Category: Memories

That’s me on the beach in Waikiki (Kuhio Beach to be exact). I put 1967 in the filename, but actually I’m not really sure when this picture was taken. At any rate, the late ’60’s. Suffice it to say, Waikiki looks completely different these days, and that half-constructed building in the background portends many things to come. This photo actually sent me off on a wild goose chase last night, trying to determine which hotel it was that is shown being built. In my ultimately fruitless search (it’s one of two hotels, as best as I can determine, but in the end it matters little), I came across this photo from 1999 which will give you some idea of the landscape changes Waikiki has gone through. (Coincidentally, this photo is from a personal site of someone who lives in the neighborhood I grew up in (Nuuanu), and whose children attend the same elementary school that I did (which I wrote about here)).

ADDENDUM: I later found some other photos taken on the same day, at the same beach. The above photo was taken in 1967.

My brother and I, either in ’69 or ’70. I’m the older one, on the left. The photo was taken by a friend of the family, and co-worker of my father, Jack Matsumoto (he also took the photo I featured here). Not much to comment on here, though I still remember vague elements of this day, of going to Mr. Matsumoto’s house somewhere up in the hills (I’m inclined to think Round Top Drive, in Honolulu), and running around in his yard and picking up guavas that had fallen from his trees.

I look at the photo, and I want to collapse the past 34-some years into nothing. Is it heretical to take a moment from looking ahead to feel some tinge of regret that I had to go on living past this point, that I couldn’t forever exist in this pre-aware state, ignorantly, blissfully picking up guavas?

I’ve recently been going through some of the stuff I moved across the Pacific last year (finally, I might add, it being almost a year now since Naoko and I moved to Japan). Lots of photos and snapshots among it all. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about growing up, and of self imagery, and how one imagines oneself, and how the on-(photo) paper self matches up with the one constructed in the mind, when they intersect, and when they don’t. If that sounds ill-formed, it’s because it is. Naturally the soon to be born child has helped to conjure up all of this, and is inflecting my thought process as I go through these old photos. So the upshot is that this week I’m going to present, in no particular order, some random pictures of me taken during my lifetime. Highly self-indulgent to be sure (then again, this whole blog enterprise can be characterized thusly), and frankly I’m not clear as to the purpose this will serve, but I’ve been in an experimental mood lately and feeling like I want to throw some things out there and see what, if anything, sticks, and how they might stick together. I may or may not add comments to these photos as I upload them.

I will comment on this particular photo, which was taken in late 1987 or early 1988 in the room I was staying in at my father and step-mother’s house in Lexington, Kentucky. I was 22 years old at the time. My step-mother took the picture. “…the room I was staying in” is telling, for I never felt much at home during the 8 months I lived in Kentucky, having landed there after traveling around Europe for 6 months, and living with my newly married father, and a step- mother and -brother I hadn’t previously met. Actually, at the time it approximated hell on earth for me, and I spent a lot of time ensconced in this room, with its 70’s wood paneling, reading my books, listening to music, and writing desperate prison letters to the outside world.

I certainly look the wallflower, don’t I? Actually, I think it’s funny that behind me hangs a poster for my all-time favorite band The Smiths (there are actually two hanging, one is out of view), featuring a dreamy Jean Marais from Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1949), for this photo looks like something I might have submitted along with my application to become president of lead-singer Morrissey’s fan club! The Matisse poster was brought back from Venice, where I had seen a huge exhibit of the painter’s works.

Although they’re not clear enough to pick out from this scanned photo, the books on the floor present an interesting if not exactly flattering picture as well. In addition to The Vegetarian Handbook (I had become a vegetarian a few months prior; the book was a gift from a friend), there is something called Film Art (most likely a college textbook; during this time I was working for a college textbook distributor/wholesaler); a couple volumes of The Diary of Anais Nin (I read all 7 volumes while in this place, from books borrowed at my home away from home, the city library); James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Another Country (I found the first slight, but quite enjoyed the latter, if I remember correctly); The Marxists, by C. Wright Mills (I doubt I read too much of this one, although I did read one of the volumes of Isaac Deutscher’s Leon Trotsky biography during this time); and lastly, there’s also a copy of Godard: Images, Sounds, and Politics by Colin McCabe (Godard at the time was my favorite director, but this book was over my head).

In short, a rank dillettante! A few months after this photo was taken, I would be packing my bags and heading out to San Francisco….