Thoughts and Ramblings of a Wandering Photographer

Tuesday.  It’s snowing.  The train's windows flicker off the reflection of a building as if they are the perforations of a film reel rolling down the train track. Handles swing in unison under the cold fluorescent light as I am transported further away from the city. Opening my sketchbook, I press it against the foggy subway door as I stand and ponder out the window, watching the world go by. 

I write: "It's now mid-February, and for over two months, I've been living in Japan. But what am I doing here?" 

In the vastness of the megapolis, flashing lights, and rubbing shoulder to shoulder, I felt solitude. Will I remember this moment? The music I'm listening to in my headphones. My damp socks. The faces of the people around me.  Will I remember my face when I’m older?

—+—

The train. This liminal space we all share between one destination and the next. This is

the place where we all participate in a collective dream state.  Being on this train is like being in a straightjacket. It’s too crowded to move. 

Is this a unique experience? Is there such a thing as one? I’m a sardine using my backpack as a block to stop me from being pressed against the train door. So as not to squish my camera, I rest it on top of my bag. As the lens stares back at me, I peer into my weary reflection. It’s so crowded I can’t even grab my camera to take a picture.  

There are a thousand people on this train rubbing shoulders, all with their own lives, memories, and ideas. Looking at my shadowy face in the reflection, I wonder if someone else on this train is thinking the exact same thing. What are the odds that there have been a thousand people standing here before me thinking the same way, and there will probably be a thousand people after me?

Tokyo is a sea of people. When I first arrived to Tokyo, I noticed how when walking in public, strangers don't make eye contact like in the United States. Therefore when it does happen, I feel a shock in my soul, a recipient of piercing eyes darting gives me a micro shock while walking by, each face imprinted in your head for you to access.

—+—

There is still an hour left in my commute.  

So as I ponder deeper into my reflection I fall into profound thought.

When I think about who I am, I sometimes find myself in a struggle.  

I speak French but I’m not French.

I speak Japanese but I'm not Japanese

When I write, 

Sometimes, it’s print

Sometimes it's all capitals 

Sometimes it's cursive

I always carry two cameras with me.  One analog, one digital.  A duality, a 

“Why choose to carry one when I can carry two?”  

What I do know is that I see the world through multiple lenses

And thus:

Multiple arcs of my life.

The early years in the hills of Portland, Oregon making stop motion animation.

The boy in Paris taking the metro across the river.

The high school rower waking up at 4am to slice my boat through the morning mist

The college student watching the silhouettes of palm trees pass while riding his skateboard

And now the wanderer in Japan, one soul in an endless sea of people.

I’ve now lived in multiple parts of the world.

And I wonder where I’ll be in the future, who I’ll be with, 

Who I can say: “I’m home” to.

Which leads me to wonder: 

Where is home?

I found a sense of home during my time in Japan.

So much that even now that I’m back from my time in Japan, i feel like I'm just on vacation.  

—+—

Before I studied abroad, I remember skipping class and walking along the pier at Newport Beach.  How will my time abroad change me?  

Seagulls fly along the shore and the pacific ocean sounds like a passing train.  

A couple months later and I would be just on the other side, commuting home on this train in my thrifted jacket.  

What a stark contrast, from being around the sand and blue skies all month, to waves of people and movement in the void of the big city.  

That city sucks you in. 

When I got here, I  used to get so lost within the crowd, overwhelmed from all the stimulation. It's no longer the sounds of the waves, but the sound of the train squealing. 

Modern technology allows for my noise-cancelling headphones to hide the squeal.  

The sound of silence as we enter this vacuumed moving chamber taking us

deeper into the world I now call home. This home, like many of my homes, has swallowed me

whole. 

The eyes that dart don't hurt anymore. 

The city has swallowed me and I'm numb.

Like a roll of film, everything has an expiration date, even my time in Japan. All these

moments I undergo, I couldn't help but remember.

—+—

My first expiration date was Nishikasai.  The Sugimotos could only host me for a month because they were preparing to move back to another prefecture down west. 

Biking alone around the neighborhood with my camera on my chest and cigarette in hand was some of my best memories from January.  I liked to bike around and explore the town, located on the east side of Tokyo.  

I took notice of the harsh winter lighting on the brutalist residential buildings, and the kids playing and laughing in the park across the street from my local Lawson. 

The area around Nishikasai had many amenities, from the various supermarkets, conbinis, greenery, and even the batting center. 

Using the above-ground station as a guide, I followed my way towards the river a couple of blocks away, and a beautiful bike path.  It was nearing golden hour, and I decided to see how far I could get from home and be ‘back before dinner.’ 

As I was biking up towards the river I couldn’t help myself but smile at that feeling to have a family to come home to.  It was a feeling I had forgotten since being in college.  Something about the moment also reminded me of my time in Paris as a middle schooler. 

Maybe the Tozai line reminded me of Ligne 6 and La Motte Piquet Grenelle, being by a river, or the children on the playground.  

The view along the river was beautiful.  In the distance, I could see the silhouette of Mt. Fuji smothered in orange.  Upon returning home, I would enter the residential building, say good evening to the guard, tap the keyfob, head through the glass automatic door, hop on the elevator and tap seven.  Inserting and turning my key, my little host sisters would tell me お帰り when I open the front door.

Taking my shoes off at the genkan and scooting them next to my family’s I would come home to a warm hug, a warm room, a warm meal, and a warm bath.  Paw Patrol is on in the background.  The laundry hangs, and I play and sing with the kids on the trampoline, or hide behind the curtain to scare them and get a laugh.  However, in the back of my mind, there was a lingering feeling that this was all going away.  As that time approached, I began to learn that this is the meaning of travel, to become heartbroken. 

My time in Nishikasai forever has a loving place in my heart.  Those final moments riding with Ayaka to the station filled me with sorrow.  As I lowered my bike into the station, I caught one final glimpse of her as she pedaled away. 

I’ll always remember that feeling of her hug, a symbol of my first home in Japan.  Surprised by her embrace, I let go too soon, her arms still around me.  I wish I didn't let go, I wish I held on longer.  

But then I begin to forget.

Time moves forward and new details arrive

I start to forget the sound of my host mother’s voice

The patterns on the cup I drink out of during every meal

The shape of the house key, and which way I turned it after inserting it into the door.

To feel the bike pedals pressing against my feet, the January wind caressing my face as I push forward into the unknown.

To share a moment with a stranger, and see them become a friend.

To look deeply into their eyes

To see their universe within them.

The interior of the elevator, and the rush from cityscape view after I turn the corner.

Tokyo.

Why must I forget?

I feel my life tugging me forwards

Accelerating automatically like shifting a car into drive.

Japan was my way of letting my foot off the pedal

Letting this train carry me.

Cruising for a while.

As I wake up back in my bed in California, I ever so often can’t help but feel the wind knocked out of my stomach.  

Oh all the life I’ve lived and the life that awaits me.  

A snowy smile peaks out of my reflection on the other side of the glass.

But oh how this world has changed, oh how I have changed, and my camera has been around to capture it all.

—+—

This camera on top of my bag was my father's camera. Shiny silver and black with a colorful leather strap. He's shot a thousand rolls of film on this camera before handing it off to me at the age of ten. This camera has seen the Champ de Mars, the streets of Spain. The woods of Oregon, the coast of Maine. This camera has seen the beaches of California, and now the streets of Japan.

But that's not what I'm here to capture. There is no emotion in that type of picture. I

capture the faces of the people I love and find happiness with.  I must capture the memories before they slip through my fingers.  Or the ravine in my mind.  

For me to remember this moment, I must capture it with my camera. 

I've got to capture this moment. I won't remember this if I don't.

I take photos to slow down time. It's how I capture time and space, Fragments and puzzle pieces mixed in my brain tissue.

Celluloid memories, energy. Electrons burning onto silver, hidden in the

dark behind the mirror reflecting the world around me.

I take photos to capture the present, allowing the future to look into the past. I'm addicted to my camera. While riding this train through the void, I have déjà vu as I reload my camera. The sound of the shutter, cranking the shutter advance, hearing the aperture ring click while I glide the focus.

The way my camera strap jingles. I love my camera. She never leaves. She's always by my

side. 

But does a camera capture my longing?  Does it capture my desire to stay?  

My memories just become 4x5’s off a darkroom enlarger with a number 4 contrast filter.  

I thought I came to Japan to take photos and somehow find the answer within them. 

Yet it's when I put down my camera that I was able to find the answers within myself.

It's the things you can't take pictures of.

A memory is the sound of my host mother chopping vegetables upstairs as I read.

A memory is the trickle of the sewer below me as I walk in the rain. The man singing in

the street.

The sound of my drink dropping from the vending machine and opening the flap.

A memory is my host mother walking me to the door before I leave for school.

『行ってらっしゃい』

The Japanese mornings watching the shops doors open, the construction workers start

constructing, the salarymen start salarying.

On the Japanese train, where its too crowded and I physically can't touch the trigger, I learned that a memory doesn’t always need a photograph.  

I thought memories were about capturing them with my camera, and while winding my camera on the train I realized: that I remember more of the moment by putting down the camera and just observing. Its closing my eyes and going back to that place in my conscience.  Repainting the scene, my mind a gallery.  

And suddenly, I can taste my host mother’s food.  

My host brother’s voice.  『いただきます。』

Once I started taking less photos, I started seeing more.

I saw Nishikasai, the blue blanket I'd use to keep my feet warm in my first home

on the east side of Tokyo.

I saw Yamato in the suburbs. The chinook helicopters and airplanes flying over me at

Atsugi military base.

The butterflies flying over May and I in Okinawa.  

You never know the true value of a moment until it’s just a memory.  

It was when I put down my camera that I understood. 

I'm traveling to learn who I am, to lose and find myself at the same time. 

I remember watching myself slowly begin to understand the world around me.  

Its when you live in a place long enough that you start to get it. 

What once was noise became conversation. 

The words people utter on the street start to make sense. 

You can read the glowing signs.

Can a camera explain that?

Traveling is waking up from a Japanese dream. Being able to make sense and take in  the environment that surrounds me. 

It's realizing I just had a whole day entirely in Japanese and didn’t think about it.

My mind had changed. It reminded me of Paris. My youth learning French, that same me,

riding the train around the city.

That's why I studied abroad, to find that experience again. To be swept away from

normality only for that to become normal. To find that moment and experience it again with my

own lens.

I understand now. I'm home.

—+—

Saturday.

The lights from the tunnel flash across her face.

Her cheeks are flushed.

As we stand into a corner by the train car door,

my right hand is holding onto the distinct green handle of the Yamanote line

Searching deeper into her eyes I am met with my reflection, this time within someone else’s.

These aren’t the eyes that pierce, these kiss me softly.  

The train cries.

Her face distorts time as it goes in and out of focus, my mind the camera eye.

A salty tear rolls down my face.

She wipes it.

If my life were a book of poems and for this moment to be a page,

I'd keep this corner folded.

This time I just look.

This time I observe.