Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 17D

[unare_haineko]

Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…

Author: Mayonaka no Taiyou/Unare Haineko

Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi

Rating:  R-ish

Summary: This story follows Ayumu, a more or less normal child born in 2012, three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here).  His parents, Jun and Ohno, are everything but

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Commentary & Analysis CH 17, Jun Section: The Prophecy – Background Info, Part 4

[mmestrange]

What does this mean? Well, the most obvious is that most people can only notice PART of the things that are right in front of them and ZONE OUT the rest. Those who see the faces ONLY in Fig 1 are concerned with the obvious over what is lurking around the bigger picture. Those who see only the vase can ONLY see the bigger picture but ignore details. So what must we do to remedy this? After looking at the surface and the obvious, stop and think whether this surface thing which seems so obvious is real. Then look at the background. How do you look at the background? Analyse the obvious first. After you analyse the obvious things on the surface you can rule them out. When you rule things out, you cross them out or shade them in, like in Figure 2 (the illustration of the shaded faces on the right). The moment you are done analysing the obvious things for the surface meaning and have ruled them out (by shading them in), you will see the background and the vase. [In fact, this is exactly my methodology in dissecting anything I read]

Doing so MUST be a conscious thing. Why? Because most of us cannot see everything we look at first glance and immediately say, “Ah ha! I have the whole picture.” The fact that you either see the vase or the faces at first glance is a profound indictment that your brain dwells solely in the objective because your brain thinks, “my opinion is true and correct; therefore my opinion is knowledge. Therefore I am right and there is all there is to it.”

To overcome this, you have to:
(i) understanding what is perception
(ii) knowing what is real
(iii) knowing that that which is perception is not necessarily real.

The Tao is the word to describe that invisible background. So what is the exact nature of this Tao context? It has a double reality. One reality is that it is the prior context and background of whatever is being seen or done. In order for those activities to be noticeable there must be a prior blank page upon which they are highlighted. When you have done so, you will see both the vase and faces. When you have done so, you will see Itsumademo isn’t what it seems.

More importantly for the plot, when Jun and the rest of our intrepid band have done so, they will be able grasp the lie and the truth behind it, and thus replace their opinion with knowledge. Nino has made that jump and he can see both the vase and faces (as we know from his epiphany shortly before his sexual assault from Reiya). While Jun has been thinking, he hasn’t been thinking hard enough. He is unwilling to look beyond the surface/obvious because he is afraid of what he will find. His method of getting the red side of the Rubik’s cube demonstrates this. Even Hubby can see it. Hubby knows that Jun only sees the swiggly lines making the faces.

Yes, Jun has chosen the ugly truth, but he has yet to deal with the consequences. Nino is dealing with the consequences of choosing the ugly truth (my precious little truffle of a chew toy). Aiba has seen the truth and has chosen it, hence, he is dealing with the fall out (pun intended). Ohno only sees the swiggly lines and has gone, “Quoi? What is the point?” Thus he choses the lie because it’s pretty and shiny. Sho doesn’t want to look at the optical illusion because thinking probably gives him a beastly headache and makes him woozy.

The whole point of the ‘do you see faces or a vase’ exercise is to demonstrate the principle of ‘through misdirection, find direction

What is ‘through misdirection, find direction? The swiggly lines in Fig. 1, lead you to think that the picture is just two faces nothing more, just like Iris thinks she stole a dictionary nothing more, just like Jun doing up the red side of the rubik’s cube nothing more.

It means this, viz., the essence of all deception, trickery and audience manipulation is to lead others to focus where you direct them so that they cannot see what you personally are truly doing. This misdirection can take all sorts of forms, but the intent and the result is always the same. You have a private space open up for your invisible activity while a crowd watches intently something else.

Commentary & Analysis CH 17, Jun Section: The Prophecy – Background Info, Part 5

[mmestrange]

This then is what Miyazono advises Jun to do in order to solve the rubik’s cube puzzle correctly (and thereby see both the vase and the faces). Miyazono will even guide Jun through it. He explicitly shows Jun how to do it via the rubik’s cube puzzle he solves. Even the person who sent Jun the prophecy deployed this method.

At this point, let me break off and ask a few questions:
(16) Does Jun still have the envelope in which the prophecy came in?
- Is it in the desk drawer where the infernal 2009 contract had been residing in prior to its dissection with Miyazono?
- That desk drawer seems to keep everything Jun wants locked up vis-à-vis his former dealings with JE and Iago. What else will that drawer yield?

(17) We are told that the envelope in which the contract was posted to Jun had been handwritten over (meaning Jun’s name and address were written rather than printed). Who wrote on that envelope?
- Is the person who wrote on that envelope the same person who sent the prophecy (and made sure to type out the ‘to the resident of unit 11-04’ on the label)?

It was with some surprise when I learnt that Jun didn’t throw away the poetic prophecy and kept it in his wallet all these years. This is because I had been looking at Jun’s OCD tendencies. However, when I recall that Jun locked up the contract in the drawer of his desk (where the envelope in which the prophecy) and that Jun didn’t throw away the goofy photo of Arashi (which he looks at on the mobius strip bus journey in the town of the Dragon Scroll Ryokan) tells us that Jun is a sentimentalist. He harps on pleasant times and he has trouble ‘letting go’ of things, which is why he had such an agonising time whilst on his ‘finding-himself’ journey. Jun has yet to learn that there are two most difficult things to do in life, namely: (i) learning to laugh at oneself, (ii) learning to let go.

(18) Assuming Jun does still have the envelopes in which the contract and the prophecy came, will Miyazono be able to trace them? I know it is possible to trace the type of ink and the kind of printer it was printed on, and even the type of the paper on which it was printed, and from there with enough questioning, one can even find out which companies/people use that kind of paper, ink and paper. Will that be what happens?
- Will Jun find the envelope that the prophesy came in? Will Miyazono trace it?

Given that Iago immediately thinks prophecy is about him + arashi, he is like those of you who only see the faces in Fig. 1. This aspect of Iago can be exploited. How can Arashi exploit this?
(a) By being colder, shrewder and nastier than Iago. Nino’s already at this stage (bless my little truffle Kazu). Jun’s approaching this stage but is hedging because he feels too much. Aiba’s doing a little better than Jun because Aiba has been thinking and questioning things (about the whole drugs in JE business). Sho is stuck in the lager/Frigidaire and being an escapist. Ohno has become a worshipper of the ancient Egyptian God Min. Until they all reach my truffle Kazu’s stage, they’ll get nowhere in the plan against Iago.
(b) By doing what my husband recommended via the rubik’s cube, id est, using misdirection to temporarily draw Iago’s attention away, thereby giving the Arashi men some direction. Miyazono is a good, sensible person, one who does not feel emasculated by his equal and will steer Arashi through the perilous waters.

From Iago’s belief that the prophecy is about him and his empire, we know Iago has megalomaniac paranoia. This same megalomaniac paranoia is manifested in his constant pursuit to bring down Nino, Ohno and Jun post-2009 contract. However, more than the megalomaniac paranoia is this - Iago too has problems laughing at himself and letting go. In some ways, Iago and Jun have more in common than they know.

Commentary & Analysis CH 17, Jun Section: The Prophecy – Background Info, Part 6

[mmestrange]

They both can’t let go (one of his empire, the other of the fact that he has erased his past ties via the 2009 contract), they both can’t laugh at themselves (one takes the prophecy so seriously that he destroys a moneymaking band, the other takes himself so seriously that puts himself on a mobius strip of torturous recollection of the past instead of looking both forward and back). They are both stubborn and believe they are right in what they do. They are self-assured and are the kinds to beat down and rape Fortune (cf. my commentary in CH 16) to give them what they want. I’m surprised with these many similarities, no one has noticed anything. I’ve seen it for some time now, and decided to say so explicitly because Iago’s reaction to the contract is the same reaction Jun had when he realised it was he who was the catalyst for the 2009 contract and the bridge burning. The similarities between Jun and Iago can be exploited. Where Jun is impulsive due to his emotions and those whom he genuinely likes, Iago is impulsive when it comes down to protecting his empire. Jun’s pressure point is Ayu and Ohno. Iago’s pressure point is his empire. Squeeze the pressure point and you will have the fellow buckling over and at your mercy. Squeeze harder and that buckling over will turn to asphyxiation. Like Miyazono, we know Iago will use Ayu as Jun’s pressure point and will squeeze that. But as Miyazono has warned Jun, Jun will not bite the bait there. Therefore Iago will squeeze the Ohno pressure point to destroy Jun. To get out of Iago’s chokehold when that happens, Jun has to squeeze Iago’s pressure point of the old goat’s empire. Once that happens, they will both be at an impasse. In a nutshell, that is my prediction of what is to come within the middle game of chess between Arashi and Iago.

Now, before I break down the contract in detail, let us go into the prophecy in detail.

[No, commentary is still not done. I will be giving a series of lectures tomorrow. Since that takes a lot out of me (try lecturing to 30-50 year old bureaucrats - all male) when I look like a slip of a girl from 10am-5pm (with lunch of 2 hours between), any further commentary is delayed till Tuesday night (my time) or Wednesday morning. I doubt anyone will get what I’m talking about in my lectures on political philosophy and Bertrand Russell. But still, money is money, even hourly rated money.
There is still much more to come, specifically, in-depth post-mortem on the Prophecy, and in-depth breakdown of the Contract.]