This is the book that I’ve been writing, off and on, for nearly two years. I’ve been going on about it at great length to anyone who will listen for two years, as well. There’s a certain amount of arrogance and obsession that comes with writing, at least for me; or at least for me writing this. But it’s finished, and there are at least some parts which strike me as coming close to who you are, and what it’s like to know you and talk to you. I wonder what you’d think of what I’ve written.
I’ve thought a lot about what I’d do when I got to this point, and what I’d like from the book. I’m giving a copy to mama and papa, and keeping a copy for myself as well. I’d like to send it to a couple of other people. Apart from that, I’d like it to be available to be read by anyone who happens to stumble across it. So I’ve put the whole manuscript on Scribd, next to your manuscript; it’s available here:
But I’d also like the book to have a physical existence. So it’s available here as well, from lulu. It costs about £10, depending on exchange rates; and from that, if it is bought through lulu, about £3 will be revenue. £1 will go to the MS Society; £1 will go to the BVA; and £1 will go to your niece’s saving account. I think that, with the excellent cover illustration from Jihyun Park, the manuscript has become a proper book. I hope you’d approve.
Click on the picture to visit a timeline at tiki-toki.com
Nearly a year after I found the “tiki-toki” website, I finally went back to it and added the endings. It seems small and sparse at the moment. This timeline, the writing I’ve been trying to do, the sea of memories, even the blogs and photographs and writing that Marisa left: none of it comes even close to ‘the truth’. Maybe there are memories which can only be kept deep in your heart; if you try to express them or bring them into the light, they will dissolve, leaving you with just a string of dates and events.
Or not. I hope that something real is left. At the very least, it’s an incredible story, even if you never met Marisa, and don’t know what it was like to talk to her or spend time with her. I’m going to try adding to the timeline, and try to improve the stories I write of what I remember. If anything is possible, it will take time. How long? At least as long as the thirty six years Marisa lived.
I hope that if you know Marisa, if you ever met her even briefly, and if you have any photographs or stories to tell, this timeline might have some meaning other than just a string of dates and images. If you’d like to, please email me (shinsuke453@gmail.com) or leave a comment; I’ll send the password so that you can add your stories. I’d love to hear anything, even if you don’t want to publish it.
Well, I’ve finished the first draft of the story I wanted to tell: your story, and mine as well. I’ve just read through it, and I’ve sent it to some people, including your best friend. I wonder: what will they think of it? Does it actually manage to capture anything true and real? I think there are some places, at least, where it does. Some passages make me cry; some parts of it make me laugh. The laughter is what I like to remember the most.
Pek Wan has read the story. She’s helped me to write it, every step of the way. Once, she told me that if we ever have children, she’d like to read it to them, to show them what an amazing person their aunt was. I know you agree, she’s a pretty amazing person as well, and I don’t know if there’s anything she could have said that would have made me feel quite so happy. Or sad.
Whether I have written it well or not, I’m going to try not to look at it for a while. Maybe until next year sometime. Then, I’ll read it again. Maybe it’ll look like trash when I read it again. But, if I still think that there’s something worthwhile in it, I’ll try sending it to the same literary agency that you sent Many Scarstoo. You see what I’m doing, of course. The name (at the moment) of what I wrote is The Scars That Remain; and a lot of it is not what I wrote, but what I’ve archived from your writing.
I put an inscription in the front of the draft. It’s a quote from Haruki, naturally. “The song is over. But the melody lingers on.” (The Wild Sheep Chase)
I’ll be leaving this blog for a while, I think, although there are still more pictures that I want to post. There’s also a trip to Japan soon – in about a month, around your birthday – where me and Pek Wan, mama and papa, will get together and scatter the last of your ashes in Wakayama Bay. I might be able to meet some of your friends while we’re over there; perhaps The Colonel, if he’s around. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Every time I write, even if it’s not about you, or to you, it is because of you. You have given me too many things to list, and they are priceless and unquantifiable; but perhaps writing is the gift I treasure the most. I hope that some day, I can write something that you’d enjoy, and be proud of.
そうして道の上
ただの言葉だけが
ひとつ溶けだして
君に染みてゆく
Just like that, on the road, the simple words
Begin to melt into one, staining you.
この太陽は夜も耀いて
導く
幻が踊る街に
さよならの鐘が鳴る
This sun is shining even at night
Leading the way
In the town where visions are dancing
The bell of farewell is ringing.
鳥は地を歩き
海は空を流れ
沈んだ魂の
そばでうなずいた
Birds walk the earth
The sea flows in the sky.
By the side of a saddened soul
I nodded in agreement.
この太陽は夜も耀いて
夢を見る
そして急ぐ君の目に
焼き付いてはなれない
This sun is shining even at night
Dreaming
And then you who was hurrying
Burned it into your eyes and it never came away.
終わりなくつづく歌
想いさえ越えてゆく
君の目に映るように
胸の奥開けたまま
This song that continues without end
Goes beyond even our thoughts
I've left open the depths of my feelings
So they can be reflected in your eyes.
急ぐわけもなく過去は消え去り
讃えるものならここにあるのさ
Without any reason for hurrying the past fades away
You see, all the things worth praising are right here.
終わりなくつづく歌
想いさえ越えてゆく
君の目に映るように
胸の奥開けたまま
This song that continues without end
Goes beyond even our thoughts
I've left open the depths of my feelings
So they can be reflected in your eyes
限りなく青い夜
心はもう空のまま
限りなく光あふれ
心はもう空のままなのさ
In this limitless blue night
My heart is already left empty
You see, in this limitless outpouring of light
My heart is already left empty.
“runner, knitter, future space traveller; scribbler, doodler, snapshotter”
Marisa, my sister, described herself in all kinds of ways. She always tried to be the creator of her own world, and was always moving towards being more herself. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was being labeled by people who knew only a small part of her. She looks oriental, so to westerners she’s a ‘chink’. To the Japanese, she looks and speaks differently, so she must be a ‘gaijin’. She’s a girl, so she won’t amount to much. She is a quiet child, so she doesn’t have any spirit. She doesn’t stand out in class, so she can’t get the grades she needs. She’s a vet, so she can’t read novels. She loves reading, so she’s a geek. She writes blogs, so she’s introverted and weird. She’s talkative and sociable, so she doesn’t think about things. She knits, so she’s a granny. She has a disease, so she’s a hysterical patient to be humoured. The list goes on and on.
The constant judgements probably fuelled her; they probably made her so mad that she would sometimes veer wildly in the opposite direction, just to prove them wrong. Mostly, though, she managed to shut the voices out, and listen to who she was. And it taught her not to judge other people. She never pretended to know everything about her friends or the people she met, and would therefore be constantly delighted when she discovered something new. She allowed people to grow around her, and become themselves; and her friends were the people who allowed her the same freedom.
This blog is about gathering some of the different strands of my sister’s life: ‘many scars’, the book that she wrote; elephantasmagoria, the ‘consequence-free’ blog that she created; and the scrapbook of twenty three skeedoo, her blog posts from Japan; although, by then, she mostly only had time to be the homesick librarian on twitter. They are the centre. They might be an end, although they’re nowhere near the whole story. I hope they’ll also be a beginning. I know that I can read them and remember, and find some more courage to be myself.
Been reading about global warming and the effects it all might have. Pretty scary stuff, and it seems that not only are we probably approaching the point where rebalancing the atmosphere is impossible, but the effects on the hydrosphere are progressing more rapidly than projected even a few years ago. It’s all inevitable, maybe. Floods, oceans reclaiming the land, superstorms and hurricanes, seismic disturbance, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis – increases in all these events are becoming more likely with each passing day.
People are amazing; both the people who can carry on, business as usual, with all the mounting evidence, and those who refuse to accept that change is not too late, that measures can be taken to lessen or control the future which is becoming less and less hypothetical. I can read articles about it, then phase it out of my head; if I really believed in it all, and could accept it, the rational thing to do would be to campaign for change. And stock up on tinned goods and cat food, look for high ground, maybe build a big boat. I don’t do any of that stuff, though.
It’s difficult to imagine that anything one person, or a thousand people, or even a billion people could do would have any effect on something so colossal. But even small variations can make a change on a global scale; and we can’t know what tiny action might have an irrevocable effect. There have been studies that show seismic activity can be linked to loading and unloading of winter snowfall, or small earthquakes being controlled by the timing of rainfall, and even the daily variations in atmospheric pressure modulating the amount of slip in landslides. Microcosmic variations definitely have macrocosmic consequences.
Eventually, the earth will change beyond what we know. Glaciers might advance, turning the earth into a giant snowball, locking down seismic shifts; or temperate regions could become scorched and baking. Change is inevitable, and nothing is eternal – everything falls apart, everything gets fucked up. It’s liberating in a way. We should do our best, concentrate on the small things we can affect; but also accept that every system, from single-cell organisms to the biosphere, is alive and entropic, and will change, and evolve, and eventually fail.
“In 2001, UK GPS expert Geoff Blewitt, and his co-authors, published a revolutionary new model in the pages of the journal Science, for the wholesale deformation of the planet. Using GPS technology to measure millimetre-scale movements of the Earth’s surface, Blewitt’s team from the University of Nevada and the UK’s Newcastle University was able to recognize a seasonal cycle that involved our world changing shape in the course of a year. The extraordinary result revealed by the study is that, rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes systematically and repeatedly, with each ‘Earthbeat’ taking 12 months. During the course of a single ‘beat’ the northern hemisphere contracts, reaching a peak in February and March, at the same time as the southern hemisphere expands.”
How cool is that? The earth is living, pulsing, keeping its rhythm. It might be – no, it will be – interrupted; arrythmia, tachycardia, bradycardia, cardiac arrest; the earth has gone through these things over millions of years and it is inevitable that it will again. It is inevitable. Nothing which is done will stop this; the most which can be done is palliative. On the other hand, probably any damage that is done can be corrected – over hundreds of thousands of years, the earth will correct its own rhythm, and find a way to continue beating.
Focus on the small things, taking the next step, listening to the rhythm of your life and heart – “You gotta dance” as you were fond of saying. Until the dance stops, do your best, and “your best will always be good enough.”
Miss you loads.
Love,
Jim
The quote was from ‘Waking the Giant’ by Bill McGuire
It was the potential end of the world on Friday 21st. Didn’t happen, as far as anyone can tell.
Pek Wan and I went to Bushbury. More than nine months later, finally managed to get the stone sorted and fixed. Expensive. Not really surprising, although having to pay the council some kind of tax rankled a bit. There is no dignity, no decency; or at least not without someone profiting from it.
Used some lyrics from the last song you put on twitter – ‘Born to Die’ by Lana del Rey. I can’t listen to it without going straight back to Kawanishi, and walking round the block at the funeral parlour, playing the song over and over.
Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
Me and Pek Wan imagine that you’re looking after those two somewhere. You never wanted kids, but you might well have two pestering you. It makes me laugh, it’s kind of funny. Fine, it’s not that funny. Not ‘haha’ funny anyway.
Anyway. The world probably did end. It probably ends every day. Every day there are less things that we can do, less possibilities. Every day the past is fixed, and becomes heavier.
But. That’s not to say that everything’s useless. In fact, everything becomes more important and precious. We will never have a chance to stand where we are again. We will be never the same person again. So we have to look up and look around, and be incredibly grateful for the things we have.
I’ve been carrying on transcribing the scrapbooks that you left behind. It’s taking quite a bit longer than I thought it would, partly because the sections in Japanese are not something I can do very easily, but mostly because almost every section brings back memories or associations. Some of them are happy, some are sad; but all of them are warm, and bring me back to you. It’s like walking into an empty room, but seeing a book on the table with a cup of tea and plate of biscuits next to it. Someone has just been here, and they’ll be back anytime to pick up where they left off.
I don’t feel like I’m intruding any more when I read the writing you left behind. I don’t think you mind me reading it. I don’t feel as if I’m scavenging through your life; I feel like Indiana Jones deciphering clues that lead to a mythical treasure, or a scientist tracking down an elusive element which can only be seen by the effects it has. Your stories “have holes”, to quote Kristin Hersh; I can never capture or quantify what you are, but I can see the shape from everything you’ve left behind.
I feel ashamed. Everything that you did for me, all the ways that you supported me, and the countless times and ways that I imposed on you; and where was I when you needed me? I hope that I gave you at least some support and joy in return. I should have done so much more. I think everyone feels like that when they lose someone. Regret at unspoken words, and missed opportunities to listen, and just to be with the person. Nothing huge or life changing; it won’t appear in any history books or be mentioned on the news; but it can still mean so much to someone.
People help each other in ways they don’t realise, sometimes. Like a plant questing for the sun, we reach for the people we love and admire, and gain warmth and light from them; they help us grow, root and leaf. We may never touch or understand each other, but something essential is passed between us. And straining to reach each other is how we help each other, how we gain strength. Knowing that we are in someone’s thoughts is water to the soul and shelter from the elements.
I wish I could have been a stronger sun for you, and shone more brightly. I hope you know that I never stopped trying to reach you, even when we were on different sides of the planet.
You’ve gone. The light you received wasn’t strong enough to help you survive. I can’t stop reaching for you though, and I never will. You may not be in these skies anymore – I wonder where you’re travelling? – but your distant beams of pale starlight now provide, will always provide, celestial navigation.
So…consciousness is a strange thing. It’s like building a shack in the middle of a vast desert, or a tiny island floating on a huge ocean. We think we’re so in control, but our subconscious is always there, and can swamp our tiny efforts at self creation in an instant. When we sleep, there’s a battle as we struggle to hold onto control and keep our sanity; because without the lies we tell ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to get through the day, let alone pay the bills and stuff like that.
Sleep has been good for me (mostly), but waking up has been hard. I think I might prefer life in my subconscious, but realising that it’s not ‘real’ can be a horrible way to wake up. I remember when I flew to Japan in December, I was sitting between two American soldiers – the woman was heavily pregnant and sitting on the aisle, and I guess the guy just wanted to be able to look out the window. Anyway, I slept. And when I woke up, I was looking straight at the woman and gave her the biggest, slowest, most heartfelt smile. Which slipped, cracked, and dissolved when I remembered where I was and where I was going. I don’t know what the woman thought, hope I didn’t freak her out too much…
I don’t remember what I was dreaming, but it felt real and safe and warm, like I was in the arms of love. Is that what they mean, when they say that you will always have the people you love close to you, even after they die? It doesn’t seem too bad, unless you have to get through the day and pay the bills and stuff like that. We have consciousness as a filter so we can think about fairly limited things and keep functioning in the world; otherwise we’d just spend all our time gawping like acid heads at all the miraculous things around us (I think Terry Pratchett wrote something like that, can’t remember where I read it).
There’s another thing they say (who are they anyway?): sleep is like a little death. Maybe that’s what happens when you die – you plunge into your subconscious and you find everything you lost, and you meet everyone you had a connection with. Surely nothing is lost for ever; I picture a dusty warehouse with rows of shelves stretching as far as the eye can see, disappearing into the shadows. (Seems like I might have seen something like that on the X-Files…). When you die, the lights are turned on, the shadows start to dance, and your ghosts come to greet you. Here’s the thing though: everything comes out, good, bad, mean-spirited, generous, sad, hilarious, golden moments and wasted opportunities. What have you done all your life except create heaven or hell? Because no matter how we struggle with our subconscious, it will rise up like the sea and swamp us at some time.
When people die, we keep them with us through our memories. But when people die, maybe they take a part of us with them. Do I exist somewhere in your warehouse, have I come out to dance with you in a world where there’s no struggling to keep on a mask (or having to pay bills and stuff)? I hope so.
an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation – OED
Synopsis
‘Many Scars’ is analogous to multiple sclerosis inasmuch as it is written in the form of relapsing and remitting episodes, which progressively overlap as the story unfolds. The odd-numbered chapters are set over a two-month period in the recent past, while the even relate more distant events spanning the previous decade. Both strands gradually merge together and, in the final chapter, into the present.”
This was the synopsis that she sent to Daniel Goldsmith Associates in 2007. She hesitated over sending the manuscript, partly through lack of confidence in her writing, and partly because it told the story of her life and scars with raw honesty.
She received positive feedback from the literary consultants, and was encouraged to edit some parts before resubmitting the manuscript for a second reading. This was the letter she received:
‘Many Scars’ was one of the winners of a competition run by Daniel Goldsmith Associates. She was happy with the praise, although she was slightly miffed with the placement of her name on the website:
Although she did revise the manuscript, she decided not to resubmit it. Writing it had allowed her to make sense of her life, and made her want to write more. She was content with what she had produced, and felt she was ready to face the future, and start to write something new.
Yeah, alright, you know, same old same old…how ’bout you?
Had a really shit week, which has finished with me handing in my notice to ARK. Just back home now, and I’ll be working there for another month, after that I’ll be a free woman.
Jesus, really? How come? What happened?
Well, it’s a long story, and I don’t really want to go into it now. Basically, it’s all over with ARK now though. I’m gonna work there until 10th January, then…well, I dunno. I’ll have to look for a place to live first.
Was it Elizabeth? Did she do something crazy and alcoholic again?
Yeah, a bit…she went back on what she said she would do, and she’s doing something that I can’t agree with, and don’t want any part of. She didn’t fire me, but I can’t carry on working for her, or have my name associated with the place.
You’re standing up for your professional ethics, huh. That sounds like you. Is it gonna be a busy month?
Nah, actually, I seem to have finally gotten on top of the work; there aren’t nearly as many dogs coming in from Fukushima, and it’s probably going to be an almost eerily quiet month after the madness this year. Seriously, it’s just been non-stop…a few people at work have been saying that I look really unhealthy – I think I’ve lost too much weight again, and I’m just incredibly tired…
MS?
To be honest, I’m not sure. I might have had a relapse, but I think I’m too tired to notice.
Jesus. Fucking hell. Well, it sounds like you’ve got to stop, argument or not. It’s great that you’ve finished the work – I don’t think anyone else could have done it – but enough is enough, right?
Yeah…I’m worried about what’s gonna come when I stop working; I think “my ego’s writing cheques that my body just can’t cash” to quote Top Gun…I think I’m gonna crash, badly.
Have you spoken to papa?
No, not yet. He’s probably gonna hit the roof, then tell me ‘I told you so’ quite a bit. There’s no way I’m going to Kawanabe. I think I’d just go nuts Jim, or me and papa would end up killing each other. There’s a guy at work – the Colonel – who says he’s going to help me find a flat…but I dunno…
Where do you want to go?
Well, I was thinking of Hokkaido. It’s just beautiful there. I can see myself living in a shack on a beach somewhere, a million miles from anyone, just me and Taro. I think I’m finished with veterinary now; maybe I could do some translation, and do some of my own writing as well.
That sounds…
Alternative? Radical? Crazy? Unrealistic?
I’ll go for ‘alternative’…and pretty damn hippy-ish as well. Seriously, if there’s anyone who deserves to just do what makes you happy, it’s you. Papa’s finally living with family, so you don’t need to worry about checking up on him, and at least you’ve got a hopefully quiet month and you can think about what you want, right?
…yeah…
Hey, James is coming over to Japan soon, right?
Yeah, he’s coming in January, 10 days after I stop at ARK.
You’re going to Okinawa, right?
Yeah…Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t seen him in ages. I wish he was coming now – a month seems like such a long time – but I can’t wait to see him again.
(And here I would change what I said…this is what I should have said, maybe these are the words that could have changed things, maybe you were waiting for me to say something – anything – to help you, to show how much I cared, to bring you back from despair and remind you that you always have a place and a home…)
Hmm…you know, I wanted to tell you…I really regret not being able to spend more time with you when we were in Japan – first there was the toothache thing, then the aborted day in Kyoto…I was really looking forward to pigging out with you and talking arse…
Yeah, well…
Well, I’ve got a two week holiday coming up – how about if I come over again? You should have more time to hang out, right? Work is quieter, you don’t have a marathon to run or any scary weddings to go to…
I’ll still be busy…
I can help you pack and stuff; and I can run interference on papa, keep him off your back…please? I’d really love to just spend some time with my favourite sister. As mama would say, ‘just to touch base’…
Eurgh. Don’t you dare touch my base. But you can’t – what about Pek Wan?
Well, she’s talking about going down to visit her sister in London; I’m sure she’d be cool with me going to visit you, ’cause she knows I’m not that bothered about going down there myself…
Really? You’d better make sure, I don’t want to cause any domestic…
Hang on a sec…yep, she says it’s OK as long as I bring back another load of sembe and stuff. And you know, she said to ask you – why don’t you come back with James? You can stay here for three months, right? We’ve got space, you can visit people or chill out here. And you know there’s nothing like spending time with me and Pek Wan. Watching Britain’s Got Talent and America’s Next Top Model for a few weeks is guaranteed to get you desperate to do anything, if only to stop your brain dribbling out from your ears…
That…yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea. Well done Chumpsey! Except it was Pek Wan’s idea of course. Are you sure about coming over? I can get your ticket…
Nah, I’ve got it this time. I’ll look now…
Really, thanks Jim. You have no idea how much this…seriously, thanks.
Alright…erm…
I feel like I don’t have the energy to carry on at work…and I’m scared of what’s going to happen when I stop going to work…but you’re right, I should see everyone in England…papa will probably love to look after Taro for a bit, and he’s got the obasan-tachi to look after him…
You’re like a deep-sea fish.
Huh?
We’ll bring you back to the surface, but we’ll have to do it slowly. You’re so used to pressure, if there isn’t any, you’ll explode.
Yeah, I guess, something like that.
Right, got the ticket for Monday. Fuck it, I’ll take a week off work and come over for three weeks. I’ll see you in two days! Prepare yourself for pigging out!
Jesus. OK. Send me the times and I’ll try and meet you at the airport.
OK. Oh, Pek Wan wants me to tell you something as well. We’re…ahem…we’re, well, she’s pregnant. 6 weeks.
That’s…that’s fantastic! Have you told anyone yet?
Nope, you’re the first to know. We want to keep it quiet until 20 weeks or so, you know, ’cause of last time…
Yeah. But will she be going in for early scans and stuff?
Yeah, it’s all starting in January. Really nervous, but quietly optimistic as well.
It’ll be different this time, I know it will. Wait a minute…6 weeks? You were in Japan 6 weeks ago! You mean you little lovebites were…and I thought you were both tired ’cause of jet-lag!
Heh heh.
Under my roof! For shame!
Your mama impression is getting scarily good there Marisa. Actually, we were thinking of doing a Beckham, and naming the kid after the place…
Yoshikawa?
Myoken.
Funny-looking face? You’d better fucking not, I swear I’ll disown you, then help Pek Wan beat you to death…
Would anything have helped? I’ve spent three months thinking of all the different things I could have said to bring you back. If only I’d realised how close to the cliff edge you were standing. If only I could have pulled you back. Were you reaching out a hand, hoping that I would catch you? Or were you just waving and saying goodbye? If I had a time machine, I would use it and do everything I could, and say everything I should have said. I’ll never know, but I know I’ll always be thinking about it: What could I have done? Would anything have helped?
I’ve read everything I can lay my hands on – letters, emails, blog posts, elephantasmagoria, translations and Many Scars. There are so many things I remember. There are also so many things I dimly remember, or don’t remember, or remember differently. Everything touches a different chord or pulls a different string – I feel like a ball of yarn being played with by a dozen kittens. I have no idea what I’m thinking; I can only wait for the next string to be pulled, and find myself yanked down some dimly lit alley of the murky past. God, what an awful way to put it! Here’s another way:
Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you’ll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs…I felt like the ice itself, suddenly shattered, with cracks spiraling out from where she had touched my chest. The only reason I held together was because my thousand pieces were all leaning together. If I moved, I would fall apart.
There are depths below, cold and dark with slow currents moving through. I want to plunge in, but I’m afraid I won’t come back. So, I understand this a bit more now:
While I survived by building walls, my best friend was busy putting his problems away in boxes.
I’ll think and feel and remember when I have time. When will that be? I doubt it will be at my convenience.
As he pointed out to me once, the trouble with walls is that they have a tendency to fall down, and the trouble with boxes is that they have lids that are prone to opening at the worst possible moment. (‘true love waits’, Many Scars)
I had a moment like that today. I’d taken a film in to be processed. It was black and white, so they had to send it to Germany, of all places. They gave me a call today and I went to pick it up. I checked with the guy at Jessop’s that the negatives were back, then went to get a coffee and find a quiet place to look at the photos. What would they be? Photos of Taro, or family, or friends, or street scenes, or Hokkaido, or the mountains around Yoshikawa? A message, a clue to what you were thinking, something to treasure, something to cry over? I prepared myself for an onslaught of kittens yanking at my frayed ball of yarn.
There were no photos. The negatives were back, with no images on any of them. I don’t know why, but I hadn’t prepared myself for that, and the ice shattered into a million pieces, the lids came flying off the boxes, the walls came tumbling down.
I was walking around town when I sort of noticed myself and where I was. Glasses fogged up, a bit of snot dribbling out of my nose. Nice. It being Wolverhampton, though, I don’t think anyone noticed; I probably blended in pretty well with the crowd.
And I’ve had a song stuck in my head – I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down. Chumbawamba. Chumbawamba helped bring me back to the surface. How absolutely fucking mortifying. I bet you’re pissing yourself, you’re never going to let me live it down (to the same tune). Now I’m even more scared of opening the boxes in my head – what if the song comes out again?
I’ve been meaning to write to you for a while. I wasn’t going to write anything about mama here, just ’cause I thought it might not be what you’d want to hear. Still, she’s really surprised me, and left me in a state of…I’m not quite sure. Just when you think you’re used to her, she ups the ante spectacularly. Quote of the day: ”I found myself crying a bit this afternoon. I must be more upset than I thought. Or maybe I’m just tired.” Classic. I don’t know what your reaction is, but mine was mixed: short laugh of disbelief, total fury, wanting to tell her to fuck off, resignation. Anyway, this is the third day that I’ve spoken to her, and it’s just been getting more outrageous each day. I’ll tell you about it later, and we can add it to the big book of mama’s quotes.
I’ve been thinking about a poem by Philip Larkin called An Arundel Tomb. It’s about how history is written to suit the time.
And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth.
It doesn’t matter how people remember. As much as I love hearing your friends talk about you, and I feel as if I’m getting closer to you when I talk to them, there will be people who simply won’t remember you in the way that I do; who will, frankly, remember untruth. What can you do? What’s important to me is what I remember and feel, and getting angry about people who should know better isn’t going to solve anything.
In a way, though, I feel grateful to mama. What I was meaning to write was probably too painfully sentimental for you to appreciate. You never did get my love of rom-coms, and I wouldn’t want to subject you to anything with remotely that kind of vibe. Anger and morbid humour is probably more your cup of tea. You’d probably tell me it’s a simple Jungian or Freudian displacement thing or something. Maybe I’ll write mama a thank you card.
Still, I’ll probably lapse back into sentimentality next time I write. As always, please be patient with me, and don’t take the piss too much.
It seems like a long time since I’ve written to you. Is it true that it’s better late than never? Even if it is, it’s probably better sooner than late. Everyone has regrets, but there’s nothing to do except live with them and try to take one step forward, and then another.
God, this is hard! I’ve been reading some of the letters we wrote to each other, and I can hear your voice so clearly; but I don’t know if you can hear mine. There are people who want to talk to you incredibly desperately. Can you hear us? What do you think? I imagine you’re embarrassed about all the fuss. Well, for a smart person, you are really dumb about yourself. I wish I’d told you that more, but everyone has a boat load of regrets. Not small boats, either. Cargo ships. Oil tankers.
I can’t stop thinking about when you took us to Kyoto. I wanted to say then – I’m not pissed off! I want to spend the day walking around a strange town, talking arse and making fun of each other! Of course you had to go in to work; you could never be the kind of person to shrug your shoulders and leave things to fate. Do something half-arsed? No, it’s full-arsed or nothing!
Bagpuss and the Captain have been reunited. Captain seemed unfazed, but I think Bagpuss is suspicious. I had a dream the other day; you were so angry that I’d taken your Murakami books, and Don Quixote. I promise that I’ll look after them, and your cats, and…I don’t know, there’s really nothing to do, is there? I’ll try to write a better letter soon.
the cat rehomed 
