Dawn

Last Monday morning I sat on a bench at the train station as the sun rose. I had woken up fifty minutes earlier than I needed to, having remembered the train as being at 6:06 rather than 6:56. And so I had walked down the empty street, the sky still pitch black, to find the station lit and warm but the ticket window still closed. It was the first time I can consciously remember when I have been awake and out in the world before dawn having woken up for the day. By the time the train arrived, the sky was a hazy gray-blue.

Perhaps there's something inherently uplifting about experiencing firsthand the transition from night to day.

In any case, for the three hours and seven minutes of that train ride, I felt bathed in a sort of primal happiness. The sun peaking from behind the mountains reflected in the mist that still hovered along the ground. We sped by little villages with those characteristic curved roofs that never fail to remind me of sunlight on rippling water, and by stores with signs written in ridiculous English. I giggled for no reason: at the cute train worker who collected my tickets, who would stand formally at the end of the car and bow before heading down the aisle each time; at the woman who came by with a car offering boxed lunches, chocolate, fruit juice, coffee, and beer; at the college students sitting across the aisle from me, one of whom was working on English homework; at the middle-aged woman who wore a shockingly colorful striped sweater and sat gossiping with friends a few seats away from me; at the glimpses out the window of the castle in Himeji. I didn't feel like reading my book. I didn't feel like taking myself out of each tiny moment. I didn't even especially daydream. Somehow I'd slipped into a state where boredom didn't exist, where the seconds strung together at exactly the right pace, and all I wanted was to take them in.

The strange euphoria didn't fade when I reached Sannomiya. I knew exactly what I wanted and set out on a quest to find it: the Starbucks we'd stopped at the one other time I was briefly in Kobe. Setting out toward what seemed from a map to be the main shopping district, I had a beautiful instant of suddenly knowing exactly where I was. And yes -- there was the street I should turn down. And yes -- there was the Starbucks, right on the corner I knew it would be on. I ordered a Cafe Mocha. Behind me in line were two American men talking about psychiatry, and I swear we saw them the first time we were at that Starbucks as well. I sat sipping the mocha and eating a warm cinnamon roll, reading my book and listening to the phonemes of English floating to me from the table where the two men sat, and from the Christmas music playing over the speakers.

How lovely, I thought to myself, to feel so thrilled to find a real city, to immerse myself in the bustle and anonymity, in the vague half-illusion of sitting in a Starbucks in America, to let myself reconnect with that familiarity, to be reassured that I am American and America exists, it's out there, it's not just somewhere I read about on the internet...to let myself be submerged in that pleasure and know, at the same time, how happy, how relieved I would be to return to Kasumi, where everyone I pass on the street grins at me and crowds of students make their mouths into perfect round O's when they catch sight of me and say "Oooh, Reh-bek-ka?? Hellooo!!" The perfect sort of trip, I reflected rather sappily, when there's something so satisfying about both being away and coming back.

Among the Christmas mix that played with Happy Xmas (War is Over). I stopped reading and closed my eyes, just listening.

Really the whole trip was perfect. Walking around old neighborhoods of Kobe discussing Thick as a Brick, stumbling upon perpetual motion machines (just lying in trash cans! ...well okay, on shelves in a little shop, but whatever), drinking 抹茶ミルク in a tiny nautical-themed bar with an adorable bartender and a mylar Elmo balloon, singing Honey Blade at karaoke, the onsen at the capsule hotel...and then of course Kyoto and the perfect garden we found, which there is no point talking about with words -- go look at my pictures on facebook if you haven't already. And all of this coming on the heels of a lovely weekend of 文化祭, from Akinobu and some of his friends very sweetly taking on the task of chatting with me and helping me find things to do to help Saturday afternoon, to almost crying at the second-years' play about the earthquake in Kobe, to the third-year girls invading my house after it was over and watching Youtube videos on my computer and squealing 「かっっこういいい!!」...

But of those four amazing days, what I want to capture and remember in this post is that feeling from the train Monday morning. I don't think there's any way to describe it quite right, and I don't think there's any way to create that feeling for yourself on purpose. But it was beautiful. And perhaps sometime in the future when I've forgotten, I'll be skimming through my blog and find this post, and I'll be reminded.

I don't want to post lyrics, because what I really want to post is Elegy, which has no lyrics. So here:

Elegy