Near the end of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Chihiro and her floating friend, No-face, board a train to a far place. I say “far,” and not “faraway,” precisely because the latter, through its sound and rhythm, gives a false sense of lulling comfort, rocking, and swaying, while the former is truer—it mimics the reach of a sullen gaze, a length that stretches just beyond the bounds of the familiar, and just before the realm of the mystical. The rest of the patrons are shadows. Shades identified solely by the outline they carry (briefcase, hat, cane). They are remnants of their former selves, now wandering in the shape of long-forgotten memories, etched into existence. Echoes.
At the lowest point of arguably the most hopeless week of my life, this scene sprawled before me on my way to campus. I laughed. I find, in the darkest moments, it is all you have left. I was on my way to a far place, a place that inflicted torture in the subtlest ways imaginable, five days a week, and I was paying them to do so. It is truly rare to find an analogue that approaches even a semblance of Humbert Humbert in terms of implicating an audience. I laughed. And when I was sufficiently satisfied, when even the last of my laughter had run out, I found myself at the correct stop.
In the depths, the dark seems eternal. It is not.
