電車男 Densha Otoko

The only thing really guaranteed to chill me to my very marrow is complete and utter silence--rather the absence of human noise, be it talking or laughing or farting or whatever. So I'm standing on a crowded train leaving Kanayama and reading a Wittgenstein memoir (don't ask), and the only thing the train car is full of besides people is silence, absolute silence. At one point as I'm reading I come across something that made me chuckle, and as a result everyone in my immediate vicinity twitched as if startled. Fascinated by this reaction, I started whistling softly "On the Street Where You Live," and noticed the invisible barrier that surrounds all gaijin begin to widen and push people back.

I stopped whistling, and after time the gaijin barrier began to recede. I waited a few minutes, let everyone get comfortable with the silence again, and let out a huge guffaw the likes of which even I have yet to see. The gaijin barrier exploded. One guy nearly had a heart attack, a woman further down the car jerked as if buffeted by the explosion, and two people in the seat behind me actually got up to move further away. All of which didn't help the situation, because it just turned my fake laughter into real laughter.

And my notebooks are no better; sometimes I get so caught up in my digressions that I wind up in places from which there is seemingly no escape:

"some say witty; some say shitty. still others only marvel at the size of her titties. of the witties, shitties, and titties, I most readily side with the witties but reserve my strongest sympathies for the labor of the titties. cities - titties - these are the best of Man's capabilities. however, in other news, some prefer Harvard, and some prefer Yale, but most could throw up in a bucket or pail. whether awake or you snooze, either is suited to 'cademy blues. and if you lose what you had in Nantucket, remember, at least, to learn when you fail."

and the word games ended up with me writing

"never wonder why a lonel[ly] spider tears her - weaving -
elaborate maps of indigenous fruit flies.

at a nightclub buzz chittering queens like bees to - honey -
'the kids have to be at soccer practice by five.'

love is not love which alters when it alteration - finds -
that made him wonder why he ever shopped retail.

sev'ral hunnerd packs of Sudafed and min'ral - spirits -
her away to a land with the sweetest hazes."

And in the margins next to those little ditties: "for want of fatter joints."