no itch is eternal

I disappeared for ten days to attend a meditation retreat in the upper reaches of Kyoto prefecture.

So how was it? What was it like? What did you do?

Even as I was perpetually writing this blog post in my head for ten days, I’m not sure how to begin to answer those questions. Was it mind-boggling? Was it hard? Did you find enlightenment or answers or inner peace?

Well, yeah. Kind of!

Basic ground rules were things like total segregation of the sexes – so I lived, ate, and meditated only with the women in the women’s half of the center, walked in the women’s garden, and saw the men only in their side of the meditation hall and from across the driveway that separated our garden from theirs. Noble silence – that is, not talking, nor communicating with gestures – with the other mediators (you can talk to the staff if you need anything or to the teachers if you have a question, naturally). No lying, stealing, or killing (this includes eating meat, incidentally, so all the food provided was vegetarian).

For me, this was no big deal, and was actually kind of a plus. I rather like simple, healthy food – rich and/or highly processed stuff sort of overwhelms me anyway. The eating situation is kind of like being a kid again; there is what there is, and if you don’t like it, that’s just too bad. I think in itself this is a humbling technique. Also, we had fruit for dinner (not dinner.. teatime.. but it was at 5pm and was the last ‘meal’ of the day) which was sort of delightful. I’ve heard that it’s healthier for you not to eat after 6pm; I think I might’ve lost a little bit of weight!

Our days started at an hour I still consider pretty nuts.. but there and then it seems just like part of the lifestyle of the center, however temporary, you kind of get used to it.

Every morning, we’d be woken by the bell at 4am, chiming and chiming again to rouse us from sleep. From 4:30 to 6:30, we were to meditate either in the meditation hall upstairs or in our own rooms. 6:30 was breakfast, and a break until 8, when we would have an hour long group sitting session, meaning everyone would meditate together for an hour. At 9, we would get our morning instructions, and then meditate until 11 which was lunchtime.

At 1, we would begin to meditate on our own again, and then at 2:30 we’d start the afternoon group sitting. At 3:30, we would receive afternoon instructions and meditate until 5, which was tea time. During tea time, new students (me!) could have fruit, while old students (who had undertaken not to eat after noon) could have only tea or coffee or water.

At 6, we’d gather for the third and final group sitting of the day, followed at 7 by the discourse, for English speakers a video (for non-English, audio only) in which the teacher (S.N. Goenka, in India) would explain particulars, answer questions I was considering asking at question time, and in general provide a context for what we were practicing. After this, we’d return to the hall, meditate for a little while (the Japanese discourse usually took a bit longer than the English one, so I would have a break to brush teeth and otherwise prepare for bed) until 9, and then that was question time, or else bedtime if you had no questions. Lights out was 9:30, which seems early but ISN’T if you get up at FOUR.

If you’ve been counting, that’s about ten hours of meditation each day. You’re doing it constantly, like it’s your job, and for these ten days it basically is. During breaks, I was mostly walking in the garden, stretching, or napping. I started showering at 4 in an effort to be more awake for the 4:30 - 6:30 time slot.

And while it seems like being unplugged and not speaking would be difficult, I actually did not have so much trouble with that, personally. Occasionally I would wish to tell someone something, and more often I would think of some question I wanted to ask someone regarding my future travels or plans. In my usual life, when thoughts like that come up, I either make a note or address it immediately (send an email, etc.), but during the course I had no pen, I had no notepad, I had no email. So things had to wait.

How I felt about the meditation changed from day to day. Some days I felt great, I was feeling it, everything was going just as I wanted it to – I was alert, engaged, attentive, focused. Other days I sucked at meditation. I couldn’t stay awake, I couldn’t stop daydreaming or narrating or spinning my wheels, I couldn’t feel anything on my body. Sometimes I couldn’t have removed the serene smile from my face with a prybar, other times tears would be streaming down my face for no pinpoint-able reason.

And when I went to the assistant teacher at afternoon question time about day seven to say “Why can’t I get it to work today if I could do it yesterday?” The answer was this isn’t about getting it to work, this is about facing reality.

This isn’t about getting it to work. Contrary to my previous ideas on what meditation must be, what it must be for (sharper vision, clarity, quieting the mental noise, becoming more centered), this course is different. All those things are ancillary benefits and almost prerequisites to the real core of what Vipassana is supposed to be about, and what it’s really supposed to do for you.

Although it’s not religious or sectarian, the philosophy behind the technique is deeply grounded in Buddhist thinking. As we learned in high school lit and history classes, the basic tenets of Buddhism hold that life is suffering because of human desire – specifically in craving and aversion – which stands between humans and their freedom.

But how not to feel and act with craving for the wonderful things in life? How not to feel and act with aversion for life’s pains? “You have to go to the root level of these things,” they said. I pictured each person carrying varying sizes of mountains of personal baggage, I imagined the kind of time it would take to peel all those layers back (some much longer than others) to get to the ‘root level’ underneath it all. How could any person uncover or even hope to glimpse this so-called root simply and within the span of ten days?

The simplicity of the answer to that still makes me laugh a little – I am seeing this root as buried beneath the issues of a person (therefore inaccessible without removal of said issues), but it becomes clearer to me that it can be accessed fairly simply because it is the first level of understanding, the most basic level of reaction in a person’s experience – the sensations of the body.

So what the technique teaches is, to become aware of sensations on the body, both pleasant and unpleasant, and to not react to them. To feel an itch, to observe it, to not seek its immediate undoing but rather “Let me see how long it lasts.. well, because no itch is eternal.”

And by so doing, to understand at the level of physical experience that which everyone already knows intellectually, that nothing lasts forever. That every feeling which arises also passes away, that every thing which lives also dies, that every object crafted or built must eventually, eventually decay and fall away. And if nothing is permanent, then why get so upset, why get so attached?

It makes sense; we all know that this is naturally so. Build something out of stone and it will last longer, but even that is not forever. Everything good needs replacing. Change is all there is. We know it, we know it. So why do we still get all bent out of shape?

The message behind the meditation is there is this huge gap between knowing something intellectually and understanding it in a way that really sinks in and applies to your life. This gap is the difference between hearing about something, reading about it, knowing about it, thinking about it .. and experiencing it for yourself.

The endgame being something like, being able to enjoy good things without reacting to them with clinging and craving, and to endure the unpleasant things without panic and aversion, to maintain equanimity at all times with the understanding that this too shall pass.

I can say that personally in my own life, I recognize a heck of a lot of examples of particularly clinging-reaction behavior. I have always been loath to let a good thing go (and my life has been above-averagely full of good things, so while it’s ironic to think that these good things could cause me suffering, well there you are). But as I look ahead to the changes that are coming (goodness, is it four days left in Japan now?), the unknowns that characterize the road ahead, I feel really okay about it. People ask how I am doing and I say good, and I really mean that. Maybe this was supremely well-timed.

During the course, various people would pop into mind, people I thought should look into it, people I thought should try it. I wanted to say, this is for everyone, and it is! But it’s also not for everyone. I don’t know. It’s hard. It’s a little out there compared to the normal everyday life of myself and most of the people I am close to. I loved it, but I also hated it; I wanted to run away, I wanted it to be over. I hesitate to recommend something that was painful to do.

And when I say painful, I kind of mean physically. Sam has been trying to work with me on the muscles of my core, how to properly distribute the work of holding the body up. My back pretty much hated me most of the time I was there; I fell asleep lying on a golf ball (self-massage, trigger point style) more than once during lunch breaks. During the sittings of ‘strong determination’ (about the second half of the course, the one-hour group sittings become attempts to sit for the entire hour without changing your position) I understood the poetic description ‘singing with pain.’ Hips, knees, feet, legs all in rebellion, back and shoulders going on strike. Parts of you falling asleep, or worse yet, coming awake. I want to tell people, it’s so great, but I also don’t want them to think that’s all it is. It is great, but at times it also sucks. It’s like medicine, it’s like exercise: you don’t always do it because it’s enjoyable in the moment. You do it because it does something for you.

Basically, to really understand it, you have to do it yourself! That was another message that was emphasized there… no one can give you this understanding, you have to find out for yourself. And you shouldn’t just take someone’s word for it, you should pass your own judgment based on your own experience!

Look at this website, see where the centers are, read all the things, and decide for yourself!

If my sojourns to temples is something like Buddhism light, this stuff is Buddhism pure – kind of at that depth of level where religion isn’t really religion because you’ve stripped it of all the rituals and rules and what’s left is just help for self, help for others, and love.

moving sucks

I don't suppose I have to tell anyone in the world that packing and cleaning a place in preparation to move out is not a fun task. When I was a kid (since I NEVER moved) I saw moving as a sort of cleansing, a time when you were forced to clean and sort carefully (because if not forced to do these things I could always find a better use for my time) all your possessions. When I heard people say "That got lost in the move," I could never understand it. In my mind, you FOUND stuff when you were moving, stuff hidden in places you would not have seen had you not emptied your house.

I think some of these notions still hold on because I was hoping to find treasures as I took apart my place. Mostly I just found dust, lots and lots of hidden dust.

I also found that my previous conviction that I would make it out of Japan with no more than my two allowed suitcases was pure folly. I've been here for three years; I've amassed a good ton of junk. I knew this, but I assumed that this would all be 'junk' that I would just leave behind, whether as give-away stuff or as trash.

Right.

So I bought three boxes for shippin' stuff back, and given three boxes, I've now filled three boxes. Since my sorting/cleaning choices expanded from pack, give, or throw away to pack, give, throw, or ship, several odds and ends have been literally chucked into the box area of the living room (I lined them up side by side in a corner and then would just fling things into that direction if I wanted to ship it).

I'm still throwing out and giving away a good deal of stuff, of course; I got rid of 31 kilos of used clothing, not all of it mine, a bit over a week ago. To the stayers go the spoils, and I've been dividing up my stuff amongst the staying ALTs and my successor, mostly 'useful' things and 'pretty' things. I can't believe I have to be out of there by the end of the week, although the walls are finally bare (and that does help it look more like progress).

I traded the tall couch for a short one, better suited for sitting at the kotatsu come winter, and I traded back my kotatsu for the one Sam and Carl had (I gave them the giant one that hardly fit in the room and took their tiny one that couldn't fit Carl's legs under it). I'm leaving the vanity, the green chair, the denki carpet, the kitchen unit, the bike, the heater.

But moving stuff around in this heat is anything but a fun pastime. I have interrupted the process frequently for social and other excursions, like visa-getting trips to Himeji, parties with leavers and stayers (as a leaver myself)... the weekend of the 21st was a sort of "party all the time" wherein we spent basically the whole weekend kicking it with Shiso all over town. I'll do posts about all that (as well as.. I suppose... my bye-bye work events). But there's no putting it off forever, and the process has been slow and painful and hot and painful and slow.

So it goes!

I did find some things I had squirreled away, forgotten, or thought lost.

This is something I mentioned in my farewell speech, unaware that I did still have it in my house. It's a talisman-like gift from a school excursion from back when the current 3rd-years were in the 6th grade. It says something like "Emily-sensei, please make fun memories with us." In writing my speech (writing, not even saying, just pre-work), the thought of including a reference to this object followed by the question, well, did we? would cause me to leak tears on my desk.

This is just a man-en with a different version of birds on the back of it than usual. I'm gonna have to spend this, though, cause that is a hundy right there.

This is a twenty, and though they are rare, I've somehow been in possession of several of them over the course of my time. I am gonna spend this too, cause I think I have one back home. 

Back of the 20.

This isn't something I lost, it's just something I thought was kind of funny and wanted to share.. try to ignore the total chaos and... Above my kitchen table I had placed a picture of Siena, Italy, because there was a larger version of a very similar picture above the table where I often at at the Centro in Rome. I created my own version of that place here, right after I moved in. 

Anyway, all these various treasures don't really make up for the fact that moving sucks, it really really sucks, even more so when it's hot and your house doesn't have 'real' AC, and topping that off, you don't really WANT to leave, you just kind of have to.

promise to work hard

In the winter, at a dinner celebrating some of the black belts' ascension to higher levels of black belt, they pulled out cell phone calendars and planned my black belt testing date. At the time, through my half-drunk haze, I connected that test date in early June with all sorts of mostly unrelated things, but all tangentially connected to badassery and the meaning of martial arts as a force to build confidence and stop violence.

I started taking karate when I was in the 8th grade, and continued in Yoshukai through high school. By then, I was a 2kyu, a brown belt. In college I spent a summer with a new kind of karate and jiu jitsu, then at my actual college tried yet more karate, then aikido, but by the time I took aikido, I was close to graduation. I didn't think of myself as a brown belt anymore, more like an itinerant white belt with brown-belt-like tendencies.

There's a tradition I learned, that you never wash your belt (though by all means, wash your gi, and often). Because the idea was, it began as white, and over time and training would turn darker with the dirt, proof of your time and effort. Last summer, my brown belt seemed to be going in the opposite direction, forming up white streaks which I never washed off (...salt, from sweating).

But if I had thought of myself as a brown belt since I got one, then I have been a brown belt for almost ten years. It's an interesting middle ground.. being pretty good. People have referred to me as "basically a black belt," or "like a black belt."

But I wasn't one: a distinction so fine as to be, in a different half-drunk hazed debate about who would win in a fight, slim to unimportant.

As you have probably heard, a black belt doesn't mean you've made it to the top, it means you're ready to begin.

In this case it means I crammed a ton of terminology and practiced a lot of moves an ef-ton of times. I also memorized some points (the eight key attitudes, the five elements of atemi, the four systems of training, the six distinguishing characteristics) for the supervised essay.. on the walk up to the budokan, one of the guys who had given me a ride (I tried to drive myself, but my car broke down again about 1/3 of the way there... so I pulled over, called my team and flagged down another car in the convoy shortly behind me on the road) commented that the written test had to be worrying me. I shook my head because if there's anything I can do, it's write a pretty solid essay in 40 to 60 minutes (thanks Dr. Bragg, college in general, and genetic disposition). The written test was the least of my worries -- it was the one thing I knew if I put in the time, I would get the results. Put a pencil in my hand and my thoughts will focus. Give me the name of a technique and stand there expecting me to do it, and they scatter faster than Japanese people when auld-lang-syne starts to play at closing time.

I actually did pull a total fail on something I had practiced a lot because it was one of the first things they asked us to do (luckily no one seemed to notice the extent to which my mental faculties had deserted me -- for the love of pete, it was a set movement, like a two-person kata, and I was completely changing the last 1/3 of it, repeatedly). A few other things took me some time to remember or figure out what the words meant, but I could do the stuff, almost all of what was asked, I could do, and as I saw that happening, my confidence grew and the test shrank and soon enough I knew what my result would be.

I got to wear the face-protecting riot gear for the fighting bit, which was really brief even by my standard.

My partner was a capable girl with a large, ghastly bruise on her left foot. The part I had most feared, the dreaded "We say, you do," part where they were going to choose ten techniques from about a hundred, all of which you must know, only ten of which you will show... And one by one, they said words I could put together and remember their meanings. The pair to our right got read the riot act in the second set of movements. The pair to our left, in the third. I shifted from foot to foot, awaiting our turn at sensei scorn bat; it never came.

Twelve years ago, I promised to work hard. Now I suppose I am ready to begin.

false start

Today is one of the spring days of changes, in which the school assumes, or very nearly, the shape it will be in for the next twelve months or so. In some ways, I've been looking forward to this time because I felt I couldn't start preparing to leave until things were as they would be when I do that.

I can't tell my successor about where and who until the where and who have been set in place, as it were. Now we know.

My desk has been moved to one corner of the room, which I rather like. I don't like having my back to the rest of the room, and now I have a great (some might say commanding) view of the staff room. I can see everything, and to face the front, I need only look up. It's pretty sweet.

Today, MP-sensei is officially leaving, so my successor will never really know her; Twitchy and Mikan are staying, which is a good thing and a bad thing all at once (better the devil you know?). There is a new JTE coming in, whom I have not yet met but who Mikan-sensei said is his teacher. I picture her as an older woman, then, strict but well qualified as any seasoned veteran would be. Also I'm a little intrigued to see what kind of English teacher produced the Mikan-sensei, from a scholastic point of view.

I'm totally jumping the gun by writing this post right now because we're only halfway through the day, but I've kind of been dying to start the "for my successor" tab on this blog. One of the purposes of keeping it has been to pass on some knowledge and helpful info; I'm quite aware that after these three years, the blog (like my apartment) has become too full of stuff for any stranger to usefully sort without an abundance of spare time.

The "for my successor" series will be a lot of retrospectives and info I think might be useful to that person, which I will not expect myself to generate all at once, but to put together over the course of the next few months as I think of things. I have a tendency to just sort of think of things at random times and need to write them down right then. Like right now, even though I hardly have the info I'm trying to convey.

But I will. Today I have my meetings with the elementary school teachers to plot the year's schedule and figure out who the elementary English contact people are this year. It also says on the front board (which I can easily see!) that our new JTE will also be part of this meeting (but not Twitchy-sensei because he's a part-timer I guess).

It's rumored that I will be spending more time at Small Elementary and less at Big Elementary because of class size changes and so on. Rumors rumors!

Here's a mostly-blank diagram of the new desk layout.

The secretary is new, but she handles a lot of the paperwork and the previous one always helped me when I broke (or discovered a problem with) the copy machines. The new lady seems very energetic anyway.

The head teacher makes the schedules and distributes them, and also keeps the schedule for the front board. Sometimes he doesn't get to "tomorrow's" til the end of the day.. I think that is unusual, but he's a really nice guy.

The VP is the person you go to for all your personal scheduling requests (that is, when you want to take time off, or when you aren't sure what is up). He handles a lot of the official business of the school, and is really nice. He occasionally sends me home a little early and is understanding about things. I've heard horror stories about VPs who are super strict with vacation hours (yeah counting hours out for you) and who are loath to let you take vacay when you want to. Our guy seems to have no issues like this whatsoever. He is easily recognizable for his full head of mostly white hair. He speaks to me in Japanese like he has no doubt about my ability to understand, but also doesn't seem surprised when I ask about something I don't understand.

The principal has his own office (the door to it is between his desk and the copy machine, though there is another door to it in the hallway) where he receives guests and I suppose chills out when he wants to be in his own space and not in the crowded staff office. He used to be a PE teacher and looks (to me) like a Japanese Michael Scott. He's very friendly and likes to party; he doesn't know you yet but he would love to get drunk with you. He's good at karaoke and often communicates with me using one or two words and a lot of facial expressions.

Mikan-sensei is now starting his fourth year at this school, and is the JTE for the second year class. He has been the one to be in charge of me here. When I arrived, they (the BOE rep people) brought him along to the bank and cell phone place to help translate for me. He has been making my weekly schedule for me since then, and also attending at least one of every two-day conference, and the entirety of the one-day conferences I have been sent to.

Either because of these conferences, or because of his own personal awesomeness level, he is the best JTE I have ever worked with. He uses activities to teach and knows his students very well; he is very strict and very kind by turns (to the students) and depending on the situation (generally he's kind in class and strict as hell in club activity time) and also on the student in question (he knows who to be disappointed in and who to speak gently to). He has always been very nice to me. Mikan-sensei is in charge of a second year homeroom class and is also the kendo club leader, which means he can become very busy. I've always tried to find the balance between staying out of his way and trying to be helpful.

His wife is also an English teacher in a school further south (not in our city limits), and I hear she is as progressive and excellent as he is (perhaps even more so), and also I believe she has lived abroad in London and also in China at some point in her life. I've only met her like three or four times, but she's awesome too.

Twitchy-sensei is about 26 years old, and is starting his second year (at this school and also of teaching, ever). He spent seven years in Vancouver, Canada (attending high school and University), and his English comprehension is therefore very high. His interest so far has been in grammar and translation, but Mikan-sensei (and now I resolve to rejoin the effort) has been on task to get him out of that habit.

I feel like I just wrote a glowing review of Mikan-sensei in which my respect and admiration are pretty clear, so I feel like an asshole if I follow that with a dour report on Twitchy-sensei. But we must be honest, too. (Heh...) Twitchy tries very hard and is very friendly, so that makes it kind of sad all around when he falls short (which last year happened a good bit). Suffice for now to say that Mikan-sensei will be in charge of both the first year and second year classes, and Twitchy will be "like a TA," according to Twitchy himself. And from today's optimistic point of view, we'll remind ourselves that Mikan has a lot more experience than Twitchy, and maybe in the fullness of time.... or something..

Aaaand .....this is about all I can provide for now.

(Also, just in case it's not obvious, these are not their real names, nor do they [or should they probably] know these nicknames at all. It's just how I like to represent them on the interwebz because of all the biased misinformation I am spouting. Oh and libel. Etc.)

The Long Hiatus Known as Winter (in review)

It's Friday, it's raining again, but at least a bit warmer than the last time. Or at least I think so.

We get the first day of spring off in this country, maybe because you are supposed to visit your ancestors on the first day of spring (I just learned). Whatever the reason, I think having the equinox off is an excellent practice. The better to celebrate.

Winter is all about the holding pattern, post Cambodia, it was a fairly happy or at least nonchalant cycle of work, reading, writing, various exercise, and housekeeping. It was like an endless ongoing movement of maintenance. Keep on trucking. Every week was not the same, but the entire season seemed to fall into a pattern of total sameness. Maybe you'll go swimming today or tomorrow, maybe you'll feel too puny. Maybe you'll buy more kerosene, maybe you'll cook something. Maybe there will be a get-together this weekend, maybe you'll be social by hanging out with one or two people, maybe you won't see anyone and will just indulge yourself in reading/the internet/pretending to do chores. Maybe you'll make coffee, maybe you'll avoid it because it's bad for circulation and your toes are freezing off. Maybe you'll go to kempo and rock it, maybe you'll go and suck, maybe you won't go.

If anything changed this winter, it was a change that felt built-in right away, and was in many cases a resumption of something old. I took up working on that novel again. I moved up a little on the coffee snob scale, because I started hanging out at Rocky just like I always thought it would be nice to hang out in a coffeeshop and 'write.' (Then I started buying coffee [at Rocky] and making it at home. I had a coffeepot for two years and used it twice [then sold it], and now I can't stop pressing myself cups of the stuff -- luckily I just got ahold of decaf, so now it's on day and night, and guilt-free for the circulation issues). I started swimming more frequently. I didn't exactly feel like I had all kinds of time to waste because I was spending all my time doing all these maintenance or resumption things.

Lately, I swim less often, partly because I wrenched out my shoulder on the only ski trip we took this year. I still go occasionally, and rent a kickboard so I can gimp along. I've also stalled on the writing, as I will now confide. The irony is that it happened because of something I did to help myself along in that department sadly backfiring. I had some comments on the first part of the thing, and someone referred to the George R. Martin series A Song of Ice and Fire to sort of compare how I used a bunch of different POV throughout the story. I had heard about the series before, and had seen one episode of it on HBO at Sagramore's (the episode with ALL the spoilers), so I kindled up a four volume set and stared in on it, telling myself it would be instructive and help my writing.

The first few chapters were okay, but once I was sunk into it, it built a nice ice wall between me and my ability to write or even edit my story. It was good. And that was a problem, not because I was so absorbed I no longer had time to do any writing (that is always and never true of life, rather than any book), but because as I read on I get the distinct impression that my story is nothing like this story.

I could never have written this story.

But I like this story, and that's a problem because suddenly all I can see is everything that this story has that my story lacks, everything I like about this book I'm reading that is glaringly absent from the one I'm writing.

An' lemme tell you, that shit'll stop your pen. Writer's block is and has always been a failure of confidence, maybe.

I'm sweet-talking myself back into it, of course. I've begun to find things I don't like about it, as a sort of salve. And I've also tried to explain to the little kid version of myself currently throwing an I-don't-wanna-play-anymore tantrum that, well of course you could never have written this story, it's not yours, you weren't supposed to, it's about a totally different thing, has a totally different appeal.

At first I was confused, because this is not by far the first good book I've read since I began working again on the writing. I've read a bunch of really good things, strong works, classics, award-winners. But I realized, they were all of some other genre, they were all something else. So I'm working my way back to a place where I can like this one and still make that one, different.

We recently set the date of my black belt (!) test, for early June, which set me off into a mental tangent about Shannon (while the June connection is obvious, if you can't see why Shannon and getting my black belt are related, I can't really explain it.. they aren't, and yet for some reason they are), which caused me to have a Shannon dream, which made me decide to resume my pilgrimage on March 20th after its long hiatus known as Winter.

The first temple of the season was Ichijo-ji, stop number 26 on the original route, and the second-closest temple to where I live.

I think I'll post that as a separate entry, because I don't have the photos ready yet anyway!

Officially Any Good

Well, it’s officially official. I turned in my paper yesterday.

It’s kind of silly how, when a decision is actually uncertain, I will submit the paperwork as soon as I know. And yet when I know ahead of time, dither to and fro, take out the form, look at it, put it away again, unwilling to submit to the inevitable, pushing back til the last minute the official sealing of my own fate. It is my way to go dragging my heels (not kicking and screaming, that is far too dramatic and noisy) through a change of any appreciable size, and this upcoming repatriation is appreciable.

When I finally did turn in the form at the last possible moment, nothing changed, no new sense either of despair nor relief washed over me. This is the next step in the way of things, it does not push its weight upon you, because its weight was meant to settle gradually, day by day, and you’ve already begun to feel it some time ago, and it will get more and more obvious, in some ways more and more strenuous, as the days go on.

But you’re doing it right, taking it slow, even being willing to enjoy, to some extent, the way that it hurts to leave. Let yourself wax poetic as you watch the snow falling between you and the dark of the evergreens.

Yesterday was a day that could have been any day. After school, I walked up the hill to Sponic, had a swim, showered, came back to school where some of the girls on their way home stopped to talk to me, then rode with the music teacher back to town. It was the first round of test for third years to get into high school, and there was a dinner party that night. We talked and ate, and I forgot, and the food was so good, and the guests between heartbreaking and a little annoying once the beer wore off in the karaoke box and the principal wouldn’t stop shaking my hand, asking if I thought he was cool.

At some point during dinner, the judo coach was talking about his time in America, mishaps and fast food restaurants, and I saw reflections of my home in his words. Then he talked about the kyoudai, the students I refer to as twins even though I am fully aware that one is older, who may work their way (is this small town gullibility?) to the Olympics in judo in a couple years. I wondered, will I hear about it? Will I see them on TV, grappling with French kids, and remember how they were when I called on them in class?

I have a connection to this place, and while it will thin and grow taut, I like to think it will not break entirely. I don’t skim easily over change because I sink into things, or they sink into me. I burrow, I feed my need to explore, to find out shit. Some of it also comes by accident.

The band teacher said something in the car on the way back to town, about how good the school has been this year, all three classes stacking up well. Last year the third years weren’t very responsible, they were full of troublemakers, but this year, there’s a harmony in place that is rare in middle schools. She called it a “miracle” and I agreed, because middle school is a tough crowd, a tough age to be, and somehow this student body makes it looks easy. I sighed to myself. All that will change in a month, as graduation hits us and a new school year begins, so it’s not that I’m losing that. It’s just that I’m glad I got to be part of the miracle year, I guess, to watch them grow and become.

One thing I remember from my kepmo homework that sticks out still is something about how, not only is it important to believe in your ability to change yourself, but it is impossible to remain the same. I’ve had a tendency all my short life long to try to keep everything, to hold on to things, even when I knew I knew better. There are pieces of that I’ve been seeing recently in my iTunes, of all places.. I don’t use iTunes, or didn’t, but have been more lately, and a lot of the music I have isn’t stuff I sought out on my own. I’m not very good or motivated at chasing down music I like. I much prefer asking for my friends’ music and then letting it sink into my consciousness by just having it in the car until I get tired of it. There aren’t a lot of people in the world I have actively cut out of my life.. I can think of two, actually. And I still have the music they gave me.

Why? Ah, why not? Because it was theirs? It’s not theirs anymore. Because it reminds me of them? So it does. Is it so bad to be reminded? That’s not what I cut out; I didn’t want to deal with them anymore. Is keeping the stuff they gave me dealing with them? Remembering them is bittersweet, and I kind of like that.

So anyway, it’s impossible to remain the same. Like, even if you stay in the same place and do the same thing and get the same result, even if you never move forward, you still can’t stay the same. If you never take a step, or a leap, if you never try, you still won’t be the same old thing (theoretically, good thing, since you wanted to avoid that change, right?) you wanted to stay being.

It echoes into the contractual paperwork. It is impossible to stay in your apartment and job forever, even if you wanted to, which you must admit (while there are some thing of which you may never grow tired), you don’t even want to.

But if it’s impossible to remain the same, then why not try to become better? In whatever way. Stronger. Happier. Better at math. More patient. More kanji in your head. Whatever. My JET life is in its final one-sixth, but my ties to Japan could just be beginning. They will be different, in six months, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be any good.

a month and four days in

Well, now it's February. I've already written about 2011, the Year That Never Was, or the Year that I Forget.. but I just read over a few other blogs and their retro/pro-spectives and I am reminded again.

The other day, I began sorting the papers, the junk I've been saving. I decided if something was from 2010 or 2009, I should throw it away. So I happily progressed through all the bills I had stashed in a desk drawer since I arrived, saving only the 'new' ones, or the papers from startup I might need at shutdown.

Re-appointment papers appeared on my desk one day while I was in class. In that class, we did a comparative/superlative multiple-choice group quiz (think of it like pub quiz night... these kids had little chance of actually knowing the answers to the questions I concocted) in which, while reading out the extra info about the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world), I said it was opened in January 2010, so that's just one year ago!

Um, what? So not only is it confirmed I cannot count, it's also apparent that I do in practice forget 2011, sometimes. Or, I feel like it must still be 2011, because already I feel like I've got more documentable "accomplisments" under my belt (as of NOW, February 4th!) than I did in all of 2011.

On the 2nd of February, I took my 1-kyu test for Shorinji Kempo, which is the highest rank I've ever been in any martial art. I'm not particularly coordinated, and and actually not very 'good' at martial arts. I do kind of like them, and I don't mind the repetitive practice. I lack technical skill, especially in a heated or otherwise important moment (so like, tests, tournaments, etc.) and end up more often flailing around performing something that would, let's face it, on the street probably work out okay in defending me, but under the watchful gaze of judges just looks like a baby deer kicking with sharp hooves. In some ways it makes me feel like I prefer the Yoshikai style of all-day testing. Where all you really have to do is outlast the day to show what you're made of, and that your technical skill has already been observed in repeated practice.

Still and all, it's something to be a first-kyu. That's right below black belt. We're still hoping to get me a black belt before I leave here this summer.

As mentioned, I also got my TEFL certification, which may not be small beans in the future. Right now it seems to make little difference in the fact that I have a job, or what I'm asked to do.. but it has changed a bit how I go about planning lessons or what I think should be happening.

But both the TEFL thing and the 1st kyu aren't just results of 2012, they're fruits grown in 2011 that happen to have just been harvested here in 2012. Comparably, I've started giving the push-and-go treatment I'm calling "FebNoWriMo" (because the weather in November and the schedule then are just not conducive to novel writing, here, and February is actually the shittiest month, weather-wise). I am also writing an unrelated 750 words a day to "clear out my mental junk" (at 750words.com, if you are interested). Even the novel I'm trying to write is not a spontaneous generation, fully formed, from this head-of-Zeus, it's a set of ideas that's been on slow cook and the backburner for years and years.

Also, in 2012, I went on a date. And this isn't like big news, and I don't see this thing 'going anywhere,' but it's kind of nice that a guy had the stones to declare his interest and invite me out to dinner and a movie. I don't really have "love and relationships" goals for 2012 (well, except for one secret one), but I think maybe I should, and if I did, maybe having a date would fall under the heading of "progress." (See: 2011 - A Year Without Climax) But even this has roots in 2011.. I wasn't ASKED on this date in 2012, I went on it then. I was asked before the winter trips.

Neighbor and fellow ALT encourages my dating life. But I wonder if her heart is really in it...

I also got wireless (which I might sell just as quickly to my neighbor) in the apartment, bought a mini-PC, had Kameron configure it, and then got it on the school network with the help of Mikan-sensei. I've been introduced to a couple places in town I had never known existed, one of which has the cutest coffee-shop atmosphere I've seen yet.

Sam is good at finding places. Remind me to take you here when you visit!

I've also been reading at a rapid rate. It began with my two winter-trip six-hour plane rides (for which I failed to pack or book video entertainment and therefore plowed through novels instead), and carried through to now. The winter cold helps. All I want to do is read books. On kindle, on kindle-fire, in paperback off the inherited shelf...

Anyway, it's about time for me to do important things like eat, do laundry, and possibly attempt to tidy up that other room. Oh and the writing, 1750 words at least.

Other New Year

I've been going through and posting about our winter trip little by little, because I want to note it all pretty carefully, but I realized today that I've been leaving out a lot of what's happened since then!

Today it's sunny and ridiculously warm for January; I've got the windows open and the laundry out. Wearin' just one layer and everything! It feels like Georgia out there (46, according to the weather channel).. It's a bright way to start the Dragon year.

Tomorrow's new moon kicks off the lunar new year, which is the actual start of the Year of the Dragon. Water Dragon, to be precise, and I hope that bodes well. Lawyers and I did "The Year in Review" back in December, and by most counts it was a pretty lame year. I recall saying I looked forward to the Rabbit for a nice little rest, and in many ways I can see how last year was metallic rabbitlike, a period of holding space, of making progress without ever actually achieving anything, it seemed. It was hard to find the special high points, although easy enough to point to the low (March, June). The Tohoku disaster was absolutely, abominably devastating to so many people's lives. And while for me, the hardest part of losing Shannon is seeing others lose her too (lose her more?), it was and is still a rocking personal loss. We were asked to give our own personal "best news" from 2011 for the end of year party and I found myself swallowing and looking back over the months and finding... what? "Best news"? What had I accomplished? What had I become in one year's time?

I wrote down my Shorinji brown belt (not to be confused with my 2-kyu test in the summer, which I hated), and my kids winning speech contest, and could not generate a third piece of news. This is strictly personal of course. I had a lot of fun, did a lot of stuff, traveled, met new people, conceived new dreams, tried to kill some old ones off, but couldn't boil it down to anything solid. This also has a lot to do with the state of mind I was in pre-trip.

But tomorrow's new moon is not for dwelling on the past year and its immobility, its status as the "Year without climax." It's about what's happening now, and what will happen next. My next Cambodia trip entry will be the Angkor Wat day, which was also New Year's Eve, and how we rang it into Siem Reap. What I know about the Dragon, now, is that I'm ready. I know this in the same way that I knew with the Rabbit I was not. Not ready to take on the next big challenge, the move, the change, the handing over of this niche and life to someone else.

Today I went to buy new filters for my water pitcher, and picked the 4-pack. "Hey successor," I thought, "you probably haven't even been selected yet, but I'm already gettin you presents." ('Cause the life of all 4 water filters exceeds my tenure)

Sometimes when I stop to think about it, I don't know how I'm going to give up this seat. I've never been good at letting go of any good thing, and I know this is a good thing. For all the little pitfalls and problems, it's still a good thing. You know a vacation was good when it is not only fun in the moment, but makes you better able to appreciate what you have once you get back home, and our trip definitely did that.

I got back on the ball and finished my TEFL course upon returning to Japan. I took the test last weekend and am officially certified now, just like that (certificate's in the mail!). My Shorinji Kempo test for 1-kyu is coming up on the 2nd, and I feel good about it. I mean, I'm not supremely confident, but I've been working hard, and I feel much more ready. For the first week after I got back to Japan, I was going to bed at a reasonable hour and not feeling rushed anymore, or as put-upon. A little of that has come back, but mostly things are falling off as I had lined them up to do. Once decision day is past, I can start training a successor in Hyogo Times. I'm auctioning off my jetwit posting responsibilities to whoever is a capable comer. Twitchy-sensei is the only thing guaranteed to make me crazy, but since they teamed him up, this semester, with Mikan-sensei (poor Mikan-sensei is a pretty big responsibility sponge over there), he keeps Twitchy in line; things are much more tolerable even there.

I have a tendency, I know, to load up on too many things. There are too many things to do, and a great number of them seem worth doing, and so I decide to do them. My resolution last year was -- in space-holding fashion -- just not to add any new things (and I failed at that right away with jetwit). This year it is a decided shift in a letting-go direction. Stop doing all that stuff. Actively get rid of things (objects, responsibilities), with an aim toward a simpler, less cluttered, thus less stressed life, and perhaps even time to write that novel.

I'm still going to travel, and write, and keep in touch by sending people things, because now I don't know how not to. But I am working on saying no, on giving myself the time and space which I am always so keen to give away. I enjoy socializing, but it really does take energy. Today I planned to just hang out until this evening's event in Himeji, reading Hunger Games before my Amazon Prime membership expires tomorrow, running errands. I've had two invitations to go places and do things, and I very nearly said yes to them both. I love to say yes, I love to hang out and chat with people, but I am recognizing more and more that I need some of that for just me, too, and that saying yes just because you are asked is silly.

So, the Water Dragon, what is that like? The dragon is the luckiest of the 12 zodiac creatures, and the only one that is mythical. It's the most badass. I think the water element will make it calm, but it will still be all about energy, dynamism, change. It's a good time to learn to leap.

from the edge of something else

Cambodia. It's amazing.

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior

It's finally here: Wednesday. I've been looking longingly at this day on the calendar since sometime last week when I realized what was happening on that pattern of numbered squares. It's a desk day, a nothing but do as you will you little ALT you day (oh, and o-souji), after weeks and weeks of classes and lesson planning and elementary and children being horrible brats and snide comments and terrorizing each other and I need a vacation for the love of God...

As usual, there's a lot going on. A lot of fun things, a lot of exciting things, a lot of tiring, tedious things, a lot of normal things, daily grind things, online course-taking things (did I mention that my TEFL course has been both more interesting and helpful, and also more demanding of me than I predicted it would be?).

I just checked to make sure my flights are all in order (that is, that I actually do have tickets for all the different flights I thought I had tickets for). Now I'm putting all the info on to one handy page, registering with the travel website of the US, and trying to generate a packing list.

But when I say there's a lot going on, it isn't all just out there in the physical world.. I also mean inside my head. It's been a bit of a mess in there lately. I don't mean to complain, but I do mean to be honest. I've been riding right up on the edge of a nice toasty meltdown.

A lot of it has to do with my ever more precarious position, timewise. As the weeks go by, things shift more and more. Everything becomes a game of now or never. I look outside and I resent having to leave this place. I look down and can't wait to get out. I say, it's my third year, so that means I have to go. "They've changed the contract," my fellow ALTs tell me, "look, you can stay up to five years, now."

Five years, three years: neither one is really permanent. The more I learn and the better I get at my job, the more frustrating become the confines of the system within which I am wrapped. They don't know what I mean when I say, it's my third year, so I have to go.

It feels connected to an inner need to own something, or build something, rather than just subsist comfortably between the lines of what the teachers expect and the students enjoy.

You can always tell a Dutchman, but you can't tell him much. When I arrived, I was daunted because the shoes were bigger than my feet, but the more I learn about language, about teaching, the more I wish I could run the city's English program (does it officially have one?), design its curriculum, lay out its calendar, and direct its activities. I want to do things my way, but not just my things. I want to be in charge of the entire affair, albeit in small scale. I would say, let me open a language school, but there are already plenty of those. Besides, I want it to be available publicly, to everyone; I want the English classes already happening four times a week to really accomplish something. I want to go at it in a systematic and real way, I want someone to see what a multi-layered approach to foreign language education starting in elementary school and pursued in earnest can really do. I mean, you'd have kids, like, fuckin'... speaking English and shit!

My dreams and desires are too big for my pigeonhole. So even though I like my salary, and I love my school (I seriously think my particular position is one worthy of envy) for its wonderful students and excellent fellow staff members and sweet new building, and I like my apartment, and I like my ALT friends, and my travel opportunities, and my Japanese townies and their gifts and their pets, and my Japan seasons and small town life, I don't like my job anymore, and I honestly think that for that reason, someone else will do a better job than me next year. Because they'll be excited to teach Halloween or whatever cultural holiday, and I skipped it entirely this year. Because I'm tired of fighting fourth graders, and enduring exuberant shouts of "gaikokujin!" (though it is pretty friggin cute that a four-year-old is able to include the "koku" part of that word... it's much more polite that way) I'm tired of "harro" and "ohashi jouzu," and all the stares and trepidation I encounter when I try to deal with people that don't know me.

And I'm tired too of missing holidays, family gatherings, weddings, funerals, parties, and babies. I'm tired of telling kids about holiday traditions in which I don't get to participate this year, and furthermore, knowing that they don't quite get it, because you don't know what it's like unless you're there, and moreover, there again and again every year. What is Halloween really like? How can I simulate or explain the experience of trick-or-treating, costumes, and also how your Halloween evolves from age 5 to 15? What is the true meaning of Christmas, especially to a roomful of Shinto-Buddhists?

I'm not part of Japan, not really, and in many ways never can be. In other ways, it could be a matter of time. Language barriers shift, weaken, and in some sectors come down, but in others they remain annoyingly in the way. But I'm not part of the lives of the people back home either; how much does anyone really know or understand about how my life goes on a normal basis, about what annoys, delights, gratifies, or frightens me? About what I enjoy, what I'm grateful for, what I need, and what I want? And what do I know about what it's like to be over there now? That feeling of disconnect has been approaching fever pitch.

I've complained before about people who say they want to start on their "real lives," how I think being here is just as real and just as part of life as going back home to a non-existent job and a bigger picture. But I do have to admit that there are a lot of things that are on hold while being here. This is another case of totaling up the little things -- each on-hold item is not a big deal by itself, but enough of them, and for long enough, starts to tip the balance over. Professionally and personally speaking, I can see the way the scales have slid, and I know it's time to go (relatively).

But I still hate to have to.