oblong thoughts

I hate the days when I get everything done, only to realize that it's 1:35 AM and there is so much more I could have done with my day. I went to Japanese class and did pretty well as far as dialogue and whatever else it is we do in Japanese class went. I found out that we're going to have a dialogue section of our final exam and I'm a little worried about it. As with most languages, including English, I'm great on paper, and can't really get my point across through speech. I chalk this up to the fact that I tend to think about language in a slightly strange way, in that it doesn't always come out in sentence form.

When I'm typing or writing, I can just move things around until they actually form a sentence, but in speech, well, not so well. Also, I do have my moments. I really like public speaking and I really like having conversations in which I actual know what I'm talking about. My biggest problem is making small talk. I always say the most awkward and inane things and it makes me wonder if I just don't know how to talk about nothing. It seems to be a skill which most of my guy friends have mastered, but somehow I just got left behind. I would rather be completely silent than try to talk about nothing, but when I do finally try to say something it comes out like: "This one time I was in high school and..." and I just get blank stares. Perhaps the point is: do not talk about high school, but somehow I don't think that it is an accurate assessment.

Recently, since coming to Kyoto, I have started thinking about my memories from high school, and some of them make me so happy that I actually cringe for not having cherished the memories more as they happened. Particularly senior beach week. I was a little uptight then, but it still turned out to be this amazing experience that will be forever captured in pecan pancakes and going out to dinner with some of the closest friends I had. It is amazing how your best friends just kind of show up to hang out with you at the most opportune moments. These opportune moments happen all the time, even when you're busy thinking that it is the worst possible moment for anything to happen.

So, one thing I wanted to think about in this post is the keys on my keyboard that are particularly worn. First, my spacebar. But only on one side because I only ever press the space bar with the thumb of my right hand. I think that my typing skills would really be helped, or at least my keyboard aided by me learning to use the spacebar with my left hand, but somehow this skill never really developed. The next most worn letter is, of course, the "e." Surprisingly worn was the "d," then the "a," "s," and "f." For the left hand, the "t" and the "c" are pretty up there. The only keys really badly worn on the right hand are the "l" and "n" which makes me wonder if I am just a more gentle typist with my right hand, since obviously I use the period and comma buttons a lot, as would make sense. Then again, despite the fact that I avidly use clauses, I guess that one actually types a lot more letters than they do commas or periods per sentence, so maybe it would make sense for the punctuation keys to not be very worn. My other reason for thinking that the a,e,s,l,a, and f keys are used a lot is because they appear in my user name! and I probably sign in over 6 times a day for stupid reasons, mostly to make sure I haven't missed an e-mail, but often times just to dope around. I actually really miss not being able to use blackboard for my classes. It was really cool to know that if I needed the readings, all I needed was an Internet connection. Lost the syllabus? No problem.

This leads me to my next thought, which is, at least for me, a slightly sad one. So, books can be really inconvenient. I realized this as I was lugging around my newest find in the Friend's World library, a collection of essays from a convention on Eastern and Western philosophies. This book is huge, and there is also only one of them. Because I have this book, no one else at Friend's World can use it. Also, it takes up a large amount of space, and probably killed a tree. Maybe not a whole tree. I actually don't know how much tree it takes to make a book, which would be interesting to know, but I do know that there is a large use of paper. So let's look at an alternative: e-books. These things are very benri (convenient in Japanese). They are mere online documents available to anyone who has the internet and the subscription to a library where you can actually check out these e-books. Also, e-books are available for sale. There are also sites dedicated to transcribing books to electronic form that provide them for free. These things can be read by thousands of people at the same time wherever they are and whenever they'd like to see them. There is (or at least could be) universal access to them. No library has to own every single book in order for them to be available, they can be accessed through a simple Internet connection. Plus, they do not take up any space or kill any trees…at least not in the immediate sense. True, they do take up space on ones hard drive, which I guess is, in the electronic world still considered space, and in a way they kill trees. It seems that to access something electronically, we need power, and to have power, we need fuel, and this causes pollution which is killing trees. Okay, so although e-books are better, there are also sacrifices one must make. And, looking at a computer screen for too long can mess up your eyes…so just as one should not read in bad light, apparently one should not read from a backlit screen. As far as whether I am an e-book or a physical book person, I'd say that I'm still a physical book person, at least when they're available, and preferably when they're mine so that I can curl up with them, write in them, and dog ear their pages. However, I have come to realize the plus of e-books or at least electronic documents. As an English major, I am required to read a lot of theory (in addition to the novels, poems, etc). This theory is usually taken from a number of sources, and provided to me by Blackboard, an online program used by W&M. Some of these documents are 40 pages long, but because of the electronic capabilities, the teacher is not printing out 20 copies of a 40 page document only to have 10 people not read it. It is there, on Blackboard, for ones viewing pleasure, can be printed out if completely necessary, but also can be read on screen. True, on onscreen document cannot exactly be highlighted and written on, but that's what Word is for, right?

I have greatly gone off subject, but I am getting intellectual ideas into an otherwise dry description of the past few days.

I had wanted to discuss my current academic project, which involves documenting all of the books that I have read for my independent projects in evaluative form, where I talk about the good, the bad, and the indecipherable in an attempt to provide a document that other people interested in the same independent projects could access and read, hopefully pointing them in the right textual direction. I think that this very "selective process" of texts is what I have missed in doing independent work. For those of us in most high schools and institutes of higher learning, we have had a syllabus handed to us, so that we know what we will and will not read, and with the exception of a few research projects, have not had to scour the face of the earth for worthwhile literature on the topics that we're interested in. All of this is thanks to the help of very excellent professors who have already read everything on the subject, thus are able to direct our attention to the better books and essays. I never realized how completely useful this was until this semester. Of course, I have not always liked the readings that my professors have assigned me, but at the same time, I at least found them moving in one way or another, even if it was towards frustration. Here, I have probably read as many bad books as I have good, although I've done a lot of pleasure reading, which has mostly been good, and though, inevitably, I've gotten something out of every text, I miss the logical, structural organization that comes in an instructor guided course. I have tried to be organized, but there's only so much you can do when you're reading a book that you've never read before in a subject which you only have a limited understanding of. This is why teachers are great, but at the same time, you don't necessarily need a teacher to set you on a path of learning. I realized in reading about tribal religions in Huston Smith's The World's Religions that one of the greatest untapped resources that we have are our peers and elders involved in different fields of study. I know that you know at least one person who knows more about at least one thing than you do. That is a gross understatement, but I wanted to ensure that everyone could agree. If we all went to these people to learn a little, then we would increase our knowledge. If, at the same time, we were helping others who knew less about something than we did, we would be increasing someone else's knowledge. When we were done learning what one person had taught us, inevitably, life would lead us to someone else from whom we could learn a lot. Now, it is true that some of us do this, but I have found that at a lot of schools and particularly at W&M, there is not enough dialogue going on about what people actually know. In fact, we talk about papers…but only like "man, I have a 15 page paper due tomorrow." Never, "Right now I'm writing a paper about Edmund Spenser's defense of sexual chastity within The Faerie Queen." If someone were to tell me this, I would be able to say "Awesome! I wrote a paper about that freshman year. If you want to talk ideas and get some passages from me that might be useful, let me know!" That would be academic dialogue. I feel like what I get from most of my friends should just be called whining, myself included. I am making an effort this semester to really start communicating the ideas that are going on in my head in the hopes that someone will benefit from them or that I will benefit from talking about them. I also have realized that I have too many friends who speak different languages not to start learning some of them. If you know a foreign language and you are a friend of mine, try teaching me "hello" or something in the language you know…and if I already know hello, teach me something new. This world is too full of rich languages for any of us to be restricted to one.

So, what I wanted to get done with my day, but didn't, was send more people e-mails, get together some mail to send out, finish up some more work for my independent projects, and tidy up my room a bit. What I did get done was get 6 pages of writing done for my Philosophies and Religions study, and get some KD business halfway taken care of. Oh, and I took a nap and ate way too many cookies. Ah, sometimes you just have to have those days.

Anyhow, this is me, for now, signing out with a Japanese poem:
This perfectly still
Spring day bathed in the soft light
From the spread-out sky,
Why do the cheery blossoms
So restlessly scatter down?
- Ki no Tomonori. Kokinshu. Keene. Anth. of Jap. Lit., p. 80

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.

stuffed animals and realism

Recently I've been applauding myself for getting work done in my independent studies, but I think that I've gone astray in my praise. Tonight I sat down and read four chapters in Introduction to Zen Buddhism, which has proved to be…ahem…enlightening… and three chapters in Quaker Education in Theory and Practice, which, believe it or not, I am reading for fun and to better understand how a meeting for business ought to function in an educational community. I also typed up my notes to Simple Guide to Shinto, but that's where I realized where I have been going wrong. When I read literature for any of my English classes, I don't tend to take notes (or highlight the text, which may be a poor decision), but when I try to read things for my study in Eastern religions and philosophies, I take tons of notes. I mean, I'm overdoing it. And that is why I think I'm a lot further behind than I would like to be. On the plus side, I found several other good books today to help with my literary studies, though with the center cleaning project tomorrow and Behind the Mask on Thursday, I doubt I'll have much pleasure time tomorrow night.

Anyhow, beyond the boring topic of academics, today was a really beautiful, moment filled day. I had envisioned myself getting a haircut today after biking into town, yet for some reason, probably because of the rainy weather, I have decided to put that off until either Thursday (if I wake up early enough) or Friday. Instead, I came home and completed some reading. For some reason, I chose to go to the window to see what the great outdoors looked like when I was confronted by two crows atop of the roof next door. I watched them for a while and drew from it a poem which I am actually extraordinarily satisfied with. It has broken my recent theme of bashing my inability to rhyme and self discovery. I suppose these are important themes, but at the same time, I belive that poetry should be a reflection of the external beauty of the world as it appears in the mirror of the author's mind and experience. The author's mirror warps the experience, showing beauty where others may never have noticed it before, and thus sharing that unique beauty with the rest of the world. Self-reflection, therefore, only remains to be doubly warped and obscure, and though it can be a rewarding topic, is often more aptly reflected in fiction than in poetry, although I laugh because, again, I have referred to fiction as a place for self reflection. We're all fictitious after all.

After my brief encounter with the Buddhist blackbirds, I was invited out to dinner. Although I was not sure if I truly wanted to go or not, I decided that I had spent a decent amount of time in my cave, so I went. We ended up meeting up with another student from the EAC who is Japanese. After searching endlessly for a place that would satisfy us, and many smiles about clocks that had day glow faces and rhythm of life occurrences, we were at a standstill. Yet somehow, the Japanese student selected this moment to have a burst of genius, and suggest that we try to be adventurous, and go to this restaurant where mice were likely to be running around in the walls. I was not sure what to think of this potential "experience," but at last we decided to give in to the will of adventure. At first, when we got to the dingy hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I was skeptical, but the guy was amazingly nice and we had all sorts of language exchange experiences, trying to talk to the other customers. The food was delicious, and the owner (and chef) made a special dish for the girl I was with who is vegetarian. I imagine that it may be one of the few 100% vegetarian meals that she has had here in Japan that she hasn't cooked herself. We left the restaurant very full and in a cheery mood. We saw some sights along the way, cutting through a temple (which may have been Kinkakuji, although I am still not quite certain where it is), where I insisted on taking pictures of everything, even in the dark.

When we got home, it was not yet very late, but the bike cubby was very dark. In my clumsiness, I ended up knocking over the entire row of bikes and had to struggle to pick them all up again. Bikes are fantastic for getting around, but they are cumbersome when you're not riding them! On the note of bikes, I was able to make all of the hills tonight, which is a victory, since usually I give up and walk my bike up the two steepest. Perhaps Japan really is getting me in shape.

I'm going to bed now, quite satisfied since I have my Kappa Delta bear at my side for the first time since being here in Japan (Mom sent him to me in the mail today). As silly as it is, it's wonderful to have a piece of "home" to hold on to.

constant movement

I had hoped that coming to Japan would help me let go of the things that worry me back home, yet I'm holding on to them, electronically. I know that my computer is a fantastic resource for me, but I also know that it makes people feel a lot closer than they are and that can be a bad thing. I find myself too often concerned with what is going on in the States, which is not where my mind should be. I would like to believe that I am capable of living each day in the moment and of being fully present in where I am and no where else, but at the same time, I tend to carry around a constant concern for the future.

Yet I was thinking a great deal today, perhaps later than it really counted, but at least I have now done the thinking. I realize that I am on a journey and I will continue growing, but that tomorrow doesn't have to be a huge turning point and that no one thing, no matter how much I have my heart set on it, will prevent me from continuing to grow and develop into a more fully capable human being in all capacities of the term. Yes, there are things that could speed me along the way, but I have to remember that opportunities present themselves at the right time. I cannot know whether or not I am spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically ready for the opportunities that my heart is set on. Of course, I value them for a legitimate reason, and there is no doubt that these dreams have played and will continue to play a role in my life, yet I do not know when I will be ready for these dreams to be realized. I do know that nothing will go "wrong" since what we perceive as setbacks are simply road signs leading us in the proper direction, even if I don't get what I want. Our desires and our path often split in opposite directions.

Yet as Bryan says, the mind creates our reality. I have confidence in myself. I have confidence in my dreams, and I really do believe that what I "want" is equivalent to taking the next step along my path. It is nice to have an idea of where I am headed without knowing where it will take me, but for now, I cannot think of the might be's, I have to worry about this moment, which is in today and extends not far past my palms. Perhaps it does extend to the keys on this keyboard which plunk away, ever faithful, even when I know not what words to give them.

reading...and not far beyond

Okay, so I didn't wake up today until 6:30, PM. Funny thing is, the girl in the room beside me did the same thing. Our sleep patterns have been pretty in line recently and I'm starting to wonder if it's because our beds are so close together. If it weren't for the paper thin wall, we would be sleeping right next to each other.

When I managed to eat and get myself pulled together, I did my Japanese homework and got a significant amount of my music organized and read a good deal of the Kafka novel that I picked up over at the center. I have so much pleasure reading to get done and so little time, I wonder if I'll actually read myself into oblivion. Believe me, I've gotten pretty close before.

a little tambourine

I am always amazed at the amount of fun that a little adventuring can warrant. Today we did ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, at the International Community House. I really enjoyed it, since I arrange flowers back home, and have often thought of becoming a florist as a fall-back career. It was difficult, since we only had a limited number of specimens to work with, thus making it very hard to make a unique arrangement. All the same, I enjoyed trying. Afterwards, we chose to get bus passes and head downtown where we visited Neomart (a very cool store, though not very Japanese) and saw the sights. We ate at a fantastic restaurant where I had a salad and some kushi (fried things). We were headed away from downtown towards the bus stop to head home when I heard an interesting sound. Rhythm. We followed it and discovered two Japanese guys playing Brazilian music. They were really nice and tried to teach us to play their instruments and were singing in Portuguese. The one guy had spent a year in Brazil and had brought that knowledge back with him. I really enjoyed listening to them play, and one of the girls here who has visited Brazil showed me how to samba and dance to Brazilian music. Believe me, it involves a lot of hip movement and I was tired after dancing for only a little while.

I think the best part about the interaction was that it reminded me that we really do live in one world. Just as I am coming here to Japan and learning what I can in the hopes that I can bring a little of the knowledge back to the States, these guys were sharing the Brazilian culture that they had acquired with the people in their home country. Plus, Brazilian music really makes you feel good.

We rode the bus home and then several of us hung out in my room, contemplating nothing and mostly sitting in silence watching the smoke from my incense, every once in a while discussing the community as it exists and our plans for Saint Patrick's Day (one of the guys here is Irish). This weekend is shaping up, with SPD on Thursday, a wine and cheese party on Friday, and the beginning of our field trip on Saturday. We won't be back until Tuesday of next week, and I'm starting to wonder if I'll get much work done between now and then.

As it stands, it's far too late at night for me to be thinking of such things when I should be sleeping, and sleeping it is.

I had my midterm today and I thought it went reasonably well. I feel confident in the fact that I studied and did a lot better than I thought I would do. I got to talk to Bryan for a while about ideas of community. I feel like the community here is small, so you get to see how different dynamics work and then you can see how those dynamics do or do not exist within a larger community like William and Mary or like the United States or like the world. Obviously, not every dynamic can be considered on an international level, but it’s still really interesting to think about.

I also go to e-mail some people I’d been meaning to get in touch with and to talk to Miranda for a while, which was really good for me. It’s always wonderful to talk with someone who will be honest about what is going on in the lives of the people back home since I’m so far away and have no way of knowing, but am still, at times, concerned for their wellbeing.

I also got to talk to one of my old housemates. I realized that before moving in with him this year, I didn’t really know who he was as an individual. I knew that he was friends with my friends, but I have learned that this isn’t enough. I had grown tired of basing my relationships solely on whether or not a person is a friend of my friends. I began to look at people as individuals who I had something to share with and learn from. In doing this, I think I’ve discovered a much richer world in which I can think about people as separate from a larger group. There is nothing wrong with being a part of a group, and often the people within a group will share things in common, but that is no reason to stereotype anyone into taking on a group identity. I believe that this is something we do far too often. We should be looking at people for who they are, not where they come from, what they are interested in, not only what their major is, and what is special about them, not what is just like everyone else.

We’ve talked a little bit in my Japanese Minorities course about how in Japan, people only understand and accept compliments which compare them to being “just like everybody else.” This is because there is a strong sense of homogeneity here in Japan and identity is linked more to the group than it is to the individual. Yet, I think that this can make us machines. In Player Piano, the Vonnegut book that I am reading right now, there is a system set up in which machines have replaced people and computers determine who gets to do what job based on scores of exams taken after high school and college. These people are identified by a number and a title, Dr. this and Dr. that. When you think about it, though, group identity can turn people into a machine, or at least a functioning mechanical part of a greater whole. However, I don’t believe that a community or group should be based off of the one part of a whole idea. Everyone is their own whole, whether or not they belong to a group. Sure, 1+1+1+1+1=1 doesn’t seem to make that much sense, but no one ever said that humans had to obey the laws of mathmatics. Or perhaps the equation would have to read a+b+c+d=1 since every individual is going to be different. Perhaps the true situation is somewhere in between. I believe that people must be looked at as individuals, yet individuals who are all different. I have found that my friendships and my view of the world as a whole has been immensely changed by forcing myself to not take labels as a representation of who a person is. I wish that my thoughts were more conclusive on the matter, but I’m still thinking and figuring it out. Hell, I haven’t even finished Player Piano yet. I think that it’s one of those issues that may never have a resolution, but I think by people individually making the effort to look at it differently, an overall difference can be made.

I started in one place and ended up in another. Hopefully in this weekend I will find new beginnings all over again.