I woke up and finished off half a loaf of German farm bread that I got in Tokyo and had been nursing for days, it’s so thick and nourishing one cannot just eat it willy nilly, even so I did, and was overly full. So full I passed the Aquarium without a thought, failed for several minutes to pay the bus driver while others waited, going through card after card until finding money somehow, then getting off and eating my feelings in a Mos Burger. The staff there was so overly kind I felt like I was in a 1930’s ford motor company potluck in Detroit.
I went for a long walk around the city and eventually found my cheap and dainty housing situation, only 25 minutes walk from the airport. It was one of those places you enter with alarm bells ringing in your own head that scream for you to make better choices in life.
“GET OUT”
“THIS PLACE IS WRONG.”
“YOUR GOING TO END UP AS A STATISTIC!”
Things like that but more as well. Going into the abandoned building and seeing a large and probably once popular night club, calling out for someone, anyone to answer, but no. I find a door at the end of the building, knock. Knock again, and a small dark asian man appears.
“Yes.” He said, it was not a question.
“Check in?”
“Yes.” He repeated in a slightly lower tone. He turned back into the closed room, spoke to a man there who grunted, and returned to take me to the elevator. The Asian man was not Japanese, but he spoke the language well.
“Where are you from? Cali?” he asked.
“Good guess. What gave it away?”
“Vibe.” He said, nodding to himself. Vibe indeed, I thought.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Philippines.” He said, with a smile, then offered me a cigarette, but before I could refuse, he realized he had misplaced his lighter and apologized, taking me to my portion of the capsule hotel which was essentially two double bunk beds in an open room closed in with drapes. So, 50-80 men in one room without walls, separates by thin fabric, what could go wrong?
Thankfully I met a wonderful Japanese busker staying there named Takashi. A man whose done a thousand odd jobs all over the world, but no matter which of those jobs he was doin, buskin came with it too. Now, if you don’t know, I certainly didn’t until very recently, busking is the art of street performance for voluntary donations, derived originally from Spanish freelancers asking for work on pirate ships, who were thus named buscar. This man suggested a place for me to stay in Taiwan as he had worked and busked there many times.
There’s something so fascinating to me about other cultures and those 1 in a million of them who are more American than not, or should I say, more free and willing to risk everything for the thrill of living and being free. Japanese especially break their mold in living that way, for they are the most rigid people there are. Deciding to live free my own self has changed my life in every way it can be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But sometimes even living free at any cost can cause great harm to those around us. Case and point was the minute we finished our conversation I went on a walk to the airport, just to get the lay of the land, then went on a rant about living free and all that, only to crush a can of Pocari Sweat, Asian Gatorade, and thereby smashing a snail which I couldn’t see next to it. I felt really bad about that, but it got worse.
As I headed back to the hostel I found myself going on another rant about freedom and smashed yet another snail... I decided in that moment what the next stage of my development would be, going within, going silent, going free from the frenetic need to speak.
But can someone like me really do that? Can someone addicted to speaking their mind really hold their tongue, especially when the need to speak is stronger than ever? I know that silence holds within itself the entirety of sound, light and experience, yet still I crave the spoken word, the enunciated intent, the thrill of the hunt for fertile ground in the minds of others. Can I keep my peace, knowing all that?
Time will tell...