Hyoutan Dream

Monday, July 8 1991: A Letter in Three Parts

Part 1: Water Gourd

Times like this each moment is isolated in a self-contained eternity. Here at Hyoutan onsen, the water rushes off the rocks above. Funneled through bamboo poles, the water pounds down on my back. As each drop hits the water it plucks a note from the water's surface. I drift in the dark, quiet space between the notes.

After Ellen and I part ways, I am walking through the streets of Beppu all ears and eyes. A junior high school boy shouts from his upstairs window, "Hello. Hello!" But I cannot open my mouth to answer him.

Part 2: Coined Words

I dream a waking dream.

When I close my eyes I feel your moist breath on my face. You part my lips with your fingers and place a go-en coin on my tongue. I open my eyes and you press your forefinger against my lips, to shut them, to seal them shut.

Your secrets weigh heavily on my tongue, grave secrets. They are cold and taste metallic.

I am walking through the streets of Beppu only ears and eyes. A junior high school boy shouts from his upstairs window, "Haroo. Haroo!" But I am dumb. I cannot open it to answer him, lest your currency drop from mouth. He continues to shout at me, "Haroo, haroo. Fuck you. Haroo, fuck you."

Part 3: Into the Eye of the Tornado

I leave this world of sound and sight and reenter the world of words. I am awake now and falling. Enveloped in silver. Falling from the sky. Falling through time and space, falling backward to a time and place I left.

Times like this each step we take pulls us along an undeviating course, drags us, accelerates us toward that inescapable attractor; our destiny propels us into the eye of the tornado.

The whirlwind of my anxiety ends in a dead calm.

I am awake now and landing. The red Fasten Seat Belt light blinks off. We all jump to our feet and wait our turn, balancing our bags, shifting our weight from one foot to another, shuffling forward, jostling and jostled. Down the corridor, illuminated in pale fluorescence, they stand waiting: my son, his father, the other Melissa. They are waiting to pull me back into their world. In the instant before I see them over the heads of the passengers in front of me, just as I pass through the door of the plane, I remember, "I forgot to tell M. Quigley that…"

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
November 06, 2003

Comments

Compelling stuff, especially Part 2. This could be, is, a poem. I love the elements suggesting death - "grave" secrets tasting cold and metallic, the pressing of the coin into the mouth (and not over the eyes), the intrigue of it, the coupling of the sweet mundane and the ominous in the figure of the schoolboy, and the pitch perfect coupling of tone and vocabulary. I love the repeated reference to money in the line, "I cannot open it to answer him, lest your currency drop from mouth." Well crafted. Lovely. Cinematic.

Comment by: jbl. Posted December 10, 2003 02:43 PM.

Thanks. I always think of it as a poem, although it's also a true story, even to the schoolboy yelling obscenities at me as I walked to Beppu station, lost in thought.

The use of grave, however, is a pun on the Latin for "heavy"--these were weighty matters to me--serious, substantial, and "Hey, man. Heavy."

Comment by: mss. Posted December 11, 2003 09:50 AM.

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