August 2006
Once again I find myself on the blank page of my computer. I am breathless and anxious even all alone in my apartment, surprising myself with the solace I seek in writing. I am annoying even myself with my bullshit about not knowing what to do about staying or going home, and I am not surprised to find that it is getting me nowhere. I imagine this would all be a lot easier if I knew what I wanted to do in general.
I can’t imagine being a journalist, I can’t be a songwriter, I can’t write fiction (just trust me, it’s bad when I try and somehow worse when I try harder), and as of late what has given me the most happiness has been writing my blogs to get a relief from my thoughts and then getting responses from people that I had brightened their day.
So, essentially, I want a platform that allows me to write things that other people enjoy, or a story that connects, and make enough money to live off of. That’s not lofty or unattainable at all. Oh, except it is, completely.
What is so special about my own personal manifestation of this all too prevalent question of “what do I do with myself?”. Nothing. So why bother writing it. And yet that doesn’t satisfy me. Even berating myself for my ego, acknowledging the abundance of similar books, I feel compelled to
write it all down, get it out there, and see what happens. There is a little turn in my stomach and my head buzzes a little thinking about it. That could mean it’s a good idea, or it could also mean two weekends of sleep hours barely breaking the double digits is catching up and wreaking havoc.
But as I was walking home from the club this weekend, exhausted and danced out happy, I just felt so filled up with potential. I don’t know what revelations drunk people have in the early hours of the morning after a good night out with friends, but I am always sober, and on my own for the trip home since I live alone, and tend to have my best moments of clarity in that exhausted morning after section right before you collapse to sleep.
The streets were empty, the details were crisp and clear from hours of being in dark, sweaty, smoky clubs, and I felt as though every step had some meaningful deeper purpose. The blinking lights were sweet to my eyes, even as much as the cliche of the sunrise climbing over the mountains. My feet were sore from dancing all night, and they took in all the little bumps and ridges in the sidewalk; the breeze was blowing through my hair, and I felt that every breath drew everything around me inside of me, through me, and then out again.
I opened my eyes wider, because I wanted to take more of it in. The drains were streaming beneath the grates and I stopped just to stand and listen, as though I had never heard it before- when the city is so quiet you realise how loud they are, like a network of underground rivers always churning. I felt as though I was in a dream, some slow between sleep state. It was as though I owned the world. The soft repetitive pad of my footsteps quieted me, my hair sliding over my neck and across my cheek was a blessing. I was alive on this day. As trite as it sounds, it hit me in my gut. I was walking on this earth, and the drains were running, and the sun was coming up, and the air smelled of nothing in particular but it was cool on my sweaty skin.
I stunk of cigarettes, my legs were sore, and my eyes were stinging from the sudden light, and I was so grateful I just wanted to lay down on the side of the road and drink up this day, this beginning time where I suddenly wasn’t worrying about what I was doing/would do/should do/ can I even do it/how will this work, but was walking with my hands swinging free, and feeling my chest rise and fall, and looking forward to a hot bath and a clean soft bed.
I turned off the familiar corner to the onsen, spent a solid hour in the steam feeling clean to my bones, and then walked the rest of the way home to sleep until the afternoon.
That my life can be this calm and easy is something I can’t quite believe still. I don’t know how to keep it, and I want to take it with me wherever I end up.
Narrator’s Note August 2020: I wrote this in August 2006, at the end of my contract in Japan. I was 23 and had no idea how to make the path of living overseas long-term a real life, so I was facing going home before I wanted to because it seemed like the most viable, reasonable, and responsible plan. It’s wild to realise that even after a year of living the kind of life I wanted to keep, it was hard for me to square how it all fit into the narrative of what I thought my life would be (or, probably more accurately, what I thought my life should be). I kept coming back to this deep seated guilt about leaving home, or having a life that seemed too easy/fun/free (talk about self destruction). I ultimately don’t regret the decision to leave for many reasons, but making it led to a rough period of adjustment, to put it mildly. It also reinforced to me the strength of story, for better or worse- the story we tell ourselves about what a life should look like, or what we can create when we’ve never seen that example.
