Today, I had originally planned to go sightseeing with Taiwanese classmates from language school, to head out together to Rinku Town and ride the Ferris wheel on its final day of free admission, before it too would soon cease operating.
But after all sorts of waning enthusiasm, everyone decided not to go together after all.
With my jet lag finally adjusted and my vampire life restored, I happily stayed awake until daylight rose at six, set my Amazon return parcel outside the entrance to the dormitory building, and trusted that public safety in Japan would keep it from being stolen.
Then I sank into a long sleep in bed.
To hell with group sightseeing. To hell with experiencing life.
Just let me have a proper sleep. Japanese homework and everything else could wait until I woke up!
Work on the middle volume had stalled a week before I came to Japan, and a voice within me kept telling me that the protagonists were still waiting for me to write their lives.
So I opened the long-neglected manuscript and began tinkering with it again, inching the lives of the hero and heroine forward at a tortoise’s pace.
I have to say that the act of writing has made me understand, with particular force, what a “parallel universe” means.
Sometimes a single line spoken by a protagonist or supporting character changes the direction of the plot, yet the major turns in life that the protagonists must endure do not change course because of one or two lines.
It is as if fate has its own immutable anchor points, while the details of how they appear can take all manner of forms.
Perhaps I, too, am bound by the Japanese onmyōji notion of kotodama, a spell carried by words.
In my stories, the protagonists’ names shift across the prequel, middle volume, and sequel, because the details of their lives shift slightly across those three parts, because in each one, the protagonists seem to have passed through a parallel timeline of their own.
Destiny cannot be defied, but the details can each be adjusted.
Secluding myself in the little room at the dormitory, I create or revise before a manuscript that is either blank or already dense with words.
The stories I am writing or telling may never bring any tangible effect or financial return.
When I browse Facebook and see the writers I have followed transform from complete unknowns into people with a modest reputation,
I look back on the road of my own life and find myself still so inconspicuous, my words still carrying so little weight.
Is there any meaning or benefit in persisting with one’s own creation or goals?
And yet I think I am fortunate. Life has not yet forced me to bend my back for five measures of rice. I can still live with the least material desire, moving calmly and with room to spare, without having to scramble and tumble over firewood, rice, oil, and salt.
Though I still cannot help feeling at times that I am rather like a parasite, if I think about it, everyone has a fate of their own.
Perhaps even a parasite like me has a reason to exist within the whole ecosystem. Would that not mean this life has not been lived in vain?
Palms together, I give thanks for the protection of all spirits and gods.
Peace is a blessing.
Retreating into oneself is a blessing.
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