Tempokai

  I want to escape from reality. I am tired of reality. I am tired of truth, which is the face of reality. I want to escape into dreams and illusions. I want to escape from the world, escape from myself, escape from myself and find a reality that will let me forget myself.

  My early life started with my father dying. Slipped to death in a bathroom while he was drunk when I was 4 years old. It is hard to tell people that.

  It's not so much the fact itself. It is the way people look at you when you do. You are supposed to smile and say it was okay. Life is life.

  When I was in middle school, I was a loner. I didn't want to have anything to do with people. I had no friends and spent most of my time alone, watching TV. My mother always told me it was normal, that everyone was the same, but it wasn't like that.

  Japanese people hate loneliness. They can't handle it. Loneliness is not part of our culture. We try to fill up every moment of life with something. With people, with noise, with things. And we call that happiness. But if you really think about it, is it real happiness? Is it real?

  I hated my mother. She was a real bitch. A real bitch. I couldn't stand here.

  But what did I know? I was a kid, so I knew nothing about anything. And I didn't want to know about anything. I didn't want to be around anybody. I didn't want to have any friends. I just wanted to be left alone.

  When the time high school came, I changed a little. I became a little more sociable.

  I studied at a cram school near my house. I learned English by memorizing words and phrases.

  When I was a high school student, I fell in love for the first time. Like in manga, with a pretty girl from another school. I liked her because she was so pretty, with her long hair and enormous eyes. She was funny and smart. She was like a goddess. She was so beautiful; it hurt my eyes to look at her.

  But there's a catch. She already had a boyfriend. They were going to get married when they grew up.

  My heart never recovered after that. The pain is still there, in my chest, burning, like the pain of losing a loved one. It is not over yet. I cannot get rid of it.

  When I graduated from high school, I joined a company called Miki-Dee, an advertising firm.

  The company made television commercials, mostly for fast-food restaurants. My job was to shoot and direct them. Mostly I shot still pictures and then added music. I liked my job because I could do things the way I wanted them.

  But I was treated as a background character. Nobody gave me any attention, nobody paid any attention to me.

  The boss told me it was normal, that people had to go through it. He said the only thing to do was to wait for them to notice you and then put up your best effort to make them notice you. Haha, haha...

  And the one who noticed me, that changed my life, was my boss's daughter.

  Her name was Miki, a young girl, maybe 20 years old, like me. She was beautiful, tall, and slim. Her hair was bck and her skin was pale, almost white. Her eyes were enormous and round. She looked like a goddess, a fairy. When she moved, it felt as if the entire world moved with her.

  She was a genius. She knew everything, from math to music and even philosophy. I understood little the things she said, but they sounded deep and meaningful. And she spoke with authority.

  I would photograph her as she walked down the street. And she would talk with me about her thoughts and feelings, as if she knew everything there was to know about life and the world.

  She didn't seem to have a boyfriend. But boy, I was wrong. She had a boyfriend, all right. His name was Shunji, and he worked at the company too. He was older than her, maybe 30 years old. He looked like an older brother to her, stern, imposing, always serious. I found out when I tried to call her to date and she refused, saying he wouldn't approve.

  And here we are right now. Shit job, shit romantic life, no friends and no one to talk with...

  I've been thinking of killing myself. Why? Because I'm so lonely? I'm so alone? No, that's not the reason.

  I just want to escape. Away from the problems of this world, this society, this country, this life. I just want to escape into nothingness.

  I want to be nothing. No pain. No guilt. No suffering. Just nothing.

  But I'm a coward, and I believe there is something in life.

  Maybe God?

  God? I don't know what I am talking about. But I think God exists. God created this world and everything in it. But God is beyond good and evil. And certainly has no interest in the guy like me or a girl like her, who are just small bugs crawling in his garden.

  God doesn't care about us, because we don't matter. We are just a tiny speck in God's vast universe of pnets and stars and gaxies. Which we can't explore, because of society's limitations on knowledge and technology.

  But there is one thing we can do: to explore our souls, to discover what is inside us and who we are deep down, beneath the surface, beyond our personality. Which the old masters already did; they discovered many techniques of meditation and contemption and discovered who they really are deep down within themselves.

  So, I meditated and contempte about God. And that is what I am doing right now.

  What's my purpose in life? What is my mission in life? Am I here to be happy? Am I here to be fulfilled? Or am I here to be good? To be obedient? To be a sve?

  Why I can't change my life? Why I am still here, living in this shitty apartment? Why do I have to work at a shitty job?

  I wish I could have someone to talk to. But nobody cares about me. No one wants to listen to my problems. They only care about their problems, their needs and wants and desires. They have no interest in my problems, they just think of themselves as me.

  They are selfish. I am too, but I am not as bad as them. They think only about themselves, never thinking about how they affect others around them. They think only about their own needs, their own wants and desires. They think only about their own self-interests, without concern for the wellbeing of others around them.

  In these decades, I understood one thing: I am not meant for this world. Not for the people living in this world. This society is not meant for me. It doesn't suit me; it is not what I want. I don't want to be part of it.

  Let's shut myself in this apartment and live the rest of my life with no one knowing about it. Just live on the edge of society, a recluse.

  I already prepared for that. COVID is everywhere right now, and nobody cares about you unless you have the virus or are afraid of getting it or your family member got it and died of it. And I am not going anywhere right now.

  I can stay inside for weeks, months, even years and nobody will bother me unless they find me dead or dying. I hope so.