What's in a name?

'Is it possible that the simple act of calling someone's name out loud can inspire feelings of attraction?


It's a simple idea, one that seems too obvious, really. While reading Curtis Sittenfeld's novel 'Prep,' the main character suddenly, in an instant, is attracted to a person who the moment before, she hadn't thought twice about. What happened?  He said her name.


Almost exactly the same thing happened to me quite a few years back, but it's a mysterious incident that I still think about now. In a single moment, the earth moved when I watched someone's lips form the syllables of my name.


Kind of makes you think, doesn't it.'


-Girl with No Name

Stop yer messin' around

Or something like that.

I went to college in Florida, a place where the world was turned on its head. Everything she'd learned in her 17 years on Earth thrown out the window. In other words, she went to a different planet.

'Life is like that, though,' writes The Girl With No Name.
'Even within one day, the range of possibilities is mind-quaking. You could be sitting on a beach in Koh Tao sipping a mai tai at two in the afternoon - a bit too early for a cocktail in some 'square' societies, but perfectly viable on an island, and later the same day, be in NYC at a 'have to yell because it's too noisy in here' tapas bar.

Strange View: a short story

Strange View 

Orihashi Inn had a bath -- actually two baths, an outdoor and indoor. It was raining when we went, so we opted for the latter. In the small changing room was an old-looking Victorian clock. It was off-white, a cozy-medium size, and was sitting on the shelf as if the owner had just taken it out of her own house and stuck it there as an afterthought. The strange thing was that the clock seemed to change as you looked at it. The pillars framing the square clock face and triangular upper portion brought the Parthenon to mind, but the scrolly vines above the clock’s face. . . just then, I remembered my Nana and her collection of things. For the first time in years,  tiny glass perfume bottles danced in a row on a mantle. They had names like --taboo-- printed in ancient typewriter letters. To the right of the bottles was a closet full of colorful mumus from the Big Island.

The smell in the ryokan seemed familiar now, too—yes! – like the house in West Brookfield. It was no ordinary house. Secret passageways, wild strawberry hillside gardens, and the lake, the glorious lake. To go swimming there, one had to change in the boatshouse where a record player from who knows when played Tchaikovsky and changing into your swimsuit among the cobwebs in pitch black (there had never been electricity in the boathouse as far as I knew) with all the mothballs tumbling out of the closet was much more challenging than one might think.

Yeah, I liked this clock alright.

Back in downtown Kagoshima in a chain coffee shop in for the first time in a very long time with a vanilla ice-cream accompanied chesnut tart, a café latte, and all the time in the world, I wrote in my notebook:

“Onsens are a sort of time-reset – not that they have a throwback button that warps you into outer space at top speed forcing you to examine your concept of bodily space – no, not that kind of time-reset. It’s more like getting into a bath of boiling hot mineral water cleans the bodily slate, bringing all of the senses back to zero.”

Suffice to say, this is the kind of writing mindset that sitting in this type of coffeeshop puts me in. I’d snagged a corner seat and the other customers, a small group of ladies in their 50’s, a couple of students with their books, and a few girls in their 20’s – I suppose the local crowd –  all seemed pretty happy in a healthy, down-to-earth sort of way. That may seem like an obnoxious thing to say, but in Japan, healthy types in coffeeshops is possibly an oxymoron, the norm being businessmen in cheap looking suits talking loudly on cellphones, 30-something chain-smoking women in furiously texting with knitted brows, or groups of elderly ladies with unusually high-pitched voices that give the phrase “lively aviary” new meaning. 

I really wasn't sure what possessed him to pick up the book and start sketching, but then again, it did seem like the perfect moment to do that then. I fantasized secretly that he would become some sort of underground avant-garde artist – or maybe even “pseudo-artist,” I’m not sure – but if he was anything like Jack Kerouac, it wouldn’t be half or even wholly bad.

The chimes in the small seaside cliff town played the song proclaiming that it was 5 pm; it was a familiar tune that I’m sure I heard often as a child, but I had no idea what the name of it was. I looked at the CD player and wondered why the same jazz song, Track number 2,  was still playing. It was the longest Track number 2 that I can remember, I thought, as I picked up my notebook.

“What does the word ‘familiar’ mean, anyway? An odd thought, I do realize, but doesn’t everyone think odd thoughts? There is so much that I take for granted, that seems ‘familiar’ to me in the everyday grind, that maybe I’ve forgotten how to ask questions the way I did when I was a child.”

Epilogue:

Timing is a strange thing, I think, especially when it comes to writing. I was on a trip to Kagoshima, and I just sort of wrote when something struck me as interesting. Writing can take you to places that you don’t expect, and perhaps, this story, rather than the trip itself, took me on a journey.

reflection....

Past loves, what do they mean?
Doesn't everyone think about this, or is it only me?


The things that I thought were meant to be, which changed their course of direction (not unlike the tide), what on earth does it all mean?


Well, if I'm the only one thinking about this, let it be. . . let it be.

On her way. . .

She has a book, a hat, a notebook and various pens and a few other odds and ends in a pile in the corner of the room. On her way to visit the adventure family---just a train trip away. The rain is pitter-pattering on the skylight, but going to the mountains, even in the rain, seems like a better option than listening to the  jackhammer outside.


She's thought of the one a bit recently, but to no avail. 'Fate is stranger and more surprising than you think,' she keeps reminding herself.

strong attachments

In the midst of making a vanilla cream custard (a la Craig Claiborne), she thinks:


“What do our obsessions mean anyway?”


Are they a sign that we are irreparably flawed as people? Perhaps. But that’s a given. She nods. There is a deeper cause for these things, surely. What lives within our own hearts is unknown to our minds. And why, this particular strong feeling? Why not something else? Obsessions must be part of our persona, who we are.


But not all.

Ryokan life.

She sits type type typing in a tatami room now, far away from what her mind's eye saw as civilization. . . civilization that is up until now. The world has been turned "sakasama" just like the pineapple upside-down cake that she made today.

I wonder. . .

how long it really takes us to understand that what's important may not necessarily be important to the world. By the time we realize that writing or playing music on a guitar is not about success but about survival, it could be too late.


Now is the time to try, to create.

dreams. . .

She had dreams of an earthquake in Massachusetts---she tried to get under her childhood bed for safety, but couldn't fit.


Later, another dream about eating blueberries and strawberries, and her younger brother. . . he was a child in the dream. She hugged him.

choices

She forgot something that happened.... a lapse in memory (she forgot to mention.) It's never happened to her, at least as far as she knows. She ate a bagel, went to sleep, and woke up in a different prefecture with no recollection of what happened in between. It was after the cherry blossom party where someone was playing a flute used in o-kagura. It was something out of a dream. . . a very beautiful dream.
She saw him out of the corner of her eye, fully knowing it was him, and she had no idea how to react. Actually just to be a few feet from him was pure bliss, and she looked up at the cherry blossoms and said nothing. He thought that she didn't remember him (or maybe he knew that she did and was just pretending), and called her name, hugging her. It was all so surreal.


How surreal are our lives, truly?


In the past few weeks, fate has been king in her life.


But how to handle her feelings about the other? She never thought life would come to this.

in transition

She sits once more type type typing in the room that's become so comfortable so familiar to her. Things, memories lying around in cardboard boxes in the room. Going back to the place where she started was maybe a strange choice, but once that seemed to be written in the stars. The work here is done.

Westward Ho!

time for a change

She sits in a completely different place, on a completely different island. The time has come for a change, that's unmistakable, but what the change will be is hard to say. Better to be in a safe place and healthy for the time being. She went to her favorite cake shop today, Sakaeya, and sipped coffee while looking out the window and writing down new vocabulary. 'Go back to being a student for a while,' a voice says, 'Learn as much as you can about your heart.'

what we really want.....

She's slightly sleepy but her mind is lucid. What we really want is a union with the divine. Everything else has no meaning, but in our search for that union, we make other things, other people important. Those things are decidedly not what we're after.

The blues. . .

She's felt slightly blue lately. . . not all the time, but sometimes when she's alone. What is the difference between solitude and lonliness? Maybe it's time to go to the oracle in Delphi and ask that question.

At the beginning of the year, all is new. . .

She sits thinking, typing, at night----not unusual for her, but rather rare these days, with little time to write and more time to just sit and ponder. What is it all about? Should writing take a first place among other things. Well, right now, friends come first. Friends and dreams.