Nights In TOKYO (A Travel Memoir)

Cosmo Clock 21

Here is an introduction with a scene quite resonant to me, and will be resonant to readers of my novel, Espresso Love. Attached is a photo from the night and a more recent acoustic cover of a sentimental song. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

 "These kinds of evenings, sitting here like this, really get you thinking huh?"

I sip from my can of beer and say nothing.

"Everything converges into one point - past, present, maybe even the future."

We stare off into the distance.

"Gets you thinking." He says again.

There's the three of us. We're sitting on a bench in a park in Yokohama, across the harbour from these far off lights almost as if it were some abandoned alien space ship, in a multicoloured gyroscopic vortex, flashing, polarities collapsing and then erupting from the center, again and again, lasers and all, haphazardly arranged like the spokes of an old bicycle wheel. Just a few meters away, I can hear the sound of waves licking lazily against the pier. I can't see anything out there since it's so dark. But every now and then I catch little specks of yellow crumbs on the surface, scattered and fragmented, a reflection of the dim lamps and the slumbering cruise ship nearby. They are always on the move, playing like sprites dancing.

"What time is it?"

"One of the largest clocks in the world is in front of you and you're asking?"

"My eyesight is terrible."

"Get new glasses," the other says. 

"My eyes are just bad, it's got issues no glasses can fix."

"It's eight forty six." 

Now I realize it does say 20:46 in the middle. The pulsing pigments must have diffused the digits. If I concentrate harder, I can see it.

This is the first time I have seen Cosmo Clock 21. It's a little sad to see it from such a distance, at the size of a child's toy wheel, but too close, and it may not look like much at all. Yet, I have to wonder how it would feel from up top, at the pinnacle of the Ferris wheel, a part of the colossal clock, a part of time itself and have the world stretch out, glow-in-the-dark stickers beneath your fingertips.

We are time itself. 

"You know, it's these kind of nights when I wonder how we came to be." I say.

"Like from your mother's womb?"

"No, I mean, how on earth did we meet one another, for one. How on earth did we end up in Japan. How did we become the people we are now."

"I'm getting another beer." One of us stands up. He saunters to the vending machine and I hear the distinct sound of rattling yen coins.

"It used to be just a dream," he says when he comes back. "A long standing fantasy. Like man dreaming of space travel, that kind of dream."

"And apparently space travel became reality."

"A form of reality." 

"We are in our own form of reality now."

"Or a reality show," he laughs.

Then he becomes more serious, "step by step, things fall into place, and little by little, we end up somewhere else. Then we wonder how we got there. And then it all feels a bit lonely. We are here, but we aren't here." 

We listen to the waves rocking the ship. It swells with the tide. I breathe in the cold air, stained with salt.

"I can hear the sound of her guitar."