Your magic is real.

1:30am is not the best time to start writing a blog entry, but I have been long remiss in updating here; and, since I have spent the entire day in the apartment doing various lazy things, I have had plenty of time to think today.
First off, school is over, over, OVER, until January 15th. Sweet freedom, she is mine. I took an easy final on the 20th and then went to an advisor meeting and the end of the semester school party on the 21st. I am still in a weird state vis a vis most of the people at school, so finding people to talk at parties etc is a little strange, but I have found that I often end up gravitating towards the kids (playing with trucks > talking to people my age?), and the other people who do the same thing make good company. In particular, I was impressed with one guy who spent most of the party playing with someone else's two year old, even going as far as to sit with the toddler on his lap during our school's violin virtuoso's performance. Toddlers, it turns out, are not so appreciative of classical music, but the image of the wee little child sitting wide-eyed, with the boy-student's skinny body bent around him -- it sticks with me.
Before that was a great deal of sitting around in the apartment with dear visiting friend IK, introducing her to chu-hi while she introduced me to the first season of "Veronica Mars". After the last day of school was more of the same, but added to it numerous day trips to Tokyo (plus one to lovely odd touristy Kamakura). I have now been to quite a few more places in the nearby metropolis than I had before -- I probably doubled my time spent there, if not more, in four days of touristing. It was cold, definitely cold, and sometimes expensive and sometimes painful and sometimes boring. Other times, of course, it was wonderful. Particularly great was one evening when the two of us, plus a friend of mine, ended up in a small grill place in Ueno. Behind a main bar, a plethora of fresh ingredients surrounded a grill made of heated iron tubes, over which two chefs were at their work. Although Japan is usually hell on the vegetarian, we were able to order many delicious vegetables one at a time, eating our fill and drinking hot sake. We were sitting right inside the restaurant next to the door, so every time it opened we'd get another wintery chill before going back to stuffing ourselves on grilled potatoes, eggplant, asparagus, japanese mushrooms. I take back what I've said (out loud, and in my mind) about hating the food here.
I also finally went to Harajuku. I wish I had more time to explore all its weird little by-ways, where it seems a hundred tiny cafes and art galleries and independent clothing shops flourish, just a stone's throw away from the goth kid shop-havens.
And of course, I was in Japan for Christmas. Which was weird. Without family and presents, of course, it felt essentially like any other day, to the point where it is almost as if it hasn't happened yet. I went to a Christmas Eve party, I made a nice dinner on Christmas Day, but I don't yet feel ready to start having holiday traditions of my own while my family does their (our) thing on the other side of the planet.
Luckily, except for the price of the plane ticket, I will be going home for a week and a half after New Year's Day. I feel pretty irresponsible about going home on the one hand, because I can't afford it by any stretch of the imagination. But, at the same time, my sisters are getting older and I don't have the best idea of how they're doing right now. And my mom was going to all try and be brave about not having me home, but I felt guilty anyway. So I hope this makes up for whatever bad-daughter karma I need to counteract.
It seems like sleep is upon me. Lately, I have been having strange dreams, particularly about my(male, scholastic) nemesis, but I suppose interesting dreams help make up for days spent in pyjamas watching video clips from The Office, right?
Right.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UKaVBVikysw



Well, let me bring you back to the subjecttttt.

Alone Again Or.

I am, as of a few hours ago, once again living on my own. As of yet, I have not really ventured over to the other side of the apartment; there are a lot of nice things over there, like a real desk and an extra couch and a place to sleep that isn't also a couch, but they don't quite feel like they belong to me.
Besides that bit of sentimentality, I pretty much ditched out of doing the "goodbye" thing. This morning as I was getting ready for school, I found out that my roommate wouldn't still be in the city when class ended, as I had originally thought. I said I'd be willing to go to Tokyo to meet him for a farewell dinner, but my heart wasn't really in it. Instead, after school, I sent him a text message to see what his progress was, then coughed myself into a sleep (I've been sick the last few days) that lasted past the point where he'd still have his cell phone; since it's a rental, he had to return it once he finally got to the airport. I did get a reply text, and I will probably write some sort of email before I go to sleep tonight, but right now all I really want is to not hear from or about him for awhile. At least a week, and possibly much longer.
The reason for that is, of course, that the random trouble with my classmate dating my roommate came to a head last weekend. On my birthday, even. I should sit you down sometime and recite the parade of crap my last four or five birthdays have been. It was last year's birthday letdown that brought this blog into being, after all.
Birthday number 24, which consequently feels far older than 23, seemed to go fairly well. I had lunch with seven other people, at least four of whom I was not expecting to show up for the event, and afterwards went to study with two of my classmates. I bought special 'birthday' coffee and a new pair of earrings, and although I didn't get a lot of homework done, it was more productivity than I usually manage on a Sunday. Little did I know, however, that while I was off wandering about the city searching for things I could buy for myself, my roommate and the girl were having a pow-wow about my various evils. Which, to be fair, I guess I am sort of evil, some of the time, maybe. I did tell my roommate that there was a good chance this girl was emotionally messy/crazy, after all, and that is not a terribly nice thing to say. In my defense, however, I was totally right: anyone over the age of 15 who thinks that Facebook is a good venue for expressing anger is at least a little cracked.
This whole "Amy-sucks-let's-badmouth-her-together" party had, of course, some negative consequences for me. Now, for instance, I am on tiptoes when walking around school, lest I have some awkward run-in in the bathroom or near the fridge with my 'nemesis'. One of her close friends also seems to not like me anymore, which is too bad, because I thought he was a pretty decent guy. I am also sort of nervous about being badmouthed to more people. I don't exactly know how to run an anti-smear campaign. I feel like I should start bringing homemade snacks to school and leaving them in the kitchenette area, just to be on the safe side.
Another wonderful side to this story is that my roommate didn't tell me himself that he had decided he disliked me. Instead, I heard about it 3rd-hand, via text, something like six days after the fact. I was home at the time after having stayed in sick, and my roommate was sitting at his computer. After I read the text and double-checked by calling the sender, I reacted by starting to throw everything of my roommate's I could reach out of the apartment. This ended up just being his shoes, as they were closest to the door. I threw a shoe, looked to see if my roommate had noticed, then threw another shoe or two. My apartment is on the second floor, and I threw eight shoes, so you think he would have heard or seen something. But, no. Talk about the internet degrading the quality of human relationships.
After the failure of my shoe assault, I yelled at him to get out of my house and never talk to me again, but it turns out that that only works if the person is prone to listening to you when you tell them things. This particular boy is not, so instead he stayed in his seat, and we ended up "talking about it". Nothing really kills the joy of a righteous indignation like having to explain yourself.
In the end, he didn't leave, at least not for three more days (which brings us to today). He also promised to try to fix things between me and my classmate, at least to the point where I don't have to fear getting shanked in the school bathroom. He hasn't done that yet, of course, and the mode was downgraded from a face-to-face meeting to an email he promises to send, but.... At this point, would you expect any better?

If there is one positive outcome out of this whole nonsense, it would have to be that I am finding myself much more drawn to boys who seem both nice and as if they have their shit together, rather than the usual "please fix me" types I seem to gravitate towards. It's about fucking time, right?

Over and over and over, again.

The girl at school my roommate was dating now dislikes me so much she deleted me as a friend from both myspace AND facebook. This is serious, kids. Don't even think about laughing at something like that.

Explosion!

A lot of things have happened in the last few days. Most of them have involved a lot of words coming out of my mouth, often angry words, directed at my roommate. In the course of two days, we may have talked for 6 hours or more about the state of our relationship. The end result is that I will soon be living alone again. This is amicable but not simple or necessarily easy, and I do not know what will become of us in the future. I do know that I am ready to be farther away from his life, though. Very ready indeed.
At first in fact I felt incredibly guilty about asking him to leave, even though he had anticipated it. I felt all mawkish, made breakfast and acted nice, even somehow found myself saying that in the future maybe he could move back in. That was pretty foolish of me, because right now, as he is lying in a sleepy heap in his corner of the apartment, back this morning from staying over at my classmate's apartment, I really just want this entire thing over with.

I was deep in a dream and didn't know it.

Two evenings ago, I got back from my first trip to Kyoto ever, during my school's fall break. At the time, as I was walking around the temples and experiencing the city, I kept thinking of how I would need to portray this all later on in my blog. And yet, now here I am, back at the computer but with my memories of the trip muddled enough that I have no real idea what to say, nor how to make it interesting enough to be actually worth reading.
I will try that, I think, tomorrow, and skip forward now to just talking a bit about what's on my mind.

What is stuck in my head most strongly now is that today seems like a day of realizing adulthood, however little I might feel ready to do so. On the one hand, I am still very specifically me, with all of my childishness and un-togetherness that keeps me from feeling as confident and real as I hope my adult self will be. Yet externally, things are shifting, and I can't get around that.

The first notice of this was that my dear old friend in Kyoto, whose floor I slept on this week, turned 30 yesterday. 30 is kind of an arbitrary signifier and all, and our generation has decided 40 is the new 30 blah blah blah. I am ignoring all that slacker generation bullshit for a moment, because holy god, a close friend of mine is 30. And not a friend who was 28 when I met him, either. When we first became friends, I was 17 and in my first semester of undergrad, nine-eleven had just occurred, there was no war on Iraq, there was no invasion of Afghanistan, and I was not allowed into any bars, ever. When it got cold I wore a big black turtleneck sweater I had had for many years that didn't quite fit and made me look like a beatnik. But I also often got caught in the rain dressed poorly in such outfits as in tights and a denim skirt and foam-soled mary janes, shoes that fit so badly I lost both my pinky toenails that year. I do not think I owned an umbrella or knew where to buy one. Once, I tried to make Rice-a-roni in the mircrowave, then tried to eat the uncooked rice and chicken-flavory broth when my cooking experiment failed. I do not know how I managed to live through that year.
My friend was not in the same straits precisely, as he was 23 and had already had experiences with living on his own for some time. Yet looking back it is also strange to think of him as I knew him then, dressed in vintage sweaters and constantly nervously playing with his lip ring, starting college for the second time and trying to get on the path to adulthood. I wanted to be more like him, have opinions on lots of music, wear v-neck grandpa-style sweaters, drink coffee and beer and all the rest of it. I don't know if I realized it then exactly, but I do remember trying to buy similar sweaters and feeling excited and special when he would pass me filled-out punch cards from the coffee shop he worked at so I could get free drinks. Making a friend at all that year, but especially a cool older friend who made fun of my age but would still hang out with me anyway, was a triumph that probably remained unmatched until I made the next big social step and started dating. And though now I have flown the coop twice, to LA and Japan, and though I can now dress myself and feed myself with a relative amount of ease, I still feel a strong connection to that first year of 'freedom', before I had any idea of what was to come after it.

The second notice of my reality of adulthood is marriage, and how even though there is more distance between me and being married than there is between me and the moon, it is an institution I can not get around encountering. My closest friend here in Yokohama, or perhaps a better way to name her would be my confidant/big sister lady, is totally married. And has been, again, since I was about 17 and wandering around in the rain in brown tights and black shoes. Her husband can't be with her for this year in Japan, so I met him last night for the first time, but I felt a bit as if I already knew him. I had heard bits and pieces about him already, of course, but the real reason was that he has almost the same exact voice as the boyfriend of a close friend back home. While I talked to him, it was hard to not point this fact out, even though I knew it would come across as irrelevant and maybe a little creepy. Yet, there it was, the voice of someone I knew coming out of someone I didn't, and as I listened I felt very far from home indeed.
I think until I was talking to her husband, however, I hadn't fully realized that she was married.
That the whole ridiculous backbreaking anxiety-ridden quest to beat loneliness and find a partner had been over for her. Yet, there it was: this man was her husband and she and he had sat down and decided that they were going to be with each other, faithfully, even while they were still young enough to be out partying and working crappy part-time jobs and hating their parents. I think the biggest surprise in all of this isn't the reality of love or faithfulness, but that people I know and have befriended had the ability to make that kind of decision. That is an Adult Thing, and you cannot get around it.

So here I am. I have become something of an adult, and maybe it did not happen until this year, but I am beginning to feel like it happened. Now is a time when I can stop saying that I might, for instance, abandon grad school and go try some other life, to avoid the weird feeling I get from telling people I am going to be a professor. Because, well, I am. I decided that. Think of how many other things I must have the power to decide as well.

Observation.

Today on the train, on the way to school, I listened to Belle and Sebastian's "The State I Am In" and got emotional (in the good way). Hours later, still thinking about the song, I came to the conclusion that the song is a subtle remake of Leonard Cohen's "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong".
It could be, right?

Remiss.

Ignore me! IGNORE ME!

...Onto other things. This is the first weekend since school really started that Monday hasn't been a national holiday, so at the moment I am trying to slog through my homework on time instead of letting everything slip until the five minutes before class actually starts. I am pretty terrible at this, it seems, since right now it's about 10:30pm and, even though I have been awake nearly 12 hours, and have not today left the apartment, I am still nowhere near done. Then again I am pretty sure the last five years of my higher education have gone exactly like this.

Autumn seems to have finally got its hold on Japan. The last two days have been cool and rainy, which, even though not most people's definition of "good weather", makes me happy after my season-less year in Los Angeles. I've been able to stop turning on the air conditioning (saving me some ￥), and a few nights ago I was leaving the window open while I slept. Even with the occasional truck sounds and loud drunks/loud early risers, nothing beats a cool breeze coming in while you're lying in bed.

I think my lifestyle has started to even out along with the season. As opposed to weekends past, which consisted of spending too much money on karaoke and drinking (and getting emotional, thank you for that beer), this weekend was a great deal more pleasant. Friday night, two guys from school came over to shoot the shit with me and my roommate. We ate peanuts and drank beer and attempted to turn a rug-beater and a trashcan into a giant bubble wand, but only succeeded in using up all my dish soap. Saturday the roommate and I spent a majority of the day in a gigantic electronics store trying to figure out a work-around for his broken laptop, then met up with a friend of mine from the summer for dinner and general hanging-outs. Somehow this hanging out also resulted in all of us going to Uniqlo and indulging in their super, super cheap clothing. Which makes for a pretty good outing actually, all things considered.

And then now, a lazy Sunday. I made french fries in my toaster oven (surprisingly delicious) and made broiled nasu (eggplant) and hiya-yakko for dinner. The roommate went out to get a beer with a friend, then came home and did odd things, such as backwards somersaults, for my amusement. The two of us get on better than I would have expected before he came to live with me, which I think is a significant part of the reason I'm happier in Japan this autumn than I was in the fall. It also makes me feel rather adult, learning how to live with a man.

Now it appears he's fallen asleep in his loft while reading the English language classifieds. Time to turn the lights down.

On parties.

In retrospect, there are a few interesting things I have learned about myself via drinking over the last weekend that I feel are worth putting to (imaginary) paper.

1) Feminism is a big deal to me.
1a) I am a very cheesy lady.
These two things might not seem to be connected, but trust me, they are. Case in point: Saturday evening, while drunk, I heatedly discussed, in terrible Japanese, the importance of women having self-pride and self-direction to two Japanese girls who I seemed to have decided needed to hear about the One True Way. Since, of course, their replies were in Japanese and I was (again) drunk, I'm not entirely sure I understood their viewpoints, but they nodded a lot and seemed encouraging when I spoke. Unbearable cheesiness of this: I may have told them that they could be President (or prime minister). Unbearable self-consciousness indicated by this conversation: I am pretty sure I got on the topic of feminism because one of the girls complimented my hair.

2) I like being dramatic.
2a) I hate being dramatic.
2b) Maybe what I really like is being dramatic with an excuse and a 50-75% chance no one is going to remember what I was doing the next day.
These deductions have come from the following realizations: I really enjoy karaoke while doing karaoke. Yet, every morning I wake up after having realized I was at karaoke the night before, I am embarrassed and uncomfortable. Also, I prefer to sing duets, to hide my shame behind the shame of someone else. This doesn't have quite enough of an effect when you're singing "Killing Me Softly" slouched halfway down onto the floor for emphasis.

3) Maybe I can't cook after all.
Evidence: My attempt to make marinated vegetable kebabs at the barbecue. I am pretty sure the marinade I made would have worked for something at some time, and people seemed moderately impressed by the amount of spice-adding I seemed to be doing, but the vegetables didn't cook all that well and at least one landed on the ground (and stayed there) during the grilling process. Also, when I got home the next day, my things were sticky with balsamic vinegar.

4) I want people to think I am cool.
Why else would I keep smoking every time I get drunk, and making such stupid faces at the camera? Whyyyy?

5) I hate shoes.
I really, really should not be taking off my shoes in a public area. Especially not the lobby of a karaoke joint, while smoking. If nothing else, it really undermines whatever small positive effects number 4 might have had. I wish the digital camera had never been invented.

Small revelations.

I feel like I've been transported back to college, both half the way I actually lived it and half the way college always seemed like it was "supposed" to be.
Right now I'm sitting in bed, wearing an old t-shirt that reads "Smaug" under a picture of a dragon and a pair of cut-off brown pants. Every so often, I can hear my roommate move in his bed while he reads. And, tellingly, the two of us didn't make it back home from our night out last night until after 12pm this afternoon.
So, while it might not actually be late, it feels like it is. I've spent most of today slowly transitioning out of "partying" phase with naps and reading, while my roomie uses hefty amounts of smoking and a few leftover beers to ease off his hangover. Luckily, it's a three day weekend, so I have tomorrow to conquer the serious amount of homework I've racked up over the last week. It's just too bad I won't be able to throw it all in my bag and march down to a local coffee shop to work until I hemorrhage french roast and have reread every news website available on the internet, twice.
But for now, to the backtracking. The first week of normal class after testing was hard. The students got shuffled around a lot, I found myself staying in the computer lab during lunch and after class to finish homework assignments and memorize kanji, and from Tuesday onward I also acquired a roommate who liked to talk much more than he liked to let me do my homework. One student in my class was planning to have many of us out to his (actual) house for a barbecue on Saturday, however, and somehow I also ended up inviting a few people over to my apartment for Friday evening. I don't know if I really need to stress how unusual it is for me to have weekend "plans"; just rest assured that I cannot remember any time in my life so far where I went 'out' two nights in a row, if it ever did actually happen before.

**********************************************************************************

I just cut out about three paragraphs of boring "party recap". Nothing really is as terrible as reading about a thing you didn't go to, involving people that you don't know, badly written to boot. If you like, I can send you some pictures. All I really want to say, anyway. is that I'm pretty happy here right now. I have had more fun than I usually do, and felt less cripplingly awkward than I usually do as well. I can't begin to tell you what a difference that makes.

A quickie.

In the last two days, I have received some of the best emails of perhaps my life. You warm my heart (心暖まる）, dear friends.
More on Japan, sweating, and being alive to follow soon.

From the Mid-west to the East.

Well, I am back in Japan. And I have a serious lot of backlog in terms of not posting for the last three weeks. Take pity on me; I have been in transit.
The week before I came back to Japan was very good. I stayed at an old friend's house and slept on her couch. We watched a lot of "Heroes" and I got to experience the warm and comfortable feeling of being around people who have known you almost as long as there has been a "you". As well as the almost-as-good warm and cozy feeling of eating a lot of seven-layer bean dip. Ending the relative isolation of my first stint in Japan was a very good thing, and I feel like I am still kind of riding on the wave of good-feeling and going-home a week later.

I even made new friends, to an extent, while visiting old ones. One of my dear-olds lives in one of the co-ops in Ann Arbor, and I spent an evening with his home crew during someone's going-away party. Coincidentally, the person moving away was going to L.A., so I was able to offer a bit of the hook-up on Angelino life. I also got to eat tons and tons of delicious vegetarian food, all of which was so amazing that my stomach still rumbles when I think about it. What was I doing all those college years, living in "apartments" and eating popcorn and raw tofu for dinner? In retrospect, I would definitely trade in on some of my privacy for a chore list and a crowd of awesome hippies, gays and weirdos to live amongst. But, you know, hindsight and all that.

So, thank you good people from home, for existing. I hope I can see you again soon, as well as all the people who have scattered to other places that I didn't get to see. I will save my ducats for all that future airfare.

But, right, now I'm back in Japan, and classes (mostly) have started, and I am living alone again. First-off, though, I will only be living here alone for another four days or so, until my houseguest makes it to Japan and sets up residence in the loft. I think I'll be glad to have a temporary roommate, even though it will cut down severely on some of the best parts of living alone: extended periods of no-pants time, dancing in front of the mirror when a really good song comes up on iTunes, not having to clean up the mess til I goddamned feel like it. But, seeing as this journal is a very good record of the negative effects isolation has on me, I think this will work out for the better rather than the worse. I have the extra space, I like company, and someone pitching in to help with things like rent and remembering to buy groceries will be a good thing.

Also, I have to say, this is the best apartment by far I have ever lived in. The kitchen is a little small and wonky, but the living space is huge, there is more than enough closet space for even the biggest hoarders, the windows are big and light comes in all day. I'm very close to my subway stop and even closer to the supermarket, and the neighborhood is quiet and residential. There's even a park nearby; out my window there's a sign reminding drivers to be careful because children are out playing. I wish I could take this apartment back with me to Los Angeles at the end of the year. I mean, I have a secret loft-cubbyhole room, with a ladder! Tell me with a straight face that you don't want to live in a place like that.

I think school is going to go better this time around as well, adding to the general "high on life" thing I have going on now. I have been put through the ringer the last couple of days over placement testing, which is especially cruel since I have no real problem with starting out again in the bottom class. Learning the basics right at last will be a lot more helpful than the ego boost of not being the dumbest person around would be. But other than that, I have introduced myself to a few people, all of whom seem like worthwhile folk and perhaps potential new friends. The ratio of men to women in the class this year is something like 3 to 1, which is odd, but sort of nice since I am used to my classes being female-dominated. Mixes things up a bit. And now that testing is over, I have a lot of down time for the next two days. This gives me the opportunity to do things like finish my alien registration, get a cell phone and a bank account, pay my new rent and pay off my old rent, and all sorts of other useful things. Or, to update my online journal! Both are obviously equally useful, right?

As a final thought, I have gotten ahold of a lot of new music lately. Thanks to my stepdad, I have an impressive chunk of post-Beatles solo work to listen to now, which I like even though it tends to display a lot of 70s-era overproduction. And thanks to the Guardian, I have some new British neo-folk artists to listen to (you all should try out Bat for Lashes; she's like Joanna Newsom but without a voice that makes your ears bleed). Mice Parade, which I acquired after seeing the CD in the "post-rock" section of a Japanese CD and DVD rental place, is also pretty amazing. Turns out, "post-rock" is a very good way to describe 90% of my musical taste. Thank you for that knowledge, Japan.

This place is haunted.

I have been remiss in posting for the last week. I am back in the States, at my parents' house, with a cold and without any particular responsibilities.
The flight back from Japan was in coach and difficult. I did not have the vast array of sleeping pills with me that I had taken on the flight out, so I was awake for most of the 9+ hours, reading Ibuse's Black Rain. After all, the one thing you want to be doing while you're 3000 feet above the Pacific ocean and trying to fall asleep is read about the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima. I am a smart woman.
Once I arrived at LAX, I had to go through agricultural customs and throw away two grapefruit I hadn't wanted to throw out in Japan (fruit, after all, is expensive). Amanda picked me up, and from there, I spent most of the next two and a half days asleep on a bed I had made out of the cushions of her love-seat. When I was awake, I walked around her neighborhood looking for food, and had the odd experience of being honked at by men in cars. I felt like an observer, taking data as to what "Los Angeles" was like. Apparently in Los Angeles, men will try to hit on me, and the 7-11 will have a gigantic "Coffee Station" with at least 8 different types of coffee available for purchase. That last part really puts the US convenience stores back in the running against the Japanese stores.
In LA, I also saw my advisor, and tried to make him laugh at my stories as I always do. He offered me a bit of extra funding, which I took despite feeling guilty about it. I fled two large debts in Japan, after all, that I'd like to settle before I have to return to the country. If everything works out, I might be out of debt for the first time in years, come September. We shall see.
On the way to my parents' house, I read A Moveable Feast for the first time, and fell back into love with Hemingway, despite the cliche-ness of it. Next came Didion's Play it as it Lays, which is biting and sad and uncomfortable. Both novels made me dislike the verbosity of my writing (and speaking); their words are sharp, and both leave out anything in their stories that is not absolutely essential. I like that; it leaves the stories feeling clean and presses the mind to create the details of each scene on its own.
Anyway, now I'm at "home", spending my time eating, sleeping, and ransacking my stepdad's music collection. I now have a lot of George Harrison and John Lennon solo works added to my music collection, and Beatles rarities, and an anthology of the Yardbirds, just to name some. I finally have a reliable internet connection here, and have been dling a lot of random things as well (to offset the Beatles' slant). Stocking up, I suppose, for the future. Pity my poor computer's hard drive. There are also a lot of cats here, who like to poke around while I'm typing and use the corners of my laptop to scratch their cheeks. Cute, until your laptop is coated in cat fur and your eyes start to itch. My years away from home have made me weak where pet dander is concerned.
I still have over a week of family time, but I've started already to become anxious about returning to Ann Arbor. Won't it be so sad, after all, to see all these places I remember so well, without so many of the people I associate with them? I feel like the nostalgia is going to beat me with a hammer. When I think of the town, I think of drinking outside on someone's steps and feeling lonely. On my own front porch last summer on the phone with George, or on Sara's with B drinking some fruity mess, feeling scared and strange in the back of my mind even in company. Or at the bar, sitting in a mess of peanut shells, laughing and happy but afraid to go home and be alone again.
At this rate, my sentimentalism will be the death of me.

In-betweentimes.

Summer school is over. I passed, it seems, as I was awarded a certificate to that end at the Center's end-of-the-program party. I also have a finished final exam, sporting a higher grade than I have ever received on a test related to the Japanese language, to serve as supporting evidence. At the same time, I wouldn't be very surprised if tomorrow morning found me rushing at 9:25 to the train station yet again, since I don't feel as if I have any purpose being here without classes.

On the last day of school, and half the students' last full day in Japan, I somehow ended up spending around 9 hours "partying" with my classmates. For the first 4 of those hours or so, I mostly felt out of place (and, at times, oily and/or sweaty) but, after the second half, thanks to drinking, I began to have a good time. This still somehow resulted in me and my one-friend-in-Japan whispering to each other, in the middle of one party, that we felt completely out of place, and then using centrifugal force to swirl around on the barstools to show that we could make our own fun without social interaction. And really, it makes me quite sad, when I've seen some of the ridiculously intense friendships that have sprung up between some of the students in the program over just a month and a half, and compare that to my own general hermitly habits. I suppose this is a good experience to keep in mind when the fall program starts -- bond quick, and bond early.

In a way this same experience is mirrored when I find myself bored and wasting time on Facebook. Scanning through other people's enthusiastic wall posts and suchlike often makes me feel envious of people who make more, and stronger, friendly bonds with the people around then than I do. Yet that feeling is rarely accompanied by some big desire to make a renewed effort to become close with whoever's profile it is I'm looking at. . . . This sort of thing makes me really wonder just what magical set of kin-like relationships it is I'm envious of in other people, and hoping to find in the future.

I should point out, though, that once I did hit some critical stage in my being-around-people + drinking, I did have a good time. I actually sang karaoke (and paid for the privilege), taught someone how to make fried rice, did an assortment of stupid dances while sitting, and got to do a great evening-ender sing along to "Hey Jude" with ten other students (all of whom whose names I actually know). At the end of the night, I ended up letting a drunk fellow student who had missed his last train sleep on the floor of my room (+futon and blanket), which I suppose nominates me for sainthood. He made up for the fact that I couldn't much sleep through his snoring and a fear he might die of alcohol poisoning in his sleep by saying a lot of nice things about how he couldn't believe we hadn't become friends earlier in the program. So, at least +alcohol, there must be a little charm left in me somewhere.

I suppose I will have a lot of time to mediate on my random desires and failings over the next three weeks, though, as I will be spending a hell of a lot of time airborne. And at home, which nearly guarantees that I will have to spend hours after everyone else has gone to sleep scanning through late-night television and feeling out of place. Even if the trip home goes well, which I am not expecting of this one, the feelings of boredom and lost freedom while I stay there are enough to kill me dead (at least mentally). This results in a lot of insomnia, or at least a lot of falling asleep at 4am to a terrible infomercial, and generally doesn't do much to make life seem more worth living.

Oh, and, since it wouldn't be my life if this weren't true, I also somehow once again owe a lot of people money that I may very well not be able to deliver on. At least this time it's UCLA's fault instead of mine.

Now I should probably be about the business of putting everything that isn't coming back to the States with me in a series of boxes, I suppose?

Coffee at 10pm.

Today, for the first time in probably more than a week, I didn't fall asleep within half an hour of getting home from school. I didn't do anything productive with the time, of course, but maybe I have a fighting chance of beating the nap curse for the last week and a half of the summer course. It's gotten to where Akizawa-先生 asks me how I've slept nearly every day (especially since "nearly every day" is when I am late for his class). Embarrassing.

Instead of sleeping, I read the entirety of Ryu Murakami's Coin Locker Babies. Does the idea of a book that combines fashion from the Eighties, real Tokyo, dystopian Tokyo, secret government drug testing, and children abandoned a day after their birth in rental lockers at a train station appeal to you? Then I guess I know what you'll be reading shortly. Bonus: the babies in question are abandoned in Yokohama station. I go there every day!

This book was okay if you accept a few things:

• The author has a terrible idea of what clothes go on a person. His fashion-model heroine lady is seen more than once wearing a lame top -- where did you learn that word, Ryu Murakami? I don't think it can mean what you think it means.
• The novel contains what I have decided must be the modern Japanese novel's de rigeur sex scene, in which a male protagonist suddenly is overwhelmed with the need to have the secks with some lady he barely knows, struggles with her mightily so you feel gross and awful because you have been tricked into reading about a rape, and then comes immediately after "penetration". Afterwards, the lady is always cool with this. Bonus points if the male character in question is less than 16 years old.
  
• The gay character is at one point a hustler. Also, after he is "outed", his character becomes an annoying douche. I really want to read more novels with gay protagonists who are totally kickass.

Besides these caveats, the book is pretty good, and I recommend it if you like the weird piled on with a shovel and have a lot of hours where you should be sleeping, but can't (or shouldn't be sleeping, but desperately want to). Also, a movie is going to be made of it, so read it now and be able to make annoying "the book was better" comments later.*

I also found an apartment. Which I was going to focus this entry on, but it will have to wait, because I have to write a speech (about what, I still have not decided) and I somehow wasted almost two hours of my life searching the internet to find the name of the temple that's five minutes from my new digs. It might, might be Kandaiji (神大寺). Then again...maybe not. You would think with all the people who <3 Japan, it would be a lot easier to get this kind of information.

*This movie will reportedly feature both Tadanobu Asano and Sean Lennon in the lead roles, which basically means that for me, even if it is the worst movie ever, it is still the best movie ever.

"Good news, everyone!"

Man, I have been watching a fucking lot of Futurama lately. S., thank you for that magical link to all the American television. Current runner-up in my media absorption is The Office, which is still sort of hard for me to get into, as every five minutes or so the next thing about to happen on the show seems so embarassing that I have to pause the episode and decide whether to continue onward.
Example, for my dear Office-loving friend: in the Michael's birthday episode, when Kevin is waiting back to hear whether he has skin cancer and you see Michael in his office taping a strip of yellow paper around his wrist. I was so sure that Michael was making a fake hospital intake bracelet that I stopped watching the show for a day before I finished the episode off. (I was wrong.)

Today I got my first haircut in Japan, and re-realized for the millionth time that if I feel at all nervous, my Japanese immediately goes to shit. Luckily, the vague ability to say "motto mijikai" (more short) stuck with me, and the hair stylist seemed to be a good sport about things. He would occasionally tell me that he spoke English; I am nearly 100% sure that he actually did not.
The hairstylist also thinned the crap out of my hair, so I feel a little like I'm going bald, but overall it is a happy improvement. I will take a picture, one day when I have my camera and not sweaty. Promise.

I got this haircut because doing such things is my remedy for bad days, going back since high school. It's a little more effective when I make some sort of large change, but it still always is successful in making me feel a little more "together", if you will.
Today was a bad day because, after class, I was taken into the Center's director's office by two of the staff, along with my prospective future roommate, to be told that it was highly unlikely a Japanese realtor would rent to us, as we are an unmarried girl and boy. This despite the fact that we are Americans, with our weird American ways, and are also requesting a two-bedroom apartment. The proposed solution: we both pay more money for tinier, single apartments. This took about half an hour to be told, as well, and there was a lot of "Hmm, that is difficult, but..." being said by the office staff to us. This made me sort of severely grumpy, because paying over a thousand buckaroos a month for a shitty apartment is not something I want to be doing again. Also, living alone is not good times. The last time I lived in a small apartment by myself, aka "one year ago", things were severely bad times. Often, I was basically just sad and worn out, and a little basic friendly human interaction at home would have been extremely helpful. I am worried about being in a similar situation again.

To end this post on a non-complaining note, some other things:

• Some giggly high school girls who were waiting for the same elevator as me started talking to me, making my elevator ride a little awkward, but also making me feel momentarily cool.

• The best thing I have ever learned from a cartoon: "A little club soda will get out most anything." Proof this is true: the lack of red wine stains on my carpet.

• In my daily diary entry for school, I believe I have written a coherent political/ideological position regarding military memorials (after yesterday's visit to Yasukuni shrine, which was both depressing and depressing). This is a marked improvement over my last diary entry, in which I complained about not having any friends and how I don't really like the girl I am constantly hanging out with.

• I am going to a play (or maybe it is a movie?) tomorrow in Tokyo. That's right, look who has plans for a Friday night!

And now, to (possibly) start studying for the important midterm I have tomorrow. Hooray!

True stories of the unemployed (and of future dead people).

One thing that I do love about being in Japan now, which will probably be surprising, is that in some greater-scheme-of-things way, I am actually saving money. For a long, long time, I have heard about how incredibly expensive it is to live in Japan, yet somehow things are really working out in my favor despite that ostensible fact.
The biggest reason for this is the currency conversion rate right now, which is totally and completely in my favor. It works out so that about 100 bucks here costs me 80 bucks in American dollars, and leads to a sort of amazing mentality where everything seems to be on sale. Even better, sometimes I use my magical american-dollar-having powers to buy things that are already on sale anyway! Thus, I get to have the magic feeling of buying something for 1000 yen that's marked down to 500, with the knowledge that that 500 yen is actually costing me only $4. So sweet, this feeling is.
Also I am no longer living in a goddamned ant-infested grad student craphole (though I suppose this place is nothing special), and the advantage of that is that my rent has been cut nearly in half. So completely worth sharing a shower room with 7 other people for that, I kid you not. If only the wireless signal would boost enough that I wasn't constantly running on a Very Low connection, I would be so self-satisfied right now I'd be whistling.

Also some things not related to me saving money happened, such as me being led to the local city library and checking out many fantastic books, and me spilling red wine on my carpet only to have it all magically come out hours later after I poured a bunch of club soda onto the stains. On my windowsill now there are two little fat avocados ripening, and I am drinking some tea and have a fat belly full of rice and veggies and tofu digesting. Good things, all.

It is a lovely change of mood, because while walking home from school today, I was nearly convinced that I might be dying. I had a strange headache and felt very dizzy, enough that I was worried about falling over. It took me awhile to figure out that I probably hadn't taken my meds in the last two days (I have been constantly running late for class) and that was the likely culprit of my sickness. So, to pass the time as I wobbled home, I thought of a few things I would like to happen if I were to die in Japan, or young, or really ever.

#1 Someone should tell my mom I am sorry I died on her, and also that she should be nicer and listen to my sisters more often hereafter.
#2 I'd rather my advisor was contacted first, before my mom & family, so someone with a nice voice who knew me could break the news to them instead of some official person.
#3 There can be a funeral, but no burying me in a cemetery. Also, no letting my mom pick out my last outfit without advice from someone who knows how I like to dress. For instance, the black jersey dress I have now and the blue-purpley short-sleeved sweater thing would work fine. Also, don't let whoever does my embalming and shit make me look like a clown.
#4 After the funeral, I'd like to be cremated, except I don't know where I'd want the ashes dumped. I am probably going to spend the next few days deciding this.
#5 Someone has to immediately delete all my internet profiles. I'll be damned if my shitty-ass myspace profile survives me in death.
#6 Friends and family can have whatever of my shit they want. Please don't throw away any books or music; giving it away to a library or something is cool if no one wants it. But I'd kind of rather the clothes were burned than end up at Goodwill.


...Is this particularly morbid? Or pretentious? After all, I'm probably not going to die for awhile, and I don't have that much good shit that I can imagine people wanting to take overall. I just don't like to think of someone wearing dead me's favorite hoodie. Or having some lame-o priest from my family's church saying things about the 'afterlife'. Or my mom and stepdad sticking some crystal whatevers into my coffin before they haul me off to get stuck in the ground where all the other dead people get stuck in the ground. At least let me be stuck somewhere pretty.

Update from the House of Oak.

Since last writing, I have seen some things, mostly on weekly class "field trips", and done some other things. Currently, my laundry is drying atop the House of Oak, because it is not supposed to rain here for at least 24 hours. This is a very special respite; I like rain, a lot, especially after Los Angeles, but it is the rare and lucky individual who has access to a dryer in this country. A rare, lucky individual who knows where to find a Laundromat.

I am starting to get more comfortable here as my room has gone from a mostly-bare eyesore, combining brown walls with orange curtains and pink Hawaii-themed bedsheets to something a little more cosy. I couldn't get rid of the orange curtains, unfortunately, but they are somewhat muted by the white and blue sheets and desk I have now. Also, now I can sit up when I use the computer or eat dinner, instead of lying on the futon feeling like a bachelor slob.

Eventually I will clean this room and stick up a few pictures of my domicile. It's on the agenda.

Other things that have happened. I saw a Zen Temple, and went to Kabuki. The temple was sweaty (did I already write about this?), and the Kabuki was not for me. I am not fond of melodrama; also, as we were at a Kabuki performance that was supposed to teach you about how Kabuki works, ergo the first half of the show was led by an Emcee who spent his time repeatedly breaking the fourth wall. It is really hard to rebuild that wall in your mind after someone has made the female-role actors (called onnagata, my dear friends) speak in their natural male voices for a laugh from the audience. I'll have to give the theater here another shot after all these memories have dulled.

The Kabuki performance was also my first time ever in Tokyo, which was rather exciting. However, after the performance, I somehow got convinced to trying to find dinner in Shibuya. Do not be vegetarian in Japan, ladies and gentlemen. Or if you do, bring a lot of snacks and drink a lot of beer to get over the fact that there will almost never be an entree you can order at any restaurant, ever. Even normally simple veggie options (pasta, pizza, indian food) have been pumped up with meat. In Shibuya, I ended up eating at a salad bar (a salad bar where I was only allowed one visit!!), and had the sneaking suspicion that somehow my salad dressing had been made with the assistance of bacon.

Originally I had thought about becoming a fish-eater again, but to be honest that wouldn't do me a ton of good. There is pork in everything here, my friends. There is pork in the salad, the soup, the noodles. There is likely pork in your bread. I am learning to eat much more cautiously here.

However, there are some great little shops in my neighborhood, mostly run by the elderly, where I can buy natural produce and small veggie meals (marinated potatoes, inari-zushi). When I bought my bedsheets from one of these local stores, I ended up in a big goofy conversation in Japanese with the proprietress, because she was so excited by the fact I could talk in Japanese. She repeatedly told me how worried my mother must be that I am all the way in Japan, and gave me two cans of cola as a present (complete with a little bag to carry them home in). It was basically totally adorable, especially as she had an old punk air about her with her smoker's voice, short dyed hair, and many metal teeth.

Also, after that I couldn't not buy the sheets, which is great in the end because even though they were not cheap, they are very pretty and I plan to take them home with me next summer. I will find some use in the States for a futon coverlet.

First impressions.

One fun thing about Japan is that once you connect to the internet, you need to explicitly tell all of your google-affiliated websites to load in English. This wouldn't be a problem really, as it's pretty obvious that "pasuwaado" is "password", except that the US google and the Japanese google give you completely different results for the same query. I have no idea why that should be.

Another fun thing is that if you are in Japan and it is June, as it is now, you will feel sticky from the humidity basically all the time. You will also have to look forward to this sensation getting worse, rather than better, for the proceeding six weeks. You will not know how to do your laundry at this time, because there is no dryer and the clothes lines on the roof of your building are constantly being rained upon.

However, you will find that, even 5000 miles away from home, there is still a Starbucks every three or four blocks, and the interior decoration is exactly the same.

More later, when I feel less disgusting.

!

Almost time to board the plane! Ohhhhh shittt!!!

Weeks and weeks of time.

Looking back on this school year, which is still not done for me but will be forcefully done in four days when I get on the airplane, I have a hard time realizing how much actual stuff I have learned. Last summer, I had never read Kant. Last summer, I did not know how to figure out bus routes. Last summer, I had never slept on an air mattress in a room with no lighting 3000 miles away from everyone I knew.

Today I had lunch with someone I met during grad school orientation, and he told me he had been impressed with my 'knowledge' in the class we had had together this last quarter. I started to say something about how I was just bullshitting, when I realized that in fact, I hadn't been. I have a hard time remembering now any time I spent doing work over the last year, to be honest, except for bad memories of paper-writing marathons and the vague and constant feeling of being behind in every class. I don't think I have made it to a single seminar in these last three months having actually read every page that was assigned. Often, I wasn't even close. But, strangely, through all the pointless time-wasting, some things have stuck. And, in four days, I will have finished my first year as a graduate student.

Any sense of pride I might have in that is, of course, utterly destroyed right now by the crushing disappointment I have in all the time wasted. So, so many things I should have gotten done and didn't, because I couldn't make myself do it, because I was too tired or sad or lazy. The lost time is particularly brutal right now, as I have to fill every day with work until I leave, and am probably all done with having fun with my LA friends for now. Right at this minute, I should be writing in a word file, not here. I should also be visiting the post office to have them hold my mail, writing long-overdue emails, calling my parents, calling Japan to solidify my housing, getting a hair cut, and so many other little things.

Instead, well...I guess this is a study break.

I may have found a place to live in Japan for the summer after all, though. It's a "guesthouse" (which seems like a mixture of hostel and co-op) in Yokohama, and it should be right downtown close to where I go to school. I have to wait until it hits 10 am in Japan before I can call, but this looks like a good lead. The house just opened up two weeks ago, so everything should be clean and new. Of course, I will be paying about $700 a month to not have my own kitchen or bathroom, but at this point I don't really care -- having anywhere that I can stay, and can also afford, will be a lovely miracle.

And, of course, the house has free wireless internet.

Le sigh.

The Oregon Trail game I found online won't let me play long enough for anyone to die. Sometimes, procrastination is just so hard.

Judy doesn't live here anymore.

My roommate moved out last weekend, and since she's left no one has been in this apartment but me.

That is particularly weird, actually, because both Judy and I would have a fair amount of people over. I'd usually end up with someone watching TV with me at least a few nights a week, and Judy often made dinner for her best friend here in LA. And though we didn't talk all that often, there was always still that presence, the knowledge that I was sharing my space.

Of course, this "sharing" often came from the fact that Judy would leave the stove splattered with whatever it was she'd last been cooking, which drove me nuts, but I suppose it was contact nevertheless.

Now there's no one, however, and no visitors either. If there were, there'd be very little hospitality waiting for them. With Judy went the living room -- couch, coffee table, TV stand, even the lamp. The room is empty now except for a television (on the floor) and my bookshelf, which is completely full of crap Judy stuffed onto it in the process of reclaiming her furniture. Likewise, it'd be hard to have someone over for a meal, because there are no more normal plates or bowls. I have to say I miss all those things more than Judy.

My bedroom and bathroom are the only places left unchanged, yet strangely I feel lonely and uncomfortable staying in my room for any more time than it takes to sleep at night or change clothes. Instead I've set up the kitchen table (which belongs to me) as a desk, and have moved all the "living" downstairs. Maybe this is my way of filling the space back up.

It's a weird reminder of both the past and the future though, to be in this space alone. I had a really rough time last year while I was living in my own little apartment-box; the most contact I had with my fellow residents was when I realized one of them was stealing my packages. Those were bad times, times in which I left the TV on for company and fell asleep at 7pm from boredom. With all the work to do for the end of the school year and moving, I'm trying very hard to avoid that, but I was never too successful even while Judy was here. I am pretty sure her biggest memory of me is going to be how "sleepy" I was.

So how to not make this the future? I turned down one offer of a roommate in Japan, actually, because the apartments are so small I couldn't imagine trying to learn to adapt to a stranger in that kind of environment. In a lot of ways, it was hard to do here, even with two bathrooms and different class schedules. And previously, I had been hoping that a friend from LA (who I like too much), who had been planning to move to Japan for a long time, would stay with me for awhile and thus keep the general loneliness at bay. I don't think that's something that's likely to happen any more, though. So this leaves me in a weird place -- I'm very worried about falling into these old bad habits.

Hopefully, I'll fill my new space in a way that makes me happy to be there.

Time's running out!

I have two weeks left in this country. That, you may notice, is not a lot of weeks at all. In this two weeks, I have to finish up my coursework, write an 18 page paper, move out of my apartment, and find a place to live in Japan.
A lot of this stuff is actually busy work, to an extent. Taking the time to put all my CDs into my extra harddrive, deciding what clothes I have can go to Goodwill, etc. Other things are just currently somewhat impossible to do -- for instance, I can't get an apartment til I know how much I have to spend on it, which depends on whether or not I get a little extra funding, which I won't know until...actually, no one even knows when I'll find that out.
This leaves the most intellectually draining and tedious stuff to be tackled first. Like reading a few hundred pages of Kant's Critique of Judgment, writing two page reviews of books I read two months ago, work work work. Which is good, in a sense -- being busy is good, falling asleep tired at the end of the day is good, sitting in the library or sitting on the bus reading is good. Or, as Kant would say, they are "agreeable to me", but this isn't something I need to get into just right now.

The problem is, though, whether or not I will have time to finish all of this. For instance, between now (2pm) and tomorrow at 11am, I am supposed to have read approximately 400 pages of theory and philosophy in total. Thus far, I have read...40 pages. Not really a significant dent, now is it? It's the same case every Friday, as I carry on with the World's Worst Theory Class, and to be honest I will probably only be able to get through about half the required reading...but that feeling of disappointment in not being able to meet the classes (ridiculous) demands really has me down, as it has all quarter. I'm eager for that to end.

And eager, I think, to leave this city. Even though I don't know at all what I'm getting myself into. I don't have enough money to make it through the summer in Japan yet, I don't have any place to be through August, and I'm moving to a foreign country, when I have never stepped foot on foreign soil besides Mexico and Canada. There is not a single stamp on my passport, folks. What am I getting myself into?

I was lying in bed this morning before starting the daily grind, and it was a sunny morning, with the light filtering in through the white shades I stuck up in my room to cover the venetian blinds. And I was very comfortable and happy, just lying there, in my own bed in my own room, enough so that it's sort of impossible to realize I have only a dozen nights left sleeping there. The bed and the blinds and the city will sit in storage til I come back for them, older and possibly smarter (and probably thinner, as this seems to happen when everyone moves to Japan).

Good things about this: Finally learning Japanese, living somewhere with snow and rain, having my own crazy-Japanese-subway stories, high probability of Beard Papa cream puffs within walking distance, aforementioned losing of weight due to walking more/no shitty american food,
new fancy cell phone that will put all american phones to shame, plum blossom and cherry blossom seasons, finally seeing all those places/things I've been having to read about in literature and poetry for the last six years, meeting friends of friends, meeting up with old friends, going to concerts/learning about Japan's indie music scene, cheap Hello Kitty things to send to the sisters.

Bad things about this: Starting over with the friends thing again, leaving behind all my nice things (my coffee mugs, my bookshelves, my cactus), having to speak Japanese all the time, being really tall, getting lost on the train/subway, trying to find good fresh coffee (who knows how long this might take), having to explain in Japanese how I want my hair cut, living in a very tiny apartment, paying a lot of money for things that should not cost very much money (like apples), people in my program might be douches, people might try to make me do karaoke, possible drinking too much beer, getting lost all the time, mosquitos, humidity, losing contact with people in the States, finding new free wireless "hotspots", not having a dryer for my clothes apparently, need to shave legs/wear skirts all summer due to ridiculous heat, my mom coming to visit me in my tiny apartment and driving me insane, anime, white people who are in Japan and like anime, having to be friends with white people in Japan who like anime because there's no one else to be friends with, maybe not being capable of learing Japanese after all.


Hey, that really helped!

Ohh MAN.

I bought my stupid ticket. The itinerary is pretty terrible, and it was $200 more than I had seen tickets going for only four short days ago, but this is what you get when you procrastinate (as I always, always seem to).
On a potential upside, I have a 4 hour layover in Seattle, during which time I may be able to chill with a friend who is now living there. So, hey, all things turn out for the best. Perhaps!

Also this morning, I attempted to make vision and dental appointments for before I take off, and that proved to be an exercise in folly. Apparently you need to make these appointments way, way before the 3-week mark. The woman at the dental clinic was particularly pissed at me for wanting to, you know, go to the dentist before I LEAVE THE COUNTRY.
This is bad news because I haven't been to a dentist for over two years now (when I had my wisdom teeth out), and I am very sure that I have cavities. Like, 100% sure. And yet I cannot stop eating the sugar, whenever I see it, just pouring it all in my mouth and then running around my apartment like a maniac until the rush dies and I pass out in the middle of the living room floor. Or something like that.

So, anyway, I have to spend the next few days calling the vision people at 12am in hopes of a same-day appointment, and I should probably find some non-university dentist who will take my insurance, and I should probably find a place to store all my things and rent a truck and move out, and finish my 10-or-so response papers that are long overdue. And find an apartment in Japan. And plan to see everyone who I want to see in this area of the country before I leave.

What else? What else is there? I know there must be.

In other news, I have been listening to a ton of Led Zeppelin lately; it has been a wonderful combination of rocking out hard (while cleaning my kitchen, etc) and feeling incredibly nostalgic. I listen to a lot of music, but it's rarely the kind of stuff where you sit back and realize how incredibly good the people in the band are at just playing their instruments. And how seriously they are just rocking out like crazy, completely absorbed by what they're doing, and essentially putting all other people within a 500 mile radius who are attempting to rock to shame.
This is especially important to me due to how much I love sad whiny bastard music, rather than music that tells you to adventure out and seek glory and end up in Valhalla (or just have a large amount of sex).

I am also really into the sort of great gender ambiguity going on in their live performances, in which Robert Plant and Jimmy Page basically have dressed in tight women's clothing, covered themselves in jewelry, with their hair grown long and covering their faces. And yet, even though Robert Plant indeed looked a great deal like a woman up on stage most of the time, and Jimmy Page was incredibly skinny and pale and sickly looking, they were still rock sex gods. It is totally awesome.

Okay, enough about this. I will go back to listening to my emo sissy rock now and leave the Zep alone. If you are anywhere near me, or not, shitfuck please give me an email or a call or something before I have to leave the country.

The death of my study session.

Next to me in the cafe is a guy who apparently is so passionate about flourescent lighting that he has been discoursing on it for literally about ten minutes now. Which is ridiculous in and of itself, but nearly everything he is saying is taken directly from a recent NY Times article on the same subject. Which I have, of course, also already read. At least the barista dude is mocking him a little now (he appears to be friends with the "regulars", of which I am not).

This may not sound like such a terrible thing, but the guy next to me actually used "They pass the savings onto you!" in normal conversation. Burn your television, before commercials manage to insert themselves that deeply into your brain.

Now there appears to be a band setting up to play, which, from my seat, looks to be composed of homeless old men. Looks like I might have to go home a few hours early.

UPDATE: Okay, nevermind; these seemingly-homeless men are rocking out. If you can rock out while playing jazz, I mean. But seriously, this shit is awesome, even if I do have to read about post-modernity while I listen to it. Especially good: it also has made the guy next to me put on his headphones and stop talking.

It's better not to make plans.

This flight leaves and arrives on different dates.
	US Airways Flight 6657	Departs: 12:34p Los Angeles (LAX)		Arrives: 3:55p Narita (NRT)
	Coach | Aircraft: Boeing 747-400 Passenger | 11h 21m

So it looks like my total lack of ability to make any plans for the summer has paid off, kind of. Paid off in that by doing nothing, a spot in a program in Japan has opened up for me without me having to do any additional work. Kind of, in that I now have to MOVE TO JAPAN in a month. That's right, one month. As well as finish up all my coursework for the quarter, and the stuff I still have to do for last quarter, and a million other pleasant little things. Save me, zombie Jesus!

In less panic-ridden news, I went home for my sister's high school graduation, and it was actually quite nice. I did not have a fight with anyone, except for a Delta rep curbside at LAX and some businessman who claimed to be in line in front of me. And once I was home, there was a lot of picture taking, and food eating, and observing my sister's friends from a short distance. There was also a wee bit of shopping and beach-going, just enough to allow me to forget momentarily that I had to return to school life and that I was woefully, painfully behind on my work.

I left home with a bunch of stolen/borrowed pictures of my various parents in their states of youth, as well as me as perhaps one of the most adorable children ever to walk the face of the earth. Seriously, you should see these pictures. In some of the pictures I have of my mom and (actual) dad, they are most definitely younger than I am now, and I have a hard time really grappling with that. But I took the pictures to have reminders of my mom and stepdad and dad, and a wee myself, as happy people who are glad to be with each other. With the hope that it will fill in some memories of my past, and pre-history, that are sorely lacking.

I also now own a picture of my (6'4" tall) father in which he is wearing a shirt that I gave to George, and which he seems to wear almost all the time. This one is going to go in the mail.

Mother's Day.

On the phone today, my mother informed me that if/when I came home to reclaim my cat, she and I would have an "anime-style" fight over who had claim to him. "Swords and everything", said my mom.
A few hours later, she sent me a big picture of my cat's furry little face. Perhaps the most successful mother's day phonecall of my life, thus far.

The Dinner Party.

My dinner party was not one. Not that it was ever supposed to be -- the original idea was that I would make dinner and have two friends over to drink wine so that we could drink and talk and have a lovely evening of it. Then I thought, I could invite one more person, and maybe one more. And it would be sort of nice and comfortable, and I would cook for once, filling all my array of little bowls with various chopped vegetables, mixing and measuring, listening to music and basically enjoying being a sort of hipster/academic/domestic hybrid. I like hybridity.

However, filling the requisite 5 peopel total was somehow impossible. I'd invite someone, and they couldn't come. Or I'd invite them, and they'd say maybe, and I'd ask again, and ask someone else, and try to remember what friends I had that got along with each other and which did not, and it was all quite complicated. Early on Friday, I thought perhaps 6 people were coming. Then 5, 4, 3...

In the end, it was 3, all of whom were late, one of whom I didn't actually know. When the first (and favorite! as she now reads this blog...) arrived, she told me she had also thought about cancelling. I told her if she had, I would have punched her in the face. Violence!
We ended up waiting almost 40 minutes for the other two kids to show up, playing Trivial Pursuit to growling stomachs, before we gave in and started eating. They show up later on, eat dinner, and basically leave right after. One, the one I like, brought a bottle of wine and tried to make conversation. The other didn't make eye contact with anyone else, talked a little about a cult he wanted to start, and I am fairly sure judged my musical taste.

After they left, we remaining two ate cake and drank wine, finished our Trivial Pursuit game while listening to the Beatles (I won, forever), and then she also left. I cleaned a little, read online comics I have read many times before, and then I went to sleep thinking about how many people had either not been able to come from the beginning or had cancelled or no-showed. Seven. The number was seven, I think.

This whole community-making thing is kind of bullshit sometimes, yes?

Word(z).

319 of the songs in my iTunes playlist contain the word "love", including few dozen by the band Love and a few intersperced "lovers" and the like. I'd try to figure out what percentage of the total that was, but at some point I seem to have managed to delete the 'calculator' program, possibly in an attempt to make room for more music.

The best title, perhaps, is "Love's A Fish Eye"; I'd like to think it's taken from this poem:


You fit me like
a hook to an eye

a fish hook
an open eye.

(margaret atwood).

Rock music and me.

It is after 2 am on a Monday/Tuesday, which is a terrible time to be awake doing nothing important if you are in grad school. Especially if you are sick, and behind on your reading, and hoping to wake up by 8:30 at the latest on the next day. Despite all this, here I am, awake and happy, writing a letter to the internet.

I am happy because I am listening to new albums, many new albums actually, obtained through this very same medium of the internet. I'd like to tell you that the new Dinosaur Jr. album is a Dinosaur Jr. album still intact after 20 years of rock, that Hi Red Center is math rock which is delicious, that you will probably really like the Panda Bear album. And I am also sad that I am stuck using the medium of the internet to let you know about this, because one thing I truly miss since moving to camp is "music" friends.

I have tried now and again to sort of spread the love of music around here, but it's very hard for me to explain why the things I love are worth loving, why weird music is so satisfying. I don't even know where to start, to be honest. It feels exactly the same as an experience I had yesterday. A friend here, who is someone I am not very close to but nonetheless like very much, told me that he and his wife are having a baby (or, in his terms, that he is "going to be a daddy"). For a reason I can't really explain, I have been incredibly happy and excited about this fact almost nonstop since then. Yet of course, for me to tell anyone who hasn't met this friend that he's having a baby is, well, not very exciting to say the least. This is approximately how I feel every time that I listen to a new album that I like: that the world is so SO good, but no one is going to be convinced of my argument. It is a difficult position, because no matter how much fun it is to be a hermited nerd with itunes and an internet connection, it is much better to be that same person with someone else geeking out in the room with you.

I did, however, have an experience about a week ago of listening to the Danielson Family through a friend's car speakers as we danced around outside and repeatedly mentioned to each other how the music was "SO good", especially the part where it sounds like they are marching, and then the other part where they make crazy religious allusions, and all sorts of things that sound like nonsense now but are definitely one of the best kinds of nonsense ever. I just need to repeat that experience, many times over, somehow or other.

Right now, when I think of these things, I also really crave yerba mate and a crew of folk to drink it with, and the beginnings of fall, and all these vague things which mean "friends" and "community". Another world is possible.

Sick as a dog, but half as hairy.

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Jumping through the hoops.

Some things have gone wrong over the last week, and I currently have no idea where I will be living and studying this summer or in the following year. I am pretty freaked out about this, and my "future", and especially scared about the possibility of not ending up doing my year in Japan after all. I am pretty sure, after all, that one cannot do good research on a literature that they can't actually read.
I also have two presentations to give this week and approximately five response papers to write (half of which are already late). All my classes and all my reading is theoretical, averaging about 200 pages per class per week, and my attention span is somehow just not what it used to be. I, rightly, blame the internet.

One good thing makes up for almost all the bad, however: I have a new pair of jeans. They are long enough, I like the color, and they are comfortable and have rather cutely-shaped back pockets.
They retail for $100. I paid $20.

Nothing soothes the heart like a bargain.

To remember Vonnegut:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

Dear real world...

I am currently involved in two online conversations. The first is about whether or not psychoanalysis and marxism are really "totalizing/totalitarian structures", the other is about female gaze and the word "poststructuralist" has come up more than once.


Someone, please tell me a fart joke, stat.

One liner.

Last night, I had a dream that I had received a piece of mail that was supposed to go to Eddie Izzard, but couldn't return it because I had used the envelope to take some important notes.

Hope is Important.

I did something kind of ridiculous yesterday. I began to give into the West Coast. And it happened through shoes.

Before I moved to start camp, I had bought a pair of canvas Converse ballet flats and some thick padded insoles to signal my transition to a place where the sun always shines and precipitation is nothing but a distant memory. They weren't the prettiest shoes ever, nor were they the most comfortable, as somehow even a pair of Converses still managed to wear off the skin on the tops of my heels with intensity. But, you know, they eventually broke in, and were cosy and nondescript and went with everything. And it worked, until I realized last week that they had started looking really terrible, and that on the right shoe my pinky toe had actually worn through the canvas and was starting to make a break for freedom.

At first I thought, well hey, I'll just throw these shoes in the washer and sew up the hole and keep on going and everything will be fine. This is the kind of imaginary world I live in, one where someone with no actual sewing experience and a $4 sewing kit from CVS is magically able to mend any clothing she owns. Remind me to tell you later about the time I tried to hand-sew a hem on a pair of shorts 45 minutes before I had to be in class (well, I guess that's the whole story right there).

But instead of saving my earth-friendly sensible shoes, yesterday I stopped into a shoe store a few blocks from my apartment that was having a "Going out of Business Sale". And I ended up buying two pairs of shoes. Two pairs of shoes that will, much more clearly than everything I brought out here with me from Michigan, will never see ground that knows snow.

My favorite pair are red. Red! And pointy. And leather. And open to the elements. You can see toes and heel and top-of-feet and side-of-feet. And I bought them knowing I could wear them every day if I wanted to, just wear silly ridiculous impractical shoes around, shoes that will cause blisters and pinch toes, but make me happy to look at. Stupid, ridiculous, happy suntime fun shoes.

This is very much like my last haircut, at another place near campus and my cabinapartment. I went in asking for a trim, but began waxing poetic to my (awesomely Russian) hair stylist about my pixie cut of yore. She immediately made a disgusted face. "Oh no no, you are in LA now. In LA, they like style."

Of course, I thought it was funny when it happened. But guess who still has a big pile of heteronormative hair, and now wears girly shoes?

LA, you win this round.

Anthems.

The song I posted below is one that, no matter how well I'm doing, always hits me -- when I hear it, I end up singing along ("Do you want to stay in bed all day?" YEAH!) and thinking, hey, depression in rock music! This is so totally right on -- I am in fact going to hide in my room during your party and fake sick because I don't want to be around people for the next year! Who knew, Le Tigre?
That isn't where I am right now, but mannnn, does it feel close.

I'm actually doing better in terms of makin' it on through the day, I think. I'm still in the cycle of procrastination/guilt/panic in terms of academic work, but the panic is a little better, and I'm doing a range of other things right. Making food at home, brewing my own coffee, drinking water. Talking to strangers at parties, just a little bit. I cleaned my stove and bought a bleach-y tank tab for my toilet, which makes my bathroom smell clean if nothing else. There's still a lot of mess (the carpet, for one, has not been vacuum'd since we moved in here), but...it's better. Right?

I've been thinking about this particularly, the "better-ness" of now, for the last day or so. Every so often I will get a lecture from a well-meaning friend about how I need to "live" my life. Usually this injunction is filled with vague suggestions of how I could be "living" more life -- meet more people! date! have sex with relative strangers and then kick them out of bed before the sun comes up! -- that don't really seem feasible or comfortable for me. There's the factor, of course, that I am scared of strange men and herpes and open sores and CATHOLIC GUILT DEAR GOD PLEASE STOP WATCHING ME. But the bigger issue is that, well, what am I supposed to do exactly?

The Amy Zone of Comfort is not a very inclusive space. Because of this, there are many places I can't meet new people.
1) Parties are out because of the parties I get invited to, I have already met everyone who will be in attendance. And by parties, I mean that one party, that happened that one time, and I think there were people there and also some delicious snacks. But the memory has definitely grown hazy.
2) Clubs are no. I think that's what people in this city do, get glammed up and go to clubs and dance with men wearing shiny shirts with the buttons halfway undone. This is a no because, among other things, I do not own any kind of sassy clothing. I don't think there's a halter top or a sequin in my entire sad wardrobe. You will find a nice collection of hoodies and hoodie-like garments, however.
3) The library is supposedly a place where young people who think they're smart meet other people who think they are also smart. But in the times I actually make it to the library, I have real work to do, and so does everyone around me, and no one looks happy enough to strike up a conversation.
4) Department functions. The only conversation opener I have for these kinds of things are "So, what field are you in?" and that usually runs short fast since the only field I know anything about is my own. Also, all the men are married, and even if they are cool, I am 110% sure you can't call a married dude to come hang out and watch a movie. I cannot make friends this way.
5) The bus. I get motion sickness. This is also out.

All I have found that this has left me is the internets. I tried this ploy out about a month ago, and you know what? This time it may have worked. Friday I may have made a friend. He's nice, and I like the way his pants fit. Some of you will know how important that is to me.

But, dear friends, what else should I be doing? Tell me all your secrets.

Real update later.

My mind's on rewind
And quicksand
(What?)
I was up all night doing nothing
(Last night? Again?)

Do you wanna stay in bed all day?
(Yeah!)
Do remember feeling any other way?
(No!)
Do you wanna stay in bed all day?
(Yeah!)
Do remember feeling any other way?
(No!)

I musta been sleeping when you called
I'm not feeling well at all
Got this thing that's been going around called
Please pretend that I'm outta town
(OKAY?)

Do you wanna stay in bed all day?
(Yeah!)
Do remember feeling any other way?
(No!)
Do you wanna stay in bed all day?
(Yeah!)
Do remember feeling any other way?
(No!)

I'll make some coffee
Put on some eyeliner
I think I'll find that things are fine
and they're gonna get much finer!

Hey look I'm really sorry
I couldn't make it to your party
I know it looks like I'm gonna cry
Got a to-do list behind my eyes so
Go tell your friends I'm still a feminist
But I won't be coming to your benefit

I give up
I give up
I give up
I give up
I give up

I'll be at home today.


Le Tigre, "Much Finer" (Feminist Sweepstakes)

Deep into no-money land.

I am not a very lucky person. My luck repellance tends to function in two modes: mode one, which just sort of keeps good luck away, and mode two, in which I actively attract unlucky and ridiculous occurances.

Here's the pertinent example:
For the last five-plus months, I've been sleeping on an air mattress because I wasn't really sure how I would pay for a real mattress. My mother offered to pay for me to get a real mattress as a housewarming gift when I first moved into my new cabin, but I didn't take her up on it right away and as time passed I became increasingly less sure she'd still be willing to hand over the money for a real bed. So, time went on, and my sleep cycle got pretty weird, but I still had a place to sleep and things were, in general, okay. This is a pretty good example of my life in mode one -- nothing really *bad* is happening, but somehow I am existing somewhat under the level of happiness and comfort a normal person should experience.

Last Sunday, however, my air mattress died, leaving me bereft of a sleeping place. This happened in my "Oh shit fuck fuck I have no money and I can't get a job what the fuck FUCK" quarter, unlike last quarter, when I could have afforded a new mattress. Then, of course, I told my mother about it, and asked if I could borrow the money from her, and she did not seem pleased in the least. Also ironically, the mattress was popped after three friends I was excited to have visit saw my apartment for the first time and all sat on my bed together. Thus, I learn again, fun has consequences. And I am left sleeping on someone else's air mattress, freaking out that they will need it back before I can procure myself something new to sleep on. This is mode two.

I owe a lot of money places. A lot. I am being tracked down by a collection agency for $50 for a Comcast bill I didn't pay before I moved away from home, I owe the ER by my house money from being hospitalized before winter break last quarter (another great example of mode two), I owe my best friend so much money it makes me feel sick to my stomach. I don't currently own a dresser, or a bed, and I wear the same pair of pants every day. This is a stupid, stupid life.

A friend here at camp offered to lend me some money, and I refused because I realized just how long it would be before I had anything close to enough money to pay another loan back. I am probably not going to be gainfully employed for anything but tiny stretches for the next seven years. That is so fucking scary-weird that it makes me want to give up this whole higher education nonsense immediately and run out to find a stable job shelving books or making coffee or anything else I'm marginally qualified for. Who needs health insurance anyway, eh?

Instead of fleeing, however, I am signing up for psych experiments the camp is running in order to begin paying off my extraordinary debts. So today, I spent an hour and a half inside an MRI machine. Ever done that? Guess what, it is terrible. The space is very small, very very small, and there is actually a strange plastic grate put over your head to hold it in place. On the grate above your eyes, there's a small mirror that lets you look into a computer screen somewhere behind your head. You're also wearing earplugs, and a headset, and your body is held in place by cushions. The entire experience felt like I was somehow taking part in an episode of the Outer Limits.

The whole experience played into all of my latent phobias (confined spaces, not being able to move my body, loud mechanical noises), but I somehow made it through it. And even though the money is decent, it is a sadly degrading experience. The people around me are getting normal and lucrative little jobs teaching or assisting professors, the kind of stuff you can put on a resume. I am putting myself into a big metal box and answering if the blinking lights seem to be moving right or left. Somehow I don't think my life is really working out right now.

One silver lining in all this though: No brain tumors! Thank you, science!

A craigslist prose poem:

"This Lamp, stool and small Table are great for whatever you want to use them for. The lamp gives off a nice glow, not too bright, the shade of the lamp is in the style of Venice, Italy, the small table is low to the ground and can be used as a stand to put a mirror on top of it. It has a glass top, and bamboo style legs. The small stool with white pillow is used as a stepping stool to get objects that are high off of the ground. "

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/fur/268386499.html

Camp life, second time around.

Since the last camplife update, I have:
Finished this year's academic first round.
Gone to the hospital, been left in the hallway, and had several nurses deny me a blanket while I waited for two liters of saline to be pumped into me.
Gone home, to my family and my cat.
Gone home again, to my aunt and my friends and my favorite bar.
Had old Greek women check out my rack, make comments (a yearly tradition).
Made friends with a dog.
Spent a little time with a boy.
Burned 400+ songs for a (non-dog) friend to take home to Japan.
Went broke.
Got money again.
Hovered near brokeness ever since then.
Returned to Camp.
Started a new round of scholastic craziness.
Explored the area around Camp with a friend from home.

And, lastly, have listened to one Camp friend complain, frequently, about sex and the not having of it. Which brings me to an important announcement:

If you are my friend, and you are having problems getting people to sleep with you, please bring your worries elsewhere. I am all tuckered out.

There are a lot of things you can do that are better than complaining to me about sex. I know nothing about sex, or boys, or how to trick boys into having sex with you. As far as I know, having sex with a boy takes a propitious aligning of the stars and the matching of two halves of a broken amulet. And even then, there's no guarantee that you'll get past second base.

So, instead of talking to me, here are some things you can do:
*Craigslist. Lots of people on Craigslist are there solely to try and have sex with you.
*Buy a T-Shirt that says "I am looking for a boy, and if you fit the bill I will have sex with you if you only ask and provide a location". Of course, that's a bit wordy, so feel free to substitute the phrase "PORN PRINCESS" or perhaps a large picture of the Playboy bunny instead.
*Find a tantra group. Craigslist could again be helpful here.
*Join a convent, funnel all sexual urges into an undying passion for Jesus Christ.
*Talk to any other friend you might have, one of those friends that isn't me, and preferably one of the opposite gender. They may have sex with you simply to get you to stop talking.

Thank you for allowing me this time to rant. And if any of you have the market cornered on halves of broken magical amulets, please let me know.