Thursday, January 29, 2009

There are different ways to disappear. Diminishing to nothing and expanding to everything can end the same. I love my visual migraines, the visual part alone. I love the first moment I notice something’s off, before it’s even really quite there – just a shadow of a shimmer. Then the glimmering semi-circle of flashing colors that grows steadily, slowly, expanding into a wider and wider arc. And finally, the best moment – when it’s almost gone, almost, just a faint flickering in the very corner of my vision, and then, in one instant, I blink, and it’s gone.

Some things vanish that way, I think. They don’t simply switch off, or shrink down to nothing. They expand until they’re outside our field of vision, too big for us to see anymore.

I say “some things.” But I’m thinking of crushes I’ve had. I’m thinking how some of them fade gradually, falling farther and farther into memory until one day I realize they reside only there. And how some of them vanish like people in the movies we used to make at holiday camp, when we’d stop the camera, the person would scamper away, and we’d start filming again. Poof, gone, with no harbinger of the change. And how some, the rare ones, just keep growing, and growing, until it’s not a crush anymore, until I blink and the anxiety, frustration, obsession is gone. This happened once, and I felt a pang of loss. Will it come back? I wondered. My mom predicted not. If it comes back, she said, it will come back as love.

I wonder how many times I’ve been in love. It depends, of course, on what you decide that means. Sometimes I think it’s only once, there’s only one that gets to count. Sometimes I go as high as four. The correct answer might be two. If you expand the definition of love to include all intense crushes it shoots up to something like eight.*

It’s like Budapest, I think. I become infatuated with songs, with records, like people. I spend weeks, months, willing to hear nothing but certain music. But there are some songs, no matter what my current music crush is, that rise above everything, that fill me with a conviction every time I hear them that this is it, there’s no such thing as something better than this. Right now I don’t want to hear Budapest. I don’t want to hear Misery. I want to play my new BUMP OF CHICKEN record over, and over, and over, and each time the moments roll around that I especially love my heart races and I catch my breath and sigh. But that feeling exists in time, subject to changing as time flows on. Some songs transcend that. Is that like love? I don’t know. If so, what fills the role of the new records, of that rush of satisfaction that comes from getting to know new music? What if I want both?

They’re not specifically relevant, but let’s have lyrics from Budapest.

I thought I saw her at the late-night restaurant;
She would have sent blue shivers down the wall.
Yeah but she didn’t grace our table,
In fact she wasn’t there at all.
And her legs went on forever,
Like staring up at infinity.
Her heart was spinning to the west lands,
And she didn’t care to be,
That night in Budapest...



*Geeky footnote: It seems there’s something logarithmic going on here, like if we have numbered definitions of Love that get more and more inclusive, the number of people included in them grows exponentially with base 2. Hmm, this clearly warrants further study. Perhaps people can be grouped according to the type of growth of this function. Or perhaps it’s always exponential and people are distinguished by the base.

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Waters of Babylon

An update two days in a row. I must be bored.

Let's see how arrogant this comes out sounding.

I'm still waiting, have been waiting for years and years, for the moment when finally I have to do something, and the strategy of pretty much leaving myself alone, trusting in my instincts, trusting that whatever I pull together at the last minute will be good enough -- no, will be better than good enough -- finally doesn't work. I feel as though I have never, never pushed myself to accomplish something that didn't already come naturally to me. In high school I studied less than any of my friends and was first or second in the class in GPA every year. For gods sake, the one thing I indulged in that I felt a bit in over my head with was advanced art classes; I enjoyed doing art but never considered myself a real artist, not like the other girls in my class who worked so hard and wanted to go to art schools. And they gave me the freakin' art prize senior year. Miss Corrigan wanted to send my short stories -- Yugioh fanfiction, might I add, that I had thrown together without any editing in the middle of various nights in between posts on the forum -- to young author competitions. It was supposed to be different in college. In the middle of fall semester we had to write a midterm paper for my Japan and Globalization class. I remember starting mine at ten PM the night before it was due. I remember writing quickly, no outline, minimal editing once I was done. It was fine, I decided, good enough to hand in. A few days later the teacher emailed me and asked if she could make copies for the class as an example of an excellent essay. I won some sort of math prize freshman year without having done anything to deserve it. My senior thesis I wrote, really, in four or five intense bursts over the course of the semester, timed just before drafts were due. I read two books and skimmed a few articles. I tape-recorded people speaking Japanese and wrote about how it was impossible to learn anything important from my data. I summarized the theories from the two books. My professors told me that if they were giving my grade, it would be an A+, the one A+ they give out each year. They gave me one of the senior linguistics prizes. I mean, sheesh.

This week when I was freaking out about elementary school, that was all I did -- freak out. I didn't know how to get past the panic and actually force myself to come up with a solid plan. Instead I relied on the subconscious voice that knew all along that it would go fine, that I had an okay plan and I could improvise. And I did, and it did. But I hadn't accomplished anything, hadn't proven anything to myself except that I got away with something again.

My writing is like this. I have no idea how to write. Sometimes, for some reason, I hit the right zone. And then I write. I don't have the energy, the willpower, the discipline, to force myself into that zone, or to consciously craft a piece of writing when it's not coming to me easily. And that's a skill I long for.

We read in adolescence class about the syndrome of people feeling like frauds; kids who are praised as brilliant and talented and live in fear that someone will find out the truth, that they're just lucky, or something. I don't feel like a fraud. I am smart. There are things I'm good at. Like scraping together linguistics theses in a few last-minute all-night writing bursts that sound eloquent and well-researched. Or remembering math well enough to do well on a test without spending more than a few hours studying. Or even standing in front of a bunch of kids and smiling at them and gauging which activity would be best and how to best introduce it on the spot. Even, occasionally, when the right spirit happens to strike me, writing out a scene that's in my head, or mushing some paint around on a huge canvas. But I am still waiting for someone to ask something of me that will be seriously, intensely hard. Where I'll have to stop relying on whatever innate intelligence I happen to have been born and raised with, and really push myself. Teach myself some new skills. Discipline myself instead of just fretting and waiting for last-minute inspiration.

I am reminded of the only time I ever cried after getting back a test. It was the first test I seriously studied for, and probably the test I've studied hardest for in my life. For two days before my Ancient Civilizations midterm in ninth grade I remember barricading myself in my room. I copied over all my notes from the term, synthesizing them into timelines and summaries of the important points from each civilization. I re-read all the primary source texts. I re-read all my tests and essays systematically. I made more timelines. I read over the copies of the notes. Every few hours I took a break and did ten minutes on the treadmill to clear my head. I suppose I ate and slept, but not more than I had to. Going into the test I was desperately nervous. Coming out of the test I don't remember what I felt. An adrenaline crash, presumably.

Mr. Gajendragadkar, a year or two older than I am right now, told us at the very beginning that he was going to push us. That he was going to make us write essays and short answers about the significance of terms and people and events. That just knowing the dates and names would not cut it. Just understanding the connections wouldn't cut it either, if you didn't know how to express yourself well. Just knowing how to express yourself well wouldn't cut it if you didn't have anything to say. The first quarter I got a B+. He told us he gave B's for good, solid work, and only gave A's for exceptional work that went beyond expectations. Expectations, he said, would go up with time, so if your work didn't actively improve, your grade would go down. After our first essay he picked two to read to the class. Mine and Andrew Husby's. His was better than mine, I thought as I heard them read, with intense embarrassment. Being picked didn't make me feel complacent. History is not one of the things that comes most naturally to me. For the rest of high school I would get through history class by knowing how to write and knowing how to remember things. But I didn't feel like I could get away with that with Mr. Gajendragadkar. I desperately wanted him to know how hard I'd studied, how much I wanted to do well.

We sat in a circle of desks as he handed the midterms back. There had been ten points of extra credit. I remember feeling terrified, my heart racing. He put a blue book face down on my desk, and I peered at it. 106, it said, scrawled in red marker. I wanted to burst into tears right then.

(Andrew Husby got 108, I happened to notice, but I honestly didn't care.)

I remember that moment so vividly because it was really a unique experience. I don't think I've ever felt as proud of any accomplishment. Studying in that way for a test was not something I'd ever had to do before, not something I really knew how to do, but I made myself, I forced myself because I just cared that much about earning Mr. Gajendragadkar's respect.

But that was just some midterm in ninth grade. And apparently, I don't know how to push myself the way he pushed me, and no one around me has been stepping in. Will it be grad school? Or will the bar there be set in such a way that I can slip through it somehow? When will I learn to push myself to do something I'm proud of?

********


I don't want it to sound from these posts like I'm feeling down right now. In fact I've been feeling deeply and serenely happy, as long as I don't really think about Andrew anyway. (When I do my stomach tightens up as if to remind me in warning about the two days when it pretty much refused to welcome any food into itself, and, duly warned, I managed to plunge myself back into whatever denial I'm in...but the truth about Andrew is that there's nothing to do until April and then we'll figure out the best thing to do and we'll do it. No point in already being depressed about something that only might happen...) It's cold, but I bounce between my kotatsu and my bedroom with the heater and electric blanket, so it's not unbearable. I'm listening to incredibly satisfying music right now. Yesterday I spent half an hour greeting, tickling, and twirling a gaggle of elementary school kids, smashed rice paste with a huge mallet, and then got to try a bit of taiko with the kids. Valerie and I finally got to eat at the little okonomiyaki place here, and while I wasn't thrilled with mine (tofu and vegetables), Valerie pronounced it leagues better than the one in Toyooka, which made me feel good. Today in the convenience store I saw Mita-kun, my class clown from the third-year class that I hardly ever get to teach, and a few of his friends, and they kept catching my eye and grinning and laughing in a way that could have been with or could have been at, but with Mita-kun one doesn't really care because his smile is so bright and infectious that even if he's laughing at you, you feel it's worth it to have made him laugh. This weekend Stix is reopening, and the following weekend I'll be in Osaka where I can have real (uh, sorry Stix...) Mexican food. When I complained to Adam that I wished I'd had a chance to look through the writing on his site again before he transferred only a selection of it to the new site, he promptly sent me a link to all the old stuff and asked me to point out any I missed, and when I did, he put one of the ones I suggested on the new site. Remember last spring when I complained to people that even though Adam seemed to enjoy doing math and Japanese stuff with me, I was frustrated because I knew I'd never really be able to talk to him about anything else, such as the writing on his site that I found so powerful? I remember that. Ashley wrote on my facebook wall yesterday just to say hi, and the other day I talked to Liz on IM for the first time in months and months. And back in ninth grade Mr. Gajendragadkar wrote in my yearbook something very much like "You possess an intellectual capacity unlike any I have seen. Yet it is your genuine kindness and care for others that is most beautiful and inspiring to watch." Yikes. Now there's something to try to live up to...

And it's 8:37 and I intend to head straight for my lovely warm blankets, in the hope of dragging myself out of bed tomorrow early enough to shower and actually be on time to school.

The song I'm currently listening (and singing along loudly) to:

強く手を振って あの日の背中に
サヨナラを
告げる現在地、動き出すコンパス
さぁ、行こうか。。。

間違った 旅路の果てに、
正しさを 祈りながら。。。

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Patti and Polar

Today I am thinking about my dogs.

Mark forwarded me an old email he came across that I wrote in the spring of 2006 when Polar was sick. And at dinner today Valerie and I talked about death. About how different deaths had affected us.

In my life, two deaths have made me cry. Tariq, and Polar. When I got the email about Tariq I didn't absorb it for several minutes. I thought I could just go to bed. Then suddenly I was waking up my mom. I started telling her, and as soon as I spoke, I was sobbing. I cried for hours.

I didn't cry when Polar died. But I cried when my dad first told me, on the phone, that it was lung cancer. Because that was when his death became real. And I cried when he coughed and wheezed and I couldn't help him. I cried because I always yelled at him. Because I screamed, cursed at him when he just wouldn't shut up. Because all he wanted was to run around and bark and we'd spent his whole life desperately trying to deny him that pleasure. Because suddenly his life looked miserable, days locked in our kitchen, always so confused when we were angry. Because I was suddenly crushed with guilt. And the guilt came out as tears.

Other deaths I have experienced have not been so sudden and have not come with guilt. Those deaths have not made me cry.

I tell students that I have two dogs in America. I'm not quite sure why it comes out in present tense. Somehow it feels wrong to introduce kids to the existence of two dogs and to their deaths in the same instant. Or maybe there's some sort of psychological release for me in letting them continue to exist, to be alive in someone's mind.

I first started this blog when Polar was sick. Here is what I wrote at the time:

I'm sitting on my couch right now listening to the Vanessa Carlton album I just bought, pausing between each song to listen to see if Polar's coughing. Last time I checked he was lying at the bottom of the basement stairs and breathing all right. It's not the fact that he's going to die soon that hurts most sharply...I think I'm relatively good at accepting the inevitability and importance of death, especially for an eleven-and-a-half-year-old dog. What's painful is when I hear or see him so uncomfortable, and I have visions of him going into a coughing fit, raspy breathing, getting worse and worse, looking at me with that hopeful, pleading, scared expression of his, like just because I'm the Mistress of the Milkbone Dog Treats, a magic being who controls food, water, and dog doors, I should be able to solve this for him, but I can't, until finally he just can't breathe anymore and his last moments are spent terrified and gasping for breath. That's the thought that makes my chest tighten. I suppose that's why people go for euthansia, because then at least his last moments can seem more pleasant. And if he really seemed to be in obvious distress and fear and misery all the time, I think I would be okay with that. But he's not like that yet. I'm just scared of not being able to make him happy and comfortable.

And a few days later...

When I came downstairs and she was barking, I said to her "don't worry girl, he'll be back, I promise." As I spoke the word "promise" I winced a bit, realizing I shouldn't jinx anything, and I almost looked for some wood to knock on, but decided this was too serious for that.

A few seconds later the phone rang. A part of me knew that when I answered it, I would find out my promise was false. Sure enough, he's not coming back.

Now is it silly that what I feel worst about is having lied to Patti?


And last spring, after Patti died:

Patti and I understood each other, and have since the day we got her, the day she walked over to me and jumped up onto my lap when she could have fled down Cedar Avenue. I loved Polar deeply but Patti was mine, my dog. When she first got sick I thought I could never consent to hastening her death. But I was wrong. She was sad and uncomfortable. She'd lived her life. I've already spent the last three and a half years missing her. Now I miss her less. Now she's ended the time that she was destined to be in our house, and I feel happy for her, happy that she loved me, happy that she came back that first day, happy that we understood each other.

Thank you, Patti.


When Polar died I made a compilation CD. The first song on it was Paul's version of Mary Had a Little Lamb. So for Polar and for Patti,

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day; it was against the rules.
It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near.
It waited patiently about 'til Mary did appear.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?" the eager children cried.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know," the teacher did reply.