Wellington

At last we are in Wellington.

All quiet on the western front.

Osaka

We arrived in Osaka to its humid 33 degree afternoon. We waited in line for 45 minutes to check in, only to be told that our flight was cancelled. We are now in a hotel, waiting. We had a terrible dinner in a restaurant that was trying to be all fancy and failed miserably and hopefully that will come out of our airline's pocket and not ours. Now to sleep and wake at 4am so that we may get to the airport in time for our early flight.

The one bonus was the amazing night view we had whilst dining. Amazing. It just goes on for ever and ever and ever around here.

blow by blow

I bet that you are all loving these blow by blow posts that I keep making. Perhaps I shall resort to even more detail as the internet access becomes more frequent．　Ｉ　ｈａｖｅ　ｆｏｒｇｏｔｔｅｎ　ｈｏｗ　ｍｕｃｈ　Ｉ　ｈａｔｅ　ｋｅｙｂｏａｒｄｓ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｍｕｌｔｉｌａｎｇｕａｇｅ　ｂｕｔｔｏｎｓ．　Ｉ　ｓｏｍｅｈｏｗ　ａｌｗａｙｓ　ｈｉｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｈａｎｇｅ　ｌａｎｇｕａｇｅ　ｋｅｙ，　ｊｕｓｔ　ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｐａｃｅ　ｂａｒ　ｉｓ　ｍｉｎｉｓｃｕｌｅ．　Ａｎｙｗａｙ，　Ｃｈｉｔｏｓｅ　ａｉｒｐｏｒｔ　ｉｓ　ｐａｃｋｅｄ．　Ｉ　ｈａｖｅ　ｎｅｖｅｒ　ｓｅｅｎ　ｉｔ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｂｕｓｙ．　Ｉｔ　ｄｏｅｓ　ｎｏｔ　ｂｏｄｅ　ｗｅｌｌ　ｆｏｒ　ｏｕｒ　ｆｌｉｇｈｔ　ｔｏ　Ｋａｎｓａｉ．　Ｂｕｔ　ｎｅｖｅｒｍｉｎｄ．

Ｗｅ　ａｒｅ　ｗａｓｔｉｎｇ　ｔｉｍｅ　ｏｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ．　Ａｎｄ　ｍａｙｂｅ　Ｉ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｅｖｅｎ　ｅａｔ　ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ．　　

Sapporo

I am exhausted. We are sitting in the lobby of our hotel waiting to check in. We finally left, all list items crossed off bar one, the predictable forgotten thing. Luckily it's not a bad one as far as forgotten things go! The really weird thing is that I'm not bodily tired. I am mentally tired. I haven't been sleeping very much at all, around four hours a night. The Man thinks that this will make me crash out on the plane, safe in the knowledge that he is guarding my dignity. I think otherwise since I know he'll be asleep so it will be hard for him to look after my dignity when he is snoring onto his tiny, little airline pillow!

It is a very surreal day.

Sayonara Small Town

Today isn't our last day in town. But it is the last day here that we will have internet, hence blog post.

Since last Friday I have been packing and cleaning and sorting. This kind of madness (including two days with pre-6am starts) means that at this point we don't have a lot to do. Lots of little things that are time specific. So I'm sitting around writing blog posts, lists and attempting to not panic.

My anxiety comes roaring out at times like these. I can do pretty much anything I want to, and I've done some things that have been pretty challenging, I think. It's not the doing that is the problem. It is the period beforehand where my mind had time to wander and engage my gag reflex. I hate the nausea and dry retching that comes with my anxiety. It screws up my eating, and that is weird enough for me without random episodes wanting to throw up. I can't believe that I lived with this daily for years. Almost five years to be exact. I feel pretty happy that now it just comes and goes in times of extreme stress. And I think that moving countries counts as pretty extreme stress. So that does make me feel better.

I am ready to leave. Each time we have to deal with some bureaucracy or crazyness I am reminded that I am actually ready to leave. I think sometimes it's easy to get so focused on going home that it becomes a big giant deal that seems like it will be impossible to deal with. I am pretty happy to find out that I am ready to deal with it. Even though I have a little trepidation and some anxiety I cannot wait to be home and getting on with the rest of our lives! I keep salivating at the live music prospects. Peaches is playing a gig in Wellington on the 25th of September and I really want to go! But I think it will be sold out before we get home. But there are more and more gigs and Wellington actually gets some decent stuff.

Anyway, enough rambling.

rain

The best thing about Summer rain is that the baseball practices are often quieter/cancelled. It is blissfully quiet as I relax on my last afternoon of solitude. For two years I have spent a lot of time alone. I am looking forward to being around people again, but I am also worried about being around people again. All this time alone has turned me into a calm hermit.

feast

We had the most amazing dinner tonight at my friend/student's Korean Restaurant. The restaurant is a Korean BBQ restaurant and we were his first ever vegetarian customers. The feast that he cooked for us was AMAZING. We spent a while, prior to tonight, talking about things he could and could not use and he accommodated us all. When he read me the menu at our last lesson I wondered how we would eat all the food he was preparing for us. We had eight courses. A kimchee course, a vegetable platter, savoury pancakes, dolsot bibimbap, a tomato and tofu salad with korean miso dressing, handmade spinach and soba noodles, handmade soba tofu, sweet rice cakes, soda and berry agar jelly (fizzy!), and a selection of homemade icecreams. It was without a doubt the most amazing meal that I have ever eaten, period.

It was made more amazing by the way it was served. Slowly over two hours with lots and lots of different flavours and traditional Korean dishes re-created for our picky vegetarian and vegan requirements. I am racking my brains trying to think of a gift to get him so that I can show him how much it meant to us that he made this wonderful meal.

The Man and I are now lying in bed, a little tired (we are not sleeping well), full and incredibly blessed to have met my friend and to have had him cook for us at his restaurant. A poem inspired by this man is going to be published in Landfall later this year. He has had amazing stories to share with me and our lessons have been the most enjoyable of all the lessons I teach. He is without a doubt the most interesting person I have ever met in Japan and I have met some really interesting people.

I feel very lucky right now.

woah

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The uterus of a pregnant sand tiger shark is not exactly a peaceful sanctuary. Her eggs hatch in there well before she gives birth. Soon the multiple embryos begin a fight to the death. By the time the mother goes into labor, there's just one pup remaining. I suspect there's now a similar kind of survival-of-the-fittest struggle going on within the metaphorical womb of your imagination, Pisces. Several pretty good brainchildren are tussling for supremacy. Which one will defeat and eat the others and grow into maturity? I bet we'll find out soon.

bookmarks

I just lost my bookmarks for the second time this year. ARGH! I think it's about me, I am clearly doing something wrong!

come with me

I am sitting in front of a fan, getting blown with deliciously cool air. It's not super hot today, but I've been out grocery shopping and banking and other tasks and it's very sweaty and hot. As much as I like air conditioning, I don't really believe in it. But fans are fine. And ours is a lovely quiet wonder that I will miss.

We went to see Speed Racer over the weekend. I surprised myself by really enjoying it, even though the seats were incredibly uncomfortable for someone as short legged as myself. Mostly I enjoyed the colours and the swirling and the set decorations. There was a beautiful red tea set that I immediately coveted. I turned off the part of my brain that had most of the women being supportive side notes, etc. And so it worked out fine.

Gradually things are coming together for going home. Paying last bills and organising the shutdown of internet and phones etc. I am so very much looking forward to not being treated as a child. It will change my whole life. And I might be touchy about it for a while when I get back. But that will be ok. Just under 19 days until we hop into the car and drive away into the sunset.

Amazing

PJ Harvey and Nick Cave: Henry Lee

Tracy Bonham: Mother Mother

wood

There is a woodpecker in the tree outside my bedroom window. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

mental

The thing about mental illness is that it doesn't just go away. Even if you've had a handle on it for a while, sometimes you will lose your grip. I lose my grip most often under duress and then I can't sleep. And it turns into an ever decreasing spiral. Until I finally pick myself up again and get back to where I was. In the last year my depression has been a different beast. Instead of overwhelming daily depression, a grind, a slog, I get sudden dips and exaggerated faltering before and after. It is a totally different thing.

And whilst I'm very comfortable with the space it now affords my creativity, I also feel the contrast more in the downshift. And it is sometimes frightening.

A respected literary magazine I have been trying to get published in for years just accepted my work. I feel a little dumbfounded. I also find myself thinking about a course at the IIML after having it suggested to me by a poet friend. What to do, what to do. Poetry and Architecture? Will my brain explode? Only time will tell.

Silly Emotions

I am so tired of anger. I hate how it churns around in my brain. If only I could figure out how to get rid of it. I am sure I would be much better for it.

puzzled

Sometimes life seems to be this big giant colourful carnival machine. Today I've spent the hours since waking talking to most of the people in my life, some new, some old, some very old. I've also done a lot of work.

I am constantly confused by relationships. All of them. People are such complex machines of thinking and feeling and acting. I don't even know how to make myself into a whole person without contradiction, so it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people don't manage to see that person that I think now exists after years of emotional hard work. But that is the rub. I've experienced it before. The change isn't always visible to people who know you. They just see the same image overlaid again, and again and again until one day they don't know you any more.

It is funny to feel so divorced from situations that would have left me reeling and hurt and stinging. And to feel reeling and hurt and stinging from other things. Often the first place that I feel hurt isn't in my chest, or my mind, but in the bones of my forearms. It's a really strange thing, the bodily representation of emotional pain.

I guess this deviates off into terribly cryptic. All I can think about is how many zuchinni I have sitting in my table and how delicious they will be to eat. There are birds everywhere, singing, cawing, trilling, as befits them. And children, so many children. Summer is beautiful. And loud.

ART needed

As you may know, I'm starting a lit mag. I am currently looking for art submissions. I am looking for art that is any of these things: edgy, political, quirky, stark, fantastical, surreal, funny, folky, crafty... At the moment I have some really great collages that are going in but I am looking for more Art! If you have anything in black and white, or know anyone who might like to get some of their art published in a new NZ lit mag, let me know, or pass on their info to me, or my info to them, or whatevs. I can't offer any payment, but I can offer credit, a complimentary copy and publishing!

email: enamel dot editor at gmail dot com

June

The end of June is so beautiful here. Right now it's blissfully warm, there's a cool breeze and the sky is so blue it just makes all of the new green leaves look even more green. I'm a little sad that the agricultural high school has mown the field next to our house. They did it so it can dry and they can bale the hay for feed. That field used to be a beautiful shimmering view. Instead today, I have three large trucks removing a power pole and sorting out the wiring. I have no idea what they are trying to do. The power pole was in a bad place, but now it just looks a bit crazy. Time will tell.

This past weekend was a very full one. Last year we put on an international festival in town. This year, we decided to do it again. So Friday and Saturday I was busy with it. The weather turned out to be perfect, we sold out of all the food, we sold out of all the juice, we didn't sell out of all the beer, but that was ok too.

The Man and I spent Sunday, relaxing pleasantly together with our tired muscles.

Awwwwww.

music, inspiration, poetry, and so on

I am a member of a women's poetry list. And in recent weeks there has been a discussion raging about famous feminists Alice Walker and her daughter Rebecca Walker. Ms. Walker, the younger, has written very public diatribes about feminism and about her mother specifically. It's a very complex thing and obviously sparks some strong emotion. Throughout the whole discussion I have been unable to stop thinking about family and poetry and feminism and it's made for a weird two weeks. On one hand I feel energised and alive and I have written some good poetry recently, privately even. My poor neglected poetry blog doesn't stand a chance.

But on the other hand I have been thrust back into memories that I don't always think about, for good reason. Families are so complex. People are so complex. I can't even begin to understand them, or myself really. Or rather my own interactions with the families that make up my family. I am worrying needlessly about events to come and about decisions which I fear will have a huge impact on the rest of my life. Japan, has been a hiatus from decisions and people when I needed it most. But it is about to end. And preparing for that is taking it out of me.

A blog that I like today linked me to an interesting music podcast. I have only listened to one so far. But predictably it was the Tori Amos one. Little Earthquakes was released when I was 12. I think the first single I knew about was Crucify which was released somewhere in 1992 and which I first heard as a New Release amongst the Top Nine at Nine on 91zm (a very different radio station in 1992). Whilst everyone else my age was into grunge or electronica, I was spurning most of it for Tori Amos. I had fairly pedestrian music tastes up until age 12, but the gift of a tiny little double tape deck/radio for my 12th birthday allowed me into the world of radio and recording radio. And upon discovering Tori Amos I felt like I had found home, I think.

Those years were pretty hard for me and Tori Amos was most of my world. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, listening to that album and when Under The Pink was released I added that to my repertoire. Now as a adult, when I consider that those albums were the fodder of my formative it years certainly goes a long way to explain who I am. Music has been an important force in my life since I can remember and I sometimes forget about that. I forget the years and years of piano practice and orchestra after I started to play the cello. The problem is that music is also my drug of choice. It takes me into depression and keeps me down there. And it is now a rare occasion that I can listen to the albums that affected me so as a youngin. I also remember the ridicule I received for liking Tori Amos during the 90s. I often wonder about the people who would say her name like it was a disease. It's also really funny to me now to meet women who were as in love with Tori as I was at that age. Or who started listening to her as an adult. I have this sort of possessive love for her. And it still astounds me to find people who like and listen to her. I love her. And probably always will.

I had a discussion today with my best student (and I like to think friend, as our sessions are more like conversation over coffee than lessons) about suicide. It was a very strange conversation. But it was also really enlightening for me. He brought in some statistics that show South Korea as having the highest suicide rate in the world, followed by Japan. Neither of us were very surprised about Japan. But he was surprised about South Korea getting the top stop. He tried to explain to me that for his parent's generation (my grandparent's generation) suicide was not even a consideration. He tried to explain that for older Koreans your body doesn't belong to you. It belongs to all of your ancestors and is therefore not yours to possess. Obviously there are gaps in understanding here, although he is a very good English speaker I think sometimes that trying to talk about complex subjects in a second language is almost fruitless. As such, he said, suicide isn't a taboo subject because it is just hard to imagine and then he outright asked me if I had ever been suicidal.

It totally surprised me. And my reaction to his totally innocent question surprised me even more. I blushed and foundered. I don't mind talking to people about my depression, but admitting that I have at times felt suicidal and have even gone so far as to plan my own demise seems to be something that it is not only hard for me to talk about, but makes me feel shame and sorrow and a whole raft of things that I don't understand. I explained to him that often in New Zealand people seem to think that talking about suicide encourages suicide. I remember the controversy over the yellow ribbon campaign. What do you think? Yes? No? I feel like in New Zealand it's something that we're not really allowed to discuss. Maybe one can admit to depression, but you have to be doing something about it. Perhaps I am extrapolating my own experience out into the experience of others here and it's just things that I have assumed from interactions with my family and peers. But I don't know. My reaction was a mystery. He, I think, felt a bit upset to have caused the reaction within me. But he didn't cause it. And such is life when discussing difficult subjects. I think it was a beneficial conversation for both of us.

He also told me that his parents, on discovering that some young Koreans in Japan had killed themselves became amazingly angry. This was in the middle part of the last century when Koreans born in Japan suffered prejudice and discrimination, fiercely. They still suffer of course, but in different ways. My student said he could never understand their anger, even now. But I think it makes sense in many ways. I have been reading about the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Zainichi Koreans, who lived and live in Japan, and their children, who are in a tight spot. Caught between their parents who stubbornly refuse to become Japanese nationals, and expect their children to do the same, though many of them have never set foot in Korea. I have heard that some Korean families disowned their children who became Japanese nationals. I don't really know how to talk about the subject. So intstead I have written a poem about it, that may or may not make it out into the light of day.

And then we are back to the beginning. Poetry.