135

Walking the back route down narrow streets to Ōji Station, I pass the house with the orange tree where I once heard somebody playing guitar. I stop and listen for the sounds of any strumming or the sounds of someone thinking about strumming, but there is nothing except silence and the smell of January cold. Then, a vending machine next to me suddenly glows and whirs to life, providing me with a ghostly consolation prize in the possibility of hot beverages. A quick nod of acknowledgment to the machine for its attempt to communicate across the gulf that separates inanimate and animate matter, and I am off towards the park with the miniature fence with a touch keypad lock.

Waiting for me at the entrance to the park, just past the tangle of telephone wires, is a small convention of people with compact dogs wearing winter clothing. One of the dogs—appearing like four uneasy sticks attached to a small sweater—looks about 18% gray and beautifully matches the sky. If I picked up the dog and hurled it into the air, it would abruptly vanish, only to remind us of its presence by the snapping sound of its landing. Across the park heading east, I consider leaping over the fence as I near it, but I speculate about what I will feel once I am on the other side. I might not want to return to where I jumped from or be unable to. It seems that it would be reasonably easy to hop over, but this might be an illusion, some diabolical method of falsely inflating intruder confidence, then snaring them mid-vault. The fact of its impossible smallness only serves to heighten the unknown threat of how it operates. What this fence lacks in height, it more than makes up through fiendishly confusing psychology. I pause for a moment and consider that the rate at which my body ages and shrinks is not so fast to keep me from a potential crossing on my way home from the café. I acknowledge the holding pattern, and I am off.

First, I run over to see that the golfers are busy golfing—and they are—but I am disappointed that the skateboarders are not skateboarding. Wouldn't it be nice if I could hear the bark of their skateboard trucks across concrete curbs and pedestrian handrails in the parking lot? Nevertheless, it is empty, and even if they had only recently departed, it is now impossible to see even the faintest trace of their breath in the air. I hear the sharp claps of clubs hitting balls and the dull thuds of balls hitting nets, but no wheels intermittently crackling and gliding across the tarmac. I circle the parking lot in a holding pattern of my exhalation until an unexpected squawk from a crow atop a garbage can, followed by a quick ding-ding from the nearby Toden Arakawa Line, punctuates the late afternoon and signals that it is time for a warm coffee.

Once inside the nearby café, I am struck, as usual, by the complete lack of separation between the smoking and non-smoking sections. The curls of smoke drift above the masked customers and the waning plants in the center of the circular smoking table, forming sheets of gray cloud cover. I slowly lift my 18% gray card into the haze above our heads, and it promptly vanishes. However, when I lower my arm again, it materializes, and I make a snapping sound accompanied by a whine that catches the attention of the schoolgirl 72% napping at the table next to mine

125

The gift of moisture my clothes quietly absorbed from the Shakujii-gawa while running alongside it has evaporated without my knowledge and secretly given itself as condensation to the cold windows, effectively blocking my view of the river with the river itself. It is a cunning strategy for escape, but it does not stand a chance against the blue and white striped dishtowel preparing for battle on the kitchen counter. Unfortunately, the colors of the impending brutality will clash so terribly with the day's dominant color scheme and the crisp countertop. I will try to dissuade the towel from following through on its intentions and allow the condensation to evaporate again and move on to the next transformation, but this is a delicate matter. Perhaps a flattering comparison between the dish towel and the striated white clouds against the rich azure of the sky will diffuse the mounting tension and make clear my high esteem for the earthbound mundane.

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?

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.

84

The new array of laundry clips I recently purchased is not quite a rainbow and they do not even make a full gradient between red and green. Still, they will look buoyant and carefree against the restrained and 18% gray sky if I can bear to break up this range of color.

56

Divisions are incrementally evanescing – soon the sky and my 18% gray card will be one.

33

The telephone repairman with white helmet, indigo work clothes, and belt with clippers, wires, gadgets, and meters – who is attached to the telephone pole outside at the same level as the balcony, and is nestled within the telephone pole wires with a clear sight line from where I am now sitting – almost blends into the powder blue and lightly clouded sky. If the light changes a bit he might disappear and I would see wires moving and attaching to one another of their own volition.

31

I am still thinking about Disneyland Park in California in 2003, but also thinking about Tokyo Disneyland in Japan in 2005, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida in 2006, and getting stopped by Magic Kingdom security in 2009. I am considering visiting Tokyo Disneyland once again as the gray of winter approaches. The gray of the painted ground in Tokyo Disneyland would match the sky and my 18% gray card perfectly, much more perfectly than in all the other Disneylands and Disney Worlds. Although they are collectively "The Happiest place on earth," they are not always the most scrupulously clean places on earth, which is absolutely necessary to achieve an even 18% gray. Waste is not visible, or acceptable at Tokyo Disneyland, which creates an overwhelmingly powerful curiosity deep inside me to see what is at the heart of their garbage dumpsters.

12

Just a few more hours and the 18% photographic gray card I am holding up will blend perfectly with the sky above Takinogawa. There will be a sudden whoosh of air, a thunderclap, and I will just look like someone with their hand raised in the air as if to ask a question. People from the neighborhood will see me doing this and yell「がんばってください！」(“ganbatte kudasai!” – do your best). When this happens I will appreciate their friendly encouragement and I will certainly do my very best.