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Coming from wind-swept bald prairie, Vancouver has always seemed
magical, and unreal. Now I’m away to a place even more exotic. What will thatbe
like?
We climb higher, ever higher. Soon the first fingerings of cloud pass my
window. These become more dense and in a moment there is nothing but white.
Suddenly, we’re above the clouds. Climbing still higher, these become fluffy
woolen batting stretched out as far as the eye can see. Peace.
Big jets are different from small planes. Defying gravity with brute force, I
don’t get the feeling I’m about to drop with every gust of wind and change in
engine pitch. Even the rattle-trap Air Lingus jet I took from Shannon, Ireland to
Montreal a few years before had instilled more confidence than the bush planes
that came later in northern Canada. Nothing to do here but relax and enjoy doing
nothing.
All lives begin anew every moment I tell myself. Having saved meagre
earnings from working in the bush where there was no place to spend it, I’m off to
find a Zen monastery in Japan. In my pocket is the address Randy wrote in
Japanese on a scrap of paper. “You’re welcome any time, Morley-san.”He
doesn’t know I’m coming.
I met Randy in Regina a few years after high school, after I had gone to
hitch-hike around Europe with three friends. It was still that curious time when the
phrase “Flower Power” was new and many seemed to believe the world had
somehow been transformed, or soon would be. Everything would be wonderful
from now on, they said. Many believed it.
Randy, who had grown up in Cupar, Saskatchewan, had been forced to
return to his “country of origin” to renew his visa, having exhausted the number of
trips to the Canadian embassy in Seoul which the Japanese government permitted
for that purpose.
A true independent, Randy had made his way to Japan via Europe, the
Middle East, Afghanistan, India, Indochina, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Working
here and there, he had mostly hitch-hiked, taking transport only when hitching a
ride was infeasible. He had found a home in Shinjiku, the area of Tokyo full of
expatriates of every sort, artists, writers and musicians. Randy fit right in.
by Morley Evans