Narrator’s Note August 2020: In August of 2005, I moved to Toyama, Japan to teach English. I was 22 years old, had only gone to Mexico once on a senior trip, did not speak Japanese, had no training as a teacher, was terrified of flying, and was living alone. In the interest of sharing my origin story, I felt I had to include writing from the time in my life that planted the seed of living abroad. I am including these Myspace- my god, I know- blogs of my year in Japan. Photos have been added retroactively, as when I was originally writing I had to go to an internet cafe, and I only had disposable cameras. I eventually bought a laptop and a digital camera, after half a year of Luddite living alone in a foreign country for the first time. What a time to be alive.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Freedom….
Current mood: contemplative
Tonight is the first night of my glorious, long awaited seven day vacation, which will feature an appearance by Kate, all the way from America.
I have to admit though, it’s going to be really really strange to have somewhere from “the real world” here in my surreal Japanese life. I came over here with the assumption that I wasn’t going to see anyone for a year, and I was okay with that. I never dreamed someone would actually come see me. I wonder if I’ll seem really different. Or if she will. But mainly it will be strange to have a reminder of my real life, the one that I feel is waiting for me, running on hibernate, until I come back home.
My life here in Japan is so completely different, it doesn’t feel as though it fits into the line of my life. It’s more like, there’s the line of my life, then at one point the line drops south to form a circle of this year, and when it is over, I feel like the line will reconnect right where it left off, and everything will keep on running.
2020 me reading this after 8 years of these circles and lines- yep, still true
I don’t feel like I will have spent a year here. It feels like a never never land, a place of great experiences and beautiful sights, something like a dream, that doesn’t really take any time away from anything in the end. I can’t even describe what I mean in words. It’s good though. Definitely nothing prickly and uncomfortable. But it can definitely be bad if you don’t control it. There are plenty of people who spend a decade teaching English, living as though they are not a day older than when they landed here. It can lull you into a weird reality, this whole “time is not passing, this isn’t my real life” kind of thinking.
I see so many people come over here and go insane, doing all of these weird things they would never have done. It reminds me a little of people who go to college as far away as possible, not so they can become what they want or need to, but so they can create a completely different person, using various templates of personalities they envied growing up. There is a lot of immaturity, a lot of tension like holding breath, a refusal to admit certain things, a devil may care kind of this party will go on forever feeling. That’s all well and good I suppose. You should take each day as it comes, live for the moment and all those other catch phrases.
But I am glad that my moment in Japan, while at times feeling like a dream sequence of events that I would never have thought would make up my world, is still tempered by the anchors of my dreams, and my goals, and my sights set on what comes after.
So, I guess Kate coming is like a loophole in this dream- my life from before and after popping up in the middle of my life now, sewing through the three too tightly so for a moment they all bunch together.
I can’t wait to show her around, take her to all the places that make up the routine of my days. In a way, I feel as though I in and of myself will be a pretty big tourist attraction 🙂 It will be good to see myself reflected in someone who has known me for a while, and to hear an outsider’s opinion on Japan and my little country town niche in it. I can’t wait to pick her up tomorrow.
Wow.
Pick her up tomorrow. I am going to take a taxi, and pick Kate up at an airport in Japan. I guess it’s also strange because, weirdly enough, a lot of times I forget that I’m living in Japan. I don’t wake up every day and think “Shit, I’m in Japan!”. Because of this however, I do have random moments every few weeks or months, in the elevator, or in the grocery store, or before I go to bed, where I think “Shit, I’m in Japan!”. How can I forget that?? I guess it’s true, wherever you go, there you are. But right now I’m in front of my computer, and my mouth wants food in front of it. So I’ll wrap this up. I want to go make a peanut butter soup sandwich, and squeeze the bread so it pops open in the middle like an envelope, and then dip bananas in it. Mmmmmm….
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Four months….four months…four months….
Current mood: peaceful
I have come to an uneasy truce with my job. I have created an elaborate “count-down-o-meter” (which I made on company time during a break) on an old scrap piece of paper. My 78 days of work fit perfectly into four different squares, that can be folded and unfolded in different interesting ways depending on how frustrated I am with my job- Shitty day? Fold it down the middle and think “In two months, only two more months!”. Okay day? Fold down the side and think “Three months, two vacations? Piece of cake”. So I was really amused with myself and my ingenuity.
But after I made it, and I folded it up, and put it in my billfold…I got to thinking. What exactly am I counting down for? To go back home to America, where I have no job, no car, no cell, no apartment? Of course, the only one of those four I even want/need to get is the first, to save up money to leave again, which is exactly why I can’t get tied down to the latter three. Leases, cell contracts, car payments, they’d just tie me down. But even thinking that…tie me down from what? I have no plans, no goals, no ideas yet as to what I want to for graduate school, or life for that matter. Which is fine.
Now that I’ve experienced the solitary joy of living alone in a foreign country I am actually a bit concerned that I’m not fit for human consumption.
15 years later, that joy is still there
I should just wander about alone with words and sentences and half birthed stories jangling around in my head, and stop in for visits with family and friends now and again to remind me of the wonderful reality of them. I think I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I am not the social butterfly I- and everyone else- thought I was. I’m recalling all of those stories my parents would tell, “You would just play alone for hours and hours” or “You were such a quiet, imaginative child!”. I wasn’t a freak, or a recluse, but my first priority was definitely being alone.
I think I am a mix of a social, friendly, confident-with-strangers kind of person, and a solitary, I-need-my-downtime-from-people-before-I-freak out kind of person. I love going an entire day and realizing I haven’t spoken a word. By the same token I have really enjoyed my hours long bar room conversations with people from all over the world. But in the grand scheme of things I think my meter swings more towards the solitary than the social. I think I am catching up on all of my alone time at the moment. Maybe this year and the next few will serve to let me store it up, like a camel, before I have to trek across the rest of my life, sharing it with so many other people, and children- and who is really ever truly alone after they have kids?
So I think I need to stop looking at my life in increments. I still have a high school/college mentality when it comes to that. I still compartmentalize according to months, and in the back of my head I still section off “Fall” and “Spring” semesters. When one is in high school, counting down the days, it’s fine. The climax of graduation comes, wraps it all up, and that experience is complete. The same with college. But really, after that, it’s life. It’s a *hopefully* long line, with no predetermined sections, semesters, or divisions. Things happen along the way, I may float around for a year or five or ten, then move on to something else.
My anxiety is no doubt coming from an extended period with no release, because I have constructed these random time limits and created pointless deadlines in the middle of what should be a great big open field of things to do. So I’ll keep that countdown to going home. After all, there is a big finale at the end of this- a fat bonus, a wonderful going away party, and an even better coming home party (at a Mexican restaurant, and please surprise me, hint hint 🙂 No I won’t have a car, or a cell, or an apartment. But their absence for four or five months gives me so much freedom afterwards it’s well worth it. And it will be good to be thoroughly saturated in family, and friends, and, strangest of all, English. I need a reality check every once in a while after I’ve been living in my head for so long.
But after that I’m off again. I’ve piqued quite an appetite for being rootless, for traveling light, for paring life down to yourself and a small circle around you. It feels good. I want to feel that for awhile.*
*Narrator’s Note August 2020: Dear Reader, if I had known at the time it would take me six years before I moved back overseas in 2012, I don’t think I could have handled it. Life comes at you.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Every Child Left Behind, Plus the Teachers, Actually, the Whole School
I’m reading about how not a single state will have highly qualified teachers in every core subject as required by No Child Left Behind. Highly qualified is defined as having a bachelor’s degree, having a teaching license, and demonstrating proficiency in every class they teach. Okay, these are all reasonable demands. But there is a huge teacher shortage, due to poor pay, poor hours, no respect, stress over high test scores determining your job security, etc. I know in Texas, they are taking anyone they can get that is a college graduate, and letting them get their license along the way, and still have a huge shortage (not that that is a good way of solving the problem, but it underscores the severity of it).
Some of the schools who didn’t meet these requirements were judged to have not made enough effort to comply in time. Guess what happens? They LOSE federal aid. Yes, that’s right folks. The poorest performing schools, where they were just too “lazy” (prepare for sarcasm) to get off their asses in between being mothers/fathers/role models/counselors/educators/mentors/ to students to get extra certification are losing “in some cases..large amounts of money”. That’s Henry Johnson, the secretary of primary and secondary education.
So, the schools that are performing the worst get huge amounts of federal funds taken away.
And yet Johnson says what they want to see most is “what states are doing to get experienced teachers into classrooms with large numbers of poor and minority children.”
Read that again.
Does that make ANY sense? Do they even take into account that many teachers are poverty stricken due to low wages, living on food stamps and federal aid? And why is it that there is such a huge demand for teachers, and yet they are not paid accordingly? So, to recap.
Shortages of teachers everywhere. Low pay, hard conditions, educating the future citizens of America. Your school doesn’t “make enough effort” and you lose funding. You make less money. You have less lesson materials. Your students perform even worse because of lack of funds. Repeat until you die of heartbreak.
There has got to be a way to punish the schools administrators, if it is indeed a dragging of feet, without punishing the children. Write your senators if you think this is crap. Congress.org has all the e-mails, faxes, and number.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Tired, and Enemas
I had a great weekend. I had a picnic with myself on Sunday morning, just sitting in the park, watching the kids play, eating onigiri (rice triangles with fish in the middle, wrapped in seaweed, they are my breakfast most mornings) and looking at the fountain. Later that afternoon my co-teacher and I went off to the beach, and were there for almost five hours, just walking up and down in the sand, waiting for the sun to set over the water. I really am lucky to be where I am, with the mountains to one side and the sea to the other. Sure, North Korea is dead ahead, and with the missile testing that’s kind of scary, but I can’t see it, so I just pretend it isn’t there.
The best part of going to the beach was finally seeing the infamous ship refuse. There are little plastic bottley-lookin’-thingies all over the place, small, like the “Lil’ Hug” flava-aid bottles that you got from Winn-Dixie grocery store when you were a kid (if, like me you grew up welfare-bulous in the dirty south, and by that I mean literally dirty because sometimes you had to heat the water on the stove top to take a bath, or wash your clothes in the bathtub with a broom handle to stir them, but I digress). So G is telling me about how he found out what these colorful little plastic receptacles were. I have transcribed G’s re-enactment of his horrific conversation below:
G: What are all of these colorful little plastic bottles?
Friend: Well, you know, sailors are out at sea for a long time, and they get….you know….I mean, all they eat is fish..they get..clogged up? Constipated! Yes that’s the word.
G: What does that have to do with these little plastic squeeze bottles?
Friend: Oh, what’s the word in English….ene….enema! Yes, they’re enemas. They just throw them overboard when they’re done.
EWW. Ew. EWW.
So of course G tells me this story on the way to the beach, and I am on the lookout for one. I hope I don’t see children using them to make sandcastles, which G has seen on multiple occasions. If I’m being honest, for awhile I thought that G, who speaks Japanese fluently and has lived in Japan since he was 16, was just pulling my leg.
Nope.
After a good long walk, there it is, in all its Pepto Bismol pink (sorry for the forever association) glory. It is surprisingly clean, and looks like it doesn’t know how disgusting its presence on the beach is, like some twisted message in a bottle, the likes of which no one would want to receive.
The sunset was beautiful, the weather was perfect, and the enema was so grotesquely unreal it was hilarious. Ah, Japan. I’m going to miss this place.
Oh, and by the way, as I was pondering the fountain I decided I’m applying to teach English in Thailand after Japan. I end here Sept. 9th, and the new job would start Sept. 22nd, so I’d just go straight there and hang out for a while, travel around Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and then work on the island for four months. I’d be home end of January. I might not get it, but if I do, I’m there.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Can’t get enough of that fish and rice
I think I could live off of onigiri. They are just so good. Nori is one of the best things people have thought to create, and fish and rice inside?? I can understand why some are squeamish about sushi, as it’s raw, but onigiri? Grilled salmon wrapped in rice and seaweed? Or rice balls with seaweed and sesame and tuna? It doesn’t get any better than that.
It’s one a.m. and I should go to futon. One more day of work and then off to Osaka for Universal Studios…JAPAN! All the same cheesy rides with none of the understanding. Thanks for the great reward, company! Then we get to put on suits the next day and listen to speeches for three hours in Japanese, because they don’t translate any of it for any of the foreign employees! Yay!
But seriously it is pretty awesome to get a free teacher reunion in Osaka, I just wish they didn’t use it as an opportunity to indoctrinate us in how awesome this gig is (we all know, we work here).
Saturday, June 10, 2006
What polar opposites…..
Current mood: confused
My co-teacher, G, and I have bonded over our recently discovered commonality of being raised working class, and relatively poor in general (not destitute, but constantly aware of worrying about money, working from a young age, etc.).
We talked about how close we came to being another statistic, how it was pretty much against a lot of the odds that we managed to get into and graduate college, that we are even in Japan at all, and not in a dead end job, struggling to feed our young families. *Not that there is anything wrong with getting married young, or struggling, but it’s obviously hard and I know how close I came to it*
Anyway, we talked about how we had this certain amount of pride in being working class, like we had this world view, this shared experience, that the people that we are now surrounded by have never known. It’s like being undercover. I love busting out the welfare stories with new friends, the free lunch shenanigans, the day I was surprised by my school when they told me I was going on a “special field trip” which meant taking a bus to Wal-Mart where a donated gift card helped me buy school shoes in middle school. Let’s just say that people who grew up in Europe or Australia or Canada don’t really get not going to the doctor, or dentist, or skipping out on vaccines. What’s worse? They don’t understand why this is happening.
So, tonight, I was talking with a guy from Australia. I like this guy, nice, stand up kind of person. Anyway, he starts talking about how all the Americans he’s met (who were studying abroad in Australia, first of all, so keep that in mind for the rest of this blog and consider the money it takes to study abroad in Australia) talk about how poor they are, but they are just downplaying it, because what they deem poor would be rich in Australia. He started comparing costs of things in Australia, with the costs of things in America, etc. So, we got started talking about poor in relative terms. I will be the first one to admit, I know a lot of people who bemoan being poor, when really they just can’t get the things they want, or they have to drive a car that isn’t brand new, they only get X amount of dollars from Daddy, etc.
I think we’ve all known these kind of “playing poor” people, and I think we all want to slap the shit out of them.
So, I was trying to agree with him, because of my own upbringing- and he tells me to stop downplaying my wealth. Or that I’m exaggerating. Or that what I deem poor isn’t poor by Australia’s standards. Now, the frustrating thing is that we’re agreeing- it’s annoying when people who are not poor at all use that term to describe not getting luxuries they want, and in general, the minimum standard of living, American style, with two new cars, vacations twice a year, brand new designer clothes, the newest gizmos, it’s pretty ridiculous what many people deem basic survival essentials.
But he was striking at my pride, while also explaining to me that my own life wasn’t true, even as I tried to tell him it was. I am proud that I worked full time from 14 over the summers to pay for things. I am proud that I worked full-time through college and maintained my academic scholarship. I am proud that I “beat the odds” as cheesy as that may sound. And I realized that he simply didn’t believe me, because of the stereotypical affluent American grousing about not having more of this, more of that, a little bit a that over here, if only I had that…and I realized, that that is what is keeping us down.
We even tell ourselves these lies, that if we just work hard enough, we’ll get this or that or the other, and if we can’t afford it, it’s not because our government doesn’t take care of us, or because taxes are unfair, or because health insurance costs are through the roof- no, it’s our own fault, because hey, if you work hard, you can make it. We spread this American Dream ideal as our image, and the rest of the world believes it- people I have met from other countries, even Australia and Canada, simply don’t believe my life. They just don’t. I’m standing in front of them, telling them about it, about my friends busting ass just to drag through college, of no one going to dentists unless their teeth are rotting out, of not getting vaccines since I was five, and they just don’t buy it.
It’s terrifying. It gets us stuck. We have this perfect, glitzy, everyone can win in America!! type of image. And we tell each other this, we take out credit cards and loans and accrue massive debt trying to have what we’re supposed to have, we look like sloppy, consumeristic pigs to the rest of the world, bitchy little spoiled children who take and take and take and then have false modesty about it- oh, no, I don’t have that much *hands behind our back filled with money*.
Anyway, so I realized that my pride in making it out was just more of the same, just a different symptom. Because I can’t discount how lucky I was just to have my type of personality, to have the kind of intelligence that worked within traditional school systems, to have had luck and chance intercept with hard work and privilege. Plenty of people bust their asses and never get out. A co-sign on the loan to go to the college they wanted to get into fell through, sorry, off to the factory for you. A baby comes along and they make just too much to get welfare, but not enough to get ahead. My pride is just the other side of that same delusional coin- work and work and work, and you will get a reward.
And you know what guys? Sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way, and good, hardworking people might need some sort of fucking help from the government, without being labeled lazy pieces of shit. Do you think, if it was peacetime, we would have approved 50 billion for education and health care reform, like we just approved for war? No.
2020 me reading this and still pissed about the same things
I talk to people from countries with maternal leave for a year paid, with free social health insurance, subsidized day care, and much more equitable tax brackets, and they scoff at me when I say it’s hard to make it in America, even on two incomes. It’s crazy. It pisses me off. And there’s really nothing I can do about it.
Anyway, just got back from the party, it’s three a.m., just some random thoughts….mmmmm sleep…….
Monday, June 19, 2006
Heads up, Kim is gettin’ antsy
Sooooooo….
North Korea is about to fire a long range missile, according to all actitivites and speculation. If you were to draw a straight line from North Korea across the Japan sea you would hit exactly where I live, right on the West coast, the heart of Toyama. Neat!
Now, I’m glad we’re this close mind you- if he fires something, it will sail right over us and hopefully plunk down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and then everyone will freak out and act all pissed, but in the end we won’t do anything because they have nukes, which will once again be a great incentive for every single country on earth to get nukes, because they will realize once more these simple equations:
Nukes+being crazy+being a dictator= doesn’t matter cause you got nukes
Developing country+trying to get nukes= wartime city baby!
So, obviously, if I were a leader of a developing country I’d be working my ass off to get a nuclear- or nook-yu-lar depending on the expert- weapon. And I’d be damn sneaky about it. And then when I got it, I would make myself a dictator, and generally just do a big fat victory dance and watch that ole’ meanie America squirm.
We’re gonna blow it all up kids. Nice knowing you. Sorry the greatest minds of our time left such a violent legacy. Have you seen the fall out after Hiroshima? Terrifying. Terrifying. At least I’ll be ready for Nuclear Winter because I’ve survived the worst winter in Japan in 88 years- oh, wait, no, I’ll be dead and so will you. No snowmen for you! Not even the two ball Japanese kind!
dealing with anxiety via sarcasm since 2006
Good night darlings…..goodbye?
*again, sarcasm and stuff…but wait, why do I suddenly feel that I have to add caveats to my blogs? I think I just like astrics…astriks….astricks…ass tricks…who knows.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Worried….
Mufasa had to go back to the vet again. He spent the weekend actually. The throwing up has stopped, but now he’s just not eating. They thought he had kidney failure, but all of his tests for everything- kitty leukemia/aids, infections, etc. etc. are all negative. They did an x-ray of his stomach however….and the vet doesn’t know what it is, but it looks like fluid. He said that since he didn’t know what it is, he didn’t want to speculate, but it looks like it might be stomach cancer. He’s still not eating, and Mom wants to bring him home- she’s already saying things like “he’ll be more comfortable here at home” you know what I mean. He’s also just laying around, doing nothing.
So, yeah, it’s basically totally awesome. I swear, if he dies, I will know there is no such thing as karma in this world. You’d think after I saved four kittens and plunged myself into massive credit card debt to give them to other people, my own cat wouldn’t die.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
No news on Mufasa
Still haven’t heard an update from Mom on Muffy. It will take a while for the vet in Dallas to evaluate the x-rays I suppose.
Also….I was told, upon arriving in Japan, that I should use Brastel cards, as they are the best deal for long distance, and you can use them on your phone, and it doesn’t charge to it. So, Especially around Thanksgiving/Christmas, I called a lot of people. I probably spent about $120 a month on calling cards (they’re $20 a pop). Around this same time, my cell phone bills were almost $300 a month for about three consecutive months. I was so pissed, and puzzled, and I spent an afternoon or three trying to force the poor sweet girls at the Vodaphone shack into admitting that they were, indeed, part of a vast Vodaphone conspiracy to swindle unsuspecting foreigners out of money.
Today, G casually mentions “Man, it sucks that Brastel cards take your minutes”.
Y’all.
For about three months, I paid about $450 total EACH MONTH to talk to people. My family would always have me call them, because I was sooooo excited- no mom, I got this! It’s cheaper for me, don’t you worry your pretty little head. Fuck me. So, sorry guys, no more phone calls from ole’ Cort. I’m calling Mom for her birthday, and givin’ a shout out to Dad on his. Other than that, e-mail is free and I’ll see ya soon.
Everyone cross their fingers that Mufasa doesn’t die. I just want to see him scowl at me one more time, and do his demanding “pet my belly until I viciously attack your hand because I am suddenly over it” back flop. Sigh. Japan has been pretty bad luck when it comes to mortality.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Thank you
Current mood: distressed
Thanks for all of your kind messages and comments about Muffy guys. It really means a lot. I actually feel a lot more at peace knowing what’s wrong with him, and knowing that the only thing to do is to have him put down. I was worried about having him put down, and then always wondering- “Was it something really simple and stupid, like a food allergy, and because we didn’t know, we killed him?!?” Now I know for sure.
But man, who would have thought such a magnificent, huge beast as Mufasa would die from starvation?? It doesn’t seem like a glorious enough ending for such a hard core bastard. I’m glad I walked into that Petsmart when I did, and then badgered the workers to let me pet him, and then convinced the lady to take Mufasa away from the people he had been promised to because I was there willing to take him on the spot. We were meant for each other. Man I’m going to miss him.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Tha’ Hoff
Current mood: awake
After sleepless nights worried about Mufasa, I finally fell asleep at a reasonable hour last night thanks to, oh, 3 straight hours of ill advised working out between 7-10 p.m. at the new gym G and I just joined because our job has sucked all will to live out of us, and all we do is suck down ichigo daifuku to cope. Then we went to a print club for a bit of weekday joy. But this isn’t about that.
I was awoken at three a.m. feeling, generally and specifically, like a ball of queasy shit. My skin is hot, I’m cold, I’m all weak and hungry. As I lay in bed convincing myself that I’m dying- because, of course, I am- I turn over to click on the T.V. I don’t want to die alone, and if the television is on, it can magically heal me by taking my mind off of my craziness.
Now, I’ve been up this late many times since my move to Japan, but never watching T.V. So, the first thing that greets my eyes is a backward and shockingly racist comedy act that is comprised of three middle aged Japanese men in black face. I know. You thought that went way out of style, right along with child labor and no birth control. Nope!
Disgusted, I click to another channel, and I am met with the hyper excited sounds of an annoying male announcer telling me to buy the Knight Rider DVD set- a badly photoshopped and 80’s graphic laden picture of Tha Hoff smoldering at me almost did the trick, but then I glanced down- and what did I see? Oh, yes, that’s right- in Japan, someone would actually pay 17,000 yen for Season 3. That’s about… does some quick currency conversion…ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS.
Sick. But then I flipped one more time, and landed, oh my, on Martha Stewart. That show is like watching a near collision. I have no idea why anyone thought it was a good idea to bring poor innocent people onto her show as “guests” otherwise known as “terrified butt puckered targets for her uncontrollable barely held in rage against anyone who knows how to do anything she can’t do….dammit”. Their interactions are painful- it’s like watching a blind date between two people who know that one of them has vastly more power than the other, but the weaker one just has to smile and make small talk. She cuts people off, says the weirdest abrupt things- I couldn’t look away.
All right, this blog review of bad Japanese television and cat grief insomnia needs to end. Round two for bedtime attempts starts…..now.
Friday, July 28, 2006
My life
That’s one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen- it’s an old one, with Micheal Keaton…maybe? and he’s dying, and Nicole Kidman plays his wife, and she’s pregnant. I’m pretty sure the only reason it got me so down was because it made me think about how my great grandma and my aunt have both died while I’ve been overseas, and Mufasa dying adds to that, but regardless I just freaked out last night- I bawled my eyes out for seriously thirty minutes. Not just sniffly little things, but long ragged sobs, and choking on snot, squirming in pain… another benefit of living alone, you can totally break down realllllly good and no one will interrupt. I don’t know where the hell it came from. Maybe that I haven’t really dealt with all the death that’s happened in my family since I came to Japan, maybe that I haven’t dealt with the death the movie reminded me of in the first place.
But in general, I don’t “deal” well with death. Other’s deaths, I don’t know, I feel pressured by the spiritual/universe is everything mindset of my family to not be upset, to smile and act at peace, to say platitudes like “there is no reason to cry, they are in a better place, we’ll see them soon”. Well, if we cry when someone is moving across the country, and we KNOW we’ll see them again in this life, why can’t we bawl and be pissed when someone DIES, and who knows when we’ll see them again? So, I’m saying screw that. I’m gonna freak out the next time someone dies- because that’s what I normally want to do.
Take me back to the days when, if someone died, you screamed and rent your hair, you wore black- you didn’t need to be calm about your grief. If someone you love has left this earth forever, you need to freak the fuck out without shame.
Also, probably the bigger issue is that I haven’t dealt with my own death, which will happen sometime between right now and a few decades from now. But being alone, and so far away this year, I’ve actually come halfway across to dealing with my own mortality. Ironically enough, with all the fun I’m having over here, my death problem is what I’ve probably been working on the most (I save y’all the details, but it’s all in my handwritten diaries, which are even more navel gazing than these blogs, if you can believe it). Kind of a morbid post sorry- but 6 Feet Under was on last night right before My Life, and let’s just say the theme set itself.
It seems weird that being able to get really upset over death has helped me deal with my own, but… what the hell can you do. There it is. I’ve been obsessed with death for as long as I can remember, and I think it’s because no one talks about it, no one really experiences other’s deaths fully, and so it’s like this elephant in the room- we’re all gonna do it, but let’s not think about it. And when it happens, let’s make it all clean and happy so no one is uncomfortable. Screw that. Maybe if we let ourselves acknowledge the pain and fear, then we could move on past it to what comes after.
Right now however, I’ll have to leave you all to your own thoughts and dart off to work to be a clown.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
I guess I have a chance to practice now
I got an e-mail today from my uncle. My grandfather died.
So yeah. How strange that I just posted that last blog. I took the last half of work off and just curled up in futon. I found out at lunch, right before I had to go back to work and teach a baby class, of all things, singing and shit. It was bizarre. I don’t remember anything about it.
I’m really doing okay now that I’ve had some time to process it, but it’s just more stress and worry. No wonder I haven’t been sleeping, and my stomach has been aching for weeks, and I’m just exhausted. I keep getting such wonderful news from home.
Read Part VI here: Teaching English in Japan Part VI: Decisions, Goodbyes & Homecomings
