as she does with the passage of time

it is so soon

and there isn't much to say. (breathstolen) (home)

Why so serious?

You know what, forget that last bit. I'm thinking about a hammock. An electric fire. A plane ride full of every bloody waking moment across the Pacific, I will not sleep. The challenge of a test. The puzzle of a portfolio. The mysteries of the empire. My last days in Japan. Quiet. Thoughtful. My first days back home. Rich. Overflowing.

The fullness of things.

See Nothing Hear Nothing Do Nothing

There are boiled eggs cooling on my cutting board. Coffee in front of me. No, behind me. My timer is still running in the corner, probably at fifteen minutes or so, I was supposed to stop it at five.

Looking at a hangnail, I wonder where I will fit when I go back home. Will they let me walk places. Will they let me read. Will they place me on a shelf in the den. Or under the sink with the comet and old sponges now only used for cleaning the tub. There is routine here, even though I pretend there is not. I must vacuum. Islands and Busdriver on my morning speakers.

I miss school. I don't imagine that I've really been at one. But perhaps it was my doing. That it is an office more than a classroom. That it is a business more than a place to push students, piss them off, get them into the fog, as my father is fond of saying, so that they might encounter that moment when I, as a guide, am insufficient to their journey. And they can show me that I am wrong, and head out on their own. And find that the fog has lifted. A beautiful moment.

I share a common dislike of clowns. So why have we been drawing them then having conversations with them. I'm even doing their voices. Psychoanalysis unnecessary. I am the clown here.

Time she is Funky, No?

The days are slow, but the things in my apartment are starting to make me nervous. They need to be gone. Now. I don't want to scramble at the last minute to find homes for chair and sofa, etc.

GRE is creeping up on me. Applications. I keep riding around looking for the doctor's office and can't locate it. I should have learned this crazy moon language more thoroughly. Getting my bags shipped to Narita. Planning a Halloween Party with NO TIME in my schedule to do anything of the kind (who thinks 30+ in-class hours is reasonable is an idiot).

But I cannot worry. It all fades away with a single quiet thought. And things will be as they must. I cannot help but trust to it. And this is when the days begin to slow down again.

SHPAYYYDA !!

little ghost

Dojyou

I encountered them swimming in a frenzy in a green tupperware bowl on the floor of Naomi's kitchen. Naomi is my Japanese sister. Her son, upon noticing the little eels, promptly shoved his hands into the water and began trying to scoop them up. Two fell onto the floor, at which I carefully helped one of them back into the bowl, watching it struggle and writhe in my fingers, worried about applying too much pressure and killing or injuring it. Finally getting it back to its home. This is how I thought of a green bowl on the floor. Home.

Her father later told me how they are cooked. I don't speak the language too well, and so gestures here were very important. They are placed in a pot with a little water and tofu, swimming around as the fire is made to bring the water to a slow boil. As they begin to die, the eels try to escape the heat and burrow into the block of tofu, breaking it up and stirring the nabe. Their desperate attempts at survival a vital role in the making of the soup. This is what I understood from his gestures and piecemeal of words I could catch and hang onto.







I considered which one I had helped back into the bowl. Had I done it any favors? Had I eaten it? Did Naomi hold it up for a photo with her chopsticks?






Dessert was cow poo. But that's another thing entirely.