Archive for October 20th, 2004
Kyoto Aquarium
This afternoon, the traffic is lighter than usual. The weather report reads 52 degrees, cloudy and scattered showers. Cars slide carefully on the wet asphalt. Red lights linger longer; brake lights appear more frequently. Traffic proceeds with caution. It’s easy to assume that no one wants to meet the fate of a sloppy fender bender on a rainy Monday evening.
Between the highrise buildings on Wilshire Boulevard–heading east toward downtown–a white canvas sets the backdrop while gray clouds shift quickly from one arched building to the next. Daylight ends quickly. The sunset goes unnoticed.
There exists a sense of newness, a feeling of sadness, when the rainy season arrives in Los Angeles. Fewer people walk the streets. Bus commuters hide under black umbrellas, revealing their pink noses as they stare into the oncoming traffic. Car windows are rolled-up, cluttered with raindrops while inside commuters remain tucked away in the driver’s seat. No one seems to notice the woman pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, her loose hair violently swaying in the wet breeze. No one hears the bells chiming at the St. James Episcopal Church.
But, I keep my window rolled down. The rain drops falling into my lap.
I see the most amazing man standing outside the Kyoto aquarium/fish store. He’s smoking a cigarette and staring downward at the wet sidewalk with its puddles congregating in the cracks. Upon first glance, one may mistake him for a homeless man with his dirty, baggy jeans and weather-worn jacket. But to me, he appears magical. Those slanted white-haired eyebrows, that scraggly Confucius beard–him standing alone in the rain.
I imagine him to be owner of this little fish store, which has been open for 15 years. He’s thinking about the lion fish that has lived in one of his bubbling tanks for seven years–never purchased by a tropical fish enthusiast. He and the lion fish are the only ones left–his wife dead, his children grown and living in San Francisco. All his wisdom and art kept secretly hidden behind the doors of the Kyoto Aquarium.
I want to stop my car and ask him why is it that my udon noodles never plump up the way they do at Japanese restaurants. I want to invite him to dinner to share my leftover shitake soup.
But instead, I keep driving. I pull into the 76 station and stop for gas. The cost for unleaded today is $2.479 a gallon.
