This post is about the movie Perfect Days. Directed by Sean Baker. Starring Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama. You can watch the film here on Amazon Prime Video.
Now is Now
What are you to make of the passing of your days? What is to keep you hanging on? The answer is simple, and so too the act, but the practice made by very few. Work, care, nourish, serve, and dare there be too what you least expect. What you hold on to captures you, what you let go of may help to find you. In not strength but ease, in not strife but rest. A seeing to things far better than you have known, a doing of things seemingly obscene.
In this you may know a perfect day.
Prefer to listen? Hear my reading of the reflection aloud.
Are you listening?
As the wind blows so too does your life. Going about the clearing of ways and clipping to strands. The upkeep that brings forth what you have been freely given, with the luxury to receive that in which you enjoy. Going to where you always go, seeing what you always see.
Pick up, trash, knock, replace; scrub to see a proper space. Ever so briefly to see what’s to be seen; an order to intention, a reflection of being. What is there to say? There is to be free, and there is to grieve. A home that can be found with very little to say.
What grows that can be uprooted, or sprouts without aim on rock? A knowing of once unknowns soon then pleases. A planting to hope for soon better seasons. We possess what we must have, confusing such for needs, much there can we have, in what we give to work.
How can you do a job like this?
What are you to make of your inner thoughts? What do your thoughts make of you? A taking to the day by what you give, a care to the touch by the mind you give. You have what you need, and such is enough. What’s there to say when enough is enough?
Love has no need for possessions and greed. What is there to buy when there is no need? Freely it gives and too it keeps; to laugh at the happenings that cross your way, with a rest being in what gives and takes. A closing in eyes to then see it again, a doing of your things that meets its end. Wiping, pressing, checking what works, knowing to appreciate that which works. What you give no mind, may give mind to you; x’s to o’s by way of two.
“Being alone at your age, aren’t you ever lonely?”
Tend what needs care, you make good what you keep. It’s onto the next to make your week. Change up the drive to the likes of your mood, simple is living when not overdue. Loneliness questioned as love is made the offer. A good friend with ears; a smile is to offer. This you give mind and too you keep, another O marked and with the X to beat. What you give will be given onto you. With the pleasure in listening to what speaks.
How can he stay so cheerful?
Any day can be the perfect day, as you rest in what hangs on. Good ears, hard work, readings to sleep; wake, dress, a promise of being. Go on to capture what’s made to keep; the usual, per usual, makes a peace, with the soothing sounds of music a blissful ease. Here it is not – the house of the rising sun.
What is it that you see when you close your eyes? What is to wake the solemn pass by? There as you awaken, there the day is; onward you go, and there she then is. You wake to make no sound, but still with the quiet creek. A changing to your days, what you did not know was a need.
What you know and listen, they can know too, just different. Quick to question, even to mock, but see there is a living magnificent. You remember not what you’ve given, but giving you have done. A friend you look after, a seeing you must capture. A possession to borrow for only a moment, a fleeing from tension, always on purpose.
So many things I still don’t know
Even from the ones you love, you can live so different. Worlds connected and worlds far different. A flowing that flows and does not stray. Where next time is next time and now is now. To receive for your troubles, and to do not as they do. A warm embrace, one never known. A heart that aches, a love that goes.
On to the next, a life that goes on. A shift unexpected, one you pick up. What you expect is hard enough, and the unexpected brings a going rough. What you’ve known, is not what it used to be, the heart it holds as much as the mind, and not easy can it be to pay no mind.
It can be so long until you see them again, and it’s when you must that you see them again. In truth, you longed to see them once more. A giving in, in part, to what you now lack, a questioning in part of what you know. There is a play to be made in the hopes of something more, and too, an underpass to the brevity of joy. As much for you as it is for them. A new sun rises, and it is a day to feel good. A perfect day.
To The Believer
What is to be of the days we live? How is it we have been given them yet do not perceive the makings of why they are to be? We see an unseeing to things that remain clear in rest. A coat of valor spotting our essence, awakening discontent. Therein lies a constant waging that has sullied the capacity to be still, and know. The very workings that make us more of what we have been has dawned upon the whole of man. To sleep with open eyes, how can this be?
If all created things have a creator, do not our makings possess a maker? And is not the passing of each day but an indication to the working up, to a not yet arrived place of being? Yet in so we do not take heart — days lacking in peace; we know so as we see it, we know so as we feel it. The perfect day is not what we make to receive, but receiving what has been made that brings belief.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
John 14:27
Credit: Script and select images used in this post are from Perfect Days (© NEON). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
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This post was all about the movie Perfect Days.
