And Mount Hood, and the Japanese Gardens where you can see Mount Hood, which is supposed to look so like Fujiyama even Japanese tourists say so, and you see them more than anyone, they’re pleased with the gardens, how authentic they are, more authentic than the ones at home, except in the most touristed castles, but downtown you can’t see it well, only a white hunch, a shrug the bridges cover, really it’s a skyline of shrugs, some snowy, some rusty, some I’d like to tap with a coin, the edge of the coin, like in a memory I have of my father, he took us out on a railway bridge and tapped the metal with the rim of a coin, I must have been eight years old, I’ll never forget it gave me real joy, the sound of that coin on the metal of the bridge, which nobody else was on, strung between mountains, over a river, twenty-nine years ago, and felt like the only real thing there was, nothing feels so real, nothing feels real when you’re surrounded by lots of people, they suck reality out somehow, make it false, or let’s say paused, in an interval, stuck in need of a bang to resume the natural order, which is silence and motionlessness, or quite subtle motion, which you don’t find in cities, or only in your thoughts in cities, or in gestures, like in the Chinese Garden, which is downtown, you can’t see Hood from it, but it gestures at silence and motionlessness, the koi pond doesn’t feel like a site of unnatural activity, the leaves that fall in don’t interrupt what I’m describing, but the people do, my cousin does, my cousin always wants to go with me, only she’ll stoop to take pictures of the stone frog with the coin in its mouth, or the koi pond, or a teacup, then I drink tea with her, but she can’t drink the tea, she photographs it first, with the windows open, the teahouse windows, and the pines wet and dignified, and then she wants lunch with me, she wants sweetgreen, and for me to sit unperturbed while she stirs the chickpeas out of her salad and says it’s over, the United States, it’s a coffin, or some variation, a coffin or crematorium, always the same general image she says like she hasn’t before, and she knows it, I see in her eyes she’s aware she’s said it, it’s a mechanical process, she knows she’s said it and knows I remember, but she has to say it, she must reach the end now she’s started, it’s compulsive, preternatural, she can’t stop now, with her eyes she dares me to interrupt, then sighs, she knows I won’t disagree, knows I know how she interprets disagreement, and says wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in an anime, this very particular anime she finds so restful, with the colors of the mountains and fields so vivid, calming, they’re the whole point of the show, to calm you, whatever happens to the characters, and it’s never anything, the episodes are interchangeable, the characters are filled with animal and magical properties, they fly for instance, it appears they heal quickly, I understand they can fly to the top of a mountain and look down to see what’s happening, it’s barely an inconvenience, and they never comment on how peaceful it is, how green, blue, or how perfect the light is on the water, because it’s so natural to them, it’s their world, it’d be good to live that way, where everything looks like a salad, and she chuckles, it’s only coincidence we live here, we wouldn’t have known we were in the same city, except her mom told her when I moved, and this is how we interact, salad lunches, gardens, repetition, she doesn’t want to come to my apartment, she won’t let me in hers, she doesn’t want me to see the mess, though I stood in her doorway once, I was giving her a cyclamen, and it’s packed with memorabilia, Star Wars trinkets, complicated board games, but she didn’t want me to linger, she wanted to go where I was going, the gardens I said, or in the mornings the cemetery where I do sun salutations, though it’ll be boring for you, I said, you won’t enjoy it, I go so early, there’s nothing out there, just grass and headstones, and sleeping men, you do see men asleep out there, I did warn her, men sleeping and headstones and arching bridges, the white shrug, that’s what you’ll see, but she comes anyway, in the morning, doesn’t matter how boring it is, she sits and peers at me over the headstones, she doesn’t exercise, she watches me on my yoga mat and sighs and looks at her phone, says how nice it is to lie in the grass, how when we’re kids we’re always lying in the grass, but we do it less and less each year, and maybe we imagine how much we did lie there, how real it felt, maybe it wasn’t so much, or so long, only it feels different from everything, the ions, as she lies down and photographs the headstones, the bridges, a man who looked weirdly at her, she wants to follow him, she says she wants to video his face, though he isn’t looking any more, the results disappoint her, but she follows, watch and make sure she says, as he walks the other way, down the riverside, talking aloud, I don’t know to her, or to himself.