逃げる (Escape)

逃げる (Nigeru)

It was a warm afternoon on San Francisco bay. Not a cloud in the sky. The beach itself wasn't perfect, it was littered with reefers and cigarette butts. It made it difficult to find a good place to sit. Sometimes I wondered what the world would be like without cigarettes. Maybe I'd be able to smell air for once.

Anyways, I kicked a few to the side so I could lay down my large kerchief. I always had it with me. I set down some of my favorite drawing utensils next to me, careful not to get sand all over them. The materials consisted of charcoal, a nice wooden graphite pencil, and a smooth canvas made specially for drawing. It was small and similar to the size of an average sketchbook, about eight and half by eleven inches. As soon as I sat down, I spread my legs out to the side with my canvas between them and got to work.

I began to analyze the San Francisco bay; all the ripples and waves in the water as a little boy skipped a across it. I watched him intently in my peripheral vision. I came to me that the same intense concentration he utilized as he skipped his rocks was similar to the desire I had when I immersed myself in my view of the ocean as I tried to copy it down simultaneously. The waves crept towards me, as if they needed me--a call for help of an almost ominous nature. I snapped out of my thoughts as a cool breeze blew across my face. That was the groovy thing about drawing something from life. You focus on the object you're illustrating, but in reality, your mind was busy making it come to life.

I was entranced for the next hour or two until a loud noise interfered with my line of thought.

...

"Ryokou! Time for dinner! Kimasu!" My mother had cried from the top of her lungs. I flung my charcoal in the air I was so startled and it managed to land and smear all over my drawing.

"Way to go, Ryokou." I grumbled to myself.

My family and I used this phrase not only because it rhymed, but I had a tendency to fumble a lot. I heard this pretty often--on a daily basis often. I stood up and trudged my way over to the beach house.

"Dinner better be good enough to make up for this... Kuso..." I mumbled to myself. I didn't really know what a bad day was at the time.

Once I got inside my mother had prepared a delectable arrangement of food on the table. There was miso soup, tofu, fresh tuna, rice, sausage, bread, and potatoes. We usually had diverse combinations of food most nights. I came from an interracial family. My father was of German descent while my mother was Japanese. We usually spoke English at home, but once in a while my mom and I would throw around Japanese phrases here and there.

"Eat up! Itadakimasu!" My mom announced as we were about to chow down. Right before we sat down, we could hear my dad shouting over the blaring sound of our radio set.

"God dammit! I swear t' God, if those meatballs EVER say th' word 'Jap' again on this station I'm gonna kick 'em up their rear ends!" He slammed his fist on the counter in rage and made a large huff from his cigar. He had a tendency to make a scene when he was angry, especially when people were racist to those like my mother and me. He was very family-oriented, not to mention defensive. There had been a lot of talk about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in Hawaii a few years back and all this other talk about some anti-Japanese labor force with second World War. I never fully understood it at the time so I figured my best bet was to back off from it all. I grabbed my fork and took a bite of sausage.

...

My name was Ryokou for two reasons.

First, it means to travel in Japanese. My mom chose it after her love of traveling. Although she was Japanese, she had been in China for some time in the 1920's. However, the British Empire and China's government were much too riotous for her to handle and she didn't want to go back to Japan. Instead, she immigrated to the United States in search of something new. Although she experienced massive culture shock as America was undergoing the Great Depression, she still married my dad. They found a nice house on the beach and gave birth to me. I guess it wasn't too bad after all.