Mountain Madness by Clinton Crockett Peters;

Author:Clinton Crockett Peters;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Hot and sleepy and the morning rush over, I stopped in a coffee chain like many others, everything plastic-efficient. Even my iced mocha had a straw dipped at a precalculated angle, the taste a crisp, burnt-brown sugar. On my phone’s GPS, I examined the route through bedroom towns I would never have visited otherwise, excited about the upcoming encounters with suburban paraphernalia.

The next few hours blitzed by, leaving me steamy and with little memory. I know I angled around the gray cobblestone and gothic Diet building (Japan’s Congress, in session). I stumbled along the green Yamanote train line that ensnares most of Tokyo, and I somehow found what I was looking for: the world’s busiest intersection.

At Shibuya Station, five fingers of pedestrian armies meet the palm of Shibuya’s exits. A thousand people crisscross in six directions every five minutes. I arrived at the scramble as the lights changed, and the crowd surged toward the gyre. The sensation was one of whirlpool, the bright flash of phone screens, shoulder strap rhinestones, and orange sunglasses. The animal young people with squeals and jingles. The glistening sun reflecting off hundreds of earrings and watches and bifocals. The old-pizza smell of humanity. The hive of life and nonlife breaking midstream into a chaos that sorted itself out when the lights turned green for the cars to begin humming across.

Walking within this mass, feeling the brushes, hearing the chuckles and the voices on the giant digi-billboards hanging from buildings, was, to me, to take in the pulse of a thriving collective experience. Here we all were, I thought, walking, enjoying colas and Starbucks, headed toward our destinations. We experienced the bright lights and beat of two thousand shoes, intent on whatever it was we desired that day, each trajectory colliding with a thousand others, a galaxy of thoughts.

Even though I was more of a wilderness guy, I understood then why people live in cities. They rise amid a din of life-sustaining humanity. This is the other thing you don’t get in the mountains, beside the wine and art: the turmoil of raging human energy.

Across the street was a small taiko drumming group. No microphones, just the basal power of cowskin stretched across cedar logs, the group’s costumes cotton robes with vermilion tassels. They had a crowd circling them, many postadolescents with their dogs. But I was swept by, caught in a current.

I tramped on, the drums dying behind me as the crowds flocked to pachinko parlors, love hotels (rooms rented by the hour), and concert halls. Someone crushed my foot, forcing me to halt. A man in a suit and glasses slammed into my back, toppling me. As I recovered, a few sharp elbows poked me in the ribs. I reached the end of the pavement and saw three people gawking. The other side of life—the misunderstandings, microviolences, why city people leave.

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