The other day when I wrote about the old woman who made my morning by being friendly and fear-free (and how that reminded me of the coolest senior on this island, Mrs. Betty), I neglected to mention something noteworthy that occurred following that meeting.
As I walked away from the woman and continued on my way to work, I basked in the afterglow of normalcy.
A couple of steps later, though, I began to notice that the joy was vanishing rapidly, like there was a leak or something.
Difficult to describe…
It’s kinda like that feeling you get when you see that homeboy of yours, the one you hadn’t seen in years, coming out of a combini just across the street. You’re so excited! You guys had lost contact years back, and that was always a regret of yours cuz he was cool as a mofo! You’d even google him from time to time to see if he pops up on the net, but to no avail. Suddenly, your search is over you think, as you step lively across the street, wondering if you should just run up on him or sneak up on him. You can’t believe your luck! Out of nowhere, there he…wait…wait a second. From a few yards away you realize, with a sinking let-down, tricked by my senses, feeling in your gut that it’s not him at all. A twin? Nah. Not even a close relative, this you can see cuz you’re right up on him now. You don’t have to retch exactly but you won’t trust your stomach to digest anything for a while, either.
What the elderly woman had done should not have made me feel so wonderful, I thought. What she did, hell, ALL she did, was greet me and make small talk, nothing special whatsoever. But the joy I derived from her normal reaction to me– which is to say, a non-reaction, when compared to the vast majority of her compatriots– could accurately be called overjoy. Her pleasantness warranted a smile, at best. All it really should have served as was a tiny reassurance that I am in a place that isn’t hostile, that is in fact, a great place to live and work. Something I’m quick to tout about Yokohama. I’ve become quite the cheerleader for this part of Kanto over the years…so many people have emailed me after reading my work saying I’ve sold them on this place.
So why would a momentary act of normality cause such an overreaction, I wondered (and not for the first time).
The question was rhetorical, of course, and the answer was sucking the joy right out of me like a leech on my heart:
Moments of Normality are Precious Here! ![basking2]()
They are not to be taken lightly, to be taken in stride, like I would have back in a Brooklyn. Back in BK, there are so many old men and women that would get a kick out of having a little chat with a passerby, nothing special whatever. I would never have thought to make the senior into the epitome of why Brooklyn is wonderful. And, unless the convo was noteworthy for some reason, I probably wouldn’t have even thought to write about it.
But…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Japanese don’t typically do this and don’t typically do that, nanchara kanchara…I know, trust me. 10 years in these parts and you learn a lot of things. About Japan, and about yourself. One thing I learned is that humans can adapt to almost any environment or circumstance, and so I have long since adapted to this rarity of normality.
You see, it was at this very moment when my despair — due to over-compensating for perpetual otherization by over-celebrating acts of stark normality — reared its ugly head, that I ripped the joy sucking creature from my heart, How? Well, by shifting my mental and emotional focus to thoughts of the aforementioned Mrs. Betty and the decision to re-establish contact with her.
And it worked, of course…I’ve gotten good at this. It worked so well, I wound up writing up the experience the other day as a lovely inspiring one rather than what it also was: a reminder that the exaggerated value I’ve placed on unworthy moments is telling. It speaks to a longing deep inside of me that I’ve acquired a tolerance for over the years, but, nonetheless, remains in wait, starving to truly belong again.
Loco
PS: …And I really dislike the word “Normal”