Cruising and Night Scenes
My daily walks take me into different neighborhoods throughout Yokohama. I prefer walking in the back streets where older dilapidated houses sit among high end homes and condominiums. The houses are ready for demolition. I can hear the faint voices of former homeowners. But I move on, not wanting to eavesdrop on family memories.
At night my glasses fog up and I have difficulty focusing. What I see through the fogged up lenses resemble scenes from vintage horror films from the 1920s and 30s.
One early overcast and dreary morning, I walked past Buddhist temple. Usually, I sit on a bench in the temple ground and clear the clutter from my mind. But on that morning, the atmosphere was filled with melancholy. I pushed on to my next destination.
The rojin club in my neighborhood planned a cruise around Yokohama Bay. As the ship sailed away from the Akarenga harbor for the hour-long cruise around the bay, I was imagining I was leaving my cares and worries on the dock. But no, they would be waiting for me when the shop docked again
The starboard hand lateral red buoy on the right side of the ship indicates direction and hazards. How often have I ignored the port and starboard lateral buoys I passed by in my life? No wonder my charted courses ended in disastrous shipwrecks.
So many songs about bridges emphasize the word over. Cross over the bridge, a big hit by both Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney (remember them?), Simon and Garfunkle’s Bridge over Trouble Waters. But I could find only one song with the word under. The group Red Hot Chili Peppers sang Under the Bridge. Surely there must be other songs featuring under the bridge.
I wonder how much energy the solitary windmill is generating. So valiant. So triumphant. So quixotic. And so alone. Or maybe the windmill is symbolic of a tribal guilty conscience. Are we doing enough?
Nothing like inserting a photograph of myself in photographs. You’d think I’d get enough of my image in the bathroom mirror in the morning as I admire my Grecian facial features after a shave. I entitle this gem A Ticket to Nowhere.”
Thank God, for Mother Nature. She produces beauty without a writer’s insistence of inserting his ego into the photos. Damn! No place for me to insinuate myself.
