Thursday, May 28, 2009

Serious Plobrems

Stealing these from the facebook note of another ALT -- the opening paragraphs of reports that her first-year high school students wrote, in which they were supposed to explain the problems of a given country. #9 is definitely my favorite. Enjoy...

1. Because of exprosion of population and food ploblem. So many people is a food critic and people is in danger of a food poison. By the way, Chaina is take part global warming.

2. In the Rpepulic of Iraq there is a serious problem in that country. To kill American solider in the US and Iraq war and to destroy America tank, the land mine was put. So people who were walking still outside are dead with step on it. I was depress it very much when I learned it.

3. In Africa, they speak English and other languages. They have an Africa ploblem

4. In Jordan, people use the Arabian language. There is a serious problem in that country. Because of a finance develop, there were made a difference an income. So many people lose theirs job. No less than thirty percent people were inferior to usually. I think that everyone can get a job when I learned that.

5. In Papua New Ginea, people use English and local languages. There is a serious plobrem in that country. Because of be stricken with malaria, a lot of late people. A medical istitution a patient about 3 over 1 malaria, well. This place a death cause as pneumonia be next the secondary occupy. This place people is a disease by inoculation.

6. In china, people use Chinese and English languages. There is a serious problem in that country. Because of poor and there no worker, gave birth to a lot of children to make my child a worker. So the population of china is the best in the world.

7. In Tuvalu, people use Tuvalu languages and some use Kiribati languages. Tuvalu of official language is English but don’t use everyday conversation. There is a serious problem in that country. Because of the global warming, doing rise a sea level. Also, moving land subsidence and occurring tidal wave. So their country is run out near the future. Also most people can’t drink water.

8. In Isreal, people use Arabia language and Hebrew. There is a serious problem in that country. It’s a civil war by the difference between arab people and jews racial discriminations and the religion. Each religion is believed, using each language in isreal by there are two kinds of people. I feel sad the fact.

9. In Japan, people use Japanese and a little english. I like Japan. I will live in Japan when I am dead. But old people continue to increase in Japan. It is hard to solve this problem. But I will be old man in the future. I’m afraid of hearing “you are problem”. I can’t say anything them.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

雨のち晴れ

Something clicked just now, and I want to record it, in case it un-clicks again at some point. I was talking to Andrew and having the same conversation we have every time our conversation goes at all beyond "hey, how are you?" "oh, I'm fine, studying for chem, how are you?" "I'm okay, trying to make lesson plans for elementary" "ah, okay"...and so on. Namely the should we really be trying to stay friends, or does that just perpetuate the pain and awkwardness unnecessarily? conversation. And I was in the middle of saying the same things: I don't know, I don't know, it hurts to talk to you but I'm afraid it would hurt even more just to drop out of your life... And he was saying the same things: I want to be friends but I feel like it just hurts you, I think distance might be good for you... And I was crying, as I am wont to do, and apologizing for turning every conversation with him into this one, and saying that if he wanted me to stop trying to talk to him so he didn't have to deal with it that was okay, and not really meaning it, and feeling like there was no way out of this...

And then, something changed. For no apparent reason, and in a split second: it felt different. Like I had a moment, a flash, just a flash, of escaping all the words and scripts and constructs, even all the fear and insecurity and regret and loss; a moment where I came close to actually understanding whatever was behind all the silliness I used to spew a few years ago about soul gardens and connections and the power and uniqueness of the relationship between each two people. Well, I'm not trying to make it sound like some grand spiritual epiphany. But suddenly it seemed ridiculous to be getting so tangled. The truth is simple: I'm terrified that I'll never find the right person to really be together with, have a family with...I'm scared no one will ever choose me for that role, and Andrew reminds me of that fear because I thought he might choose me, and he hasn't. But really, that fear, that pain, is independent of him. And I love him. There are only going to be so many people in my life that I can love deeply, comfortably, completely, and damned if I'm gonna throw one away just because of my insecurities about my future. Good friends are exactly what I need to help with that insecurity.

I don't know if this will last, but right now I feel good. Still too scared about the future to really think about it without feeling crushed, but somehow, at the moment, I've separated that feeling from Andrew, and re-cast him as someone who can help support and advise and listen and snuggle me when I need it.

Does that mean I just let go of him?

I think it means I let go of something. But something that wasn't really about him. And now maybe, just maybe, if I can keep this feeling, I'll be ready to start being a real friend again.

炸裂する痛みが 駆けぬけるだけの風ならば、
雨のち晴れを待とう。。。

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Blairstown

Last night, lying in bed before falling asleep, while thinking about completely unrelated things, I had a sudden, vivid, powerfully intense image burst into my mind, and with it one of the sharpest pangs of sadness and nostalgia that I have ever experienced:

Turning right onto the gravel drive, following as it curves down the hill past the little basketball court, past Cabin 6 tucked back to the left, around the wash house and toward the lake; the lawns dotted with people setting up tents, lugging sleeping bags into the cabins, little kids chasing each other and laughing, older kids clumped together talking in low voices...

I may have thought, in some vague way, of Blairstown at some point in the past several years, but nothing even close to this visceral, detailed, powerful flood of feelings: that first view of the lake, the mingled voices in the air, the feel of pulling the dark red sweatshirt with the frayed cuffs that I always wore over my head and running down the steps of the cabin, the excitement of finding each of my friends as they arrive, comparing the lists in our folders to see who's in the same Adventure Group, the same carpools...it came so suddenly, seemingly from nowhere. I had been thinking about nothing I can connect to Blairstown, to PFS, to camping. At the time I was vaguely confused; I let the images and the sadness flood me for a minute, then gradually it ebbed, I went back to my other daydreams, and finally fell asleep.

But this morning I logged onto facebook and there, a little ways down my newsfeed, was the new status of "Pfs's Pfs page": Blairstown.

Oh -- right. It's late May. They're heading to Blairstown this week. So how random was my sudden flash of nostalgia, really?

PFS lyrics:

I was born in the path of the winter wind,
And raised where the mountains are old.
The springtime waters came dancing down,
And I remember the tales they told.
The whistling ways of my younger days
Too quickly have faded on by,
But all of their memories linger on,
Like the light in a fading sky...

River, take me along
In your sunshine, sing me your song,
Ever moving, and winding and free,
You rolling old river, you changing old river,
Let's you and me river...
Run down to the sea.

Friday, May 15, 2009

6666

So while I was sitting in the parking lot of the ダイソー waiting for Yumi to show up, a small gray van drove down the driveway in front of me. Its license plate read 66・66, which caught my attention, so I glanced at the driver, and found him to be a young man with long-ish hair tinted orange. He swept elegantly into a space by the "recycle store" (not quite sure what that is?), and got out, so I could see that he was wearing a sleeveless black shirt and really baggy off-white cargo pants. I glanced back at that store every couple minutes and finally caught him coming out -- he didn't appear to have bought anything. He got back in the car and drove away.

So what? There is actually no point to this anecdote except that I decided I'd like to remember him. Something about him stood out as compellingly graceful and attractive. Of course I will never see him again, never talk to him, never know the first thing about him; and I'm fine with that. But this way his existence in my life won't have been completely transient.

Monday, May 11, 2009

沼田見

You hear about the sakura blossoms; you hear about the viewing of the fall leaves, and the snow festivals up in Hokkaido. No one talks about how, just as the last sakura blossoms are falling, all the rice paddies suddenly become shimmering sheets of water reflecting the mountains and the sky, so that space seems to stretch out in extra dimensions as you drive along the same roads you've driven for eight months. I pretty much couldn't be less of an expert about how the cultivation of rice works; but I'm assuming that it's some step in the process that causes everyone to simultaneously flood their fields like this. I want to be a passenger instead of a driver on the roads that cut the corner of Toyooka and head toward Kinosaki, so that I can properly gawk at these odd gridded lakes that will be gone, I assume, in a week or two. Maybe one of these days I will actually remember my camera and find somewhere to pull over. But in case I don't, I wanted to mention it here so I don't forget.

I think I've talked about liking reflections because of the way they make me contemplate the path of the light. I don't remember mentioning the other reason: the way they can open up the space, create the illusion of the infinite. It makes such a difference to the landscape to have the sky reflected in all the fields, to have the illusion of a whole alternate, slightly dulled and distorted and rippled, upside-down version of the world stretching out beneath us. Because they are so shallow and smooth, the rice paddies actually reflect the scenery like mirrors in a way that no lake I've ever seen does. It's incredible, and there are (as far as I know) no "flooded rice paddy viewing" festivals. I suppose because it's man-made, a practical and necessary part of farming, and not some sort of mystical gift of nature. But I think it's become one of my favorite things about life here; and all the more so because it's so unheralded.

I also -- and I don't know if I can phrase this right -- find something powerful in the temporary existence of these reflections. Like just for a few weeks (again, I am not an expert about rice fields: for all I know they'll be flooded for a couple months. I can really only vouch that they weren't all fall and winter...), these mountains get to see themselves in the mirror, get to have these almost-twin versions of themselves completing the symmetry, but then they will be gone, and then the mountains will simply rise from green fields. Right, I don't think I phrased it well. But the changing nature of it seems to make it more beautiful, somehow. Or like, how it makes the vague question float through my mind of whether the reflections only come into existence when the rice fields are flooded, or whether in some abstract sense (and this is, I'll admit, more how it feels to me) they are always there but hidden, and it's like the water erases the earth that was blocking them so we can see down into this other endless world. Well -- of course that's complete bull. But does it matter that it's complete bull? I think it's an interesting image and in a way it's just as true as anything else.

I can't think of any relevant lyrics (probably because I have an irrelevant song stuck in my head); and I need to go to sleep (like, an hour ago...), so, 歌詞なしにしよう。 Instead have a few pictures that people who remembered their cameras apparently took at some point. ^_^;;

Friday, May 08, 2009

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.