Tokyo Triptych
Intro
I write for no one; certainly not a single ghost, just me, no one.
THE DREAMREADER is the sole speaking role, has no gender, and exhibits an aura of calm collectedness directed towards the future. They always are clothed in white and are wearing dark black teashade sunglasses.
Scene 1: Okina Ringo
Setting
A warm stage with accents of light red light. Images of swirling cherry blossoms should be projected on the background. A cherry tree, or representation of it, is at the front left of the stage. THE DREAMREADER is in the center of the stage. They are holding a red apple in their hand. Various FESTIVAL GOERS are dressed neatly and are crossing the stage, as if the stage was a busy park. They may be chatting idly as they walk, making THE DREAMREADER raise their voice a little to be heard over the din.
DREAMREADER: It was spring in Brooklyn. I was in civilized attire, coat, waistcoat, collar, everything minus the gloves and tea. So, not civilized. Tea is the essence of civilization, gloves even more so. Tea is an internal cleanser; it rids one of emotional attachment and leaves only external framework. Gloves are an external cleanser; they prevent one from forming an emotional attachment in the first place. I had neither safeguard. And I have neither now, which should be obvious. If I had them I wouldn’t be talking to you. Instead, all I have—
THE DREAMREADER tosses the apple into the air to about eye level and catches it.
DREAMREADER: —is this fucking apple. How civilized. But I digress. It was spring in Brooklyn. 63 degrees. The cherry trees were at the fullest on the East Coast. This was the last time I’d see the cherry blossoms on the East Coast. I may like the chilly, I-don’t-care-about-you attitude of New York, but I had a different commitment. Siempre soy un angelenx. Los Angeles is filled with golden skies and golden butterflies. I like the Golden State. I like gold.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: Since it was my last day out and about in New York I had to see the cherry blossoms. I wanted to strut around in confidence amongst the trees, knowing that my prowess of understanding them was superior to the obliviousness and plain ignorance of those who also came to Sakura Matsuri. That naivety wasn’t a necessary condition of the sprawling metropolis of under- ground fondness and the towers to the sky that dominated the empire state of mind. It was simple human nature. Well, it’s more complicated than that. Let me tell you about it, yes?
Pause, as if waiting for an answer that will never come.
DREAMREADER: (rocks forwards and backwards, before continuing with a lecture-like tone, using hand gestures) The entire concept of human nature is a stretch. It’s pretty fucking prescriptivist. Not empirical at all. It favors ideology, not truth, and that ideology in turn tends to favor people whose skin is any shade darker than transparent, think 4Chan is the best thing that ever happened to this earth, and whose phones’ immediate suggestion to the question “What is this about?” is “Ethics in gaming journalism.” Those who have ruined all hope of a decent future, those whose ultimate allegiance is not to any one party–fuck the Party–nor to any one ideology, paradoxically, but to the weakness of their own will, their insecurity of their ontology, their doubting of the seemingly necessary right to assert themselves onto other human beings. I could go on. The point is, the idea of human nature favors straight cis white men. You get this.
Brief pause.
DREAMREADER: Now I don’t want you to think I don’t believe there aren’t ontological properties of humans. I just want to distinguish those from everyday human nature. You see, I’ve found that a lot of things that we think mean something actually objectively mean something completely different, if they even exist at all. The System—with a big ‘S’— makes the rest up. It reifies ideas. The System is a pervasive motherfucker in that way. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s just bourgeois propaganda and what’s actually the truth. Take Big Pharma, for example. We both know that medicine is empirical, and that the pharmaceutical-industrial complex has pulled one on us in the past. So where do you draw the line between sound science and profiteering? This is why I don’t have any respect for medical doctors. A Ph.D. is harder anyways. Anyway, the System likes to keep us in a narrow window of acceptable topics and encourage infighting within those topics. We end up with a lot of very ignorant people that think they know everything, or even people that think not knowing anything is a good thing or God’s gift or in opposition to the (air quotes) “matriarchy” or whatever. This knows no geographical boundaries.
Pause, as if to let the information sink in.
DREAMREADER: This reminds me of a story. Not really a story, but a metaphor, a cinematic image, really. Imagine this.
The stage goes dark and a single spotlight focuses on THE DREAMREADER
DREAMREADER: One, (THE DREAMREADER holds up a finger) you are in a little boat, floating on a quiet sea. Two, (THE DREAMREADER holds up a second finger) you look down, and in the water you see the peak of a volcano thrusting up from the ocean floor. Three, (THE DREAMREADER holds up a third finger) the peak seems pretty close to the water’s surface, but just how close you cannot tell. Four, (THE DREAMREADER holds up a fourth finger) this is because the hyper-transparency of the water interferes with the perception of distance.
The stage returns to normal
DREAMREADER: I feel this growing sensation. It’s so…familiar. It’s a word that slips out from your thoughts, the place where you know you left your keys but you can’t actually identify the place specifically. It’s a part of my psyche, a part of me as an individual. The clearer it is, the harder it is to identify.
Pause
DREAMREADER: Most people don’t do anything to combat this building violence, breakdown, and alienation inside them.
DREAMREADER: These sakura viewers are no different. I was separate from them. At the very least I could contextualize what was going on and give it a more accurate analysis. But regardless of who was right or wrong it objectively was a very nice day to strut around. It was 63 degrees after all. Remember, 63 degrees is always a good temperature for things to happen. Anyway, I made my way around the gardens that hosted the trees. It was pretty crowded; 24 million people in a metro area will do that to a Sunday walk. I eventually went up the hill that filtered out the crowds and found where they were selling concessions. There was tea. I bought some. I drank it all. There was some sweets wrapped in an oak leaf. I bought some. I ate them all. I found a pottery stand manned by several generations of a Japanese family. I…
Long pause.
DREAMREADER: I’m going to let you in on a secret before we go on. I’m called the Dreamreader because I now live at the End of the World. I see wispy, warm, golden dreams that emanate from the skulls of people’s souls. (brief pause) I really shouldn’t have told you this. (laughs) That’s what I get for not wearing gloves.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: I found a pottery stand manned by several generations of a Japanese family. That was when the golden butterflies began to appear.
Pause, as if THE DREAMREADER realizes they’ve made a grave mistake.
DREAMREADER: (hurriedly) I need to go.
THE DREAMREADER walks off stage to the left.
End Scene One
Scene Two: Tami Takitani
Setting
A neutral stage with accents of light blue light. The picture “Blue Pond” by Kent Shiraishi should be projected on the background. TAMI TAKITANI andbTAJI TAKITANI are standing on the back right of the stage. There is a simple black table standing at the front left of the stage with two sake cups on it. THE DREAMREADER is in the center of the stage. They have a single sake cup in their hand.
DREAMREADER: There were three of them.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: At the pottery table. There were three sake cups, pale sky blue on pottery white with the shapes of matte black mountains drawn artfully on top.
Pause, contemplatively.
DREAMREADER: Only three.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: (matter-of-factly) Well, there was probably a fourth somewhere. I didn’t know where. It was long gone before it was 63 degrees in New York City, when I strutted over the expanse of pottery that lay on the tables stretched on the grass between the cherry blossoms, down the way from containers of tea and fine clothes and sakura blossom sweets wrapped in leaves.
Pause
DREAMREADER: (slightly concerned and apologetic) But you’ve heard this before, right?
Pause, as if waiting for an answer that will never come.
DREAMREADER: (“normally”) I’m sorry. Something changed since the last time I saw you. I think that’s the way friends get when they don’t see each other for a while. I guess we’re friends, then. That’s a weird concept for me. Social interaction isn’t my best skill.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: Anyway, the three cups were the ones on the table, and I liked them. I also liked the silver-haired person that watched over them. That person had a British accent. I was pretty sure it was fake. There was no way it was real. But that didn’t concern me, although it gave me a weird feeling. I bought the first two cups first, easily. I said they were pretty, in Japanese, anxiously. I then hovered over that table, looking at the silver-haired person, then the table, then the silver-haired person. I then found the third cup. And bought it. The silver-haired person told the artisan, their mother, that I had bought all three. She was excited. I then told her that I loved them. In anxious Japanese again. She was excited. I hovered around some more, figuring it was socially acceptable since I spent a good amount of money here. I ended up getting the silver-haired person’s contact information, along with their mother’s, as a cover. I did like the silver-haired person, after all. Very quickly after I realized I was incredibly hungry. I triumphantly strutted off. I thought I heard the sound of a bird winding itself up before singing its song as I left. Citizen Wind-Up Bird. That’s who I’d be if I told the person with the silver hair what I heard.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: I didn’t get much to eat after that. But I was okay. I don’t eat much. I hovered around Brooklyn some more, got coffee, hovered some more, and got on the subway when it was dark. I clutched the paper bag that held the cups the entire way.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: A week later I boarded a commuter train to Manhattan. I had that same air of confidence as I did before. I didn’t know if this was a date or not, but I knew I would succeed regardless. But something was off. Something was different. I ran my fingers across the handle of my penknife all the way there. I didn’t know why I decided to bring it. I just knew the future required it. The future is a funny thing. I don’t concern myself with what could be. I concern myself with what will be. That’s subjective, I know. But it’s me. And I’m the only one here now. That’s acceptable. Of course, here and now is a funny thing too. I don’t like it. People who are concerned with the here and now have no regard for consequences. No regard for how things actually are, funnily enough. Who needs the here and now, the individual dot on a chart when you can have the entire smooth curve? I hope you’re not offended. This is just the way things are, even if you’re a here and now person. (awkwardly) Accept it, friend.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: Back to New York. I was anxious the entire way. I arrived at a bookstore, Kinokuniya, to be precise, on the Avenue of the Americas. Kinokuniya is the land of fountain pens and books by department chairs. I felt like a victor then. I came, I saw, I would conquer. I met the silver-haired person as they walked through a door with an umbrella and walked upstairs to pick out a bento box.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: I must admit the next part did not go according to plan. That upsets me to this day. My plans are sacred. (takes a deep breath) I have a habit of talking too much. I would compare it to what’s going on here, but that’s not fair to you, my friend. I respect you. I know you can’t talk, so I do the talking for us. But this conversation with the silver-haired person was too one-sided. I tried to balance it out. I failed. I remained anxious, all the way to the subway station where I dropped them off. I should have asked if I could hug them. We both needed it.
Pause, regretfully.
DREAMREADER: Three days later I packed up the sake cups in a box and shipped them off to the City of Angeles. That was the last time I saw the silver-haired person. The last time I talked to them.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: The artisan’s name was Tami Takitani. I wondered if she had made three sake cups on purpose, as a symbolic emptiness and uncomfortableness with the way things were. A cup each for the System’s unity, balance, and pragmatism, where I wanted a cup for my own tripartite. I wanted one each of equality, solidarity, and liberty.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: Now that I’m with you, my friend, I’m thinking— maybe the three cups stood for Tami Takitani, Taji Takitani,—the person with the silver hair— and me. Or us. You and I are starting to grow inseparable, I’ve realized. My memories are your senses. That’s what happens when I haven’t had tea or worn gloves. Perhaps had there been a fourth one, there would be a complete relational set, or a fourth paradigm for life no one knew because no one had possession of the fourth cup.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: I never bought more pottery from Tami Takitani, although I wanted to. Such beautiful work. But if I had I would have bought either four pieces, two pieces, or one.
Pause. TAMI TAKITANI and TAJI TAKITANI disappear from the stage.
DREAMREADER: Not three.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: You know, somedays I wonder whether Taji Takitani would have looked good in a bikini. And somedays I wonder if I only care for those most similar to me. That’s a selfish trait. A destructive one. If it’s true. But when someone with your personality type, gender identity, someone who talks about how similar you two are and how you both had the same experience of figuring out what you felt about them, sends you a picture of themselves wrapped in a towel fresh out of the shower, you can’t help it. You can’t help falling in love with them, and falling out of love with the person you know you will spend eternity with. I did actually fall in love with them–not Taji Takitani, mind you, another them. How could I not? A singular vision of the future is a very attractive notion. But I’ve come to find that I fall in love with a lot of people. It’s a strange kind of love. I certainly platonically love a lot of people, but this love is somewhere in between platonic and romantic. It makes me want to be alone, and not deal with this, because surely the people I have this special kind of love for can never return the feeling. They can’t comprehend it. It’s infinite, and they’d come to understand that they couldn’t do the things that I would be willing to do for them. And then they’d leave.
DREAMREADER: (singing “Norwegian Wood”):
And when I awoke I was alone This bird has flown So I lit a fire Isn’t it good Norwegian Wood?
DREAMREADER: (laughs) Look at me, talking about fucking love! How ridiculous a notion. My emotions are showing, how embarrassing! We’re so caught up in this notion of trueness and universality and intrinsicness that we fail to notice the distinction between love–between how language represents it– and correspondence to reality. Love is being a cunning linguist, so to speak. Love is both a choice and a bourgeois emotion. Being in love with someone is the bourgeois emotion. It sucks us into wage slavery, dulls our intuitions so we don’t see the truth with a capital T. The bourgeoisie is anti-intellectual. Thinking does not equal profit. Feeling equals profit. Emotions are profitable. Examining the world and questioning how things are and how they ought to be is not profitable. Loving someone is the choice. By doing that you seize your free will and your existence, your undeniable lightness of being that all of us possess. You own up to being a thinking thing. You own up to being stardust.
DREAMREADER: Love doesn’t last either, though. Neither the choice nor the emotion. We were born with this notion inside of us. Universal suffering. Universal ephemerality. All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profane.
Long pause
DREAMREADER: I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry friend. I need to go back now.
THE DREAMREADER walks off stage to the right.
End Scene Two
Scene Three: It Was 63 Degrees In Tokyo
Setting
The same stage, but now with heavy accents of golden light. There is nothing projected on the background. THE DREAMREADER is clothed in white, wearing round black sunglasses, and is in the center of the stage. They have white gloves on, and are holding a teacup.
DREAMREADER: (visibly unraveled throughout) Hello, friend. Things have changed again. (holds the teacup up) I’m better now. I have gloves on. I have my tea. I feel like myself now. All of myself. This is a good feeling, friend. I wonder if you knew that tea and gloves were all that it would take. But you probably didn’t. I know you and trust you, friend. I trust you so much I think it’s time you knew my deepest, darkest secret. I’ve told you too much, but I was still hiding things from you. I hope you’ll forgive me.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: It’s time to tell you how I got to the End of the World, friend. I can do that now.
DREAMREADER: It was 63 degrees in a different city, with different festival goers and different trains and different dates and different loves. But they were still the same. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Deep pause.
DREAMREADER: It was 63 degrees in Tokyo. I told you 63 degrees was a good temperature for things to happen. 63 degrees Fahrenheit, of course. I don’t know why I still need to use that relic of the past. Fahrenheit is such an American thing. So backwards and idiosyncratic. It advances the System. Celsius is cleaner, sharper, more analytical and acute. So instead of reminding myself of the patina inside of my soul, the one that makes it impossible to read my own dreams,—thus your presence, friend—whatever remains of that other self you saw before, well friend, I know who you are, so why don’t we start again?
Pause.
DREAMREADER: It was 17 degrees in Tokyo. There was a light rain, a refreshing rain, even though it wasn’t the tropical rains of Japan’s far-flung islands, and it certainly was a bit chilling, but it was a clean rain. It washed the already near-spotless streets with the reflection of the neon lights of Shinjuku and the grey suits of the intellectuals of Hongo, with a flash of a floral pattern darting through the water like some demented, manic, independent fish. I looked down from sixteen stories up standing stalwartly at the window, observing the pulse and flow, pulse and flow, of a civilization, of a framework, of a system. A single golden butterfly floated down into the picture. (excitedly) They had returned. New York was the first time I saw them. After Taji’s departure I didn’t see them again. But they were there now, friend!
Pause.
DREAMREADER: (returning to the same tone as before) I walked down the street with my umbrella over my shoulder, the butterflies drifting around the edges of my coat as it flapped gently in the wind. I had been waiting for them to join me once again, bring the frantic, glass-like music to my head. I’m still not sure if it was the rain that brought them, or something else; this type of cleansing wash was rare, and it wasn’t raining in New York. But the point was they were back, and I felt alive and acute once again. I felt normal, like now. A butterfly darted out onto the street and swept around and up to the forefront signage. The rain stopped for a minute. The sun was setting. The sky was turning a deep, deep, red, the red of those that had perished under robber-barons and the great wars. The clouds wafted away, and the rest of the golden butterflies fluttered upward. Some said it was beautiful. But efficiency, not beauty, matters.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: It was 17 degrees in Tokyo. 17 degrees is always a good temperature for things to happen, friend.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: The shopkeepers strode out to look at the sky. No one knew what was happening. This was new, like what it was going to create. Some brave new world, some utopia of the working class, some crystal city across the fruited plains and down the yellow road. I always thought that the people staring upwards were trying to figure out what to name it. It needed a name, one that had the entirety of humanity’s free will invested inside of its power, a permanent legacy on the pale blue dot, the pixel, the milquetoast mote of dust.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: (manically) That’s all we’re on friend. A pale blue dot. That thought came to me, fluttered by me like the golden butterflies, through the streets of Tokyo. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. But I didn’t need Sagan to tell me that. I didn’t need science to tell me that. I saw it in the butterflies and the people and heard it in the music, the heroes for a lonely day. It was a profound, humiliating experience, one that puts your entire life into a single pixel, but that changed. The pale blue dot was a pale red dot, a permanent record, an everlasting tattoo on the skin of the universe, right there on the street. And that told me what to name it. The End of the World.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: (rising) It was 17 degrees in Tokyo.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: (still rising) I don’t remember what happened after that. The butterflies tend to do that. Well, let me rephrase that: I don’t remember exactly what happened. These golden insects make me focus on the big picture. I like the big concepts. They work with who I am. I flesh out the details only when they are salient to my plan. That sunset, that rain, that temperature was salient. It allowed me to continue what was started. I myself washed the already near-spotless streets with the neon light of Shinjuku, and the grey suits of the intellectuals of Hongo, this time with a flash of blood red darting through the water like some glorious, stalwart, all-encompassing fish. I washed past Tokyo and the Pacific, past the amber waves of grain and wrapped around the green floating mountains of the dragon. The gold swept across the universe and the collective consciousness of every single living organism.
DREAMREADER: (peaking) But what I do know was that I tasted it in the air, that ringing metallic feel, like a crisp, unyielding, detached coldness that was quickly replaced with an anxious heat and unsettling gust, some testament to the greater good that does—or should—surround us all.
Long pause.
DREAMREADER: (eerily calm) It made me cuddle and cry and become manic and escape. I loved, lost, and never loved at all. People blurred into one, and one person blurred into many. I think there was some LSD and other noxious cocktails involved once or twice, some lithium too, but I’m not sure. I could be mistaken. I forgot and misremembered a lot of things. That’s how you change history, after all. You consciously rewrite both time and yourself. That’s some- thing I learned early on. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that. Stop getting hung up on yourself, the tangibles and the intangibles. Let the butterflies take you away, friend. Well, if you can see them; I’m pretty sure only I can, and I accept that. It is a destiny of being a sinner and a saint to humanity, a victor, maybe even a martyr to some souls that have a patina like mine. Either way, it doesn’t matter; it is a destiny I accept readily, assuming that I’m still right about what events occurred.
Pause.
DREAMREADER: But whatever it was, whatever really happened, whatever sin-eating acts I may or may have not done, I trust them. I trust the golden butterflies as they flew across the world. I trust you, friend. I trust you to know that when I woke up the next day, I was at the End of the World.
Very long pause.
DREAMREADER: And it was all because it was 63 degrees.
Short pause.
DREAMREADER: I’m sorry friend. This is the last time that I’m going to be here. I need to go, again.
Very long pause.
DREAMREADER: (pointing a finger gun at the audience) This bird has flown.
They turn and walk off stage to the left