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 - Actor Thoughts 3

“A borrowed memory from a time I did not exist:

Erika was a very popular girl from my high school years. She was loved by the average student, envied by the outcasts, and desired by the easily excitable pubescent male populace. Her breasts were perky and youthful, her curves smooth but not over exaggerated, like some of those playboy models. She wore the most fashionable clothing, and she wore it better than any other girl did. Perhaps, as these were the memories I have of her, I too was infatuated with this girl.

She was smart too, but not too smart. While a serious enough student to win her the admiration of teachers and parents, she was never a book worm, or a girl who cared to do math problems more than explore the secret world of a young man’s pants. She was athletic, and graceful; one of the school volleyball team’s top players. Everyone knew she had a promising future. It was common knowledge even to one such as myself.

During her final year, before heading off to university she stepped into the car of a boy lucky enough to retain her attentions long enough to be considered her boyfriend, for a drive. What her purpose was that day, I am unsure of, but the youth, with a lack of experience on the road, and stubborn, foolish teenage ego, managed to take a detour into a tree.

Erika was thrown from the vehicle and suffered serious head trauma and lacerations and broken bones. Her spine was dislocated in several areas and some would later say it was a miracle that she was not paralyzed for life. As it was, she was not able to walk for months. She could not even lift herself up from bed to the table where the hospital staff placed her meals in the few weeks that followed her after she awoke from her coma. She had to be retrained to sit, learn again how to walk and run. Her nerves had been nearly severed so she had to re-learn how to feel. It took her over a week just to be able to sit up in bed.

That day of the crash in the middle of the road, when the paramedics finally reached the scene, they found Erika, badly injured, but wide eyed and sitting up, her back so immaculately and straightly aligned that it would have made an English princess in training jealous.

Why was it that her broken body, unable to accomplish that feat in the following months, was able to maintain that position?

Trauma, physical or mental, has a powerful effect on a human being.”

Strangers - Actor Thoughts 2

“My life. I wake up in the morning and hear strange, yet recognizable words. The young and the old that I approach, women and men, there is nothing I cannot understand from the mouths of these people, but there is something oddly unfamiliar about these words. They lack roots. They lack true feeling and emotion. They are hollow words of a game I believe I started played before I was ever conscious of myself.

This cannot be my native tongue. At least, there is something odd about this language. My words do not express me, but they become a mask of everything I believe in and feel. They turn unbearable pain into quiet pleasantries. They make my physical memory forget of love, loss, and passion, and instead place the topic of the weather at the top of my priorities.

I speak a language that is light on the tongue. The words flitter in my mouth and on my lips as a butterfly makes its way through wildflowers. Sometimes my tongue is so light that it trips on itself, and I stumble in words. This cannot be my native tongue.

And yet I command the syllables that escape my lips with eloquence and possess a natural fluidity that surprises those around me. Try as I may, I cannot make this language coarse in my mouth.

There are deep memories in some of the words I choose. Memories from before the time of my existence. ”