The Escape Artist

Since it is his 137th birthday and since Houdini was one of my earliest heroes and since I have always found him kind of sexy, I thought I would post a poem today in his honor.

The Escape Artist

Why don’t we take a tour of your ribcage?
Feel free to smoke. No spitting, though. It’s rude.
Now pick a person from the rack—an image
To titillate your senses. Something nude.

That’s your companion for Eternity.
Your soul-mate, if you like. He never rots.
You’ve picked a postcard—excellent. Let’s see.
He looks like that Houdini—clad in locks

From head to toe. Will he escape in time?
Reserve your seat for Harry’s greatest feat!
While we are waiting though, we ought to dine.
There must be something in the Snack Bar. Sweet:

I thought I saw a box of Raisin Bran…
You do like Raisin Bran? You look distressed.
No, the box contains no Raisin Bran,
But please inhale whatever’s there with zest.

You’ll find it very hard to criticize
The brute who brings the breakfast—and his rose.
Tears have a tendency to fill his eyes
When you attack him. And he breaks your nose.

Which brings us back around to your cell door:
They recently installed new mirrors—steel.
We had an “incident” on the top floor
When life inside lost all its sex-appeal.

It does get dark in here. That’s why I’m glad
They took my glasses and bricked up the sky.
The other prisoners all called me mad:
But I’ve no hopes to tie me down, do I?

Letter to Takaaki

As some of you may know my boyfriend, Takaaki, lives in Tokyo. He is there right now, hopefully sleeping.

Since the cellphone systems have been down, and he doesn't use a landline, in the days since the tsunami and earthquake we have been keeping in touch by e-mail and through Facebook. He plans on staying in Tokyo for the duration of the crisis. Food supplies in Tokyo are low, but he has provisions. He has turned off his heat and is bathing at the public bath to help conserve energy. He is trying to see if he can help out the people in Tohoku in other ways, too.

Sometimes the two of us get a little down, being separated by so many miles and surrounded by so much uncertainty. Still, we have been trying keep our spirits up. Here is an excerpt of a letter I sent last night, in case you are curious how we are doing it.

Dear Taka-chan,

I am happy you and Koji had a good night last night. I wish I could have gone to the bath with you! I haven’t been sleeping very well for the last week and I could use a nice evening soaking at a Tokyo sento [public bath]!

We are getting a lot of confusing reports here, too. The BBC says the JSDF [Japan Self Defense Force] is dropping water from helicopters into the spent fuel pools and reactor buildings. It is scary that there is so little food in the stores and that people are hoarding, not pulling together and thinking of their neighbors as much as one would hope. Some have a hard time remaining rational during a crisis. Fortunately there are always a few sensible citizens, like yourself, determined not to fall apart, to do what they can, like those men at the power plant in Fukushima.

People are freaking out here, too, mostly news people and Californians. Everything freaks out the news people. And Californians. Maybe the news people are all from California. Who can say? They lose their minds at falling snowflakes. I am from Buffalo, New York, so the snowflake holds no terror for me.

So, I ignore the news people and look at what the scientists have to say and sift through their opinions myself, piecing together a picture of the situation in Japan as best I can. I am not a physicist, of course, or an engineer. I am, like you, just one man trying to make sense of Chaos. Even so, ignorant as we may be, we both know this: Japan has faced much worse and overcome much greater hardships than the ones it faces now.

There was a picture in the New York Times today, taken in Tohoku, which caught my eye and reminded me of something. In it, a bunch of ojii-san [grand-dads] were arranged in a circle, like stones, around a fire built from smashed houses. They were all sitting in different kinds of chairs—metal, wood, canvas—some of them broken—also probably collected from the rubble. They looked tired, dirty, a bit hungry, but not defeated. A heavy sky hovered above them—dark blue—like an on-rushing sea. But there they sat, outside, keeping warm, defying the darkness gathered above with a little fire they had lit themselves: a fire which all the collected forces of nature could not put out.

That fire is like my feelings for you. That fire is your friendship with Koji. That is the fire which draws people from all over the world to search for survivors in Tohoku. That is hope. Whatever happens, ojii-san, we must take care it is never extinguished.

So, tell Koji I say, “Hi.” Remember to bundle up. Remember to keep warm. Remember I love you.

Even if, in the next few days, I do feel the need to send you a case of SPAM…

More Ozu

I am sorry I didn't get to this yesterday, but I was so busy with work that I didn't have time to write.

Saturday and Sunday night two more wonderful films by the celebrated Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu premiered on my tiny computer screen: Early Spring and Tokyo Twilight. Faithful readers of this blog will recall Mr. Ozu from a post in early January, where I discussed his film Ohayo, or, Hello. A little Ozu on the weekend seemed like a nice way of rounding out a couple afternoons of Japanese grammar.

Both films are set in mid-1950s Tokyo and concern families adapting to the new realities of post-war life in Japan. Today I would like to talk about the first one, Early Spring, from 1956.

Early Spring opens with a 30-something veteran (of WWII), a salary man, Shoji (who works for a brick manufacturing company), and his wife, Masako, a housewife, rising in the morning. It is clear that she has much easier time waking up than he does--although she might not enjoy the world she wakes to any more than he does. We soon discover how a crushing daily commute to Marounuchi, obligations at work, obligations to friends, a dull, mind-numbing job, a son dead of disease are slowly conspiring to dissolve their marriage.

An initial flirtation between Goldfish (an office girl) and Shoji becomes increasingly serious, after a company outing. They arrange a date. They drink a bit too much. They kiss. And Shoji and Goldfish spend the night together at a small hotel. Later, Masako discovers lipstick on a her husband's handkerchief. She says nothing to him, and only alludes to the discovery to her mother. Soon, Shoji begins coming home later, and later, and finally, one night, Goldfish comes to the house of the Sugiyamas to confront Shoji. After this, Masako packs her bags and moves back in with a friend.

This is the story in the foreground. Behind it, there are several parallel stories being told simultaneously. The miserable life of the salaryman, the matter of fact way older couples cope with infidelity (a shrug of the shoulders and the proverbial rolling-pin applied to the peccant husband's head). There is also the embryo idea of democracy, on a local, personal level--choosing a path for yourself over falling into one prescribed by a closely structured society: abandoning office life to run a coffee shop, for instance. In some sense, these are the choices facing the generation charged with the task of rebuilding Japan. Will you exchange your wife for your mistress? Where do your loyalties lie? Can you be loyal to the past and to the future? Can you be loyal to yourself? Shoji makes peace with Goldfish with a handshake at his going away party.

Just prior to his wife's departure, Shoji is presented with a choice: to accept a three year transfer (with the prospect of a promotion) to a branch office in a distant depopulated prefecture, or stay in Tokyo. After his wife leaves, and a determined effort at reconciliation on his part, which Masako rejects, he decides to abandon Tokyo.

The final few scenes of the movie are set in the brick factory in the mountains where Shoji now works, and in the apartment he occupies in the poky little town surrounding it. Suggestively, enormous brick smoke stacks may be seen from every window, constantly belching smoke, working hard to rebuild Japan. It is a gritty place to live. But Shoji can walk home now, and he doesn't have to bother with trains. He may not enjoy the wild nightlife of Tokyo, but he does have time for reflection, and reading.

No life is without regrets, and none without its surprises, as Shoji finds, one afternoon, when he shuffles home from work to find one of his wife's dresses hanging on the wall. She has decided to join him. And it is here, in the ugly little factory town, surrounded by smokestacks, and mountains, they resolve to put their lives back together.

Like all of Ozu's films, this film is beautifully filmed and quietly understated. It is also very Japanese in the tension between social obligations, personal and public lives--ancient necessities that seem as distant and arcane to us today as private tears.

Never in the film did I doubt that Shoji and Masako deeply loved each other. But love is not always enough. And I was never sure that their marriage would survive until the final moment where Shoiji returns to his rented rooms in the mountains and we (both the viewer and Shoji) see the dress hanging on the wall.

Although they decide to begin rebuilding their lives in this new place, Ozu does not leave us with a rising crescendo of music signaling that all will turn out for the best. The last image we see is a departing train passing behind a black smoke belching chimney in the mountains. Above the chimney , soars a large white radiantly beautiful cloud. The future is remains obscure, of course. But for Masako and Shoji, we may have reason for hope.

If.

Apart from a quiet interlude of peace yesterday afternoon, in Jackson Heights, when the light in the room was perfect for photographing elements of Heaven, it has been a dreadfully disillusioning couple of days here in the Land of Iambs.

First, thanks to the Flaming Curmudgeon, we learn that much of Mankind--the best part of Mankind--is destined to die of throat cancer. Second, our Japanese language school has announced it is closing down its Japanese program--and we are about to be cast--ignorant of Kanji-- on to the streets of New York. And third, the dentist had to reschedule this afternoon's appointment with bib and ice-pick.

Well, maybe that last item doesn't quite come under the heading of disaster, but when you have successfully psyched yourself for a bout of torture, it is hard not to be disappointed when the ordeal is postponed.

The impulse to lose my head and run screaming back to cigarettes is strong, but somehow I am resisting the urge. I have started eating large quantities of Empire apples--with no ill effects.

This is not to say that the Imperial Apple of Knowledge may be consumed in large quantities without some startling consequences for the human body. (I refer the reader to the book of Genesis for a full explanation of the human predicament.) But these consequences are relatively benign in nature--rich in pathos and metrical regularity--like the best poetry. Never has indoor plumbing been greeted with such sighs of joy by an audience. Or relief...

As for me, I believe that as long as the toilet paper holds out, we can hold out--wherever we happen to find ourselves deposited on this globe. Contrary to the predictions of doom-mongers. Man is an inventive creature, and never to be underestimated in his will and his capacity to survive.

If we can keep our eyes firmly fixed on the Future, these moments of stress--second thoughts and self-doubt--environmental, economic, psychological, physical--will pass silkily out of our system like yesterday's apples. With hardly a scrap of thought or paper wasted.

This why I like the the poem, If, by Rudyard Kipling. And if I were poet laureate--now there is a scary thought--I would not screw around with subways. I would see If posted in gold lettering on the inside door of every privy and every public convenience in the Land.

In this day and age, where else can a gentleman find the time to properly concentrate on literature?

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!