“Tokyo, Japan”

This painting was part of a senior spring term project I completed. The painting is accompanied by the poem, “Tokyo, Japan” shown to the right of the painting (if you are viewing on a computer) or below this text (if you are viewing on a phone).

Acrylic painting on canvas

24x18 inches

May 2022

Tokyo, Japan

By Alex Gibbs

I feel so lost these days,

traveling through the streets of Tokyo.

Living off minimum wage,

struggling to find my inner balance.

I arrived in Japan five years ago

to find myself.

Now I feel more lost than when I arrived.

I have been submerged into the inhumane conditions of the Japanese working culture.

The daily grind makes me feel like Sisyphus,

pushing a boulder of papers and reports.

Up a mountain of deadlines that never ends.

That never will end.

Sometimes I wonder if I live to work or

If I work to live,

Or maybe a mixture of both.

As my paycheck increases,

my hours spent inside the walls of my clustered cubicle increase,

and my passion evades me.

Each day my smile of feigned enthusiasm grows thinner and thinner.

Ironic.

I came here to find myself.

Now I am a perpetual foreigner,

doomed to never feel like I belong.

Though the country has gotten more accepting of foreigners over the years,

I still get the occasional stare at the park,

or the supermarket,

or anywhere else really.

A kid will stare at me like I’m some sort of spectacle,

whisper to his friends,

give me one last curious glare,

then laugh and walk away.

Perhaps I idealized Japanese culture.

I was drawn here by the art,

the fashion,

and the food.

The ethereal beauty of the sakura trees,

and the shrines captivated me.

From the outside, Japan seemed so perfect.

A land without flaws.

To think I came here to escape the mundane reality of American suburbia,

just to be met with the grim reality that heaven is not a place on earth.

No culture derived by humanity will be perfect.

Humanity will never be perfect.

“Midlife Crisis”

This painting was a part of my senior spring term project and is accompanied by the short story seen on the right (if you are viewing this on a computer) or below this text (if you are viewing this on a phone).

Acrylic painting with a few lines of white charcoal pencil on a thin canvas.

Due to the minute amount of charcoal on the canvas, it does not need to be sprayed with a fixative.

16x20 inches

June 2022

Midlife Crisis

Alex Gibbs

Around 7:30 on a Sunday evening in the middle of August, a middle-aged man found a place to sit on the soft sands of a local beach. As he plopped his fleshy and decrepit legs onto the sand, he pondered on his sixty-six years of existence.  

First, he thought about the vague and blurry memories of his early childhood; making his first friends in the vast playground of his elementary school, his mother comforting him after he skinned his knee on hard pavement, and the time he saw the ocean for the first time, consciously that is. After that he recalled his experiences from middle school to college; the friendships and relationships forged and destroyed, the interests he discovered, and the passive attitude he developed toward life. Next, he recalled the last 30 or so years. It was all a blur to him. He married his ex-wife when he was thirty-eight. They had two children four years later. The couple adopted another two children three years after that. Ten years later, their first-born son tragically passed away from an epileptic seizure. It took years for the family to recover from the shock of the horrific occurrence. 

Two years ago the last brittle flames of his stagnant marriage died out. The couple decided to divorce each other and go their separate ways. His wife had undergone a dramatic transformation in ideals after her son's death. She wanted to journey off to India and start life anew in Jodhpur, India. After years of attempting to convince her to stay, he lost his will and gave up. His kids were now in their mid-twenties and had their own lives. 

Life had been difficult for him lately. Aside from a few old friends and his golden retriever Wallace, his life was fairly lonely. His kids visited a few times a year, but never for long enough.

Now he stares out at the sea and wonders how his life had gotten this empty. He had no urge to end his life, but he didn’t have much of anything to live for. He clenched his face in his frail hands and tried to cry, but no tears would come out. He let out a loud sigh and looked out into the distance. While the waves crashed, he thought about what he could do for the rest of his life. Maybe take up golfing or start taking his casual poetry more seriously? Perhaps his wife had the right idea in embracing her hobby of travel. 

The man began to realize that deep down, he expected some sort of grand epiphany to occur during his beach visit. What he didn’t realize, was that life is not dictated by grand epiphanies.  Every so often we realize the fragile nature of our existence and promise ourselves that we will do everything that we’ve always wanted to do, and make the best of our lives. But how many epiphanies does it truly take for us to actually take action? Very few people capitalize on the life-changing realizations that give us the motivation to pursue our most grandiose ambitions.

As for the man, he left the beach shortly after watching the sunset. After doing a lot of thinking he decided that he would take the next day to think more about what to do with his life. Whether or not he actually did so, I do not know.