A 'once upon a time' and a happy ever after

Memory and sensations can be quite uncertain things and they can differ in the way that one particular event in your memory can be held and how it's remembered in several other people's minds that were also there at the time. A photograph in my hand helps me to consolidate that memory of mine and perhaps it helps prove to me that yes, I was there at that time and yes, those events did happen the way I remember them. The photograph is not fallible and it is a separate link to the reality, it is something to confirm to me that I didn't dream it all. A chain of facts arise as I use one 'reality' to relate to the other 'reality'. This chain exists in my mind with each link being a series of 'what happened next' links and perhaps somewhere I have something to say "Yes, I can confirm that this happened", be it a photograph, a notebook, a diary entry, a ring, a business card from a flower shop, a hotel receipt. A lot of these memories have little pieces of alternate evidence to say I was there.
Should something happen and the chain breaks then I'm left with a conundrum.
What is real? Is it on this side of the chain or that side?
I sat at my desk and vaguely remembered a life I had seemingly long time ago. I looked upon a photo in my hands and I read a few entries from my personal journal for 2003 and 2004. Thinking about it, it does seem that I have some broken chains flailing around up there in my head.
I made a decision and sent him a text saying that I'd love to meet him.

Empire of the sun - Standing on a shore.

He said that he'd meet me at the 'café Anniversaire' on the omote sando for lunch. It's a lovely little French style brassiere that's situated nicely half way between our respective homes. It's not a place that I was overly familiar with but I knew of it because it is directly opposite the Gucci store and close by the Omote sando Hills mall.
There was quite a crowd but he was already there with a table when I arrived and I was very punctual and not at all fashionably late. Nibbling on the bread-sticks he said that he'd missed breakfast and suggested we order straight away. I too was quite hungry and the smells of their delicious fare had me eagerly anticipating something nice. He put on his glasses to read the menu and looked at it in quite an odd way, turning the menu this way and that way and held it at different lengths away from his body. Then with his finger he poked himself in the eye! I giggled and he winked at me. One of the lenses had fallen out in his spectacle box.
He always could make me laugh with the silly little things he can do.
We ordered and ate a crispy squid with salad for starters and we followed that with a Moroccan spiced lamb with Mediterranean vegetables and a barley couscous. He chose a wonderful Shiraz that had a medium body but not so rich as to drown out the flavor of the food. He's become quite the connoisseur.
"You've changed!" he said to me after a few moments of almost intense scrutiny.
"We all change. Time does that to everyone and everything." I replied.
Apparently and in his eyes I seem to have mellowed and become a little more relaxed. I however lost that mellow calm when he said you have lost something haven't you.
"What is it you think I've lost? I asked.
"That intensity you used to have, the sharp edges and perhaps that awful paranoia."
I suppressed a laugh, "You've been reading my blog haven't you? You have raided my personal diaries perhaps, wait, who have you been talking to about me and what else do they tell you?"
He looked at me for a long moment perhaps deciding or not if my poker face was serious and then he laughed realizing I was playing the paranoid.
We relaxed with that special way we always could be with each other. It's been a long time since we were like this together but that time does not have to make us strangers. We had been friends for a long time and at one stage lovers with plans to marry. This is still an open question really and no one in the world, including myself and perhaps him too knows why it just all collapsed around us and again my thoughts turn to being stranded amongst the ruins. I seem to carry some affinity for the vivid scenes of destruction lately.

We took the bus up the street to Harajuku and had a wander in the park.
It was a lovely sunny and warm day and we sat for a while with iced cola, relaxing in each other's company. He turned and looked at me and improbably out of the blue, recalled a memory.
"Do you remember the day before you went to Kyoto?" he asked, "We had that day in the park."
Despite my apparent lacking paranoia according to him, I asked if he had been reading my on-line blogs.
He nodded and smiled, "Of course I have, I've read them for a long time, I've always thought about you and it's nice to know you are doing alright." he confirmed.
"So you know a lot about me even throughout the time we've been apart." I said.
"It's an on-going story, a public story if you like and if feels quite strange to me because when I read it, knowing it's all about you, someone I know, it's like I can reach into my screen and touch your heart and soul. I even feel what you go though. There have been times I have even wanted to call you simply because of what I read!"
"Why didn't you?"
"Because it's not the same anymore, feelings and thoughts are lost like smoke on the wind. It is difficult in many respects. I was aware of the uncertain feelings when we had dinner together last time."
I remember quite clearly how awkward the situation was when he came to dinner with Hitomi and me.
He sipped his cola and looked back at the surrounding shade and greenery.
"Don't misquote me if you write about this will you?" he laughingly added.
"It's my blog honey, I try to keep things accurate but I write it as I interpret it and I may miss out a lot but I'll get the important things because I remember the important things..." I paused looking into his eyes as he looked into mine, "... Who exactly are you?" I joked.
He smiled, "I sometimes wonder about that myself."
"How are things for you?" I inquired. He looked at me for a long moment, perhaps formulating his words.
"I always feel as if I'm struggling to be someone else, as if I'm trying to find a new position or reach out for a new life. Perhaps I'm constantly trying to re-invent myself, is that a part of growth?"
I think I've acted out similar moments in my own life, at least in the re-positioning of myself and my points of view and perhaps my priorities into my little world.
"I have often felt that when we lose touch with the things that are the foundations of our lives then it's as if we need props to hold us up. It's a psychology that many character actors know well and if they don't know it by the facts then they know it by instinct or by intuition." I answered.
"I think by becoming a different me I could escape this version of me but it's no good, I always end up being this, what you see in front of you. What's missing inside me never changes, the scenery about me changes and the people around me changes but the same elements missing from inside me torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think it's that lack of something which is defining me at the moment but I hope to grow into a new person."

I thought long and hard about his words, I wasn't going to forget these because there was a parallel train of thought within me and in a way I felt like I have thought this way on many occasions with him. We are so close in the way we think and feel I sometimes wonder if there is more than a psychic connection that seems to bond us. Oh sure he has read my blog and he can feel that he is keeping up with the things in my life and the things that matter to me but I don't reveal every single thing about me in these posts. This blog is nothing like my private and personal journals. This is more like a public peek at my insanity with free tickets being issued so I can attempt to fill the stand and hopefully satisfy the advertisers and other sponsors than take any personal measure of egotistical satisfaction. It's also a kind of therapy for me in this manner and it does seem to ease my soul that I can let some thoughts out. Writing them down is like opening the floodgates and easing the pressure behind the dam.
Hey I'm the one writing this nonsense here and letting it out of my system. You are the unfortunate ones to be contaminated by the reading of it and taking it in! There must be more entertaining pages on the Internet.

"Tell me really how you feel deep down." he asked after a few moments of silence.
For one of those silent moments I thought that he may have been looking for something to connect the two of us in an intimate way but no, I do know him well enough and I know genuine concern when I see it.
"There's something wrong," I said, "Up here." I pointed to the side of my head.
"I think I know now that it's not going to kill me any time soon although that being said I could be tempting the fates with such a statement. It has been a worrying time for my family and for myself. Dad has done everything humanly possible and we have battled against it."
He wiped away my tear and held my hand.
"I no longer fear this demon inside. I just accept that it will always reside within. The damage has been contained and now it is dormant and hopefully will be for all my future years."
"And work?" he asked.
I told him about the promotions and events modeling and how it was far and few between jobs at present and to keep myself busy I have taken other small jobs on such as the translation of English audio tracks and more recently the editing of school text-books.
He asked about the magazine.
I told him quite candidly that I can no longer do it. I've made excuse after excuse for myself and saying that I burned out is not strictly true. I've just lost my creative flair and at times I have sat and admitted to the girl in my mirror that she's lost a part of her brain, the part that did her creative writing, a part that sought answers from a secretive universe. A Poet and Muse decided that they no longer wanted my company and deserted me. At times I just lose my concentration and have feared losing my mind.
I once thought that the best way to leave this world would be with a bang (Yuushuu no bi o Kazaru) and then with my health problems I was afraid that I was doomed to suffer great pains and an agonizing death, I couldn't allow that scenario and I have prepared for such an eventuality. It seems more than likely though that I'll go with a whimper, a forgetful one. How utterly disappointing it all is to my morbid dreams and the other Grim tales that abound."

At this point he made an overtly and overemphasized act of folding up his newspaper and throwing it in the waste bin. 
"It's not a good time to read about the suicide of a guy who made it to 102 years of age. If you continue your suicidal thoughts then perhaps you can volunteer for those government jobs to clean out the radioactive reactor rooms." he said and then started shaking in some epileptic way and acting out some crazy death scene.
I actually laughed. It's a bad thing to do but the way he acted and responded to my near morbidity made it seem funny.
He got up from the floor and pointed to me, "That's what you don't do enough of," he accused. "You smile but you don't laugh!"
There is a distinct possibility that what he says has a grain of truth. What is it that is missing, my ability to laugh? Oh it's more than that but at least this is a start. I should listen to my friends more often. They have, I'm sure, valuable insights to offer me. I don't ever want to lose my sparkle.