Strangers - Emily Holmes 1

There are countless stories that chronicle the tales of misappropriated passions. Fables tell of the difference between youthful romance and stable, genuine affection. Passion, not love, ignores the truth of relationships. Passion is unconcerned with reciprocity. Passion downplays incompatibilities, emphasizes glorified preconceptions and even has the power to readjust personal values. When passion burns up quickly what remains can be claustrophobia.

Surely, Evan was evidence of that. What Emily saw in Miyuki’s eyes as she came for her Thursday night one-on-one English lesson with Evan was hopeless passion. What she saw in Evan’s eyes was the shadow of diversion. He was polite, even flirtatious with Miyuki, but it was without meaning. There was no promise of a future rendezvous anymore when he saw her to the door uttering “Ja mata ne!”

That is why Emily’s mind was at peace when she pondered the upcoming arrival of Jaden, her boyfriend on and off for the past two years. Together, they had never let themselves become so carried away with passion that they let their emotions steal their future. They had experienced the closest intimacy and long-term separation. This is how she knew she was not addicted to his physical presence.

Throughout their months apart Emily and Jaden kept regular contact. Every Saturday morning she would log onto her computer and Skype with him as Friday evening set upon Beantown. For an hour the two would recount their week’s adventures before he logged off to join his friends downtown at Sunset Bar while Emily left to hike to one of her favorite Shinto shrines followed by her Ikebana flower arrangement class.

The comfortable rhythm of their relationship was never meant to be permanent. They had lived together in the months prior to Emily’s departure to Japan, and it was always envisioned that after two years the two would reunite in Boston and attend Harvard Law School together. Their future plans were a source of security in their otherwise transitioning lives, but they were also safely guarded in the untouchable state of distant dreams.

At 9:00 am, Emily had been waiting at Kansai Kuukou International Airport for 45 minutes. Jaden’s plane had been delayed after an ice storm in his layover city of Chicago prevented the plane from taking off for 2 hours. Emily’s heart felt still even as her brain congratulated herself on her calm demeanor. After 7 months she and the man of her future would be reunited and she felt not a single butterfly. She was at peace, and this even-mindedness could only be an indication that what she and Jaden shared was far more than simple explosive passion.

As Jaden’s plane came closer to Osaka, Emily took her time to reflect and recall fond memories of her life with Jaden. She mused on their future life together as she shuffled through her iPod.

Funny. Neil Young seemed to pop up more than normal and she found this mellow song to resonate with her heart. When all the adventures she was having now, all the adventures she had in store for the future were said and done, this is what would remain. This would be there to cushion her heart as it exchanged a lust for adventure for the love of peaceful, quiet simplicity. In the end, there was a slow dance years in the future when they were celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary. She could smell the wooden floor they rocked their feet on. She could feel his wrinkled hands caressing her arm with familiar affection, starkly in contrast to the feverish lust in the caress of the first night they consummated their relationship.

Because I’m still in love with you, I want to see you dance again. Because I’m still in love with you, on this harvest moon.

Tall, short black hair with tired eyes hiding behind reading glasses, Jaden finally came into view. He saw her as well and but maintained his pace. Finally the two met at an embrace that required neither tears nor words. She was where she belonged. He was where he belonged. Their relationship is solid, borne on a foundation of communication and mutual respect. The walls protecting their dreams are in perfect condition.

Strangers - Actor Thoughts - Azuka Horie 1

I am amazed by you, you silly strange incredible person. What are you doing here? A thousand other places would beg for your presence, your talent and accomplishments yet you make your home here, among peasants and fishermen. Before you landed, no one felt the lack of your existence but now you will never be forgotten. You are integral to the fabric of this town, although you were not born here. No one here knows your first steps, and your family is known only through non-descript pictures, but I wonder if this doesn’t simple give the baa-chans greater incentive to adopt you and claim you as their own.

You are the man everyone knows. When I meet a new visitor to this town I am surprised when they are already speaking fondly of you as though you were brothers. Friends of friends cut the middle man and you take them under your wing and make them a part of your life directly. How are you able to trump time, commitment and history and become as important to their lives as your friend? How are you able to turn a chain into a triangle?

And you know how to use these connections. Already I can see if you wanted to, in a decade you could be the second westerner elected to the Diet! If you wanted to. You could go anywhere, and I worry this town is going to suffer some heartbreak over you. You may enjoy it here, but have you ever really been living here?

But I must acknowledge my selfishness. My observations are painted in jealousy, not admiration, and it is tempting to hate you for it. In many ways, your success only highlights my failure.

But to hate you would be to hate motivation, progress and pure, beautiful, intellectual curiosity. You push me to do better merely by the strength of your tale. In the face of failure and emotional disappointment, you don’t persevere. That would imply a change in quality of effort you exert on your life. That would imply a conservative stance. You never exhibit such a shift in perspective. Tragedy and life are not interrelated for you. They exist on two completely separate planes of reality, and you make your home in the latter.

I want to be a stronger, accomplished person because of you. For you? No, that cannot be right. I want to consider myself your equal. Please, can see me as your intellectual sibling?

No that cannot be right.

I want to make an impact on this world, to traverse it and come to understand it. And in exotic adventures, I want to meet you there.

No that is also not right!

I want to use my skills to become as respected as you. I want you to respect me. But this is not at all correct, for to require your approval would automatically make me less than you!

You are no god. I know your failings. I know that for all the amiable attention you receive, for all the time you spent in the lab, on the mountain tops, you have not been able to achieve the one thing you want most. For in your success you are hopelessly dependent on one connection more than any other. For you, she doesn’t have to be smart, she doesn’t have to be pretty, but she does have to exist, and your magic has not been able to conjure more than a temporary dream of her.

I see you, I know you, more than you really know yourself perhaps! You want to dump in her the insecurities that no one ever knew you had. In her you want to find the meaning to why you work as hard as you do. In return, to her you offer your success, and with it the respect that would naturally come from being your bride.

You don’t understand women, and that might be your downfall. What is illegitimate fame achieved under a false pretense of love?

I know what you need too. You need an equal. To have a pet can mean blind affection, but a human pet will just disintegrate into resentment.

I know I cannot be that equal. There is too much I have yet to work on. I cannot risk losing to you in anything.

No this isn’t right either. I need a more aggressive stance.

You do not ask for it of a woman, but I ask it of myself for you. When we meet at the table of equals, when my achievements exceed yours, when I can challenge you on neutral territory and give you a good fight, only then will I deserve you.

But please, as I prepare for battle, wish me good luck with a kiss.”

Strangers - Actor Thoughts - Lyn Nagy 1

“I’m never going to get out you know. Yesterday is the same as tomorrow, and the life you know today isn’t much different either. What will change between now and your fantasized day of departure? Do we suppose perhaps one of these days one of these same people we see everyday will impart us with some terrifying knowledge, the answer to some mystifying riddle that has been the mess you call your life? Or do we think even that one day fate will just smile on me, placing in our path someone new, a new stranger, who starts by feebly trying to say something in my native tongue, but who then grows into a new and dear friend. Perhaps they will be able to change our situation in a way that you yourself cannot even fathom now. Perhaps they will be your ticket out of here.

Or do I think our efforts will get you out of here? Do I actually think we are in any position to improve your situation? Look at us! We are far away in mind and body from anybody who knows or cares about you. Your existence in their world is a shallow memory laminated by the sentiment that they always knew you would end up leading a different life. Even as we struggle, some think of you proudly. They live their happy comfortable lives, and are still able to gossip about their wayward relation who is out there in the jungle, at the edge of civilization, living amongst exotic peoples with strange customs.

Not that it matters of course, since nobody who knows or cares about you really cares anyway. If you inspired pride in some, you garnered loathing, or worse, pity from most others. You knew what you were doing when you left. You never fit in at home. You were always the black sheep. You were always the oddball. There is a reason why we are here, among so many people who don’t understand us or our culture. It is because we don’t much understand us or our culture yourself.

And these days that drag on. Wake up. Work. The dull rhythm of life outlasts any spark of panic this mind can fabricate. Do you know why that is? Because tomorrow is always a new day. Because emotions change like the wind. They are fickle, they are more random than we give them credit for, and they are completely incomprehensible to the person we will be tomorrow. So have a bad day today, don’t worry, tomorrow will be better. The sun will rise again and breathe new life into a body we thought devoid of it.

Don’t worry. Yesterday we panicked, but physical limitations didn’t let us panic forever. Eventually we had to sleep, we had to eat, we had to bathe and breathe. We had to take myself out of that existence, out of that moment in time where this life was not livable. Our moping was interrupted by bowel movements. Our tears ceased and were dried accidentally by our shirt when we lifted it to apply deodorant. Daily life upgraded our status, saved our sanity, killed the sharp pain in our heart that burned for you to escape what you considered unbearable.

You envy the antelope we see on those nature shows, desperately running from the jaguar. They are faced with a moment between life or death, and their instant physiological response is to live. If the effort to run faster than that predatory cat lasted longer than a few moments, rationality would have time to set in. Acceptance, perhaps, resignation to meet one’s fate as the dinner of one very hungry feline, might cross the mind of the antelope.

Yes, perhaps I am being harsh. So in the meantime, make excuses. Today we are tired. Last night we were up far too late, and this morning we had to rise early. Tomorrow we will think of how to get out of this cage. Hold that thought of misery just for now. An hour or two later, after work, after dinner, after the mindless existence we deserve to have for a few hours every night that we refer to as relaxation, unwinding from the day, then we will resume feverish despair.

And anyway, nothing can be done right now. It is too cold in this place. We are doing the best we can with the resources we have at our fingertips, but getting up would mean getting out from under the warm kotatsu. My lips would turn blue, my teeth would chatter uselessly and we would not be able to concentrate on anything besides how to retain the warmth of life.

But this mind cures all. This mind saves us with the gift of daily life.

So do not worry. If our pulse starts to race, if our breath shortens, you know what to do. If you feel helpless, for even one moment, and you think you might fall into pressure and despair, when you think nobody is looking, lift up the blanket just for a moment, lest we let too much cold air in. Slip my hands into that warm haven, and let my fingers loose the chill to their touch. Make your way to my belt and pull it out from under the loop. Take the spokes out of the holes that keep my belt tight enough, and unclasp the buckle.

Undo the button of my pants and pull down the zipper. Reach in and do not give us the opportunity to dwell on anything any further. When you think nobody is listening, let the sounds of your panting and replace the sounds of helpless tears. This is how we deal with life. This is how we maintain normalcy and stability.”

Strangers - Actor Thoughts - Emily Holmes 1

“Second thoughts?

Second thoughts my dear, second thoughts? As if you made a mistake? I see how you lips quiver and tremble at the thought of before. As the memories you so joyously created long before your birth into this world pour out of your dark pleading eyes, I know you lived another life. Your eyes glaze over and you are transported to another world, a world unfamiliar to the sights and sounds of today, and you know it so well you can smell it. You had hopes and dreams, some of them led you here, led you to create me, a vessel for all of your anxieties. But you never considered back then that the every day, the ordinary, would become a treasure, something you would treasure with your whole being.

Now, you see what you never saw before, the fine wire attached to every appendage on your body, to every hair on your head. They are attached with the strongest cement known to mankind. They are attached to your every breath of yester year. You can never dissolve it. You can never break the bonds of your past.

But these memories are poison.

The only way to rid us of these burdens, these tiresome recollections of a life long gone is to forget.”

Strangers - Cassidy Rivers - 2

When he escaped Ranch Rivers, Cassidy was 23 and the world was changing in ways that wouldn’t hit rural Australia for years. The 1980s were in full swing and not since Marco Polo was the eastern hemisphere as commercially important to the world as it was becoming now. Japan and the Asian Tigers were leading the way in shifting the focus from the west, and Australia too was benefiting from increased trade and an easy supply of cheap goods. Increased mechanization of agriculture also meant that the young Mr. Rivers was not the only former farm boy leaving his life behind for the big city.

Cassidy moved into a new world when he rented that small, entirely over priced, shack of an apartment in Melbourne. Modern living may have meant he had hot water at his fingertips in a moment’s notice, but it also meant living like a sardine that managed to fit a toilet, bed and kitchen sink in one can. After finding work in construction in the rapidly growing business of building life-sized monopoly pieces, Cassidy took the lease with some self-goading.

“The world is my abode. My apartment is just my bedroom.” he once commented to a fellow countryside transplant turned laborer, with a grin. That coworker ultimately couldn’t put the spin on his life Cassidy did, and in longing for wide open pastures, and a house one can walk through in more than 5 steps, eventually abandoned his new life.

Perhaps the years of maintaining a nearly consistent high off marijuana finally burned a hole in his head, (he still enjoyed a more than occasional toke) but Cassidy felt no discontent about his housing situation and his strenuous, grunt work. To ask him if he was a happy man (and have him respond in earnest) might have set him off balance, forcing him to reevaluate his life, his mother, his future, and all those mops of hair in-between. This was something he was completely uninterested in doing. Life is unpredictable, changes in a moment. What is the use in looking at the path that got you there? Far more important to take life as it comes.

As a side effect to the Asian Miracle, xenophobic Australia was subjected to a new threat for the first time since English prisoners made the continent their new home: foreigners who looked funny. They came mostly as businessmen, but familiar American and European tourist faces slowly but surely were being subsidized by the faces of the new Japanese rich. And with them came their strange language, and their strange food, and strange mannerisms.

Unlike many of his peers, particularly those in parliament, Cassidy rather liked these new comers. They mostly avoided eye contact with him, they didn’t wear those god-awful Hawaiian t-shirts, shorts and sandals, they didn’t find his “accent” cute and he didn’t find their “accent” obnoxious. Most importantly, they were short and had nice, uniform hair. It was mesmerizing to look at a tour group.