And yet I didn’t really feel any difference. Why was that? This was different from when I’d made the other things disappear. Other than a few pangs of guilt when I thought of my father, I felt no pain, no sense of loss. But this should have had a pretty huge impact on the world. Clocks make the world go round.
Schools and businesses, public transport, the stock market, and all other public services must be in chaos.
But for someone like me, on my own here (well, plus one cat), there wasn’t really much of a difference. It seemed like we were getting along just fine going about our normal lives without clocks, or much of an exact sense of time at all. It didn’t really make any difference.
“So why are there clocks in the first place?”
I thought Aloha might know.
“That’s a good question. But even before clocks were invented, it was only humans that had a sense of time.”
“Huh? I don’t get it.”
Seeing I was puzzled, Aloha went on.
“OK, stay with me. You see, time, or that thing we call time, is simply produced by arbitrarily determined rules. Rules that human beings made up. I’m not saying that the cycle of the sun rising and setting doesn’t exist as a natural phenomenon—because obviously it does—but it’s humans who have imposed an organizing system on that process and called it time, giving names and numbers to different parts of the day like, say, six o’clock, twelve o’clock, midnight and so on.”
“Oooh, riiight . . .”
“So, human beings may think that they’re looking at the world as it is, but they’ve got it all wrong. In actual fact, they’ve just imposed a meaning on things, come up with a definition of what the world is all about which happens to suit them. And I just thought it might be interesting for people to see what the world would be like without that system of telling the time, which humans just made up for their own convenience. You know, just to mix it up a bit . . .”
“Oh, so just like that, huh? Just because you were in the mood?”
“Yeah, well, that’s what this is all about, right? So listen, have a great day! Oh, right, there’s no such thing as a day anymore!”
And then, Aloha disappeared—his glib parting words still hanging in the air.
The story of the last one hundred years could probably be made to fit onto one page of a history book. Or maybe only a line would do.
When I found out that I didn’t have much time left, I decided I’d try thinking of an hour not just as sixty minutes, but 3,600 seconds, just to make myself feel better. But since clocks had now disappeared, counting seconds didn’t mean anything anymore.
Even the meaning of words like “today” or “Sunday” had become dubious. But after Wednesday comes Thursday, and since I knew it was morning, that meant that today must be Thursday. Which is not to forget that these days are only arbitrary human inventions . . .
But anyway, I didn’t have anything in particular to do, so I thought I’d just kill some time. Although there was no time to kill. And even if I decided to waste time, there was no time to waste either. This really left me with very little to go on.
How many minutes had passed since I woke up? I’d usually glance at the alarm clock by my bed when I woke up, but now there were no clocks. A world without clocks. I was being pulled along in the endless undercurrent of time. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel myself being dragged out to who knows where. After a while, it felt as if I was being drawn back into the past.
When you think about it, people sleep, wake up, work, and eat according to the established set of rules we call time. In other words, we set our lives by the clock. Human beings went to the trouble of inventing rules that imposed limits on their lives, boxing them up into hours, days, and years. And then they invented clocks to make time’s rule over us even more precise.
And the fact that there are rules means that we’ve given up some of our freedom. And yet humans have put reminders of that loss of freedom everywhere—hanging clocks on walls, dotting them around their houses. But as if that weren’t enough, they make sure there’s a clock wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, by going so far as to wrap them around their wrists. Humans have even felt the need to wrap their bodies up in time.
But now I think I get it.
With freedom comes uncertainty, insecurity, and anxiety.
Human beings exchanged their freedom for the sense of security that comes from living by rules and routines—despite knowing that costs them their freedom.
While I was thinking this over, Cabbage sidled up to me. Usually when Cabbage comes over and shows me any affection it’s because he wants something.
“What’s wrong, Cabbage? Are you hungry?”
That’s usually what he wants in the morning.
“No, that is not at all what I want.”
“Oh?”
I was still struggling to believe that the cat was talking back to me. Cabbage let out a deep sigh.
“Sir, you have once again completely failed to understand correctly.”
“Sir? What’s that all about?”
Apparently he meant me. So how far is he going to take this gentleman thing?
“If you’ll permit me to explain. When I want to take a stroll, you think I want to eat. When I do in fact want to eat, you think it is a moment’s rest—‘a nap’ if you will—that I want, and when it is ‘a nap’ that I require, you believe I wish to play with you. Your judgment is always, if I might say so, just a touch off.”
“Oh really? Is that so?”
The cat nodded and continued.
“Yes. It is so. You behave as if you have an understanding of my kind, when in fact you do not understand cats at all. You ask me if I am sad when I am not sad, and see fit to approach me with that purringly sweet voice. I do wish you’d stop that! Oh well, in truth, you’re not the only one. All humans are this way.”
I was shocked. I had lived with Cabbage for four years and I thought we understood each other. It can be brutal when cats start to speak your language.
“I’m sorry, Cabbage. So what is it you do want to do?”
“I would like to go for a walk.”
Cabbage had loved taking walks since he was a kitten.
“This cat is just like a dog!” Mom would laugh as she talked about Cabbage. I remember how she would often take him out for walks.
I told Cabbage to give me a minute to get ready, and went to the bathroom. I was mid-way through relieving myself when suddenly I heard the door handle being fiddled with. The door opened and Cabbage barged in.
“Come now, hurry hurry! Let’s go.”
All right already! I pushed Cabbage out of the bathroom, finished my business, and then washed my hands and face. As I splashed the water around in the sink I could feel Cabbage’s eyes on me, pressuring me to go faster. When I looked around I saw him watching me from the shadow of the wall.
“Oh, do come on. I am quite ready for a walk.”
“OK, Cabbage, just wait a sec!”
It used to be a meow was enough, but now he was talking to me. This really was making things much more difficult!
I took my clothes off quickly and jumped in the shower. As I was washing my hair I sensed something behind me, like a ghost. It was like being in a horror film—it sent chills down my spine. I kept my eyes closed tightly to keep the suds out until I finished rinsing my hair. When I opened them, I noticed the door was ajar and Cabbage was peering inside.
“Let’s go!”
Are you a stalker or something? I felt like shouting, but managed to keep it in. I slammed the door and finished rinsing my hair. I had a simple breakfast, just a banana and some milk, then quickly got dressed.
“Really I must insist. Open the door this instant. I wish to go out.”
Cabbage was in the small entry to the apartment scratching at the door with his claws. I was more or less ready, so I caught up with him and we left for a walk.
The weather was good. A perfect day for a walk. Cabba
ge walked ahead with a spring in his step. Mom would always go out on walks with Cabbage. When I think about it, that means Cabbage got to know a part of my mother that I never saw. In any case, I decided I would take it easy and spend the day with Cabbage.
Another thing I wondered about was how was it that Cabbage came to speak like an upper-class gentleman. Then suddenly I knew.
It was Mom’s influence.
Around the time Cabbage first came to live with us as a kitten, Mom suddenly got into TV period dramas. (This was during the “My Boom” of the late 1990s when it seemed like everyone was adopting short-lived obsessive interests.)
She would watch popular long-running series and declare that “all Japanese men should be like this”.
Along with her personal “boom” came outdated theories about Japanese masculinity.
“Sorry, Mom, but I really prefer films to TV shows.”
I politely refused her offers to join in with her historical drama obsession.
So Mom would watch hours of TV with Cabbage curled up on her lap. Cabbage must have learned human language from the shows they watched.
So Cabbage’s Japanese was an odd mixture of my mother’s speech and period TV dramas. It was kind of terrible . . . and yet kind of cute too. So I decided I wouldn’t try and correct it. This is what was going through my head as I followed behind Cabbage.
Cabbage’s preferred route for his walks was overgrown with weeds, but here and there wildflowers also bloomed. Below a telephone pole I noticed some dandelions flowering inconspicuously, and it occurred to me that spring was on its way. Cabbage went up to the flowers and smelled them.
“Dandelions.”
When I said the word Cabbage made a face.
“One would call these dandelions?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“It’s a flower that blooms in spring.”
“Ah, I see . . .”
Cabbage went on to approach every flower we passed along the roadside, asking endlessly, “And what might one call this?”, “And this?”
There was an endless variety of wildflowers growing by the side of the road, and Cabbage wanted to know them all: vetch, shepherd’s purse, common fleabane, marguerite, Paris daisy, henbit, and so on.
The wildflowers on the roadside were exposed to the north wind and completely dependent on what little warmth they could get from the sun. At that time of year, they were in full bloom. I trawled my memory to try and find the names of the flowers, to teach them to Cabbage. It was strange how the names did come back to me—memories from my childhood, all that time ago.
Like Cabbage, I used to take walks with my mother when I was small. I would ask her questions too: “What do you call that? And that?” I suppose I was just like Cabbage. To think that Mom spent her days like that, putting up with me, and then later putting up with Cabbage.
“You’d find a flower and then sit down, then find another flower and sit down again. Walks would last forever. It’s not easy taking care of a small child.”
My mother would tell me this, once I’d grown up.
“But those were happy times all the same.”
She’d get that faraway look in her eyes, talk nostalgically about the past, then let out a little laugh.
Having taken our time, Cabbage and I finally reached the park at the top of the hill.
There was a beautiful view from the park. Just below us we could see the road we’d hiked up, lined with houses. Then beyond that was the sea, the color of lapis lazuli. It was a particularly big park, but it had a swing set and slide, and a seesaw for kids. Mothers played with their small children in the sandbox.
Cabbage circled the park, played a bit with the children, and then headed toward the benches where the old men played Japanese chess. “Get out of my way, I’m sitting here,” he announced. I was worried that the sudden appearance of a talking cat would frighten the old men, but they just smiled and laughed. Apparently I was the only one who could hear Cabbage speaking.
“No, Cabbage. These people are using the bench now,” I said.
But Cabbage was having none of it. Suddenly he jumped up onto the chess board and the pieces went flying. But the old men just laughed it off and acted like it happened all the time. They gave up their spot for Cabbage.
I hung my head apologetically as the old men got up and left. Cabbage gave me a side-glance and positioned himself on the wooden bench, from which ribbons of blue paint were peeling off. He started licking his paws.
It looked like he wasn’t going anywhere for a while, so I sat down beside him and gazed absent-mindedly at the ocean that extended for as far as the eye could see. It seemed possible that this peaceful moment might last forever. I looked over at the park’s clock tower as I tended to do. As I suspected, there was no clock. Was the disappearance of time responsible for this calm? Or had it always been that way? I couldn’t tell. But now that I had finally come to terms with the fact that clocks were no more, I felt light and free.
“Humans are strange creatures.”
Cabbage must have finished grooming himself. He looked in my direction as he spoke.
“What’s that?”
“Why do humans give flowers names?”
“That’s because there are so many different kinds. Without names you wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them.”
“Just because there are different kinds it doesn’t mean you have to name each and every one. Why not just call them all flowers? Isn’t that good enough?”
I suppose he was right. Why do people name flowers anyway? And flowers aren’t the only thing. We give names to all kinds of objects. Colors have names and so do people. Why do we need names?
It’s the same with time. The sun comes up and it goes down. Humans went and imposed their own system of months and years, hours and minutes, on what was a natural phenomenon. Then we gave all those things names. And that’s all that time is.
Cabbage existed in a world without time. No clocks, no schedules, and no being late. And no such thing as categorizing people according to age or what year they are in school. And no vacations because there’s nothing to have a vacation from in the first place. There’s just the changes brought about by natural phenomena, and our physical response—like when you’re hungry or sleepy.
In a world with no clocks, I could take my time and think about things. It seemed to me that there were all kinds of rules made up by human beings—rules that begin to fall apart when you look at them closely. I find myself coming to the realization that the ways we have of measuring things—like, say, temperature, or the reflection of light that produces color—are artificial human creations, just like time. Basically humans just applied labels to the things they sensed. From the perspective of the non-human world, hours, minutes, and seconds don’t exist. Nor do colors like red, yellow, and blue. And temperature doesn’t exist. But on the other hand, if yellow and red don’t exist, does that mean Cabbage doesn’t think dandelions are pretty, or that roses are beautiful?
“But you know, Cabbage, it was really sweet of Mom to go along on those long walks with you.”
“How so?”
“Spending all this time with you was a big deal for her. Mom was really fond of you.”
“Mom, you say?”
“My mother. I guess she was kind of your mother too.”
“Exactly who is this person you refer to as ‘mother’?”
I was speechless.
Cabbage must have forgotten about Mom.
But that’s impossible. Or on the other hand, maybe he’d made himself forget about her.
I remembered my mother’s face the day she rescued Cabbage. She looked a bit sad, and yet she was also so happy. She would watch TV with Cabbage curled up on her lap, stroking him until he fell asleep. Then she would fall asleep too, tucked up with Cabbage on the sofa. She looked so peaceful. I got choked up thinking about it.
“Don’t you remember Mother?”
&
nbsp; “Who is it you speak of?”
Cabbage had the look of someone who was wondering what the hell I was talking about. He really must have forgotten about her. It suddenly hit me how sad this was. Cabbage’s complete innocence just made me feel worse. I guess somewhere deep down I always believed those stories about animals that never forget their master, like in the story of Hachikō, who for years waited at the station for his master to come home, without realizing his master had died . . .
But I wonder if that’s just wishful thinking on the part of humans. Would Cabbage forget about me soon, too? Would there come a day when I disappeared from Cabbage’s world?
All the moments I’d lived through, more or less without thinking about it, began to feel very important. How many more walks would I be able to take with Cabbage? With the amount of time I had left, how many more times would I be able to listen to my favorite music? To enjoy a cup of coffee, a good meal? To say good morning, sneeze or laugh?
I’d never thought about life this way before. It hadn’t crossed my mind during any of my visits to my mother. If I’d realized that someday it would all have to end, I would have appreciated the time I spent with her more. Before I knew it Mom was gone. She died before any of these things had occurred to me.
Had I done anything significant during my thirty-year existence? Had I spent time with the people I really wanted to spend time with? Had I said all that needed to be said to the people who mattered?
There was a time when I could have called my mother, but my mind was always on my mobile’s recent call history. I was so busy dealing with what happened to come up at any given moment that I left all the important things for later.
I got so caught up with all the little everyday things that I ended up wasting the time I could have spent on more important things. But the scariest thing is that I never even noticed that I was wasting my precious time. If only I’d stopped for a moment to get some perspective, away from all that busy running around. It would have been obvious what the most important thing was, and which of those calls (if any) really mattered.
If Cats Disappeared From the World Page 8
