Monday, September 17, 2001

I met an incredible man on my way back to Ann Arbor Sunday night. A Japanese-American, he had been Amtraking his way back home, to Ann Arbor from Seattle. Unable to fly home due to The Crisis, he had been on the train for two and a half straight days and his journey was just about to end.

He had been in Seattle tracing the roots of his family and Japanese-Americans in general. He was working on a book; it's finished now. He began it as a story of his family to be only for his grandchildren. Eventually it had become the story of his life and others like him. Of course, it had started as just a mess of statements and eventually organized itself into stories with beginnings, middles, and endings that became his chapters.

Everyone's got a story, he said. Everyone insists that they're boring as hell and their life has been pretty predictable, but if you keep searching you'll find something amazing.

He spoke a lot about fate. He told a story of a friend he has, a fellow doctor, on how he made it into Harvard Medical School. After sitting in the Admissions Office lobby for three days straight, with no money, the secretary offered to take him out to lunch. Over sandwiches, she told him she was able to slip his application into the stack, replacing someone who had dropped.

Living through Pearl Harbor and being sent to the camps in Southwest US, I considered him to have a valuable perspective on our current situation. We didn't talk about it too much. He felt that Vietnam made a critical change to the citizen's perspective on government's actions. Our government had let us down, and they could do it again. But we don't trust our government anymore, and he felt we would handle this situation much better.

My writing can't do him justice, I know; it sounds like "Chicken Soup for the Japanese-American's Soul" or something. I know you would be as awe-struck as I was on that train.

He had a lot to say about fate. He felt that the fortune in his life could only be due to fate and it happens to all of us. Things he said made me bring up little stories of my own. They were fewer and smaller, of course and he insisted it was simply a matter of age. Consider your last coincidence. Your last big stroke of luck. You have it, too... We all have it, and it took him 73 years and a written exploration into his own past to realize it. He was the most wise and youthful men I have ever met and when we got to the train station I wanted to call someone and shout about how amazing the guy was. It was past midnight and I didn't have a ride home. He and his wife dropped me off and waved goodbye. He lives right around here, I hope I will see him again someday.

Shockresistant is my attempt to keep things documented. It too will be messy, with parts of beginnings, middles, and endings of various stories lying all over each day. Someday I hope I can let them organize themselves and watch my fate describe itself to me.

The links at the bottom of the page will be working very soon.