A something or other post

Three high school boys in a small park fixed themselves statue-like along the edge of a decaying old fountain. Panting after I finished my jog, I watched them from the edges wondering what they were doing. At first thought they were posing as pop stars for an invisible camera. Owing to the likelihood of my footsteps on the crumbling dirt waking the boys from their meditation, it took me a while to make out what they were fixed upon. I turned off my headphones and was surprised that I could hear nothing except the tired feet of a few late commuters stumbling home from the station. I chanced the situation and walked a bit closer still covered stretching occasionally and surveying the still hidden object of their attention. There were no sounds, not even whispers or the scrape of their shoes on the concrete ledge making an noise.

I often come to this tiny neighborhood park that by daylight hosts the screams and energy of the local kids finding creative ways to unleash themselves in such a small place. The dirt park offers no swings, slides or toys of any kind less the old-fountain, a couple of immovable benches and surprisingly an ungrafittied public toilet. I've watched hide and seek games begin with all the contestants visible from the count of zero; adventurous elementary school kids shooting homemade arrows and climbing the lone, surprisingly rugged tree to get to the roof of the public toilet fort. By night the park quiets and acts as a reprieve to single locals, small groups of high school kids, returning husbands and occasionally myself, the reluctant jogger. The exclamations and flying children of the day contrast with the somber and hushed mood of the nights. It seems that everyone, the occasional couples, groups of friends and likely even myself, are avoiding going home. In this small park people can anonymously sit and briefly find a quiet open space to escape the confined lives of work and home that in this city more than all others, seldom allow for privacy. Even if we all spoke the same language, even if we were all bleeding extroverts, we would not talk to other solitary strangers. It is not the place for that.

I remember many faces glowing by the light of their phones as they frantically text.

I finally noticed a pair of deeper shadows along the concrete barrier holding back the soil and bushes. My first thought was perhaps is was a friend of the boys squatting in the ground, looking down in to an old style camera. But, then I remembered the year and thought if it were a camera it would have the tell-tale glow of all modern day digital cameras which have come to mean for all intensive purposes now simply mean, camera. No, instead it moved slightly and the two shadows crossed each other thinly. It seemed to be a cat, possibly calico but I could not tell without risking disturbing the boys who still were squatting around the fountain and its iron statue of the girl. They had changed their pose only twice for the few minutes I was observing. At first squatting and later standing but both times very still. I waited for the flash of a self-timed camera but it never came. It is possible they were in fact taking pictures without a flash and this necessitated their frozen posturing but I like to think they were instead in communion with the cat.

I look around here and after a year I am still in fact very much an outsider. I think I have very little figured out in general and with many of the young high-school boys who artlessly un-tuck their shirts and pull up the collars of their uniforms, who sit with their short socks, penny loafers legs crossed exposing the occasionally haired leg... they all look slightly rebellious, a bit stylish, a tad 70s glam prep school Bowie and almost all of the ones who carry themselves with any physical confidence, a speck gay. It's doubtful their fashion or actions have any effect on my situation, but, all that aside I still like to think that those few moments I stumble onto in this crazy city are precisely the things that inspire the modern myths about this city. I for one prefer the imaginary possibilities of the evening to the realities of the Tokyo daylight.