Jams and preserves

We were stuck in the traffic.
Normally the traffic is heavy at such an early time but it still flows. This morning of all mornings there just had to be an accident further up the road and as the traffic exiting from the expressway exit of the Roppongi Dori behind us cut off a decent retreat, we were stuck and waiting our turn to get out of the bottle-neck up ahead and out onto the Aoyama Dori. He turned down the radio and phoned into work to let them know that he'd be late. It didn't help matters that he was driving me home first before going into work. I told him that I could so easily get the bus but he wouldn't hear of it. We left with plenty of time for him to take our detour and had there been no accident then there would have been no tardiness or even that much guilt on my part.
"Not with your foot in that condition. I can't allow it!" he said with such authority.
So the way that I saw it was all because of me that we were on this road and now we were stuck and he was going to be late!
I told him that I was sorry and that it seems I am sometimes a jinx. He laughed and said that the fates of the world do not rely solely on the decisions that I make in my life. Unless of course I had moved into the position of center of the universe and not told him. I think he was trying to say that it wasn't my fault!
Even the police cars with sirens blazing far behind us could not pass. They had to let their partners out so that they could run ahead to try to bring order to the confusion. It took us some forty minutes to drive one hundred meters. By this time some paramedics had been in and carried two stretchers away to an awaiting ambulance. A car had impaled itself into the front of a small truck and police were photographing it and measuring tire tracks on the road as we were guided past.
We eventually got home and Terutaka dropped me off outside. He wanted to help me inside but I told him that it would perhaps be more prudent if he didn't. I thanked him for everything and he told me to look after myself and he headed off to the office.

I'm thinking of buying a tee-shirt that says "Yes, I'm OK thank you!"
As I went inside I met my brother Hiro, he was coming down the stairs and he asked me if I was alright. He was looking at my bandaged ankle. Another one that's in for a shin kicking (see last post)!

"I tried to call you yesterday evening but your phone was off."
"I forgot to charge it and my battery died."
He looked at me and I don't know if he knew I was lying or not. I'm just feeling so guilty and even in all innocence one small excuse leads into the next doesn't it?
"So what have you done to your ankle?" he asked me.
"It's just a sprain, nothing really! Please don't worry. It happened yesterday and it's already feeling better."
He offered me his arm and I took it as he helped me upstairs.
"How is Hitomi's mother?" he asked.
I looked at him and he looked at me and he just knew that I didn't know. The expression of shock and confusion across my face said it all.
"What about her mother?" I asked.
"Hitomi phoned here yesterday. She said she couldn't contact you and left a message with me. Then I assume that you still haven't spoken with her?"
I shook my head in the negative.
"Apparently she had a fall and Hitomi is staying there to look after her."
As we walked up the stairs to our apartments I questioned him at length of when she called, what did she say and I tried to squeeze every last gram of information out of him.

Once inside my apartment I rang Hitomi.
Now I'll be totally honest here. I didn't switch on my phone I used the home phone and I didn't call her phone, I rang her mother's home phone.
Why you may ask?
To satisfy curiosities I think would be the correct answer even if it's a limited one.
Hitomi's sister answered the phone and I asked after her Mother. It seems she had fallen down the stairs after experiencing dizziness and tripping over. The Doctor attended and sent her to have an X-ray in the hospital but thankfully there were no broken bones. She was quietly resting at home and everyone was there looking after her.
I asked if I could speak with Hitomi but she said that she was out at the store buying the groceries.
I gave her and her Mother my good wishes and ran a hot bath. I put a little classical music on the radio and lit a couple of scented candles and then I soaked away my aches and pains, both real and perceived. The sensations on immersion were joyous and I'm suddenly relaxing to Vanilla and Vivaldi.

Life just goes on despite its ups and downs and its right and wrongs. I'm not really happy about so many things and I think that I've acted out of character recently and perhaps I did so as a response to what I think is wrong rather than what actually is wrong. For most people who live day after day and think that the world that we know or 'life, the universe and everything' is basically logical and consistent, I think they really need to analyze it more instead of walking along like sheep in a pen. They take a mouthful of grass and munch away and smell their neighbors. It's what the sheep did yesterday and failing it becoming lamb steaks then it's what it will do tomorrow. If something happens, and I don't see any distinction really whether it’s a big event that affects the whole of society or something small and personal, people talk about it like bleating sheep.
“Of course that happened because of some such and such,” and most of the time people will agree and say, “Oh, sure, I see how that happened” and they just add things together in any flow that they imagine to be fluid and continuous. “She is like this and like that and so that’s why the other girl did this and did that.” I mean, that doesn’t explain anything really. It's just them needing to apply what they think is just cause and effect to arrive at why they think a conclusion to an event is as it is and most of them do this with lots of ardor, lots of generalizations and hardly any facts at all.

It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off, when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni cheese in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that’s just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rung and you opened the top, you got macaroni cheese. I supposed I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some way, a whole lot more real.*

A lot more real simply because it jumps out of what everyone expects from consistent behaviors and allows for the unexplained and the unsolvable under so called "normal circumstances." Of course most people would instantly assume that they'd picked up the wrong sachet and if they checked the sachet wrapper and found it to be that of a rice sachet then they'd next assume that the wrong content had been placed inside at the manufacturers. They would present for themselves any reason whatsoever to explain it except that the rice pudding mix had changed into macaroni cheese during the cooking time inside the microwave. I mean they actually saw the rice go in and they would not believe the results if it happened this way!
I am not happy and I can't say why. It's not because I don't have the words and it's not because I move into the realm of privacy although perhaps some of it does reside there. It's because of thoughts and my intuition and things that exist outside of 'normal circumstances.' It's there in the macaroni cheese and there in a shadow world that lives on top of ours. Some people fall into it for a little time, some people have access to powers there and some people get lost in there. There are many things that inhabit that place which occasionally reach out into our world and play with what they find here.

I finished my bath and had coffee and spent time on the phone chasing up messages and more importantly an offer of work. Then I drove over to the store and bought a gift wrapped fruit basket and drove over to Hitomi's Mothers house. Hitomi opened the door and looked so pleased to see me that the stresses of the last few days simply melted away into non-existence. I went in and gave her mother the small fruit basket and sat and listened to how it happened and how she can't see why everyone makes such a fuss. She has bruised her hip and needs a little rest is all.
We left Adachi together and drove down to a little restaurant that she knows close by the Monzen-Nakacho Station. On the way she said that she was sorry for not being able to get hold of me once I explained my phone battery problem. She said that the doctor wants to give her mother a blood test to see if there was an underlying reason for the dizzy spell since her sister said that her Mother has had them before.

Nothing is spoken of regarding missing days and perhaps no shadows fell across our world.
The status quo is preserved.   

*村上 春樹,