A Day of Mesmerica

 I love the Omniversum Museum in The Hague.

Though it’s called a museum, it’s really more of a cinema—but not the kind that shows ordinary films.
There’s a dome-shaped screen, like a planetarium,
and the visuals completely cover your entire field of view.
It feels as if your whole body has been transported into another world.

Last winter, I saw a film there based on Pink Floyd’s famous album Dark Side of the Moon.
I loved it so much, I went again with a friend—and then once more by myself.
Since then, I’ve been a fan of this dome-shaped cinema.

This Sunday, I went to see "Mesmerica".

It’s an immersive audiovisual experience created by American visual artist and musician, James Hood.

As healing music plays, overwhelming digital imagery unfolds before your eyes.
Even after it ended, my vision was still spinning,
yet my mind felt strangely alert,
and the speed of the visuals still lingered in my body,
leaving me with the sensation of having been in another realm for a while.
I was honestly sad that it was over.
I felt like I could’ve watched it forever.

Maybe people who are at risk of drug addiction should just move to The Hague.
It’s easier on the body and the wallet,
and I imagine it offers more or less the same kind of high.
I wonder which costs more—drugs or a ticket to Omniversum.
Mesmerica is fairly expensive—it was about 27 euros.

I checked the website to see if I could watch it again,
but unfortunately, it was sold out.
Which makes sense.
If there’s another chance, I’ll definitely go again.

If I didn’t have to worry about commuting distance or the shockingly high price,
I’d probably live near the Omniversum and go every weekend.

On the way back, I left Omniversum and followed a couple of people down a back street.
It was around 6:30 p.m., but still bright like daytime.
I sat on a bench for a while, and soon the people were gone,
and it was quiet.

Even on a summer day, the evening sunlight isn’t too harsh,
so I enjoyed the lingering sensation of Mesmerica in my body,
and read a book for a while.
I was reading "the Assassin Izo" by Ryotaro Shiba.
The vivid mandala-like experience of Mesmerica merged with Shiba’s calm, incisive prose,
and that contrast made my head spin in a whole new way.

Back in the city, the streets were filled with people dressed in red.
"Why is everyone wearing red?" I asked Zoroku, means Chat GPT.
He told me it was the Rode Lijn, a protest against what’s happening in Gaza.

On the tram, across the aisle, sat a family that looked Palestinian.
A father, a mother, and three children.
The children wore red dresses and T-shirts,
the mother wore a red hijab,
and the father wore traditional clothing with red patterns.

The youngest girl, who looked about three years old, was clutching a handmade canvas.
Even when her mother tried to take it from her, she refused to let go.
Eventually, she began waving the canvas and chanting in her own way,
“Daa, doo, daa! Daa, doo, daa!”
It was adorable.

On the front of the canvas was the Palestinian flag—vivid red, green, and white.
On the back were the words “STOP GENOCIDE.”
This family had come together to stop a genocide.

If I had been a member of that family,
I think we would talk about it for many years to come.

“Remember that peaceful, beautiful day?

  We all dressed in red and joined the protest together.

  Yeah, it was kind of funny, but there was dignity in it.

  As a family, we stood up against inhumanity!”

It really was a peaceful and beautiful day.

where am i, ..

At the end of last year, when I went back to Japan,
I sold off the mountain of books my mother had owned.
And from between those books, a single sheet of paper fluttered out.

It was a children’s poem written by Michio Mado,
hand-copied by my mother.
I brought it back with me to the Netherlands,
framed it, and now it hangs on my wall.

---

The bear

Spring is here
Bear opened his eyes—
was thinking, kind of slow.
The flowers are dandelions, I know...
But hmm, who am I?
Who am I?

Spring is here
Bear was awake
was walking slowly to the stream.
He saw a face so grand in the water’s gleam:
“Oh! I’m Bear—that’s who I am.”
That feels grand.

Michio Mado

---

The other day, I sent a message to my mother’s mobile phone:
“Hi Mom, how are you?”

Not that I really expected a reply.

Lately, she seems to have forgotten how to answer calls—she hardly ever picks up anymore.

So I figured she wouldn’t be reading text messages either.

It was just a test.

Messages I’d been sending to others had all bounced back with error notifications,

so I needed a recipient I could message again and again.

That recipient became my mother’s silent phone.

To my surprise, she wrote back.

“Same as always.”

I was so happy.
I replied,
“Well,  you’re taking it easy. I envy you.”
“I’ve been super busy with work. Every day is a lot.”

Then my mother said:

“Where am i, ...”

I realized—this will probably start happening more often now.
That she’ll be lost, not knowing where she is,
and I’ll be far away, unable to reach out and take her hand.

I told her the name of the facility, and said,
“It’s a nursing care home.” I answered correctly and precisely.
But now I think—
I should have said,
“You’re in a dark forest.”

If it had been the mother I once knew,
she would have immediately recognized it as a quote from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
She always loved that kind of shallow yet intellectual black humor.
She would have brightened up in an instant and laughed out loud:
“How awful of you!”

I truly regret saying “nursing care home.”
There are expressions in this world that are far more despairing in tone than “a dark forest.”

In a sense, she is a bear in hibernation.
Still a bear.
She may be dazed, forgetting who she is,
but her true nature—that she is a bear—has not changed one bit.
If only she could see her face in the water,
she would surely remember herself.

I want to be that river for her.
To me, my mother will always be the bear with the grand face.
What matters is that I don’t forget it.
It’s not quite a belief,
but something close to it—
and I cling to it with a heart that feels like it might cry.