Lost in the gray

Before me

Are the keys laid out

White and black

Like a world

With no moral questions

No gradient

 

Curiosity

Grips me with this task

I’m compelled

By a note

Hidden in this pattern

Of melody

 

Is it me?

The drive behind it

My feeling

To bring forth

What lies out there

Already

 

Inside me

An urge to arrange

Vibration

That’s in such need of

Discovery

Reincarnation

No matter how young

How old

Used

Naive

.

How troubled,

How hollow

Or Whole

.

No matter how much was achieved

Or lost

how pure

Or how sick

.

No matter how coldhearted

Or full of contempt

.

Whether enlightened

Or riddled with guilt

.

Atrocities.

.

All can be salvaged.

Repaired and reworked

Recycled.

.

The soul,

A broken ship

Pulled up,

Floats

.

Just to sink again.

The gradient

We connect

the dots on a graph

with straight lines.

But between them

there is a story to tell

 

 

There was a line

between this one

in the text

but it didn’t rhyme

with the rest.

 

 

Our eyes

like small telescopes

dart from here to there

only able to focus

on one thing, then the next

 

 

And in this moment

There is another time

running

alongside

that could have been

 

 

I play a minor key

A sharp, a flat…

but there are more tones

between white

and black.

 

 

There are notes

between notes

and life between thoughts

and no spaces

inallofthefolds…

 

 

Yet in the pauses

between words

and wars between urge

There is love.

and love does not cancel love,

I believe

 

Uncovering urban existence

As an outsider, I always viewed Tokyo as an intense, flashy city that wasn’t so much Japanese as it’s own alluringly peculiar culture. The streets burst with unique hole-in-the wall ramen shops, buzzing arcade-pachinkos, “standing” bars, and izakayas themed from maid to ninja to giant-robot-lady-show.  This is the face of the metropolis, and it’s no lie.  The circus runs day and night, for hours even longer than the human-packed Yamanote line.

But the shift from the Shinjuku sightseer to Edogawa side-street commuter brings out a different current.   It is a struggle to sort out this city.  What truly lies beyond the expressionless faces of the train passengers who sway together when the brakes slow for the next stop?  What subsists beyond the platform, behind the shops, between the apartments and the alleyways?

Cats. There are so many cats, often too quick to catch with the shutter. Most show signs of somewhere they belong, but I suspect even the feral ones manage to find more fulfillment in the city than a handful of the passing salarymen.

Waiting.  A city of ultimate convenience, a mere nine floors via elevator separate me from twenty-four hour snacks and bill-paying. Of course, I take my place in queue.  I rush to the ward office after work.  Take a ticket.  At the grocer a few steps from my building, the wait in line might as well be the same as a drive to the local AEON mall.

Sorted, stacked vehicles pile up in every direction.

Reflections in windows, isolated by the eye or aperture, repeat an exponential visual echo.

Secret pedestrian paths behind the vertical homes give way to enclosed bonsai gardens that are only appreciated from careful vantage points.

 

An insect comes to its final resting spot on the porous asphalt.

Parks redefine “night life” when visited well past sundown. Geometrically pleasing shapes settle the city tensions when illuminated by a mixture of incandescence and moonlight.

Finally, there are the phenomenal, pollution-enhanced skies at dusk: A balcony-viewed brilliance I can count on.  No matter the state of the lights that sparkle below them, the atmosphere’s inevitability and persistence is reassuring.

Photo by Daniel Pierce