Train collection 004: the unicorn

It was just there, in front of me. Listening to its teammate about something, maybe volleyball, soccer. While the pal was scribbling something, game strategies perhaps, it was listening intently—black mane, and the whitest set of enamels I’ve ever seen. A kind of white only fantasy creates. It was almost real.

I now think that unicorns, not rainbows, show up after the rain. You see, it has been pouring since daybreak and only until about past 2 in the afternoon, well at least in Yokohama, did it start to clear up. I got to see this magical creature inside a train car. Matching its wavy black mane is a bonnet on. Lips a little bit dry—it’s late winter—but still pinkish, almost red, and full—not the erotic type, but a fullness that’s pure, almost innocent. The late afternoon sun was up, with its last soft glow of light, when this apparition of a wavy-maned unicorn, in black bonnet caught my eyes.

It was in a stop in Koenji, or in Kichijoji, when it noticed my glances. But how can one keep from doing so when a unicorn—listening to strategies in a volleyball/soccer game—is just in the opposite seat? I couldn’t. And then I focused on the hooves, one word: magical. The eyes, indescribable; I just glanced at them, and hoped that the images caught would be preserved in my head forever. But when it noticed my glances, I decided to stop. Stop glancing. I tell you, it was the sweetest self-inflicted punishment I’ve ever done and felt. To not glance at this bonneted unicorn with wavy mane pained me with excruciating fear that never again shall I see it; but this also ecstatically swirled my world on this seat of a train with images of what I just behold of a creature of magic.

It’s my stop (I mean the station where I get off). And since I decided not to glance again when it noticed I was doing so, I was also resolved that everything was unreal. That it was just, as I’ve said, fantasy.

But they, the teammate and the unicorn who appeared after the rain, also stepped out of the train. So it lives somewhere ’round my area. But I’ve already stopped glancing. For to glance one last time would spell my destruction: remember a scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? It warned that when you try to suck out the blood of a unicorn, you will live an immortal life—but a cursed life nonetheless. My glances had begun to suck its blood out, and I don’t want to live in a meaningless eternity, what’s more, I don’t want to have anything to do in the death of such pure a creature—that unicorn with a black bonnet on a wavy mane, with the whitest set of enamels only fantasy can create, looking at me now getting out of 武蔵境駅：Musashisakai station’s south exit.

I didn’t glance back. Goodbye unicorn.

Catching February

Had this brilliant(?)-slash-silly idea to compile interesting quotes and blahs I’ve heard/eavesdropped from people for the whole duration of February. Got me a sheet of paper, posted it on the fridge’s door, and began writing those interesting little things people told me, or those that escaped their lips (ok, tv dialogues included), and were caught by my rather satellite-like ears. And hollah! Here are some of them:

Heard him say “やばい:yabai!”, and sensing that I reacted, asked,

“Do you know the meaning of やばい:yabai (awful;terrible;crap;amazing;cool)?”—Tsuyoshi, previous roommate (shouldn’t have told him I got a “D” in Japanese)

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“I dunno where I dropped my fingers!”—ate ‘Nor, on a cold winter night

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IM with a friend in HongKong (the topic’s about Loowwve—it’s February remember?):

“Sorry, but everybody needs Love.”

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“You seem solitary.”—Chinese friend, while we’re eating in the school cafeteria, to which I replied, ” I am, always. And happy ’bout it.”

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“You are good at singing. Some people say [italics mine]. We were in the social room, and you were singing in (the) kitchenette.”—stop it Tsuyoshi!

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“The dark needs to become darker, for the light to grow brighter”—umma mama (queen mother), Goong S, translated from Korean

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“Remember, statistics shows that 25 per cent of the sexually active population has herpes.”—a visiting past OYR(one-year-regular) student and Canada House dormer, to people who were talking about their recent trip to Thailand…and the Thai girls.

But still, he couldn’t stop somebody from blurting out:

“It was brown, brown, pink (while touching his chest, and later on pointing his crotch in time for the word ‘pink’)!”

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“Do you know how to do this (letting me see how to turn off the bathroom faucet)?”—dormmate…

me: You mean turning off the faucet!?!?! Yes, I certainly do.

dormmate(kindda feeling awkward): “Aa, ahm, ok…some people don’t.

I just let the soothing warm water coming from the shower calm my senses. God help me.

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Hata, new roommate: “I don’t want to go to tonight’s kick-out party. Probably, they will do the ‘Jungle Fire’ again.”

me: What’s the ‘Jungle Fire’?

Hata: “It’s an event.”

me: I see. What do they do in that event?

Hata: “It’s a metaphor, you know, fire, on a jungle.”

me (connecting the idea of wishing luck the graduating seniors, and life as metaphored by the word ‘jungle’): Ah, I see. Maybe they’re going to talk about life as a kind of jungle…right? You know, those clichés of life as a steel and glass jungle, where it’s still a question of who’s the fittest and…”

Hata: “No! It means our jungle!”

me: What?!

Hata: “You know, our jungle, down there… (pointing at his crotch)”

And so that’s when I discovered that this kick-out party event, this “Jungle Fire”, is, simply, burning your pubic hairs “down there” and letting others burn theirs too, while you enjoy the “exotic smell” of the resulting smoke. Interesting.

And it became more hilarious when he added,

“暑い　よ:it’s hot, you see…”

Train collection 003

Sunday, March 2, 2008. Train from Shinjuku going to Harajuku, Yamanote Line.

I was going to dance tinikling with Jera, for a charity luncheon hosted by the Tokyo Union Church—proceeds would support the trip of youth volunteers to build houses somewhere in Cagayan Valley.

On the train: father and daughter wrestles their fingers in this game most of us should’ve played before. While in it with her little girl who has rosy cheeks, dad keeps on smiling, the kind of smile that smells proud, and happy, and hopeful for her rosy-cheeked baby. It’s refreshing to find a middle-aged man, not in business suit, being father to his daughter, in this part of Japan where people are often regarded as snobs.

And so off I danced the tinikling with Jera. Now wrestling our feet with the bamboo poles, I hoped I had the same smile on, for the people at the luncheon and for the future houses in Cagayan. It was a great Sunday.