Eternal Gardens

So my mom said something the other day that I'd never thought of explicitly: she connected my inability to entirely enjoy traveling and sightseeing for extended periods of time to everything else I already know about my extra-sensitive sensory experience: remote-control tickling, feeling nauseous from just knowing that stewed tomatoes are in the vicinity, refusing to eat anything with complicated texture until I was like fifteen, being unable to listen to any discussion of an injury or disease without feeling it somehow in my own body, and so on. I was complaining that I didn't get what was wrong with me, and how I keep just telling myself that if I just chill I ought to be able to spend more than a few hours at a time out and about seeing cool new things without crashing and needing desperately to go back to somewhere familiar and private and curl up with my Rumpole book or a word puzzle or my own daydreams. And she said "well of course, new sensory experience is very intense for you and that's draining; after a little while you need to be somewhere without so many unfamiliar stimuli." Oh...hmm. Well, that might suffer from the common (in my opinion) problem with many scientific "explanations": renaming without actually explaining. It also might just be putting a less negative spin on the same facts: the fact is, judging from the evidence of experience, that it's harder for me to deal with taking in new things and places for a long stretch of time than it is for most other people. Why? Because I'm worse than most people at coping with things? Because I experience things in some way more intensely than most people? Are those two explanations actually different? Is there any way to tell them apart? How could anyone ever know whether it's the experience or the reaction that's different? Does it matter? If the reaction is different does that mean that by definition the experience is different? Is there any other way to measure intensity of experience than by how much it exhausts me emotionally and psychologically?

I would like to know whether other people fight the same feeling of being overwhelmed and saturated and just do so more successfully, or whether in fact if other people could spend a few days sightseeing from my mind, they'd want to curl up at home too.

This isn't to say that I don't love traveling and seeing new places: I do. Just that every time, no matter how much I tell myself to just relax and enjoy it, I end up spending the whole time balanced precariously between joy and stress. Interestingly, the only time this isn't true is traveling with my dad and my brother -- the two people I know who definitely share a very similar hyper-sensitivity. And when we travel, we spend a good deal of time in the car -- a little shell of familiarity no matter where we are -- or just hanging out in the hotel rooms chatting or watching Law and Order or dueling or something. Interesting.

In other news: Today at the supermarket I ran into some of my former third-year girls who were really excited to see me. I also chatted with a fourth-year kid from Kasumi-sho, who initially smiled shyly to me and whispered to her mother "it's Rebecca-sensei!" And then I said hello and I tried to teach her to say "good evening" in English but she was too shy to try, so I just asked her name in Japanese and said I'd see her in school, and then went off to do my shopping. Then when I was standing putting my change into my wallet she came up to me and asked me how to say こんばんは in English, so I told her again "good evening," and she tried saying it, and then we also practiced "good morning" and "good afternoon" -- although that one was too hard for her to say. And then when she left to go back over to her mom she said "good morning!" and then realized that wasn't quite right and started giggling and said "uh...see you!" and ran off. It was really sweet.

I love my first-year class. Something about those green name tags gives good vibes; I loved the third-year class that just graduated and I love their replacements almost as much. I'm certain that leaving after this year is the right decision, but I see an alternate universe where I stay here and teach these kids for the next three years and really get to know them and be part of their lives. As is, I think I'll have only four or five more classes with them, if that, given my weeks at elementary schools and two weeks of vacation. There are a bunch of them who actually like Yugioh and come up to me after class to ask me about my cards. ^_^ Today one boy asked me if I had cards and I said I did, but then felt the need to add "but uh, they're not that strong..." and he cracked up. And then started saying something in fast Japanese about how maybe if I met little Yugi when Yami-Yugi (as he called him) was resting and just had a regular duel with little Yugi, maybe I could win. (At least, I think that's what he was saying...?) And another girl started jabbering to me after class about whether it was okay that she had Japanese cards, and I think she said she'd bring them and show me, which is uh, probably against the rules, but...I can pretend not to know that lol. Nishimura-sensei was showing me some of the little posters the kids made for their classroom walls (nothing to do with English class) about greetings (our school motto, if you recall, is "Best greetings in all of Japan!"), and one kid had drawn a picture of Atem dueling and looking really intense, with some slogan about doing proper greetings written down the side. "I don't get what this has to do with greetings..." Nishimura-sensei commented. It was, in fact, quite a good drawing of Atem. Some of the boys asked me my strongest cards and I found I could barely remember any of my cards off the top of my head lol, at least any that they might have heard of (sorry Ancient Elf...). The best I could do was to say I had one Blue-Eyes. Looking through my deck now I don't see much else I could have told them...Gemini Elf? Chaos Command Magician? I have Harpie Ladies in my deck, but not legitimate ones: pre-Konami 1800ATK version. Other than that I don't have any cards that play a big part in the show, especially post-Duelist Kingdom (I do have a Magician of Faith and Mystical Elf). And the fad now is for these themed decks, which I don't have at all. Still, my deck isn't that bad. Of course, if you took out all the cards that aren't officially allowed in tournaments, it would become much weaker. :-/

I miss Yugioh -- does it show?

So today was a good day. And now, when this song finishes, I shall go attempt to make an orange lemon cake. If that comes out well, it will be an even better day.

Blocking on relevant lyrics, so let's play the "put my iTunes on shuffle and use lyrics from the first song it comes up with" game...Aha, Paul McCartney. But this is a happy love song...*pouts* Oh well, it's beautiful anyway:

I stood inside Egyptian temples,
I looked into eternal gardens;
Lay on the shores of distant islands, listening
To the seabirds' song of joy...

Oh, I owe it all
To you, you make me happy.
Oh, I owe it all to you...

Sigh.