Yuki (Japan, 39yo)
When I have some time for myself, or some time to kill, or some time to do what I am forced to do, especially while I travel by bus or train to work, I have two ways to spend it.
(1) One is to practice my role in a drama, my hobby. These days my role in the amateur drama club is an around seventeen girl, a second daughter of a mother who had lost her son and husband in the Pacific war. 'My' mother, in the drama, often indulges herself in watching at the sea; their house has a nice view over Tokyo Bay, from a hill in the Boso peninsula in Chiba. 'I' am irritated by, or seem to have even a kind of rage towards her as such, with no hope of persuading her to let 'me' to go to a medical school. 'I' am determined to carry out my plan, to go to Tokyo and study to become a doctor, with supporting myself with part-time jobs, which is the idea 'my' mother finds ridiculous and impossible. 'My' elder sister is so supportive to 'my' mother that she is about to give up her love; her fiance, a bet, applied and got accepted to get dispatched to Brazil from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to help Japanese migrant farmers. 'I' tried desperately to persuade her to leave 'my' mother as I will do, but 'my' sister tells me that it is 'I' who confine myself to a narrow-minded selfishness. In the end of the play, 'my' mother understands everything, mainly by overhearing us talking, and she decided to arrange so that my elder sister can go to Brazil with her future husband and I can go to a medical school in Tokyo - if I get accepted. Most of the members of our club became more and more into the play, though at first none of us was so interested in the play, which our leader and instructor, a professional actress, brought to us, but recently some of the members seem to begin losing confidence or passion to play their roles. It is interesting to see how others and I play someone else and how it affects us. How free am I to be just something living my life?
(2) Another way of my killing time is to play in my head some memory of myself, as if I were seeing a movie, with scent, air and noises that existed for sure then, to some extent. The memories are usually of myself wondering somewhere with good feeling alone, as if becoming a part of the place. My grand-father's last words which I heard from him in person was that the memory of traveling in your young days is your treasure for all your life. He was right. When I want, I can go back into my own memories, which usually happily sleep in my depth. Is there any reason everybody should always keep progressing? What is the progress? I really don't know the answer but I can go back to when I was walking alone, with friendly souls invisible around me, in a graveyard where children had taught me which wild herbs are good to eat, and we ate them together, picking them up from ground in the daytime, behind an old wooden church in a Transylvania village, with a few almond trees in blossom whitely visible in the distant mountains, just as in the time of Turks invading there as they talked as old stories with no longer hate. I am in a trembling bus now, and I am in that graveyard of that time at the same time, almost to the same extent. Do I have to concentrate on my feeling of traveling in the bus here instead?
(3) The other way is to do nothing, to let thinking go, for nothing. Here comes ideas such as, for what I live, why I am here now, what I am now and then, and for what this moment is. What is the meaning? Do I have to know? Can I get to know it?
