Never to come again

Dear John,

I feel stuck trying to write anything to you. In my usual cloistered bubble in Kamakura I’m compelled to write everyday, like a chore that has slowly come to define my life. It reminds me of my old neighbour, who insists on faithfully washing her Nissan roadster every Saturday at eight o’clock in the morning no matter what (Even if she has not actually driven the car!).

So, why was I even in the city of Melbourne?

It was a call with an old kiwi friend who had escaped to Australia a few years ago. He’d introduced me to someone else that recommended I send myself here for a large agricultural technology conference.

It was an impressive affair, with smoke machines, drones, full catering, and twenty-metre tall electric billboards showing livestock and farms. There were lots of meetings and encounters as I told people about my company strategy and what we were doing. It was incredibly productive and I have a thousand notes to followup on.

But that is all work stuff.

The hotel-conference-hotel flow was getting tough. I wanted to get out and see this city, which I had not been back to in twelve years. By the time Thursday afternoon came around my work commitments were done, and to be honest, I was pretty burnt out.

Maybe it was the long days, but I began to feel as if I was my own twin brother passing off as myself. Did I really live in Japan? Was I really who I said I was? Was I the one who had been writing to you this whole time?

Who even is Cody? All he had were a few items of clothes and his computer. But that “life” of his seemed so far away and distant, like something I might of read about once.

I spent the afternoon just walking around and taking it all in: the Chinatown, the entourage of people around the state library park, the construction down by the Yarra River. I spoke with a few people in a cafe, one of them said she was from Nerima! (And was incredulous that I was a self-proclaimed Kamakuran.)

Generally I found myself drifting along the same general desire lines, parched for something to drink and not quite sure where I was going. There were so many new skyscrapers and people that it reminded me of Hong Kong or Shanghai, but I did not fully trust my memories of those places either.

That evening I decided to go to a language exchange event to practice my Chinese. I thought it might be like the small and cozy catchups we used to have back in Wellington where I had met some of my best friends.

But this event was a bit different. It was huge, with hundred of people. I managed to find a place to catch my breath and struck up a conversation with a guy. He had a Chinese and Australian sticker on his shirt but barely spoke any Chinese (his parents never having taught him, apparently).

He couldn’t really hold eye contact with me and kept looking around and over my shoulder, constantly waiting for a more promising conversation to come along.

I met another Australian guy, who spoke Japanese, and was hanging out with some girls and a dude from Kyoto. I was reluctant to try and speak Japanese with any of them, as I knew they really ought to be practicing. But that was probably naïve of me (That was not the reason they were here).

One of the Kyoto girls was studying law, but I was struck that perhaps to become a lawyer one needs to be acquainted with the seductive mind of debauchery first.

The Australian guy said that I seemed quite grounded. He asked about my MBTI personality type. I had no idea. Though he was sitting with two beautiful women, he seemed to be nervous and on edge.

Is it not the case that in our modern world of abundance and plenty, that a sheet of plywood had been placed over the great abyss? We don’t see death or disease anymore. All the people here were beautiful, young, and self-authored. But of course, we can never escape what is to come for us.

Someone broke a glass and everyone clapped.

I felt a bit like the old man in the room. Our Kyoto companions got up and drifted away, content with the attention we had tributed to them. Even as the rest of the bar got loud, me and him were left with a quiet corner to talk.

I found out that he was actually about the same age as me.

He shared how he had lost someone once upon a time, and how at the lowest point in his life a friend had asked to pray for him. Even though he had tried to reject and run away from that faith of his childhood, he felt something profound in the notion that there is something deeper - that redemption is possible.

Looking around. They were all just kids really. Exchange students. Punks. Part-timers working in some over-priced cafe or cleaning AirBnBs to make ends meet.

They did not know that their youth was so delicate, here for just a brief moment, and then gone. What are the words of the old song from that Kurosawa film?

Life is brief,
Fall in love, maidens,
Before the boat drifts away,
On the waves

My new friend seemed to know this. He was looking for something here, something to remind him of that delicate tapestry of youth and innocence that seems as if it can hold anything, but really is quick to fray and split after a short time.

Instead of chasing the tail of a dragon in the night, he had been put squarely with me. Even though my own life seemed far away right now, I knew there was something great waiting for me back home, something that had become me and I had become it.

The truth was that there was something waiting for him as well, there was something beautiful waiting for each of us, out there.

I left and got a bowl of noodles on Swanston street.

I prayed for him, too.