The Silicon Valley is a total and complete cultural disaster, of sorts. You beckon from the fragile yet robust Santa Clara county. There you find disgust in the world of technological progress. It is like everyone in the Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, wants a slice of widget and wafer pie, with the exception of the homely Hispanic folk who just want to make an honest living in the great United States. What many travelers coming to the Silicon Valley do not realize is that there are a few cumbersome barriers to entry. If you put aside the pain-in-the-ass public transit system and the crumbling Californian economy all you have left is a weird ass Californian culture. Made up of nearly every weird fragment of other world cultures, the Californian culture is just some sick amalgamation of weirdness. Divided into northern and southern cultures, your preference being for the north, travelers need to realize that they are not seeing the true America if they land behind the partitioned California border, especially in the Silicon Valley. These travelers are not even seeing the widely publicized image of the “real California” which is unarguably Hollywood and the other hella degrading areas of California that get talked about, they are seeing the Silicon Valley. An island of mincemeat, dull San Franciscan skies, and an Indian population outnumbered by only Hispanics; this is the world you come from.
On a train from downtown San Jose to San Francisco these idle thoughts swim from ear to ear. You are going to pick up some sensitive documents ensuring your escape from this weird culture is realized. Despite having been raised as a northern Californian nutcase you still find escape to be the only sensible thing to do considering your unabashed goal to leave this place behind in the dust cloud of psychological progress. You momentarily laugh at the picture that was chosen for your Japanese visa but suppress the giggling for a rush of adrenaline as you realize this is it. This is validation of your escape. You are leaving. You finally can exchange the weirdness of California, inherently in your blood, for a culture that is probably just as bizarre to the lay American man. You are utterly speechless as incredible motivation and feelings of hope flood your bodily systems to the point of cardiac arrest. You stab yourself in the leg with a PDA stylus just to verify you are alive and barbarically scream, “I hath risen!” The man on the train, who you just stole a stylus from, looks at you in complete paralytic shock as you return to him an essential component of his ancient organizational device.
Slowly moving away from that guy who now looks like he would like to take another stab at you with the same apparatus, you sit next to some kid a few rows back. He asks you if this train is bound for San Jose and you look at him blankly to say “yes”, the man a few rows up looking back with a slight look of fright as you beam him with the crazy eye. He quickly slips back into position staring at a bald man’s head in the seat in front of him, periodically rotating his head and craning his neck to look at you. The kid you are sitting next to is now in another world, the world where small creatures you have captured fight other small creatures for experience points. Entranced by the full-color back lit screen, you and him both get excited at the sight of a wild [insert fictional animal name]. Once he captures [insert fictional animal name] you prompt high-five position only to be left with an arm in the air, saluting a fictional dictator. You awkwardly move another few rows back through the train and take a seat away from other passengers.
Having your own disturbingly weird personality rejected now by two individuals you decide to just keep to yourself for the remainder of the trip when a strikingly and ridiculously beautiful Asian woman sits next to you. You try not to make eye contact even though she is looking right at you. The train enters a tunnel and you see her gaze against the reflection in the window to your right as the cabin lights create a distorted mirror of the surface. Slowly you turn your head upright to investigate her curious eyes and before you can snap, “what!?”, even though you thought it, she says, “Hi”. Speechless, you attempt to respond but you only can muster the ability to mouth the word, “Hello”. She asks, “I’m Miko. What is your name?” You quickly trip into your own name, “Michael”. “Nice to meet you”, she replies as if the conversation was to end there. You start into a cold sweat and the next twenty minutes go by drudgingly slow in such a disgustingly peculiar stream of consciousness that you become sick to your stomach.
What in the hell was that? What person randomly says hello and abandons the conversation? What random person starts a conversation on public transit in this area? This area is usually full of neurotic and self-diagnosed Silicon Valley-an psychopaths, I should know, I am clearly one of them. The mere fact that I am having this silent conversation with myself about this fact is only verification of that sad sad truth. Maybe this woman’s disgustingly good looks makes her a little more neurotic than me. Maybe her neurosis is causing her to begin conversations that she has no intention of finishing. Maybe she intended to finish it but is as choked up about my own good looks as i am about hers that she cannot reciprocate conversation. I highly doubt that because even I shutter at how ugly I am when I look in the mirror. Maybe I am being to harsh on myself. My mother thinks I am good looking and that any woman would be lucky to have me. I should hold that thought with caution though. Maybe my mother only says I am attractive to satisfy her own insecurity about her looks, having given to birth to me and all, me being a part of her gene pool and all. Maybe this woman has doubts about her beauty as well. Maybe her mother begrudgingly gives off the same thoughts to boost her self confidence (the woman’s mother that is). But her mother wouldn’t do that. Her mother would probably tell her she is ugly in denial of the fact that she birthed something so beautiful. Maybe this woman has not met her mother. Maybe she is an orphan. Either way someone has told her she is beautiful before or she has reason to doubt that she is ugly unlike me who only has reason to doubt that I am attractive, thanks mom. I should get out of here before I start to sweat on her. I am in no capacity to sit next to such a beautiful woman for another twenty minutes to SF. I should get up. If I get up she might think something is wrong. She might think she smells or something. I already clearly must look upset about something and I cannot just get up and leave without her doubting something in herself, which would be bad because I know this woman must be the most perfectly crafted woman ever birthed into this world. I should leave a note.
So you get your ass up and get the fuck out of there really quick so as to not show any type of hesitation but as you get ready to leave the train car, before your stop anyways, you take a look back at the woman as if to verify her beauty into your long term memory. She read the note. You left a simple message, “You don’t stink, you are perfect”, signed Michael with your phone number at the bottom. Idiot. If it wasn’t odd enough that you left a note verifying the fact that she did not stink you just had to leave your phone number, as if she would take the message as terms of endearment and give you a call. “Hi Michael. This is Miko calling, the girl from the train. I just wanted to call and tell you how I really enjoyed your note. It was cute. Though we were bound for San Francisco I actually live in San Jose. If you wouldn’t mind the train ride I would love it if you’d join me for a cup of coffee sometime soon. You are probably a very busy man but you can surely give a girl a chance”. Yeah, she never called.
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Mon, Aug 8, 2011
Who is Michael in Japan?