Ringo Ishikawa

Ringo Ishikawa

Amidst a sea of uncertainty in life, we return to our comforts as old, worn jeans and childhood bedrooms, if we are so fortunate as to be still afforded the luxury to seek solace in them. So, then: to writing and to video games.

It’s 8:10 pm. I’m sitting at my desk, staring out the window. I really like this song. I really like the view. I really don’t use the TV. I really tire of this place. I really hate working late. I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life.

This morning, I studied Literature. I must’ve read the same paragraph a thousand times over. Fatigue had set into my eyes. You know the type: that burning hot singe from cornea to corner, where you blink in a panic to relieve the pain only to find yourself looking at the word “what” on the page before you as you are suddenly rendered immediately and completely illiterate in that brief lid-borne dark respite, scarcely comprehending how such arbitrary scratchings on a page and guttural sounds forced from gullet could amount to a word virtually impossible to define yet so permanently trapped in the gutter of our collective understanding.

I don’t even remember what I was reading. “Literature”, I guess. The book was about nothing.

I’ve taken on a new job recently which has taken me away from my studies. You know how it goes. I had to pay the rent.

And, of course, the art of love is as expensive as the love of art.

Eh, she wouldn’t like that I’m saying that. Then again, she’s herself trapped in her own studying, in her own room with her own music and her own thoughts. She’s surely longing for that same change of scenery. She’s working harder to get it, though. Tiny girls are the toughest.

Work is fine. I make an appearance Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays — I’m trying to balance the studying and the girl with the dreams and the do’s and do not’s. I don’t know how those Japanese life simulator video game players do this. I’m exhausted.

I don’t know what’s happened with my friends. Fuckers are probably doing stupid shit; playing video games or chasing tail or smoking cigarettes idly on the corner of the town they’d never mustered the courage to leave.

I haven’t had time to see them. I have to keep up with the studies, and the work shifts, and batting away the stubborn and sinking feeling like all of this is sending me no place in particular.

I should be going to the gym more. My trainer keeps telling me I’m making progress, but to be honest, I still can’t do a pull-up on that pair of bars at the park. I guess I need to just stick with it.

Ah, to hell with it. We’re all going to the same stop on the subway, when it’s all said and done. What good is there in moving to the first car?

I guess I’ll play my game before bed. I need an escape. And so are my nights: I plop myself down on the bed and pick up the controller as I drift through the screen and back into that same seat, at the same time, staring out that same window with the same doubts.

It’s funny how art imitates life.