Zen subway
aka “Glorious Cultural Assimilation and Mass Transit”
1. Hi Steve. I want to kill myself. I’m still in Kyoto.
2. What is it about mass transit that makes me suicidal? I guess it’s those open highways of yore.
3. I’ve lived in Kyoto for 5 months and I still can’t get to Osaka without 3 hours of extreme difficulty.
4. Not to mention that I speak very bad Japanese still.
5. My Japanese sensei is always saying that Japanese is logical. Yeah right.
6. Some days being an incompetent foreign freak from hell is really lame.
7. Finally I get to my goddam train. Before I get on I see the coolest old man. He makes me feel better.
8. All of this running around on subways and trains tonight makes me miss NYC.
9. I mean, what’s with this place? Sometimes the order of it all is just way too much.
10. I mean, look at these subway stations! Not a single piece of trash, the floors are white, there are no rats, and all of the homeless have apparently been conveniently tucked away elsewhere, out of the public eye.
11. I sit on the train to Umeda Station and the whole damn thing is silent. No man with no legs, no opera singing schizophrenics, no grafitti scratched into the windows, no one saying a word. I mean, what is a subway ride without at least a tiny inkling of insanity and fear?
12. I’m sitting here w/my headphones on, and when the train is stopped I’ll bet the people around me can even hear the song for chrissake. And I’ll bet it pisses them off.
13. I think the Japanese must really have a gigantic reservoir of passionate rage dammed inside. I mean it. I guess that’s what beer and karaoke are for.
14. But what if they are just actually incredibly superior to us Americans? What if their minds are really as calm as their outside appearance. They are coming off of centuries of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and all else.
15. But still, these people live in modern society. Osaka is as much a big and terrible and fucked up a place as any other large city that pulls man away from nature. I mean, how do these people keep from going totally fuckin crazy?
16. When I think of modern society, I have a hard time separating it from the ridiculous chaos that ensues.
17. I love Japan, but there’s that element of unbridled and shameless mental illness that the United States citizenry manifests so very well that I miss
18. I’m so immersed in this, I wonder if I will ever escape it. I guess that’s why sometimes I long for that beautiful filth that covers cities like New York.
19. I guess since our society is so misconstrued, we all learn to cope in our own way.
20. Faith in contrived prophets, alcohol, mind control, pachinko, valium, fattening foods. You know.
21. And I suppose that cultural assimilation includes the adaptation of new types of stress-subduing addictions, the necessity of which springs from living inside this bewildering renegade parade of madness that tends to contain no semblance of decency or purpose, be it here or there or anywhere else.
22. Yes, maybe I do need a cell phone, after all.
23. And you know, I really probably should try to adapt to fashion currents.
24. Maybe subduing my frustrations will make me more productive.
25. This is is a very nice society, no one bothers anyone else. Clean subway stations are a god-given right of the modern citizen. This should be a goal for everyone. NYC is Jurassic fucking Park.
26. There is an advertisement for Parliament Ones and the picture is that of the Manhattan skyline. We don’t even have Parliament Ones in the U.S. We don’t even have a parliament, for that matter.
Following this list was a vow I wrote later, drunk in Osaka with Steve, that I would never get married or bear progeny for the wager of 50 U.S. dollars, bearing all factors of inflation from the year 2001. Steve notes: “Sarah’s gonna lose at 2050 AD/BC. Steven Evans.
