Hidemi’s Rambling No.517

There’s an old Japanese custom called ‘Age of Thirteen Visit’. A child who reaches thirteen years old by the traditional system of age reckoning visits a specific local shrine to receive wisdom. The important event has one critical rule. The thirteen-year-old visitor should never look back until they pass through the shrine’s gate after the visit. If it happens, wisdom they’ve just gotten is returned. Every time a topic of the visit was brought up by some chance in my childhood, my mother would strictly instruct me not to look back when my visit came. It had become a repeated threat for me. After those years, I reached eleven years old, which is thirteen by the traditional system, and the day for the visit arrived. I was so tensed and nervous because of years of my mother’s threat. I got dressed up with kimono and my mother put a wig on my hair to make me look grown-up. While I was greedy enough to look forward to getting wisdom, I was anxious about looking back as much. From the moment we left home, my mother kept reminding me not to look back at the shrine. As the pressure had accumulated, a sense of panic had been built inside of me. By the time we prayed at the altar in the shrine and started leaving, I was panicky. On the spot about only several yards to the exit gate, I couldn’t stop myself and looked over my shoulder. I blundered away my once-in-a-lifetime visit. My mother made sure I didn’t look back when we passed the gate. I lied and said no. On our way home, we dropped by my aunt’s house. She noticed that I was wearing a wig. But when she pointed it out, my mother instantly denied it. I didn’t understand why she had to lie about such a small thing like a wig, but she just insisted it was my real hair. My aunt slipped beside me when we were about to leave and asked me if it was a wig. Although I said yes indifferently, she triumphantly uttered, “I knew it!” She sounded as if she had beaten me and I felt annoyed. I hated my mother’s totally unnecessary lie. And as for me, I went through a terrible teenage life with my own trifling lies. I believe that was because I had returned wisdom at the shrine on my Age of Thirteen Visit…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.516

A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard a loud thud. I thought something had fallen from the shelves, but the minute I dozed off, a thud woke me up again. This time, it sounded like my inner noise coming from my head. I opened my eyes and saw my room spinning vertically like a fun house at a fair. At first I thought it was a strong earthquake. I covered myself with my futon and waited it to stop. Then I noticed there was no noise of anything that should fall or be broken though the earthquake was strong enough to make my room upside down over and over. Besides, while my room was rolling, I hadn’t fallen from the bed. The room was in dead silence and I lay still. I realized it wasn’t an earthquake and removed the futon from my face. The room was still spinning around me violently and finally I understood I was having massive vertigo. Since I had hardly ever had vertigo in my life, fear engulfed me. I wondered if I was dying now and this was how it felt right before people died. I asked myself if I had bumped my head on something earlier or eaten something bad, but I had no idea. Long, terrifying minutes later, the spin stopped. I felt queasy and went to the bathroom to feel better. And then, the bathroom started spinning madly. I held on to the wall desperately not to roll around. When it stopped, fierce nausea hit me. I got back to my bed to lie down, and the incredible amount of sweat began to pour out of me. I had never sweated so much before. It was as if every pore on my skin had spewed sweat all at once with all their force. I saw my sweat dribble down onto the floor and was fully convinced that I was dying. The first thing that came to my mind was my new song I have been working on. I regretted not having finished it and thought I should have worked for it much faster. It was near completion but never saw the light. I even thought of booting up my computer and setting the song up so that my partner could play it back as it was completed so far. Instead, it occurred to me to leave a last note to him. I rummaged out a piece of paper and wrote down how and what time I died. I also tried to leave some messages for him, but nothing came out but fear. I just scribbled casual words and a weird doodle and went back to bed. Feeling extremely scared, I alternated between dozing off and waking up by vertigo until morning. I didn’t die. Dizziness subsided and I was alive. About a week ago, my partner told me that I might die soon because of my continuous lack of sleep. I’ve exercised at the gym in the morning everyday for over one year and regularly had to shorten my sleep for that. I believed that one-year exercising had made me physically strong and healthy, and that some lack of sleep wouldn’t do me any harm. I was wrong. I think my lack of sleep contributed that scary near-death experience. Or, I was simply under hypnosis of my partner’s reproach…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.515

Before I began to replace a wristwatch battery by myself, I used to visit a small mom-and-pop clock shop. It was diffidently situated in a nook of a supermarket. Although the supermarket had fairly many shoppers around, they just walked past the clock shop and seldom got in. The shop looked near deserted and I often saw an old couple who kept the shop nodding off over the counter. The old man was a typical bull-headed craftsman. He never pitched or chatted friendly to the customer, but worked on a watch intensely and precisely. All his tools looked as old as he himself was, having used for who knew how many years. Every watch of mine I brought there was a cheap one, and yet he treated them as if they were high-end watches. One of my wristwatches has a peculiar-shaped lid and when I brought it in for a battery change, he closed the lid with his own hands by taking ten minutes since his tool was too old to deal with the shape. When I brought in an apparently broken wristwatch, he poured a mysterious liquid inside the watch and dried it with the ceiling light by standing on the chair to reach up the light for ten minutes. The watch started ticking again magically and has been in top shape since then. I had never left the counter during his work because I liked to look at it so much. Everything he was doing to a watch attracted me immensely. I would even gaze at a simple battery change with fascination. He would use a wearable loupe, clean the lid with a tiny brush, open it, take out an old battery with tweezers, bring a new one from behind the curtain, engrave the date on the battery so that he could evaluate its duration on the next change, put it in, close the lid with his old tool and set the time with his wristwatch. Sometimes he found a tattered water-repellent rubber ring inside my watch but he never pressed me into buying a new one. He just picked up torn pieces with his tweezers and put them back in as they had been. His most strict instruction to keep watches was to separate them from appliances at least ten feet. It’s difficult in my small apartment but I still keep my watches as far from appliances as possible. He also told me repeatedly not to place a watch close to a cell phone. I’ve changed my wrist to wear a watch to my right, as I use a cell phone with my left hand. Eventually I moved too far away from the shop and couldn’t visit any more. And I started replacing a battery by myself. I mimic his battery change with much more primitive tools. Probably I liked to see his work because of his passion and earnestness for a watch. I wonder how he’s doing and miss him…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.514

For some reason, I like a wristwatch so much. I have a collection of inexpensive wristwatches. So far, I’ve got 25 of them, almost all of which cost under $15. As a cheap collector, the biggest drawback is a battery. Having the battery replaced at a clock shop costs about $10, which is sometimes more than the price of my wristwatch itself. To solve this problem, I started changing the battery by myself several years ago by getting some basic tools for that. A battery for a watch is available on the Internet only at around 40 cents and replacing it by myself makes a big difference. While I’ve replaced a watch battery regularly, I found it really enjoyable. It seems I also like tinkering about with a watch. There are various tools for a watch on the Internet such as ones to open and close a lid, ones to change a watch band, ones to adjust a length of a metal band and so on, and everything attracts me. Since my songs don’t sell, I even thought of early retirement and visualized myself opening my own clock shop. How nice it would be tinkering with watches all day, surrounded by many new watches. Better yet, how about a clock shop with a cafe in it? Customers would have coffee looking at a line of watches of my pick. But the watches would keep reminding the customer what time it is and the restless ticking of their second hands would make them rush. Besides, I’m a dropper and I would drop the watch to the floor all the time. New watches would be broken and the customer’s one would be compensated. In addition, I have a germ phobia and couldn’t stand touching someone’s belongings, which would make it impossible to replace a battery in a customer’s watch. Above all, people usually retire from a shopkeeper and then start music. My course would be the reverse of a common situation. Incidentally, I’m a little astigmatic and no good with tiny parts. I’d better restrict myself to a battery change of my own wristwatches…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.513

When I was a ninth-grader and a leader of the ninth-grade play team for the homecoming at school, I devoted myself to dramatization and direction in the run-up to the homecoming. The teacher in charge of our team praised my first dramatization. He said it was a good script and I had a talent. While I was motivated, other members of the team didn’t have a whit of interest or enthusiasm. They tried to make me decide everything. I took care of the set, the props and the costumes while teaching the lighting and acting. Above all, their acting was terrible. They were just reading their lines in a monotone. No matter how strenuously I explained, they simply couldn’t act. I acted every role for them and asked them to mimic me. As I needed to tell every member what to do and how to do, I felt like I was working with a bunch of robots in the team. At last, they started suggesting that I would be better off if I did everything in the play alone by myself, instead of giving them each and every single instruction. Maybe it was true, but there was one exception among the cast members. The girl whom I cast as a leading roll tackled her acting earnestly and seriously. She followed every instruction and advice from me. Other members were still sardonic for my casting of a non-pretty, unpopular girl as a leading role, but her acting got better and better. It seemed she felt an obligation to me for the casting. She even brought a present for me on my birthday although we had never been close and had hardly talked with each other at school until the play team got going. With her and my effort, our team successfully put on the play at the homecoming and it was much better than I had expected. This curriculum play was part of a school competition. The faculty would vote to decide the best play among the seventh, eighth, and ninth-grade team’s plays. It was a school’s tradition that a ninth-grade team won every year. As a ninth-grade team leader, I was sitting at the auditorium, preparing myself for receiving the prize out on the stage when the winner was announced. “The eighth-grade team!” the announcement filled the air. That year, for the very first time in the school history, the ninth-grade team didn’t win. In the joyful clamor of the eighth-graders, every member of our team shot me a reproachful glance. It was a perfect nightmare. Our team’s teacher later told me that a big set in the eighth-grade’s play had impressed the faculty. A large glittering slay with The Snow Queen on it appeared and that was the decisive factor in victory. Come to think of it, our team’s biggest set was an ordinary ping-pong table…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.512

Back in my schooldays, there were required curricula specifically for the homecoming event. Students must participate in either an exhibition, retail, or a play. I chose a play every homecoming when I was a junior high school student. When the homecoming’s preparation began in my ninth grade, my passion for the theater was at its peak since I had been regularly cast for a major role in the drama club at school. Other students knew that and I was appointed as the ninth-grade play team leader almost automatically. Everyone had no interest in a required curriculum and I had to put together a play by leading fifty unwilling, reluctant team members. From the first meeting, I encountered foreseeable difficulties. No one brought up any suggestion of what play we would show at the homecoming. When I uttered a Japanese classic novel, they unanimously shouted, “That’s it! That’ll be our play!” in order to finish the meeting quickly. Our play was decided like this and I dramatized the novel for the first time in my life. I had thought it would be difficult, but it was unexpectedly so much fun. I finished the script quite fast. And then, the casting. I had decided not to be cast in the play myself because I had been already cast in a play of the drama club for the homecoming. I didn’t want to appear in every play at school like an attention freak. I thought it was cool that I produced, dramatized and directed for this curriculum play. But in the team, everyone had neither experience nor skill in acting and they didn’t want to be cast. It was again left to my sole decision. While I was choosing some students who seemed to like appearing on the stage, a girl timidly raised her hand. She said she wanted to act. Although I finally got a volunteer, I hesitated to cast her for a moment. She was not pretty. Other students started giggling at her brave attempt. Instantly I came to myself and remembered the fact that I was also regarded as an ugly girl at school. My bad looks contributed to continuous typecasting as an old, wicked woman in drama club’s plays. As I had been weary of disadvantage of appearance, I cast her as a leading role. My decision made other students gape. Thus, I had trying three months for the play with totally amateur actors and backstage staff…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.511

Inside a cabinet in the old house where I grew up and spent much of my childhood, there was a beautiful music box. It stood out by its glamour and westernized style among other articles of Japanese folk art in the cabinet. My mother took it out once or twice a year for me, solemnly and carefully as a special occasion. She would wind up, open the lid slowly and let me listen to its heavenly melody. It was the first gift she received from my father when they were young. The tune was ‘Truimerai’ by Schumann. I asked my father what the title meant and he told me it meant ‘rosy happiness’ although I later learned it actually meant ‘dreaming’. I imagined that he felt rosy happiness when he was marrying her. Since the music box was expensive, my mother strictly forbade me to touch it. I wasn’t allowed to play it on my own. My parents were usually out for work and I was suffering from auto intoxication when I was little. I often fainted while I was playing alone at home and my grandmother had to call a doctor each time. In those days, my secret remedy was sneak open the cabinet and take out the music box. While my mother believed it was a once-or-twice-a-year occasion, I listened to it almost every day. Although by then I had already known that my parents got married by an arranged marriage for each family’s convenience and my mother especially married money, it helped me delude myself that my parents loved each other. By listening to the tune, I felt hopeful and had fewer blackouts from auto intoxication. When I lived in the city before moving in here, I had an idea that I would play ‘Truimerai’ on the piano for my parents on their wedding anniversary. I practiced playing it by listening to a Schumann’s CD. But my rare respectable attempt never materialized after all for a strange reason. Every time I practiced ‘Truimerai’, a cockroach appeared from somewhere as if it was a cue. It was impossible to continue practicing because I have a strong phobia about roaches…