Hakone, Japan

There I was again, cringing. There he went again, exchanging stories with the person who knew of a person who also lived on S block. Back in the day, Western Massachusetts was nowhere near as diverse as it is now, yet my grandfather had this internal radar which honed in on his peeps even in the thickest of snow. And always in places where I feared I'd run into a schoolmate who would overhear him speaking his native tongue rather than his impossibly cool James Bond British accent. 

"Why is your grandfather sneezing so much?" 

"He's not. It's a word that sounds like achoo but means okay..."

"Are you okay? You look lost...didn't you pass by here earlier?" He emerged from what looked to be a glorified tree house. The demeanor and sway of a surfer, though we were high in the mountains. Something about his furnishings tipped me in the right direction. Maybe a surfer, but definitely a hippie. 

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks. I'm trying to find my camera, I lost it this morning..."

Hakone is much closer to Mt. Fuji than the view from my speeding train

"Oh, don't worry. The Japanese are amazing, you'll find it.*" I had spent hours trying to communicate "lost camera" in charades and drawings as my day continued backwards. It was exhausting and I was exhausted. But his conviction and sandalwood incense were all I needed to pause and see what I was doing -- wasting my time for an object. I thanked my radar set on the One Love dial, then him. "Thanks. Seriously, thanks." 

In the midst of "letting go" and "letting things be**" at every. single. turn (and there's a lot them), thoughts gave way to zen like musings: uncharted waters are easier to navigate with anchors; nature may be survival of the fittest though it seeks like in order to survive. The type of stuff I would write if I was working on inspirational cards sponsored by Oprah, and distributed by Hallmark. It wasn't long before I began to reflect...

"That's cool." She was Puerto Rican, her family was bi-lingual like mine. 

"Really? Thanks." We eventually became best friends.

My grandfather didn't befriend the fellow he met, he did, however, learn where to rent his favourite dramas not too far from our home. Standing in front of the racks of pirated VHS tapes (I'll say this much, it wasn't at Blockbuster), I saw him smile like he might have smiled when he was 10. An age I'm pretty sure I regressed to when I spotted my camera from across the room.

* He was right. The Japanese are amazing. All the lovely people I  had "communicated" with in the morning continued to call others throughout the day to find my camera. Un. real.

** You know all that balderdash yoga instructors carp on about while you note and contemplate which epidermal layer produces sweat beads on your knees? Apparently your brain absorbs that shit like an Auntie Anne's butter drenched pretzel because you look like one.

Length of Stay

One day

Docking Index

       

Eight anchors, do I need to say more? Methinks not. (Err... I saw a Shakespeare play last night.)