Writing | Tiger Riding for Beginners

Harajuku Huggers

I took the picture above one Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2008 at Harajuku in Tokyo, Japan. For those of you who aren’t familiar, there’s a bridge between the Harajuku rail station and the Meiji shrine where crowds gather on Sunday afternoons to –for inexplicable reasons– dress up in costumes. It’s a festive environment with a mix of cos-players, travelers taking photos and reveling in the weirdness, and conservatively dressed visitors heading to the nearby shrine.

I digress. As I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions, this moment popped into my head. I was thinking about how a good resolution involves going to a place that scares you. That’s how one grows. When I thought about the place that scared me, FREE HUGS leapt to mind.

What if random strangers start hugging you?

What if they don’t?

And I wouldn’t even have to worry about a third issue that the two comely lasses in the photo did (i.e. What if some creepy jerk lingers, reeking of impure thoughts and Old Spice aftershave?)

Does one have to give up one’s clean-cut, god-fearing, Midwestern, conservative club card in favor of a granola-munching, dreadlocked, ganja-smoking hacky-sack club card?

This will sound insane to many because everybody’s scary place is different. I should note that I was in Japan for martial arts training. Having my body subjected to all manner of beatings –I must say– was not nearly as intimidating.

If the sci-fi movies of 2013 reflect a zeitgeist, then we’re shifting from a people who think bad things await the Earth to a people who think we’ll have to abandon the planet altogether. That’s a prevailing theme in the upcoming big box-office movies of the genre. In Oblivion, Tom Cruise plays a drone repairman who at least believes himself to be one of the last people on the planet. In After Earth, Will Smith and his son (in character and real life) return to an Earth devoid of humanity. In Elysium, not everyone has left Earth, but everyone who is anyone has.

There are still a few of the traditional dystopian visions in which some dire fate confronts humanity on Earth. World War Z is a movie adaptation of Max Brooks’ novel that brought the Zombie back to life (admittedly bad pun intended.) It features Brad Pitt battling an ever expanding horde of “fast zombies.” Pacific Rim envisions giant alien monsters coming through a dimensional portal at the bottom of the ocean, and the giant robots humanity creates to battle them. The movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game, while largely about the training of the genius Ender Wiggin, also imagines an Earth in peril from an alien threat. Even the new Star Trek movie at least partially abandons frolicking in deep space in favor of confronting an evil genius who threatens Earth.

Oblivion

Star Trek Into Darkness