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

132

Up in the sky on the fifty-second floor, the ideal pear tart patiently waiting before me gradually transforms into the dark shape of Yoyogi Park out the window to my left. What to do? Open spaces are precious in Japan, particularly here in Shinjuku. The pristine and glassy surface of the pear radiates a sense of new beginnings and opulence. It seems to be glowing. Finally, a deep silence begins to gather around the table while the lights dim, leaving a solitary point of illumination on the pear.

Along with the intensifying and narrowing of the lighting scheme is a rapid and unforeseen flattening of the space in front of me. The gentle arc of the pear is undergoing a visual compacting that will leave the apex of the fruit at the same level as the black plate. The transformation underway will leave nothing more than a two-dimensional nature morte. Sensing this shift and its implications, I eat the tart in one flawless maneuver and lick the plate spotlessly clean with a long tongue drag. The staff and chefs stand nearby looking on, happy—joyful even—for my appreciation. The momentary transplanted voracious imaginary real estate developer fantasy is followed by mellow fruit sweetness, perfect succulence, and echoes of buttery pastry

.

113

The entire Akihabara Station platform smells of butter. Is there a “Beard Papa’s” cream puff store nearby venting baking aromas into the station at a high velocity? Suddenly I am pulled from my olfactory reverie – or is it horror – when I see a man accidentally drop his wallet. I call out to him to inform him of the situation and he is both startled and thankful. I could have a delicate sandwich with the crust cut off to celebrate the encounter and successful maintenance of his financial situation, but I go for a louder culinary statement, order curry rice and inexplicably receive a plate of fatty meat. Recently in the town of Onomichi I found another wallet and brought it into a nearby store. The owner was also startled and thankful (who knows if it was even his wallet). I could have had a delicious bowl of piping hot Onomichi noodles to celebrate the encounter, but yet again I went for a bolder statement and in a nearby alley I had an impromptu staring contest with a medium sized, yellowish brown cat. Why does the mascot for “Beard Papa” look like the author Ernest Hemmingway, or the Gorton's Fisherman from packages of frozen fish when he is from Osaka? Is there a relationship between weathered old men, beards, the sea, fishing, luscious cream puffs, and the inadvertent jettisoning of personal wealth?

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.

62

Heading west along the Shakujii gawa into the setting sun, suddenly the smell of flour, water, salt, oil and boric acid, or otherwise known as Play Doh.

20

Please, come in to this one cubic yard dumpster, as today's runny, drippy garbage is tomorrow's desiccated and priceless archaeological find. From my current perspective in immaculately clean 2-32-10 Takinogawa, Kita-ku, Brooklyn strikes me as a place that is sending out a confused message, although I do admit that I have a love for garbage dumpsters. Actually, I have been inside of a three cubic yard dumpster full of trash and it was much more spacious than I thought it would be. Also, the smell was not nearly as repulsive as I expected and I wasn't even wearing a face mask. Unfortunately, I didn't find what I had accidentally thrown away into the dumpster only hours earlier. This lead me to think that possibly there was a tunnel connecting the dumpster to an alternate world of puppet sanitation workers and puppet archaeologists working side by side to decide what will be considered valuable in the future. What a lovely, precise broadcast that would be.