A Fear of Aging hr619

Before pains from my fall at the communal spa have gone completely, I accidentally got my foot caught in the heavy sauna door the other day. I felt an electric shock in my foot that was swelling in an instant. The pain was so severe that I could hardly breathe. I dreaded to think that I had a broken bone. While thankfully it didn’t seem broken, I bruised again, the arch and both sides of my right foot this time. I have been living in pain so far, putting poultices on my foot and walking in large shoes with a loosened shoelace. What shocked me more than injuries was my recent careless behavior. I have seen myself become a blunderer and lose my edge. Simply, I felt old.
   Between the two injuries, there was another happening. I got a pin that commemorated Disneyland’s 60th anniversary when I visited there a few years ago. The limited-edition pin was sparkling and super cool. I loved it so much that I hadn’t worn it because I couldn’t imagine how devastated it might be if I dropped and lost it. I had displayed it on the shelf for years but one day, I summoned courage and put it on my sweater when I went out.
   As I had thought, my courage had worn out by the time I headed home. I just couldn’t bear the fear of dropping it any longer. I took it off and put it in my bag. A couple of days later, I noticed it was missing. I knew I had been a little drunk when I put it in my bag, but I couldn’t remember exactly where I put it. I rummaged the entire bag through pockets and pouches but it disappeared. I haven’t seen it since.
   It has lingered on my chest and I’ve launched a closet-wide search once in a while with no luck. Similar to the two accidents in the spa, my behavior shocked me more than a loss of the pin. I was upset over my mess incurred by a woeful lack of attention and my wretched state of concentration. I feared that my brain activity has begun to deteriorate.
   I confided my fear to my partner. While I conceded that I had become old, he dismissed it easily. According to him, I had been like this since he first met me in my teens. Because he has seen my blunders so many, such as slipping on the wet sidewalk and opening the KFC’s automatic doors by doing ‘Home Alone’ which startled the salesperson, or, tripping on one of the stairs and rolling all the way down to the platform of a train station, he thinks my mess is better than in my twenties. He said that I was much more careless, messier and older in my youth than now.
   His comment reminded me of a box of my scarves that I lost about six years ago. It was a cardboard box in which I stowed all my scarves that I had gotten through sales and outlets. The treasure box for me was kept in my closet. But one day, I found it missing. I had searched for years all around my apartment but couldn’t find it. The box was too big to be obscured by other stuff or to just disappear. I had developed numerous theories about the mystery during those years, for example, a thief exclusively for scarves took it, or my partner hid it out of spite, or it was sucked into a black hole of my apartment and gone to the galaxy far, far away. And then, it came out very unexpectedly, very casually. When I straightened up the closet, I put a label to each box. I mislabeled one box that was for scarves. All the while of my vigorous search, it had sit right in front of my eyes with a false label on it.
   Like my scarves, I hope that my pin also appears out of somewhere, someday. It might as well though, I would have really grown dim by then and forgotten about that I had it and lost it to begin with...

Back to Montreal hr558

A trip to California I took in May changed my mindset. When I found bargain fares online, I quickly decided to go to Montreal for the first time in seven years by using my emergency savings. I felt it was ridiculous to keep money in a bank although we are mortal and we don’t know when our time is up. I once lived in Montreal for about a year in total. I wanted to stay there, but I had to leave and come back to Japan as my money ran out. Since then, I have always hoped to live there again or at least to visit there as a tourist. What I like about Montreal are its beauty, a relaxing atmosphere and people there who seem to live to enjoy life rather than achieve success. I’m not sure if it’s because of their ways of life or the French-spoken region of Canada, but they are fashionable with excellent taste. For that combination of the city and the people, just walking down the street is fascinating enough. I took on a 12-hour flight to Toronto during which I happened to find ‘Tomorrowland’ among the in-flight movies, saw it twice and cried yet again. I went through immigration where an immigration officer gave me lengthy, irrelevant, even harassing questions including about my pin I was wearing on my jacket. It was a pin from ‘Tomorrowland’ and she almost made me begin to explain the whole movie story. The airport system in Toronto was somewhat odd. I was just in transit en route to Montreal, but I needed to pick up my luggage, carry to the distant counter and check it in all over again. Although I had already been through the security checkpoint before I got on board in Japan and had never left the airport, I had to do it again. I ended up gobbling a whole bottle of water in front of the security gate, which was exactly what I did on the last trip to California. After the security checkpoint, I saw an information screen for departure to make sure the gate number for my flight to Montreal. The flight was missing. There was no information about my flight, no cancelled, no delayed, no nothing. Among the long list of departing flights, my flight itself didn’t exist. I was close to panic. And I realized we don’t have anybody around for something like this nowadays. There is no information counter, airport workers don’t know about flights, and airline personnel at the gates don’t know other flights’ status. I had no one to ask. The only place I came up with as where the airline personnel with flight information were working was an executive lounge. I went up there and asked about my flight. She glanced at her computer display and said, ‘It’s on time.’ My flight did exist, but for some weird reason, the airport screen showed information only for selected flights. I had scurried around the terminal for this absurd system. I finally arrived at Montreal after a one-and-a-half-hour flight. A cab ran on the freeway at 75 miles per hour through the night and downtown Montreal appeared in 20 minutes. It was the same freeway on which a cab carried me in the dark before dawn seven years ago when I was leaving for Japan. I remember I wished upon the moon that I could return here someday, as I had no way to find the money to come back. The moon satisfied my wish, I supposed. I checked in a hotel and looked out of the window. Beneath the window was Sherbrooke Street where many people were still passing by. Above the town lights of the city, I saw the cross on the Mont-Royal that was lighted up and floated in the dark sky. It was a view that I felt like I was strayed into a dreamland. I thought my bold decision to spend money for this trip was right. It would be a big loss not to come to such a beautiful place like this when it exists. I literally fell down to bed to sleep since I was completely exhausted from the 24-hour trip from home to here and the turmoil at Toronto Airport. Next morning, I woke up early because of jet lag. The first thing I decided to do in Montreal wasn’t to get a rest in the hotel room or to take a walk in the city. It was going to casino to win back all the money I had spent there in the past…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.554

I hadn’t been to a movie theater for fifteen years. The film I saw at the theater fifteen years ago was Brad Pitt’s ‘Meet Joe Black’. It was surely a disappointing film but that wasn’t a reason why I stopped going to a theater. Back then, I lived in the States and movie theaters there were clean, modern and comfortable. They had also a reasonable matinee price. And I moved back to Japan where the movies from the States became the foreign ones. Movie theaters in Japan hadn’t been modernized yet with cramped stiff seats, and didn’t have a reduced price like a matinee. A ticket cost about $17 that was too expensive for me. On top of that, every foreign film had Japanese captions at the bottom of the screen, which obstructed each scene. Those theater circumstances in Japan were the reasons why I stopped going. But I like movies and had regularly watched them exclusively on the TV screen in my living room. My partner loves movies much more than I do. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday this year, his answer was a movie ‘Birdman’ at the theater. And for the first time in fifteen years, I got in the movie theater. While I was away from them, Japanese theaters had been transformed dramatically into modern, clean, gorgeous ones. The seats were large with padded backs and arms. The rows were placed so steeply that I no longer have trouble with someone’s head in front of me. They were just like US theaters and I loved them instantly. They also had a variety of tickets of a reduced price. Japanese captions were still there, but I managed to ignore them. ‘Birdman’ was such a good film by which I was moved so much, and I was completely awake to the charm of a movie theater. When I was leaving, I found a piece of information that said an advance ticket for a coming movie ‘Tomorrowland’ came with a pin. The film was what I had been interested in and I’m a pin collector. Since the advance ticket had a reduced price already, getting a pin with it would make the price for the film even lower. I purchased the ticket, got the pin, and set out for a trip to U.S. wearing the pin before I saw the movie. In Disney Resort, quite a few people approached me to talk about the pin. Most of them asked where I had gotten it. A cast member told me that the park had carried those and they had been sold out within a week. Those experiences made my expectations for the film higher. I saw it at the theater after I came back to Japan. I was deeply moved to tears that didn’t stop falling. It was so hard for me to mute my sobbing. The last time I cried this hard on the film was when I saw ‘Field of Dreams’. I remember that I wrung my T-shirt at the bathroom that was soaking wet with my tears. Only a couple of weeks after I saw ‘Tomorrowland’, I had an urge to see it again. As the nearest theater from my home had already ended showing it, I went to a distant theater. I was moved even more than the first time. I returned to that theater a few days later to see it for the third time. Then, as no theater around my home showed it any more, I took a trip to a theater in Tokyo by bullet train to see it for the fourth time. Considering the amount of money I had spent for ‘Tomorrowland’, I looked stupid myself. Still, I couldn’t stifle my urge and saw it for the fifth time at the same theater in Tokyo a few weeks later. A few more weeks later, I happened to know that the theater in Tokyo was the only one in Japan that still showed it, and would end that soon. If I missed this opportunity, I would never able to see it at the theater ever again. I felt I would be a fool if I didn’t see it one last time. I hopped on the bullet train yet again. The last week’s schedule for ‘Tomorrowland’ was moved to a late show slot, which meant a day trip was impossible for me because I couldn’t catch the last bullet train home. I stayed at a cheap hotel for the night to see it for the sixth time. My adventurous summer of ‘Tomorrowland’ had thus ended. It reminded me of my teenage time when I was hooked on going to concerts of my favorite band. I’ve made an advance purchase of a ‘Tomorrowland’ Blue-ray and DVD set at Amazon and now can’t wait for the release. One thing I don’t understand is that it wasn’t a mega hit…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.549

During my latest trip to U.S., I visited Disneyland Resort on Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. The reason that I chose this date was because it was the first day of Disneyland’s 60th anniversary celebration event and the parks opened for 24 hours. It was a special day that new shows and parades started and we could stay there for the whole 24 hours with a regular one-day ticket. Considering both two different parks were open for 24 hours, getting the ticket for hopping between both parks was a great money-saver rather than the ticket for each park on separate regularly-operated days. I felt lucky that I could save money by staying in the parks for 24 hours and got in one of the parks called California Adventure right after it opened for the day. I was going to get a commemorative pin and T-shirt that were limited and available exclusively on that day, but the long line for those items had already been formed and I gave up. I don’t like thrill rides but I had decided to try them on this visit because it would be even harder to try when I got older. Before I was headed for the thrill ride that featured the film ‘Cars’, I got on an easy tea-cup-style ride for small kids, as there was no waiting line. Although those who rode it were all small children and their parents, the ride had speed and wild moves, and was actually scary. It spun and jolted violently and made me scream while other kids were having fun. Now I wasn’t sure if I could ride the Cars attraction that was clearly labeled as a thrill ride. I’m timid but also cheap. I had to ride the main attraction not to waste money I had paid for the admission ticket. I mustered up all the courage I had and got on it. The former half was fun with showing the story of ‘Cars’, but the latter half was ferocious. The ride plunged into a race, zipping up and down at breakneck speed. I was scared to the maximum and just kept screaming with my eyes shut until the end. The photo was taken and showed at the exit, in which I gaped my mouth to the full on a contorted face while others were smiling. Needless to say, I didn’t purchase a copy. My throat ached from too much screaming and trembling didn’t stop. I learned I wasn’t cut out for a thrill ride after all and retracted my decision to experience all the thrill rides. After I was impressed by a superb show of ‘Aladdin’, I moved to Disneyland where I enjoyed seeing Darth Veider beaten by kids and rode a submarine. As the park was getting very crowded, I moved back to California Adventure to see a fountain show that premiered that evening. By then, the park’s congestion had become terrible. There were no empty benches and every shop and vendor cart had an extremely long line, not to mention hours-long lines for the attractions. I couldn’t get even a cup of coffee or popcorn unless I joined those eternal lines. I tried to get back to Disneyland after the fireworks display to avoid excessive congestion. At the exit, they told us that Disneyland had stopped admittance due to dangerous congestion inside. Also, once we got out of California Adventure, we couldn’t get back in unless we waited in a line at the entrance for at least two hours. I was stuck in the extremely crowded park that more people still continued to flood in. I couldn’t eat, drink, or even sit down. The only option was standing and waiting. I gave up staying for 24 hours and decided to go out. Instead of 24-hours fun, I exited the park earlier than its normal closing time. I didn’t get to see the new nighttime parade in Disneyland and hop between the parks as I had planned. I surely enjoyed seeing people having fun in the special festive atmosphere. But it didn’t go according to my plan that I would save money by getting in the both parks as much as I wanted. I still grumble about it now back in Japan, thinking that I should have been there on a normal day…

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…