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Sigourney Weaver and I Visit Iwamizawa in My Dreams

It’s February and it’s the coldest it ever gets in Iwamizawa. 4 a.m. and

sunrise is hours off. In four months the sun will have been up for 7

minutes and thirty seconds. But there is snow. And it is snowing.

Sigourney Weaver is all hat and mittens and in the Hokkaidō fashion

circa 2007 long quilted coat. I ask her how her eyeballs feel and she

rolls them at me as an answer. We walk down 1-chome (ee cho may)

in the middle of the street like it was the middle of the river like it

was Nakagawa and I was pushed from an eggshell balcony into 6 and

a half feet of snow. The ring fence around the baseball field clatters

and dings in the wind. But then the snow is batting and we are

insulated from every sound but ourselves. The dogs all shit on one

corner of the main road and their owners dust the white flakes over

the top with their feet. Come spring Sigourney Weaver can imagine

the results. She knows the truth of the melt. For now the shits sleep

on in the cryogenic darkness. Oh Sigourney Weaver, I say. Shall we

play pachinko? Shall we go to the all night kaiten sushi and take the

undulating fishes into our mouths? Or shall we drive to the big silent

city and wander the train station’s underground caverns of omu-rice

and makudonarudos. Let’s ride the subway in the last car and look

out into the tunnel receding behind us. Shall we pierce our own ears

with the cheap plastic gun kits from beauty shops where our faces are

the white ideal. Or we could buy Häagen-Dazs from the Keio Plaza

lobby vending machine and go upstairs to the feather beds and

plastic cube bathrooms you cannot stand up in. Sigourney Weaver

says: ‘Take me to your house short woman, I want to see you sleep.’