Hotel Stories (0) upstream during a system implosion, silence, chinmoku in japan…

They are sitting in the black hotel — alexandria (she was mendelev’s daughter) in edinburgh, the bar is almost empty, it’s late in the evening. They are drinking carbonated water and eating tapas. The staff have been told to be nice and helpful to them, but not to pay to much attention…. The hotel is new, they are staying in one of the suites on the top floor. Their children are in the suite, hopefully asleep and not watching television. They are exchanging stories about their lives , she asks him about the last time he was in Tokyo with the other woman. He has realized over the years that his social and sexual relationships before her are a less disturbing than hers. Well, he says, it was like this[…]

After the long case ended, i had marked time in the office, a few minor tasks, I was exhausted, it was the last time i was exhausted, the last time i could ever afford to be exhausted. We had become incapable of anything but chinmoku, silence had fallen between us. I couldn’t tell her about the case. She did not insist, she did not interrogate me. Just as I never asked her about her work. If I had spoken, if i had not been silent perhaps none of it would have happened. We did speak, we almost spoke, but nothing about what mattered. We decided on a three week holiday in a place she loved, i thought, we thought, she thought that we might learn to speak again in this place. Japan.Tokyo. We were young and imagined we were older than we were. We thought we were travelling to rebuild the relationship that our lives had broken, twenty four hours of travel, ending with a car trip to the hotel, another twenty four hours and then another, a dramatic story of a dying relationship, irrecoverable. passing and returns, silences unable to be broken, forgetting and remembering, flows and currents, detours, it was a detour a last hesitancy before saying goodbye (bye bye). Nothing flows, passes as it is imagined, more rather that everything sings and dances like a stream.

We are in a car driving down a contemporary stream, a three lane road, or looking out the window of a car, heading south, it could have towards Spain or Italy, through it was in actuality in japan north of tokyo… perhaps we thought we were the first ones to pass through the landscape, watching the trees, houses, fields pass us by, feeling like this. We imagine we are still whilst the world passes us by. We haven’t spoken to (a=)one another since we left the plane, silence. At the midpoint we stopped at the services and walked down the hill to the stream that marked the border between the services and the land of the village. Locals stared at us across the stream, tall unspeaking westerners and the driver, we talked with him in our hesitant japanese, which improved almost immediately. We picked up three pieces of wood to place in a line and have a downstream race, the stream had a gentle incline. From point a to b, whichever piece of wood passed beneath the bridge would be the winner. Was this a neolithic game? The origin of the world, chaos, commotion and contradiction, the driver won. Driving south again, the clamor of being in the world. The tyres thrumming on the concrete. The sound of small ridges on the road. Road signs in japanese, elevated highways, japanese pop, insanely cheerful Japanese voices on the the radio, even though we understood the words they were still meaningless. Filling the silence between us the taxi driver began telling us about himself. He went on chatting about his own concerns from the services to the hotel, and i didn’t have to put in any answers for about thirty minutes, until the suburbs. He told us he had been interested in politics since the liberation, since the fall of the last neo-fascist government. Then, he explained, he had been a member of a factory committee, that had been a wonderful time. When the liberal government had abolished the committees, he’d gone to America for a few years and then he had returned, missing home and well he’d felt melancholic. It was disgraceful what the liberals had done, just preparing for the next neo-fascist return, terrible don’t you agree? He cared a great deal. She said it was disgraceful. I wondered if she meant it. I agreed and said it was terrible. He talked about how he had ended up driving a taxi, how much he’d had to pay to get the licence. Who do you have to pay? She, we asked. I pay one dragon, he hesitated, thinking he had said to much, a company that sorts these things out, I have a yearly fee. That was the first time I ever heard of them. Last time, he said, there was a very beautiful woman there. She was drinking tea and playing cards, some Korean gambling game. She was waiting for something, someone. They were being very careful with her… Do you resent it? She asked. He shook his head, no more than paying taxes. It’s pretax so it’s not that expensive… they told me what to do… he said as we pulled into the front of the hotel. A blue sky… A classic hotel, a room on the 9th floor.

We tried for a week to learn to speak again, one hundred and twenty or was it two hundred hours after boarding the plane, we stopped trying. Those few last days were all the same, she went to see the sights. The philosophy of a tourist. See the sights to avoid him, me. I don’t know what she was thinking, didn’t know. She saw the places, museums, bridges, that she remembered from when she lived here, doing what she could in that many hours. Perhaps she was already thinking of seeing the people, the person she remembered, or was that later? I imagined she was thinking of me vanishing, not polluting this place she loved. What did I do? If she went east, i would go west, anything to avoid speaking with her. I had no idea what she wanted, to revisit her past, “one chance in a thousand” she said. “änd supposing, it doesn’t work out? “ I asked. “It’s all öne to me” , later much later I understood what this meant, who this actually meant. That was the only only only successful verbal communication we managed. The other communication we managed was all ‘chinmoku ‘ or ‘silence’ the Japanese non-verbal communication trait, not simply the empty pause between words but most importantly, it’s the kind of silence that means something without saying anything. After those hours of chinmoku. Silence translated into goodbye; I packed my bag whilst she wasn’t there, wrote a note and left the hotel, left her, she was looking at me from across the road as I boarded the taxi with my bag. We didn’t wave at one another, we merely looked across the smooth tarmac at the person we knew so well, perhaps i was remembering the bodies, flesh, smoothness of her muscular body. It was the mind that could not desire or speak. Once we had loved one another. Silence. Neither of us was upset, we did not cry, did not mind, we were pleased it was over. She changed her flight, extending her stay. I asked the taxi driver for a good hotel in Exe, Why there? she asked. I have just broken up with my partner, She and I need the space. I know a good hotel there, the taxi driver said .. She drove along the white ribbon of the gps route to Exe, imprinted with buildings, labels, churches, temples, government offices, police, parks, shop[s], restaurants, espresso… these things marked in the traffic flow as if they are musical notes, accelerando, atonality, dissyncopation, and runs, walks, and there. Across one square, them another crossroads and finally across another square the entrance to the hotel at Tokyo.exe…

Alone and in silence i wandered around the city for three or four days, on my own in Tokyo, those days were more or less the same. To avoid thinking I went to see the sights, I lost weight, got thinner. I think I saw all the museums, galleries, palaces, temples, shops, pavements, crossing roads, overpasses, underpasses, fashion shops, craft shops. the rivers and tributaries that flowed into tokyo bay. Walking, trains, buses, heading out from the hotel at Tokyo.exe continuously exploring. Everything that its possible to see in such a brief time I saw. Anything to avoid thinking of my leaving. Then one day, the fourth day i think, when I was still, sitting, sipping tea in the design museum gardens. I wondered what she was doing. It was there, in the shade over the tea that I slowed down, began to imagine speaking again, to say more than something like “can i buy this please”… The commotion of the ending collapsed into something like harmony, a pause where the noise becomes a subtle music waiting, just waiting for some disorder to interrupt everything. I felt in short, better and happy. I followed the paths around the city, riding on a decaying bullet train, threadbare carpets, duct tape holding the plastic on the doors together. I was becoming attuned to the city, hearing and seeing. The rhythms of the dance and the music of this city which were sublime in the real time way of things.

In recovery, and then a day or so before this all ended, descended into catastrophe, i was leaning against the bar in the hotel, i was drinking, sipping a few shots of japanese whiskey and espresso, the espresso was better than the whisky, eating some suchi from a bento box, reading last few pages of a text on detournement, when when when i noticed the bar was changing, new people dressed more formally. The bar was playing what sounded like charlie parker, but it could have been anyone. A mix of black suits, business casual, locals and a few koreans, an undisguised aura of criminality surrounding some them. Reminding me of meetings I had attended at home. There was an obvious hierarchy on display, one or more meetings about to take place in the safety of the public realm. Down the bar, two or three stools away there was a beautiful woman (she laughs, only you think so) dressed in black with a white teeshirt who looked at me and after a short while spoke to one of the bar staff. Still looking at me as they said, “hotel guest…” The allowable space that I could move in was shrinking. I enjoyed watching their professionalism at work. I think i was too relaxed and smiled at something, because she looked at me more intently. Sorry i told her, don’t mind me I will be going soon… On the other side there were people staring at white screens, deft fingers and hands, eyes knowing how to draw signs, maps, charts, images from cameras. Modern day farmers, hunter-gatherers. And a man came and stood beside me, behind me, ordering a drink. I’m harmless, I said to her and the man behind me, almost a a tourist, trying to not leave leave traces everywhere. Perhaps its impossible, i have tried myself, she said with a slight smile. Moving a seat closer. I can see how difficult that would be with all these people around you. I said. Even when I am on my own it’s difficult. Are you here on your own? I hesitated for a few moments as I wondered what I could say to this person, wanting her to continue speaking. Then, yes. […] We talked, the idle chatter of people who are at a bar and thinking they will never speak again. On the periphery of my vision i could see people looking concerned, alarmed perhaps as they looked at us. I wondered what was going on, not understanding it was because we were talking. I was breaking my silence with this woman […] A man, walked over and invaded our our small geosocial space. They are waiting. She nodded at him and shrugged. I have to go, the meeting can’t start without me… We didn’t say hello or goodbye, i didn’t watch her leave, instead I drank the rest of the whisky, ate the remains of the bento box and left. She went and sat at a round table with four or five others (would things have been different if we had (laughs) begun then? She smiles, it took years before we acknowledged this was our initial meeting, that this momentary conversation even happened. And really nobody knew , those who did mostly died a few days later…) Men were standing by the entrance to the stairs, so i walked to the lifts. Behind these appearances no mysteries were concealed, nothing exposed. There were no voices worth listening too. Who speaks? Who relates? I left, we believe ourselves to be capable of understanding, walking, carving the narcissistic lines on the world they think is solid. It was a utopian moment, that seemed to pass as i left the empty glasses on the bar and left, but it didn’t pass and was a precursor for my future. ((Do you think she knew Kenji from when she was there before? she asks. I think she must have, whilst I was leaning against the bar she was probably sitting at a table in the garden of a house, opposite a man, they were five years older since they had last seen one another. Was she beautiful? she asked. No, perhaps she became so for him, I said. I imagine, she says that they were being tentative, cautious and perhaps, being there, a maidservant began serving them light tea and some honey biscuits. Gradually becoming happy, and the maidservant would report this “becoming happy” to mother, emphasizing his unusual happiness. “Pretend you didn’t tell me that, “ she would tell her. Yes that’s what I imagined…))

Later in the evening i went for a walk, it was still warm as i walked out the hotel doors (I saw you leave, she says, they asked me if I wanted you followed. I said no. ) and I walked down into the neon and led lit streets, along the avenue, into the park. and then along the avenue of cherry trees. Another utopian moment that i thought would be repeatable, if i thought about them at all. i had a copy of the penguin classics Erasmus , Praise of Folly in my pocket, i read a few pages over green tea and biscuits in a popup bar. There was nobody watching me, nobody cared that I was sitting there reading, drinking tea, then a few pages later I ordered coffee and read some more. It was one of the last moments, probably the last moment that I could be alone and unsurveiled. I had no idea about this for months… Around midnight, it must have been before midnight I left and walked back to the hotel. The meeting was over and as I walked into the hotel, people were leaving in uniform black vehicles, SUVs I suppose. I didn’t pay much attention. The book was left in the hotel room like most of my life which vanished the next day, or was it the day after? I think it was the next day. I had returned to the hotel in the late morning, after going to the Muji store to buy a present or two for my sister, and and left the bag of things, i don’t know what they were, in the hotel room and after a while I went down the stairs in the afternoon, early or late i don’t remember, I stepped through the open door from the stairs into the hotel bar at Tokyo exe. You were standing in front of me, I was behind you when your guards were killed, I reflexively grabbed you, the aristocrat and pulled you backwards into the shadow of the doorway. She understood,(I know why now, I didn’t then, it was fate, she says.) The rest simply became part of our running across Tokyo, mostly walking… Becoming us.

She waves at the waiter, I suppose it could have had worse consequences, you could have ended up living with her again, a becoming miserable for both of us. I don’t think so, but your right if i hadn’t come down the stairs at that precise moment, everything would have been different and i would never have been happy. She smiles at him, he feels that explosion of warmth that only her smiles ever cause. (They order more vodka, espresso, a single piece of cheese cake. She tells the waiter to put the bodyguards bar bills on their tab, and tell them I say thankyou.) It could have been like The Castle where it belongs entirely, impotently and yet obviously invisibly to K, not The Trial where the institution is mysteriously and obviously K… Before unlike K, my life and your life had an element of visibility about it. There were people around who more or less understood us. Afterwards Becoming us, there was nobody left. And in Becoming we had to build new relationships with people who could not understand who we were before… This shows how much we in the shadow of the resources of books… she said slyly. We should go and check on the kids…