Now You Are...

(Recently discovered entry from a diary note-book I had kept during my one-year-stay in Tokyo)

16th of January 2006, Tokyo.

A few days before leaving Tokyo to come to  Montreal for the holidays, I had flashes of hyper conscious awareness of myself being in one place and yet knowing, in detail, all about another place at the same moment in time. I was walking up the metal stairs to my apartment in Tokyo while being keenly aware of the particular sound my footsteps made. At the top of the stairs, I turned to face my front door, which is flimsy, and small with the grey residue of an old sticker interrupting its uniform beige surface.

At this point in my routine of entering my apartment, I glance at the tranquil residential scenery below. I can see a bit of the neighboring houses' rooftops; their glazed semi-opaque windows are shut, a futon may be hung out to air if it's a sunny day. The yard of the house in which I reside has a black aluminum fence with a swinging door. There is no grass, only concrete. The narrow alley parallel to the house is an earthy pathway of a variety of shrubs, weeds and small trees. I take in all these details and think about the details I've taken in thousands of times over when doing the same routine back in front of my Montreal apartment. The smell and feel of all the textures particular to that space flood my senses and, for an instant, I'm stranded in an in-between-state.

Then it leaves me and I'm animated again, I'm fully in one place, Tokyo, and I unlock the door and go in.

Later, as the day of departure nears, I would find myself thinking: "Now you're here sitting on a local train in Tokyo, staring at that girl's pointy golden shoes, but in less than a day you will be the same person sitting in an airplane thousands of feet  in the air hurtling through the sky as well as time." The din of an airplane cabin fills my ears and I tell myself: "Remember this moment, you are on a train in Tokyo listening to the sound of an airplane cabin you will ride in tomorrow."

Then, like some strange, indecent magic zipper had been pulled down to peel the reality of the train in Tokyo off of the reality of the airplane bound for Montreal, I blink and I'm sitting in seat 29A on Flight 04 Air Canada. I look out the window and see a bright white button against an absolute blankness.
The moon is reflected on the airplane's wing.
The fact that its image is so sharp, stark and simple is frightening and I long to see some clouds around it but they are all far below me in a sleepy, lavender-blue blanket.

As I look on, I recall what I had told myself a day earlier: " Remember this moment, you are on a plane thousands of feet in the air hurtling through the sky, when only less than a day ago, you were on a train in Tokyo feeling over-heated because of the heating system embedded under the seats, while scrutinizing the pointy sparkling-gold shoes of the girl standing in front of you."

After this thought, I remembered all that took place in between then and now, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

It's as if we must behave like Hansel and Gretel, leaving little crumbs of reminders to mark the path we took through time so as to be able to retrace our steps in memory. The alternative would be to be lost always, in a stark, sharply defined reality with no clouds to soften the experience.