Strung out and flattened in Inokashira Park. Renamed Inokashira Dark because of all the troubles. Pretty much homeless and nowhere to go. Me. Canned classical music plays on hidden speakers while the final rays of Golden Week fade out. Trail of worker ants on every surface, mirroring human sized traffic on the paths behind me.
The first earthquake I ever felt in Japan was a 5 min walk from here. A now-dead café where yet another girl named Yuka (the most popular name given to the last-born during the Taishomei) used to work, putting up with my policy of trying to stretch out a single drink purchase into a 3-4 hour stall for time. That marked the beginning of the Gerotan invasion, but not the ending, which Counter-ESPY still deems classified. Whatever else ended there in then-definitive terms has turned to a staunch policy of no-closure and denial, making burn victims of us all.
Government of Dark. Secret mission in the park. Everyone trying very hard to relax, but their hidden trauma and fear bubbles up to the surface in subtle configurations. “We see terrible things if we live too long” said some old dead person in a Gamera movie; the great truths of the universe spilling out in hastily written words made to fit out of synch lip movements. And these are mine.
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