My favourite time of a day 私の一番好きな時間帯
日本語と英語が交互に書かれています
“A small footnote found in the court records of some parallel world.
The name of Mitchell Chaplin, who served his sentence of invisibility and learned his lesson well. Too well. This time, however, he will wear his invisibility like a shield of glory. A shield forged in the very heart…of the Twilight Zone.”
– Rod Serling –
Twilight Zone. I really like the time of a day. A zone which is in-between the light and shadow. In Japanese, Twilight is called “Tasogare-doki”, which means the time when the eyes do not recognize a person. Perhaps, this connotation gives an impression of ‘spooky time’ because whom a person is seeing might not be a person really…. In Japan, my grandmother used to tell me that twilight is the time when spirits return from the other side of the world. The gate opens during this peculiar time. Somehow, I want to believe it.
たそがれ時。1日で私が一番気に入っている時間帯だ。なんだかソワソワするのに、静かで空の光が美しい色に染まる。少し、神秘的な時間。写真を撮っても全てがきれいに撮れる。語源は、「誰そ彼」（だれそかれ）からきているらしく、『あの人は誰？』つまり、薄暗くて見えにくいため、誰が確かめたくなる。このことから、あちらの世界から来た魂がコチラの世界に潜り込むにも都合がいい時間なんだ、とおばあちゃんがよく言ってた。あの人は、何か見えていたのかもしれない、と今になって思う。
Last week, my partner and I went to see some family members of his in Alberta. To get there and back to my place, we went through (luckily) the Canadian Rockies. So beautiful. The drive takes about 4 hours. During the four-hour-drive, we stopped quite a bit. Each part of the trip was absolutely special. I guess the sun and the rain clouds traveled with us, we constantly saw rainbows! We stopped our car in the middle of the Canadian Rockies in order to see the rainbow arches in the great sky. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures – I was busy looking at the rainbow (and as you know it disappears very quickly). Nonetheless, I was very pleased to see so many of them at once!
先週のこと。私のパートナーの親戚がいるアルバータ州へ行った。私たちが住んでいるブリティッシュコロンビア州からは車で４時間。カナディアンロッキーを横断する。本当にラッキーな話だ。高速道路には車を５分以上見ないという貴重な時間もある。まるで山脈が私だけのものになったかのように、誰もいない壮大な森、大河、湖が広がる土地が私の心を魅了した。特に美しかったのが雨上がりの薄青空に広がる虹たち。ロッキーで初めての虹体験だった。雨上がりの空に広がる七色は私に何かこれからのたくさんの色で飾られる喜びを伝えているかのようにも見えた。写真は撮れなかったが、今でも目の裏にその光景は焼き付いている。
On the British Columbia side, there is an area called Kootenay National Park. By the time we got to this side, the sun is almost set. The twilight zone began.The beam of sun between the clouds took my breath away. It was so beautiful that I could ‘t help gazing at it. No smell or no sound was there, and yet, the soundless sound of the beam, the existence of the light was so loud in my eyes! My heart remained on the gorgeous view of the Kootenay Sky.
黄昏時は、昼でも夜でもない。その二つの時間帯の「はざま」だ。私は、このどちらとも言えない空間に興味がある。どちらかに決めなければならない時ももちろんあるが、私は、許されるなら、このどちらでもあり、そしてどちらでもない、この空間に身を置くことが多い。例えば、男性性、女性性。どちらでもいいではないか、と思う。昨今、性のあり方が多様化しているが、それ以上のことを思っている。私は、女性としてのアイデンティティーを持ち、この世で生かされている。社会がそう決めたからかもしれない。ただ、魂のレベルで言えば、男性とか女性とかは関係ないような気がする。この世に生を受けるということは、肉体で魂を覆って出てくる。その肉体が起こす奇跡がヒトを男性や女性と分けられているだけなのではないか、と思っている。時には、それが、微妙な交わりをしていることもあったり。また、過去世の記憶が本当に現在の自分に影響を及ぼしているなら、その日によってその記憶の中に男性がいても、女性がいてもおかしくない。私は、いつもどちらでもあり、どちらでもない、と言える。その日、そのタイミングによって違うから。心の中ががロッキーの清く流れる透明な大河のような時もあれば、乳白色のように美しいながらにも濁る時もある。どちらでもよく、どちらでなくてもよい。その時に、そうなるようになっている。
Twilight zone is a space which is neither day time nor night time. I am always fascinated with this special time and space. During this ephemeral moment, my thinking often zones out. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that I lose myself, and yet, I definitely lose the naturalized way of knowing. The idea of neither of them allows me to go outside of a box. Nowadays, talking about sexual orientation can be so complicated. Why create categories to fit each person into a certain place? Gay guys are not all the same. There are various types of people living as just who they are! Each person lives their life as who they are. I personally think that each human travels between their own twilight zones – back and forth. One day, I bet the term LGBTQ ++++ will be gone because the world will recognize the differences are uncountable that grouping won’t really work anymore….
Plus, when I think sexuality in a soul level, I don’t really see the divisions. A soul, when it enters this world, needs a body (flesh). When a body is being formed in a womb, somehow a miracle determines the sexual and the gender orientation of a person. Or a soul really chooses the miracle! Who knows. The amazing cross-and-match mysteries create something called uniqueness! And the uniqueness always is uncountable. Some people might consider that a female-bodied person acting manly can be a lesbian, and yet, each person with female body might act and think differently. Some may not realize who they really are because their idea of a woman is socially constructed by history, custom, culture, and belief surrounding the person. Also, believing reincarnation and thinking of the many lives I had in a soul level, I can’t help imagining that I must have experienced many lives with different gender and sexual orientations. Each day I wake up, I don’t even know which soul-record enters into my life of the moment. I wonder how many in-between zones I experience in a day – many twilight zones in which I constantly change my beings. Each day in an each moment, I am a different person. One moment, my mind is clear just like a wide river and another moment, my thinking gets beautifully confused just like a milky white river running through the magnificent Canadian Rockies. I can be both and I can be neither.
Calicorico Life ♦︎ カリコリコ・ライフ 