September 22nd, 2003
The things that make life sweet (pt. 3)
I carried “Flowers for Algernon” around in my coat pocket today so I could read it during lunch and break. I also have gotten into the questionable habit of reading it when I walk, I just started this morning and I’m already up to page 50. Books have an interesting way of affecting my behavior. It may be kind of silly, but as Charlie is growing more and more intelligent, I’ve found myself walking with better posture and thinking about everything in more than one dimension at a time. I want to believe that I have the potential to be exceptionally bright, and just as the Dalai Lama says of happiness, I feel my capacity for intelligence and learning is dependent largely on my attitude and the way I approach the challenges I encounter each day.
Anyway, I’m writing mainly to report that mood is continuing to skyrocket. It seems that ever since the weather changed things have been markedly different. I still feel great mentally, even though I am fully conscious of how precarious a position I’m putting myself in by not resting. In addition, the temperature has plummeted from a humid 87 on Friday to a poor shadow of summer with a high in the mid 60s. People say this kind of dramatic change makes it easy to get sick, but I’m so thrilled to be able to have my window open and feel the brisk evening I don’t care. I didn’t get to cleaning the dishes I mentioned earlier as I probably should, in fact at work I toyed with the idea of putting it off until tomorrow morning when I have to take out the trash, but the odor right now is demanding otherwise. It’s just a pain in the neck dealing with the common space downstairs that I’m trying to avoid, not the actual dish washing itself (which I actually enjoy).
Tokyo is a city of 12 million people. I’m not sure how many I get to see on a daily basis just walking to the train station and back, but I’d guess it’s close to several hundred if not a thousand. Shinjuku eki is the busiest train station in the world, over one million people go through it _every day_. I’m one of that million, twice, though I have the entrances, exits, times and train doors memorized so well it’s quite effortless for me at this point. The great thing about the cold weather is the crowds are no longer oppressive with heat and humidity, but rather a Dionysian field of pleasant fragrances both synthetic and natural. I CAN’T GET OVER how fantastic girls smell. It may just be that I’m starstruck, or in one of the most fashionable cities in the world, but Japanese women seem leagues more feminine than their American counterparts. Ack, my head is going to explode from so much coquettish allure.
Life is an ever-evolving, biomechanical, multi-dimensioned beast of synaesthesia, and I possess the means to navigate its bloodstream en force.
The Tokyo Game Show is this weekend. w00t.
