breaking words

In these past few weeks of silence, those of you who know me the best or who have known me the longest were probably worried. It seems that in the past I have tended to fall silent during very strange periods in my life, and this is no exception. However, the silence that has filled this space has nothing to do with a lack of interesting things going on in my life or lack if interest in sharing them, but instead with something else. I guess, sometimes I do not know how to branch the gap that exists between my intellectual discussions and my daily journal. While they both have their own merits, I have found that in greatly pushing myself to do the one, I slowly cease to do the other, not only in my actual writing, but also in my thought process. I can become so completely overwhelmed in work, but just the same, I can get so enthralled by life that I cease to take the time to reflect upon it, or apply what I am learning in my classes to the life that I live outside of William and Mary, or for the time being, the East Asia Center. In recognizing this failure on my part to participate in both, I have taken some time off to attempt to better orient myself to my surroundings here in Kyoto, expressing my feelings in discussion form with those I am closest to, allowing my thoughts to crystallize before I place them out in the great web of the Internet. I think that, just as we can learn to grow through an online learning community, we can also get so focused in projecting ourselves a certain way, that we forget who we are. I did not want that to happen to me. So here I am, back in fully formatted form, awakened to my senses and set to place them down on this metaphoric paper.

I have found, in the time that I have disconnected myself from the net, that the beauty in my life has risen directly in proportion to my being sporadic. Or rather, I am not sure it is really true that one could "be" sporadic, since erraticism is greatly dependent on one never being anything, but simply being. Eroticism is another thing altogether. I say that because my laptop claims that erraticism is spelled wrong, and though it may be, eroticism is certainly no replacement, though it is what was suggested.

So, instead of being either erratic or erotic, I will try to chart into this weblog, through a nifty feature that allows me to perform my very own version of the time warp, the important moments that have spanned over the amount of time that I have been absent. I will say, however, that I will not be able to draw them out as if they just happened, and that is far from what I wish to do. I want to be able to look at these events as they happened in my life as they happened in my life, not as a fiction that I am recreating in my head in order to be able to use the word "today."

Except, today. Since today is really the day that today happened.

But even then, I am not going to begin my day with insignificant information such as: I was unable to sleep last night and therefore work up well past 1:00 in the afternoon. True as this is, your opinion of the rest of my day (nor my own) rests on what time I managed to get out of bed. Also, since you are all reading this online, whether or not I took a shower is of little consequence to you, since you will not be bothered by how I do or do not smell. Unless I am describing the flowers of spring, which I can smell just fine.

The highlight of my day was spent sitting with my feet dangling off of the ledge of Basho's Hut. Basho, for those of you who do not know, is considered the greatest of the Japanese poets, and is renowned for his haiku. I have read some of his haiku in my study of classical Japanese literature, and am very moved by his quirky observations that he allows to crystallize into a witty 17 syllables before placing them down on paper. In the histories we have of him, he speaks with the wisdom of a Zen master, so much so, that sometimes people mistaken him for one. Basho was no monk, but for me, his hut, with its rotting poles and thatched roof, was somewhat like a sanctuary. I felt moved, and for the first time since my poem of blackbirds, I decided to allow my thoughts to come out in poetry, instead of holding them back until the time is right. I have not yet read what I wrote, for that was not the point, but somehow, I felt directly connected with Basho through what Carl Jung calls the "collective unconscious." My teacher explained it as some mysterious place where only the great minds of our time can exist, yet there Basho and I sat, side by side, like old friends, looking out over Kyoto. I was hesitant to leave the place where I felt his soul resting, though his actual physical self is long gone, because I had not felt so closely united with someone for quite some time. Perhaps you think it is strange that I could feel closer to an idea, a historical figure, than I do to the actual physical human beings I am currently living with, but I do not think that all of our souls are in the same place in life, and sometimes I crave communication on that deep, spiritual level. More than ever, I realize that this is how I often communicate with my closest friends. Not through words, not through letters, but the hundreds of words unsaid that pass from one of us into the other so that we both become aware and find something shared in this level of collective unconscious that we all share, but perhaps more closely share with some than with others. It is in this place that I know that my friends are not thousands of miles away, but circling in and out of my life in ways that I will only recognize as they pass.

The other particularly meaningful point in my day today was locking myself out of my dormitory at about 1:00 AM. The lesson I learned from this is not to lock your window, especially not when ones possessions can all be done without. Yet, as much as I say that, I also know that I am pretty fond of several of my thrift store t-shirts, and I would probably be pretty bummed out if I were to lose them. They do not define me as a person, but somehow they resurrect small memories every time I put them on. This is something that I weigh above almost any piece of jewelry I own.

On a note that I am sure play into the current discussion going on back home, registrations was disgustingly easy for me. I was almost frustrated by the fact that I actually had to pick between classes instead of having to rapidly search for a slot in the appropriately leveled English classes. I am taking Adventure Games, Social Problems, East Asian Culture Film, Shakespeare in Film, Philosophy and Literature, and Modern Poetry to 1930. I chose Modern Poetry over taking a class on Gertrude Stein with my advisor, because I figured it made a lot more sense to tackle the beast of modern poetry before dedicating myself to the study of someone I only know from two or three poems, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and the anecdotes I have heard though various courses. I have, however, borrowed a book of her poetry from the library here. It really makes me wonder why I don't use the library at school much. I went there once or twice last semester, mostly just to return books with Bryan. I guess my attempt to avoid the library as long as possible will be broken next year, due to some very sad news I heard tonight: The viewing lab at the Charles Center will no longer be in operation. It is going to be moved to and absorbed by Swem. I have to say that whoever made this decision was not an English major…or a film major…or very smart.

I am going to head out for the night. But know that as much of my absence will actually be filled in, I simply need electronic records (e-mail) to reconstruct it in an accurate manner. But for now, I've got a good reason for taking the easy way, and a version that is the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. It's omoshiroi…or entertaining.

P.S. Be prepared for me to speak Japanese a lot from now on. I love the language and am going to be studying it for a while. You know, it's nice to find something you really like. Especially when that something can potentially be useful to you in later life…like a language. It's also really nice when that something is going to be at the airport waiting for you when you come home from a long trip away. I can already feel the emotions clawing at my skin begging for a chance to be let out.