I've read somewhere that the witching hour is a time for spirits to cause trouble and perhaps even Beezlebub himself makes a celebutante appearance, prancing around on cloven hoofs and defiling his ex-boss through gritted teeth with an often dramatic flair-and from what I've heard, a feral scent. This hour of the most unwelcome invasion is often thought to be between 3 am and 4 am, and it's believed that during this time, the veil between our world and the spirit world is weak, allowing spirits to pass through and cause mischief.
I keep odd hours. And being a logical heathen who tends to scoff at superstition, I don't know much about demons or the supernatural, but I am mindful that I see this particular time as the chance to get a delicious snack, (croissant with honey) a cuppa Joe, and perhaps even watch a bit of Japanese baseball more than anything spectral and nefarious. The match? Yokohama Bay Stars vs Yakult (Tokyo) Swallows. Welcome to the league of opposite-field slap-hitters, domes, beer girls, and competent umpires-a league of mythological wonderment for most Americans.
My favorite player, Shugo Maki, stepped into the box and the crowd fervently sang him Happy Birthday complete with blaring brass horns as the rain bounced off his helmet violently. Maki grounded into an uneventful 4-6 fielder's choice but later crescendoed the drama by hitting a majestic home run into the left-center bleachers, scattering a sea of fluorescent green rain ponchos. (a giveaway?) It was an incredible feat that garnered him a standing ovation from the crowd and a birthday to remember as my eyes grew heavier and "tiny death" beckoned me.
I could feel my neuroticism and disconnected thoughts slowly fade while the moon peeked through the window and the little noises that live in the silence came to life. I oddly think about a probably long-dead grade school teacher from the distant, barely remembered past and another friend from the same exact class who I had learned perished in a auto accident before his 21st birthday. I think of the others who were ushered from the world of the living and how I will be joining them in the blink of an eye...a narrative that is becoming increasingly familiar.
Did I finish the game? No. I fell into the abyss and eventually ended up at a swap meet where a vendor was trying to hustle me into buying a weird and arcane baseball card of unknown origin. A friend told me not to buy it (I had never met this person before, yet he was seen as a friend) and that it wasn't, "worth a shit." I scolded the vendor for antithetical behavior to the code of fellow card collectors (which makes no sense because most are cut-throat scumbags) and walked away. These little stories that bubble up from my unconscious fascinate me, but in that three-ring circus of hallucinatory images this one was rather sober. I then remember that I made a girl happy yesterday after buying her a coveted book, and I am certain that this will stand as the single most important thing I have accomplished all week as I love and adore her.
Like dreams, baseball is a fantasy land and a child-like repose, and I was fluttering between two worlds with nothing tangible to cling to but a greasy pillow and an essay of interminable rambling running through my skull...lo-and-behold these scraps of thought that cracked the facade of self and perception were scratched and pecked away at an ungodly hour, only broken with random sips of coffee and spread before you, the reader. Somewhere, a clock struck 4-initiating bells that echoed through a desolate town square, a newspaper slammed into a weed-strewn porch, and the cow jumped over the moon.
Final score: Yokohama 8 Yakult 3
