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I was just a young boy My fortune yet untold
I have wandered thru the distance
with a camera full of miracles,
Such are promises
All sights are truth
Yet a man sees what he wants to see
And disregards the rest.

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of killers
In the middle of the induction center,
Being scared,
Saying so,
Seeking out the safer notions
Where I could safely go
Looking for the places
That I would surely know

Lie-la-lie…..

My apologies and thanks to Paul Simon and the lyrics from the Boxer

As you age things occasionally pop into your head in the form of memories, things from the past that are so vivid and real that they could have happened this morning. This one didn’t however, it happened 51 years ago and whenever I revisit this image Paul Simon’s song “The Boxer” accompanies it and the first phrase that I hear is “When I was just a young boy, my fortune yet untold” plays. I know that my version is incorrect and differs from the original but that’s the way I hear it.

It is almost impossible for me to realize that I was only 18 at the time and had already been in the service for a year. I was stationed on the South Pacific island of Guam in the Trust Territories of the United States and had already used up every new experience that place had to offer. Consequently whenever I had the opportunity I would hop a plane and go to Japan. It is difficult to explain the impact that incredible place had on an impressionable young man but I still feel the exotic-ness of those memories over 50 years later. I judge every new experience I have against those memories in fact. At every available opportunity I wandered through their country like it was another dimension, camera in hand, trying to capture what I was seeing and feeling at the time and failing miserably but loving every second of it.

I remember taking what seemed like thousands of pictures but as I search through my files I find only a pitifully few of them, faded pockmarked Kodachromes, colors becoming transparent, fading like my memory, but what treasures they are. I have pictures of open air markets on the docks with the sea smell and raw fish and the sound of a language that was both harsh and wondrous and magical at the same time.

I have pictures of movie posters that featured the latest Japanese productions of Ninja movies that I never missed on a Saturday afternoon with the locals yelling insults at the bad guys and eating fried rice out of paper boxes with chopsticks.

There’s even a photograph of a Japanese girl who I’m ashamed to admit that now I can only remember her first name, which was Midori, but I remember she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You must remember I was young and hadn’t seen everything yet. But she was lovely.

But the one that stands out, the one that I don’t need to see to actually see if you know what I mean, is the one of the temple in Kamakura pictured above. If I could only describe the thunderous silence that surrounded it and the way the moonlight struck the roof and illuminated the garden and the feeling that what ever you might seek in your life was right here right now, I think I could die a happy man, or at least a contented one.

It’s possible I didn’t have all of those thoughts at the time, I was only 18 after all, and there was the beautiful Midori waiting nearby, but something made me take the picture and that something has stayed with me through the years. Many, many memories and experiences have taken place and added up since then but few equal the intensity of emotion that occurs when I see this image again. Just thought I’d share it with you because it’s rare, at least for me, to have a memory that is over half a century old still so vivid and clear.

Note: For those of you that are interested here is a link to a YouTube video that has the original music and lyrics. Sorry about the ad that runs in front of it, thankfully it’s a short one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYPJOCxSUFc