bumping uglies, or, not that at all

details

The New York Times [NYT] - Front Page [A1] - Friday, October 12, 2007
[FOUND AT: Uncertain, though probably Super America off University and Broadway, Minneapolis]

Unit Cost: $1.25 | Total Cost: $5.25

flashback

Over a span of nearly 60 years, Doris Lessing wrote herself to a Nobel Prize by voicing the spirit of an underrepresented part of society, its female part. If only she had read the stories Japan wasn't writing, maybe she would have dressed in fewer shades of blue on the morning of October 11, last year.

The day after Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, a dog named craig came across an article in the New York Times just to the right of the 88-year-old novelist, that is, just to the right of a photograph of the 88-year-old novelist. In the photo, Doris wears a blue vest over blue shirtsleeves with a blue denim skirt (granted, there is some purple). She sits on the front steps outside her home in London, and the front door is open behind her. There are only two steps, and Doris has a body part on each. Potted plants sprout on either side of her and line the checkered walkway. She sits unflatteringly, looks up unflatteringly, and holds, by our count, three separate bouquets of flowers wrapped in crinkly plastic. She corrals the bouquets with her right arm, and in her right hand she holds an envelope that might contain her 10 million Swedish crown Nobel Prize honorarium, though it probably just says “congratulations” from a fancy man or woman with hair as white as Doris’.

In every regard, the author looks uncomfortable. The quote beneath the picture seems to confirm this: “I had forgotten about it actually.” If you look carefully at the photo, you can see these dismissive words dribbling out from behind her frown. Even her frown looks like an accident, as if to say, “Don’t worry Doris, I too had forgotten about the Nobel Prize.” The article says she had just returned from the hospital with her son, so okay, maybe she was too preoccupied to remember the biggest award in letters. We doubt it.

But aloof Doris is not the focus for a dog named craig. Our focus is blurred off to the side, hanging out in Doris’ periphery. It is beneath the fold, and it is photo-less. Compared to the announcement of the recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature, the article’s headline seems like a jealous business associate whose number one client you just had lunch with. It’s a little too sensational for its own good: Starving Man’s Diary Suggests Harshness of Welfare in Japan.

The story is about exactly what the headlines says it is about (although a dog named craig questions the copy editors at NYT who decided “suggests” was the most appropriate verb to insert between “Starving Man’s Diary” and “Harshness of Welfare in Japan”)*. As the article reports: an unnamed man on welfare in Japan kept a diary until he starved to death.

a dog named craig has carried this story around with us, tied to our collar, ever since we read it in October. When we run, it jingles. We’ll be brief.

***

a dog named craig flew out to Kitakyushu, a city located in the Fukuoka prefecture in northern Japan. We researched the approximate location of the diary man’s home, and then set out to find its exact location. After only two days in Japan, we did in fact find it. It was surprisingly easy.

The ground was muddy and the other homes in the area were made of shabby boards. Loose chicken wire on the ground ensnared old newspapers, and rats wandered in the open, as if they had laid claim to the ramshackle neighborhood. We asked around, and sure enough, they had.

We went to diary man’s door and knocked, stupidly. We entered after not hearing the response we didn’t expect to hear anyway. We thought the place was empty, but to our surprise it wasn’t. Someone had tossed scraps of wood and tin cans into the home, probably to store for later use, though a dog named craig had no idea what that use could be. A group of rats were playing bridge on top of a heap of cardboard in the center of the room. “Bugger off,” one of the rats said, the British one, apparently. After deciding we weren’t out to hassle them, however, they resumed their game and paid us no attention.

We sniffed around, read through some of the newspapers, and emptied the water out of a few of the tin cans. The clay roof was dotted with holes and the water dripped through them, as well as through the invisible cracks that ran around the holes. After an hour or so, the rats finished their game and took off under a hole cut into the wall. We were alone.

The room was silent except for the droplets plunking into the tin cans. Now that we were by ourselves, we couldn’t remember exactly why we had come. With the place completely empty, our uncertainty only intensified. We thought, this must be what those water droplets feel like as they hit the bucket: They fall for miles from the sky, and then, after they’ve already landed once, they’re pushed through a crack and fall again, right into a gaping space. Splash. And they hit the bottom of the can.

We circled the room — once, twice — before dragging some papers into the corner to sleep on. It was quiet, and even though we didn’t have our usual bed, we looked forward to a full night’s sleep. But when we went to stretch ourselves out, we bumped into something, and something bumped back, lightly.

“Sumimasen,” was all it said — Excuse me.

“Sorry,” we replied. The polite little bump rustled about briefly before settling. Its rustling was quiet, silent, almost. We lay back down, taking care not disturb the little bump again, and fell asleep.

***

We knew what it was that we bumped into. We knew the second we bumped into it. It was just a little bump, tucked off to the side of the room, somehow front-and-center, yet easy to overlook. It was the little bump that we had flown to Japan for, yet it was so small we had forgotten this until we bumped into it. We had forgotten that it brought us to Kitakyushu, whose name we had also forgotten. It was just a little bump, after all. It was tiny, even. It was nothing more than a tiny bump tucked off to the side and out of focus, waiting on the periphery, just beneath the fold. All it said was “excuse me.”

*The online edition of the article bears the headline: "Death Reveals Harsh Side of a ‘Model’ in Japan." a dog named craig's print edition reads "Starving Man's Diary Suggests Harshness of Welfare in Japan" on the front page, and "Starving Man's Diary Reveals Harshness of Welfare in Japan" on the inside jump, page A12. This is significant, we think.