現在地

Today while the students were copying grammar notes and the Japanese translation down in their notebooks and I was wandering up and down the aisles entertaining myself by observing the left-handed kids writing in Japanese (seriously, it fascinates me, for no good reason...) and playing with a couple of magnets I'd grabbed off the teacher's cart, I glanced out the window and noticed a group of high school guys on their bikes congregated in the driveway, peering into the gym. (Uh, that sounds a little sketchy when I put it like that, but it wasn't really meant to lol.) Anyway, I kept wandering and next time I circled around to the window they were still there. Having nothing else to do, I watched them absently for a minute, vaguely wondering what they were doing loitering around the middle school. After a moment I realized that a few of them were staring up toward the classroom windows, and after another moment they all were. At the very window I was standing at, in fact. As soon as I realized this one of them began to wave, and then a couple others joined in. Still not certain it was me they were waving at, I returned the waves rather timidly, and as soon as I did they all laughed and waved more enthusiastically. I left the window and went back to walking around the classroom, and next time I came to the window they'd gone.

I'm not sure exactly what brand of vanity or desire for attention is behind this, but I am definitely going to miss being someone that people notice standing at a window three stories up and begin waving to.

Tuesday I gave Risako a hexaflexagon and got the best reaction I've ever gotten from giving anyone anything. She acted like I'd given her the deed to a private tropical island full of gold mines and adorable puppies. She gave me two big hugs, and promised to give me a card for my birthday, and then today when I saw her she thanked me again with almost just as much enthusiasm. Today in the elective third-year class, I came armed with hexaflexagons for Masashi and Takashi, my ambidextrous twins. I was doing warm-up questions, and when I asked "What is the date today?" as the first question, Masashi (the left-handed one) grinned and said "My birthday...", which was cute, but didn't actually answer the question. My scheme was to leave one of them for last and then ask "When is your birthday?" Which meant that poor Masashi got passed over a couple of times when he was in fact the first to raise his hand, and each time he gave me a puzzled expression. Finally he was the last one left and I asked when his birthday was, and he said "February twelfth." He could have gotten away with "today". Anyway, I gave him his hexaflexagon, and one to Takashi, who hadn't really earned it because it was Masashi who wrote me a note and told me when his birthday is...heh. But I'm not that mean. Anyway, they weren't as effusive as Risako -- it would have been a bit awkward if they had been. But they were quite impressed with the technology, as everyone I've given one has been. Takashi managed to get his all tangled in a way that took me a couple minutes to fix, which everyone thought was quite amusing. And when I first handed it to Masashi, his first impulse was to try to sort of open it by forcing it apart, which caused me to yelp and pull it back out of his hands, which also made everyone laugh.

Interestingly, I had a brief moment of panic a few minutes after I'd given them out, because I realized that I hadn't managed to explicitly confirm which twin was which before giving them. It had been my plan to make sure before handing them over that I didn't give them to the wrong one, but then I just plain forgot, and just acted on an assumption that the one sitting in front was Masashi. I think this assumption came partly from a vague memory of the seating arrangements from last time, but I also feel like it just felt obvious to me from slight differences in their affect, and that pleases me. Since Masashi cut his hair (very annoying of him), they really look almost identical, so it's kind of cool to feel I can tell them apart without handing them a pen and making them write something.

I also got the most ambitious answer to "what are you going to do this weekend?" that I've yet gotten, namely "I am going to go to the eye doctor," from Takashi. At least, I think he was trying to say eye doctor...

Sigh, I will miss my third-years...

Tonight I went to the beach. They're not turning on the lights by the path, because it's winter I guess, so it was quite dark sitting by the water. Incredibly beautiful. I stayed until it got just a bit too chilly.

I will miss Kasumi.

I think I'm making the right decisions. But until now I haven't felt like I've passed up a lot of paths in my life that were real losses. It was the plan all along to go to school, to go to high school, to go to college. I could have gone to PDS, sure, but I don't lie awake at night wondering what beautiful things lay down that road that I missed out on. I could have gone to a different college, but I felt so at home at Swarthmore as soon as I set foot there that I never spent much time fretting about opportunities missed at other schools. Coming to Japan after graduation was such a clearly perfect thing: a language I'd studied, a culture I wanted to learn about, a chance to teach in real classrooms. So until now, any path I've rejected has been completely vague, hypothetical, and rejected in favor of something that felt absolutely right.

Now I'm learning what it feels like to know that I'm walking one path while down another lie more evening walks along the shore of the Sea of Japan, more elementary school students waving at me as I drive along and yelling "I am hungry!!" (the only English they knew?), more train rides through the countryside down to Kobe, more students writing "twenth-four" as the ordinal number for "twenty-four"...

But just because a path is alluring doesn't mean it's the right one.

Right?

Sometimes the only choice is to let go of something you know would be amazing in a way that nothing else in your life quite is. Sometimes amazing isn't enough. Sometimes you just can't make something into more than it is. Maybe that would destroy it. Maybe what you dream of doesn't actually exist, can't actually exist. Maybe the path is only beautiful and alluring when peered down, but you'd discover if you took just one step that you were standing on nothing, and you could never go back.


.........


Sorry, back to the previous topic: I handed in my (non-)re-contracting form last week. So that decision is made. And I do think it's the right one. But I'll come back and visit you, Kasumi. Part of me will always live here.

One of my current favorite songs is surprisingly on point (oh hmm, it looks like I used lyrics from this song a few posts ago, but they're more relevant here, so oh well):

これが僕の望んだ世界だ
そして今も歩き続ける
不器用な 旅路の果てに
正しさを祈りながら。。。

This is the world I chose,
And even now I'll keep walking,
To this clumsy journey's end,
Praying that it's right...