There is a sushi shop in Ootsuka, North Tokyo, where I did a few laps of heavy drinking in the pre-AA days. Its one of those places where most of the customers order alcoholic beverages before midday: beer, sake, Shochu, or Soju. No one orders food there, only Jinro, gali (pickled giner), and “just one more for the road”. Even the sushi chef, Taisho*, has had a few by 1pm.
Ootsuka, a rough, working class neighbourhood, is close to my old, old, old, flat I lived in nearly 6 years ago. I had not visited this area for ages until recently. I was there doing some spot “language consulting” work which involves me introducing potential English language students to teachers who can teach in their neighbourhood. The agency sets the time and place, and I am just there to explain the payment system. Nothing to it, but it takes one hour, on mostly weeknights after 8pm, or 9pm.
On Thursday last week I found myself standing outside the Ootsuka Sushi “Bar” at 9:45pm. Its peak drinking time for most of the punters. I know, for I was a long standing regular there at the turn of the last century. A year or two ago, had I found myself standing in the same place my mind would have jumped straight to the thought of a nice Go of Hakkaisan sake, but that day my intensions were clear: have some dinner, and head off home to my nice, middle class suburb.
As soon as I walk in the Taisho asks me what I'd like to eat. I order tea and begin to shout out my order one by one Toro (fatty tuna), Uni, Engawa, Hamachi, etc. I ordered nine items all together just to test if he could remember it all.
“Hai-yo” (sure), he exclaimed, his hands moving up and down the display case picking out the various fish in my order. Some of the other punters, already on their third or fourth drink, started to laugh. “Taisho, how many orders can you remember all at once?”
“I can remember about 11, or 12.”
“Taisho, how about how many drinks you've had today?”
Taisho, never missing a beat with his hands moving smoothly through his rhythm of putting together my raw fish dinner, said, “I remember only important things, and how many I've had is irrelevant. Oops, it's nearly 10pm; I better catch up to you guys! Hey, I'll have some cold sake”.
A minute later he has a glass of clear, slightly thick liquid, and is almost finished with my small order of nine.
Amazing. It truly amazes me how some people are functional alcoholics. I know one when I see one, for I used to be one of them. The dude remembers 11 items at once – must be rote memory – but can't remember how many he's had that day. No wonder I used to enjoy losing track of time, sipping my next one for the road, and eating nothing but pickled ginger and a few slices of sashimi in a grubby little neighbourhood. It's so easy to leave the outside world and to sit down on a stool opposite the tipsy Taisho ordering food after drink after food.
You leave your wet your wet umbrella and the day's trouble outside the sushi bar in Ootsuka; and you never have to worry about remembering what you ordered, so long as it's only 12 items or less. (Hell, no one there would order that much food. Drinks, perhaps, but never food!)
After finishing the last piece of salmon sushi in my mouth I stood up asking for the bill, paid, and bid the happy punters and the Taisho goodbye leaving them with their next one for the road. It was a nice little trip down memory lane, but on reflection it's easier to see that some things are best left where they are: in the past.
I slid the wooden door behind me, smiled to myself and left Ootsuka, booze, and Taisho too – my memory lane – to take a train back to my new house in the middle of a squeaky clean, family oriented, quiet neighbourhood in Southwest Tokyo.
*Taisho has the same meaning as “Governor” or “Gov” as loosely used by people from the southern parts of Britain.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Lost In Thought
Have I ever talked about “Blind Cycling”? Probably not.
I am frequently lost in thought; I often miss the station I’m supposed to get off; I take the express train instead of the local one, get on the train going the wrong direction, and the list goes on.
I’m not only absent minded about where I am going, but also what I wear. Many a times have I left the house in my slippers, worn odd socks, worn my skirt back to front, because while my body exists in the physical world and functions to accomplish daily tasks, my mind has already removed itself to enter the realm of my vast imagination. (A bit Alice-like I suppose). I am a classic introspective introvert, a group often linked to the “absent minded professor”.
This morning, for example, I was on my way to my brother’s office lost in thought and having a “conversation” with him in my head. I often rehearse in my mind what I am going to say, and what I anticipate him to say, etc., when I noticed that something was missing at the top of the stairs at the station. Not only was I at the wrong end of the platform from my usual transfer, I was at the wrong station. Somehow my body just drifted off the train, my legs moved independently from the frontal lobe activities, and I was standing at the wrong place, at the wrong time as if unbeknownst to me I had been transported by aliens from one dimension to another.
My eccentricities go even further than this: it was raining this afternoon when I got to Dotour, a cheaper Japanese version of Starbucks, where I usually pick up my “coffee flavoured cake” in a semi-recycled cup. The polite Japanese placed a grey, plastic bucket just on the inside of the door – a perfect place to put my wet umbrella. Wrong…. On my way out of the shop I noticed for the first time that the umbrella stand was on the other side of the vessel that contained my umbrella. What the hell did I put my brolly in then? It turned out that my precious umbrella was sitting in a rubbish bin along with someone’s old receipt and a few snotty tissues.
Typical….
It is at moments like these when I have to put the breaks on my untamed mind. I know that by living in my head I am far from living in the moment: the here and now. The place where real people live: the place where real people are reading the morning papers; the place where real people are twitching their nose ready to sneeze; the place where real mothers struggle up the station stairs with one small child in one hand, and a bag of shopping in the other; the place where real homeless people rummage through the rubbish bins looking for half left over sandwiches; the real place where real things – good and bad – happen. This place is the real source of my inspiration, my excitement, my happiness, my pain, my sorrow, and my snotty, runny nose on cold mornings.
Not my ruddy head.
Going back to blind cycling: what the hell is that? People who are visually impaired have really sharp senses, because they are missing one of the most relied upon sensory organ by humans to give them information about the outside world: sight. As a way for me to come back into the real world (apart from meditating), and to heighten my sense of being in the “here and now” I take my bicycle down a stretch of familiar side street and cycle with my eyes closed: Blind Cycling”.
Blind cycling not only tests your faith and ability to remember the road EXACTLY the way it is, but also it makes you very aware of all the small changes going on around you. The slight bump on the road, perhaps caused by an unexpected pebble, a pedestrian turning into the street, your exact position on the street based on the changes in the air speed as you pass the space between the side garden of one house to the edge of the garage door on the next. Sound, smell, and balance working together with the picture you have captured in your head.
You should try it once; it’s quite scary, but liberating.
Trusting one’s ability to live fully in the here and now is hard for someone who is naturally inclined to live in a world of abstract connections , but I think it’s all worth it, for I would never be able to gather the pieces of the puzzle to make up the painting in my head.
It’s blind cycling on days like this that brings me back to where I belong: here and now.
I am frequently lost in thought; I often miss the station I’m supposed to get off; I take the express train instead of the local one, get on the train going the wrong direction, and the list goes on.
I’m not only absent minded about where I am going, but also what I wear. Many a times have I left the house in my slippers, worn odd socks, worn my skirt back to front, because while my body exists in the physical world and functions to accomplish daily tasks, my mind has already removed itself to enter the realm of my vast imagination. (A bit Alice-like I suppose). I am a classic introspective introvert, a group often linked to the “absent minded professor”.
This morning, for example, I was on my way to my brother’s office lost in thought and having a “conversation” with him in my head. I often rehearse in my mind what I am going to say, and what I anticipate him to say, etc., when I noticed that something was missing at the top of the stairs at the station. Not only was I at the wrong end of the platform from my usual transfer, I was at the wrong station. Somehow my body just drifted off the train, my legs moved independently from the frontal lobe activities, and I was standing at the wrong place, at the wrong time as if unbeknownst to me I had been transported by aliens from one dimension to another.
My eccentricities go even further than this: it was raining this afternoon when I got to Dotour, a cheaper Japanese version of Starbucks, where I usually pick up my “coffee flavoured cake” in a semi-recycled cup. The polite Japanese placed a grey, plastic bucket just on the inside of the door – a perfect place to put my wet umbrella. Wrong…. On my way out of the shop I noticed for the first time that the umbrella stand was on the other side of the vessel that contained my umbrella. What the hell did I put my brolly in then? It turned out that my precious umbrella was sitting in a rubbish bin along with someone’s old receipt and a few snotty tissues.
Typical….
It is at moments like these when I have to put the breaks on my untamed mind. I know that by living in my head I am far from living in the moment: the here and now. The place where real people live: the place where real people are reading the morning papers; the place where real people are twitching their nose ready to sneeze; the place where real mothers struggle up the station stairs with one small child in one hand, and a bag of shopping in the other; the place where real homeless people rummage through the rubbish bins looking for half left over sandwiches; the real place where real things – good and bad – happen. This place is the real source of my inspiration, my excitement, my happiness, my pain, my sorrow, and my snotty, runny nose on cold mornings.
Not my ruddy head.
Going back to blind cycling: what the hell is that? People who are visually impaired have really sharp senses, because they are missing one of the most relied upon sensory organ by humans to give them information about the outside world: sight. As a way for me to come back into the real world (apart from meditating), and to heighten my sense of being in the “here and now” I take my bicycle down a stretch of familiar side street and cycle with my eyes closed: Blind Cycling”.
Blind cycling not only tests your faith and ability to remember the road EXACTLY the way it is, but also it makes you very aware of all the small changes going on around you. The slight bump on the road, perhaps caused by an unexpected pebble, a pedestrian turning into the street, your exact position on the street based on the changes in the air speed as you pass the space between the side garden of one house to the edge of the garage door on the next. Sound, smell, and balance working together with the picture you have captured in your head.
You should try it once; it’s quite scary, but liberating.
Trusting one’s ability to live fully in the here and now is hard for someone who is naturally inclined to live in a world of abstract connections , but I think it’s all worth it, for I would never be able to gather the pieces of the puzzle to make up the painting in my head.
It’s blind cycling on days like this that brings me back to where I belong: here and now.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
I'm Back
And I am completely sober; haven't had a drink in over a year. Not a single drop, which is not bad for an alcoholic, right?
Looking back over the past year life has been more than a perfect excuse for me to return on the piss and trip my sorry arse away, but as life goes (just as it does for others)I have to live one day at a time: a good friend commited suicide leaving me a note; insanity to be in a relationship with a colleague for the reason that I was "lonely"; getting Shingles twice resulting in residual neuralgia; return of asthma attacks which ended in me passing out at our office lobby; excessive weight-loss (being 41kg at 162cm made me look like a crack whore!); missed days at work; my brother's arrest for possession of "illegal substances -- he was locked up for over a month; dating an ex-coke head (which ended in me running away from the relationship -- again); quitting my 6figure a year job to follow my heart and become certified as a professional SCUBA diver in Flores, Indonesia; the death of my unborn nephew, followed shortly by my brother's girlfriend committing suicide; tax man freezing my bank account for unpaid back taxes from 3 years ago when I was living in Hong Kong; working as a freelance translator, English teacher, interpretor, researcher, and copy editor -- basically anything to put food in the Kitty bowl every night!
SHIT! Sounds like hell, huh? But I had good fun last year, because I did all of this with no booze, prozac, pot, benzo's, white drugs, binging/vomiting, or anorexia. Just green tea and coffee. Isn't that amazing? Green tea and Coffee.
I have no excuse now not to continue myy writing. I stilll see shit going on around me, but I also see a lot more happiness in the world. I started these ramblings for a reason. And so long as the reason still remains, I might as well keep it up.
On a small note: one of my DWFs, A, is getting married next year. All three of us (DWFs) had dinner at the end of last year to celebrate the good news. A asked me why I stopped writing for a while; his take on it was that I am no longer angry. I disagree. Self righteous anger has been a huge part of my adulthood (and maybe slightly before) but the continuous motion of my pen comes from a different, unknown source. It's not pain, anger, or bitterness; it is something much simpler. Just like the Tao, it just is. Perhaps that is why all my emotions ended up on here, exposed like a dissected frog. It's OK; it's not the end of the world. I don't know who is reading this post at the moment, and neither do you know me. But at this moment, we both "are".
We are.
Looking back over the past year life has been more than a perfect excuse for me to return on the piss and trip my sorry arse away, but as life goes (just as it does for others)I have to live one day at a time: a good friend commited suicide leaving me a note; insanity to be in a relationship with a colleague for the reason that I was "lonely"; getting Shingles twice resulting in residual neuralgia; return of asthma attacks which ended in me passing out at our office lobby; excessive weight-loss (being 41kg at 162cm made me look like a crack whore!); missed days at work; my brother's arrest for possession of "illegal substances -- he was locked up for over a month; dating an ex-coke head (which ended in me running away from the relationship -- again); quitting my 6figure a year job to follow my heart and become certified as a professional SCUBA diver in Flores, Indonesia; the death of my unborn nephew, followed shortly by my brother's girlfriend committing suicide; tax man freezing my bank account for unpaid back taxes from 3 years ago when I was living in Hong Kong; working as a freelance translator, English teacher, interpretor, researcher, and copy editor -- basically anything to put food in the Kitty bowl every night!
SHIT! Sounds like hell, huh? But I had good fun last year, because I did all of this with no booze, prozac, pot, benzo's, white drugs, binging/vomiting, or anorexia. Just green tea and coffee. Isn't that amazing? Green tea and Coffee.
I have no excuse now not to continue myy writing. I stilll see shit going on around me, but I also see a lot more happiness in the world. I started these ramblings for a reason. And so long as the reason still remains, I might as well keep it up.
On a small note: one of my DWFs, A, is getting married next year. All three of us (DWFs) had dinner at the end of last year to celebrate the good news. A asked me why I stopped writing for a while; his take on it was that I am no longer angry. I disagree. Self righteous anger has been a huge part of my adulthood (and maybe slightly before) but the continuous motion of my pen comes from a different, unknown source. It's not pain, anger, or bitterness; it is something much simpler. Just like the Tao, it just is. Perhaps that is why all my emotions ended up on here, exposed like a dissected frog. It's OK; it's not the end of the world. I don't know who is reading this post at the moment, and neither do you know me. But at this moment, we both "are".
We are.
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