Hey, Livejournal!
Nah, I'm shittin with ya, I'm still dead as a doornail. But today is my one month anniversary of life in Japan so I thought I'd post my musings so far. Good luck deciphering it.
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to people, places or events are purely coincidence. Except for that part about Conor and the tea. That was fucking hilarious man; hope Austria’s treating you well. For figurative readers only and not my mother.
The weather is beautiful today. It must be about 10 degrees. Ten degrees! I’m spoilt by this luxury! It was wonderful to wake up to window literally glowing with a sun as lazy as I am in the mornings (already 7 and not yet completely over the buildings on the uncomfortably close horizon!)
The weathergirl said today will reach about 13 degrees. I didn’t even need to wear a coat. I was fine in my stockings and oversized cardigan I don’t wear nearly as well as those wonderfully big-eyed shoujo manga girls I love so much. But, like as I discussed with my father, today’s prediction for the weather may be accurate, but Saturday is a mystery to us all. Indeed, day fades, light fails and night falls. Like the long winding road to Kanazawa, you see the approaching moon like a tunnel. Anticipation. Anticlimax. But just when the disappointment wears off you realize it was no less interesting than the afternoon valley you just left, just not particularly more interesting, and suddenly it’s light once more. You keep driving.
But the weather is beautiful today. In the end, that’s all you can hope for. And when the coming Saturday rears its head and I’m carting an umbrella with disdain, that will be my mantra.
* * *
I wonder, she said, what makes an artist an artist. Is it the love of aesthetics? Then we all are. Is it skill? Then what about those who squander theirs? I’ve come to believe that, just as everyone’s been saying, it’s insanity that truly makes an artist.
She smiled
Wonderful. At least it means the sane people are in charge of the functional side of life. We nutters just make it more interesting. Oh, but that’s a bold assumption, isn’t it?
I shouldn’t assume things.
She took a swig of coffee- God I wish that had been whiskey or something. The truth is, I’m dying for a cigarette. I thought I’d never be able to do it again, but spending a lot of time in unventilated places filled with smokers really tugs the urge. Too bad I haven’t got the balls to lean over to the president and risk everything by asking if I could bum a smoke in garbled Japanese.
But I’ve forgotten my point
She paused, chewing a thumbnail as her eyebrows slowly met in distaste at her own forgetfulness.
I can’t believe that guy, she said finally. I didn’t know whether this the topic she had originally intended or if she’d just given up and started over. It’s not exactly like I could ask her, though.
No, that’s a lie, she said suddenly. I can believe him perfectly, that’s not the issue. It’s that I just don’t want to. Oh, look, the sky’s already gone purple.
She flicked the nearest light switch experimentally, and moved as if to shut the blinds on the other side of the room, but stopped herself before she’d left the chair again.
I mean, it’s been a month, whatever- his life、 his freedom, this is exactly what I wanted to happen, right? That’s what one part of me is saying- God I need that cigarette. But you know, that part of me saying it is the same part that always tells me I’m incapable of living like a normal person. Like, my uppy-downy side. The one that sends me into self-destruct mode. I think for the next couple days I’ll be in self-destruct mode, actually. Sucks, really. But I’m used to it, you know?
She glanced at the table
This cup of coffee, for instance. The silent voice that communicates without words is all ‘don’t drink that coffee, it’ll fuck you up woman, you know what you’re like on coffee and you’ve already had bad news today’ but the audible voice just says ‘ooh! Let’s exacerbate the problem!’ and I drink it. I always listen to it, because I can hear it- if that makes sense.
It didn’t make sense, but she went on anyway.
I guess I’m female after all, huh? Always unreasonably jealous. It’s not even that he’s got someone new. It’s that he’s got someone new and I don’t. That’s what’s making me green.
Jesus, where did that come from? What am I, eighty years old?
She ran her fingers though her hair.
God, this weather is terrible. I’ve got the worst dandruff you’ve ever seen.
She paused, fingers remaining tangled in her short light brown curls
I think I’m just homesick, and his new girl is the treacherous piece of straw on this camel’s back. Her bottom lip twisted out of the grip of her teeth into a disappointed frown- she directed her now overly bright stare onto the ever fading gray of the window instead. The monochrome of dusk might hide her secret a while longer.
Fuck it. She’s probably a million times better
Suddenly she laughed, a shrill, broken thing
I’ve resorted to hyperboles!
For a while then, she didn’t speak at all.
I think, she said finally, I had just hoped that I had finally made a male friend who could regard me as more than six months of almost dating- y’know? He’s sent me one email. One fucking email. Whatever.
She stood, collecting her glass as she did.
Fuck it- I’ve had worse. I’ve had worse from him, even. I guess I-
Ah, forget it. Let’s go look for a cigarette vending machine, or something.
She stopped again and swiveled, throwing one last look to the window.
The weather was beautiful today.
* * *
It’s the smallest noises that scare us the most: the almost inaudible ‘click’ of the car doors as it takes off, filling you with a sudden urge to climb out of the window just so you know you aren’t trapped. Or the uncomfortable rhythmic rustling from the next room reminding you that someone has a love life even if you don’t. The feeble ‘putt’ after flicking the light switch connected to the bulb that just burnt out. The smack of foot against ball 50 metres away that you just know is going to hit you square in the face no matter what you do. The last note of your ring tone in a crowded street fifteen minutes after you promised you’d call your mother.
This doesn’t have a conclusion, and neither does your mother.
(that is to say, that bitch never stops)
* * *
(A letter to Hannah Winn)
Fresh baby corn, I’ve decided, tastes exactly like what the smell that immediately precedes heavy rain would taste like if you could eat it. Quite out of nowhere, now that I think about it, but I ate it at the rotary meeting today and thought of you for some reason. I always become randomly inspired at the rotary meetings, not because rotary itself is particularly inspiring (nor do I have a bad word to say about it either) but when being buffeted by a language I barely understand by middle aged to elderly men conversing rapidly with one another I have a tendency to kind of…zone out. I’m sure you know the feeling. But these little excursions into my imagination are quite welcome, in fact, I haven’t had this much fun in my head since year 10, when my love for anime was just beginning to peak and I had just decided that Kurogane and Fai were, in fact, lovers, CLAMP just threw Tomoyo in a red herring. God I’m good at going off on tangents. It feels good to write like this, I miss it. The kind of rambling, meandering prose with neither reason nor rhyme that appears to go nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Well, at least you’re not completely stagnant. It also feels good to be able to write from a solid first person perspective without feeling like Bella-fucking-Swan or spending half the time I have fretting that I’m imparting too much of myself onto the character.
Maybe I am this time as well...
Alright, lets get this penny back on the track and cross our fingers for some mischief.
Japanese coffee really is terrible. Whenever I see someone drinking it I can’t help but wonder if they’re actually a masochist. I must be too, because whenever they serve it, I always drink it. Another, Liz specific downfall of this action is that Japanese coffee is also ridiculously strong. Half a cup later and I’m shaking like a leaf, fingering the stem of my wineglass (full of iced water) compulsively. It’s one of those, I could stop doing it right now if I wanted to, but I don’t want to so I won’t kind of compulsions. It’s then that the image (a memory, really, but it’s become muddled in my head like so many other things that I’m certain anyone else who was there would recall it differently) of a young country boy springs to mind, sitting on the steps with a cup of tea in his right hand. The voice of a certain Miss Hannah Winn sounds from somewhere behind my right temple (yes, I think she was behind me at the time) with a joking “Pinkie up!”
Already mid sip, his right hand remains unchanged as left raises level with it, pinkie stretched out elegantly as he can manage.
Back in Japan, Elizabeth can’t quite mask the chuckle erupting from her throat. She’s sure her face is red and earnestly does try to stop, but whenever her eyes come across the handle of a coffee cup (and my, aren’t there a lot of them in this room full of old men!) that awful, relentless giggle starts up again. The last thing she wants is to offend, but, oops! The president is somehow enjoying that black greasy trash.
I looked into my lap for a good ten minutes today; I’ll have you know. It wasn’t by choice, either. Microsoft Word JP wanted me to put that semicolon there, I disagree but the paperclip won’t shut up so I’ll play the role of a good husband and just disagree silently.
I love figures of speech and the like. I spent at least 20 minutes with my Japanese teacher today discussing equivalents, she was thorougly entertained by the notion of a chocolate teapot, as was I by the sash too short for a belt and to long for a sleeve tie. I guess that one’s more or a Japanese one. We often discuss things like that, and to blend a prior conversation about the irregularities and difficulties of English, I (not without difficulty) translated the old favourite:
The English Language was pieced together by three blind men with a German dictionary:
英語は三人の盲目男の人とドイツ語辞書を組み立てました。
（えいごはさんにんのもうもくおとこのひととどいつごじしょをくみたてました。）
She said she didn’t quite understand- it made sense literally, but it must be more of a native thing. Probably. You can’t really hold a grudge against a language you aren’t fluent in. My Japanese classes are by far my favourite. She can always tell when I understand and don’t understand, and there’s always a meaningful look from her after my home room teacher comes to tell me in broken English that next week we will also meet in za conputa roomu so, please wait here, nekstu weeeku.
Gosh, that was a wonderfully pointless little paragraph, wasn’t it?
If I were in the mood to become existential I’d take this golden opportunity to express with grating non-chalance that everything is wonderfully pointless, darling (because it’s not patronizing enough without the darling, darling) Luckily enough, I’m not, so let out that sigh of relief and read on, soldier!
I’m sitting in an empty house right now. It’s raining (no baby corn in sight, however. The smell remains a mystery.) I miss Australian summer rain, the warm cushion of humidity that catches you with a sly grin as soon as you walk out of an air conditioned room that, despite the fact you’ve been living in the same state for 17 years, also caught you completely by surprise. I miss a lot of things, actually. Like the Internet, Junjou, good coffee and my mother. But they’re my left arm compared to the Fai that is my Japanese life. (There I go again, spiraling onto those Tsubasa digressions again)
* * *