comfort

The dream of the 90’s

light fading on Repulse Bay in Hong Kong

We are chasing a dream. Everyone, I think, is chasing a dream. “We are all in some way or another going to Reseda,” as the man says. The dream in most cases bears an eerie similarity to the world of our teenage years, of our youth. For me this explains the sudden feeling of familiarity when driving the New Jersey Turnpike with the windows down. My youth is there, on the roads of the eastern seaboard, scattered across highways and through small towns. It is hidden next to cornfields and beside lakes momentarily visible through the foliage. It is on the radio.

In Hong Kong we find out about upcoming concerts from posters glued to buildings. We discover events while out and about. We buy paint for our new apartment at a small shop a block from our old place, and then, dissatisfied with the advice, at a different small shop a half dozen blocks from the new one. Both are licensed distributors of major brands, both are run by families. Despite the dominance of chains, of Maxim’s cakes and Starbucks, of Pacific Coffee and Pret, Hong Kong is also home to thousands of small shops run by families, serving neighbors who walk in with questions. Serving me.

There are many ways to shape the world. We do so through our jobs, through our donations, through our words. We do so through the lives we choose, through the ways we live. We believe in loose ties, in social networks built on the unit of the neighborhood, and in the value of humans. And we live in Hong Kong, we shop in person, we spend most of our time walking this island, both so dense and so small. We see the same people every day, are known by most shop keepers and wait staff, at the 7-11 and the grocery store. We live in one of the biggest, densest cities in the world, and we are not alone. We are lucky and we are comfortable here, knowing the family that runs the fruit stand, the folk who run the car repair shop, and on and on. We know the SF delivery person turned hotel desk clerk not because he delivered to our house, but because we encountered him every day, walking around the neighborhood.

The 90’s, in some way, are alive in our dream of them. We purchase music from bands, we pick up our take away from the Indian place, from the dumpling shop, from the sushi shop. We consume, to be sure, and our relationships are built on that. They are built on knowing, on participating, in the world. Our goal, in progress for so long, is to be comfortable everywhere, to be at home everywhere. It remains a work in progress. We are most at home here, in the 90’s, where the internet is a tool, but not the only one. Where word of mouth matters, and foot traffic. Where people are out, likewise discovering their desires by walking.

Nostalgic, and simplified. The car-based reality of my youth intrudes but rarely, when on vacation to other countries. The Hong Kong version of the ’90’s is a New York version, is a Manhattan version, with trains and bands and enough money to make it work. It’s a place I’m happy to live. It’s a place I’m happy to create for ourselves, for as long as we can.

Never your mind

An alley near Haneda airport in Tokyo in the morning light.

On a Monday evening I walk twenty minutes from Haneda to a small hotel near the airport. The air is cool and dry, the way cleanly paved, and the passers-by mostly on bicycle until the last few blocks. The sun has set. Most of those similarly walking have just left work. It’s the kind of Tokyo evening that will always feel familiar: the quiet walk to the station, ride home, and quick dinner or groceries in a familiar neighborhood. I have never been to this stretch of Haneda-adjacent Tokyo, but it is not unknown. As per my goal, I’ve spent enough time here to be comfortable.

My mind drifts as I walk, between distant locations. This is expected. I am just off a flight from San Francisco, and only outside tonight because of a missed connection. I think of family in Hong Kong an hour behind, just starting to wrap up the workday. I think of my friend, arrived back in LA after our weekend together in Oakland. And I think of my colleagues, now scattered across the US again after our week together in Walnut Creek. Briefly I consider my friends, now scattered to the US and UK, with whom I would have stayed or eaten with on previous Tokyo stops like this. Last, and only once I find the hotel, do I consider Tokyo, my plans for the evening, what I’d like to do. Part of this is due to the unplanned nature of the visit, the unexpected reality of being in Tokyo at all. Part though is because my mind is scattered, pulled at by the remote nature of my job, of my friends, and of our life. As Yoda said, “All his life has he looked away to the future, the horizon.” I would add the pull is that of the unknown, of the different. That pull is strong.

Combatting that pull is a depth of friendship only possible after twenty five years, that allowed my best friend and I to spend a weekend together on the deepest topics, without pre-amble or a pause to catch up. We did, of course, watch sports and go through the mundane details of our current lives, but mostly we focused on the things we can discuss with no one else, the questions for ourselves that only someone with twenty five years of context can help clarify. It’s valuable time, made all the more so because of it’s rarity. Call it twenty hours.

Moving, really relocating, fractures our lives into segments. There are friends from our home town, friends from university, from our first job, from our first city. Friends from Tokyo, from Shanghai, from Houston, SF, and Hong Kong. There are friends met in places we have never lived, on frisbee fields mostly, but also from jobs. And all of these people, like us, have scattered, have spiraled out until we have friends in Austin, where we’ve only briefly ever been, from five or six different segments of life. Likewise Seattle and Boston. Manila holds not only friends but families of friends, and more connections. Shenzhen, a frequent work stop, holds dozens of former colleagues in long-since failed startups. For work we have been all over Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, making friends and acquaintances. And each of these groups exerts a pull, a sense of comfort and place we could return. Each one makes, in some small way, the next move to the unknown harder.

They make keeping our eyes on where we are require more focus.

And yet I am here, in Tokyo, wandering small streets with a Californian originally from Belarus who I met in the airport. We eventually eat ramen and return to our separate rooms, immaculate and tiny. Watching him navigate the Japanese menus and ticket machines I’m happy. Here is Japan, the voice in my mind says, familiar and unique. How lucky we are to see it again after so long.

For a night, that is enough.