Liberation from Money hr649

 As I recall it, a ticket vending machine first appeared in the early 80's at the nearest train station from my home in Japan where I grew up. There had been two ticket windows one of which was replaced with the machine. It was an exciting new gizmo especially for children that spewed out a train ticket by just pushing a button corresponded to the destination. The ticket gate was still operated by a clerk. The ticket examiner stood in an open booth with special clippers in his hand. Passengers would show the commuter pass to him, or have the ticket clipped by his clippers to get a hole or a nick on it. The examiner handled clippers skillfully, clipped tickets one after another so fast and rhythmically. When passengers broke off, he would turn clippers many times in his hand artfully as if he had been a juggler. Later on, the ticket booth was also replaced by the automatic ticket gate.
In those days, more and more vending machines had emerged here and there in Japan. They started with coffee and soft drinks, then cigarettes and beer. Soon pornographic magazines and condoms, hamburgers and noodle soup were all purchasable from the machine.
Nowadays, ordering at restaurants has been by a touch screen on the table, and check-out counters at the supermarket have been self-service registers. Either at a restaurant or a supermarket, I pay an incorrect total once in two or three visits when human servers and cashiers take care the payment and make a mistake. I know the odds because I look into the receipt very carefully right after the payment each and every time. Almost in every case I don't gain but overpay, which is a mystery, so that I claim at once. I understand I myself induce their mistakes by using every possible coupon and discount promotion in one payment that makes my total so complicated. When a machine handles service in place of a human, it's fast, convenient, clean and no mistakes. But on the other hand, no small talk or smiles are a little tasteless. Even so, machines may fit better for me since I often get annoyed with people too easily.
The day that machines take up most jobs of humans' might arrive sooner than expected. If it happened, the government would pay the people a basic income by taxing companies. Is it possible that people don't have to work? For the first time after the ancient times, humans would get liberated from money at long last. Everybody could live by doing what they want. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing that day come. I'm strongly hoping. And I believe in a miracle as such.

 

Gold Dust hr584

“Would you believe it if I said gold dust could fall on you?” I was asked out of nowhere by Kuri-chan who sat behind me in the classroom when I was a senior in high school. I had known her since junior high and we had chatted casually all the time. Although we had never belonged to the same group to hang around, the last year of high school made us closer as we were in the same class sitting next to each other. She abruptly asked this question with strange solemnity, looking set on confiding her big secret. I had never seen her like this. While I had no idea what she was implying with the question, I answered I would. I thought someone who was seeing the meteor shower was so excited that she or he felt that gold dust was showering on her or him. Or, someone having the happiest moment in the snow might feel the snow gold. Or, gold dust was simply an analogy to an inconceivable happening that made someone very happy. Those thoughts led my answer to yes, on which Kuri-chan hesitantly began to explain her question. She had visited frequently a certain shrine where gold dust fell on a person who believed. And she wanted me to come. I promptly asked her if it had ever fallen on her. She said it hadn’t because she hadn’t believed enough. Then I asked if she had ever seen it fall on anyone. Her reply was no and she added, “But there are people who have seen it.” My head got filled with doubt and questions. How often does it happen? How much does gold fall when it happens? By what size? How is it collected when it is sprinkled all over her or him? Are a broom and a dustpan provided near at hand? Don’t other people scramble for the fallen dust to steal it? How do you declare it as yours? And when you collect it safely, where should it be brought? Can it be cashed out? Does it fall at a time with an enough amount to make a living? I couldn’t subdue my curiosity, greed, and weird self-confidence. What if it fell on me today? Actual gold dust, not an analogy, could be possible when it comes to me. I followed Kuri-chan to the shrine after school, feeling as if I was going to a casino, although I sensed it was some sort of cult. The shrine was in the vast, luxurious premises. There were many people in the main hall, mostly middle-aged and elderly. They were intently praying, which seemed waiting for gold dust to me. A large framed portrait of the founder of the religious sect was hung on the front wall of the hall. Kuri-chan told me that gold dust fell on him first. I somehow refrained from asking her if he built this cult with the money from that gold dust. In my mind, though, I was thinking it would fall quite an amount. I sat face to face with Kuri-chan inside the hall and she put her hand above my forehead. She was going to pray for me and gold dust would fall on me if I believed. I was told to keep my eyes closed until the praying was over. It lasted for about five minutes and I believed hard that gold dust was falling on me now. “It’s done,” She said. I opened my eyes and looked for the dust around me. None. I asked her, “Didn’t only a bit fall?” She smiled wanly and said no, looking surprised that I thought it would happen to me on the first try. I was led to a small room for a new comer. A group of ten new comers was greeted by an unnaturally friendly middle-aged woman. She told the story about gold dust falling on the founder but didn’t explain how to cash it out to the end. When we were leaving, a woman who was an acquaintance of Kuri-chan ran toward us and said hello. She offered a ride to the bus stop. She casually asked where I lived. She said she knew the area well and would drive me home. I began to feel uncomfortable. I declined repeatedly, but she insisted strongly. The car finally stopped near my house and I said goodbye. To my surprise, she told me to let her meet my parents. I asked why and she said she wanted to tell the story about the gold dust to my parents. She gave me a ride to recruit. I was too stupid to know earlier. I said my parents were out for work, but she said she would wait. I said they would come home late because they were farmers, but she was adamant about waiting. I asked her to leave, but she wouldn’t let me out of the car. I felt scared as if I was kidnapped. Kuri-chan joined me and asked the woman to let me go home. With repeated angry begging from two of us, she finally gave in and released me. Next day at school, Kuri-chan apologized to me about how it had gone. “It should never be that way. Trust me. I didn’t know that woman was wicked”, she said regretfully. A few days later, she asked me to go to the shrine together again. I rejected. She asked, “Why? You said you believed gold dust would fall.” I still believed it but wasn’t interested in the cult. I thought if gold dust fell on me, it would happen anyway, with or without a cult. I’ve never joined a cult. But the fact remains that I believe in miracles…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.548

After I landed on Los Angeles, I took a bus to Anaheim from LAX. It was playing outdated rock music on the stereo and running on a patchy freeway that had eternal traffic. Out the window were rows of shabby houses along the freeway. Everything was so familiar that I felt as if I had been here last month, not ten years before. It seemed that I had just awoken from a long dream of ten years in Japan and actually never left here. I thought nothing changed after all, but realized I was all wrong about it afterward during my stay. The biggest change that surprised me most was people. Until ten years ago, I had lived or visited regularly here, and people weren’t nice. At a fancy beauty salon, when a receptionist was about to lead me to a seat, a manager stopped me and asked me to leave. I was told that the seats were full although the salon was apparently empty. At a deli, a salesperson ignored me and wouldn’t take my order. She took an order of a white man who was standing behind me in the line instead. I used to encounter unkind people with horrible attitudes and racism almost every day. For those experiences, I had braced myself for similar bad treatments on this trip. As it turned out, what awaited me was a miracle that I never had them at all during the whole trip this time. Every single person I met was nice and kind. When I took a local bus and was standing, a man offered his seat to me, saying his stop was next. I have a storage unit here and went to open it for the first time in ten years. Because I paid late a couple of years ago, the lock had been changed. I explained the matter at the office and the man with a Southern accent pleasantly came over to my unit. He didn’t mind extra work inflicted by me and cut the lock with a circular saw for free while burning his fingers a little, smiling and laughing all the way. I was wearing a pin of a movie ‘Tomorrowland’ during the trip, and seven or eight people who spotted it talked to me. Everybody was smiling and friendly. I’m not prettier or richer than I was when I lived here. While I remain the same, people’s attitudes toward me have dramatically changed. I wondered where those then-mean people had gone. They might as well have been abducted by aliens who in turn put down new nice people. As the trip went on, I had been getting more and more in high spirits. It had seemed silly that I spent months ahead of the trip worrying so many things. I was elated enough to get a lot of souvenirs. At the checkout, a salesperson, who needless to say was polite, said to me smiling, “It seems your card can’t be processed. Do you have a different card?” Everything in my eyes suddenly went black. My charge card was maxed out, which meant I completely used up my entire budget for the trip. I paid with my emergency-only credit card and my shopping spree came to an abrupt end. A new worry that I would manage to cut and contrive expenses when I returned home grasped at me. I felt an urge to be drunk…