2005

今日

今日という日の一日がいつまでも終わらない日だったその時、今の日、という言葉の意味はそっくりそのままで、今、以外にありえなかった。明けることのない今、では、日は常に目の前にあり、今、家の友がいるこの場所から見えるか見えないかは関係しない。つまり、日は明け続けていて、明日は存在し続けている。このまま朝が夜を迎えても、朝日は夕日に変わるだけで、今日の今はいつまでも変わらない。月が、早いうちに空へあがり、日とともにあがることもあれば、夜だけにあがることもあり、それが明日になるということはない。日も月も、朝と夜という明るいと暗いの中だけにいるわけじゃなく、別々のものとして、今の今日と明日を終わらせないよう、地球は外側でゆらゆら回っている。

家の友は、夜を起きていた。いつまでも眠っているわけではなかった。ゲーセンが眠った朝に近い夜三時に、外で友人と待ち合わせをした。家の友の年齢が一桁に満たない頃は、こんな時間に外へ出ることなどないはずであったから、誰もいないはずの夜三時の外にこんなにもたくさんの人が出入りしていることがとても不思議だった。初めてだ。友達は、クラブでDJをしていた。クラブには、十八歳以下は入れない。身分証を見せることなんてないから、なにより見た目が大事だった。十八歳以上の見た目は、服でなんとかなる。親が買ってきた服は、まずだめだ。自分で買った服もだめ。フリマアプリでタグを辿って買った服は、サイズがちぐはぐでも多少の高級な使用感が見た目に歳を与えてくれる。自分自身で選んだ服でも自分のために選ばれた服でもない、キーワードが導いた服を着て、クレジットカードを親の財布から少し借りる。

The sense of what it means, the present day, when it signifies the single day called the present day in its present state unchanged and at no point ever ending – it became strangely impossible. The present which cannot dawn then, the day ever before our eyes, now: it does not concern whether or not the friend of the house can be seen from this place. In other words, as the day continually dawns, tomorrow’s existence continues. Even if the morning remains itself as it meets the night, sunrise merely changes to sunset, and the present in the present at no point ever changes. The moon rises into the sky early, and if it should rise along with the sun, or indeed into night, that doesn’t mean you can say it becomes tomorrow. It is not that both the sun and the moon are found during the light and the dark, what are called morning and night, alone; in order that the present present day and tomorrow never end, as separate things, outwardly the earth spins, oscillating.

The friend of the house was up during the night. This does not mean that they were forever sleeping. Even when close to three o’clock late at night as the game centre slept the friend of the house met with a companion outside. Around that time, the friend of the house wasn’t yet an age of more than single digits, so to have so many people going in and out at three o’clock when no one should have been around, when they shouldn’t have been going out themselves, etc., felt bizarre. It was a first. The companion was a nightclub DJ. Under-eighteens can’t go to nightclubs. And since it wasn’t like you had to show any ID, it was all about how you looked, ultimately. Somehow, clothes were enough to look over eighteen. Clothes their parents bought – they were no good. The clothes they bought themselves: no good either. Clothes bought by following certain tags on flea market apps would mean sizes that wouldn’t match, but their slightly classy, well-worn feel added years to their looks. Yet the clothes they themselves had chosen weren’t even clothes chosen for their own sake; these were clothes they were led to wear by certain keywords, just by borrowing a credit card, for a bit, from a parent’s purse.