Life Among the Pastures

Dear Gregory

After a couple more shootings at the farm, we decided to relocate a different area for our next scene. We stopped at a nearby Italian restaurant and ordered a simple Spaghetti with Parmesan cheese and wrapped the meal up with Tiramisu. We exchanged a few words joyously, boiled with anticipation on the next scene, until the director gave the dreary news. After "careful consideration", the board decided to recast the protagonist, Kenzo Tenma, and give the role to a new guy after the actor, according to them, wasn't competent enough to take the role. It didn't occur to me that much until I saw the actor for the next shooting, which was a white male by the name of Liam Fergusson.

    What bothered me was that the previous actor was asian which matched the background of the character. I remember one afternoon, I asked the director that Mr. Fergusson might be better off given to a different actor that had asian descent since Kenzo Tenma was asian. He said that what mattered was their competence of taking the role and should disregard race. I ducked my head low and was intimidated to push the conversation further since it may jeopardize my role in this film. This might make me finally break into Hollywood, Greg. What could I do?

    Everytime I heard the word Liam Fergusson, Liam Fertis would sprinkle his presence in my head. When we were at the pasture, I talked to Liam a couple of times while you, from a distance, stared at me mockingly as if I belonged to a mental asylum.

    "I believe that was Chopin or Bach," he said. "It's been a while since I listened to music. Back then in the early 20's and 30's, my girlfriend and I would go down to the local cafe since that was the only cafe that played classical tunes. After I was drafted into World War 2, that was the last thing that accumulated in my memory when I died in the field of Normandy."

    "Normandy?"

    "France. It was a long battle between the Americans and the Germans. The last thing I remembered was sprawling to the ground by some German gatling gun."
    Another cow trotted by after it eavesdropped on our conversation. The cowbells clanked side-to-side with the name "Joe Kawasaki", which ironically sounded like the baseball player from the Blue Jays.

    "War is bad," Kawasaki began. "It's the entity that strips away dreams and aspirations and pour into the greedy mouths of 'war'."

    "Never knew you're a talker, Kawasaki." Liam joked.

    He ignored him and I could feel a tinkering of a smirk that I sensed from Liam.
    "During that time, we suffered under the reign of Franklin D. Roosevelt when the rest of the world were focused on Hitler."

    "What are you talking about?" Liam rebuked and twisted his neck sideways in dismay. "You talk for the first time, and this is what comes outta your mouth?"

    "After the attack on Pearl Harbor, innocent Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps signed by the executive order of FDR. Life changed for Asian Americans, my friend. I had graduated from medical school and they decided to put me in those camps. What's worse was after the war ended, I still felt like I still hadn't left the camps?"

    "What do you mean?"

    "Nobody wanted to hire me even with my credentials. I felt like I still have not left that camp, because society has mentally stripped every last humanity of me. Physically, I'm out of the camp; but mentally, I'm still in it in the eyes of the American public."
    "Is that why you ended up here?" I asked reverently, trying not to anger him.

    "What else could I do? I became jobless. What had to be done to end the suffering. I needed to free myself, because I became the prisoner of their ignorance."

    Those words carousel-ed around my head for hours. The old man stacked a pile of hays in the corner of the room as our mattress. "Just be a little imaginative," he said. "Just think this is a comfy bed." After he left, you pulled out your guitar.

    "You said you liked 'Wild World' by Cat Stevens right?" you inquired.

    "Yeah."

    "Here, I've been practicing."

    When you began picking the string, it ricocheted ripples of ambience that shot through the moonlight while pebbles of light leaked in from the window. From the grassy dew that grounded with the harmonious tunes, my entire spirit levitated in joy as, in front me, you became a cowboy-looking Cat Stevens. You had a nice voice to say the least and the whole world fell onto you, giving you the spotlight as everything became quieter than silence. That was when I saw Midori again, but this time, in you.
Can you sing for me again, Greg?