(no subject)
i don't know what's caused this writing hiatus, exactly. there are hypotheses, of course. it could be my new full time job that gets me home at 8, 9, even 10 at night. it could be the daze of this gorgeous- at times unbearable- summer heat and the bubbling joy and contentment i draw from it- it could be just that i exhausted my typing hands in july and now feel that full time work has sucked away all my possible hours at a computer. or, it could just be mere laziness, lack of inspiration and lack of internal pressure from myself. after all, i have a salary now. what the hell do i need art for? pfft.
needless to say, that sentiment won't last long in my over-active mind, and having already settled in and almost grown tired of my job, i am seeing the stirs of a tide of restlessness about to engulf me somewhere in the near future. there is something gorgeously simple, routine, fixed, steady about my life right now; i wake up, drink a guarana-powered smoothie, make a bento box, shower, cycle to work. work, go for a walk, lunch, more work. cycle home and if i have enough energy, some kind of karate or cardio or something. reading, bed. and repeat. dancing at the weekend, wandering the streets, falling back in love with the city. but no reading, making, writing. and i need to get it back.
it's not that for a want of subjects or things to write about, either. japan remains to be an anthropologist's wet dream, a cataclysmic juxtaposition of incongruous, incomprehensible elements. it gets dull, of course, and extremely frustrating; the perfectionism, the bureaucracy, the slowness at which people do things, the way cyclists either perilously weave their way through crammed pavements or else ride 逆行 (gyakkou, the wrong way) down the street towards me like kamikaze drones. idiots! i scream inside, only permitting myself to yelp, "baka!" (stupid idiot) when i am feeling particularly angry, energetic, drunk or... all three. but what i continually remind myself of is that the ignorance and stupidity i encounter here is not necessarily a national trait, although it may seem so; it's easy, as a foreigner to take an individual as a representative of a culture, and to forget that one's own culture has an equal amount of stupidity. it's just that it's far easier to ignore or block it out when you are accustomed to it. you have your own group of selected friends and acquaintances, and the faults of the society are blurred to you. but when you go abroad, you have no easy reference system, and assume that everyone you meet is somehow emblematic of the whole society. until you gather together that group of like-minded friends, everyone somehow disappoints you. my students' lives depress me, with their obsession with safety and cleanliness keeping them from travelling or fully exploring the world, and their overwork and fear of meeting new people often preventing them from doing anything other than watching tv every night, or practicing some new ritualised hobby to make them a better person- like knitting, or nail art, or reading about history. but i have to realise that they are simply one small sector of japanese society, and as they are the kind of person to study english- sometimes just for the sake of having a hobby or something to do- they tend to lead a pretty boring life that is at odds with many others out there doing something more exciting.
which is something you realise when you are spat out of any metro station, out into a heaving cluster of people on their way to drink shochu, slurp noodles, catch a movie, play football with their friends, go to belly-dancing classes (surprisingly popular in japan). sometimes i get down when i realise none of my students ever go to art galleries, parks, festivals or talks; but then i question what people in the uk do with their evenings and weekends and realise that there is little disparity. japan is seeming more and more like an interesting place to be; not only for the expat parties and dancefloors i frequent at the weekend, but the fact you can go to massive firework festivals, surf, go to the beach, ski, wander temple-ridden towns, sample truly seasonal cuisine, and take up any hobby or class you want. i'm thinking about starting salsa on sundays, now that i don't have to work anymore, and maybe join a long-distance cycling club... while fitting in gallery-hopping, review-writing, white-water rafting, the usual dancing and drinking along the way...
but there still nags a sense that i need to get on with things. i hit twenty-three two weeks ago, and despite the fact that i had an article published in a national magazine, completed a zine and had articles published online, i am still nowhere. working relatively long hours or late enough in the evening to scupper any other plans makes me realise i need to get out there more, chase my hopes of becoming a journalist with more fervour and spirit. i cannot rest on my laurels, but i can at least continue working so as to have a proper salary that prevents me from worrying about my expenditures, fitting in writing on the side rather than throwing myself in at the deep end and hoping to make it freelance immediately. i only realise now what pitiful self-enforced poverty i was living in through the miserable winter; literally sleeping on a foldable chair for a few months because i didn't want to buy a futon, feeding up on free food samples instead of dinner, refusing to go to parties because of the cost, and yadayada. interestingly, i still managed to squander a significant amount on drinks and dancing, if only to keep myself sane.
yet, at the moment, reading anaís nin's diaries, and sensing the energy and exoticness of her life and her times, mixing with dali and his wife, supporting henry miller and otto rank and the countless others, i wonder where i am at and where i will get to. i remember someone telling me that the beats were over, the 1900s were over, and we had to invent a new way of life, a new kind of creativity for this century. it is true; i am not sure i would like anaís in real life anyway, although i feel that her written words are the best representation of how i think and live out of anyone's. her account of arriving in new york struck me to the core, so similar as it was to my own in tokyo. there are too many page edges that i have bent over, shocked at how smoothly she echoes my own emotions.
i have this faint, indistinct image of how my life might turn out, how i might want it to be; waking in the morning amidst snaggled white sheets in a high-ceilinged room with french windows, perhaps a hotel, perhaps the room of some illicit lover. breakfast is eaten nude, lunch is skipped, dinner is bought from some local market, voluptuous with vegetables. i answer to no one but ask something of someone; i sleep around and walk through concrete jungles and fiercely green parks, enjoying the sweat that rises slowly to my skin... i cycle miles and end it with some massive meal, like japanese barbequed eel or mexican tortilla or falafel sandwiches, and night turns into some strangely hallucinogenic lurch between bars, digital visuals, dj booths and three-chair establishments. i don't know where this place is, or whether this small fantasy should be fulfilled. i don't know whether full time work is good for me (as it feels like at the moment) or whether i really could cope with being freelance. i don't know whether all the energy and spark i recognise in myself will ever come to fruition, or whether i will throw it all in for fear of the slog that i must go through to "make it". i don't know whether i want to give myself up for others, or work for myself... i don't know how i term "success," really, to myself.
but onto another tokyo again; i feel like i work in one of the most beautiful parts of it. it's still lined with the same acid-rain-stained grey edifices that populate the city, but at ground level, there's a spark and colour that's missing elsewhere. it's in 下町、or "shitamachi," the old part of Tokyo where people still live and work in the same area, lending the streets a buzz of life and community that is missing elsewhere... i used to teach english in shinagawa, a distant centre of alienation and distance (and, incidentally, the main hub for the bullet train); set upon the grim landscape of tokyo bay, with tall and glossy skyscrapers supposedly humming with commerce crowding the horizon. it was dull, lacking in atmosphere and reason for being. but in nezu, where i am now, i wander around organic bagel shops dressed in seaside off-white paint, a line of cafes selling anmitsu, the summer treat of konnyaku jelly with fruit, sweetened soya beans, black sugar and green-tea cream, bars run by mama-sans in aprons, handmade tofu shops where wizened old ladies with bodies that resemble baked potatoes are bent over the counter, handling the ガンモドキ with care, while next door men in smartly ironed uniforms smoke fish with their hands, tobacco with their mouths, staring at the slumped old lady opposite minding a store full of dusty junk, records, broken-handle bags and one-eyed dolls... it's somewhat magical and unique, and i feel i am peeking in on a lost world when i trawl the streets. then, just down the road, there's ueno park, one of the greenest areas in tokyo. right now the lily-pad pond- an expanse so wide and full of plants you can hardly believe it-
which is just flowering now, encouraging dozens of people to hop over the gates to get a better picture with their mobile phones. when i walk through the throngs of homeless men with their neat tarpaulin shelters, men in crisp white shirts playing go, smokers enjoying the sting of poisoned lungs in front of the green sea of plants...ah. i feel outside of myself and yet more myself at the same time.
even more so now that there are certain things that japan is changing about me; the quest for perfection, neatness, cleanliness is somewhat affecting me, although in a positive way. i always felt too thrown together, too imperfect, wherever i went; a mess of hair and un-ironed clothes, hopping sweaty straight off my bike... but here, inspired by the neat compartments you find tucked inside handbags (make-up bag, check, flannel wrapped in bag, check, toothbrush in toothbrusher holder, check, perfume inside own bag, check, massive square wallet, check, dust-free, check, bento box in special cloth holder, check) and the immaculate exterior of most people here, i am becoming somewhat more organised, punctual, neater. i understand the importance of turning in a neat, new-envelope parcel to the post office, because if you try to recycle an old scraggy package they will merely force you to buy a new one. i understand the importance of bringing a change of clothes, keeping heels at work, buying new clothes and spending time over one's hair, nails, all the things my mother always told me... i am not yet anywhere near the standard most japanese girls keep, but perhaps i am absorbing just enough of it to fit it. the thing that worries me is that i can never go 'travelling' again, sleeping on sandy bunkbeds in the same t-shirt i had worn for the last three days, not washing for fear of cold showers, living off bread and coca leaves and adrenaline and maize. actually, maybe actually this is a good thing...
i feel i must tie up this ragged entry with some kind of conclusion, some sort of neat sound bite to make its wriggling narrative more coherent, but i can't think of anything suitable. so i'll leave you with some anaís;
"our bare feet in sandals felt the wet grass tickling. at night insects beat their wings against the screens. the nights lie around us like an abyss of sensual warmth, awakening the sense, almost palpable. they are like a caress on the skin. wherever the earth can breathe, our bodies breathe, too, and the pulse of nature sets our own pulse beating. tropical nights are hammocks for lovers."
"i see my life in paris with the added elements of fiction; lighting, focus, the gold patina which memory adds to it, and they appear to me more vividly, more separated from the quotidian details which dilute it, from the unformed, the excrescences, the dust or dullness of familiarity. they are highlighted in this case by poignant memory and a desire to relive it all, now that it is forever lost."
needless to say, that sentiment won't last long in my over-active mind, and having already settled in and almost grown tired of my job, i am seeing the stirs of a tide of restlessness about to engulf me somewhere in the near future. there is something gorgeously simple, routine, fixed, steady about my life right now; i wake up, drink a guarana-powered smoothie, make a bento box, shower, cycle to work. work, go for a walk, lunch, more work. cycle home and if i have enough energy, some kind of karate or cardio or something. reading, bed. and repeat. dancing at the weekend, wandering the streets, falling back in love with the city. but no reading, making, writing. and i need to get it back.
it's not that for a want of subjects or things to write about, either. japan remains to be an anthropologist's wet dream, a cataclysmic juxtaposition of incongruous, incomprehensible elements. it gets dull, of course, and extremely frustrating; the perfectionism, the bureaucracy, the slowness at which people do things, the way cyclists either perilously weave their way through crammed pavements or else ride 逆行 (gyakkou, the wrong way) down the street towards me like kamikaze drones. idiots! i scream inside, only permitting myself to yelp, "baka!" (stupid idiot) when i am feeling particularly angry, energetic, drunk or... all three. but what i continually remind myself of is that the ignorance and stupidity i encounter here is not necessarily a national trait, although it may seem so; it's easy, as a foreigner to take an individual as a representative of a culture, and to forget that one's own culture has an equal amount of stupidity. it's just that it's far easier to ignore or block it out when you are accustomed to it. you have your own group of selected friends and acquaintances, and the faults of the society are blurred to you. but when you go abroad, you have no easy reference system, and assume that everyone you meet is somehow emblematic of the whole society. until you gather together that group of like-minded friends, everyone somehow disappoints you. my students' lives depress me, with their obsession with safety and cleanliness keeping them from travelling or fully exploring the world, and their overwork and fear of meeting new people often preventing them from doing anything other than watching tv every night, or practicing some new ritualised hobby to make them a better person- like knitting, or nail art, or reading about history. but i have to realise that they are simply one small sector of japanese society, and as they are the kind of person to study english- sometimes just for the sake of having a hobby or something to do- they tend to lead a pretty boring life that is at odds with many others out there doing something more exciting.
which is something you realise when you are spat out of any metro station, out into a heaving cluster of people on their way to drink shochu, slurp noodles, catch a movie, play football with their friends, go to belly-dancing classes (surprisingly popular in japan). sometimes i get down when i realise none of my students ever go to art galleries, parks, festivals or talks; but then i question what people in the uk do with their evenings and weekends and realise that there is little disparity. japan is seeming more and more like an interesting place to be; not only for the expat parties and dancefloors i frequent at the weekend, but the fact you can go to massive firework festivals, surf, go to the beach, ski, wander temple-ridden towns, sample truly seasonal cuisine, and take up any hobby or class you want. i'm thinking about starting salsa on sundays, now that i don't have to work anymore, and maybe join a long-distance cycling club... while fitting in gallery-hopping, review-writing, white-water rafting, the usual dancing and drinking along the way...
but there still nags a sense that i need to get on with things. i hit twenty-three two weeks ago, and despite the fact that i had an article published in a national magazine, completed a zine and had articles published online, i am still nowhere. working relatively long hours or late enough in the evening to scupper any other plans makes me realise i need to get out there more, chase my hopes of becoming a journalist with more fervour and spirit. i cannot rest on my laurels, but i can at least continue working so as to have a proper salary that prevents me from worrying about my expenditures, fitting in writing on the side rather than throwing myself in at the deep end and hoping to make it freelance immediately. i only realise now what pitiful self-enforced poverty i was living in through the miserable winter; literally sleeping on a foldable chair for a few months because i didn't want to buy a futon, feeding up on free food samples instead of dinner, refusing to go to parties because of the cost, and yadayada. interestingly, i still managed to squander a significant amount on drinks and dancing, if only to keep myself sane.
yet, at the moment, reading anaís nin's diaries, and sensing the energy and exoticness of her life and her times, mixing with dali and his wife, supporting henry miller and otto rank and the countless others, i wonder where i am at and where i will get to. i remember someone telling me that the beats were over, the 1900s were over, and we had to invent a new way of life, a new kind of creativity for this century. it is true; i am not sure i would like anaís in real life anyway, although i feel that her written words are the best representation of how i think and live out of anyone's. her account of arriving in new york struck me to the core, so similar as it was to my own in tokyo. there are too many page edges that i have bent over, shocked at how smoothly she echoes my own emotions.
i have this faint, indistinct image of how my life might turn out, how i might want it to be; waking in the morning amidst snaggled white sheets in a high-ceilinged room with french windows, perhaps a hotel, perhaps the room of some illicit lover. breakfast is eaten nude, lunch is skipped, dinner is bought from some local market, voluptuous with vegetables. i answer to no one but ask something of someone; i sleep around and walk through concrete jungles and fiercely green parks, enjoying the sweat that rises slowly to my skin... i cycle miles and end it with some massive meal, like japanese barbequed eel or mexican tortilla or falafel sandwiches, and night turns into some strangely hallucinogenic lurch between bars, digital visuals, dj booths and three-chair establishments. i don't know where this place is, or whether this small fantasy should be fulfilled. i don't know whether full time work is good for me (as it feels like at the moment) or whether i really could cope with being freelance. i don't know whether all the energy and spark i recognise in myself will ever come to fruition, or whether i will throw it all in for fear of the slog that i must go through to "make it". i don't know whether i want to give myself up for others, or work for myself... i don't know how i term "success," really, to myself.
but onto another tokyo again; i feel like i work in one of the most beautiful parts of it. it's still lined with the same acid-rain-stained grey edifices that populate the city, but at ground level, there's a spark and colour that's missing elsewhere. it's in 下町、or "shitamachi," the old part of Tokyo where people still live and work in the same area, lending the streets a buzz of life and community that is missing elsewhere... i used to teach english in shinagawa, a distant centre of alienation and distance (and, incidentally, the main hub for the bullet train); set upon the grim landscape of tokyo bay, with tall and glossy skyscrapers supposedly humming with commerce crowding the horizon. it was dull, lacking in atmosphere and reason for being. but in nezu, where i am now, i wander around organic bagel shops dressed in seaside off-white paint, a line of cafes selling anmitsu, the summer treat of konnyaku jelly with fruit, sweetened soya beans, black sugar and green-tea cream, bars run by mama-sans in aprons, handmade tofu shops where wizened old ladies with bodies that resemble baked potatoes are bent over the counter, handling the ガンモドキ with care, while next door men in smartly ironed uniforms smoke fish with their hands, tobacco with their mouths, staring at the slumped old lady opposite minding a store full of dusty junk, records, broken-handle bags and one-eyed dolls... it's somewhat magical and unique, and i feel i am peeking in on a lost world when i trawl the streets. then, just down the road, there's ueno park, one of the greenest areas in tokyo. right now the lily-pad pond- an expanse so wide and full of plants you can hardly believe it-
which is just flowering now, encouraging dozens of people to hop over the gates to get a better picture with their mobile phones. when i walk through the throngs of homeless men with their neat tarpaulin shelters, men in crisp white shirts playing go, smokers enjoying the sting of poisoned lungs in front of the green sea of plants...ah. i feel outside of myself and yet more myself at the same time.
even more so now that there are certain things that japan is changing about me; the quest for perfection, neatness, cleanliness is somewhat affecting me, although in a positive way. i always felt too thrown together, too imperfect, wherever i went; a mess of hair and un-ironed clothes, hopping sweaty straight off my bike... but here, inspired by the neat compartments you find tucked inside handbags (make-up bag, check, flannel wrapped in bag, check, toothbrush in toothbrusher holder, check, perfume inside own bag, check, massive square wallet, check, dust-free, check, bento box in special cloth holder, check) and the immaculate exterior of most people here, i am becoming somewhat more organised, punctual, neater. i understand the importance of turning in a neat, new-envelope parcel to the post office, because if you try to recycle an old scraggy package they will merely force you to buy a new one. i understand the importance of bringing a change of clothes, keeping heels at work, buying new clothes and spending time over one's hair, nails, all the things my mother always told me... i am not yet anywhere near the standard most japanese girls keep, but perhaps i am absorbing just enough of it to fit it. the thing that worries me is that i can never go 'travelling' again, sleeping on sandy bunkbeds in the same t-shirt i had worn for the last three days, not washing for fear of cold showers, living off bread and coca leaves and adrenaline and maize. actually, maybe actually this is a good thing...
i feel i must tie up this ragged entry with some kind of conclusion, some sort of neat sound bite to make its wriggling narrative more coherent, but i can't think of anything suitable. so i'll leave you with some anaís;
"our bare feet in sandals felt the wet grass tickling. at night insects beat their wings against the screens. the nights lie around us like an abyss of sensual warmth, awakening the sense, almost palpable. they are like a caress on the skin. wherever the earth can breathe, our bodies breathe, too, and the pulse of nature sets our own pulse beating. tropical nights are hammocks for lovers."
"i see my life in paris with the added elements of fiction; lighting, focus, the gold patina which memory adds to it, and they appear to me more vividly, more separated from the quotidian details which dilute it, from the unformed, the excrescences, the dust or dullness of familiarity. they are highlighted in this case by poignant memory and a desire to relive it all, now that it is forever lost."