I have been looking at all the photographs I've taken in the past several months and, by and large, have noticed a particular aesthetic. Clean, right angles. Empty fields of vision. Plenty of vacated space. Even the warmer colored pictures, I normally filter out a lot of the yellow and red for a kind of cool blue finish.
Similarly, my writing has been full of distances, dispassionate digressions (if we might allow some unfortunate alliteration), white space, stillness. Perhaps there is something of learning patience in this, but it is not my current reading.
In the mornings I wake early and brew coffee. I grind the beans and mix them with water in a saucepan, heating them slowly until there is only the slightest activity on the surface, and straining the dense liquid into a single cup. I eat a piece of fruit, usually a banana, and take a vitamin from a stockpile I collected at Central Market, and have had some imported to me as well so they might last much of this year. Some days I add Mozart or Beethoven, others I prefer silence. I sit and pretend that I will write something today. Most days, I compose a line or two. Others, nothing. And I pour myself into the study of Japanese, mostly composing katakana lines and memorizing simple phrases, but it is difficult to recall these phrases in practical situations. I am more likely to use the phrases, questions, and sentences that I have observed in conversation.
I stop convenience store clerks, McDonald's employees, waiters, civil servants, civilians who happen to cross my path, and I ask them how to say things. I can almost always use these.
I begin to think of my students. What I may need to do to improvise with the more advanced students when the lesson plan is beneath their abilities. What tacks I can take toward understanding when the subject matter is a little difficult or boring.
I brace myself for the cold.
And I am satisfied.
And I am quite alone.
I recall the muddled photographs and dense tomes I used to compose. Jumbled layers of narration, improperly exposed and furiously piled over and over onto a page. Mornings spent hiding from the breaths coming from the bed upstairs, rushing every word into whatever heat remained of my hastily made coffee and the sugar, collecting in the bottom of the glass, offering a thready sanguine half-hour past which I could not think.
And I was satisfied.
I was not alone.
And I honestly don't know which I prefer. There is a deep sadness buried in each. And some joy to be uncovered.
