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly. But now Haruko is here. That's how I know there really is a world outside."
We drove around town at 10:35 pm on a night not unlike the one a few weeks ago, or a few years ago, or a few decades ago. It is all the same and yet entirely different. My hand traced tiny circles around her thigh as she shared a new band she was excited about with me. She remembered that I used to do this, I used to love it. At each stop light, the fireflies seemed to light our way. "Turn here" they suggested. The top of the hill overlooking downtown was at once beautiful and disappointing, a reminder that it's the same view I've had my whole life, like a city that could fit in the palm of my hand, one that wouldn't breathe, unlike the air around us.
"Nothing amazing happens here. Everything is ordinary. We crossed the bridge as usual, and before we knew it the seasons had changed. Mamimi left town. She said she wanted to be a photographer. I don’t know what happened to her after that."
The drive lasted forever and not at all, like a summer day. Our car rolled to a stop before the front door of our home as usual. I smiled at her. I never used to smile on these drives; there wasn't anyone to smile to, nobody to see, nothing but the emptiness of a car on a late night drive. We walked in and kissed and swayed back and forth. For a second, I was a palm tree, gracefully moving, side to side, slow and rhythmic. I still fear winter, I still fear being trapped in this city, the pull of convenience and cheapness and familiarity and work. But maybe that's not the point. The person looking for something on those late night drives no longer exists. Something amazing happened here.
