Perhaps I wasn’t meant to settle for やってみよう.
There comes a time when you must say goodbye—even if only temporarily—to a human being with whom you discovered goodbye was not an option. Since you cannot do much about fate (for the time being), you have no choice but to follow this person down to the very end of your road together, kiss your last kiss, then turn around and walk back to normalcy (i.e., the way things were before they appeared in your life). You gulp down the tears and let them harden like amber. Even if you’ve never suffered from an embolism or kidney stones, you must be able to picture how painful it must be to have a foreign object stuck inside you, impeding the free flow of whatever it was that made it comfortable for you to live alone. This crazy pebble is full of memories and hopes for the future making of new memories. It hurts, but in a way you’re glad it hurts. It’s life at its fullest. Love.
One day this long trip will come to an end, and I will no longer be of your interest. Your morbid curiosity for a girl who lost her mind on the other side of the planet will recede, and you will slowly get up from your chairs and leave the theater. Look at her. She lives where we live, she eats what we eat, her heart is perpetually broken—what good is she now that all-too-common body is surrounded by Roman letters?
I once escorted a friend of mine to dinner with some friends of his. It was a rather uneventful gathering, except that for the duration of the meal I was invisible to them. At some point they introduced me to a newcomer as a nameless being, undeserving of recognition as a human—until my friend mentioned my current whereabouts. As he (not I) pronounced the two magic syllables, I sprung to life from thin air before their eyes. That’s how I understood I represent nothing but shock value to most of the people I meet. Once it’s gone, I’ll be gone as well.
It should be okay, I guess. Le monde sans moi, c’est la même chose.
Categories
My Other Half Speaks
(Not my other half as in my romantic partner, for I am a complete being with or without him.)
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.—Sylvia Plath, “Ariel”
Do you remember, dear, this thing called gender studies? You probably do, because you talk about it all the time. Do you remember how crazy you are about this subject and how you would like to do research on it and talk about it and teach people about it and help the world change even the tiniest bit in terms of it? It is as inherent to you as writing, singing, and drawing. Try wiping it out of your head for a while. Can you simply quit this thing that drives your desire for knowledge, a passion that even gets you in trouble with other people? Can you?
Do you also remember that you are very good at what you do (that is, when you actually do it)? Sit down, write a paper: most chances are that it will be excellent, and you know it. This fear of yours is nothing more than a fear of yourself. You know very well that you are your own worst enemy, and you’re letting the enemy win. Take the word “stasis” and do something beautiful with it! You think that education ruined your creativity, but look at yourself: you’re back at sketching, you’re singing again, and you never actually stopped writing. This blog is witness to it. Anger, frustration, forget all that. You’re flourishing rather than withering.
Feel the ideas flowing through your fingers, listen to the endless pit-pat on the keyboard, see how words rain. You can summon this rain.
The future is far ahead—why worry about it? Why listen to all those who push you into something that’s never worked out for you? Were you ever planning on coming to Japan? Dreaming, yes, but planning? How did you end up in Hawaii? Was that ever among your plans? Dreams, yes, but plans?
Don’t be scared. Take it one step at a time. Soon you’ll be done with this weird, weird dream called Japan. Who knows what’ll come next? Isn’t it exciting to expect the surprise?