From the Fringes of a Typhoon
The wind and rain is equalizing us all in this concrete toothed monstrosity with neon eyes, steel undergarments and glass clothing.
This morning the whole city has turned into a painter’s palette. The salarymen are dripping into the yakuza which are melting into splashing puddles of girls dressed as maids running from camera toting bloggers.
No matter what your paycheck says, you’re getting wet today.
Transparent umbrellas are in bloom across the megalopolis. They don’t stop the incipient spray of ten million footsteps and a million whizzing cabs. We’re all caught in the run off gutter of our times.
The rain has dampened the cameras. No one takes a photo on a rainy day. Tokyo Tower doesn’t make a good postcard with water streaks streaming down the lens.
So climb back into your neon marked holes Tokyo. Cuddle up to your cubicle, have a riceball or two at your desk for lunch. Keep your head down, even inside it feels like its raining. We’re all just chilling inside this giant concrete cloud. Maybe we are the rain itself.
In a city where no one sees you, they see you even less today.
The subways have become submarines.
The taxis drive with no passengers. No one is out to hail them.
Everything has become automated. The cars could fly today and no one would notice.
The few people you see are scurrying like spiders looking to return to the safety of the crack in the wall.
Dreams are melting. Hope is put on hold. You can do all your chores tomorrow. Have another riceball with your self pity.
My umbrella blew inside out. Sometimes we all get exposed. To the elements. To our fears, our enemies. To an old woman getting splashed by a taxi as she is spraying a hose on the ground, washing it like she does everyday, oblivious of the record rainfall.
Some people are unprogrammable. That’s her routine and she’s sticking to it.
In a city this size, it pays to be part robot, part Zen monk.
Let the splashes pour over you and purify you like holy water. Let the umbrellas gouge your eyes in some sort of faux-spiritual sacrifice of enduring pain and turning your cheek. Let the disgruntled office drones bowl into you and take it. Take those elbows as cordial handshakes. Take those subway station bodychecks as hugs from family members.
These tricks help the rainy day blue to pass until the clouds and spray and runoff lift and you are free to resume your blue skied dreaming in all its grandeur.
