This Is This

Bears make room for Lego.
Bricks get shelved for ships.
They’ll set sail for bedrooms new
when out the door he slips.

I tidied son, 6,’s bedroom last weekend. His room has now gone through many changes, starting out as a spare room where friends used to crash in that brief period of our lives when we had the space and nothing to fill it with apart from drunken mates.

From there it became a baby room, then an infant room, then a toddler room and now it’s a boy’s room. Everying is within reach, things light up when you press buttons and there is stuff that fits together with other stuff in ways I am not a party to, because I no longer need to be.

All fine, of course. I often have to point out that I am OK with these changes, but I am. The Japanese have a word for it - “aware” (pronounced ah-WAR-eh), which expresses the sensitivity brought on by the loss of things. It isn’t sadness so much as a resigned expression at the impermanence of things.

Like in those plays where they painted their faces white and got all dramatic. Someone would shout out: “Aware!” and everyone excepted it and probably did their Robert De Niro downturned “fuck it, why not?” grin and half-nod looks. You know the one.

It’s not mourning, it’s not nostalgia. Manyoshu poets used it evoke a sense of transient sadness at passing beauty. It’s more like something that means: “you know, we’re going to miss that”.

It’s subtle and beautiful and I’ve seen it twice that I can think of in films. One is Apocalypse Now when the officer played by Robert Duval (whose whole face looks like this feeling) says: “Someday this war’s going to end.”

The other time is in Fandango, which is a great film about it and the bittersweet priviledge of youth, when Kevin Costner’s character says to the uptight character played by Judd Nelson: “You know one day Philip, when you’re old…”

Son 6. Same kid as Son, 4, when I started this blog and yet totally different. I hope your kids and parents are well if you have them and I hope your happiness lasts a long time.

And while it does, think what became of your childhood bedroom.

It really doesn’t matter, does it, apart from at the moment of change. I guess that’s where the feeling grows and flourishes, takes root like a fern in a joint of a wall, there to remain as you go on. Aware.

Also on This Is This
I bought some petrol for the car today. I had a fiver on me, so I wanted to put five pounds in. I overshot it and ended up with £5.09, but it was nine pence worth of levity.
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This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 8:25 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.