I was nervous, because it seemed a little dangerous. But I’m someone who lives behind the camera, tucked away from the world of lights and sounds in a small, dark, and totally empty pocket. Nothing can harm me, because I don’t brush up against anything in the world, and nothing in the world can touch me. Telling myself that allowed me to relax and walk out into the woods with confidence.
Once there, I was immediately bathed in the fresh green smell wafting down from the trees that spoke in inaudible whispers, words, and sighs. Those sighs were filled with oxygen, so when I breathed deeply, it felt like each cell in my body was rejuvenated and the parched thin outer layers of old skin disappeared.
I burned. That old skin had been like reels of film that shielded my little pocket from the world outside. Without those reels, I thought a poisonous bug or lizard would bite me before long. And sure enough, a wasp or hornet was hanging around in the sunlight, and a winged bug I didn’t recognize grazed my ear, leaving behind a whirring sound in its wake. Billows of dark mist were skirting over the horizon right at me, and I thought they were probably mosquito-infested. A single white spot jutting out of the red earth was a mushroom. I had to worry about whether a fat mountain leech the size of a penis would fall on me from overhead. And the scariest part was when I stepped on dry leaves and it sounded like someone was following and steadily gaining on me.
I made a speedy and desperate getaway to the interior.
My feet fell into something soft and cool. I let out a cry. When I looked down, I saw that my feet were covered in mud. For a moment, I thought, “Shit, I’m standing in a swampy sink hole,” but it was only a puddle where some water dripping off the crags had collected. The mossy crags were moist and very green. It was almost like green water oozed out of the rocks themselves. I made my way up to the top of the crags to investigate. The water was bubbling out of a crevice in the ground that was surrounded by trees and sending a thin stream out over the crags to keep them moist. I was thirsty, but the water wasn’t deep enough to scoop up in my hands. So, I went back down below the crags, where I could finally cup my hands to catch a trickle and quench my thirst. The cool freshness of the water revived me. Water that bubbles up through tree roots must carry tree essences, so I think there was probably as much oxygen in the water as there was in the trees’ sighs.
I shed several layers of old skin and was revived many times over. I returned to the lodge in good spirits. Of course, film reels aren’t soft or supple, so they don’t vanish so easily. I was like an onion wrapped in layer upon layer. No matter how many layers you peeled off me, no inner form would be revealed, just more layers and then nothing. That’s because I’m like the blank space where whatever is caught on a reel of film is recorded and imprinted. Fresh water in the palm of my hand, the sigh after I licked the water off my lips, the shining green moss, the green day, the sunlight, the sunbathing wasp, the sound of the bug’s wings, birds’ chirping, my yelp, the stirring of the wind, and everything else is stored on a disc. That recording came in handy later.
It was back when the search for water became an issue. Electricity made its way up to the mountain lodge, but we had to rely on our own nearby well for water. There were signs that the old well might be running dry, so we had to ferret out another water source.
I told everyone about the water I’d found bubbling out from the crags and showed them the footage. I took Mokuren and an expert there so they could survey the location and water quality. The expert held a rod, which looked like a slick crape myrtle branch, against the ground and then gave us the go-ahead. Apparently that rod was somehow a listening device, and the expert heard water running.
First we had to dig a hole at the base of the crag to serve as a reservoir. After plenty of water had collected, we released some goldfish to keep bugs from breeding and carved out a path for a stream to carry water away from one part of the pool. That little channel runs up to the lodge, where we built another little well in the garden for storing the water that gets pumped up through a purification system. We also made a back-channel for when we get a lot of rain.
In those days, we just called the reservoir “the spring,” and it was still protected by a thick grove of trees. But year in and year out, the number of days when the hot yellow sand-filled winds blew increased, battering down the trees until it looked like a forest fire had cleared the woods, and yellow sand settled into the loamy red soil, changing it into a desert. The old trees by the spring didn’t have the strength to resist either, and they, too, were destroyed. The only thing standing guard by the spring now is a lifeless old trunk. To keep the water flow from evaporating quickly, we ran it along the sides of the crags. That killed the moss, which was left standing as earthy yellow fuzz. The water used to be resplendent in obsidian underneath the shade of trees, but now the yellow sand at the bottom interacts with sunlight, and the surface glistens in gold.
The water has continued to flow from the spring, so the lives of everyone on Ascension Pass have been granted an extension. With precious little protective cover from the hot yellow sand storms, the flora died though, and the area was transformed into a wide-open field devoid of life. And still, so much of these islands’ population clings to dusty plains of concrete and sand. The introduction of drought-tolerant plant life played a role in mitigating the water shortage. But whenever the short rainy period comes, there is no escape from the floods produced by the onslaught of consecutive days of heavy rain and run-off from the surrounding mountains. Each year, the damage gets more extensive, but the residents don’t move, because those floodwaters are also their lifeline. The special characteristics of each of the four seasons became as indistinct as if they’d donned a Noh mask. All we have now are a cold dry season, a hot dry season, and a brief rainy season. We’ve lost the cyclical sense that a year with four seasons might come again, and instead it feels like we are progressing along a single desolate path, where sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s cold, and sometimes a squall hits.
I later asked Mokuren if she had checked into water sources when she first bought the lodge because she had a premonition of what would happen. Without so much as cracking a smile or pausing from pulling up clumps of weeds, she asked, “Are you implying it was my idea for us to be confined to this reservation?” That shut me up. “It just worked out like this by chance. That’s all. Actually, it’s a freak of chance that we are alive at all.”
From her lips to the world below, where it was all the rage to say “the self-reliant who have survived are the chosen ones.” According to those who have taken this motto for our times to heart, we are all corralled here.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. It was already summer by the time we finished making the reservoir. We dug down about two meters, and water started spurting out all over the place, which is how we learned there really were several underground water veins in our area. We sealed the base with a sturdy layer of clay, covered that with pebbles, and then inlayed large rocks along the walls. The water level rose steadily, which meant the lodgers had to work quickly and ably. I devoted all my time to the project for days on end. It was so hot that people made dumb jokes about how our sweat alone would fill the reservoir.
It turned out to be an astonishingly large reservoir, and it must have taken about two weeks for the whole thing to fill up with water. During that time, we started construction on the channel stream beds. We were small in number and proceeded with the work carefully. I paced myself, taking time off for walks and to check out the mountains.
As I got increasingly used to the eco-system’s variety of bugs, birds, and lizards, I grew fascinated with the subtlest of changes in the woods. Through a change in the smell of the dampness or a bird’s call, I could sense that it would rain even if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I could tell autumn had arrived even if it was still hot. If the wind blew a certain way, the sound of the whole forest would change. And there were all sorts of rhythms and sounds: the ruffling of the leaves, the chafing and cr
eaking of tree limbs, the fierce whistling through the gaps between trees, the warbles and cries of birds, the bugle calls of the cicadas, the bell tones of the evening bugs, the pattering of raindrops on leaves from pianissimo to a thundering forte. One could never get tired of listening to this soft and eternal recital. If I could have absorbed sustenance through my fingernails and skin the way leaves and branches do, I would have stayed there forever. I was so enchanted, and I caught what I could on film. I’m reminded of something Miko said. “Your films are all about you. They’re completely personal diaries and too private. It’s like you’ll end up losing yourself. If you get to that point, you’ll be reborn somewhere where your films can start representing something.”
I feel like now I can understand what he meant by that. While filming, I’m like a slightly funky tree planted in the forest. It’s a little different from the anonymity I experienced while becoming one with my camera in the city. Back then I lost myself. But I didn’t disappear in the forest. I became a part of it. The forest also accepted me and was changed ever so slightly by my presence. Under the awning of trees, fish darted around the overflowing waters of the new obsidian spring faster than ever. I also felt tempted by the desire to melt into the spring – like I’d wanted to become just another tree in the forest.
I suppose I’ve always wanted to be something else. I was my skin, a reflective cocoa powder-colored screen. Maybe that’s why I adopted Miko’s ideas as my own so easily.
Miko wasn’t like Inoue. Inoue was like me, nothing without something to reflect, just an empty screen. A blank sheet of paper until someone writes something on it. We took our cameras into every nook and cranny of these islands because we enjoyed being able to capture detailed bits of light and sound. However, we didn’t express interest in one another. If we had, we would’ve confronted the awkwardness of having to look at the reality we tried to avoid, the reality you can see in “Mixed Cameras,” the reality that there was nothing between us.
While sharing my sense of being a broadcast receiver, Miko was, at the same time, trying to be our projector. When he tried to face the screen and release light and sound, he struggled.
For example, we went out filming, and he would not stop trying to get me to talk about myself while I ran the camera. He wouldn’t let up, questioning me about memories of my dad and what I thought of my mom, giving me the third degree to try and expose something authentic about me while I was seeing myself as the camera. I couldn’t keep filming the way I liked, and he wouldn’t let me stay hidden behind the camera. The result was footage with major discrepancies between the words and images. The images took on a strangely painful meaning because of my speech. Actually, the truth is the footage itself had no meaning. The story of my life just made it seem like it did.
That was a terrible experience. Why? Because if you dress up something that is only light and sound in meaning and stories, there’s bound to be a lie in there somewhere.
“Iroha, you’re always saying that anything you get on film is all sound and light, that there’s no difference between people and things, and you’re right about that. But that sound and light take on new meaning when they’re transmitted through the camera. Saying you feel like you’ll disappear if you’re captured fully on film is a cop-out. After all, if you are holding the camera, your presence gets recorded too, even if only in the slightest noise or shadow. To break it down further, let’s say your body temperature makes the area warmer. That’s going to trigger a change in the color of the surroundings. Or what if you were filming in a rural village somewhere in Africa? It’s not like the people there could be oblivious to you or your camera.”
“We’ve already been through this. Whether it’s a building in Shinjuku, a giraffe in Africa, or a meadow, once it’s filmed, it’s digitally transformed into a recording signal.”
“Okay, so even if you think you yourself and a building are just recording signals, that doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings. The indifference you feel when you think you disappear and are merely a recording signal is still a kind of feeling, and your films will never ring true until you take responsibility for that as a part of this world. I couldn’t care less when it comes to myself. And that’s why I really want to really live and say. ‘Hey, this is how I’m living’.”
The real Miko was very reserved and didn’t stand out in a crowd. The average person wouldn’t even notice he was there. You could have said the same about Inoue and me. However, we were also the kind of people who’d show some concern for our own survival by hanging on for our dear lives if we were spared in a great flood that swept away everyone else.
I didn’t pretend to proselytize my ideas even to myself. What patted, licked, and nibbled at the emptiness, or “apathy” even, of my melancholic depression was the recognition that I wasn’t simply projecting light. I was touched by the smells, shapes, and substance bound up in living things. The temperature, air, moisture, and weight of their breath, as well as the palpable presence of Miko filled me with feelings other than “apathy.” Maybe Miko’s ideas were just starting to resonate with me.
So you can imagine how hard it was for me when even Miko was spirited away after the great flood, His Young Majesty’s death, hit, and why I couldn’t help but think Inoue was full of shit when he acted like he was trying to bring about the end of the world with all his talk about disappearing. And I can only describe Miko as having been destined to betray me, and nothing I could do was going to change that.
I was fairly dark and sullen when surrounded by the lodgers, but dyed in shades of green when I entered the woods. There, my substance melted away and I could think about Miko and Inoue like this, and my treks to the spring became a daily ritual.
My afternoons were spent working on the water channel and other projects and hiking in the woods during my free time, and my evenings were devoted to editing work in my room. Therefore, I didn’t get too involved in relationships with other people in the lodge. Mokuren said the policy on Ascension Pass was that people who wanted to live that way could, so I always approached people other than Kisaragi and Udzuki as casual acquaintances. These escapees, evacuees, and refugees enjoyed a relatively relaxed lifestyle here. Of course, that’s the way Mokuren arranged everything.
But not my mom. You couldn’t tell her from the others when they were working, but she felt like she didn’t belong. Her constant refrain was, “No matter how much you try to convince yourself this is only crisis management, the way of life here is simply not normal.” She said that a “proper life” meant working hard and, at the end of the day, “spending private time in a private place.”
She complained like that and wanted to return to the life she’d had before as soon as possible, but public interest in Inoue only escalated. I worried that the media might zero in on her, and she’d run off at the mouth and end up saying something weird. I also smelled some kind of impending violence in the air. So while it took a little effort, we detained her. She couldn’t adapt to life at the mountain lodge, and what we’d done depressed her so much that it seemed like an act of cruelty to do so.
A chronic helplessness ate away at her. Since she didn’t have anywhere to go when even we weren’t getting along, she soon became a radio junkie. (I’m glad we didn’t have a TV in the small room.) She’d listen over the kind of comp headphones they hand out to old guys at the race tracks and give me the play-by-play on the latest news as soon as she heard it, especially if the news involved a love suicide related to Inoue’s document. She’d wrinkle up her forehead and recount the details as if she were telling me current news about Inoue himself. I definitely did not want to hear it. It was hard to stomach the mentality that reproductions of an unparalleled masterpiece were diminishing in quality. But my mom seriously thought it would somehow console me for her to validate Inoue’s influential powers, and she’d say things like, “What Shôji said really struck a chord. You might even say he had the gift of foresight. That is, if you allowed yourself to think abou
t it positively.” And that’s not all. She made that comment after recounting the following story of a mother-daughter love suicide without batting an eye.
I think it was the third love suicide, and it happened right before the beginning of the rainy season. A thirty year-old who worked as a temp at a local bank and still lived at home strangled her mother to death and then hung herself. It happened in a residential Sendai suburb.
Of course, they discovered Inoue’s document downloaded on the woman’s computer. Furthermore, she agreed with Inoue and advocated his ideas in an anonymous online journal.
“My sentiments are exactly the same as Shôji Inoue’s. I want to quietly libertate [original spelling as is] tired and confined living beings. That is what I am too after all. Without people like us, this world would surely have grown stronger and more meaningful. We are the kind who lead a futile existence together with the increasing herd of other useless people. Soon, and it won’t be long now, am I to become another sacrificial lamb?” Yada, yada, yada.
This person’s goal was to get all the useless people out of this world by turning this world into the otherworld. Well, that would mean that once this world is the otherworld, where ever she is would be filled with the same useless people.
That’s not to say that a part of me doesn’t sympathize. I am keenly aware that dipshit parents raise dipshit kids. I even felt faint while listening to none other than my own mom tell me the outline of this love suicide story.
Lonely Hearts Killer Page 11