And the tears came down, like falling rain
Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. Today, my weekend stretched into its fourth day. As some of you may know, we’ve been getting a heckofalotta rain in Tatsuno, and this has caused some big problems for such a small town. See, Tatsuno, like most of the towns in Kamiina, is situated around the mighty Tenryu River, in the shadows of a few of the smaller southern Japanese Alps. Most of the time this is fairly harmless and scenic. Most of the time, when it rains, things just get a little damp for a while and then go back to normal. Most of the time, our roads are more or less whole, with no gaping holes where the asphalt has been carried away by runoff and mud from the mountains. The problem is, when it’s been raining intensely and steadily for days and days, things start happening that fall out of the category of “most of the time.” School closings, for example.
To date, this journal has been a place for my lighthearted musings on Japan. I’ve tried to keep the tone upbeat, mostly because I am an upbeat kind of girl, who would rather make jokes than talk about anything serious. The world is becoming this increasingly scary place to live in, and making dumb jokes is a way of preventing oneself from going over the edge into 24-hour anxiety mode, something I’m usually just inches away from anyway. Sometimes, though, events need to be written down and remembered, even events of the most tragic content. Say, for example, one of the students at the school where one works washes away in a flood--They just found her body a couple of days ago.
The day I heard about Akahane-san being lost was also the day I heard about Lebanon and Israel. It is difficult to really express here how upsetting a day it was. It happened last week, and when I went into work on Thursday the sadness was absolutely palpable. When someone finally remembered to tell me what had happened, it was as though my heart sunk a few inches in my chest. A girl I had probably seen every day since coming to Japan, who I had smiled at in the hallways, who I had said good morning to, was now lost forever. A young woman with her whole life stretching out before her had been carried off, and I imagined her small hand, reaching out from the raging water of the river before she sped away, never to return. I regretted the fact that I had no face to put with the name given to me, but then realized it doesn’t matter. She was my student, and she was a child, and her family will miss her and mourn her forever, and that is enough to be getting on with.
I found out about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that same day, while quietly reading the Washington Post at my desk. The news was not the welcome distraction I had been searching for, and rather than taking my mind off of the recent tragedy that had happened so locally, it compounded those feelings with ones of panic and anxiety for what was happening globally. Then I started getting irritated at Ota-sensei, who kept telling me to go look at the local newspapers sitting up at the front of the teachers’ room, where I could see all the scenes of destruction the water had wrought. Don’t tell me about destruction, I thought furiously. I’m an American, man, I come from the land of Katrina, and picking fights that are impossible to win but are really adept at running up a huge death toll on both sides. My own government is making me ashamed of my nationality, something that I never wanted to be.
Now I was irritated with the Bush administration, which is a pretty common irritation these days. I stood up for America all year to all my friends from Canada and New Zealand and the UK, I thought to myself, trying to send a mental irritate-o-gram to the White House. At every opportunity I reminded them that Bush’s administration didn’t equal America, that 50% of my countrymen had tried their best to get rid of him, that his approval ratings were dropping all the time. STOP I pointed out that America was a young country, and that every nation has its own past horrors and regrettable leaders. STOP Looking back, I rather wish there was a German AET in Kamiina, because to this day no one is a more regrettable leader than Hitler. You wouldn’t accuse Germans of today of being Nazis, though, would you? STOP Still, everyone has a limit. President Bush, you are doing a crap job of leading my country and I can’t wait for you to finish your accursed run as “head” of the executive branch and get out. STOP Hillary, please run; I will totally vote for you. STOP
Okay, I’ll stop. Thursday was a bad day--a really, really bad day. The upside of bad days, though, is that they can only get better. You realize that it’s still okay to laugh, to make dumb jokes, to think about the future. You realize that you have to do these things, or you wouldn’t really be living your life. I ended up spending the night at Tonya’s apartment in Takato on Saturday, which is the first and last time I will ever be able to do that. We had a nice Sunday morning together, and she drove me home in the afternoon. I had a lot of stuff to give her, since I need to clear out the apartment a little anyway, and she came up and picked out some books to take, along with my test cookbook and a bunch of spices and sauces from the kitchen. For the past few months I’ve been helping Tonya relearn how to knit, and we’ve been meeting up at a coffee shop in Ina every week, to knit and gossip and drink mango olaits. I had gushed to her many times about the Stitch and Bitch books, and how wonderful the first one was when I was first learning how to knit. She had said she would buy it, but on Sunday I had a wonderful idea-I would give her my copy.
My copy of Stitch and Bitch: The Knitters Handbook was given to me by a very dear friend when I was still in university. Tina was the person who suggested we learn how to knit in the first place, actually, and for that I owe her a great deal of gratitude. She is one of the most creative people I know, one of the least destructive, one of the liveliest. She is an incredible person, who was always pushing me to do things I’d never have done otherwise. She is one of the first true friends I ever had, someone who made me feel more like myself when I was with her, not like I was trying to be someone else. She is a friend I can see after ages and ages, and we can talk as though no time has passed at all. She gave me the book as a present, and it proved to be the best kind of gift, both useful and enjoyable. It became well worn, the binding soft and creased as I looked to it for reference time and time again. My first sweater ever came from one of the patterns in the book, and occasionally I would open it up just to read it, just for the pleasure of Debbie Stoller’s practical advice on my craft, because that’s what knitting became after Tina gave me the book: My craft. It is not my hobby, nor is it my art, it is my craft; a skill that I look forward to eternally polishing, forever incorporating new techniques into the expanding scope of my knitting knowledge.
Of course I hope that Tonya will eventually come to feel this way too, although I know that it’s not for everyone. She’s really improved, though, since we first started knitting together, and I’m hoping that with the book, she’ll experience the same learning explosion that I did when Tina gave it to me. I winced a little at giving it away, not only for its value as a reference book, but because it was a gift from such a beloved friend, a gift that amounted to not only the book itself, but the skills and love of craft that came along with it. Then I thought, isn’t that the best kind of gift? A gift that you, as the giver, love and value? Isn’t it a fine thing to want to gift the joy you got out of it to someone else? Of course it is. And, I realized, it had been a long time since I had really needed it as a reference; it had given me all it could, and it was time to give that to someone else. I pressed the book into her hands, and told her to hang on to it, and that when she was done with it, to pass it on to someone else. I wrote the date and a message of encouragement and confidence inside the cover, and said goodbye. I may never see Tonya again, but I hope that in giving her that book, in giving her a tool with which to hone this craft into her own, I have added one more person to the web of creators, makers, and craftswomen that twists and tessellates backwards into the dimmest corners of history…and that is something to feel optimistic about.
If you have made it this far, dear reader, I salute you. As I said, I don’t like to wax serious here too often, as I generally find it makes for a dull read in other people’s journals. It’s so difficult to write from the heart and not have it come out maudlin or trite, although a certain amount of self-indulgence is inevitable. Anyway, this will certainly be one of the last journal entries written from Japan, as I’m flying out a week from Tuesday. Thanks for reading me all year, comments and emails have meant the world. I look forward to seeing you all very soon. Let’s get some coffee, or diet coke or train wreck, and spend some time together! Love, Sara
P.S. In light of the heavy, heavy journal entry above, I felt I must provide some sort of comic relief. Check out this picture of a wooden wishing plaque, photographed at the big ole wishing tree in the Meiji Shrine.
It reads:
Sean Fitzgerald’s Wish List
1. Safe travel
2. Tommy has a good internship
3. Dad gets a new lawnmower
4. Mom has a nice summer without us
5. Julie stops going to the hospital
6. I become Mark Rozenfeld’s boss (or I at least make more money than him.)
P.P.S If that didn’t do it for you, here is a picture of the socks I just finished, a modified version of this pattern. It is impossible to look at them and not laugh. And yes, they are that bright and orange.
To date, this journal has been a place for my lighthearted musings on Japan. I’ve tried to keep the tone upbeat, mostly because I am an upbeat kind of girl, who would rather make jokes than talk about anything serious. The world is becoming this increasingly scary place to live in, and making dumb jokes is a way of preventing oneself from going over the edge into 24-hour anxiety mode, something I’m usually just inches away from anyway. Sometimes, though, events need to be written down and remembered, even events of the most tragic content. Say, for example, one of the students at the school where one works washes away in a flood--They just found her body a couple of days ago.
The day I heard about Akahane-san being lost was also the day I heard about Lebanon and Israel. It is difficult to really express here how upsetting a day it was. It happened last week, and when I went into work on Thursday the sadness was absolutely palpable. When someone finally remembered to tell me what had happened, it was as though my heart sunk a few inches in my chest. A girl I had probably seen every day since coming to Japan, who I had smiled at in the hallways, who I had said good morning to, was now lost forever. A young woman with her whole life stretching out before her had been carried off, and I imagined her small hand, reaching out from the raging water of the river before she sped away, never to return. I regretted the fact that I had no face to put with the name given to me, but then realized it doesn’t matter. She was my student, and she was a child, and her family will miss her and mourn her forever, and that is enough to be getting on with.
I found out about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that same day, while quietly reading the Washington Post at my desk. The news was not the welcome distraction I had been searching for, and rather than taking my mind off of the recent tragedy that had happened so locally, it compounded those feelings with ones of panic and anxiety for what was happening globally. Then I started getting irritated at Ota-sensei, who kept telling me to go look at the local newspapers sitting up at the front of the teachers’ room, where I could see all the scenes of destruction the water had wrought. Don’t tell me about destruction, I thought furiously. I’m an American, man, I come from the land of Katrina, and picking fights that are impossible to win but are really adept at running up a huge death toll on both sides. My own government is making me ashamed of my nationality, something that I never wanted to be.
Now I was irritated with the Bush administration, which is a pretty common irritation these days. I stood up for America all year to all my friends from Canada and New Zealand and the UK, I thought to myself, trying to send a mental irritate-o-gram to the White House. At every opportunity I reminded them that Bush’s administration didn’t equal America, that 50% of my countrymen had tried their best to get rid of him, that his approval ratings were dropping all the time. STOP I pointed out that America was a young country, and that every nation has its own past horrors and regrettable leaders. STOP Looking back, I rather wish there was a German AET in Kamiina, because to this day no one is a more regrettable leader than Hitler. You wouldn’t accuse Germans of today of being Nazis, though, would you? STOP Still, everyone has a limit. President Bush, you are doing a crap job of leading my country and I can’t wait for you to finish your accursed run as “head” of the executive branch and get out. STOP Hillary, please run; I will totally vote for you. STOP
Okay, I’ll stop. Thursday was a bad day--a really, really bad day. The upside of bad days, though, is that they can only get better. You realize that it’s still okay to laugh, to make dumb jokes, to think about the future. You realize that you have to do these things, or you wouldn’t really be living your life. I ended up spending the night at Tonya’s apartment in Takato on Saturday, which is the first and last time I will ever be able to do that. We had a nice Sunday morning together, and she drove me home in the afternoon. I had a lot of stuff to give her, since I need to clear out the apartment a little anyway, and she came up and picked out some books to take, along with my test cookbook and a bunch of spices and sauces from the kitchen. For the past few months I’ve been helping Tonya relearn how to knit, and we’ve been meeting up at a coffee shop in Ina every week, to knit and gossip and drink mango olaits. I had gushed to her many times about the Stitch and Bitch books, and how wonderful the first one was when I was first learning how to knit. She had said she would buy it, but on Sunday I had a wonderful idea-I would give her my copy.
My copy of Stitch and Bitch: The Knitters Handbook was given to me by a very dear friend when I was still in university. Tina was the person who suggested we learn how to knit in the first place, actually, and for that I owe her a great deal of gratitude. She is one of the most creative people I know, one of the least destructive, one of the liveliest. She is an incredible person, who was always pushing me to do things I’d never have done otherwise. She is one of the first true friends I ever had, someone who made me feel more like myself when I was with her, not like I was trying to be someone else. She is a friend I can see after ages and ages, and we can talk as though no time has passed at all. She gave me the book as a present, and it proved to be the best kind of gift, both useful and enjoyable. It became well worn, the binding soft and creased as I looked to it for reference time and time again. My first sweater ever came from one of the patterns in the book, and occasionally I would open it up just to read it, just for the pleasure of Debbie Stoller’s practical advice on my craft, because that’s what knitting became after Tina gave me the book: My craft. It is not my hobby, nor is it my art, it is my craft; a skill that I look forward to eternally polishing, forever incorporating new techniques into the expanding scope of my knitting knowledge.
Of course I hope that Tonya will eventually come to feel this way too, although I know that it’s not for everyone. She’s really improved, though, since we first started knitting together, and I’m hoping that with the book, she’ll experience the same learning explosion that I did when Tina gave it to me. I winced a little at giving it away, not only for its value as a reference book, but because it was a gift from such a beloved friend, a gift that amounted to not only the book itself, but the skills and love of craft that came along with it. Then I thought, isn’t that the best kind of gift? A gift that you, as the giver, love and value? Isn’t it a fine thing to want to gift the joy you got out of it to someone else? Of course it is. And, I realized, it had been a long time since I had really needed it as a reference; it had given me all it could, and it was time to give that to someone else. I pressed the book into her hands, and told her to hang on to it, and that when she was done with it, to pass it on to someone else. I wrote the date and a message of encouragement and confidence inside the cover, and said goodbye. I may never see Tonya again, but I hope that in giving her that book, in giving her a tool with which to hone this craft into her own, I have added one more person to the web of creators, makers, and craftswomen that twists and tessellates backwards into the dimmest corners of history…and that is something to feel optimistic about.
If you have made it this far, dear reader, I salute you. As I said, I don’t like to wax serious here too often, as I generally find it makes for a dull read in other people’s journals. It’s so difficult to write from the heart and not have it come out maudlin or trite, although a certain amount of self-indulgence is inevitable. Anyway, this will certainly be one of the last journal entries written from Japan, as I’m flying out a week from Tuesday. Thanks for reading me all year, comments and emails have meant the world. I look forward to seeing you all very soon. Let’s get some coffee, or diet coke or train wreck, and spend some time together! Love, Sara
P.S. In light of the heavy, heavy journal entry above, I felt I must provide some sort of comic relief. Check out this picture of a wooden wishing plaque, photographed at the big ole wishing tree in the Meiji Shrine.
It reads:
Sean Fitzgerald’s Wish List
1. Safe travel
2. Tommy has a good internship
3. Dad gets a new lawnmower
4. Mom has a nice summer without us
5. Julie stops going to the hospital
6. I become Mark Rozenfeld’s boss (or I at least make more money than him.)
P.P.S If that didn’t do it for you, here is a picture of the socks I just finished, a modified version of this pattern. It is impossible to look at them and not laugh. And yes, they are that bright and orange.