Experiences on the Way to the Pool

I'm swimming at the Hikone Aquatic Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd probably swim more, but the rest of the days the center is used for school practices. It has been really good for me to get out into the community. There are sometimes when normal life completely consumes you; envelopes you in the wonderful gauze of regularity. Even if your life may seem "exotic" to others, the everyday is everywhere. Sometimes the weirdest experiences can shock you out of that gauze and into clarity and recognition.

I always walk to the pool around the castle moat. Kate and I were out just the other day, and they have started to set up for Hanami. There are food booths out and some people are already out looking at some of the flowers that have started to poke out. On my walk a gentleman was coming toward me at an intersection (Intersec, making lines meet for centuries). He caught site of me and slammed on his brakes causing a tremendous squeal. Even though we both going the same direction, he refused to come closer than 15 yards. This must have been tortuous for him, as I was walking and he was on a bike. Every time he would get too close, the brakes and squeal. I would say that he was trying to alert me that he was coming, but he was coming to a complete stop, as I said, about 15 yards away each time. What a way to demonstrate to someone else their otherness, that they don't belong.

Contrast that with the conversation I had with another gentleman after swimming. He was interested in where I came from, what I was doing in Japan, where I had learned to swim. We had a fairly informal chat for 10 minutes in both Japanese and English. And so you have the dichotomy of otherness, sometimes it is repellent, other times it is an attractor. We have to leave with both, and choose which experiences are more valuable, those that set us apart negatively or those where genuine interest allows connections to be made. We must also remember these lessons for our own life. How can we reach out to "others," to make those connections and bring them to us and bring ourselves to them.