“Son I come from five generations of people who’re slaves and share-croppers but there ain’t nobody in my family tha’ never took no pay from nobody that was a way of tellin’ us we wouldn’t fit to walk the earth.

They never been that poor… they never been that dead inside.”

Based on a broadway play of the same title by Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun [2008] tells of a colored family’s life in Chicago. Dealing with racial prejudice and other struggles of the African-American, what makes it stand out from other motion pictures of the same theme is that it goes on to identify itself as a movie that focuses more on the universal human aspiration to acknowledge the individual in all of us—that one, in a search for worth, must first find truth in the innate fact that self-actualization is not solely established in everybody else’s respect but that one must also have a deeper kind of that respect, sometimes even almost pride-like, in one’s self. It focuses more on that, than on the pigmentation of the skin.

Good cast, simple plot, real. And a beautiful message, that’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Watch it here.

It was just there, in front of me. Listening to its teammate about something, maybe volleyball, soccer. While the pal was scribbling something, game strategies perhaps, it was listening intently—black mane, and the whitest set of enamels I’ve ever seen. A kind of white only fantasy creates. It was almost real.

I now think that unicorns, not rainbows, show up after the rain. You see, it has been pouring since daybreak and only until about past 2 in the afternoon, well at least in Yokohama, did it start to clear up. I got to see this magical creature inside a train car. Matching its wavy black mane is a bonnet on. Lips a little bit dry—it’s late winter—but still pinkish, almost red, and full—not the erotic type, but a fullness that’s pure, almost innocent. The late afternoon sun was up, with its last soft glow of light, when this apparition of a wavy-maned unicorn, in black bonnet caught my eyes.

It was in a stop in Koenji, or in Kichijoji, when it noticed my glances. But how can one keep from doing so when a unicorn—listening to strategies in a volleyball/soccer game—is just in the opposite seat? I couldn’t. And then I focused on the hooves, one word: magical. The eyes, indescribable; I just glanced at them, and hoped that the images caught would be preserved in my head forever. But when it noticed my glances, I decided to stop. Stop glancing. I tell you, it was the sweetest self-inflicted punishment I’ve ever done and felt. To not glance at this bonneted unicorn with wavy mane pained me with excruciating fear that never again shall I see it; but this also ecstatically swirled my world on this seat of a train with images of what I just behold of a creature of magic.

It’s my stop (I mean the station where I get off). And since I decided not to glance again when it noticed I was doing so, I was also resolved that everything was unreal. That it was just, as I’ve said, fantasy.

But they, the teammate and the unicorn who appeared after the rain, also stepped out of the train. So it lives somewhere ’round my area. But I’ve already stopped glancing. For to glance one last time would spell my destruction: remember a scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? It warned that when you try to suck out the blood of a unicorn, you will live an immortal life—but a cursed life nonetheless. My glances had begun to suck its blood out, and I don’t want to live in a meaningless eternity, what’s more, I don’t want to have anything to do in the death of such pure a creature—that unicorn with a black bonnet on a wavy mane, with the whitest set of enamels only fantasy can create, looking at me now getting out of 武蔵境駅：Musashisakai station’s south exit.

I didn’t glance back. Goodbye unicorn.

Sunday, March 2, 2008. Train from Shinjuku going to Harajuku, Yamanote Line.

I was going to dance tinikling with Jera, for a charity luncheon hosted by the Tokyo Union Church—proceeds would support the trip of youth volunteers to build houses somewhere in Cagayan Valley.

On the train: father and daughter wrestles their fingers in this game most of us should’ve played before. While in it with her little girl who has rosy cheeks, dad keeps on smiling, the kind of smile that smells proud, and happy, and hopeful for her rosy-cheeked baby. It’s refreshing to find a middle-aged man, not in business suit, being father to his daughter, in this part of Japan where people are often regarded as snobs.

And so off I danced the tinikling with Jera. Now wrestling our feet with the bamboo poles, I hoped I had the same smile on, for the people at the luncheon and for the future houses in Cagayan. It was a great Sunday.

Train for 新宿(Shinjuku station). An afternoon. Crowded. Seats full. Quite a bouncy train.

An old woman trying to balance her weight in that bouncy train, amidst people mostly in business suits. An old man on a priority seat spots her, slowly stands up, ushered his open hand from the spot where the woman stands to the now vacant seat. An “ありがとう(thank you)” from granny, and a little nod of acceptance from him.

The train’s still bouncy, but not quite as bouncy as it has been just a while ago.

Since I’m in Japan where trains dictate the people’s schedule—they’re the primary mode of transpo—and since it’s even a requirement for employment hopefuls (whether white-collar or blue) to state the nearest train station from their residence, I think I have to write about trains. Well, not really about trains, but about the things I see in them. Let’s call this blog’s segment the Train collection, whatever that means.

No, I’m not going to write about the man who’s asleep all throughout his ride, or of the lady who fixes her eyes on that book, and definitely not about the girls in micro-mini skirts with crystals on their nails. As in the previous post, I would write about things that make the trains here come alive. I’ll look for the smile, the kindness—not the explicit politeness in their language, and the general goodness of something, or someone, on the train.

Let’s begin. This is the Train collection 001:

An aged woman in purple and old rose, clutching her multicolored bag, stood out among the people of the “rapid” (there’s local, rapid, and special rapid) train because she was smiling—you know, that honest smile about something that’s good—while she looked at her handbag. A special anticipation on her face. Whoever she’s going to meet (a), or whatever’s in the bag (b), I’d like to think it’s a present for her grandchild…doesn’t matter, is (a) lucky, (b) nice. And it’s a cold afternoon here in Tokyo. But she’s warm.

When it’s time for her to get off, other people closed in through the door. They were expressionless—she was still smiling.