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Parable of the Belle

10/21/2020

Two friends, a straight man and a bisexual one, sit along an esplanade, watching people go by and drinking a couple of beers, They are there for a while, and are just about ready to move on to something else when the most beautiful woman that either has seen walks by. Neither man is a boor, and both try to avoid ogling her, but nevertheless their eyes are drawn to her, where they linger longer than either would ordinarily consider polite. After she is out of eyesight and earshot, the bisexual man lets out a low whistle and says to his friend, "Wow, what a woman! I feel bad for you, not being able to appreciate her beauty as well as I can!"

Confused but unbothered, his friend laughs and replies, "I think you've got it backwards. If anything, I can appreciate her beauty even more than you can. Whyever would you think otherwise?"

"Well," says the first man, "Every woman, no matter how feminine, has some masculine traits - we all inherit genes from both our mother and our father. I'd imagine that as a straight man, you only appreciate those traits considered feminine, whereas I can admire the whole person. It's a shame, really: you find half as many people as I do attractive, and even of that half, you're able to appreciate their beauty less fully."

The straight man chuckles, "I'm not sure if we were looking at the same woman, if you saw any hint of masculinity in her, but let's put that aside for now. It's precisely because of my inability to appreciate masculinity that I'm better able to appreciate femininity. Can someone truly appreciate summer without winter? Peace without war? Success without adversity? You see beauty everywhere, and so it is less significant to you, less rare. For you, that woman may have been water on a hot day, but for me, she was an oasis in the desert."

The two men went on like this for a while, gamely arguing their cases, but soon each began to suspect that the other was right. At the end of the night, when they went home and laid in bed, each thought about the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, and wondered if they had somehow missed out on something.

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Flight

11/17/2014

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Original post was written on June 11, 2013.

As Arthur Sinclair looked out over the edge of a cliff, down at the turbid water below, he began to realize that perhaps he might be a coward. This might strike you as a strange thing to come in the form of an epiphany; that perhaps being a coward is something that a person should already know about himself, but this wasn't the case for Arthur. You see, it wasn't that Arthur couldn't face perilous situations when he needed to - he had had to deal with a variety of unexpected emergencies in the past and had always reacted quickly and efficiently, perhaps even admirably - it was that he would never choose to take any avoidable risks.

And until that point when Arthur Sinclair, a mild-mannered actuarial scientist, stood on top of a cliff and looked down at his girlfriend's smiling face, surprised by how weak his legs felt, he did not realize the extent to which he was unwilling to take those unnecessary risks.

Fiona had taken him to the cliff-diving spot as a surprise. They had been dating for less than a month, and she was one of the most free-spirited people that Arthur had ever met. A lot of people pretend to be free-spirited, but few actually are, and Fiona actually was. That's one of the things that he liked most about her. She was interesting, and fun, and lively. She was the epitome of vivacity. It wasn't until he had met Fiona that Arthur realized how boring he was, with his desk job and his shirts and his ties and his Camry. Fiona was a vocalist for a rock band. They called themselves Broken Glass and they weren't big, but they booked a lot of gigs and had a decent following. Arthur knew that Fiona knew that it wasn't likely that she'd be able to do that for the rest of her life, but she didn't seem worried about it at all. She never seemed worried. She was either confident or she just thought that she would worry about later later and enjoy now now. Sometimes, Arthur wondered what she found interesting about him. Maybe there aren't very many nice, sane guys that she gets to meet in her world, and he was just the one lucky enough to have the chance to meet her.

Maybe it was because Arthur felt like he needed to prove himself, or maybe it was because just being around Fiona made him more adventurous, but when she arrived at his door in her beat up Volkswagen and told him she wanted to surprise him, he didn't protest. When they arrived at a cliff overlooking the ocean, they got out of the van and looked out, and Fiona said, "Isn't it beautiful?" and he nodded in agreement. Fiona went closer to the cliff's edge than Arthur did, but she came back towards him after looking out at the water for a little while, and started to take off her clothing. Arthur stood transfixed, and when she was down to her underwear, she came over to him and kissed him on the cheek and mischievously smiled and said, "Follow me."

As she walked slowly away, towards the cliff, Arthur was too shocked and entranced to say anything. They hadn't slept together yet - they had only been on a few dates - and this was the most he had seen of her. If Arthur was being perfectly honest with himself, he'd admit that Fiona's figure was one of the other things that he liked most about her. She had wide hips, the kind that would look odd on most girls, but they worked on her, in a strangely enticing way, a kind of way that drew Arthur's eyes easily when she turned around in her plain black panties and walked away. And so, instead of protesting, Arthur stood hypnotized as Fiona walked away, then ran away, then jumped away. He still stood there for a second, dazed, unable to comprehend what he had just seen, until he came to his senses and ran to the cliff's edge and looked down. And there was Fiona, looking back up at him and smiling.

"Follow me," she had said, and Arthur was only just now piecing together what her words had meant, as images of her mesmerizing flight played over and over again in his mind. She wanted him to follow her. She... wanted him... to follow her. Arthur was still looking down, and was starting to get dizzy. It was only perhaps seventy feet, which might not seem like much, but it was enough to weaken his knees. The water didn't have any rocks in it, but the cliff jutted out a little bit, and if Arthur somehow botched the takeoff, somehow jumped too soon or didn't jump far enough, there was a very real risk that he could injure himself on the jagged cliff side. The ground at his feet wasn't soft. It looked like it could crumble at any moment. Arthur gulped. A gust of wind blew from behind him, and he heard the long grass swishing behind him, but there wasn't any grass where he was. No grass to stabilize the ground with its roots. Maybe there was grass before, but the ground below it crumbled, sending it into the waters below.

He could signal to Fiona. Let her know that he didn't want to make the jump and that she'd have to swim to shore by herself. It would be humiliating, and it might even make her angry or disappointed enough to break up with him, but did he really have a future with this girl? This was stupid. He could die. Impressing some girl that he'd barely been dating for three weeks or so was hardly worth risking death, was it?

Was it?

Fiona made him feel alive. She was exciting, and daring, and free, and that's what he liked about her. He liked those things about her because deep down, that was what he wished he could be like. He liked being with her because he wanted to be the kind of person that could be with her.

Arthur thought about all of the things he had never done. He had always liked motorcycles, but had never bought one because it would be too impractical and too unsafe. When he would go to amusement parks with his friends, he'd go on the roller coasters with them, but would stay back and watch as they went on the riskier-looking human slingshot ride. He once went to a zoo and watched as other visitors paid to pet and have their pictures taken with a cheetah.

He thought about how Fiona made him feel, and he thought about the risk of giving that up. Fiona made Arthur happier than he had felt in a long time. Fiona made Arthur feel daring. Fiona made Arthur feel like he was the kind of man who could jump off of a cliff without a second thought. He clearly wasn't that kind of man after all.

But he could be, maybe. Maybe. Arthur wasn't ready to give up just yet. He took one last look at Fiona, and walked back to where her clothes lay strewn in the grass next to the dirt road that they had come in on. He began to take off his clothes, folding them neatly, partly because that was more practical, and partly because it took more time. His heart was beating quickly, too quickly, and his breaths became shallow. He tried to calm himself as he bent over, wearing only his boxers, placing his folded pants on the ground next to his folded shirt and his shoes and his socks and his belt. He stood up and looked out at the cliff and the wide expanse of water behind it, with its curved horizon, the blue of the water darker than that of the cloudless sky. He thought one last time about Fiona and her confident, playful smile and the way she said "Follow me," and her beautiful, beautiful ass. He replayed it in his mind and watched Fiona walk, and run, and jump, and he knew that if he did not follow her now, he never would.

Arthur couldn't walk, as Fiona had - he had to run. He didn't remember making the decision, he just knew that he had to run, and then he was running. The cliff's edge was coming up quickly, too quickly, he wasn't ready for this, and he suddenly became aware of what had previously been instinctive, automatic running. He was getting closer to the edge that might be death, it was getting closer and his legs were jelly, and the ground was too dry, there wasn't any grass, and Arthur was sure that his legs would give out or the ground would crumble away beneath him, but he was still moving, and before he knew it he was at the edge and there was nothing he could do except jump with all of his might and try to lift his weak, dead legs and that's what he did, he jumped using the last of his strength, the last of his willpower spent in one final moment.

And he flew. Time slowed, and he was vaguely aware of his legs still running. He felt the wind in his hair. It was done. He was floating, in slow motion, past the cliff's edge, past whatever danger lied below, and into the emptiness beyond. And then, for one glorious moment, time stopped. Arthur Sinclair was frozen in flight, relieved and happy and alive, and the world turned beneath his feet.

Then gravity finally kicked in, and Arthur fell, his head so empty from shock and relief that he barely noticed when his legs went a little bit farther than his body. He fell and he fell, and when he finally hit the water, there was a loud CRACK as the back of his upper body slapped the water.

Fiona swan to him as fast as she could as his body floated slowly upwards and his head poked out of the water. When Arthur opened his eyes, Fiona was the most concerned he had ever seen her, saying over and over, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Please be okay." Arthur looked up at her and dimly smiled, and said:

"I think I want to buy a motorcycle."

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Sunup

11/17/2014

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This post was originally written on February 15, 2013.

Standing on the rooftop of his Brooklyn apartment building, Trevor felt the stars. He couldn't see them, but now more than ever, he felt their presence. Staring out at the city, he could barely see the downtown skyline over the other apartment buildings, but it was there, bright like the stars above, so bright that it outshone even them. The streets below weren't moving much, but a laundry line strung from the balcony of one building to the chimney of another reminded him that the city was full of people, all with their own stories and their own lives. He suddenly felt very small, but not frighteningly so. He felt strangely at peace, as he stood there, and felt the world turning around him as he appreciated the grandeur of the universe.

Trevor stood transfixed on that rooftop for so long that he had forgotten why he'd come, and hours passed by the time he even considered going back inside. It seemed a waste to return to his room on such a night. What would he do, play a video game? Jack off? Check Facebook? It all seemed so mundane. The world was constantly changing, but here he was, doing the same thing every night, only to wake up to go to work the next day, day in and day out. It was like he was an island in a sea of motion, unmoving as everything around him swirled and changed.

It was while he stood there, unwilling to return to his life, when one area of the sky seemed to call to him more than the others. It was a place with no particular significance, almost but not quite opposite the waxing moon. Why he felt drawn to it, he couldn't say, but it gave him an idea of how to spend the evening. He would drive off in that direction, completely letting his whims and fancy dictate where he'd go next. He'd be a leaf on the wind.

Before he knew it, he was walking downstairs, stopping in his room to pick up his jacket and keys. His room felt like another world, one that he was familiar with but had left behind, like the memories of his childhood home. As he walked through it to reach his keys, he felt like a ghost passing through the earthly realm, temporarily out of place, unnatural. Then it was over, and he was in his car, streetlights passing by overhead as it carried him off.

He barely noticed merging onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from the Prospect Expressway; the words on the street signs meant nothing to him, and he took exits solely based on how much they appealed to him. Before he knew it, he was passing through a tunnel, the orange lights rapidly flitting over him, creating an otherworldly air. When he passed over a huge bridge, which he would have recognized as the George Washington Bridge if he had been paying attention to such things, he truly felt like the city was behind him. The farther that he was carried from the city, the less city-like his surroundings became. The traffic became less congested, the buildings farther apart, and he eventually found himself traveling down a nearly empty highway.

Finally away from the lights and the sounds, he felt like he had when he was standing atop his apartment building. He was at peace, in an almost meditative state, and the quiet thrum of his wheels on the asphalt and the occasional soft sound of passing cars soothed him. He felt like he had become part of something bigger. He had left the island that he'd been stuck on, braving the dangerous waters of uncertainty on a raft of his own making. He had a sail, but could not dictate which way the wind blew, and went wherever it took him. The farther he was blown away, the less likely he was to return.

When his ride came to an end, Trevor found himself in a parked car in a small, gravelly parking lot in the middle of a wooded area. He got out of his car and looked up at the stars. He could see them now, and there were more than he had ever seen before. He found the star that he had felt on his Brooklyn rooftop, and saw that it was shining brightly. The moon had moved, and was closer to his star, but even the close light of the moon couldn't drown out his star's brightness. He walked toward it, where a path led him into the woods, past a sign that he did not read that said "Sundown Wild Forest". When the path changed course, he followed his star through the brush, blindly stepping over roots in the dark.

Eventually, Trevor came upon a tree. It wasn't a particularly significant tree; it wasn't the largest and it wasn't the most beautiful, and it didn't stand alone in the middle of a clearing. It was just an ordinary tree, but Trevor knew that it was his tree. This was what the star had led him towards. The moonlight shone through the dark leaves, and dappled the trunk. Trevor approached the tree slowly, as if in a trance, fixated on one spot of light on the tree's trunk. Step by step he made his way closer, and when he was finally close enough to the tree to touch it, his body didn't block the spot of light that had transfixed him. He stepped even closer, and lifted his hand to the spot. He felt the roughness of the bark on his fingertips, and lightly traced its odd patterns.

For a long time, he stood there, his fingertips lightly resting on that one spot, feeling at one with the world. The tree and its rough, flaky bark occupied all of his thought, and it was only when the sun rose that he realized something had changed in the world around him. It was warm, even though it had been a chilly autumn night, and the sky was blue, even though it was still dawn. He looked around, and everything had changed, except for the tree. He spun around, gaping at his surroundings, and he immediately heard the surprised rustling of a small animal running away. He didn't catch a good glimpse of it, but it was probably a rodent, though it was maroon and didn't look like anything that he had seen before. The animals were strange and the trees were strange and the whole forest was strange, except for his tree. His tree was the only thing left from his old world that he could hold on to, the only thing that made sense in this sea of unfamiliarity.

Trevor walked away, not sure if he would ever be able to find his tree again.

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Desiderative Magnetism

11/17/2014

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This post was originally written on January 13, 2013.

They asked me to write what I feel.

A lot of people think that human beings tend to not want what they have. They assume that people are perpetually dissatisfied with the status quo. Some people even believe that this is the very reason for human progress; that discontent breeds innovation, and that if people weren't always dissatisfied with the way things are, they would never want to change anything, and there would be no new inventions to improve the lives of others. The idea is that once a person has something, he’ll no longer want it.

That's not the way the world is.

I don't mean to say that people are content with their lives. No, that isn't what I mean at all. In fact, the idea that humans are perpetually dissatisfied is pretty on-the-mark, as a general thing. The problem that I have with the idea is that almost everybody who thinks this assumes that human beings don't want things because they have them. That's the part that I disagree with. You see, it's not that people don't want things because they have them – it’s because they don't want things that they're able to get them. It's not that people want what they can't have; it's that they can't have it because they want it.

How many times have you seen someone demand respect? Someone who wants people to respect him so much that he rants and raves about how he doesn't get the respect he deserves, and as he rages on, loses even more of the very respect that he's demanding. Those people are a dime a dozen. They spend their whole lives wanting to be respected, and work their way into a position that normally warrants respect, only to find that it was never about their status – it was about them. They still don't have the respect that they worked so hard for, because they still care about it too much.

How many lovesick fools have you met? Ones so infatuated with someone that they don't pay any attention to anyone else. How many times have you seen someone pine over the one that got away, or the one that they could never have, convinced that that person was the only one? How many times did they get what they wanted? The way I look at it, there are three outcomes to a situation like that: they fail, they succeed, or they succeed only to find that their object of desire could never live up to their expectations. Let's take a look at all three instances.

First, the failure. When someone knows his love is unrequited, and it becomes obvious that he has no chance, what does he do? He tries to move on. No matter how hard he tries, though, he just can't seem to break free of whatever spell has been cast over him. He'll struggle for a while; maybe try to forget his true desire by dating someone else. It's easy to get someone else, when you don't want her. Eventually, though, anyone in a situation like that will discover that no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much he wants to stop caring about her, he never can. And he gives up. He resigns himself to being stuck loving someone who doesn't love him back. He sees a poignancy in it; thinks he's being romantic. He starts to see the beauty in his tragedy, and embraces it. Then, just as he starts to see the twisted appeal of his situation, and just as he stops wanting to escape his unrequited love, he finally starts to let go.

Now let's look at the person who succeeds only to find that their newly found love couldn't live up to his expectations. That one's pretty simple, really. The lovesick person idealizes his object of desire, and when he finally gets her, she doesn't seem quite as perfect as she had before. She was never what he really wanted – he wanted the perfect love. Now that he has her, not only is he in a relationship with someone who he doesn't truly love, but he also no longer has that belief that he used to cling to – that his woman was ideal. He'd give anything to have that back, but he never will. The broken mirror that was his naiveté can't be pieced back together.

And what about the one who succeeds? He who pursues his love diligently and persistently, and is finally rewarded for his efforts, and somehow, against all odds, the object of his desire does live up to his expectations. Well, let's take a look at what he wanted. He wanted her to love him. After the first time she spurned him, he kept trying and trying, convinced that he would be able to win her over – that if she gave him a chance to show her how much he loved her, she would return his affection. So what happens when she finally says yes? When he finally gets his chance, was it really what he wanted? What he wanted was for her to say yes the first time. Why did she refuse him so many times, if she didn't find anything wrong with him? Whatever it was that had kept her from accepting him the first time was still there. That knowledge eats at him, and every time she tells him that she loves him, the doubt lingers in the back of his mind, and he can never truly enjoy his success.

In every relationship, one person settles and the other knows it. With Wanda, it was me who settled. We never talked about it, not at first, but we both knew. Sometimes I wonder if it would have ended differently, if I'd learned to appreciate her sooner. I don't think it would have, but I like to wonder sometimes anyway.

Wanda was a sweet girl, and she deserved better than me. We had a lot of the same interests, and she was nice. Nice doesn't sound like much of a compliment, does it? That's the impression that I had of her, though. She wasn't stunning, or vibrant, or sexy, but she was nice. The feelings that I had for her were as underwhelming as the word nice. I was fond of her, and I liked being around her, but I didn't love her. She loved me, though, and for a while, that kept everything together.

Deep down, I didn't want to marry her, but I couldn't see any reason not to. She was like a companion to me. Isn't that what I always used to think of as perfect love? Someone who you don't get tired of being around; someone you don't mind spending every moment with, like they're just an extension of yourself? That's what I always used to want, wasn't it? By the time I got it, though, I wanted something else.

I wanted to love her, I really did. Wanting didn't change anything. If anything, wanting to love her only made it more apparent to me that I didn't. But what could I do? I was married to a woman that I didn't love, but it's not like it was a horrible life. I liked her just fine, and we even had a kid on the way.

I think she could sense that something was wrong. In fact, I'm certain of it. The more I slipped away, the closer she tried to get to me. She lied to herself and hid from the truth that she knew deep down. She tried to comfort me and ask me what was wrong, and the more she tried to fix the problem, the worse it became. She'd come closer and I'd pull away, out of guilt, or shame, or I don't know what, but I couldn't stand to be around her, to look into her eyes and see the pain that I knew that I was causing.

As our child grew up – we only had one – I started to become bitter towards her. I felt like I had somehow been robbed of something, like if I hadn't gotten married and had a kid that I'd be rich and famous, or traveling the world, or anywhere other than the middle management hell that I was stuck in. I'd go out with my coworkers after work and get drinks – not because I enjoyed their company, or even felt like one of them, but because I didn't want to go home. What kind of father would rather get shitfaced and black out every night instead of tucking his daughter into bed?

I might have gone on like that for much longer, maybe even the rest of my life, if I hadn't been hit in a car accident. Strangely, I was sober the day it happened, and the accident was another man's fault. It was a bad accident, and I had to be put in the intensive care unit. Somehow, I made it out with no permanent damage, but I did have to spend a lot of time in the hospital. It gave me a lot of time to think.

Sitting in that bed, I realized what a fool I'd been. I had had a loving wife and a beautiful four year old, and I was spending every day at the bottom of a bottle, and for what? So that I wouldn't have to go home to my family? I remembered what it was like before I was bitter, back when I enjoyed just being around Wanda, even if what I felt for her didn't fit my definition of love. Who was to say that I couldn't go back to that? I could learn to appreciate her, and be happy around her again. The only thing stopping me was myself, wasn't it? I knew that when I got out of that hospital, I was going to turn things around. I was going to be the husband and father that Wanda and Amy had never had, but always deserved. I was going to appreciate them, and I was going to be happy again.

When you start wanting happiness, though, the universe always finds a way to take that away from you. Wanting something makes it impossible to have. My stay in the hospital gave Wanda some time to think, too, and while I was in there thinking about how I was going to turn my life around, she was at home, thinking the same thing. She was taking care of Amy all by herself, which really wasn't much different than when I was there, except for the fact that there wasn't a drunk reminder of the man she once loved stumbling in every night. She realized that she didn't need me, and she was right. It's funny, but the day that I was finally ready to start loving her, she didn't want my love anymore.

The divorce ruined me. I don't mean financially, but I guess there was that, too. What got me was the knowledge that I had had every reason to be happy, but I was too stupid to see it. I looked back on the life that I'd had and hated, and missed every second of it. I would have given anything to have it back.

There was this incense that Wanda used to like to light when we would have sex, back before it all went to shit. Sandalwood. She said that it set the mood. I never really thought much of it at the time, but after I really started letting myself go, it was what I would cling to to remember what it was like to be by her side. I would light a few sticks while I'd drug myself into oblivion, and for a second, the smell would take me through space and time, and I wouldn't be leaning against the wall of an alley with a needle in my arm. I'd be there, in bed with her. I could feel the sheets against my skin and I'd look over and watch her breathe. The nipples on her flat chest would be swollen from the attention that I'd given them, and the sweat made us sticky, but we didn't care. And I'd start crying, and before she could ask me what was wrong, she'd disappear, and I'd be back in the alley by myself.

Even the incense didn't last forever. Eventually, I stopped associating the smell with my memories of Wanda and I started associating it with my memories of missing her. I'd lost what I had left of her and I couldn't find it no matter how many straws or needles I looked in.

I had lost everything that had ever mattered to me, and I couldn't take it. All that I had left was my life, and I'd be damned if I was going to let fate take that from me, too. It was the one thing I still had control over, and I wanted to take it from myself before I was robbed of the chance.

I still remember my last thoughts. I wouldn't say that I was happy, but I was at peace. It was a relief, knowing that I was leaving my misery behind. I didn't leave a note, but maybe Wanda would hear the news and know I was sorry. It was a lonely death, but I had no problem with that. I was free, and that was all that mattered.

And then I woke up. I should have known.

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Hiroshima

11/17/2014

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This post was originally written on September 14, 2012.

Being a non-Asian foreigner in Japan is a strange experience. Everyone who looks at you knows that you aren't from around there. I remember once walking into a department store in Nagoya and knowing that there was a good chance that I was the only white person in the five-story building. Once, in the same department store, I was sitting on a bench in a small waiting area with a TV with a couple of friends, waiting for some other friends. After a short while, a Japanese man around 50 years old or so struck up a conversation with us. I don't remember much of the conversation, but I do remember that he told me that we were the first white people he'd ever talked to. I've heard that if you go to more rural areas of Japan, there's a decent chance that you'll be the first white person that they've ever seen. Throughout my travels in Japan, it seemed like the only place I wasn't a novelty was in Tokyo.

Every once in a while (and this really wasn't a very common thing), you'd meet someone who just didn't like foreigners. Japanese people aren't generally confrontational, and none of them would tell you that they didn't like you; they're even polite to you, albeit somewhat passive-aggressively. It's just something that you learn to pick up on after a while. I only ever saw outright racism once; a young man (25ish) wearing a shirt with a picture of Hitler heiling on it.

So it didn't really come as any major surprise to me that when I mentioned to other foreigners that had been to Hiroshima that I was going there for a day, they told me that I would get dirty looks. Naturally, since Hiroshima was the site of the first atomic bomb being used on people, there are a lot of memorials and museums about the subject. They aren't exactly uplifting. One of my friends who had previously been there told me that a woman on the cable car looked at him like he had killed her baby. After hearing these stories, I started thinking about what I would do if a Japanese person confronted me about it. I had a little speech that I'd gone over a few times in my head. The crux of it was boku wa boku no ojiisan ja arimasen: I am not my grandfather. Obviously, my grandfather didn't drop the bomb; he didn't even fight in World War II. It was a metaphor that I was fairly certain would get my point across.

When I finally went to Hiroshima, the first place that I visited was Shukkeien, a park designed in 1620 that had been rebuilt after being almost completely destroyed by the A-bomb. A large number of survivors took refuge there after the bombing, but died before receiving medical attention, and their ashes were scattered in the park. Afterward, I walked around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. There are many memorials in the park, including an eternal flame, a children's memorial, and a peace bell. The most striking thing there, though, is the remains of the only building to withstand the blast of the atomic bomb. It's an impressive and sad place. There is a small plaque in front of it that mentions that it "expresses the spirit of Hiroshima - enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony and prosperity for all, and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace," but looking at the building, it's hard to see anything else other than tragedy. Even though there are plaques like that all throughout the park, all with the same message that the solution to this tragedy is peace, not hatred, I begin to understand why my friends got dirty looks. I don't think that my friends deserved the looks they received, or that the people giving the looks shouldn't have known better, but I can understand why they were angry, even if that anger was misplaced.

So, there I was, walking alone through the Peace Park, marveling at the incredible pathos of the place, thinking about war and death and emotional wounds, when an old man sitting on a bench motions for me to come over to talk to him. My heart skips a beat. The man looks old enough to have fought in the war. Does he resent me? When he looks at me, does he see the men who killed his friends? Does he see the men who dropped the bomb? All of the defenses that I've prepared rush from my head. I'm not ready for this.

I walk over.

He asks me if I like baseball. I don't, really, but I understand the significance of the question. Baseball was one of the first and most significant cultural bridges between America and Japan. During the postwar occupation of Japan, American soldiers taught Japanese people how to play baseball. A lot of the soldiers didn't speak a word of Japanese, and the baseball games were a way for them to bond with the Japanese people. They learned that Japanese people aren't bloodthirsty savages, and the Japanese people learned the same thing about the Americans. Baseball is still the most popular foreign sport in Japan. So I tell him that I like to play baseball with my friends, but I don't really watch professional baseball.

We talk for a little while, branching off of the baseball conversation. After he learns that I like the Yankees (even though I don't really follow them), he asks where I'm from, and we talk for a little while about that, and how I first got interested in Japan. There are a lot of small, awkward pauses that reveal that neither of us really knows what to talk to the other about, but we each appreciate that the other wants to talk. After we run out of things to talk about, we just sit there for a few minutes. Eventually, I decide to leave, telling him that I'm happy he talked to me.

On my way back to the hotel, I pass by the peace bell. It's already evening, and the ram that lets you ring the bell is locked up for the night, so I flick it instead, and listen to the deep, quiet sound that it makes.

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Trouble In Cape Town

11/17/2014

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Originally written on September 13, 2012.

South Africa. Cape Town. Within my first few days, the lady working for the organization who got me my internship gives me a brief orientation over drinks at the cafe downstairs. I don't remember all of what she told me, but I do remember the safety tips. Don't go out alone at night. Don't walk any long distance at night, even in groups. Don't carry a lot of money. Those were pretty easy tips to follow. Later, my roommate added another one: if someone asks you for change, ignore them. My bosses, who, by the way, started a social enterprise based on improving the lives of the less fortunate, agreed. One of them told me, "if someone asks you for money, just give them a very firm 'No,' and walk away."

On the way from my apartment to the supermarket, there were always people asking for change. There was a day hospital that must have had some kind of charity, because there were always homeless, relatively elderly people lined up outside of it with their blankets. One of the first times that I made the trip to the supermarket, a youngish guy who looked a little bit too well off to be begging for change held out a cup and asked for money as I was walking under an overpass. Everything that I'd been told kicked in, and I gave him a firm no, walked a little faster, and kept an eye on him as I went. He let me go without issue.

On another trip to the same supermarket, an older, more homeless-looking man sitting outside of a gas station asked me for change, and I instinctively gave him the firm no. Afterward, I thought about it and felt bad, because the man clearly hadn't been going to mug me. It bothered me that I had instinctively refused him out of fear, because he clearly needed the money, and I set some change aside and vowed to give it to him on the way back. Unfortunately, he wasn't there by that time. I learned from that, and later gave to multiple beggars without incident. Just in case, though, I'd never linger; I'd just give them the money and keep walking. At most, I'd say "sure" when they thanked me.

One day, I was leaving the Nando's that I had eaten lunch at, and someone asked me for change. It was on Adderley Street, one of Cape Town's busiest streets, so I didn't feel nearly as nervous as I usually would on the way to the supermarket, and I knew that I had some change in my pocket from lunch that I wouldn't have to open my wallet to take out. There were two guys, one of which was holding a nearly empty plastic pitcher. As they walked towards me, I saw the lady at the flower stand that they were leaving shaking her head at me. That, in conjunction with the fact that they were young and that there were two of them, should have sent up red flags for me, but in the two seconds that it took for them to walk up to me, all I thought was that I didn't have to take out my wallet, and that the lady probably disapproved of giving to beggars like so many other South Africans do.

I dropped a few Rand into the pitcher, and kept walking. The two of them kept pace with me, one on either side. The guy holding the pitcher was on the left, and he did all the talking. "Hey, c'mon, man, you can give more than that." I told him sorry, that was all the change I had. "Tell you what, there's an ATM in that store to the left. You can take out 10 or 20* [Rand]." I said, no, sorry, I've really got to get back to work. "Look, we're asking for money because we don't want to steal..." I don't say anything, but keep walking. "I could just reach into your pocket..." he says, as he starts reaching into my left pocket. That day was one of the few days that I had decided to bring my iPod with me, and my left pocket is where I kept it. Half out of instinctive protection of my it, and half out of blind anger, I swat his hand away, run a few steps forward to get some distance between me and them, and angrily shout, "Get the fuck away from me!" It takes them by surprise, and by the time they realized what's happened, everyone in a 20 foot radius is staring at us. As they realize that they can't do anything, and their faces go from surprise to disappointment, they slink away. I go to that Nando's a lot, but I never see them again.

I was never afraid. I probably should have been. At least one of them probably had a knife. All I was was angry. I still get angry whenever I think about it. Every day in Cape Town, I'd see people who needed money, and every day I'd see people who were afraid to give it to them. All because of stupid pieces of shit like the guys that tried to mug me. Because of them, people who really need money and aren't willing to hurt people for it are going hungry. When people are willing to give money, they get mugged, and most learn not to try again. Not all muggings are clean. Sometimes people get stabbed for trying to help someone else out. I can barely even begin to relate to the kind of asshole that would rather rob a person willing to give them money than a person who wouldn't give them a cent. Not only are they screwing over people who had wanted to help them; they're also screwing over all of the people that that person would have helped in the future. Sometimes, I wish I had been carrying a knife myself. It's probably a good thing for both me and them that I hadn't.

In case you're wondering, I kept giving change to people, but I was more careful about it after that. At one point, near the end of my time in Cape Town, I gave a homeless man a sleeping bag that I'd gotten for free as part of participating in some event. The guy was ecstatic. Couldn't stop telling me how thankful he was and about how he really needed one of these; the blankets that the charities give out don't help in the rain, and don't do much in the cold, either. I saw that he wasn't just happy to have a new sleeping bag; he was happy that there are people out there that are still willing to give away sleeping bags. Part of me was happy to see his faith in humanity restored. Part of me was angry that it had needed to be.

*At the time, about $1.50-3.00, which goes a little further in South Africa than it does in America, but what's worrying here is that he was asking me to go to an ATM to get him bills

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12/5/2013

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Desiderative Magnetism
Flight
Hiroshima
Parable of the Belle
Sunup
Trouble in Cape Town

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