It doesn’t get much more relaxing than this.

Still a favorite from my Colorado trip.

On Saturday morning we sat on the floor watching, but not understanding, the TV news reports on typhoon number 17 that was buzzing South-West Japan. The reporters spoke in solemn tones, cutting back and forth between satellite maps and flooded roadways.

We stayed indoors as long as we could but experience told us that if we didn’t get out of the house, we would spend the rest of the day wallowing in our culture shock , wanting to go home. A day without purpose leads to dark thoughts so instead, we opened our English train maps and choose to visit Atami, an old tourist town up the tracks from us.

The weather turned out to not be so bad after all so we had fun wandering the city in the storm, looking through all the shops.

Atami is very different than our more rural “home” in Ninomiya. It’s literally built on the mountains along the Southern edge of Japan so the views from the streets are always winding and obscured. Seaside hotel towers jut out from every possible foothold to create a second layer along each ridge. The typhoon contributed to the surreal images by blending it’s grey clouds into the buildings making the manmade structures seem intrusive on the black land. Narrow alleyways offered secret views of small back openings to homes, restaurants, and businesses while larger breaks gave entry to other unseen parts of the town by way of old moss-covered staircases turning up and away at severe angles. Entirely new sections of road would appear around a corner and buildings seemed to be pushing over each other to get your attention. Sometimes, an ancient temple could be seen on another high peak, shrouded in mist and far away. It was a town that could only be viewed in vertical fragments and the never ending storm made it all the more beautiful.

I’ve always been a night owl. From as far back as I can remember, mornings have been something to endure before my real day starts. My parents and a long string of other type-a personalities have put consistent effort into changing me to no avail. It seems to be part of how I’m made and no amount of habit changing has been able to reverse my late-leaning circadian rhythm.

From getting terrible grades and dropping out of my college classes that started before 9 AM to working the early shift at Starbuck’s, where we tossed back espresso shots like junkies, mornings always remained a struggle. Even when I moved to Japan and the timezone was flipped by 12 hours, my body quickly sussed out day from night and made me pay for it with every 5:30 AM wakeup. I resigned myself to the life of the permanently tired night owl trapped in the working world dominated by morning people.

Then, near the end of 2008, everything changed. My daughter was born and with her arrival, my relationship with the morning was reset.

As any parent will attest, a new baby = no sleep. Especially if they are your first. They break you and brainwash you and there is nothing you can do about it. Very little memory remains of what my life was like before my daughter and I’m oddly OK with that.

The interesting side effect of my daughter’s mind control was how quickly she was able to accomplish what no job or /more-productive-than-thou/ shaming ever had. I was still a night owl but I no longer cared about how early it was because I was just so thrilled to see her happy. She would cry, I would plod my way over to her, she would smile and all was right with this wonderful new world.

The other day, she turned five. She woke up early but I can tell that she’s probably going to be a night owl like me. We stumble out to the kitchen. I grab the pancake mix and click on a burner. She folds her arms against the morning chill. Neither of us talks or opens our eyes much but we are happy for the time together, no matter how early that happens to be.

A tiny silver light shines like a brilliant star in the near total blackness of a bedroom. It’s steady beam faintly illuminating the pause/play symbols on a set of headphones. Within their while plastic shell, small magnetic drivers pulse a faint rhythmic beat into a woman’s ears.
If this woman is listening, we can’t tell as she is making no expression. Her only sign of movement is the equally rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she takes in and releases air.

Minutes flow on with no change to the muted scene.
The headphones continue to pulse.
The woman continues to breathe.

Before we loose interest, however, a car passes silently outside. The light from it’s headlights rush across the room and momentarily reveal a hidden world we couldn’t see before. Warm, red colored walls. Photographs framed in rough golden wood. The open door to what looks to be a bathroom. The silky shine on the folds of the woman’s pajamas as she lays above her covers.
Within this sudden visual revelation, we are also able to see a movement that we could not perceive before. Wisps of black smoke are silently curling from underneath the woman’s still body. Once the light is gone, we can no longer see them but the density of blackness within the room falls even heavier than before.

Though we can no longer see the room’s details, we know that things are changing. The rhythm from the headphones no longer matches the woman’s excelerated breathing. The black smoke fills the room and we can no longer see the details of her face as we could before. The small silver light remains our only visual guide.

The light begins to move. Slowly at first, then more quickly, it rises high into the air. The woman’s breathing continues to quicken and follow the light upward until we hear a sudden gasp. Instantly, the black shroud fades from the room and we can see the woman is levitating far above her bed. From our viewing angle, we can barely make out a surprised expression as she continues to gasp the air.

Another car silently passes outside and the beam from it’s headlights track across the room from right to left. As the bright light scans over the levitating woman, her body falls slowly and silently back atop the covers of her bed.