A FLIMSY TOWER OF NUMBERS
Toshi had a regular route around the Honolulu campus. My office at the East West Center Communications Institute was at his mid morning point, one of half a dozen or so his stops around the University. He usually perched on the soft leather chair at my office, waiting, the stop before the stop before the lunch bell. He saved the stop before lunch for one of his more generous regulars, Fred the dean of law students, or Joe Sutton the long time art teacher and amateur musician. After Tosh had paid his initial respects and collected his dues, enough cash for a fresh pack of the bright red packaged long unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes, they would go off to the cafeteria where Fred or Joe would treat Toshi to a hearty lunch. Toshi kept up his routine for many years until the tide of history eventually swept him aside along with our protests and the Vietnam war.
Toshi was a scrawny little veteran of the legendary much decorated and heralded 442nd U.S. Army regiment which fought in Europe during the second world war. The Nisei Battalion. Like many of his former regiment, that wartime experience turned out to be the defining event of Toshiro Nagata’s life. After the horrors of war, he was never again able to abide the constraints and normal shackles of daily life. He became a “free spirit”, observing no schedules, wearing old and wrinkled clothes, smoking one cigarette after another and obsessively talking and giggling in his raspy voice about his fantastical mathematical theories.
The first time Tosh in his high pitched squealing and giggling voice told me about his “Theory of Inaccurate Measures” we were sitting on the second level, in his three story tower of bamboo that he had constructed on the lawn in front of the main University of Hawaii gate. It had three levels of importance, or ascendancy as Toshi said, the first being for visitors and guests that milled around. He had a second level with several little private spaces which was for journalists and other folks that might somehow influence the establishment.
Toshi had this unusual ability with numbers. He was like one of those savants that can do these amazing things in a limited area, like music or math. He could remember and perform strings of complicated mathematical computations in his head. Multiplication, division, square root, etc., it was all the same to him. He would dazzle and amaze when 15 or 20 minutes after starting a randomly chosen complicated calculation Toshi’s answer would substantially precede the math professor who was using a hand calculator next to him. Both would both come out with identical answers to the problem. Toshi would giggle and smirk happy once again to triumph against the forces of the University establishment.
From what I remember, the theory of inaccurate measures as articulated by Tosh was that since all physical measures were intrinsically and inherently inaccurate to some degree or another, and since these measures were used in daily trade and commerce, thousands of trillions of times a year, the cumulative effect of this mistake could be calculated and measured and put into the context of daily interaction in various ways. Sometimes it could be shown that these things null out, cancel each other in the final analysis. Other instances could be possible where like the butcher with his finger on the scale for twenty years the amount of power or money that accrued was immense. I immediately recognized a kernel of logic in the foundations of his theory since I remembered the first assignment in my organic Chemistry class. The first lab assignment, was for each team of two in a lab of about 120 to calibrate our 60 or so brand new glass lab thermometers against a more accurate electronic standard. It turned out that only 3 or 4 of the 60 thermometers read the same. I realized in a flood understanding that this applied to rulers and tape measures, and butchers scales around the world. It wasn’t until years later when there were quite a few University math departments scattered across the country, examining this very subject that I realized how visionary the crazy Toshi really was.
In those days Toshi had constructed a huge structure on the lawn of the most visible and publicly accessible part of the University campus. It was if someone had taken a huge stack of 20-30 foot bamboo poles and scattered them like a cosmic version of that old Christmas stocking game “pickup stix.” In addition were randomly attached, rope, door frames, auto parts, windows, duct tape, electrical wires and wiring strung with lights that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. It all made up the spiraling twist of incredibly thin and incredibly strong long stands of bamboo and stuff sculpture.
In the later days, intertwined at various levels Toshi and friends had fashioned more platforms suitable for one or two people to sleep or eat and Toshi usually had one or two people, key luminaries , from the burgeoning antiwar movement of the day “up a tree’ as he liked to describe it. There they sat, after sweating up the flimsy ladder, paying homage to the campus crazy in his patchwork bamboo palace. Nodding and giggling, cautiously passing a joint, they made Toshi’s palace on the front lawn of the university an imperative on the antiwar map of the day. He stayed there “24/7″ to resist the campus cops moves to evict him or demolish his structure .
Toshi refused all bureaucratic attempts to get him to take down or remove the palace. More than once he and the “campus lawyers” had stymied attempts to get rid of him by baffling the authorities with bogus legal arguments and distracting legal briefs. When he had to leave to make his “rounds” or go to the bathroom one of his good friends would take his place. He smiled and cackled and cultured good press with the reporters that visited. In fact Toshi greeted just about anyone with a smile and good attitude. He made a lot of friends. Everyone loved him and no one but the administrators in charge wanted his bamboo palace to be demolished. That was until the shrill height of the protests against the war in Vietnam forced the administration to take action.
The Administration brought in two big Bulldozers. Huge Hawaiian drivers, their fat asses and corpulent thighs spilling over the scoop shaped steel seats perched atop huge industrial strength machines with big heavy blades. They smoked cigarettes and sat in the shade a few yards apart, as they waited, poised to take down Toshi’s structure upon getting the go ahead. We, students, teachers, researchers et al had been following the eviction drama and the crowd was loud and boisterous, singing protest songs and holding hands in a circle around the structure. At the time I remember thinking that there was a sense of community and well being at these events that drew me to them.
This time we all stood around and in front of the structure to thwart the bulldozers and sang and joked. Some of us gave speeches, some napped and others meditated. A people watcher, I stood there and looked at the folks close to me and around me. Across from me in the circle was a dark haired haole girl with a very short green skirt and a light green tee shirt with no bra through which I could see her nipples. I smiled at her and she smiled back but then looked away.
One of the organizers, Roy, of what by now had become what later was called a “protest,” stood on a toy red wagon, part of his presentation kit, a children’s “Radio Flyer” that he used to pull along behind him. Roy called out for us to sit down and settle in as this was going to be a long wait to protest and outlast the bulldozers.
Anticipating at least a quick flash of panties I watched as the girl with the short skirt slowly sat down cross-legged between and behind two other girls slightly in front of her. As she settled in she delibertly hiked up her skirt and slowly moved her legs so it was possible for me to see. I realized with a pleasant start that she was not wearing any underwear. She sat there with her head down for a long time. It seemed hours. My eyes were glued to her brown fur and vagina so openly displayed. An eternity passed. When she raised her head I raised my face too and our gaze locked. She smiled into my eyes and I looked away and tried to concentrate on what Roy was saying.
When I looked back down her sacred passage was demurely covered with a jacket. It was in that instant I knew we would lose the war in Vietnam.
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