this is . . . true human connection

all my nieces and nephews chiming in

Over the course of two nights in Kyoto, I walked 45 miles around the city . . . mostly up and down the Kamo River near my hostel while on the phone with Leila and Alayna and Julia. I spent four days there, but I left the city and went back to Tokyo as soon as I woke up this afternoon . . . I felt too isolated there. My little tatami bunk at the hostel, while comfortable enough, was essentially a glorified coffin . . . every time I woke up inside of it, I was filled with utter terror. After nearly dying in a plane crash off the coast of Japan and ending up in a Tokyo emergency room because of an accidental overdose last week, the last thing I need is the old “waking up in a coffin” sensation. Don’t get me wrong: this hostel was clean and modern and well-run, but it was a lonely place. I hardly ever saw anyone in the bathrooms or halls or common rooms, though I did sometimes hear them, and this almost made it worse. I felt the presence of others but was alone, which left me with a haunted feeling. It amplified my loneliness. I did not like it. So I left.

And so at four in the afternoon, as the winter sun was sinking behind the three mountains which encircle Kyoto, I walked to the main train station downtown and bought a one-way shinkansen ticket for Tokyo. A nice dude at the JR counter got me an aisle seat near the front and everything. Onboard I sat down next to a Yaukuza-looking dude and within seconds we took off headed east and rocketed through the snowy Japanese countryside, which by then was bathed in an eerie blue evening light. We stopped in Nagoya and Shin-Yokohama and finally Shinagawa Station in Tokyo. From there I took the Keikyu line eleven stops to Ueno. Upon weary legs I ascended the stairs of Kuramae Station and entered nearby FamilyMart to load up on mineral water and green tea and rice balls and hot-spring-boiled hardboiled eggs. Before I left for Kyoto, I had been going to this particular FamilyMart every morning and every evening for two weeks straight . . . it felt good to return to it. The old guy at the register spoke perfect English and I told him so. Thirty seconds later I was once again SWADDLED in the WARMTH of my old hostel. The cafe was dimly lit and people were eating dinner. The guy behind the counter handed me a clean towel and said: “Welcome back, Ryan.”

Here are some pictures I took in Kyoto during my long walks:

It is 4:22 am here in Tokyo, which means it is my 38th birthday. Good-night! ☆彡

“It is as if one hemisphere of your brain is perceiving the world as reflected in a mirror. Through a mirror. See? So left becomes right, and all that that implies. And we don’t know yet what that does imply, to see the world reversed like that. Topologically speaking, a left-hand glove is a right-hand glove pulled through infinity.”

“Through a mirror,” Fred said. A darkened mirror, he thought; a darkened scanner. And St. Paul meant, by a mirror, not a glass mirror—they didn’t have those then—but a reflection of himself when he looked at the polished bottom of a metal pan. Luckman, in his theological readings, had told him that. Not through a telescope or a lens system, which does not reverse, not through anything but seeing his own face reflected back up at him, reversed—pulled through infinity. Like they’re telling me. It is not through glass but as reflected back by a glass. And that reflection that returns to you; it is you, it is your face, but it isn’t. And they didn’t have cameras in those old days, and so that’s the only way a person saw himself: backward.

I have seen myself backward.

. . . “Then shall it come to pass the saying that is written,” a voice said. “Death is swallowed up. In victory.” Perhaps only Fred heard it. “Because,” the voice said, “as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not into the body but up—in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now: we shall not all sleep in death.”

The mystery, he thought, the explanation, he means. Of a secret. A sacred secret. We shall not die.

The reflections shall leave.

And it will happen fast.

We shall all be changed, and by that he means reversed back, suddenly. In the twinkling of an eye!

Because, he thought glumly as he watched the police psychologists writing their conclusions and signing them, we are fucking backward right now, I guess, every one of us; everyone and every damn thing, and distance, and even time. But how long, he thought, when a print is being made, a contact print, when the photographer discovers he’s got the negative reversed, how long does it take to flip it? To reverse it again so it’s like it’s supposed to be?

A fraction of a second.

I understand, he thought, what the passage in the Bible means, Through a glass darkly. But my percept system is as fucked up as ever. Like they say. I understand but am helpless to help myself.

Maybe, he thought, since I see both ways at once, correctly and reversed, I’m the first person in human history to have it flipped and not-flipped simultaneously, and so get a glimpse of what it’ll be when it’s right. Although I’ve got the other as well, the regular. And which is which?

Which is reversed and which is not?

When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?

Do you feel sympathy for yourself? For that lonely spot inside of you? The one that she mirrors with her own loneliness? You feel seen and mirrored in your deepest loneliness. This is very powerful . . . when you saw her and felt that feeling, what you were really seeing was yourself.

fujisan and the kamo river in kyoto. i had not seen either in sixteen years

There! I did it!! Happy birthday!!!

“the fool and death”