William Ruzicka - 10/24/77 to 2/1/23

 I met William around 1994 when we both worked in the same office.  The colleague who supervised the him, a prototypical New Yorker named John Maciag, came up to me at my desk one day.

“Hey, you do that sci-fi stuff, right?”

“Uh…  I write science fiction, if that’s what you mean.”  

“Yeah, yeah.  you write that sci-fi stuff.  There’s this guy I’ve got working for me.  He does the same thing, only different.” 

“Only different?”

“Yeah.  He draws stuff.  I was telling him about you and he’d kinda like to talk with you.  It’s Ok if he comes over, right?”  

“Sure.  Yeah.  What’s his name?”  

“Vinny.”  

“Vinny” came over at lunch.  A big, friendly looking guy with a thick sheaf of papers in his hands.  

“Hey,” I said,  “Hey,” he said back.  “You’re Vinny?” I asked.  He smiled in a quirky way.  “Yeah.”  It wasn’t until some weeks later that I would find out that “Vinny” was the nickname John Maciag gave him when he started working for us.  “‘Cause he looks like a ‘Vinny’,” John said.  

After the introductions were done, he handed me the sheaf of papers.  “It’s a comic I’m working on.  It’s not very good.  The character is one I’ve been playing around with.  Would you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think.”  

It was a Friday.  The sheaf was pretty thick.  I told him that I would read it over the weekend and give him my feedback on Monday.  He thanked me then went back to his section.  

The comic was called “Chronoshock.”  The story was disjointed.  With lots of jumping around.  More of an excuse for action scenes.  But it had a germ of an idea that I found appealing.  A Celtic-ish anthropomorphic warrior that’s transported to the future and meets someone that looks like the woman he loved and lost in the past.  The art was really good.  I spent the weekend reading it and writing up things he should think about.  I didn’t want to rewrite it for him.  I did think it would be fun to try. 

We met on Monday.  He sat opposite me at the lunch room table.  As I talked through my notes, he kept nodding his head saying, “Yeah,” “Ah,” “Okay…”  now and then.  At the end of my feedback he said, “That sounds great.  Would you like to write it for me?”

That started a creative partnership that lasted about a decade, and a friendship that lasted almost 30 years.  

As we worked on the comic, changing the name to “Time Venturer,” I found that William was like me, but different. 

I was older than him, though by how much I couldn’t tell.  I didn’t know exactly how old he was until he passed away.  It never mattered much.   

We were both science fiction fans, loyal to the show that brought us into the genre.  Mine was Star Trek, his Star Wars.  

We both were enamored with Japan.  Me, from the novel Shogun, which I read when I was 13.  Him, from the manga and anime he loved, like the Transformers, and Ranma 1/2. 

The biggest difference though is best described as two character types in a story.  Doers and Be-ers.  Be-ers adapt to the situations they find themselves in to find what they want.  Doers will try to change their situations to reach what they want.  I was the Be-er.  William was the Doer.  And the one thing he did all the time was draw. 

I mean, all the time.  Every spare moment.  While waiting for his order in a restaurant.  Standing in line at a moving theater.  Talking to a location on the phone at work.  Waiting in the theater for the lines to dim before the moving started.  He would whip out his notebook and a pencil, and later his iPad and stylus, and start sketching.  

One time, in the lunchroom at work, going over the pages of our comic, he said, “I’ve got something you gotta take a look at.”  He turned his notebook around and handed it to me. 

It was one of the characters of another comic we were working on.  Only, she was dressed in samurai styled armor, a sword in hand, looking like she was taking a breath in the midst of a fight.  It was a cool drawing, but…

“There’s no scene in the script I gave you where she looks like this.”  I said as I handed the notebook back to him.  

“I know.”  He flipped the notebook around so he could admire his work.  “I got the idea for this look and had to draw it so I could see it for myself.  Cool, huh?” 

This was one of the times I got something unexpectedly from William.  Prior to that meeting, whenever I wrote it was for a specific story or project I wanted to publish.  But William always drew for fun.  Sometimes it was for one of our comic book projects, and other times it was something else.  But always for fun.  It made me think about my approach to writing.  I changed how I journaled, which I did daily, to focus more on things that were cool or fun.  Things I just wanted to see how they sounded like when I put them on paper.  I think my writing has improved a lot because of that. 

On another occasion, William brought a Japanese text book with him.  He had started taking lessons to learn Japanese.  I asked him why, and he told me that he’d heard that the dialogue, and even the storylines, of Japanese manga and anime could be radically changed when it went through translation (I’ve discovered that this is true).  He wanted to read the original manga, or hear the original dialogue, for himself to discover the artists’ intent.  Plus, he wanted to visit Japan himself one day.  

I thought it sounded like a good idea.  I wanted to hear and see what the artists’ intent.  I wanted to go to Japan one day.  I just never thought of myself as someone who traveled to foreign places.  Seeing William preparing to go made me think that I should do the same.  So I started studying Japanese on my own, and later took classes through UCLA’s Adult Education program.  

Since then, studying Japanese has become a daily routine in my life.  I have been to Japan five times now, and I’m planning my return to Japan after Covid in September this year.  I’ve added Korean and Spanish to my daily language studies.  And I’m thinking of trips to countries where they speak those languages as well.  All this from William’s example of getting ready to do something even if it seems so far away, and so impossible to do. 

William was an inherently generous person.  Not only through examples.  He gave personal gifts to others routinely.  My home is filled with books, pictures, plushy toys, that he would just hand to me, saying something like, “I saw this somewhere and thought you’d like to have it.”  

Sometimes these gifts would serve as little nudges.  Encouragements to do something that he knew you wanted to do.  William believed that everyone would be happier if they just did what they wanted to do.  Doing something to earn money was sometimes necessary, but always considered to be a temporary activity.  There were countless times when I would be sitting with William while he was talking to someone else, a family member, a fellow artist friend at a convention, extolling them to do this or that so they could ultimately do what they really wanted to do.  To get closer to the life they wanted.  

William’s application of this point of view to his own life eventually lead to the dissolution of our partnership.  Teaching himself how to use software meant for animators to draw comics, he came to realize that what he really, REALLY wanted to to was work in animation.  With this discovery, drawing comic books became a distraction.  Now that he knew the path in life he wanted to take, he needed to start doing it.  

It was a difficult transition for us as friends.  I resigned myself to it.  We didn’t communicate with each other for a time.  

But then, one day, he sent me a text.  He had something he wanted to talk about.  Could we meet for dinner, his treat?  I replied, “Sure.”  We made arrangements to meet after work on a Friday.  

He was already at the table when I got to the restaurant.  It was awkward at first, catching up.  He stopped taking animation classes after he started getting work as a storyboard artist.  He had already worked on several well very recognizable projects.   

He took out his iPad and set it up on the table.  “I’ve got something I want you to look at.  Tell me what you think.”  It was a short animation video.  The drawing was quick, sketchy, but the action was sparkling, grabbing your attention.  When it was done, he asked me what I could tell about the story from it.  It was part of a pitch he wanted to make to his bosses at the studio.  

I gave him my feedback.  He nodded, he asked me questions.  He told me what his intent was in the story.  I replied with suggestions as to how he could bring that out.  Two things struck me in the conversation.  One was how much he had come to understand story and how to present it with his images.  The other was how into he was in the process.  This WAS what he was meant to do.  A lot of my resentment over the ending of my partnership went away at that moment.  

We spent the rest of the dinner renewing our friendship.  We made arrangements to go see whatever new comic book hero or sci-fi blockbuster that was scheduled to come out.  As we were leaving the restaurant to head to where we parked, he stopped me.  

“I want you to know something.  The time we spent, working on the comics?  That taught me that it wasn’t a wasn’t a pipe-dream.  That I could do this for real.”  

That stands as the most gracious thing any contemporary of mine has said to me.  

We kept in touch after that.  We went to movies and dinner.  He sent me texts about something I should see that was so cool and stupid.  He asked me if he could tag along on my next trip to Japan.  He would let me plan everything, so he could see how I took care of things.  We ended up going to Japan twice.  When he saw how well I spoke Japanese, he started studying again.  “Just remember,” he told me, “It’s because of me that you learned to speak it that well.”  Yes.  I remember.  

The third trip together was cancelled because of Covid.  For the next couple of years, our “get togethers” were restricted to calls, messages, and Zoom meetings.  

The last time we met in person was on New Years Day this year, in Little Tokyo, at the Oshougatsu Festival.  As usual, we didn’t plan to meet up there.  We both went.  Then we texted to see if we were both there.  We made arrangements to meet up, with other friends and acquaintances at a pop-up bar set up for the festival.  

As I sat down at the table, he reached into his bag and pulled something out.  “I saw this while shopping and thought you might like to have it.  You like doing stuff like this, right?  Writing?”  

It was a belated Christmas present.  A thick writing journal.  Wrapped in a leather cover, with pages made to look aged, like parchment.  Pretty cool.  Yeah, I told him.  I do like to write.  As I handled it, I thought that I needed to come up with some special use for it.  This was no mere diary.  

That feeling intensified when I heard of William’s passing.  

There is a quote by the 19th Century novelist, Henry James, that I’ve been remembering recently.  It goes like this: 

“Life is a slow, steady advance into enemy territory.”  

The metaphor expressed was always clear to me.  As we march forward in life, unable to retreat, forced to advance, even if afraid, we get farther and farther from the place we think of as “home.”  The terrain becomes more foreign.  We find ourselves increasingly surrounded by people that seem to be speaking a foreign language.  

And the comrades with us, suddenly, inevitably, start to fall by the wayside.  

William is a special example in this.  He is not someone bound to me by blood or genetics.  Not some hero that blazed a trail that I wanted to follow in life that has met his end.  

No, he is the first of my inner circle to fall on this march.  A squad mate.  A member of my tribe.  Someone marching with me because while we did different things, either smearing paint on the walls of a cave to show the wonders we’ve seen, or dancing around the fire, telling others new myths and legends of our journey, we were going in the same direction.  

Thinking this way, I realized what I needed to do with the gift he gave me, to acknowledge the nudge he gave along with it.  It has become my Word Palette.  W

A Review: Call Me Chihiru

 I saw a film on Netflix that I wanted to talk about.  It’s a Japanese film called, “Call Me Chihiru” (Japanese title: “Chihiru-san”).  

While watching it, it occurred to me that most would describe it as a “character study.”  A movie where we follow the main character from one moment to the next, where nothing dramatic happens.

A better perspective to take is that it’s a story where all of the dramatic action takes place inside the main character.  We derive her goal and inner struggles from the clues presented from her interactions with others.  This view fits in with the society this movie comes from, where the expression of strong emotions and personal desires are constrained by obligations toward group harmony.  

We start with the main character herself, Chihiru, in the opening scene where she comes upon the neighbor cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, using what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice,” the high toned, sing-song voice people use when trying to get on a cat’s good side.  We immediately see a kind, happy person, that responds sweetly to the cute little creature that everyone has a hand in caring for.  She has been given a stamp of approval by the film makers.  This is a good person.  

The movie starts by presenting us with the title character, Chihiru.  We see her greeting the neighborhood cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, speaking to her in what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice.”  We are presented with a seemingly happy person, that responds sweetly to those she meets.  It is a stamp of approval of her character.  

In the scene that follows we discover more about her.  While working at a take-out only bento shop, one of her co-workers tries to shush her when she mentions her past work as a sex worker in a massage parlor.  But it turns out that “almost everyone” in the town already knows this about her.  This is boisterously confirmed by the crowd of male customers waiting to order.  In a country that came up with the saying, “It’s the nail that stands out that gets hammered down,” Chihiru is remarkably open and unconcerned about who knows about this part of her past.   

We start the issue Chihiru is dealing with as she interacts with the people in the town.  It starts with an old homeless man that hangs around the town.  One day, Chihiru sees a group of school boys tormenting and bullying him.  She looks over the fence and calls out, “That looks fun.  Can I join?”  The boys scatter and run away.  Chihiru comes around to check on the old man.  She sits and talks with him.  She brings him a bento box from the shop to eat.  Then, she invites him to her apartment to take a bath, where she washes his back and hair.  Later, as he bows politely to her in the entrance way of her apartment, wearing a clean t-shirt she’s given him, she asks if he’s sure he really wants to leave now.  He does, leaving without having said a word.

Later, Chihiru goes looking for him, another bento box in hand.  She eventually finds him.  Dead.  Laying alone in an overgrown empty lot.  

Here, again, Chihiru’s behavior deviates from the norm.  Instead of telling the police about the body, or going out to find whatever family he may have had, actions in keeping with real life, either as actually lived or in a movie, she returns to the body late at night, with a shovel and lamp strapped to her head, to wrap the body in a sheet and bury it right where she found it.  We then see her in her apartment, showering off the dirt from the burial.  It is a sad and quiet scene.  

In the following scene, she finds another body.  A seagull.  Laying on the road by the ocean that she walks along at night.  She gives the dead bird the same treatment as the old man, a midnight burial in the same overgrown lot.  The next day, she tells a customer that she always seems to get hungry after burying a body.  The customer laughs and asks, “Who are you?  You sound like an assassin!”  Chihiru laughs with him, but doesn’t explain.  We’re left to wonder if this is really something she has done an unknown number of times before.

The movie goes through a series of interactions with other townspeople.  All of whom suffer from loneliness and isolation.  A friend from the massage parlor, who had the money she saved to start her own business swindled by people she thought she could trust.  An elementary school boy who hangs out in the playground until his single mother comes home from work.  A pair of high school girls, one that skips school to read manga when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  The other, who seems to have an ideal life, but has no one close to her.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized due to losing her sight, feeling useless as a result.  

Chihiru will offer these people help and support.  But with some degree of separation.  Her former boss at the massage parlor, who has come to the town to raise and sell tropical fish, describes her as a ghost that moves through people’s lives.  

From flashbacks, and little moments in the present, we see that the antagonist keeping Chihiru from overcoming her loneliness is her past.  Flashbacks of her as a little girl, wandering alone at night in the town she lived.  There she met a woman named “Chihiru” who looked like someone who made their living on the street who kept her company.  Later, grown up, wearing the uniform of an “OL” or Office Lady, black blazer, black skirt, white dress shirt, but with old, worn out shoes, she is applying for a job at the massage parlor.  When asked for a professional name to use, she gives “Chihiru” as what she wants to be called.  A call from her brother, which she ignored times before, telling her that their mother has died.  Chihiru tells him he’s too busy to go to the funeral.  She has sex with one of the bento shop customer she meets in town.  During the act, laying on his back with Chihiru on top of him, he covers his face with his forearm, as if realizing that he will get no closer to her than he was before through this act.  It’s Chihiru’s past, and her relationship to it, that’s keeping her from alleviating her own feelings of separation.

There is one character that Chihiru impacts the most.  And other that has the greatest impact on her.

Okija is the person Chihiru has the greatest influence on.  She is the high school student with the ideal life.  A “cool” father that “still takes the family on outings.”  A mother that makes meals, “beautiful and nutritionally balanced.”  A little brother that sits quietly with the family, not making trouble. 

Okija’s life is not so perfect, though.  Her father is like the director of a play depicting an ideal family.  Even to the point of freezing in place when someone makes a miscue.  He will stay silent and wait until it is corrected.  Okija admits that her mother’s meals are “strangely tasteless.”  Even her name, “Okija,” is a nickname.  A label given to her, whose origin has been forgotten.  

Okija has noticed Chihiru around the town.  She takes pictures of her with her phone, flipping through them during the day, looking at them intently as if trying to find something important.  A classmate sees her collection and tells Okija who she is and where she works.  She then goes to the bento shop as a customer to meet Chihiru face to face.  After taking her order, Chihiru strikes a classic Japanese photo pose, big smile, fingers in a “V” by her face.  When Okija stares back in confusion, Chihiru asks, “What?  No picture?”  

Mortified, Okija hurriedly apologizes and runs away.  Later, she will spot Chihiru again.  Standing in the waves by the road that runs close to it.  Okija will gather her courage, take off her shoes, and go ask if she can join her.  Chihiru assents, and they are soon playing in the waves, splashing and kicking them at each other.

Chihiru takes steps to lead Okija out of her isolation.  She introduces her to Mokoto, the school boy that wanders by himself, alone, while waiting for his single mother to get off work.  She becomes like an older sister to the boy.  Helping him with homework, keeping him company, squabbling like siblings.  Chihiru gives her a “treasure map,” which leads her to Betchan, the girl that skips school to read manga in her hideout when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  They become fast friends, with Betchan returning to school to be able to hang out with Okija.  

Okija begins to assert herself more with her parents.  Resisting her father’s plans to make pottery on the weekend so she can spend time with friends.  Fighting with her mother over “the mess” she’s making when she learns that Mokoto has locked himself out of his home on a rainy night, with nothing to eat.  Okija leaves the mess for her mother and goes to Mokoto to sit with him while he eats the rice balls she made for him.  When Mokoto’s mother arrives, she invites Okija in to eat, making friend noodles, which Mokoto declares is the most delicious thing she makes.  While Okija eats, the mother trying to clean up the dirty kitchen, she begins to cry.  The greasy, messy noodles apparently are far more delicious than her mother’s perfect meals. 

The character with the greatest impact on Chihiru is Tae.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized for an illness that has left her blind.  Chihiru comes to the hospital, calling herself “Aya,” after seeing Tae when she came to visit her own mother.  She gives Tae comfort just by listening to her talk about feeling useless, no longer able to help him in the bento shop where she loves to work.  At Chihiru’s last visit before her release, Tae reveals that she knows Aya is actually the woman that replaced her at the bento shop’s counter.  She tells Chihiru a story about outings she would go on with her daughter, gathering acorns.  At the last one, she realized that she had gathered all acorns they brought back.  Her daughter had grown too big for doing it.  In the following scene, we see Chihiru at her mother’s grave.  This is after we find out that Aya is Chihiru’s real name.  After praying and lighting incense, Chihiru piles something on the gravestone.  When she leaves we see a pile of acorns left behind.  An offering to a past she can no longer change or make up for. 

By the end of the movie, it is clear that Chihiru hasn’t reached the goal she’s been struggling toward.  On a rooftop patio, Chihiru is with her circle of friends at a barbecue.  The camera pans around them, showing them laughing, chatting, and enjoying each other’s company.  When it returns to Chihiru’s seat, it is empty.  No one seems to notice she’s left.  

The final scene shows Chihiru in another place.  Diligently working at something else.  There are clues that, while she might not have a solution to her own loneliness, her time in the seaside town has given her the means to reimagine her past.  In a way that may allow her to find what she wants in the future.

Which may be the best any of us can do to find our way forward.