Ouroboros
I have a hole in my life. It's so vast and daunting that it's actually quite easy to overlook. Tiny pinprick holes itch (like "Why don't I have enough money to buy this and that"; "I wish weren't half blind without glasses"), bigger ones hurt ("I wish I had told my grandfather") and the large ones, well, you have to not notice them or you simply break (I had to press the heel of my hand against my breastbone, while I was walking away on the airport - twice now -, had trouble breathing, walked faster and tried to wrench my inner eye away from this sudden, gaping hole).
So I am blind these days. I am good at that anyway, I always knew that. Lie to yourself and ignore this enormous issue looming above you (I left half of myself in Japan - don't look!).
Moments later, after I stared at myself in a mirror and bought stupid things in a way too expensive airport shop, a constantly blinking half chinese half english guy with a black tail and an elegant suit murmured "Sorry!" to my "Sumimasen!" when my map of Japan bumbed into him. He smiled at me, and though my smile had to have been a parody of a facial expression (God, how much it hurt then, and the pain still lingers on), he stumbled over greeting me and said:
"I'm sorry, I promise I didn't stare at your breast, I just never saw a Livejournal T-shirt outside of a convention!" He was such a nice guy, telling me about his girlfriend, about his feelings of inadequacy and isolation in Japan, where everyone assumed because he looked asian - and he just didn't like to talk Japanese because his girlfriend was way more competent, but everyone ignored the blond girl.
But he had bad timing. I was actually relieved when we had seats far away from each other. I did so not want to talk. Just drown in Ironman and The Incredibles and Splash!.
Walking the world in big leaps like this did not leave me with a broadened mind, like obviously some part of me hoped. Personal growth is not that predictable or tangible.
But I learned a lot nonetheless.
How it feels when suddenly "Asian" is normal and "Caucasian" is worth a stare. How normal it felt to have her near, how natural. How some people are way more emotional than I ever suspected, and react, no, act even purely based on emotion - even lash out brutally, crushingly, without really meaning to.
How easily I could submit to being an Otaku, stay at home and drown myself in fantasies and pretty pictures. How I still see myself: two contradicting images, constantly overlapping. The bumbling fool and the suave player.
How easy I adjust to new surroundings, new people and new levels of life - and how hard it seems for me to adjust to new goals and psychological gains: I really don't trust myself. I still don't.
Some things you can see happen time and time again and still not believe in them. If people see me as competent, intelligent, pretty, nice, good, you name it - on a very deep level I don't give that the slightest bit of value. I just think I fooled them well.
And oh, how horribly superstitious I am. Stupidity.
And Magister thesis epiphanies:
So Japan was a closed country for centuries, most of you knew this. There was always a trickle of information into the country, but regulated, carefully modulated and mostly insignificant. And then, all of a sudden, the whole western culture rammed into the Japanese cultural peace. (I'm glossing over a lot here, obviously, but the main point stands.) Imagine that. Centuries of no real outside pressure on your culture. You are the gods' people, living on the gods' land, center of the universe, smiled upon by the sun, the moon and the sky. Your culture was guided by the light and the truth.
And then they come and show you all those things you didn't know, can't do, don't believe in. And they are better. More efficient. Faster. Taller , for fucks sake!
Now, I am writing about painting. About how japanese art was confronted with western painting. There always was a japanese mode of realism, but it wasn't based on scientific knowledge, for example anatomic knowledge of the human body. Hokusai drew very realistic movement, gestures and facial expressions, but his skulls were deformed and muscles completely randomly drawn.
So they show you a drawing of a dead body, of a skeleton, of flowers and ladscapes and each of them show what was to be seen, sometimes even more than could be seen - but everything so real.
And Japan abandoned it's art. For more than ten years, they destroyed buddhistic statues, used ukiyoe as packing paper, laughed at artists and artisans of centuries old traditional modes.
And then my personal heroes appear. Okakura, Fenollosa, Hôgai, Gahô, Taikan... and they bemoan this and demand of Japan: Find yourself again. Fight for your way of seeing things. Look at these painting, this skull, this skeleton, this flower, they are nothing more than glorified hand drawn photographs. The don't mean anything. There is more to reality than what can be seen and you, Japan, and your mother, Asia, you were on the better track on the hunt for that what is behind the visible.
So for about ten years Japan condemned western style painting. Did not let western style artist show their work. Didn't buy it, didn't ask for it.
And at the same time, Japan had a major identity crisis.
If Japan could do all the western techniques, could wear suits and corsages, lift their hats and shoot their rifles, what was the difference, then? I you let in the "other", then what are you? Another other?
So my personal heroes walked the islands and collected pieces. Hidden buddhistic art, crumbled ukiyoe, sad artists. And they wrote down a story. This is "the Japanese", they narrated, this has always been "the Japanese". Regardless of the original location, all art became Japanese and was condensed into a japanese art history.
Now don't get me wrong, they made stupid mistakes and couldn't free themselves from their own taste (who can, really). Fenollosa called the art of the Literati "a bowl of noodles", and Okakura dismissed all western art as inferior. I mean, come on. All of it!
But there is this.
Japan defended her sense of self against the pressure of the values outside of her borders, even while they were slowly creeping inside.
Japan invented her own history and her own identity, and then took all what was usefull from the outside and digested it, until it was something Japanese. Had always been Japanese.
(And yes, extreme nationalism came, twisted and tainted everything and used this for its own means. But still, before that, it was about identity and self-value, not nationalism...)
So every person is a unique individual which has to exist in a social context full of outside values. And with every social contact the questioning of the own identity, the own values increases.
And all around me beautiful people struggle against the outside values. Learn something useful, and no, kid, art isn't useful. Nor is writing. Or - snort - cultural studies. You need to find steady work, or you will starve. Yes, very nice friends you have there, but blood is thicker. Noone will ever understand you like you mother does. How much exactly do you weigh, again? What about kids? Marriage? A car?
These are my own values, and I defend them.
Nothing is thicker than kinship of souls.
You can't feed your soul with money.
Dreams are lighthouses. Therefore, they can be quite big and don't have to be reached.
Most people mean well.
Labels are for cans.
Fear should never be the deciding argument.
And therefore I live by always having a Worst Case Scenario. I look hard at the ground I threaten to fall onto, if everything fails. Most of the time it's not even that dark or deep. And if fear starts to overwhelm me, I level the WCS up. This is, ultimately, why I study in the first place. So that the WCS isn't that far down and quite likeable by all accounts. The dream, and therefore the distant goal, is to write, though. I don't aim for the WCS.
I try to build my own pack of wolves, some of them are related by blood, most aren't. And I try my utmost not to let anyone annoy me, hinder me, drag me down. And even though I rarely openly commit... I do so in secret.
Anyone can be a worthy human being, if he or she just doesn't give up on themselves. I can even love someone who has given up, but what I mean is, well, honor, I guess. Walk on. Learn on. Find your own way home. This is the most valuable human ability.
Don't just let outside values overtake you, but look at them, sift through them and digest them, until part of them might become part of you... and the rest doesn't. And this is true also: The human brain edits the past all the time. Rewrites it, anyway. So use that. Rewrite your own narration. Define your own identity. Invent your own tradition.
But here is where the snake bites its tail. The moment I started to invent myself, sorting my values, narrating my history, I started to doubt everything on a deeper level than ever before.
Everyone can lie to themselves so convincingly, that in the end they believe the lie to be true. ("She didn't mean to hit me." "I can do this.") Sometimes this is, in fact, a very good thing. And it's quite natural. But it makes me wary: "Is this or that a true believe or did I invent it?"
"Am I really confident?" "Do I really like myself?" "Can I really do this?"
This is so, so unproductive.
On what do you base security, when you cut yourself loose from any general outside affirmation? Whom do you trust with particular self-image and value affirmation? (Never again emotionally unbalanced friends who may kick the ground away from under your self image with an only marginally related emotional outburst, I'm sure of that.)
Where to gain certainty when too much certainty may lead to hubris?
Again: a tightrope to walk.
I found a bracelet in Harajuku. Snails biting their tails, and you can't see the latch, when it's closed.
This is not only an extended Auryn (and I always wanted one), whispering Do What You Want, what you really want. (Give love, Bastian.)
It's also a reminder. The human mind is an Ouroboros. It can destroy you or you can use it. Break the destructive circles, build new ones.
Still, it's hard to even think clearly with half my mind in Japan and the other half searching frantically for a new place to live. I just don't want to live without hot water, with three damaged windows (only two of five rooms are really nice to live in) and a post-Al Qaida-attack-bathroom any more.
The day after my flight back here we visited a house, slighty off cologne, very, very beautiful. We didn't get it, and that is so annoying.
She said: it's been a long time since something happened that normally just doesn't happen. (Well maybe me being bumped up to business class, but somehow that doesn't count, too little, to badly timed).
I've been working hard to pump up my carma (daaamn superstitions), but life doesn't work quite that see-through.
I just want to live somewhere without having to think about it, at least until I did this final degree.
Things to cling to:
A warm, smiling voice, shushing my tears. A grateful smile under eyes that once again shine with future possibilities. A teenagers view of my life. The one man at my back since my birth, and the pride in his grunts. An ever shifting web of silent wolfs howls.
The sky and the whole world. Gold dust on a wooden screen with calmly swimming fishes. A man dancing badly all over the world. Music.
And this:
A few days before I flew to Japan, I met my old neighbour from level two. He had all his post in one hand (he always gets so much) and I had just unlocked my bike.
He's a great person, a nice old man, smart and cultured, with a terrible taste in clothing and visible signs of old age. He doesn't like anyone getting into his home, for it's unbelievably cluttered and full of trash, which is nearly hiding the original sketches and artworks, there are bookracks up to the stucco ceilings, long flowing curtains blocking out the sun, nicknacks and lush, dirty carpets, everything reeking of decay, dust and former glory.
After we bitched companionably about this house and its owners for a while, he showed me one particular letter, creamy white paper and dark red ink in a flowing handwriting. "See here!" he says and shows me the fotos that came with it.
A wedding, pretty normal, but the bride shines so, so happily.
"This is a former student of mine," he says. "You know I studied four subjects? And I was a teacher for a while. Youngest of them all, and, well four subjects, they hated me, and I said to them, when we sat around this table: We need to do something, this girl, from A to D in one year, that's not normal, there's something happening. And this stupid woman says to me, has the gall and says to me: the father left the family, the stepfather is a monster, but what can one do. The gall! So I talk to her, encourage her, you know, just a kind word, here and there, and I am so, so angry all the time, and lo and behold, she's a bright girl and gains back her straight A's. And you know, many years later, wissen Sie, she comes to me, and she says, you know..."
And his eyes become even more red than normal, some hidden tears flooding them, and he stops looking at me and tells me, as if he is confiding something:
"She said I was the only bright spot in all those years. She said I rescued her. This poor helpless girl, and just a few kind words from her teacher..."
And my eyes get wet too, for this is my weakest point (poor helpless kids), and we smile weakly at each other. He waves the photographs around and says joyfully:
"She's going to be a teacher now! And she says she couldn't be happier!"
He grins and says:
"Life is beautiful. Life is beautiful."
Das Leben ist schön. Das Leben ist schön.