Is there a meaning to all this? Is there a purpose to just going through the motions? I think not. I want to go somewhere where I can reason all this out. I want to understand myself. I want to find my passion. I want to learn to deal with all this. I want to still imagine.
Everyone claims that memories are the most important, that memories define who you are. I guess that's true. However, I would say that it's more of the memories that you retain which provide clues to your beliefs and values. True, memories are not as credible as they may seem. Many of the events I remember have a more elevated position in my mind than they deserve. Some of the places I remember are hardly true to their originals. Then, there are "memories" that seem so surreal that I cannot be sure if they are real memories at all, or just merged fragments of dreams in the murky depths of my distant childhood. It almost seems like the boundary between reality and fantasy merges when you try to go too far back in your mind. Dreams and imagination fill in those holes in memory created over time.
Childhood DreamIt had been almost ten years since we moved into that house. It had been eight since we moved from there. It had been one and a half since I have been alone. Maybe I was stupid to go chasing after a dream. For that was surely what it was. But it was fall break and I had no plans. So I decided to go back. Just for old time's sake. Just to capture a wisp of my childhood.
The forest seemed so sparse compared to what I remembered of it. Back then, the trees had loomed ominously over me and the little gravestones had been scary. Now, the trees were just baby sequoias turning brown with the fall, and the gravestone spirits were just badly painted faces on rocks. It was spring back then. I had the flowers my friend had given me when we moved. I haven't talked to her in a while. There was a light breeze, barely comparable to the once-insistent hand urging me forward. The path didn't seem as long and bumpy as it had when dad raced us down the road in pursuit of his shortcut. One thing was the same though: the rustle of the wind through the falling leaves sounded like faint whisperings. That much was the same.
The statue no longer seemed life-like. It was instead a poor imitation lacking quality and originality. The walls did not stand as high as the sky; they seemed instead to be on the verge of collapsing, a crumbling shell with fading paint.
So why did I hesitate to go in? Maybe because, this time, there was no wind pushing at me to go inside. And because, if I went in, I would find out the truth and the dream would shatter. After all, it is not so bad believing in dreams is it?
I traced over the weathered bricks and crumbled the chipped paint between my fingers. A fine dust rained on my sandals and disappeared. I peered into the dark tunnel and tried to make out the details. Nothing. The shadows hung like a curtain between my memories and reality. I didn't know if I should sweep open the curtain or not. To be honest, I think these memories I remembered probably were mostly dreams filling in the holes of my parents and my exploration of this abandoned amusement park so many years ago. But I would be lying if I said that it would not have been nice to leave even a shred of hope for myself that what I thought happened had actually happened, that I had met this unselfish, caring person who showed me that example of simple, childlike love.
Did I want to see the other side of the curtain? I was no longer sure. I had thought that it would be important for me to find out the truth about my past if I were to understand myself. But now I was not really sure. It is not really what's true that's important is it? It should be what I believe is true that really matters. If I want to find my goal in life, I should look at myself, my beliefs. I may make the wrong choice but I would have been true to myself. Why should I risk destroying that part of my essence which revolves around my memories of this place?
But then, those memories should only serve a small part in helping me understand myself and my goal. It would be better to make an informed decision. It is better to know the truth, then there's one less factor for mistake.
So I stepped into the darkness. My heart skipped as I heard the distant whistle of a train. Could I be right? I took another step, then another. I walked past the dusty benches and the dried fountain. I smiled at the sunlight filtered through the stained-glass window. Then I realized that none of this is magical anymore. I knew why there was so much dust on the benches. I knew why there seemed to be a pale orange shroud on everything. There was no longer any room for the imagination. There was only room to admire the understanding gained through logic and science.
I stopped admiring and walked on. Once again, the darkness engulfed me, and I emerged from the tunnel to a sea of green. Except, it was no longer a sea—I could see where the grass cuts off the dried river and where it joins the actual park itself. The grass merely bent lazily as the wind swept over it, it didn't rustle a secret message, it didn't dance to the sunlight—it was just grass, not a sea of green. Just grass. Just a dried riverbed. Just an abandoned amusement park.
Maybe I should just go back. It was most likely a dream. Turn back before I reach the bathhouse—if the bathhouse even exists. I tried to glimpse past the steps up to the park, but it was too far away. But there was the possibility. It still might have all really happened. I couldn't have dreamed it all up. In the distance, I heard the train again. So I ran. I raced across the grassy field, I jumped over the stones of the riverbed, I leapt up the stairs and rushed through the streets. Then, I saw it: the bridge. Beyond it, the bathhouse framed on the pale afternoon sunlight beckoning to me as it once did. I stopped myself as I reached the bridge and walked slowly towards the bathhouse as if in a dream.
The train whistled again. I turned my gaze away from the bathhouse and searched for the train. It was in the distance, close to where our home had been, close to that old train station we had passed when we moved. My hopes waned as I realized that I was looking in the direction of the Arasagi train station.
I let myself slide to the ground and crouched in a fetal position. In my dream, he had once comforted me when I was sad like this. I realized that I should have turned back at the entrance, that I should not have come. Now that the dream was gone, I realized I never wanted to find out. It was okay to indulge in a dream. There was nothing wrong with still being a child at heart. Nothing wrong at all.
"What are you doing here? You should leave right away!"
Startled, I looked around as words out of a dying memory rang in my ears. Maybe it was real after all. Maybe it wasn't just a figment of my imagination. My eyes landed on a withered old man in a janitor's uniform and my heart fell back into darkness.
"Don't you know that this place is off bounds? They're tearing down the bathhouse attraction to rebuild the amusement park. A young lady like you could easily get hurt wandering around here." The janitor continued on, but I barely heard him. I felt so stupid—fantasy doesn't exist in this rational, scientific world. Everything works according to nature's laws. If something appears to be "magical", it is merely because we have yet to apply those laws to that phenomenon. It was naïve of me to hope for magic because magic does not exist. Only what we see, what can be proved is real. And I had proved to myself that this dream of mine was, in fact, merely a dream—an imaginative story my mind painted up as I slept. That is all.
Muttering an apology that I didn't know about the rebuilding, I walked slowly back. I felt sad. I had lost the child in me. Before I came here, there had been some hope, however diminished by years of school and learning, that maybe miracles can happen—that there is this wonderful world out there where the boundaries as we know it are broken, where magic is real and people can fly and dragons exist and there is such a thing as simple and pure, unconditional, undemanding love. But that world exists only in a child's mind. Such naivety cannot exist in the adult world. It would only get crushed under the harsh reality of logic and reason. The imagination has no place in this world. There is no fantasy world for an adult. That is a luxury reserved only for carefree little children.
I felt like a part of me had died. I had been waned into the harsh reality of adulthood; and I had done it myself. But why must my inner child be shut away? Why must she die as I grow older? Is it so wrong for her to have lingered longer? I rued the unjustness of it all. Yet that was the truth—reality.
Well. Well. I cannot change the way the world is. But that doesn't mean I had to like it. I knew then what my goal would be. I would try to keep children's imaginations alive. I would try to help children enjoy the hope for the surreal during those times when they are still able. Then, maybe, one day, it wouldn't be so bad to wish, to wish for something more. And a proof otherwise wouldn't be so devastating because it wouldn't matter if it the dream is true or not. We would have the luxury to entertain those possibilities, to hope for some utopia which allows childlike innocence. After all, hope is the driving force. Without hope, then we become zombies going around our daily meaningless lives, aimlessly performing tasks dictated so by logic and reason and science.
Hopefully, one day, the child can be a child for longer.
Hopefully, one day, the world would no longer be so heartless and harsh.
Hopefully, one day, people would start to love each other with that pure, simple, untainted love of a child.
That would be nice.
EpilogueThe janitor looked wistfully after the slowly fading outline of the girl. The next moment, he was a janitor no longer. He was a young man in his early twenties, with olive-green eyes and dark brown hair. For a long time he stood there, his eyes lingering on the place where she had disappeared down the street. The sun fell below the horizon and the clouds became lined with silver and red. The lights of the bathhouse turned on one by one. He lowered his gaze and turned slowly back to the bathhouse.
"Goodbye, Chihiro."