the incorruptible killer and the counter clockwise clock

it is said that each day is a life and death, that each day should be lived from one side to the other. every day is a lifetime.

my life is just lived in, counter clockwise and clocked-in, a station every point seven to two point two kilometers, another station always after the last. my life is twenty nine stops when everyone else is just starting, everyone getting in and getting out, everyone going somewhere, osaki station to shinagawa, to tamachi, to hamamatsucho… everywhere pre-calculated and computer automated, everything in seconds, everything averaged out and always in between.

i am forever on the line, what is really a circle, what runs all day and on the outsides of the clock, late nights and early mornings. i am forever on the outside of the city and never in it, passing by like a moon around a planet, unseen in my compartment, a moon in a moonless sky. this is what i have come to, i did not strive for this or anything else. i am a train operator only by chance, an accident no different than a pedestrian killed by a car, carried away by an inertia not their own, their empty shoes at the curb where they were standing, a body and its black stocking feet ten meters away, my hat and shoes at the door.

i eat standing up, in my apartment, just in my socks, just in my underwear and a bleach white undershirt. i am always standing up, at the ramen counter around the corner or a rice ball from the convenience store, a shallow cellophane bag of squid jerky as i walk to work or back. i walk the same way street to work each day, out the petty door into an apartment hall, what is not mine, but somehow where i live, down a zig zag stairs and a dim sidewalk, between the buildings and the sun or the streetlights so it is never day or night. my uniform is stiff at the collar, at the cuffs, my hat brimmed and neither tilted back nor pulled forward, but always perfectly a top my head, my pressed pant legs rubbing a thin sound as i walk, my shined shoes tin, my white gloves saying nothing, i am sure to never touch the stair railing.

i wonder now if my life would be different, if i hadn’t seen him, if his death would have been the same. i wonder if he had his feet, if he wasn’t already dead, standing straight up on a straight stretch of track, standing just after harajuku station as if he had never been anywhere else. i only saw his face, even his eyes behind his glasses. he smiled as if he knew me, as if he chose me. i wonder if i flinched.

i would not engage the emergency stop or brake until after we hit. i made sure to hit him at full speed. the kaishakunin and the condemned have an understanding, what can be only between them, it is the way as it has always been, there can be but one truth. everything turned sure and see thru the moment the train and he met, the instant of his life and death, of my day and night. i could see beyond the tracks and both sides of the day, that end of a day and again beginning the next, what i can’t explain here in the middle again. i slowed the train until it stopped, i’d never noticed the weeds between the tracks until then. i informed the passengers that there had been an accident and reported the events to osaki central station that a physical body had been hit, jinn shin jiko. i knelt down with my head up for the appropriate time and stood again.

the shinbun said “suicide stops yamanote line” the way black ink does. it did not say his name, there were no details of his life or of his death other than an “apparent suicide”, the word “suicide” the same size as all the other words. there was a picture of the tarp surrounding the scene and the uniformed men that appear around such things, i always think of flies. a rail official said “unfortunate” and stressed the words “safety” and “reliability” in his statement, passengers tattered a series of complaints for the four hour delay. i tore out the picture and the small words beneath it, wrapped it around a rice ball and ate it, black and gray newsprint, the whitest of white rice, hot green tea so it hurt my hand.

i am waiting for an end now, for what it seems can only be followed by a beginning. i am always waiting for something, for some cure to this route, for some way to live out a line instead of this circle. i try to find him amongst the people waiting, the people walking by, but death is a way of life here, the ghosts all dress the same so there’s hardly a difference. i sometimes think i see him or the next one like him, something familiar, a glance up from their feet maybe longer than a glance. i think of his face now as each turn gives way to a straight stretch of track, of his black framed glasses, of his white shirt and dark tie, a rain coat over his suit jacket. i think of the dignity of his smile, how he never parted his lips, of the long moment before we hit, the instant of his death that was to become my life. i am just alive, another second or a year, it makes no difference, both add up to always.

it is said that life is short and that days are long, that each day should be lived like it is the last day of your life.