Rice Clocks and Dreams and Waves
It's about three o'clock in the morning. I'd made a cup of tea and a bowl of rice. But I can't smell the scent of tea or rice. I can only smell the box of tissue in front of me. Somehow they smell like the scent of an ocean, palm trees and salt. Outside the waves must be eating the shore but there's no sound. I long to hear it but all I hear are the clocks in the room. There are two clocks here and I've always wondered why the need for two when there is supposed to be only one to which the world adheres to. They're not even in sync, one slightly ahead of the other - or behind, the difference I usually can't tell. Sometimes they sound like galloping hooves, one leg weaker than the other, and other times, like raindrops.
I can't remember why I woke up but I woke up and suddenly feel lonely. The bedroom is dark and my hands are dark. I look at my hands.
But she's here; "I'm here," she says. I ask her to hold me because I am adrift somewhere in the soundless waves outside, dancing in pirouette, and falling apart and soaring into the cosmos, into the stars, into the constellations, but she doesn't respond for a moment. Then I feel her arms wrap around my waist and she's naked on my back. I feel her hair on my neck like vines, like cloud, and I ask her if she had had any dreams. She says she does not know but she vaguely remembers a feeling of weightlessness until I woke her up. I'm sorry, I say. I give her a sip of my tea and kiss her forehead. She breathes out against my ear. I remember not to look at her collarbone. Her collarbone is kryptonic. She's a collarbone model.
"Remember when we first met," she says. I do remember. It's been a long while. She was the advertisement on page twenty three in the magazine and her collarbone was naked.
"Why did you have to be page twenty three? You deserve to be on the cover," I tell her.
She laughs. Then she stops. I eat the rice and the clocks are galloping, faster and faster. She turns to me but I can't see her that well in the dark. I can only smell the ocean in her hair.
"There's always something to be discovered you know. What's on the cover is what doesn't need to be seen - it's to keep the blind, blind."
"Blind, I'm pretty blind myself," I say.
"You only need the middle sight," she nods. She presses a finger to my forehead.
"What does your middle sight see?"
"You, out of time." She laughs. Then she gets up and with her, the sheets become her wedding gown. They prostrate themselves on the carpet. Her toes sink. "I smell rice," she says. "Can I have some?"
She pads over to the window and I make her a bowl of rice. But there's no sauce or egg or furikake or pickled plums or dried fish or nuts or ochazuke.
"That's okay," she says, "I just want white rice."
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Analysis and Explanation
This was written in Feb 2015, and beyond my earlier works, Espresso Love and its entire physical, social criticism, philosophical, psychological journey into spiritual awakening and the visionary, as well as my earlier short stories in this collection, I personally have felt my consciousness and my soul struggling and growing and developing. There are many things I've been coming to terms with, epiphanies, spiritual awakening, new forms of perception, dreams and vision - on a level much further than even what was in Espresso Love and I've been struggling to put to words the cosmic and the divine scale of things I can see stretching all before me. It's like trying to describe the universe or trying to describe God if you were in front of his full entity. It is just simply impossible and ineffable. This story is my first attempt to wander back into writing and trying to adapt to a new state of being or state of mind.
I will attempt to describe and explain some of the things in this piece, while the other stories may also carry weight, this may be too enigmatic or esoteric to leave it as it is. But remember this is simply my own interpretation or understanding. I think all interpretations and readings of pieces or literature in general are valid and subjective perception and ideas are very important for both the meaning of the piece and for the personal growth of the person reading it. So you do not have to try to adhere to my understanding or even understand what I'm saying.
There are several recurring themes and symbols, for example clocks, the ocean, white rice/tissue/bedsheets, middle sight/sight and so on. Obviously, the narrator had just woken up, so therefore keep in mind you may interpret this as dream or vision, a state between waking and sleeping, or seeing the dreamstate even though he is awake, or vice versa, maybe he is still asleep. He even makes allusion to the fact that he's still adrift and needs something to ground him to reality - the girl tries to help him with that. Even her hair is "like vines". (You could go off on a tangent with the vineyard but I think that might be quite a tangent).
There are two clocks for a reason. There's supposed to be one that the world adheres to as said. However, most people are unaware of the two clocks and he himself is confused at the idea of the two. The first one, the world adheres to it, which is in a sense the idea of "worldly" or the physical world we see around. In visionary terms we call this the horizontal axis, the one of physical matter, history, events, politics, sustenance, money, law, interpersonal interaction, human construct, anything tactile or possible to be perceived. Of course I start here with Espresso Love - with the capitalist system and its social concerns and issues. Aside from the horizontal axis we have the vertical axis, which is more than physical, because we are not just physical beings, but spiritual beings, we have a soul, we have consciousness, etc. It starts off with basics of emotions, energy, philosophy, psychology, imagination, creativity, abstract ideals and universal concepts, and archetypes, dreams, and onwards through to the spiritual, faith, mysticism, and finally, the ultimate destination of the Divine. We have to also note that most religions, even some poetry, fiction, works of imagination and other great feats are human constructs and human attempts at reaching this vertical axis and going beyond the physical world - but when people rely on simple words and terms and put things into labels, they force it back down to the horizontal axis and make it a limited distorted corrupt creation of man. We look at the physical cathedrals or megachurches and its rules and legalistic codes of modern day Christianity and compare it with the original early Church, the foundation of Jesus on the cross and people coming together for spiritual revival, awakening to a different life and experience with God, or Buddhist statues and prayer beads and massive temples and compare it to the original founding philosophies of spiritual enlightenment and moving beyond physical desire and corruption, and you realize that this is an example of what I mean. Every human being either seeks higher consciousness because our soul instinctively seeks it, unconsciously, or most of us try to blind ourselves with the material world and refuse to think about it. We are bound by subjective ideas and perception and limited by human constructs all around. We must rise above all constructs - if possible, though we may never be able to fully. Plato has the theory that the more abstract you go, the more universal and objectively true it is. For example, Northrop Frye saying that all literature or all of mankind at its root tells the story and asks the question of identity: "Who Am I?" (It is said there is nothing that could prove otherwise, all stories contain this question and all human beings is in a perpetual search for identity). On the other hand, simply saying this all (the vertical) exists and is how the world works beyond our ability to comprehend it (the inability or the ignorance of it is the result of so much dissatisfaction with the world and the many issues of the world) would be the most objective "truth" (if you prefer to debate about whether this is true or not, I can provide possibly shocking reasons that have been right there all along why this is true). But to continue with the example, relying on religious constructs and labels and denominations would limit it into subjectivity and forcing a huge picture into a tiny fragment or glimpse of the full cosmos. And in this example, that would be a reason for the many issues people have with religion or the clashes that bubble from such construct. There are many such constructs in the world that people simply take as true, but it is not shared or universal. These are all transient like material wealth, like a cookie on a table. Even the cookie on the table or a tree is perceived and conceived. If no one was there to see it, it simply would not even "truly" "exist" in consciousness. If I say a cookie on a table, each person may have a different idea of what kind of cookie, what it looks like and so forth. Even the word "cookie" is subjective because it is a constructed language - in this case, English, which has etymology of many various roots - and that word wouldn't make any sense to someone from a different language background.
You can think about it in simpler terms this way: we live as third dimensional beings (X, Y, Z, L x W x H) and in a third dimensional world, and all of the third dimensional world is quite transient and subjective because we can physically perceive it. But we have to realize there is much more than meets the eye and much more beyond what we can comprehend or experience with our five senses. We have glimpses of the fourth dimension ("time" + X,Y,Z coordinates or beyond). Our fourth dimensional sparks of consciousness, heart, soul etc. which is beyond the limit of "time" - eternal elements - and we are in a sense moving up towards the fourth dimension towards God. Once we reach the highest capable point as human beings, we are in a new sense of perception and consciousness, where I feel I am - connected to the Divine and seeing things from beyond subjective construct and being "out of body" so to speak. But it is limited for we still have physical bodies and are trapped here - at least until we die.
Without getting too much into this, going back to the story, the second clock is the current and flow of "eternity" or the cosmos, or the divine, or the spiritual, or visionary - the vertical axis. It also flows with its own power and own current and momentum. The "middle sight" otherwise known as the "third eye" in many religions and philosophies, is what is "needed" to see this sort of level of existence or this level of the universe. It simply means a new form of perception or consciousness, or just first of all, awareness of all this. For the narrator, he cannot smell the rice or tea, but can smell the world through an irrational box of tissue as a nod to this different level of thinking. The girl comments that he is "out of time", which may be that he's out of time with the world's clock or the visionary clock, or maybe just with her (out of sync). (Note, that they have known each other for a "long while" and they have slightly different ideas about the magazine). On the other hand, maybe he is out of time to live or do something in some way. There is the mention of hands and arms in the story, which is a reference to being a part of the clock. Maybe they are the two clocks themselves. (Note the Beat Movement, and the idea that there is a pulse or rhythm or current that some can hear and tap into and become a part of.)
The girl herself is meant to be not entirely physical. He is still in semi-dream state or visionary perception, so it is arguable whether she is actually real or not. This sort of theme often occurs in my writing, Espresso Love very much included. Her hair is like cloud, she seems to blend into his consciousness and into the environment. She seems to be like a catalyst or the spiritual guide. She appears on page twenty three and mentions that most of the world is blind - "to keep the blind, blind". He of course managed to "meet" her, therefore awakened to a deeper meaning of life and perception. He is not just limited by looking at the cover as most might do. Why collarbone? I don't quite know myself, but it is a start to my next experimental novel and you will see this character take her form (or lack of form) there. Collarbone can symbolize a lot of things, but that's up to your imagination. I can say that it is definitely a unique and extremely specific part of the body, that grounds things to "reality".
Back to symbolism, we have the smell of the ocean and various mentions of such a concept. Again, the Oceanic is something that reoccurs in my work a lot (of course particularly in Espresso Love). This is the cosmic, the cosmos, the universe, but also the Collective ( Espresso Love readers know what I'm talking about) - the whole collective unconsciousness, the universal, all of human wisdom and humanity, imagination, archetypes, etc the vertical axis I mentioned before that we are all connected to, with or without our awareness. (For example, some say deja vu is a form of someone else experiencing something before - or shared dreams or just shared dream-patterns, shared ideas and instinct and intuition, or same symbols or archetypes or human nature that seem to be built right into all of human existence). So this oceanic can come to represent many things and with his perception on that level, he is swimming in it, but also lost, and finds it a struggle to be grounded to reality.
The white rice and the whiteness of various things contrasting the darkness may bring to mind a lot of ideas. But on a more relevant approach, the white rice as she just wants the white rice, maybe a simple thing that is necessary to stay grounded to reality and not float, adrift in the Oceanic. It is up to interpretation why the clocks gallop faster when he eats the rice, I prefer not to put specific boxes on something that I myself cannot be certain about. Lastly, the whiteness of the wedding gown made of the bedsheets is an interesting point as that brings to mind the bride of Christ being the Church, or just the symbolism of being unified and united. The man and the woman unified on a deeper spiritual level. Sex in my work is much like writers like Murakami, a much deeper communion of two souls, on the spiritual level, and something is exchanged spiritually. This is definitely how it can be viewed if you think about our souls being on the fourth dimension and what we cannot actually see physically - so in the vertical realm, our souls connect with one another.
In any case, I would like to go deeper but I think that would be too much (as if this isn't too much). Important thing to note is, the struggle within me is how to express or write about what exactly the "middle sight" sees. She replies, "You, out of time." Maybe she is speaking to the reader or the writer, but nevertheless, we don't get what it is exactly that they see on the cosmic level, on the vertical level. That is what I cannot express yet, and maybe it is only more possible through poetry like that of the greats such as Rimbaud, Blake, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and so on, who were "on to something". There were also many philosophers who attempted... but as humans, we all ultimately fail to describe the "fourth dimension", because we still trapped here at the moment. So all this craziness, is only dancing around the edge of it, beating around the bush, being peripheral. The core has not be conquered yet - nor is it possible.