Salavation Lies Within (Feb/Mar 2004)

The hotel was the kind of place where the guests come because they've lost it all; they've nowhere else to go; the broken & the broken-hearted.
The strasse disappeared into snow & shadow & disappeared off into archways & around corners. Behind me & over the road there was only darkness & the spiny, scratchy fingers of leafless, lifeless tress. Perhaps a park. I thought of vampires & spies coming in from the cold. And Vienna is very cold in February.
A sickly, septic light oozed from the unimpressive looking door of the hotel while on either side of it imposing & impenetrable buildings looked on stoically.
Even the front desk couldn't bear to enter the hotel and was pressed up against one wall in the vestibule, barely big enough to corral the night clerk; himself barely big enough to fill out his ridiculous bandstand jacket. As I stood halfway up the stairs & leaning on the front desk filling out my registration card I noticed, over the gold-tasseled, sofa-trim epaulets, boxes of cigarettes for sale alongside bottles of vodka & whiskey. I was already preparing to check out as I was checking in...
I imagined the hotel beyond would be antiquated cage elevators humming between floors, casting film noir-shadows on the half hidden faces of men with piercing eyes, trench coats & trilbies. All I found was the echo of my footsteps leading me up some distinctly institutional stairs to my room.
The room looked as if it had never seen a joyful day or tasted a sun-kissed afternoon. There was a bed, a nightstand & a brown bulb. I twitched at the spider web of lace at the window & saw only dark walls & the empty eyes of empty rooms glaring greyly back at me. I lay on the bed & smoked a cigarette. I considered the bottles of spirits downstairs & knew that would be the end of me. I'm sure if I'd enquired  I'd find, under the counter, the hotel had an equally impressive selection of razor blades, nooses & big bottles of almond-scented cyanide. It was that kind of place; a guesthouse for the broken & broken-hearted. A place to check-in & then check-out once & for all; the place you come when you've lost it all.
But this isn't that kind of story. I had lost it. But only a bit...

3 months had passed since my mother had too & we were midway through what my brother described as "the longest winter of our lives". The drip drip drip of sorrow will keep you awake at night & as it fills up your life you've got to find a way to bail or you start to sink.
& that's when I lost it.
My boss finally suggested I take some time to come to terms with everything & despite my protestations & claims as to my "fine-ness" her suggestion was final. I was like a balloon drifting over the zoo; beautiful, free & sad.
Somewhere you know a child is crying.

So, I drifted into a travel agents & booked a ticket for Vienna the very next day. It seemed as good a place as any, maybe it was. But it was also cold.
Did I mention the cold?

So I lay on the bed of Hotel Suicide & smoked my cigarette & listened to my walkman & wondered for the thousandth time what the fuck I was doing. I chased my thoughts around my head until they tired me out enough to sleep.
I awoke early the next day, dressed & left the hotel as quickly as I could. Breakfast wasn't included in the hotels modest price range. I doubt most guests make it that far.

 The sky was white & heavy with snow; much of which had already hidden half the city from me. What I could see was dark, brooding and Baroque. Red trams screeched & scraped through the streets.
I consulted my map & checked my bearings through the fog of condensing oxygen that slipped from my lips. My cheeks already felt pink & flushed. I adjusted the messenger bag across my shoulders, pressed Play & set off across the city in search of new lodgings.

The city was still stirring it's early morning coffee as I found myself amidst the Prater; cold & empty; long before opening & the breath of life that would fill it's lungs long after I had passed through; candyfloss, laughter & gumdrop lights amidst the cold, cold night.But there was a strange and lonely beauty about a sleeping, snow smothered funfair; like the balloon above the zoo.
I walked into the city & marveled at the architecture & the circumstances of my situation; I was alone & far from home. My life existed somewhere else & while I was here it was on hold. I was a ghost, haunting Vienna while the ghost of me haunted the rooms of my life back in England. Perhaps my life haunted me too.
Through the ice & the snow I found somewhere better to stay; somewhere with a European joie de vive & a snoring room-mate; somewhere to store the toothbrush & changes of underwear I'd brought.

I returned to the city, following my feet through the snow, guided only by the capricious compass of the idle wanderer. I passed through courtyards & plazas, gardens & and archways; I followed tramlines & busy roads of chugging exhausts & condensing breath; I exchanged glances with the cast-iron gazes of a hundred statues as they looked out over this beautiful city, as they had for centuries, as they always would. I was searching for something I had come here to find; a sense of perspective, and it was this search that, eventually & without warning, brought me to The Vontiv Park Cafe.
Vienna is famous for it's Cafe & it's coffee-culture- Sachertorte & opera, waiters in shirts as crisp & clean as the snow; but the Vontiv Park was not like that at all. The Vontiv Park was hidden in plain sight, just out of sight of St. Stephan's Cathedral. It was the kind of place you would walk by everyday & not take a second glance at, and if you did you would have trouble recalling it's existence. There was nothing special about this place, it was a coffee shop and nothing more, but the significance of places is borne not from its location but from what transpires there. As I stepped inside this thought couldn't have been further from my mind.

The interior was as dark & warm as the aroma of coffee that embraced me as I entered. Light bled in through the large but grimy window at the front  but was slowed and thickened by the heavy, blue fog of cigarette smoke; dark wooden tables, scratched and chipped by a lifetime of coffee cups & conversation clamoured for space, flanked by creaking chairs with pretzel-shaped backs. I eased myself into a small booth in the corner, ordered a coffee, lit a cigarette. From my bag I produced a shiny, new Moleskine notebook, the first of many I've had since then, & began to write.

I wrote for hours & then I wrote for days, confessing all to the cream-coloured pages in the chaotic, unrelenting scrawl of my own hand. Each day I would breakfast on 2 bananas & a carton of milk ("The Breakfast of Champions") before making my way to The Vontiv Park to unburden myself of all the thoughts that had drifted up from a heavy heart. I wrote about the hospital, I wrote about my mum, I wrote about the man who was my father, I wrote about myself, I wrote about the girl & the one I'd left behind. I wore out pens & pages & batteries; I emptied cigarette packs & coffee cups; I shed tears.

In the evenings I would leave & find someplace for dinner or sip a beer at a lonely bar. With each passing day, with each completed page I felt better & better while my bag, it seemed, grew heavier & heavier with the weight of an unburdened heart.  One night I lost myself in a park amidst a snowstorm, my ears filled with the soundtrack to my Vienna (the greatest mix-tape I ever got). I was listening to Sigur Ros' #3 & I was overcome with a sense of life & joy & I knew things were going to be okay.
Or, at least, they would be if I could find my way out of the park before I froze to death.

On the final day I headed once more toward the cafe that had become synonymous with my salvation. I had a few more pages let in my journal & a few more thoughts to get down to finish what I had started. It was still cold, the sun shone out of an icy blue sky, but I was smiling & feeling better than I had in months. I turned the corner, away from the cathedral, into the now familiar street. I tried the handle then tried it again, then I stood for a long empty moment & simply stared at the door. No light's of any kind shone from within, only the faintest glimmer of sunlight reflected in the glass bottles & steel fixtures of the bar. If salvation lay within then I would never find it. The Vontiv Park was closed.

I looked up & down the street as if some passer-by might rush to aid me in some way I could not comprehend how. I shielded my eyes with my hand as I peered desperately through the window as if I would discover that it was all some mistake. I checked my watch, hoping I'd made some gross miscalculation of the time, that perhaps I was too early. But no, there was no mistake & presently the proprietor arrived at the window, unlocked the door & informed me that today was a holiday.
I thanked her meekly & stumbled away from the door. I wandered down the street, once more at the mercy of the same idiosyncratic compass that had brought me here. I peered in at other cafes as I passed but nowhere else seemed to hold a sense of salvation.  So I hopped on a Ringstrasse tram & followed the route without a ticket, unsure as how or where to purchase one. I have a memory of a rose that may or may not be true.
 I looked out of the window & wondered if I could be considered a tourist for I had taken in the sights of this beautiful city only in passing. I could be anywhere, I could've gone anywhere & it was now that the thouht blossomed in my mind;
 The significance of places is borne not from its location but from what transpires there. 

I was one stop from a complete circuit; the conductor got on so I got off.
(Did I mention how cold Vienna is in February?) The cold & declining caffeine levels & my pocket-sized epiphany pushed me into another coffee shop; a bustling, no frills affair that bordered a bustling plaza. I ordered a Vienna Coffee & sat down to complete what I'd started.

Draining time from the clock & the coffee from my cup I set down my pen & flexed my wrist. I was finished. I did not go back & re-read any of what I wrote (It is only in the years since then, that I have, in times of trouble, gone back to look at the words contained therein & tried to make sense of now from the sense I found then.) I simply returned the journal to my bag, my burdens now weighing so much my shoulder ached & complained.  My last night in Vienna was spent toasting my future & acknowledging my past in a cafe that only years late did I come to know was used as a location in one of my favourite films, Before Sunrise. In the morning I took an early bus to the airport, I looked out of the window & waved goodbye to this stranger of a city that had held me in it's arms for a time in a moment of anonymous tenderness. For a moment I thought I saw a pale reflection of myself waving back. He was all that I'd left behind & we were both happy for it.
The future that lay ahead would not be easy, futures never are, but it would be easier now from the perspective I had gained as I clambered to the top of my pile of woe.

"We are broken..." (Oct 2010)

...her error couldn't have said it better.

Dec 5th 2010, Yoyogi Park

Shibuya X-ing (Nov 2010)

(Jan 2010)

"And the fact that it was black-and-white made it look all old and wise, belonging to a different, vanished, therefore better world"

~Aleksandar Hemon

 

Holding Hands in Autumn

I read the words:

"It's not impossible that they fell in love. They were both past the age of foolish passion, so they were passionate without being fools"

-(Michael Chabon's 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union')

and in that moment I see the seats opposite me taken by a man & a woman; they are older, much older than me & yet there is a glow about them that lies beyond the ruddy cheeks of Autumns kiss. The pair of them smiling & giddy, the woman wriggles her hand into his with eager excitement as if on a cold day, as if with the love that has brewed long enough to no longer hesitate but has not grown cold & awkward. These people seem not to have lost a drop of love in all the years they've been together & I wonder how long it's been; twenty, thirty years?
I look again at the words I have just read, their ink on my memory still wet. I smile; eyes that reflect the sorrows of a long life lived & yet etched around each in wrinkles of joy I see that these people have known as much happiness, if not more. They laugh & smile & the man holds the woman's hand tightly, happily, lovingly in his. I can't recall the last time I saw 2 people so in love. They smile & talk & too soon my stop arrives & I watch their light disappear along the train tracks.

Mum's Birthday

Today is my mother's birthday. She'd be 65.
My mum was the strongest person I've ever known; she bore the brunt of an alcoholic husband destroying everything they'd created, she watched her parents, her brother, her sister & her dear friends die & throughout all of this she was the shoulder for everyone else to cry on, she was the shield that stood between her children & all the darknesses of the world.
And despite being a tiny woman, flighty & slight of frame, she could still beat my 18 year old self at Mercy & was the one who could get the lid off the jar of jam.

I only ever saw my mother sick a handful of times & it terrified me. My mother was invulnerable.
Almost.
She carried on regardless & somehow, somewhere, always, always, always found the strength to smile & was quick to do so. She was good fun.
She would iron my socks & underpants in winter so they'd be warm, despite me telling her how pointless it was. She always wanted to hold my readybrek hands in winter even when I was far too old to agree.
I'd give anything to have her hold those hands now.
There was no pretense with my mum, no bullshit, & I admired her for that the most; she was kind, generous & forgiving. I never knew her to be malicious in anyway. She had no time for it. She would often say, when as a boy I'd fallen out with friends, or later with girlfriends; "I don't know why you just all can't get along". I often think the world should've taken note.
After I was unfairly dismissed from a job my mother, unbeknown to me called my boss & then his boss & then his until she got to the top of the company, berating each one in turn until they offered me my job back, a reluctant handshake from a recalcitrant child. I have no idea what she said but I can imagine her making each of them feel like they were 7 years old, caught shoplifting Woolworths pick n mix.
My favourite story is from my graduation; I had tickets pus extra tickets for my mum, her friend & a whole host of other friends who wanted to come & see me in my cap & gown. Unfortunately those tickets were still in my pocket when I went off to get the aforementioned attire. With the ceremony about to start I ran back to where I'd left everyone to find them gone. My head spinning wildly as I entered the hall I saw everyone seated & smiling from a balcony above the stage. Later I discovered my mother had waved everyone through to the seats & when stopped & questioned by an usher stated simply "I don't need tickets" in a way that suggested that that was that & that that was enough. It was.
She would give you all she had and more even if all she had was nothing.
But don't take this from me- it's easy for a grieving son to idolise the dear departed, understand as it became even more clear to me; the funeral hall could not contain all the people who had come out to say their final goodbyes to my mother. People who were strangers to me but not I to them for my mother was friend to everyone she met & she always told them about her sons. I have never felt so proud to know any one person in all my life, on the day I said goodbye.

Of course, things weren't always idyllic- far from it at times. But those things seem so much less important now. I only wish they had at the time.

My Mum didn't understand a lot about my life, or my brothers, she'd probably understand even less about it now but that never stopped her from supporting either of us in what we did, no matter how unfathomable it might be. If there was ever to be a role model it would be her; she taught me to be generous & kind & considerate although perhaps she taught me, inadvertently, to worry too much too. She taught me a strength, although I can't always find it & good humour, ditto.
I miss my mum every day & while I'm thankful for the time we had, although I'll always wish we'd had more, I think the saddest thing is that you never got to meet her & the friend she would have been to you & the love she would have given.
She was mother, friend, sister, aunty & more to more than just those within her family.
I leave you with this photo- it's my favourite & yet it's of a woman I never really knew, taken years before I was born & yet it captures the spirit and the joy my mum carried with her her whole life, no matter what.

Happy birthday Mum. Ciders at half mast!. xx

Doug.

Doug doesn't have answers but he does sometimes pose the questions that I need to ask to help me find them.

A Hazy Shade of Sunday (31st October 2010)

The typhoon has passed, leaving only puddles & metaphors.
I'm sat in the park wrapped in my autumnal tweed & scarf. My mind is a hazy shade of something & it feels like my hangover is relapsing.
It's Sunday & feels like it, in all it's Sunday best.
The Beach Boys pose "Wouldn't it be nice?" to me in Californian tones under Tokyo Skies & I watch as Japanese Rockabillies dance out of time to my own private soundtrack. I ponder the rhetoric & think about last night;

The marriage of 2 of my favourite people. A day they'll never forget, nor me neither. A day where all the rain in the world couldn't wash their love away. I know now it never will.  There are chants, toasts and speeches. There is food & drink & photos taken. There is laughter, there are tears & there is, of course, love. There is always love.
One party becomes another & another, an endless supply. Even after the happiest couple in the world tonight fall, exhausted into their first matrimonial bed, my merry band of renegades & I press on til dawn- toasting their happiness & all ours as we dance & laugh & sing & bowl.
The Bride & Groom went home to grow old together on a single pillow.
The others went home together, carrying love in differing weights.
Jpop went home heartbroken.
I went home alone... but hopeful...

Which is how I find myself now, waiting in a fading afternoon for a girl to arrive & she's already late.
An evening lies ahead that speaks of walking through the park amidst sodium lights & shadows; of talk & laughter; of drinks & home-cooked meals in pubs where no one sings Joy Division covers & we wonder why. & she'll know what nail polish Mia Wallace wears & wear it; An evening where maybe we'll kiss & maybe she'll say the sexiest thing a girl has ever said to me.

But right now I'm waiting to see if she really is worth waiting for & I can't think of a better way to be spending sunday.

Yeah, it would be nice.

"You learn a lot about a woman when you fight with her.

You learn a lot about a woman when you have sex with her.

& if you want to know how beautiful a woman can be, see her cry.

& if you want to see how beautiful a woman can be, marry her"

10.11.03----------------------------10.11.10

It's a quiet nod sort of a day. That's how my brother puts it & he couldn't have put it better.
It's only when Jpop reminds me that I'm forced to remind myself.
7 years & the chlorine lights have flickered & fizzled out; the death & disinfectant smell has faded.
7 years since I last held the hand that had so often held mine & wished in the yawning abyss between breaths that each one would be finally be her last, that she'd be free. Until finally, with ear-ringing silence, it was.
7 years & I've forgotten so much. With no present to unfurl into the future, all we have is the past accelerating away from us & dragging memory behind it; unraveling it, distorting it, pulling it thin & we forget.

We forget & it makes strangers out of mothers, lovers & friends. These are the ghosts that haunt us- the half-remembered details, the spaces we cannot fill. & they're only getting wider.


7 years & I've forgotten the sound of my mother's laugh, her smell & the way a smile broke across her lips (I wish I had a photo of her hands).  All I have are moments frozen in time, a fading photograph, a silent smile, the perfume of fixing solution & time.

But her fingerprints remain in the shape of my nose, or the way my eyes sometimes turn green & in who she taught me to be.  I hear the echo of her laughter in my brothers as we catch sight of the past & hold it for a moment & Remember.
& smile.

Since '76 (Oct. 6th 2010)

I looked out from the 52nd floor of Shinjuku's Park Hyatt hotel; from here I could see the emerald of my beloved Yoyogi park set in the concrete chaos of Tokyo that had been poured as far as the horizon & beyond. The sun was shining & the sky a perfect blue, accented with the faint, wispy clouds that spoke of autumn. It was a good day.
I was alone, the only guest at a party that would mean the most only to those that were invited- my birthday.
I treated myself to a lunch I couldn't afford whilst, in honour of the location, I sipped on Sophia's family wine paying more per glass than I would normally pay for a bottle. It was worth it.
 I'd made as much of an effort as I could to look respectable but looking around the few fellow diners who'd made it this far at lunch I had to wonder what they thought my gambit was- Some sort of musician, eccentric writer or just someone who had saved up enough money to treat himself to an upmarket meal. The roles of my fellow diners seemed to be played by a couple on a high-end luncheon date-I hope he or she was worth it; some ladies-who-lunch while their husbands work themselves to death floors below & a group of French businessmen slicing up steaks & signing contracts over coffee.
There are times, rare though they might be, when loneliness is the best company. At least I didn't have to worry about conversation.
The morning had been counted out in chord formations & cups of tea. Before leaving I dragged my tripod & old Nikon camera out into the hallway & documented this my 34th year.

Later, with red stained lips & a wine stained brain I would wander aimlessly toward the park I'd seen from one high & practice my harmonica until it was time to meet Dave. We would eat at a street level eatery with street level prices, spilling out onto the street on makeshift chairs & sip highballs. We would be in the company of his lovely wife & her equally lovely friend who I met for the first & only time exactly a year ago. A day of synchronicity & diversity which is exactly what you expect from this city.
It was a good day indeed.

15th Sept. 2010

It's cooler & I'm wearing my first jacket of the season. I like wearing jackets.
I'm listening to "Daughters of the Soho Riots" by The National & I'm on my way to my appointment.
A cute woman on the train keeps swapping glances with me that I return over the top of my book. Is she interested in me? Could she be?
I'll never know.

I arrive- one stop away from Sakura Shinmachi & a girl I used to know. I'm early.
I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging out outside convenience stores in this part of town.

"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

A good question. It was posed to me outside a convenience store  in Shinagwa late one summers afternoon a couple of years ago. I cracked open my beer and looked around at the gold & silver light of the fading day, the long shadows it cast & the way it brought out the neon in Tokyo's eye.
"I tell you what I'd do" said my friend, in answer to his own question, "I'd go swimming. I've never been a strong swimmer & I'm scared of being in the water. I'd go swimming & learn how to swim."

I nodded, acknowledging a worthy admission, but my gaze was somewhere between the business men leaving work & the Taj Mahal. I was wondering what one thing I would do if I weren't afraid. There seemed to be too many things.
"I don't know" I replied, weakly.
"I do" said my companion. For all his faults & inconsistencies he was a kindred spirit & knew me as only perhaps a handful of people do. It's why we were friends.
"You'd ask people on the street if you could take their photo" & I knew he was right. It was absolutely true & so obvious I couldn't even see it myself.

As the light slipped through hues of pink into blue & then the inevitable velveteen indigo of another Tokyo night, we made a pact. There in the spill of acid-washed, convenience store light we made a pact that was signed with a handshake & the kind of determination that all young men should experience as often as possible. We sealed it with another celebratory beer.
We would overcome our fears.

The night rolled on & our talk turned to other things but the pact was not forgotten. My friend went swimming. He went swimming a lot.
& a week or so later I was sharing a cigarette with my friend & going over the details outside the train station in Harajuku; it seemed a good place to start as it might be a little bit more accepting toward my nervous advances. I had a time limit of 3 hours in which time I had to successfully capture 36 portraits of random people on the street. They could be anybody but they had to approached & accepting of my request.
With a plan to meet 3 hours later in the pub my friend set off in one direction & I the other.
I slipped into the labyrinth of backstreets that run through Harajuku & the back of Omotesando, my camera clutched determinedly in one sweaty hand, looking for someone who looked like the kind of person who might just agree to have their photo taken for no real reason by a foreigner who could barely speak their language.
I didn't really know what that sort of person would look like.
So I walked around a little more. Then I stopped outside a convenience store & had a cigarette. Then I did some maths & worked out how many minutes I'd have between photos if I were to succeed. Then I waited for someone to approach me & ask me if I could take their photo. But that didn't work so I had another cigarette. Then I checked my watch & knew, with the kind of determination that young men should experience as often as possible, that it was now or never.
I walked straight up to the nearest person, kept walking, went into another back street & cursed myself. Then, in a last ditch attempt to make that leap over the infinite inch & into the beyond I walked up to this young man who was sitting nearby. He was surly but accepting.

Click.
It was done. I'd done it.
I thanked him quickly & bolted away, my heart racing awash with exhilaration & the last giddy remnants of fear. This. Was. Great.

I needed more. No longer for the sake of the project but for the rush, the knowledge that I could do it.
I took more & with each one it became easier. I went out on shaky limbs of language & tried to engage people in a bit more conversation. The refusals came & they hurt. I remember that but I don't remember who. Whatever blows it dealt my confidence were soon forgotten.

When the 3 hours were up I had failed to get all 36. I'd reached 26. Some way out but still, I'd done what I'd set out to do.
I even went back a few days later so I could finish the roll. They were some of the best photos I've ever taken.

Strange thing is I always meant to do more but over time the idea slipped away & when it came back I found that the confidence I'd gained that day was gone. But after writing this tonight, on a day when I could be writing something else, I remember how it felt that day & maybe that memory is all I need to get out there with my camera once again...

Liminal

(taken from my notebook-Sept. 09)  

The narrative of this story has already become fractured & blurred by time & distance, alcohol & distraction, by failing memory,  by the little sleep I've had & all the sleep I've missed..
It began with a large bottle of red; split 3 ways between 5. Then 3 of those split too. With nothing better to do, nothing but the night & the city, we took to the streets.

"Let's make this coffee Irish" we joked, and we did. Sat outside a cafe that felt like I shouldnt belong in this city. A lost orphan of cafe culture. Time took steps and steps took time & streets from beneath us, down from Takadanobaba to Shinjuku & on to Yoyogi. The night reveals the city in mysterious ways, my companion revealed more of his history. His Story.
Harajuku soon became Omotesando & Cat Street led us toward Shibuya; by day these areas were crowded, the business end of Tokyo. In the chlorine light of the convenience store we appeared as pale ghosts haunting an empty night. lost souls.
Can we get some service?

Slipping into Shibuya we sought out, once again, the bar that had become a part of our own urban mythology after some half-remembered drunken night summers before. Despite bearing the legend "Too Sweet Ass" in brilliant red neon I recall the place hadnt seemed nearly as provocative as the name suggested once within. Although my companion (also present that fateful summer eve) had sworn he had engaged in discourse with a concubine.
Unbelieveably, we managed to find it.
But they refused to let us in.

Our pretense at some destination or goal momentarily gone we needed a new plan. Trains were hours away on either side of us & so my erstwhile companion suggested we press on to Roppongi & the spider that lurks in the shadow of the Mori Tower.
Our walk had, over the course of the past hour, been transformed it seemed into some kind of quest.

However, somewhere between the disbelief of finding our initial destination, the disappointment of our lack of ingress & the formulation of our new plan Shibuya had spun us round & spit us out on some unfamiliar part of it's periphery. My unfaltering sense of direction faltered, then failed.
& then we became lost.

Moving only forward we could be, should be moving toward Roppongi- we even catch a tantalising glimpse of the famed tower through a thicket of blacked out, onyx buildings only for it to disappear again & forever. It's a mirage, a Siren call that we follow down to drown in this concrete sea.
There are no landmarks anymore, maps are old, yellowed & indecipherable ("How does it feel to be illiterate at 30?"). We flotsam & jetsam on an ocean of night, adrift on the waves of the city. Seeking out some Plutonian shore.
Soon the sky pales; velveteen blue to grey & before we have time to outrun it dawn is upon us.
We are still lost. Time has become slippery & we cant hold onto it. The light is the grey light that inhabits dreams, discomforting & strange. There's no skyline that I recognise. I havent seen a train station in hours. We are in some post-Lynchian suburbia of expensive, sleeping houses,BMW's & Porche's guard driveways. I feel 100,000 miles away from Tokyo.
We have entered the Twilight Zone.

Jpop, in his delirium, asks for directions.

Walking, stumbling, laughing, freaking out. Roppongi is forgotten. Our destination is somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere but this nowhere.

Everything becomes a blur of architecture & I cant believe we 're so lost. I will always keep the vision of my companions face- a touch of insanity in his eyes- as he cackled & asked me or whatever gods might be watching, "where the fuck are we?!"
I couldn't answer him then just as I cant answer him now.

We finally find a Denny's & eat breakfast in silence. It feels comforting despite it's Tarantino pretensions. Everything is almost okay- although night feels like it happened to someone else, even dawn is fading into memory. It's undeniably day. Trains have been running for hours, not that we've seen a station, and we're still lost.
Then, inexplicably, we're in Shibuya again.
We sit at Hachiko & drink a final beer. The clocks say 8:30 but they speak a language I no longer understand.
A train waits to carry me home.

My bed waits to carry me to sleep.

"The what line?"

In all the years I've been in Tokyo I've never heard of it- the Ikegemi Line- but that's where I'm headed. It's a small line that seems like it doesn't belong. And it sneaks out of the city under the cover of darkness.
At first glance, Ikegemi itself seems like a thousand other satellite towns dotted around Tokyo. only smaller & with less invading skyline. Or so it seemed.
I'm here to meet M. It's been too long. Too long since we've been face to face over a couple of beers- something the ersatz experience of ambient awareness could never compete with.
Those same few beers later we head out to restock & for M to reveal to me the secrets of Ikegemi-

A hundred thousand stairs or so it seems & I'm glad I'm already drunk- but it was well worth it. The temple seems big & given such room to breathe that you just don't find in the claustrophobic confines of the city. The pagoda disappeared into the darkness & we found our way to the top of a nearby viewing tower to take in everything from Yokohama to Tokyo- a constellation of sodium-lights & neon scattered beneath & beyond us.

(Thanks to M. for the foto)

It's one of those great, quiet moments where just for a second everything else is forgotten; the stray dogs of your worries cease their incessant barking & watch with you.

And then the police arrived.

Okay so the tower IS off limits at 3 a.m. Surprisingly.
We act dumb- although I'm not acting & M's native tongue works better than mine. A few verbal wrists slaps & some apologies should be enough but the guy decides to go ahead & search us too (can they do that?) but to no avail. We are sent on our way.

It's been a good night- the impromptu ones usually are.
I needed this. I think maybe M did too. It's been a long week, maybe more. So I'll take the 5 hours sleep & the hangover & the rolling into work in yesterdays clothes because this is the kind of thing that makes the rest of the week, maybe more, easier to bear.

Marching Bands of Monday Nights (Nov 2009)

A random Monday in November, a random route around the city. We walk & talk as we always do, our autopilot instructed by both a sense & an aversion to the familiar. We walk backwards into Shibuya & before the noise & the neon we find music & marching. It's a parade for who knows what. Technicolour uniforms, majorettes & twirling battons.
It's things like this; these wonderful random, meaningless yet meaningful idiosyncrasies that make me remember why I love Tokyo.
The band eventually passes into the night. It leaves behind no memory of it's tune only the warm afterglow of some bit of magic. Smiling, we press on into the noise & the neon that awaits. 

What's in a name?

There was once a blog that garnered some favourable reviews & keen readers but it has long since been abandoned, become derelict, crumbled & decayed until it was swallowed up once more by the wilderness of the internet.
Since disconnecting my Facebook account (a liberating experience that may well be undone by the creation of this site) I decided to pursue a new avenue for somewhere to display my thoughts, feelings & memories as laid out in words & pictures...
The title-Postcards from yesterday was a term I came up with about a year ago. Maybe more (time is lapping me now). The idea was, & still is, to put together the photos I've taken over the years into some kind of book.
I have no pretentious of making a living as a photographer- my photos are just another medium in which I record the world around me & my place in it.  Just as a long-awaited letter reveals to us the thoughts & feelings of the writer, spilled out in ink in their own unique hand, on paper that they themselves once held, we get a glimpse into where they were or still remain.

My photographs are my own way of keeping in touch with my future self; etched out in light & memory they are my own postcards from yesterday...