Ghosts Passing along Sunset Boulevard

  It is an endless sky. I can see the cumulonimbus that spreads fluffy like cotton candy. A swallowtail butterfly that is weakly swept away by the wind. A crow that stops flapping and jumps into a canopy of zelkova leaves. The days are getting shorter. It is the end of summer. 

  The SUN has been falling on the emergency stairs of my apartment. It is a fragment between my diary. The letters “SUN” put on it. SUN has sunburned and faded after a lapse of seasons. I wonder it comes down from the sky waiting for dusk. Like Montgomery Wood a.k.a. Giuliano Gemma in Spaghetti Western filmed in the mid 1960s, the SUN squints in the glare of a brilliant west sky. 

  When the sun sets, a grey evening slowly begins to wrap around the town. At the same time, a ghost of winter appears through the gap between the clouds. I cannot remember the colours of this summer. It has faded into the pages of my diary again. Only boring memories come and go at dusk. All are due to my poorly regenerative hippocampus.

  I go out to buy a toothbrush or something, return to my apartment keeping with coins in pocket of my overcoat. I am not sure whether I should choose a light bulb of 80 or 100 watts for my bathroom. The light bulb in my brain is also about to burn out. I cannot enter my room because of the lost key. The owner of the apartment lives in Hong Kong, so I cannot get a copy of the key right away. I am at a loss sitting on the emergency stairs in my apartment, watching taxis and trucks come and go on Sunset Boulevard. “Sunset Boulevard” is the name I give to National Route 20. As I stand on the highway in the fine and chilly evening time, I can see the beautiful bright red sunset to the west. As long as I gaze on the shining Mt. Fuji with the setting sun in the background, I am in paradise. I feel bizarre to watch the view that the same scenery has been there for about 200 years.

  Tamagawa Aqueduct used to flow along National Route 20, but now it is a subterranean waterway. The groundwater streams through the culvert from Shinjuku to Harajuku and becomes the Onden River. “Watermill at Onden” in the print collection Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) depicts Mt. Fuji as seen from the current lively Harajuku in Tokyo.

  There is an old persimmon tree in the backyard of the apartment. Under the emergency stairs, a ripe fruit of persimmon emits a rotten odour. The colour of persimmon is a shade of sandstone. It is a hazy shade of winter. It seems to fade into a tunnel that larva of antlion made with dry soil. My fuzzy memory goes through the ephemeral underground tunnel and reaches at a diner on the other side of Sunset Boulevard.

  It was the end of last summer. It was the late afternoon when I entered the diner on Sunset Boulevard. At the seat next to me, two businessmen facing each other across the table were quietly talking, "The pandemic will never subside in just a few years." They left their cold steaks mostly uneaten, paid with cash, and went out of the diner. The cook muttered, "I have to close my diner within this year." I was the only one at the table. Oil of French fries splashed on the floor, a film of the dust had formed on the wallpaper, so the whole diner looked dark and dull. Not to mention cleaning, I could see the pots left in the kitchen sink and the tablecloths full of stains, I recognized that the diner was run by the cook alone. No, I saw a shade of his wife. The ghost of his wife. Reproduction paintings of Georges Seurat in the tilted picture frames, Un dimanche après-midi à l'île de la Grande Jatte, Jeune femme se poudrant, Une baignade à Asnières had been giving the walls lights and colours faintly. Decorative chandelier with bulbs imitating candle flames. Elton John's vinyl records in the 1970s that had been piled up randomly on top of an old Sony stereo component system for five decades. Hand-knitted doilies on each table. Dried buds of roses in the cracked vases. Piano of Steinway & Sons that had never been tuned. The shade of the ghost that have been dwelling in each object. The cook faking a smile brought to my table a cup of coffee, filled with steam of his sigh. A fly was dead in the sugar pot. The carcass got buried in the sandy white sugar. I could hear a voice of the ghost from the antlion's tunnel. And the music floating on the turntable of the old Sony stereo component system.

  Sometimes just before I fall asleep I think about her, but all I can remember about her is that she had a dog. We met at a bar. We talked for a while. We had a few drinks. Then we went to her place. There was a bicycle in the front room. I almost fell over it. The bicycle was right beside the door.

  We made love and she had a dog.*

  “Would you dance with me?”   

  The ghost wearing an apron of Laura Ashley is dancing on the boulevard. Her printed cotton dress made in the mid 1970s blooms softly and slowly in the setting sun. She sings the songs she knows. The songs I know, too. We count the headlights on the highway. Taxi lights shine so bright. The evening sky in flamingo pink is flowing into the night. My skull is flooded with the songs of the 1970s. A lullaby is coloued in pale pistachio green with voices of the ghost. I can remember the colours of last summer. Only boring memories come and go at dusk. I am at a loss sitting on the emergency stairs in my apartment, watching taxis and trucks come and go on Sunset Boulevard. 

Reference:

*Ghosts by Richard Brautigan

The Tokyo-Montana Express A Book by Richard Brautigan (pp. 187 / Derlacorte Press, 1980)