aesthete and philomath @annetique - Tumblr Blog

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME. YOU CANNOT TURN THE CLOCK BACK NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE FUTURE.

I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE SCARED OR MISS THE PAST, YOU CANNOT, LOGICALLY, GO BACK TO THE PAST. DO NOT OVERINDULGE IN PERSONAL, ARTISTIC, POLITICAL OR IDEOLOGICAL NOSTALGIA. YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE FUTURE.

THE FUTURE IS THE ONLY THING WE HAVE. THIS IS NOT EVEN AN APHORISM. IT IS HOW LINEAL TIME WORKS.

ARE YOU LISTENING.

weltenwellen

Leila Chatti, from “Tea”

hungwy

We missed the last train of the night due to the snow. It was the first snow Tokyo had in a while, apparently. None of us seemed dressed for that kind of wet cold. No gloves, just jackets, hats. We were worried for a little bit about how we would get back to the dorms. We waited a long time for a taxi. A long time. The snow had built up on everything in thick layers. I was used to snow but could not ignore how the cold penetrated my pocketed hands to the bone. We stood outside some building, I cannot remember now what it was, but freezing puddles formed around our shoes, kept liquid by some unseen heat source. The puddles reflected all the reds and blues and golds of the city lights. It was quiet for a city. I was tired.

A taxi finally arrived after a while. Just long enough to make its arrival a celebratory affair. We hurried inside it. I sat in the back, on the left, behind the passenger seat. My friends took the front seat and the seat next to me. Someone showed the driver the university address on their phone. In broken Japanese my friends both attempted small talk with the driver, an older man, but he seemed reticent, probably tired. I can't remember if he even responded with real words--probably focused on not crashing the taxi in the fresh slick snow. I knew how to drive in snow. I wonder, in all his long years, if he ever got used to it. The snow had been falling for some time now. Everything was capped in that snow, diffusing the golden glow of the street lights. Were they gold, I wonder? Maybe some were silver. I can't remember any more. It reflected the colors of the night, the still, freezing night which churned under an endless dark grey cloud. I'd seen those clouds before, in the winters of home, and they made me feel comfortable, warm, like a great blanket stretched across the sky.

I remember how the taxi cruised through the thin residential alleys of Tokyo, lined with small one- or two-story houses, stone fences barely interjecting between the property and the street. Most houses did not have their lights on. Fence after gate after fence after wall flickered past. I fell asleep, or pretended to be asleep, or failed to fall asleep, for a long while. I love sleeping in cars. I always have, since I was a kid.

It was a very long drive. I don't remember how I ended up back in the dorm. Where were we even coming from, then, when we missed our train? Were we split from a larger group? By ourselves, us three? Did we go out to eat, go to see some place? I don't remember any more. I remember the night, the cold, the snow, the frozen world, and the pleasant doom of knowing something would become a memory. Something I would regurgitate and reconsume in my mind until all the realness had left. The snow made sure the memory would become imaginary, picturesque. My eyes engulfed the fluttering, transient frames of the lamp-lit snowy streets. Those pictures which with use would eventually smear and blur into puddles of soft form and color, as they do even now. I wish I had written anything at all then. None of it would've been good, but just to preserve the detail, to remind myself of real, solid things. It's all slowly melting away, now, so soft