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.