131

Heading west on the south side of the Shakujii-gawa tonight, I was vaguely annoyed by the realization that nothing in particular caught my attention. I often turned my head like Seijun Suzuki's slow tracking shot around a rice cooker to stay attentive to various objects as I ran past them. Yet, my observations had no particular focus and constantly meandered from the indecisive angle of tree branches to the indeterminate feelings associated with the time between 16:00 JST and 17:00 JST. Nevertheless, while returning east on the north side, I was practically stopped in my tracks by a quick sequence of appearances. First, a spotless, yellow, eight-prong Lego brick was resting on its side in a patch of dark soil. It seemed as if the ground had been evenly raked, then the brick placed on top with such care that it left no impression and floated slightly above the ground. This sighting was followed immediately by a young boy bounding towards me in a green down vest, his left bloody nostril plugged with tissue paper. Evidently, his nose had been packed for some time, as the tissue had drawn blood out from deep inside his skull, almost to the remaining white tip. The last triangular iceberg of tissue would no doubt soon succumb to the flow in his mobile paper chromatography experiment.

Three paces later, three identical dogs emerged in rapid succession from a bush. They were impossibly small dogs in matching and impossibly small dog sweaters, their nails nervously tapping out an erratic Morse code like a bushel of crabs dumped on the pavement. The dog in triplicate instantly made me conscious that tonight, along the Shakujii-gawa, there were no cats. Simultaneous with thinking "no cats" from the end of the thought, "Tonight along the Shakujii-gawa, there are no cats," a cat promptly appeared on my left. The cat's head momentarily raised, ceased the meticulous cleaning of its ass, swiveled, and slowly tracked my passing; all the while, its left leg was sticking up in the air at a precise ninety-degree angle to the ground upon which it was sitting.

120

If flying from Cairo to Beirut yields shimmering red and green hexagonal light refractions in photographs, and if flying from Cairo to Tokyo yields arcing red, green, and blue color flares on in-flight television, then what kind of light and what kind of shape would a flight from Beirut to Tokyo generate? Would it be red and blue, or blue and green? Would the colors present as undulating waves, crisp, rotating pentagrams, or would they take the more radical form of the Japanese Red Army being extradited from Lebanon?

110

Making images of scenic rivers, blue skies, and autumnal foliage while crossing red bridges is prohibited. Running alongside the river, or traveling up the river by boat might be permissible.

109

What would be the consequences if Japan Airlines altered their aircraft identity signage so that the tail had a second slightly offset green circle in addition to the current red circle? Against a blue daytime sky it would form a red, green, and blue additive color model, cleverly hearkening back to the initial attempts in the late 1800s to generate color photographs from three separate red, green, and blue filtered black & white images. On the other hand, it could trigger a different chain of events for an approaching aircraft where the pilot happened to be wearing 3-d glasses.

71

The Takinogawa laundry clips align with the afternoon sun so well. The three-color composite film of laundry in Higashi-Nippori from 2005 never really aligned correctly. Filming drying laundry three consecutive times with black and white film shot through a red filter, then a green filter, then a blue filter inevitably encounters the issues of wind and improper registration between the plates when superimposed to make a rudimentary color film. The irony is not lost on me that an almost impossible task utilizes the most mundane of acts as its focal point. I can understand why this experiment was a filmic failure, but I still don't understand why the successful conclusion of the laundry process here in Tokyo results in slightly metallic smelling clothes.