Nothing is strong enough to come between me and my present reality. I cannot concentrate long on any book, any movie, any music. In fact, I haven’t seen a complete movie for over 5 months now. I’m so deep into this Tokyo existence that I cannot for a moment separate myself from it. But, I’m separate from Tokyo itself, a foreigner outside enough that I’m outside of any culture. I’ve been from floating in my own separate realm of thought. New levels of introspection. A kind of solitude I’ve not previously known. I am unable to reach that willing state of disbelief in which the pleasure of art for many lies. Escapism is not an option. And any art of the in-your-face variety seems more like an intrusion into my personal ego space, these days. Wherever I go, I cannot leave the present behind. But it’s an eternal present, a timeless present – the past and future have collapsed. Time’s off its track. The clock ticks in ways unknown. Every sentence I reads ends not with a period, but rather with a space, a space that I stare deeply into for a moment long enough to forget what I have just read. 
For better or for worse, life seems to have become an extended dream. Dreams are neither good nor bad. Things just happen. But whatever happens in a dream, I never find myself reading anything or listening to any music or watching any movies. Everything just evaporates and transforms, melts into air. 
In the Fall of 1998, I watched about 25 movies during two weeks of the Vancouver Festival. I have documented my feelings on this in the introduction to the recent Space Age Bachelor. I would document them further, but it would be at the risk of plagiarizing myself. Since that Festival, it’s been difficult for me to watch movies. I’ve only seen just a few in the theatre since then. I developed a bad habit of getting movies from the public library, and either not watching them or not finishing them, and then having to pay late charges on them. I still owe various libraries money for fines uncollected. 
In the early Winter of 1999, I was excited because there was a run of movies by the Taiwanese director Edward Yang at a Vancouver cinemateque. From the movie I saw, I recall the classic line, “We plant bombs in each other. These bombs are still ticking.” But otherwise the movie, whose title I cannot remember, well, how do I explain my feelings watching it? I couldn’t stand its silences. It seemed to say nothing to me about my life, but rather it multiplied the loneliness I felt in the dark theatre, as if it was moving on a feedback loop. Forty minutes into the movie, in a dark apartment room, a woman, alone, puts on a 7 inch. The camera catches the turntable, and the lovely sound of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” fills the cinema and the director wisely allows the song to play for its duration. And such a feeling of peace sweeps over me. And I want this feeling to stay. And so I left the theatre, and never saw the end, and never saw the next movie on the double bill. And fortunately I was alone.