2001-11-08 - 17:13

oh god. what am i doing in japan? who would have thought even last year while in the midst of gas mask clad protestors in quebec city that i would be holed up in a small town in the very country that invented chemical hand warmers. actually i'm being melodramatic, in fact i quite like it.

i have a community of people here - most who i couldn't tolerate for more than a year - that are comforting to be around. i have a job teaching super-rad high school and junior high school students - most who i couldn't tolerate for more than a year - english and doing lesson plans and meeting japanese people and visiting shrines and seeing tops of mountains . . .

but it's not good enough. usually at these points i just need to simple my life down a wee bit. for example, to stop living in the past. or the future. there's my little weakness, it keeps stepping right over me! i see it. i know where it stays in my psyche, but turning it around is the most difficult task. besides, there's more states to smash than annoying little idiosynchratic nothings . . .

so to push these little (what shall we call them?) . . . TUGS out of the way when i want to pursue a real life in the present i rent LONGTIME COMPANION. ever seen it? a decent movie, save for the ugly queer moustaches that seemed to have so much appeal back in the 80s among gay men. i've seen clips. the whole movie perhaps is one of the first mainstream films to confront hiv/aids, head-on. it's definitely about peoples' lives. i'm left wondering how many guys who watch this film (women? aids?) are left feeling slightly mentally disjointed from the gloss-over job. what is that documentary that one man made about his partner dieing? he filmed to his his death. it was heartwrenching, maddening, and definitely gratuitous usage of film. but it was good stuff. it was also pretty indy, so that's what you get. also, i was left with the boringly consistent afterthought of, "hey, how come my body doesn't look like theirs?" yup, once again, it's body beautiful. getting sick of that.

on the upside, i've discovered a monthly alternative english language newspaper called the japan observer. i didn't realise how out of touch i was with good alternative sources, writers until i logged on today and got a chance to see chomsky's speech at MIT on amerika's bombing campaign. also on the upside, there is an import store in hisai that sells mushrooms. they are legal here.

. . . all the same, i piiiiiiine for the radical involvement of being overtly political. but only in the moments when i'm at home alone, tapping away on my computer. walking in a bamboo forest near marolyn's house on the weekend made me never want to leave japan. getting my 3500$ paycheck each month makes me never want to leave japan.

that said, there's far more to finishing my life than bamboo forests and paychecks.