(no subject)
there is too much to tell; my thoughts are a tangled ball of confused threads that threaten to infect this entry with their disorder. if i manage to describe everything that has happened, both in the material world and in the flashes of my synapses, then i doubt any one will read it all. so in short, for those with restricted time/attention spans;
I. christmas was terrible, miserable. my family came over and did nothing but complain and hate tokyo until i took them to an unexpectedly brilliant new years party and we made up.
II. i got into an even more complex and messy relationship with my flatmate, murphy, that went from better to worse-than-ever within the space of days. i threatened to move out, found a new place, then turned it down and had to construct a web of white lies to get out of my promises to the new landlord in order to avoid being blacklisted by an important company for foreigners moving in tokyo. furthermore, it seemed that my take on what murphy had said about me paying the entire rent and utilities for january (since he's moving out) were a misunderstanding and made me unnecessarily blunt/harsh to him without reason, as well as colour my mother and sisters' perception of him. they still think he's manipulating me and i am not strong enough to stand up to him. he's a difficult character, to be sure, and if i have been as unfeeling or cruel to him as he claims, i am more capable of meanness than i thought possible. i'm still not sure which side of the fence i stand on, as i think both parties (murphy versus my family) have the other side wrong, and yet are both right about each other in certain ways.
III. in the ten days that i have had off from work, i wished i had had more time for contemplation and for seeking the things i wanted to find, and meet the people i wanted to see, but was unable to because of the 'duty' of showing my family around and dealing with the innumerable arguments/disagreements/complications over christmas. but i realised that this kind of period will come again once i decide to end my UN internship (which is, in theory, entirely up to me as they appreciate/need my free labour as much as i need the kudos, information, experience and routine that they offer me) and work out what i want to do in tokyo, or rather, what i need to do with my life.
those three points summarise the mess that is inside my head that i had imagined working out in a stream-of-consciousness kerouac-on-benzedrine-like scribblings that i have silently hummed to myself these past few days. today my mother and sister left at 7.30am to catch their flight, as i daydreamed about hours of stress-relieving cycling and gallery-visiting that i had yearned after over the winter break. in fact, i stayed in bed (or rather, the mess of rice-cracker-thin futons and thick blankets that formed our three-person dormitory for ten days) through exhaustion, woke up to my coffee and grapefruit ritual, spent a good few hours spring cleaning my room and hoovering the collection of hair from the last 30 blow-drys of the knight family collective, drinking green tea, smoking roll-ups that should be totally banned in 2009 but aren't yet, and extinguishing the last traces of 'home', such as the lipstick-stained mug of hot-water-and-lemon that is always the telltale trace of my mother's presence. i went for my first run in tokyo until my knees gave up, renewed my cupboard and fridge with sesame oil, tofu, mandarins and japanese groceries, and let the outside sky turn charcoal without my noticing, while arguing with murphy over what to do with refugees and the iraqi war. i grilled fish and made soup and sat in a post-exercise stupor with my dusty laptop, wondering what to do with my evening. by nine, with a stiffened spine, i made a decision to move and went for a long walk through shinjuku/harajuku/aoyama and home again.
on new years' eve i was at a loss of what to do with my family, especially as christmas had been so tragically awful and new years' day is my mother's birthday. i chose a restaurant, which i vaguely remembered other people praising. i had a plan to meet up with candy, an australian girl i teach with, who seems to live a crazy life of designing jewelry, drinking champagne on pavements and taking drugs in a city where there seems to be none... as my mother had already "struck off" christmas as non-existent and had no faith in having a good new year, she had sworn (disappointingly) to go home after dinner to 'read a good book and sleep'. while i realise and notice that she is getting markedly (and alarmingly) older and tired-er, i still thought this was a shame, and harked after the years when we'd all go out together on new years eve, such as when we went skiing and she coerced us all to steal a municipal 9 foot xmas tree after too many chartreuse and mint-aero-flavoured-vodka shots and dancing on tables... anyway. the waitress told us that last orders had already been and gone, and that there was a free party downstairs. we didn't hold much hope for it, but went down anyway. things suddenly looked up; although the bar was relatively empty, the decks were manned by two stunning french-japanese twins and a slow trickle of outrageously dressed people came in through the door, some of whom i recognised (the foreigner community in tokyo is relatively narrow, especially if you move within 'creative' circles). it turned out to be an unexpectedly great party, and candy and her friends even turned up (having just dropped acid- what?). i even got to briefly talk to one of the french-japanese twins, with whom i have developed an unhealthy obsession. i joked to my mother that my decision to stay in tokyo would depend upon the calculus of risk-of-giant-earthquake versus existence-of-french-japanese-twins, despite the fact that they are probably far too good-looking to be either humble or interested in me [this sounds self-deprecating, but believe. one of them is on mtv japan and they don't appear to lack contacts/friends/kudos].
which all leads down to the thought pattern of today; i want to be a mover and a shaker, not merely a passive audience member . i still hold a small hope for becoming wildly creative and successful in a creative way, as in actually making something material rather than just cerebral (translation, charity work, academia). i should admit to myself that after taking this certain path that i have, and after pouring my energies into almost entirely cerebral things over the last few years- striving at all costs to get a first at university, working stupid hours for free at the UN and hours pouring over foreign language dictionaries and so on, instead of drawing, building, sewing things- that i am just not cut out for a fully creative career, i don't have the consistent imagination and energy to make things happen in that way, and that i would be far better off in a 'thinking' role, with 'making' things forming a sideline hobby. or rather, in line with my idea of staging an art exhibition and thus doing what i can, with my skills, to meld together the worlds of art and charity- than pretending to myself that i could actually produce sellable art or anything. but at the same time, the people i yearn after, the people i wish to be all seem to be in that field. it's probably entirely pathetic and wrong-headed, but i want to be part of their world, and imagine that i have to create in the same way to be accepted, to be on an even level. this is so very childish, i know, and makes little sense; i can equally impressive things in the fields that i might excel in, but still...
2009 will be a challenging year, i think. i want to get into something, and yet have no idea what that 'something' might be. i imagine it being in tokyo (no matter what my mother says about me staying here no longer than a year, plaintively asking when i'll move to rome because italian sounds so much nicer than japanese) because there seems to be a rich seam of potential here to exploit, and because having fluent japanese and native english is a valuable profile here... but as to what i'll do, i have no idea. up until now i had imagined working for a japanese NGO, but i'm not even so sure about that now. it seems academia and creativity are opposed, but i'm not even sure they have to be. similarly, i'm constantly worried about my japanese ability and the fact that i still don't speak totally naturally. everyone tells you you're very good at japanese, but only because so few foreigners speak it, and even fewer are expected to; i want to be so good that people stop telling me i'm good at it and start asking which one of my parents is japanese. i need to sort out my accent, my daily conversation, rather than just learning how to read newspapers....ahh, such a long way to go. i may be only 22 but things can't happen fast enough. on a side note- my mother kept warning me while she was here that i live too fast, i rush everywhere (they walked so SLOWLY) and am too impatient. my 2009 horoscopes tell me, unfailingly, that i will suffer poor health due to an insufficient diet or over-activity. but i can't help but feel that time is limited, that things must be done, that while i pluck my eyebrows or dust that the whole world is spinning without me and i am merely becoming part of that 98% that sit by and be employed by someone else and watch everything happen around them, instead of being part of that 2% that makes things move.
"ordinary life does not interest me. i seek only the high moments. i am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. but i am not always in what i call a state of grace. i have days of illuminations and fevers, i have days when the music in my heart stops. then i mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture, but while i am doing this i feel i am not living"- anais nin: always too true to my own mind
I. christmas was terrible, miserable. my family came over and did nothing but complain and hate tokyo until i took them to an unexpectedly brilliant new years party and we made up.
II. i got into an even more complex and messy relationship with my flatmate, murphy, that went from better to worse-than-ever within the space of days. i threatened to move out, found a new place, then turned it down and had to construct a web of white lies to get out of my promises to the new landlord in order to avoid being blacklisted by an important company for foreigners moving in tokyo. furthermore, it seemed that my take on what murphy had said about me paying the entire rent and utilities for january (since he's moving out) were a misunderstanding and made me unnecessarily blunt/harsh to him without reason, as well as colour my mother and sisters' perception of him. they still think he's manipulating me and i am not strong enough to stand up to him. he's a difficult character, to be sure, and if i have been as unfeeling or cruel to him as he claims, i am more capable of meanness than i thought possible. i'm still not sure which side of the fence i stand on, as i think both parties (murphy versus my family) have the other side wrong, and yet are both right about each other in certain ways.
III. in the ten days that i have had off from work, i wished i had had more time for contemplation and for seeking the things i wanted to find, and meet the people i wanted to see, but was unable to because of the 'duty' of showing my family around and dealing with the innumerable arguments/disagreements/complications over christmas. but i realised that this kind of period will come again once i decide to end my UN internship (which is, in theory, entirely up to me as they appreciate/need my free labour as much as i need the kudos, information, experience and routine that they offer me) and work out what i want to do in tokyo, or rather, what i need to do with my life.
those three points summarise the mess that is inside my head that i had imagined working out in a stream-of-consciousness kerouac-on-benzedrine-like scribblings that i have silently hummed to myself these past few days. today my mother and sister left at 7.30am to catch their flight, as i daydreamed about hours of stress-relieving cycling and gallery-visiting that i had yearned after over the winter break. in fact, i stayed in bed (or rather, the mess of rice-cracker-thin futons and thick blankets that formed our three-person dormitory for ten days) through exhaustion, woke up to my coffee and grapefruit ritual, spent a good few hours spring cleaning my room and hoovering the collection of hair from the last 30 blow-drys of the knight family collective, drinking green tea, smoking roll-ups that should be totally banned in 2009 but aren't yet, and extinguishing the last traces of 'home', such as the lipstick-stained mug of hot-water-and-lemon that is always the telltale trace of my mother's presence. i went for my first run in tokyo until my knees gave up, renewed my cupboard and fridge with sesame oil, tofu, mandarins and japanese groceries, and let the outside sky turn charcoal without my noticing, while arguing with murphy over what to do with refugees and the iraqi war. i grilled fish and made soup and sat in a post-exercise stupor with my dusty laptop, wondering what to do with my evening. by nine, with a stiffened spine, i made a decision to move and went for a long walk through shinjuku/harajuku/aoyama and home again.
on new years' eve i was at a loss of what to do with my family, especially as christmas had been so tragically awful and new years' day is my mother's birthday. i chose a restaurant, which i vaguely remembered other people praising. i had a plan to meet up with candy, an australian girl i teach with, who seems to live a crazy life of designing jewelry, drinking champagne on pavements and taking drugs in a city where there seems to be none... as my mother had already "struck off" christmas as non-existent and had no faith in having a good new year, she had sworn (disappointingly) to go home after dinner to 'read a good book and sleep'. while i realise and notice that she is getting markedly (and alarmingly) older and tired-er, i still thought this was a shame, and harked after the years when we'd all go out together on new years eve, such as when we went skiing and she coerced us all to steal a municipal 9 foot xmas tree after too many chartreuse and mint-aero-flavoured-vodka shots and dancing on tables... anyway. the waitress told us that last orders had already been and gone, and that there was a free party downstairs. we didn't hold much hope for it, but went down anyway. things suddenly looked up; although the bar was relatively empty, the decks were manned by two stunning french-japanese twins and a slow trickle of outrageously dressed people came in through the door, some of whom i recognised (the foreigner community in tokyo is relatively narrow, especially if you move within 'creative' circles). it turned out to be an unexpectedly great party, and candy and her friends even turned up (having just dropped acid- what?). i even got to briefly talk to one of the french-japanese twins, with whom i have developed an unhealthy obsession. i joked to my mother that my decision to stay in tokyo would depend upon the calculus of risk-of-giant-earthquake versus existence-of-french-japanese-twins, despite the fact that they are probably far too good-looking to be either humble or interested in me [this sounds self-deprecating, but believe. one of them is on mtv japan and they don't appear to lack contacts/friends/kudos].
which all leads down to the thought pattern of today; i want to be a mover and a shaker, not merely a passive audience member . i still hold a small hope for becoming wildly creative and successful in a creative way, as in actually making something material rather than just cerebral (translation, charity work, academia). i should admit to myself that after taking this certain path that i have, and after pouring my energies into almost entirely cerebral things over the last few years- striving at all costs to get a first at university, working stupid hours for free at the UN and hours pouring over foreign language dictionaries and so on, instead of drawing, building, sewing things- that i am just not cut out for a fully creative career, i don't have the consistent imagination and energy to make things happen in that way, and that i would be far better off in a 'thinking' role, with 'making' things forming a sideline hobby. or rather, in line with my idea of staging an art exhibition and thus doing what i can, with my skills, to meld together the worlds of art and charity- than pretending to myself that i could actually produce sellable art or anything. but at the same time, the people i yearn after, the people i wish to be all seem to be in that field. it's probably entirely pathetic and wrong-headed, but i want to be part of their world, and imagine that i have to create in the same way to be accepted, to be on an even level. this is so very childish, i know, and makes little sense; i can equally impressive things in the fields that i might excel in, but still...
2009 will be a challenging year, i think. i want to get into something, and yet have no idea what that 'something' might be. i imagine it being in tokyo (no matter what my mother says about me staying here no longer than a year, plaintively asking when i'll move to rome because italian sounds so much nicer than japanese) because there seems to be a rich seam of potential here to exploit, and because having fluent japanese and native english is a valuable profile here... but as to what i'll do, i have no idea. up until now i had imagined working for a japanese NGO, but i'm not even so sure about that now. it seems academia and creativity are opposed, but i'm not even sure they have to be. similarly, i'm constantly worried about my japanese ability and the fact that i still don't speak totally naturally. everyone tells you you're very good at japanese, but only because so few foreigners speak it, and even fewer are expected to; i want to be so good that people stop telling me i'm good at it and start asking which one of my parents is japanese. i need to sort out my accent, my daily conversation, rather than just learning how to read newspapers....ahh, such a long way to go. i may be only 22 but things can't happen fast enough. on a side note- my mother kept warning me while she was here that i live too fast, i rush everywhere (they walked so SLOWLY) and am too impatient. my 2009 horoscopes tell me, unfailingly, that i will suffer poor health due to an insufficient diet or over-activity. but i can't help but feel that time is limited, that things must be done, that while i pluck my eyebrows or dust that the whole world is spinning without me and i am merely becoming part of that 98% that sit by and be employed by someone else and watch everything happen around them, instead of being part of that 2% that makes things move.
"ordinary life does not interest me. i seek only the high moments. i am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. but i am not always in what i call a state of grace. i have days of illuminations and fevers, i have days when the music in my heart stops. then i mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture, but while i am doing this i feel i am not living"- anais nin: always too true to my own mind