Closed Eye Comfort

Closed Eye Comfort
The train is crowded. Everything is crowded. I have to close my eyes. I have to shut it out, too many people too many people. You might ask how I live in this country where everything is so full of so many people. It’s not so bad walking, it’s easy to think that it’s a means to an end, to get away form people. I would rather drive but it’s so expensive and my apartment has no parking.
At least it’s quiet. My headphones are working. I hate it when school girls get on. They chat, prattling on and on. They grow up to do just the same when they become office workers. I wonder it they do this to annoy me? But if it’s quiet like this I can close my eyes and drift away.
It’s like the song says, “I am a rock, I am an island” that’s really the only part of the song where the English is so easy to understand and feel that it radiates through me. If I could have an island with just me, it would have everything I needed. Someone would drop down supplies once a month by plane so I’d never have to talk to them. I’d have the fastest internet in existence so I can order books or movies or music. I can just click and there it goes. I would have a large house with many rooms and I would spend a new day in each room. Or I would have a room for every activity. I would have a western door with a lock on every door. Not a screen so that the whole family can see everything and people are running but don’t seem to get that not everyone needs or wants to be around people.
But I can’t have an island. I must forever be around people. I cannot truly select my own society which is myself, alone. I really hate it on streetcars. One day my sisters and mom and I went to Miyajima. It was my first time and I was so excited. I wanted to wear my new elementary school uniform but my sisters laughed and said I shouldn’t do that. It must have been a holiday because everyone was on the roman densha. Somehow in the rush of people I got lost. I couldn’t see my mom, my sisters, no one. Just a forest of feet. I felt so afraid, like I couldn’t move so I closed my eyes. If I didn’t open my eyes it was easy to pretend that there were no people. Easy to pretend that I was still next to my mother and she was holding my hand.
Of course she found me. She naturally wasn’t too far off and was unable to understand my feeling of fear, of budding heishokyoufushou. I didn’t have the words for it the. I know it could have been more terrifying. I know if I were anywhere else but Japan I would have been kidnapped. But closing my eyes helped me to ganbaru, helped me not to cry. Ever since then I’ve wished for a lock and a key and an island but I’ve never gotten it.
The train blessedly stops and I get off, glad to be feeling again like I’m moving away from people. I get through it, bear it, ganbaru, but I need my solitude so much, and on some days I need my closed eyed comfort even more.
Roman densha-street car, we don’t have subways in Hiroshima but our streetcar system isn’t that bad.
Heishokyoufushou- claustrophobia, the last part kyoufushou is the word for phobia in Japanese. The depths of my psych nerdity are now apparent.
Ganbaru- better known as ganbatte, to persevere
I saw this guy on the train from Mitaki to Hiroshima. He had his eyes squeezed shut, almost as if he was really focused on his sleep. Most people look very relaxed, almost like rag dolls when they sleep on public transit but this guy was not actually asleep I suspect. I started to wonder why he would concentrate so hard, what he was so focused on.