Monday, July 20, 2009

To break

Almost everything in my life turns into a good memory.

Memories of old fights, injuries, disappointments, fears, frustrations -- I wouldn't erase them. When I think back, now, on dislocating my knee, on sitting in the computer lounge in Hallowell basement at three in the morning crying on the phone, on driving along Georges Road searching desperately for Patti the night we got her, on the surges of pure pain and jealousy that overwhelmed me whenever Max would flirt with Laura S., on the sinking dread in my stomach sitting in class knowing I was about to have to give a presentation I'd barely prepared for, on sitting in the animal hospital in the middle of the night watching infomercials while the doctors examined Polar...when I think back on those things, it feels right; they are part of the experience of living -- albeit a painful part -- and I can remember them now and appreciate the power and importance of feeling things. A whole range of things. Not just the good things.

But,

I remember a day in third grade, in the Meeting Room, just before Morning Gathering. It was time to turn the light out for a few moments of silence, and I happened to be sitting right next to the switch. So I reached up for it. Richard saw me, and quickly leaned over and said, gruffly but not really unkindly, "Let a teacher do that."

This memory remained, for years and years and years, too painful to think of without cringing and having a small dip in my mood.

The feeling of misunderstanding sticks in my mind. I was just trying to be helpful! Something about his tone made me feel that he saw me as trying, somehow, to cause trouble, when I wasn't. And I had no recourse to explain. I hate, hate, hate misunderstanding. I will refrain from saying anything at all if I feel there is any risk that I didn't understand the question or topic right. I begged my dad to let us show up just a little bit later for spring training games, because if we were there so early that no one else was around, someone who saw us might mistake us for people with some special connection to the team, rather than just random fans. When I get tests back I feel a compulsion to explain to the teacher exactly why I made any errors I made, so that he or she doesn't misunderstand my thought processes somehow. I can't stand the feeling that there might be assumptions made about me that are false, and perhaps because of this, if I'm ever caught making assumptions about a situation that are false, it will keep me up at night with a sinking, nauseous feeling. Even if it's completely trivial.

Related but not exactly the same is how much I hate being wrong when I acted like I believed I was right. I don't mind not knowing something, but I will be deeply embarrassed if something that I claim to know turns out to be wrong. This is significantly less true than it used to be -- when I played the Jeopardy! computer game with my dad in middle school, I would routinely fail to answer questions that in fact I had known, because the idea of giving a guess that turned out to be wrong was too horrible. ("Yikes, how could you have thought that? What kind of moron are you?" So much better to at least be correct about my ignorance...) At this point I can usually brush of getting factual details wrong, or even being proven wrong about a math problem or something. This is a healthy development. But the old embarrassment will still surface occasionally.

And I still hate misunderstanding. Since I have been lucky enough to avoid ever experiencing real tragedy directly, the only memories I can think of that are unpleasant to remember even after a long time are memories of misunderstanding.

In other news: If anyone actually clicks on the links along the side of this blog ever, they might be puzzled as to why one of the links is to something about auto loans. Well puzzle no longer, for I shall enlighten you: it used to be a link to a site called 1000 Ridiculous Tragedies, which was awesome. But the domain expired in February, and I was incredibly, incredibly sad, since I had specifically put off reading most of the stories on it so as not to run out. So this morning I was depressed. Adam, trying to help me find mindless things to read to distract from my mood, suggested graphjam, but instead of cheering me up this served to remind me that 1000 Ridiculous Tragedies had had a section of silly charts and graphs, which I would never get to see again. To which Adam responded "is it not archived at archive.org?" To which, after a couple minutes of investigation, I responded ".... !!!"

So yes: it is archived. ...Mostly. There are a handful of stories that seem to be randomly missing. And, perhaps ironically, the majority of the charts and graphs aren't there. But I cared much more about the stories. And now almost all of them are saved onto my computer, for me to read at my leisure. And the link on the right shall be updated.

Yay!

This goes on the list of things that have made me incredibly happy recently, along with getting to tell one of my first-year classes what prime numbers are, and buying a yukata, and doing skip-change along a crowded street in the pouring rain.

My life right now is composed of things that make me incredibly happy and things that make me want to curl up and cry.

Here is a quote I liked from one of the stories I had thought I'd never get to read:

She filled me with water, and I can see in every direction. I’ve never been in this room before, either. It’s white all around, like milk, and everything looks soft. She must care to put me in here, even the floor is covered with a kind of shaggy white fluff. I’ll never fall and break in here. I’m on the night table, too, so it’s not far to the ground.

It might be kind of wonderful to break. But it is frightening, too, and I’m glad this room is so soft and safe.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

果敢無く散る

Yesterday Andrew and I were talking about the feeling of emptiness and worthlessness and whether it could ever go away. He talked about becoming a doctor as a goal he really feels passionate about, and I tried to think if I had any such goal. Right now I think I want to teach English. And maybe if I do that for a long time, if I meet tons of people and see each of their stories, maybe someday, eventually, I'll be able to look back and feel like maybe I made some sort of positive impact....but right now, I feel as though I'm always going to wonder if it's really worth it, to feel like if I weren't doing whatever I'm doing, someone else would be, and would quite possibly be doing it better -- so I'm unnecessary at best and in the way at worst. So what is my goal, then?

This is embarrassing, because it's so unoriginal, and I'm sure it comes from some sort of genetic code, and in many ways it's incredibly selfish -- but if I project forward ten or twenty years, what I want, what I really feel I most want, is children. So much so that as soon as I typed this to Andrew I started crying. Score one for evolution, I guess. And maybe I'll change my mind on this, especially if I never find someone to be with, but as a purely selfish desire, I want to give birth, not just raise children. I've known that I wanted to have kids someday pretty much since I can remember, but the desire has grown so much more intense recently. Especially now that the trajectory I am currently on is not leading there.

My mom freaks out when I say I want children, but don't worry Mom -- I'm not trying to say that I'm desperate to get pregnant any time very soon, or that I'm going to start going after guys based on how likely I think they are to agree to have kids, rather than how much I really love them. Just....it's something I want, someday. Someday.

This week every day is my last day. Every day I have to make a little お別れのあいさつ speech, and tell the kids to work hard at English and come to America someday so we can meet there. And wave goodbye to them saying "See you again!" That's 建前 -- the chances that I'll see these kids again are marginal at best. Although I suppose that if I ever do make it back to this area for a summer within the next four or five years, most of the younger ones will still be around, so there's a chance. Whether they'll remember me is another question. Today I said goodbye to the six kindergarten kids at Shibayama. I'd only played with them twice, but their faces all light up so brightly when they see me, and they wave and run over and grab my hands and say レベッカ先生 or べベッカ先生 or べブレッカ先生 or some such approximation of my name so excitedly, like they've spent the past two weeks just waiting for me to show back up. Will they grow up with any memories of me at all?

I've been meaning to post this here but I keep forgetting -- just a random line I wrote in my notebook one day when I was musing about the importance we place on love being eternal. The line was as follows:

Love can stretch infinitely in dimensions other than time.

Well, initial reviews of this as a little bit of writing were not good, but that's okay -- I didn't intend for it to be brilliant writing. But I do think it's a concept that we sometimes forget to question. Most of the language used to talk about the deepest possible love expresses the idea of infinite time, with the unspoken but powerful implication that if love ever fades, ends, proves finite in time, then it was by definition not the deepest, truest, most powerful sort of love. Well, I think that love that lasts a whole lifetime can be great, if it's possible; I'm not trying to devalue that, but I don't think we should be made to feel that a love was lacking, finite, shallow, fragile, just because it changes through time. That's all I meant to be expressing. I don't know if that's deep but it is important.

Maybe an interaction can be meaningful even if it doesn't create a lasting memory? Maybe?

But if you believe in the sort of afterlife envisioned by John McCutcheon and Yu-Gi-Oh (among others), then afterlife is memory, the memories you leave with people.

Maybe part of me believes afterlife can be children. Maybe that's part of why it's a selfish desire.

Yesterday was (sort of) 七夕, Tanabata, a night on which you're supposed to be able to make a wish to the stars. Last night also contained (if you allow twelve hour time) the moment labeled 12:34:56 7/8/9. This must be the moment at which the Gods of 12:34 are at their most potent. All together, I figure last night was one of the best opportunities of my lifetime to make a serious wish.

But I couldn't think of the right wish. Nothing that wasn't too vague to be reasonable: "I want to be happy" doesn't feel like a fair wish to me, if I don't even know what it means.

I hope I can trust the Gods to have heard the right wish from my confused mind.

Perhaps they'll just give up and improve my penmanship.

Right now almost everything I see or hear makes me feel like crying. Not out of sadness. Just from an overflowing swell of contradiction and poignancy. This happens to me during transitions. Everything is shimmering with more power than I usually bother to notice.

めいちゃん、ひなちゃん、きわこちゃん、なずなちゃん、ひろとくん、ひろゆきくん、あなた達のことをいつまでも忘れたくない。

急ぎ 廻れ、 砕けても 
果敢無く散るが故にも
今を待たずに
まわれ、 Hurry merry-go-round
生き溺れても 
また春に会いましょう
春に会いましょう。。。

Saturday, July 04, 2009

さびしさ

So while we were walking around Harborland in Kobe, Eric commented that it's always so much nicer to just wander around places and explore when you have company. Perhaps in retrospect it was somewhat rude of me, but my initial reaction was to disagree. When I'm exploring somewhere new, or am at a sculpture park or museum or zoo or somewhere, I have often felt that I wanted desperately to be left alone, to be able to wander at precisely my own pace, pause when I wanted, hurry when I wanted, take every detour I wanted, watch all the people around me without distraction, and just feel completely free. I've gotten, perhaps, slightly better than I used to be at claiming that freedom for myself even when I'm with friends, and not letting myself get too tangled in the stress of trying to coordinate each moment to best meet everyone's desires. But still, something about the process of first exploring somewhere, of taking it in, getting to know it, feels deeply personal, something I can only do properly when I'm alone.

Today as I was driving to Toyooka, the sun was beginning to set over the mountains behind a sky of marbled, scattered high clouds; mist hung over the dark green mountains and reflected the fading sunlight and so the air and sky seemed to shimmer a sort of soft silvery orange. It was breathtaking and crushingly lonely. And I felt sharply as I drove along how I've felt reluctant all year to do more exploring, to take little road trips, to go out and watch the sunset, to seek out more new places, because the thought of doing it alone is too dauntingly sad.

Don't those two paragraphs contradict each other? I'm trying to understand why they don't. I suppose all my pleasant memories of exploring somewhere on my own -- the art museums in DC, the sculpture park in Seattle, Sannomiya back in the fall -- were cases in which I was there with other people, but broke off from them for a couple hours. Is that the difference? Does the loneliness come from setting off by myself and returning to my house alone, without anyone to meet back up with and compare our impressions? Or does it just depend on my exact mood? I don't know. Maybe they just are contradictory. Sometimes contradictory things are both true.

Let's have some lyrics today:

状況はどうだい
居ない君に尋ねる
僕らの距離を 声は泳ぎきれるかい?

忘れたのは 温もりさ
少しずつ冷えていった
どんなふうに夜を過ごしたら
思い出せるのかなぁ?

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Comforting

Ooookay so, for lack of any other inspiration, I have regressed to middle school again...sort of. Well, in choosing my narrator anyway -- he hasn't been the protagonist of any of my stories in a long time, heh. Anyway, really random but hey, it's something. ^_^;;


* * * * * * * *



She needs me.

I heard them talking, earlier, heard the voices through the old walls. I couldn't catch everything but they were on the phone with her, and then whispering to each other in worried voices. I heard her name. And doctor. Medicine. Hospital. They don't know I'm listening; they forget about me. But I heard.

Now it's quiet, the faded pink curtain just beginning to glow with new sunlight. I know the world is round; I know because I've seen the globe downstairs. I know this same sunlight is fading from where she is right now, she's that far. That far, but I also know she's scared. I know that without a doubt, I feel it. Long ago she fixed me at seven years old and so seven years old I stay, as she's passed by fourteen, twenty-one...long ago, when she gave me math quizzes I could never quite figure out, and laughed as she explained the answers for the fifth time. Well I still can't add. There's a lot about the world I don't know. But I understand things that no one with all those neurons firing off like crazy inside their head confusing them could ever figure out. I know how she feels when there's no one to take care of her, take control, tell her it's okay, everything will be okay. When she loses all those years of experiencing the world and lets herself be suffocated by helplessness. When she just needs to be a child again.

Hospital. That time, too, I heard the low voices outside the dormitory before I really understood what was happening. Heard the sirens approaching, then silence, then the sirens fading into the distance. Finally I realized it was her name they were all whispering, the clumps of girls who drifted in and out of the room changing clothes, gathering their music binders. And then I could feel her, in the ambulance, crying out, wheeled into a hospital for the first time since she was born. I saw in the memories of the other girls that leg in a shape no leg should be, felt them shudder at the image. She needed me then. But I could do nothing but lie there, hidden inside the sleeping bag out of her guilty shame for having me with her, when she was almost twice my age. So young. And I could do nothing.

Until suddenly, the sleeping bag pulled back, and a rough hand grabbed me. I knew this man -- I knew how she saw him, at least. A new teacher, newcomer to her school, her community, her home. A man who didn't know his place, didn't properly understand that he would never belong here the way she did. He gripped me firmly around the neck as he carried me outside, to a car, flung me on the seat next to him. I watched the unfamiliar Delaware twilight flash by out the window as we drove quickly away from the camp. Towards her.

The resentment that flickered beneath the tears in her eyes when the teacher walked in didn't last long enough for anyone but me to catch. When she saw me she whimpered, with no pretense of shame, and reached out her hands. I felt her silent apology as she held me -- to him, to me. And then I felt nothing but pure, undiluted gratitude.

She needs me now too, but I've seen the globe: she's halfway across the world. No one can carry me to her this time. So I'll stay here in her room, listening, waiting -- I have no choice. But I hope someone reminds her, the way that teacher did so long ago, that it's okay to feel helpless, sometimes. It's okay just to need to be comforted.

There's a lot about the world I don't know. But this is something I know for certain:

It's okay.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

続ける意味

Three things.

Firstly: Yay yay yay -- in fact, perhaps this calls for a randomly generated obscure interjection: voetsek!! Uhh yeah no idea what that means, but let's assume it means "yay!". Anyway: I'm sure this is more exciting to me than it is to whoever is reading this, but today after school as I was leaving I glanced down the hallway, and some girls from the ping-pong team were clustered near the student entrance, and one of them (a first-year girl I think) was reading the poster of English tongue twisters I put up on Monday! This makes me happy. Maybe I'll actually be motivated to make something else in the next couple weeks. ^_^

Secondly: I wrote a poem. But, posting poems is embarrassing, soooo here's a Babelfish version. As always, this was edited from the translation I was given using only backspace, enter, and changes of capitalization.

All right.
Remove the remainder.
The pupil of green, statistic of time
wasteful, foolish, excessive,
don't you think?
It is congested, separated.
All sunsets are obstructed from you.
The only flower of the world is her smile.
It is complete.
Right?

Wrong.
She does not complete me.
But without she, laughter is the sky,
the world meaningless
each victory loneliness
each sunset excessive.
She keeps perplexity together;
She is infinity, the asymptote
you reach.


Yeah it's not great. Neither is the original. But hey, I wrote something! Zounds!

Thirdly: I just watched the unedited interview with Mike Huckabee from the Daily Show a couple weeks ago...and it made me want to scream. In particular, it made me want to scream the following rant:

Look. Abortion is a damn complicated issue, I get that. I don't want to sound like I think that I alone of everyone in the world have figured out the correct answer to this question. But every time I hear people talking about abortion I have this intense, suffocating feeling that, even more than with many other "political" issues, the framing of the debate is completely wrong and designed to lead nowhere. As Jon Stewart points out in the interview, the rhetoric seems to be trying to lead us to believe that anyone who isn't "pro-life" is anti-life, and just doesn't really see what the big deal about abortion is -- after all, it's just a fetus, right? The argument is often framed like if you believe that aborting a pregnancy is a bad thing, you will logically be in favor of making abortions illegal.

Well yes, on some abstract level that is logical, perhaps, but the world isn't on some abstract level. This is reality here, and the reality is that if your ultimate goal is to minimize the number of abortions, debating the legality of the procedure is not necessarily the most effective place to start. And anyone whose goal is not to minimize the number of abortions -- no offense -- has issues. I'm not saying the moral arguments aren't powerful and maybe important, and if people want to spend their free time sitting around trying to convince each other that "life" begins at such-and-such a point, or giving speeches about the sovereignty of a woman's body, then fine. But at some point, it seems that people ought to get together and give some thought to how to actually best reduce the number of abortions, and how to make sure that those that are performed are clean, safe, and don't put the woman at extra risk. (Opinions may differ on that last point I guess -- for someone who strongly believes that abortion is akin to murder, the health of someone who chooses to have one might not be a huge consideration.) And I am no expert -- I don't have statistics readily available to quote, I haven't done extensive research into the matter -- but it feels pretty obvious to me that to reduce the number of abortions, some good steps would be better sexual education, more readily available birth control options, and more support for mothers who do go through with the pregnancy, such as affordable daycare or a good adoption system (hey, here's a thought, perhaps there are some gay couples out there wishing they had a child to raise...).

Yes, those things take time, effort, and money, and even worse, involve admitting that teenagers are going to have sex no matter what you try to tell them. But By simply making abortions legal without working to address any of the underlying reasons that so many people feel the need for an abortion, you're just creating unhappy and potentially dangerous situations.

I am in favor of legal abortions. I am also in favor of sex ed that teaches kids how to think about sex in a mature way, how to make their own decisions about it, how to turn it down, and how to have it and enjoy it without a high risk of pregnancy. I am in favor of gradually working to diminish the aura of shame that surrounds anything sexual, so that perhaps when accidental pregnancies do happen they will be less likely to lead to tension, anger, and guilt. Of course, there are plenty of people who would tell me that better sex ed and easier access to birth control are not viable solutions because teenagers should not be having sex, period. If that becomes the argument, then I'm happy to dig in and disagree and stand up for my opinion. But to me, these questions are separate from the big moral/spiritual questions about what constitutes life, whether fetuses have souls, whether the government has a right to ask a woman to support another life with her own body. I don't know those answers. I have opinions, but I think people can reasonably disagree. But while we're disagreeing, I wish we'd focus on a more constructive debate about what's actually practical, what might actually work.

Okay. Rant over. Time for dinner. ^_^ Oh, but here are some lyrics, courtesy of BUMP OF CHICKEN (no connection, the song just happens to be in my head):

大切な人に歌いたい
聴こえているのかも 分からない
だから、せめて、続けたい
続ける意味さえ 分からない