Word by Melanie Cheng
In my job as a general practitioner, I frequently dispense lifestyle advice: exercise regularly, cut out saturated fats, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol, limit social media. Some days, especially those days when I wolf down a muffin for lunch and scroll through my Instagram feed before bed, I baulk at my hypocrisy. It’s difficult to do the things that are good for us. The warm bed is so inviting, the likes on Instagram are so addictive, the pork belly and doughnuts are so damn tasty. And yet sometimes, the inspiration to live better does arrive. For me, it came in the form of a great work of art.
Perfect Days is the German director, Wim Wenders’ latest film, about Hirayama, a Tokyo public toilet cleaner. Hirayama leads a simple, repetitive and unplugged life. His world is small, limited to the public toilets of Tokyo, his home and occasional visits to a local restaurant. In the hands of another director, Hirayama might have been the object of pity; instead, we find ourselves envying his contentment. Here is a man with a rich internal life—an existence that, outside of his work, comprises tending to an indoor garden, reading classic literature, listening to music and taking photographs of “korembi” (the Japanese word for “sunlight leaking through the trees” which is also the Japanese title of the movie).
In the days after the film, I, too, started taking photos through the leaves of trees. Instead of burying myself in social media feeds, I stopped to take stock of the natural world around me. I reconnected with my environment and the experience was both clarifying and invigorating. Perhaps the most transformative change came during my son’s soccer practice when instead of sitting in my car and staring at my phone through a fog of resentment, I walked around the pitch for an hour.
And so I saw the changing colours of the sky—from blue to yellow and then a pleasing bubble-gum pink. And I saw the clouds become charcoal smears and the trees flatten into crisp black silhouettes. And I felt the cold air bite my cheeks and the puffs of pollen tickle my nostrils. And I heard the screams of the white cockatoos, and the pop of soccer balls being kicked. And when my son finally ran back to the car sometime around 6 p.m., red-faced from the cold and all the exertion, I knew that the brightness in his eyes was reflected in my own.
In my writing, I try to tap into these accidental moments of wonder. My latest novel, The Burrow, follows a family ravaged by grief after a senseless tragedy. They have withdrawn into themselves and their sorrow, and in so doing, have lost connection with each other and the world around them. Healing arrives in the form of a pet rabbit—a prey animal who, in spite of being constantly alert for predators, is curious about his environment and capable of relaxing in a pocket of sunshine.
In the introduction to George Saunders’ short story collection, Tenth of December, we learn that he almost died on a flight from Chicago to Syracuse. The plane flew into a flock of geese and while the pilot landed the plane safely, Saunders describes how “For three or four days after that, it was the most beautiful world… If you could walk around like that all the time, to really have that awareness that it’s actually going to end. That’s the trick.” And that is what Perfect Days gave me. That awareness—without the near-death experience.
Like Wim Wenders, I am interested in ordinary people doing ordinary things. In my books, I choose to write about small worlds because they are the worlds most of us inhabit. We may travel and experience new things and we may feel alive while we are doing it, but for the remaining ninety-five per cent of our time, we are working and doing repetitive daily tasks like hanging clothes and washing dishes and shopping for groceries and waiting for our kids to finish soccer training. And yet, that doesn’t mean contentment or even transcendental experiences have to remain out of our reach. Sometimes we just need a little push in the right direction. For George Saunders, it was a brush with mortality; for the characters in my book, The Burrow, it was a mini-lop rabbit; and for me, it was a wonderful film called Perfect Days about a well-read man who cleans public toilets for a living.
