1. Teaching/Tutoring/Instruction: unlicensed teaching in subjects like high school mathematics and recently English and ESL but also in computers, science and theatre. All ages, weird schools, a year in Japan. I have received the most training in ESL teaching, but still have not embraced it as a career. It looks like, unless I get some sweet corporate gig, this job pays $10-15K less than it does abroad. If I was doing exclusively tutoring, however… but that takes time. I secretly love this job, though. Do I love it enough to really learn how to do it well?
2. Writing/Editing: All based on natural talent/AP English training for expository style writing. My job at Pearson was my only official editor experience (other than while tutoring) and I didn’t learn any copy editing, so I can’t get copy editing jobs. This job is the nicest blend of left and right brained effort and theoretically pays well, 1:1 or corporate.
3. Counseling: I have a Master’s degree but have not done my 2 years of post-masters internship or gotten my license. This could turn into something but it would require focusing on it exclusively and would take a while. In the end, this might be the most profitable avenue.
4. Tech: The last operating system I did anything technical with was Win2K, and even then I was faking it. My quality assurance internship was running ethernet cable and I only know how to talk about computers, not actually write code or admin anything. Plus, doing it is actually not that interesting- more of a spectator sport for me. Microsoft Office is my bitch, but other than (1 or 2) this is just a basic required skill. I could get a job as a lab tech or a customer support guy, but it would pay less than what I am making now. I have no way to make what I might have as a 32-year-old who had stayed in the field.
5. Performing arts: As much as I would love to get back into it, the last time I was a stage manager was in 1999. I don’t remember how to do lights or sound anymore, either. Not that this would pay well, anyway. But if I wanted to make it happen, I’d find a way. Again, I could get a job in the same role I had when I was 20, but I’d be making dirt.
6. Martial Arts: A job where I used all of myself would probably the only thing that could hold my passion for the rest of my life. And that means something physical bound with the intellectual, emotional and spiritual satisfaction of the other career paths. Maybe someday this will be what I do, but having taken 1 kendo class and 2 weeks of kung fu, this will need to stay a ’side-passion’ for a long time… decades, maybe… before I will be expert enough to shift it to my main path.
7. Japanese: There are Japanese teachers in the world, maybe I could be one of them someday? This is probably about as far off as the martial arts one.

Given the answers to that question, is it realistic that I might be prepared to return that way in three months when the new school year starts?

Exceedingly unlikely.

Which kind of bravery should I choose? Staying here until I am fully prepared is more practical, but would mean finding another job here that pays much more. In Japan, I’d automatically be making $40K. It is the transition between here and there that is the problem. Last time I did it with about $500 and it felt horrible and was pretty pathetic. That doesn’t count airfare. Do I really want to return to Japan on my knees? Coming home to Boston costed about $5000, all told. Moving back to Japan doesn’t have to cost that much, but wouldn’t it be nice if I was prepared for things to go wrong instead of hoping I got lucky? I do have free places to live with friends now, and I could make sure the contract gets me housing and pay right away…

Look at me.

It is SO HARD for me when I have a wish without the means to fulfill it. To admit that waiting is necessary for success. To do the slow work. To hold still.

This is exactly what I must change in order to be successful in the long term.

I can’t pretend that returning to something is the same as undoing a choice. I left Japan. I am here now. I can realize that it was a mistake, or accept that it was what I had to do at the time to learn what I needed to learn, or decide that coming to Boston was providence in disguise. It doesn’t really matter what meaning I make of it. I am here. I am not in Japan. I cannot undo. I cannot pretend that returning to Japan is not going to be a total pain in the ass that ‘wastes’ the money I just spent getting back to the US. I cannot pretend that I have already healed all of the issues that got me in trouble last year. I cannot pretend that I am even succeeding right now, given the state of my bank account.

I am not in a position to do something as dramatic as returning to Japan in three months, and that is the truth.

Shit.

Okay. So March 2013 is the goal. That gives me time to prepare.

1. Get a high paying job.
2. Pay off credit card and as much of the reentry loan as possible.
3. Save at least $5000.
4. Learn Japanese, maybe take the JLPT level 5 or 4 next December.
5. Keep making Japanese friends and getting involved in Japanese stuff in Boston so that my Japan resources are maxed.
6. Finish getting into shape, start dating; maybe, if I’m lucky, fall in love with a Japanese bishounen or to return to Japan with.
7. Figure out what it was that I missed about America when I was in Japan/ what I was so happy to get back when I returned here and consider.

Caveat: March 2013 is the goal UNLESS I cannot find a higher paying job in Boston, in which case, going back to Japan may be the only way to get me out of debt. If that’s true, then maybe I should apply to jobs in Japan for this year and if I get a gig that sounds ideal I should go for it?

*pulls hair*

I needed to come home. I needed to remember that I had a home, that there were people who knew and loved me. I needed to share time with them, let my body recall closeness. These things I will need forever, and I will spend my life learning how to get closer to those I love, how to create a home and a life and walk through fire.

There was a lot of walking through fire when I left in May 2010, but it had the sort of shoving-myself-from-behind feeling that I have learned means that it was based in illusion. I could only have learned the truth of this by returning. I have tried to capture the learning that I have done ever since I began to awaken to my life, ever since I made the choice to awaken- ever since I changed my name. This awakening comes in layers so fine they resist language.

Walking through fire with unshakable purpose is new. I am no longer running from something. I am striding toward something. And this something seems to involve an awful lot of Japanese stuff.

I am awakening to what Japan means to me. I no longer care if this feeling is overly romantic or irrational. Or rather, I am letting go of worrying that others think it is, because I know it’s not. Romance matters to me. It is essential to my happiness. And I am an exceedingly rational person, weaknesses and all.

Pathologizing gets me nowhere, though it is my oldest habit to worry that I’m doing something wrong. I am learning to believe in myself, my way of living. I have strengths that only emerge when I accept my nature.

I walk around Boston like I own the place. I do. I learned how to own a city from my brief, nervous adventures getting lost and frustrated in Tokyo. Boston is easy. This sense of competence and mastery feels right. It is my right to feel it. So for a while, I need to soak it up. I need to stay with this feeling of having a right to do what I love. Learning Japanese, kendo, singing, writing, making money, being with loved ones, romance… these sound like a lot of ‘do’, but if you know how I do things, then you know they are actually all ‘be’s. Being is energized for me.

But then I am going to walk through fire again and do all the things that were below my threshold of tolerance before. All the experiences in Japan that I thought I had no right to do, I am going to do them. The life I was too insecure to build for myself there, I will. Being valued as unique in Boston has undone my ‘just another gaijin’ mentality that poisoned my efforts while living in Japan. When I return, I am going to go all out. The only question is when- the moment when the balance of the learning I am doing in Boston shifts toward the need to move forward in the areas that can only be accomplished in Japan.

I am starting to understand the power of having a clear, defined goal and putting your all toward it. My goal is so simple I can point to it in my mind instantly, though putting it into words makes it sound needlessly complicated. Luckily, I’m the only one who needs to understand it fully.

Life is surprisingly straightforward.

I can’t help grinning like an idiot. I keep thinking I must be in one of those stretch mirrors. Where did it go? I have lost 50 pounds of the 70 I gained when I got married! Soon I will fully recognize myself again! Already my curves are returning to the arcs I remember. Thank the goddess for my amazing collagen!

This is really going to happen! It’s not some miracle, I am doing it every day!

I’m so happy that the ’secret’ to losing weight was simply finding the foods that my body desired and leaving behind the rest. It took years to learn how to listen since I had been so throughout numbed out, but now there’s no way I would ever shut myself down again! I feel alive!

Also, I am now a kendoshi! My first kendo practice was this Thursday, wherein we did 2,012 overhead swings, or suburi. I made it all the way through! And I learned a ton. It hurts so much more if you do it wrong! Like any sport, I am realizing, it is designed to make use of the body’s natural way of doing things, thus why unlearning is probably the most difficult stage of learning. I can tell by the blisters and cramps that my posture will be fixed during my study of this art. So much better than pointless physical therapy exercises. This is going to be great. The footwork practice I did has left me with more aches than the arm work, which makes sense given that even my legendary shoulder-neck tension cannot match the ridiculous brute strength of my poor overworked calves. It’s relax or die. Perfect.

~

These two developments combined to make some sleepless nights, just buzzing from the awesomeness that is coming into my life. At 214 pounds, married and miserable, in 2006… it was all I could do to dare to wish I might have my life back and set it on the path that was stolen from me when I made that series of stupid decisions when I was in college, even though I can’t imagine having been able to break free any earlier than I did given what I was up against. But now… now it is in sight. It is not just some theoretical dream. It is blossoming.

and yes, I’ve decided i’m cool enough to use boku. we’ll see if I can pull it off with the native Japanese. ;P

These last few weeks I have been soaking up a new consciousness that is freeing me to accept things about myself and life that I resisted seeing before. They are all essentially positive things, but my tolerance for holding onto the things that matter to me has grown. And yet I am not gripping these things tightly. The word quiescence keeps coming to mind. And at the same time there is a not-unpleasant pain coloring this new way. My Western-trained brain leapt to the fear that it meant something was wrong with me or what I was doing even though this process felt so organically right. Here, again, I am grateful for other cultures’ paradigms. Just as it feels to me, in Zen what I am experiencing is actually a desirable aesthetic.

Sabi: Asymmetrical, impermanent beauty; quiet elegance; acceptance of transience. A ‘positive sadness’; ‘detached loneliness’; ‘Beauty with a sense of loneliness in time’. (thanks http://www.michaelhaldane.com/HaikuLink.htm)

While in this mind, I wrote the following passage, which successfully captures the flavor of my inner world in a way I have been unable to write before. For me, it seems, sabi and mushin (flow) are entwined.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My dreams have been poignant and melancholy of late. I feel like the limit I’ve discovered, that boundary we all face between our current and potential selves and lives, has come tantalizingly close in an increasing number of areas that I have aspirations in. This is the best news of my life, because it means that I am on the cusp of leaving behind the stagnation and listlessness that has been the hallmark of the last decade of my life; though I am becoming convinced that this feeling is the same I carried with me for as long as I can remember though by another name: despair. It lives in me with an existential cast most of the time- a vague, low-frequency hum that vibrates up from my core that brings some disorientation and discomfort, but for the most part is easily repressed, ignorable and forgotten. But I am fooling myself to claim that I truly step free from its grasp. It stays with me, shakes my sleep to loosen dreams that leave me disturbed or moved, drains my energy and focus so that I forget my purpose, confuses my mind until I am swimming in tepid passions- a content smile and pleasant demeanor but lacking the true substance that I treasure about myself. I begin to feel hollow, and the strength of my integrity cannot tolerate it for long.

That is when I notice it consciously for the first time, and my self-consciousness feeds back on itself to amplify whatever has been disturbed in me so that the vibrations pull me from my routine and style and character in a way that ever others begin to notice. This is when I begin to feel so uncomfortable from being shaken that I actively distract myself with escapism and fantasy. It is also when the personal projects I have set for myself become unraveled and I begin to feel frustration with my lack of willpower and simply reigniting my resolve has little lasting effect, like trying to spark a match in fog. There is something about the quality of this phenomenon that it deflects being looked at directly, as if it cannot bear the scrutiny and uses any means to avoid seeing its own face. Sometimes, if I am very lucky, I become poetic like today, and the use of illusion and analogy can be a trick of mirrors to examine the root of it without its noticing. The vast majority of the time, this angst sinks back under my consciousness without every manifesting as painful, merely existing as a few days of lessened productivity and feeling out of sorts. But with no pain or emotional component at all, these waves of sensation become very difficult to approach consciously. There are no tears, no specific memories- just a building pressure that begs release but without an epiphany or realization that could serve as the knife needed to spill open whatever is being hidden in my heart.

Almost half a year ago in Japan I finally had an experience that freed me from this endlessly repeating cycle. I felt my loneliness. The buzz throughout my being crystallized into an ache in my heart, with a quality so ancient that I later wondered why it had seemed so new, given how much grief, rage and terror I had released from my heart already. I think that, for the most part, the feelings that I was able to access and release were mainly from acute episodes of my pain, when a feeling welled up in me and was either suppressed in the moment knowing that expressing it would do me no good, or stuffed down by force of will after seeing the danger such honesty put me in. My loneliness, however… that had been by my side as a friend I called self-reliance, creativity, freedom. There was enough truth in these names that loneliness could hide unchallenged, safe from me feeling such devastation before anything could be done to spare me from it. By some cleverness of survival I managed to integrate it so tightly into my being that it took something as dramatic as living by myself in Japan with no true social contact to bring me face to face with my need for human closeness. Even now I can feel the ache where I would have been whole if only companionship has been allowed to flower in my young life. This ache is a blessing that I believe will bring me into the next era of my life, because now that I am feeling it, I can use the pain of my heart’s inexperience as a compass leading me to intimacy, friendship, romance and someday, a home.

Sitting with this twin sadness and longing in my heart is already slowing the hum within me to something approaching a feeling. This is how I know that my loneliness has companions of its own. Other losses that have been disguised as strengths of character to hide in plain sight so that I may never become unraveled from discovering the true depth of my chronic pain. My acute pain, even my thematic pain, has mainly been washed clean through experiential therapy and the excruciating process of overhauling myself to become who I was meant to be. I have come so far. In fact, even given my vast ambitions for happiness I have already come most of the way that I desire for this life. That this is true brings me more pride and joy and relief than I could possibly express, but I am nothing if not ambitious, and I can see a sort of life ahead that so far has eluded me. I am convinced that the key to this new plane of existence will be unlocking not only my acute and thematic pain, but the pain that built even in moments of loving peace, safe solitude and surprised laughter when I was able to feel the closest thing that could pass as happiness available to me in such a life. I have tried to explain how even though every moment was not full of pain, the reprieve from attack was never truly restful as abuse lingered in that house like an invisible poison gas, or, more appropriately, a poltergeist. Every moment of joy was stolen, every laugh framed by the expectation that if our laugh were judged inappropriate, the attack would come. So we laughed too hard, pushed our quota of joy out into the world as fast as we could before we had to suffocate on misery again. Being naturally joyful, I remember the moments when my instinct chose to smother my love of life for fear of my safety as more painful than the attack a moment later, more painful than the fear preceding it. Where did this lie of joy go? Where did I hide the illusion of contentment when I was held in my parent’s arms, waiting for their mood to turn and lash out while desperately trying to soak up as much of their love as possible before the inevitable occurred? Where did I hide the sense of connection that was sacrificed for the need to keep my distance from every human for fear of having who I was overwritten with their insanity? Where did I hide the knowledge that I have whatever it is that makes someone truly great, so that their life resounds across history? I knew this about myself once, in a way that only my dream self remembers, but it is coming back to me and I need to find a way to hold onto it. What did I trade this for? What could be worth feeling like a limited failure of a girl, when the sense of my potential would not leave me alone? What price could have been worth relegating myself to a life of mediocrity and stagnation and lost direction, when I could see as clear as day the person I would become if I only let myself move beyond the line I had drawn? How could I have thought that I would be satisfied with fantasy when the opportunity to lead the world in whatever art I chose could have been mine? To truly hold in my mind the vastness and pricelessness of such a gift of innate ability coupled with confidence only serves to illuminate the magnitude of pain that this trade must have relieved me of. That a little girl can survive under the assault of such a thing is beyond my ability to understand. That a grown woman can begin to find it again is an even greater mystery, one that I have the miraculous honor of embodying. Perhaps they are one in the same, what I had sacrificed and what I have gained. Perhaps this is how the wheel of life returns things to us, in the time when we are able to make use of them. Because what a waste my gifts and ambitions were when I was trapped in that cage. If it has taken me thirty years to make my way out it seems like a blink of an eye compared to the eternity of freedom that I have won myself.

I have come to believe that this boundary that I have learned how to see between where I stand as I am and where I could stand if I shed these final hesitations must be part of the human condition. Upon reflection, it occurred to me that I may have stumbled upon the very concept that is the focus of the transcendental philosophies and religions, like the nirvana of Buddhism, a state where devotees spend their lives training and untraining themselves so they may flit into that new plane of being for longer and longer moments, to feel the shackles of our limited existence may fall from them for even a short time. Flow, which I have been lucky enough to experience, is also of this type, as is much of the existential philosophical concepts that lead great western thinkers in their ponderings.

If this is what I am seeking, then I have surprised myself with my ambition. It’s humbling to remember that this whole journey began with a simple wish to not spend most of every day crying. When that wish turned into a hope that I might be happy most of every day, not just un-miserable, it felt like a leap forward in consciousness. Now that I am genuinely happy with most areas of my life, and probably more than many people are able to be happy with, I am trying to achieve Nirvana. Typical. But this came to me in a completely un-intellectual fashion, dressed in none of the occultisms or clever romanticism that I find so attractive in systems of belief. I simply found an image in my mind of a membranous wall of a soft and slowly moving translucent material, somehow reflecting and allowing me to see beyond it at the same time, almost like water, but with the sense of quicksilver or fire as well. And beyond it I saw myself, or rather felt the feelings of my other self- her body’s lightness and strength, her mind’s clarity and brilliance, her heart’s connectedness and passion, her spirit’s focus and power. In my mind’s eye, I reached out my hand but the wall was just out of reach. I did not strain to reach it, I was not glued to the floor, but I did not step forward or lean. This was simply where I was at this time, no closer, no further. But I knew with a certainty that the wall was touchable. I would be able to put a hand through, in fact had already brushed it with my fingers without realizing, and that it was possible for a human to exist on the other side for long periods- well, longer than the briefest moment that I had experienced. I suddenly knew that Alexander the Great, Leonardo DiVinci, Achilles and undoubtedly Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus as well had all lived on that side of the barrier for extended periods at critical moments in history.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I think I am amongst the company of such amazing individuals. But it made me think about what separates me from them. Although my genius is not of the highest order, I have been told that I am smart enough to learn anything I care to learn, and I believe it from the moments where my ability to tolerate my own capacity for understanding has been expanded into the realm I thought was for ‘other people’. My heart’s journey is one familiar to biographers of these legends, the strife and overcoming of it, wisdom learned through trials and whatever the innate quality I have which I call my Spark. My body has only begun to find its potential, but I know I am naturally faster and stronger than many people; I can endure pain and have good instincts. If these three general categories can somehow quantify the potential someone has to be legendary, then my aptitude is pretty solid, and many people have changed the world without being in the absolute echelon of their type’s skills. However, as I sit here, the difference between potential and actual is clear: I may be a genius, but my vocabulary is locked away and my knowledge of how stuff works is lost in a fog. My heart may be wise, but I can’t pay my bills and I stay in my house all day. My body has the makings of a warrior, but I am still 30 pounds overweight with a postural disorder. How do I account for the difference?

Said simply, I think the difference between my current self and the great legends of history lies not in our potential but rather our ability to tolerate treading in a realm where humans are completely out of their element. Think about it. Someone who dwells permanently in a place where their potential is completely untapped would, to my mind, be best described as a god. By definition, they would be limitless, except only in the most magical sense of literal immortality, star-destroying strength, creation from nothing and other powers that don’t honor the conservation of energy and other fundamentals that despite my foray into these concepts in my novel are mainly held by me as imperturbable. So by this schema, gods are those creatures that never get in their own way. Achilles, then, was god-like in his ability to have moments consistently over his lifetime where his potential and his actuality were the same, or close enough to achieve things beyond what most of us can dream. And because my life has gone from absolute shit to full of wonder and pleasure, I am filled with a need to see how far I can take this journey. It is my ambition to become the Achilles of me.

It is not by accident that I chose Achilles as my example, though I did not realize how illustrative it would be at the time. Achilles is almost more famous for his fall than his decade of baddassery leading up to it. Surely he was slaughtered just like any man in war, but that is not how his story is told. Paris’ arrow, guided by a true god’s hand, found the one place he was vulnerable and took him down in the hour of his glory. Built into his tale is the lesson “if you burn too bright, your flame will be extinguished”. It was not hubris that sealed his fate, not some moral weakness he needed to be punished for… he was simply too awesome. We have a limit as to how much awesomeness we can tolerate coming from a single person. As someone’s impressiveness increases, we are fascinated and giddy with excitement, seeing one of our own demonstrate the best of what our species has to offer. But after a certain point, our attitude changes. We begin to look for things to criticize, to ‘bring them down a notch’, ‘show them their place’. The most petty, bitter or insecure of us do this before the awesomeness is even digested. Many of us strive to counteract this tendency by being supportive and outspoken in our praise, but it is the rarest individual, I am convinced, that can tolerate seeing someone’s life continue to expand without feeling uncomfortable. I have experienced this myself from my most well-meaning friends, people who believe wholeheartedly in ‘dream big’, but when I am honest about my aspirations try to help me by telling me to be practical, that my interests are immature or a byproduct of some unresolved psychological glitch. Though these things may be true, and this advice may be well needed with some of my crazier schemes, I cannot imagine anything threatening about “I want to find a cool tree to climb”, or “I love these rainbow shoes” with my face lit up in joy that really requires getting mature advice to keep me from going astray. There is something difficult to tolerate when I am unabashedly following my bliss. I shut myself down around such things all the time, but practice to keep my bliss awake and alive despite my habit of trying to be quiet about what makes me truly happy. Pleasure is precious to me. Having lived a lie for my whole life about what made me happy, I am going to be completely clear about the kinds of happiness I want to manifest in my life from here on out.

I think that the amount of actualized happiness we each can tolerate for ourselves comes from a number of factors, not least among them trauma and overt social conditioning, reinforced by the sort of unconscious messages inherent in the examples my well-meaning friends provided above. My sister has a lyric in one of her songs that succinctly explains the trauma behind this inability to tolerate awesomeness, or even a lack of conflict, that is so uncomfortable that it tangibly builds in pressure until something has to be done to relieve it: “Everything was fine for about thirty-six hours; I should’ve stayed in bed today”. Our family fought so many times every day that if a day and a half passed without a conflict it began to feel odd. If a second night passed with people still in generally good spirits, we would actually start to joke about it to each other, we were so uncomfortable. Everyone would begin to get nervous and hypersensitive to each other’s needs, increasingly willing to sacrifice our own needs to not start fighting. On the third or fourth day, these good intentions would buckle under the strain of the impending explosion. A ‘reprieve’ this long only happened a couple times a year so we were never very practiced at dealing with them. If a fight didn’t break out from the building resentment from having to walk on eggshells in the first place, one of us would manufacture something to return the household to the status quo. I found myself creating trouble with something I knew would incite enough anger to work as a release valve but was focused on something I didn’t really care about, since if the break in peace happened ‘naturally’ I would probably lose something dear to me, be broken hearted or in physical danger. Starting a fight about something stupid was a reasonable choice in the face of this inevitability. I am pretty sure Mom and Dad even used this approach with another chore argument to get us out of these periods of no fighting. They were excruciating. At least when we were fighting we were getting constant updates on everyone’s anger levels so we could prepare ourselves. Losing our vigilance to a false sense of security hurt so much more than open fighting. It’s no wonder that during our early years I fought with my ex-husband every day just to feel comfortable. Poor guy. I could not tolerate peace at all.

So there is definitely a trauma component in this for me and I can’t underestimate that measure of time: 36 hours. When things are going well for two days in a row, some ancient part of me starts to fear inevitable pain. Just that alone explains my two-day rule for eating the way I wish. No tongue’s craving moves me to eat something I’m allergic to on that second or third day. It is the buzzing, the pressure of the awesome life I am in the process of building warning me of impending doom. This fear from continuing on this path due to failure or pain is one half of what traps us on this side of the boundary of potential- this is the aspect I know best,  having worked on it for years. “Tolerating the good” as Amanda Curtin calls it, a phenomenon all trauma survivors work to stretch so that they do not sabotage their own happiness in order to have some measure of control over their fates, rather than leaving their pain to the far more brutal hands of chaos. But it is to the other half of this pressure that I turn to now.

Just as there is a pressure building from impending doom, there is also pressure building from impending glory. By this I do not mean the same as being paralyzed by both fear of failure and fear of success, though that is probably an offshoot of the phenomenon I am trying to describe. The feeling of pressure that I am talking about is not precisely an emotion (such as fear) at all, but might more accurately be described as a sensation. When I am in touch with it, I feel it as a literal weight upon my skin, pushing back against me like a thick wind. The part of my mind that holds such instincts as always knowing where the ocean is or where an odd stranger is also points to the presence of this boundary in the way it did when I first encountered in my meditation. It is a completely subtle feeling, and as I have been practicing tolerating the knowledge of its presence in my mind, it has come to feel warm, even welcoming. I think as my relationship changes with the representation in my mind that I will be able to move closer to becoming my potential self, even as I stand closer to the wall in my visualization. Though this is the first time I have met this barrier in this way, I have writings from years and years ago describing the version of myself that I was in my sleeping dreams, and how she was clearly me and yet had none of the fear, insecurity, hesitation or fog in her mind that I have always had. This is a private knowledge of what I believe is my true self that I have no way of sharing with anyone. I love her dearly and know her perfectly, yet I have never succeeded to describe her in words without sounding trite and simple. So I will not try again here, instead trusting to the faith that you who read this also hold a secret knowledge of your true form in your heart that I have no more access to that you have of mine. This boundary between self and other may be the same as that between our actual and potential selves, but if that is the case, then I have only had the fortune of visiting the other side of one and not the other, though I believe I have loved as deeply as one may. I look forward to being proven wrong, however.

In any case, this best version of me is so clear in my consciousness that it has become frustrating that I am not more like her. She is within reach! What is holding me back? Why do I not trust what I know? Why do I hesitate to move toward what I love? Why do I not take myself seriously? Why do I dumb myself down? Why do I tell myself that my choices don’t matter? Why do I have such a narrow view of the possibilities of life and lifestyle? Why do I not throw myself into the things and people I love the most? Why do I let so much time go by without purpose? Why is it so difficult to practice and learn without expectation of running out of ability soon? Why do I have such trouble securing the means to support my dreams? Why do I constantly forget or dismiss what I have discovered works for me?

These questions are not in the panicked tone they might once have been in, but rather come from a slow, pensive place. The judgment and self-criticism that once accompanied these questions are largely gone, replaced with a genuine curiosity and tenderness toward my journey. I think these are universal questions. Where I used to pathologize myself for not being Achilles on the day I discovered my trauma, now I understand that everyone struggles with these issues. It is part of the human condition to be held apart from your actualized self.

~~~ Some adapted inspiration from the anime Bleach~~~

A samurai lies defeated, bleeding her life onto the ground. As her consciousness leaves her, we follow her into her mind where she encounters herself looking down at her. “I fought as hard as I could”, she says in defense. “I just wasn’t strong enough.” Her other self looks at her with detached curiosity.

“And that was enough for you? To know that you have fought your hardest? Was the struggle all you wanted? No one can criticize your effort, your dedication. You did your best. So what if you lost? People lose. Not everyone can be a winner.” She shrugs and begins to walk away. “Well, it was a good life. Everyone will remember you as the one who fought.” The last word held a touch of mockery in the tone, and the fallen samurai grips the hilt of her sword tighter.

“Just fighting… it’s pointless. Just living is pointless.” Her movement causes her to cough blood, but she starts to rise.

Her other self stops walking away. “I suppose. Always fighting just to fight. Living just to live. But what else can you do?” She looks back over her shoulder with a mischievous  grin. “Unless, that is, you want to win.”

“I want… to… win.”

“Do you? You’re much safer here, though you’re dying. You kept the best of yourself safe from losing. You can die now, knowing that what is most precious to you will never be at risk. But if you win- for that, you will need to put all of yourself on the line. You cannot regret or hesitate. You cannot cling to the illusion of praise that is given to those who try. You would pass up those who are content having only tried. You might be alone, or misunderstood, or feared.  You would never again be able to lie to yourself about your true capability. You will have touched your potential and never again will you be satisfied with less. Never again will you have the luxury of doubt. Never again will defeat be an option. Just fighting the good fight will be a waste of time for someone who has set her mind on victory. Can you sacrifice these comforts? Can you let go of the dream of ‘potential’ that you chase and grasp your actuality? Can you win?”

A fire was lit in the samurai’s eyes. “I want to win.” She rose unto one knee, using her katana to help her stand. “I want to win!” She stands, and her ki swirls around her in rainbow flames.

“I WANT TO WIN!”

She awakens back in the real world and kicks ass, heals her wounds, and her acceptable limits have expanded to include victory, success and mastery.

~~~~~~~

The actual scene catalyzed this inner monologue in me as is shown here, synthesizing so many aspects of the organic change in consciousness I’ve been experiencing that it made me aware of how Zen my mind is becoming.

I’ve decided to practice kendo. I need to hold on to this philosophy of severing doubt from choice, expectations from desire, hesitancy for action, discomfort from pleasure, fighting from winning.

For so long, being a fighter was enough for me. Being in process of escaping and healing from my past brought me immeasurable pride and self-love. But now it is not enough. I am no longer content talking about how I will ‘someday’ be a badass, or ‘someday’ my dreams will come true. My behavior during most of my daily life shows a woman who is content to stay on a treadmill of self-growth. Sometime I wonder how much I do this work just to be praised for improving in small amounts. Do I even sabotage my large successes so I won’t lose that kind of praise? So I won’t alienate the people who are on the treadmill with me? Well, I can’t live like this anymore. I KNOW I am capable of so much more, and it is like slowly dying to not just go for it full-throttle. It was a necessary transition, these years- first my awareness of needing to rescue myself at all, first from the dramatic trauma of my childhood and then from the numbing trauma of my marriage- many people never do either of these feats, but the idea that I should be satisfied with have repaired this must has lost its appeal.

My first goal was to un-traumatize myself and my life, and I have. I no longer meet any of the criteria for PTSD and my dysfunction and pain is not any greater than someone suffering only from the standard human condition (whatever that is). I have made good progress on my dreams and aspirations and am happy every day. But I am more ambitious than that. I am, right now, stepping across this level of satisfaction. I am now living my life at 100%. No more holding back how great I can be. I know I will not be able to stay here all the time, but the glass ceiling has shattered and it will not re-form. It is terrifying, but it feels like I can finally stop apologizing for being who I am, for being able to do what I can do, for loving what I love, for achieving everything I want. Everything.

I will definitely return to live there again, but not alone. Hopefully when I have a family. If I meet a Japanese partner, that would be ideal, so that my children could know the culture of their heritage in a way they wouldn’t in America. And surprisingly, my Japanese language acquisition seems to have sped up since I left. I apparently know WAY more Japanese than I ever gave myself credit for- including sentence structures! Maybe the respite allowed my brain to synthesize and organize everything, but suddenly my fear around grammar and kanji have all but gone and I have decided to study seriously to take the JLPT exam before I return. If I could really speak Japanese when I went back, I could have so much that I denied myself before- friends, being able to find things, dating, working and playing with Japanese in Japanese… it would be amazing. I could learn some of the ancient art forms without feeling like such a poser. In fact, it would be the experience I was hoping for myself the first time but couldn’t make happen.

Am I sorry I left? Yes and no. I think I needed to return home for a reality check. I was shocked to find Boston so clean and pleasant, with so many facilities and areas I had never frequented and a river that was the cleanest one I had seen anywhere in Asia or Europe. I appreciate Boston a lot more and would settle here if California did not exist. I need to get home and feel that sunshine on my skin again, hug my trees, jump through my waves, eat my fresh fruit. So that is my next destination after I get my financial feet under me again, which is well on its way, I’m glad to report.  Coming back also reminded me of the artificiality that is distinctly American and that I will only encounter in greater strength in California, but I feel like I have the perspective and integrity to withstand the pressure to conform to it now after holding to myself in a culture who had no idea what to do with me.  On the other side, as soon as I got here, with no money and facing so much hardship after my stupid panicked-dissociated decisions about ending my job in Japan, I wanted nothing more than to go back in time and undo it all- staying in my cozy apartment, having the daily life I had built, and this time really appreciating what I had there. The good news is that all it takes is saving up airfare to do it again, so I can put my regret to rest with that assurance, even as I know that I will not move to Japan until I have gotten rid of my pending financial obligations and have saved enough money to not have the poor life in that country.

Thank goodness 32 isn’t actually that old. Babies, and therefore, love-of-my-life  and financial/career security need to happen in the next few years; but there’s no reason I can’t move back to Japan when my child is half-grown and I am 50. It’s not like my adventursome spirit is going to decrease! I will never get my 20s back, but that long painful process was required so that I can be free for the rest of my life, so every day is precious. Now I am learning how to give myself the means to do what I really want, not just throw myself forward without support in the desperate hope that I will get some crumbs of my dreams. Now that I know how much awesome is out there, I am going to establish security so that I can explore it all! Yay, attachment resolution! ;)

Being in Japan had aspects in common with going on a retreat in the mountains to find one’s muse. Although I love people and social gatherings now in a way I could never appreciate before the work I’ve done in recent years, I’m still not good about initiating or following up on relationship building with friendships. No, that’s not exactly it- when I realize I have the opportunity, I have skills that work just fine. It’s just that I forget other people exist so easily, or I have deeply rooted taboos about social interaction that cut off consideration of pursuing friendships before they even reach my consciousness. So I never really got together with the other foreigners that I had access to, and I thought it might be inappropriate to befriend my students. In the last few months I began to dare and almost immediately made lasting friendships with Mio, Yukihiro and Chris that made me incredibly sad to leave behind. We were just getting started when I left. And, to be honest, it was heartbreaking to see how easily my replacement teacher confidently stepped into building her social relationships immediately, and has now spent more time with Mio than I ever dared to wish for, out of some misguided sense of propriety. I’m glad for her, and grateful for her example, because she shows me what I could have ‘gotten away with’- which means I can do it next time! But this conditioning is my legacy, and my regrets have taught me what I needed to learn.

It took being alone in a country where I didn’t speak the language, in a culture notoriously foreign from my own and even on an island famous for its isolationism, half a world away from everyone who loved me (and those few enough), for me to finally feel the loneliness I carry for the first time in my life. It came to me softly, like the warmth of an old friend. Actually, it felt exactly like Ginger, the dog I roamed the hills with as a girl. I had no real friends growing up, my parents were busy running their own plant business, and I was completely isolated in the country, so I had my trees, my hills covered in weeds, my dog, and my imagination to keep me company from age 4 to whenever my sister was old enough to become my friend- which I pretended was the day she was born, but was probably more like when she was 3 or so. I would have been eleven then. That’s my entire childhood. Every moment not spent working hard labor around the property or interacting with my parents or being teased by kids was utterly alone. And my strength is such that it never felt painful. I made up stories and games, went on adventures and explored every path, played on my Tandy PC, built forts and read books and sang and played with wild animals and dreamed of what I would do when I could finally get away to where my real life awaited me. I wove a spell around myself so that I never had to feel lonely or bored or trapped, because what could I do about it? So instead I transformed it into a fierce independence, fueled on creativity and fantasy, my love of nature, and undying curiosity about every little thing I found. But of course I was lonely. Of course I was.

In Japan, I went into this ‘alone’ mode automatically without even noticing. I began a novel that brings me endless joy and creative satisfaction to work on. I finally figured out the secret to my food sensitivities and lost thirty pounds, and I can honestly say my issues with food are gone. I learned a lot of Japanese. I reignited my passion for singing and got into music school. I learned what it meant to practice something and what a genius body I have been gifted with. I watched tons and tons of anime and discovered my affinity for shounen ai. It was from a romance story of this genre that I first felt my loneliness. Shounen ai (boy’s love, or BL/Yaoi) features beautiful young men falling in love with each other, regardless of identity, social expectations, status, clan feuds… they are compelled to surrender to their feelings for each other that cannot be denied. Even if it means feeling pain, to acknowledge how important the other is to them. Even if it means the sweet agony of letting in the beauty of intimacy with another person when all you’ve known is loneliness. Even I noticed when I couldn’t stop watching these stories. They were trying to tell me something.

Ah. You may not know something. I haven’t been able to watch a romance comfortably since I broke up with my high school boyfriend, Richard. The loss of that true relationship, where I was never lonely, and the mockery of a marriage that followed it, where I was lonely every day but could never show it, made me incredibly bitter and despondent toward anything romantic. Love stories were either trite or torturous. So the fact that I would willingly keep watching love stories caught my attention. And when I couldn’t stop sobbing after one of them, I was shocked to hear myself say, “I’m lonely. I want to be with someone.” And suddenly, with a fire blooming in my chest, I FELT my loneliness. My distance from all human beings. The eight years of my marriage, and all of my youth except for those two years of happiness with Richard before things began to disintegrate… That was a hard night, as I warred with the honesty of this feeling that had always been with me, and losing the strange solace of it’s adapted form. All the work I have done on myself supported me to feel the truth, and it has freed me to love again. Given the amount of loneliness I was keeping behind that wall, I am impressed that it only took me three years to want to be with someone again.

So that was a big deal.

It seems fitting that I would need something as iconic as a year in freakin’ Japan to open my eyes to how I isolate myself in my own life. I still do, even tonight; I took myself out as if I were the only person in the world, instead of being with others. But part of that is because I need to build this new lifestyle up. It is part of why I decided I must go to music school, because when I was in college I easily surrounded myself with others, and it is why I came home, so that the loved ones I already have could be nearby to share my life. But there is still more to be done before my heart will open completely, before I am free to love again.

I remember the night when I gave up on ever being in love again. I was 20. I cut off my braid of the hair I had grown while I was with Richard. And I swear that is the night when I started gaining weight. 70 pounds, half again my body weight, gained consistently in a matter of months and then held there for eight years. This weight was how my body protected itself from a million different betrayals of all types from all directions; self-betrayal of my truth, betrayal by a brutish lover, betrayal of my dreams, so many more. I grew like this especially to keep these betrayals from reaching me, to keep my honesty hidden sufficiently so that I couldn’t notice my own revulsion and despair. And the body before I put up this barrier knows what true, egalitarian caresses are, from Richard and from my treatment of myself when I was with him. The body underneath is who I am, and I do not want to bring the body I wore as a shield to a new relationship. I am in the process of burning away the defenses I needed to survive, as fast as I can tolerate accepting they are no longer needed, and intuitively I know that if I don’t finish this journey with myself, I won’t be able to take in the goodness of a truly intimate connection because this is here. And that’s only a couple angles on what I’ve discovered about what this fat, skin sensitivity, limited freedom of movement and weakness means to me. It’s not exactly related to my sense of being lovable. I believe I am totally loveable, because I remember being loved and I know myself. But it is an old obstacle to block myself from allowing false love in, so I need to strip it down to find true love underneath so I can meet my lover without that between us.

So much has changed about how my body feels that I can tell it will be soon, the day when I am ready to touch someone’s hand, to kiss someone. I am really looking forward to the kissing. Kissing is my favorite thing in the world. And it has been half my life since I last kissed the way I was meant to kiss.

A note on the gay: It is very common for lesbians to be into the boy’s love genre, apparently. But regardless of my attraction to women, nothing makes me want to pounce like a long-haired, slim-waisted, lean-muscled, smooth-skinned man. A beautiful man, and a feminine man, but definitively different from a girly man- there is way too much masculinity in the air for that. These creatures are called bishounen, literally beautiful boy (used in the same way ‘boy’ is in BL to mean young man). I don’t know what about this equation does it for me, but seemingly all of Asia has figured it out and a surprising portion of western subgenres like high fantasy have, too (Tolkien elves, vampires). If I must apply some sort of western-style label to it, I would categorize the orientation as queer, and maybe even still lesbian, somehow… but there was no ignoring my attraction to these bishounen. If they have beautiful eyes, are a musician and/or a martial artist and/or scientist, and have /that/ voice… I literally go weak in the knees and my heart tries to throw itself out my chest. No woman has ever elicited this reaction. Some might say that I need to have actually bedded a woman before my body will know how to react, but I guess I’ll find out eventually. But I don’t think it was coincidence that the love stories that got me to feel my loneliness and open my heart were about men falling in love with men. I think I needed to see vulnerable, tender, passionate, attractive men loving each other to heal the misandry I had learned from my experiences while married. So I’m kind of shifting my American gay-culture label from ‘lesbian’ to ‘queer’, though after living in Japan, where just because you’re a man who loves men (or has happened to consistently thus far) does not mean you identify with a label or social movement, I feel much more grounded just bowing out of the whole mess. Part of me said “but I promised I wasn’t attracted to men! I can’t take it back!”, but the wiser part of me responded with, “would you rather fit in a box and live a lie or have exactly what you want and frustrate the narrow-minded?” and my choice was obvious. My tastes in lovers are very particular, as, I’ve come to believe, most people’s probably are. I think that when I came out as bisexual in college without the understanding that I was only interested in a very specific flavor of men or women, it was part of the tangled trap of my getting married. I couldn’t disqualify him on grounds of gender, and I couldn’t be honest about how I felt, so I thought I was stuck. Oh, I was so lost in pain back then. That’s probably why coming out as a lesbian empowered me to divorce him, because I could use something he couldn’t wheedle out of as a disqualifier. I was worried that I was doing this at the time, that I wasn’t really a lesbian and was only using it to make it easier to leave him… but who cares! That smells suspiciously like the kind of cognitive distortions we used to argue about. It’s my life, and I can choose to identify, or not, however I like; and the people I want to share my life with will get that. He didn’t. I’m attracted to who I’m attracted to, and it wasn’t him. If I needed the assistance of the American labeling system to give me the kick in the ass I needed to do what needed to be done, that’s fine by me. So this isn’t so much a PSA for changing how I identify as it’s to say that if you see me with a beautiful, long-haired swordsman on my arm, know that I have not sold out. Trust me. And if I am feeling really courageous, on the other arm will be my lady-loves. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be draped in gorgeous badasses? If I can make it happen, I am not turning it down for fear of social reprisal. By definition of me being attracted to them, they will be the kind of people that can pull a multi-lover relationship platonic-solid-of-choice off healthily. But, ug, do I not identify with the poly movement, either. Maybe that’s the influence of having lived in such a different culture. All of this American dependence on boxes for identity and subcultures to support it just feels /off/ now, in a pretty creepy way. and yet, it’s hard to date in a style that is not-mainstream because the heteronormative culture sets people up to expect a declaration of allegiance before they bother to open their hearts. I just want to fall in love with someone who has become a friend and see, if when I touch their hand in that new way, are they falling in love, too? I don’t want to have to shout, “I am a lesbian. Are you a lesbian? No? Well, then there is no hope for us. Bye.” I believe love is stronger that all of that. Here’s to me keeping my romanticism.

I’ll make a separate post on the Japan decompression.

Hey all! Upon returning to Boston I disappeared again… crazily interviewing and then starting my new job on Aug 16th as a full time ESL teacher at Kaplan at Northeastern Univ. I have been bouncing between Katherine and Jon’s houses (thank you guys, you saved me!) but only had internet access sporadically and I still don’t have a cell phone, tho I should be getting one tomorrow I hope. I’ll send out the number as soon as I know it. Today I signed a lease on a little apartment w/ housemates in Allston, actually a block away from where Katherine is moving into this week, too! I caught the flu on Friday so I was staggering around with a fever today trying to get the stuff together for my landlord, but now its done so I can rest and then move in starting on Tuesday (which will take 2 car loads!). Anyway, that’s the brief update! As soon as I have a phone it will be easier to get together with all you guys- I miss you!

This is actually posted on January 8, 2012 when I realized there was a month when I didn’t update at all. That’s because this was the month from hell. I ran out of money in Europe, to my infinite shame, barely got home and then was completely dependent on the charity of my friends for a month… and while I was able to find a job in only a few days, it is, even now, barely covering my expenses. I had to take out a $4000 personal loan to survive. And I was numb from reentry culture shock. My friends were all disgusted with me and I am still earning their trust back, and the relationship with my siblings was incredibly strained. I had to give up on music school (for now) because the financial aid proved impossible given my credit history. I spent two weeks in Nice, Paris and London and it might as well have been in a video game for all the impression it made on me. I was so afraid of starving that I was only able to allow the smallest amount of pleasure in.

But the learning was rich, some of the richest I have done. Turning 32, I realized how much I was trying to literally have a second adolescence, as if I could actually go back to the moment when I sent the break up letter to Richard and step forward into the new era before me with the wisdom I had gained in the 13 years since. As if I could be 19 years old again and not go through all the pain of giving up on love and my future. “If I could do it all again, I would throw myself toward my dreams, even if I didn’t believe in myself yet, because now I know what I can do so I know I will make it.” So I threw myself to China, then to Japan, then to Music School via Europe and now here I’ve landed on my ass in Boston expecting my friends to pick up the pieces as if they were the parents I should have had to support me when I was 19. There was a lot of success, much more than there was failure, for sure. But it all felt like running, falling, shoving, flailing, forcing, hiding, pretending. Not all, that’s not fair to the moments I was awake. But I didn’t realize until I came home to Boston how much my trip had been a teenage rebellion against the limited existence of my post-Richard life. That’s fine. Everyone needs a rebellious stage. But now it is time for me to be an adult.

The question is, how can I create the adult life worth living? A life that holds up to my ambitious expectations, overflowing with my reasons to live? And what is that subtle difference between this life and the rebellious one?

I have some of the answers already. It would include money; enough money that the days of anxious paycheck waiting are behind me, that my debts are decreasing steadily like the weight I burned off my body. I wouldn’t be lonely; friends and loves and family would surround me. And I would feel like I was walking, not running; dancing, not dodging; touching, not flailing; confident, not afraid. Like I said, the life I have in mind is an ambitious one.

But as I sit here today, 4 months after the date of this entry, contemplating moving back to Japan, I have to remember how it felt when I first came home, and I MUST make sure I am not running again.

How can I return to Japan as an adult?

I am probably going to gush like a fountain by Friday. I really have such warm feelings for so many of my students… I was so lucky to have a job where I spend most of the day grinning like an idiot, and even when things have gone to hell I’m still laughing my ass off! At least I know I love this job and maybe I can find a way to be a rock star and still work with Japanese youth. I know that really Japan is a country of humans like every other country of humans on this planet, but for me it is extra sparkly– the language is the language of love, the social conditioning contains some of my choice values, their sense of humor is just about perfect, their music is awesome, I am in awe of the character of its people… I am going to have to find ways to keep it in my life forever, because the idea that I might lose it is too hard.

But for tonight, I have to finish packing, somehow. Dora, the new teacher is coming over tomorrow morning (in 12 hours) to see the apartment!

Seriously, I suddenly had the thought that if that’s true, without realizing it I was limiting myself to “getting as good as I used to be” instead of considering surpassing myself! In getting in shape, too! Hmm… what would my motivation feel like if my goal was not a comparison to my ‘golden age’ but was creating a new and better golden age more awesome than I have yet experienced in my life?! Woah. *lets it soak in* That feels lusciously different!

Thanks, Mike!

The Experience

Mio picked me up at the train station and brought me to the race track at Mobara Twin Circuit. She told me the bad news that her husband’s car was dead- he had been practicing (for taking me out, aww!) and something gave way so it won’t run. But, she said, have no fear- she had another friend, Suzuki-sensei, who even spoke English, who would be giving me a ride. The first thing we saw was a motorcycle course with like 15+ elementary kids riding these chibi bikes (Pokebai, “pocketbikes” apparently), dressed in race uniforms and taking curves such that their knees grazed the ground… on the spot I vowed to be a parent cool enough to support my children if they ever want to do something this awesome!

Then we walked up to the car course and I heard, and then saw, my first drifting cars in person. In moments I was overcome with that feeling that allows me to identify something as ’sexy’, and said so to Mio, who laughed and said that in Japanese they never refer to men as sexy. Well, this was definitively sexy to me. I asked later how fast they were going with they cut into drifting around the curves, and because the track is not so big with only short straightaways, they are going ‘only’ about 100kph, or 70mph. Imagine driving along on the freeway, then immediately making a 130 degree turn! And drifting is not normal turning because (as best as I understand it right now) one of your axles stays still (relative to the direction of the road), used as a pivot for the other axle which slides sideways in an arc. You do this by some crazy balance between braking and accelerating simultaneously while of course steering into and out of the curve such to customize the direction you’re going. Then, as you get lined up in the new angle, you gun it to escape the turn. Since the tires are sliding sideways, more smoke means you are doing it right (the rubber is melted and torn off) and at a more impressive speed than a drift with less smoke. So there was also a sexy burned rubber smell to the place, too.

Watching the cars drift was thrilling, and I got a sense for the right approach angle and the timing for when they would initialize their drift, whether they would stay in it, what their exit would look like; I felt like I was beginning to understand the mechanics after only watching for a few minutes. Like when I watch martial arts or listen to adroit music solos, my body began to respond with little involuntary muscle actions synchronized with what I was watching. I couldn’t wait to get in a car and feel it from the inside! But I never wanted to stop watching, either. They started a race and they guy who was going to drive me was doing really well in it, but then had to leave the course because a ring came loose in his engine. I joked that I was bad luck, since the cars who were supposed to take me kept breaking, but he just needed to replace the pipe sleeve thing and then it was time for me to ride!

Mio had warned me to wear all-covering clothes, and they gave me a helmet and gloves. Then I got strapped in with over both shoulders hardcore straps, into a bucket seat that made me totally nostalgic. Then we headed to the track. I turned on the camera, but only glanced at it now and then when I decided I wanted to record his technique or the view. My body and mind were focused on absorbing as much as possible.

As soon as he accelerated my whole body relaxed and I had this, “I’m home” feeling. There is something about speed that just feels right to me. And when we approached the first curve where I felt he was ready to drift, I remember knowing the moment he was going to make his move and what it would feel like. As it happened, and as it aligned with my prediction, I had this incredible sense of rightness come over me, like this is what I am. I can do this. I have this inside me. Not in the limited sense of drifting or driving, but this experience of being on the edge of capability. Where my senses need to kick in, my body needs to be awake, my intuition and calculation and reaction time and muscle memory all need to be tapped, in harmony, to pull something off. But no processing, no planning, no concentrating. There was only the moment, taking in information, acting spontaneously. I think I was flitting along the outer boundary of ‘flow’, the concept of mushin (無心) that I have read about in martial arts. It felt… well, perfect. It was exciting and exhilarating and challenging and fascinating and beautiful and fun and so many other things, but really I spent the whole time alternating between the briefest of moments touching this feeling of rightness, and then basking in awe of what I was feeling, what my mind and body were doing. Because I was busy, even though I was not driving.

On our fourth lap I closed my eyes, loosened my grip on the handle and relaxed my muscles so I could shift freely with the car. It was like floating in the ocean. It felt like I could do that forever. I could feel when he was going to drift us. As I settled in, I thought I could feel the tires go in and out of gripping, and once I thought I could differentiate between the left and right back tires. In the first video, at 5:30, he asks if it is fun, if I am scared. The question seemed so odd to me- what is there to be scared of? I truly wasn’t at all scared, which I realize is telling. I mean, I don’t know this guy or his skills, but I suppose I trusted him to not crash. Most people would probably need to establish trust with their driver before letting them drive in a sport which could be defined as ‘try to half-crash yourself then get out of the crash’. But I don’t think I was bypassing this need for trust, I just think I could tell that he was a good driver really fast. The feel of his driving was similar to mine, I remembered thinking as we made the first turn. So I must have tested his trust nonverbally, I guess. and that kind of matches with my instant unease when I am being driven by someone whose style doesn’t match my own- I can tell almost immediately whether I will be comfortable with a friend’s driving- though I love to drive so much I am also a bit of a control freak about this, as my sister will tell you.

So when I tell him I’m not at all scared, he says, “Very strong girl!”, which made me glow with pride, I have to admit. I told him it made me want to learn, and I swear, 2 seconds later when we got to the main curve, he kicked it up a notch- we went faster, the drift was tighter and he held it longer- we got so close to the median that I wanted to leap and cheer- and then he sustained that attitude into the next curve! It felt like he was believing me and not holding back, and/or testing that I really wasn’t scared by really showing me how it was done. I was so grateful to him in that moment, that he could take me seriously. Suzuki-sensei became a mini-hero to me then! The last time we took that wide curve we followed another car in so I got to have the thrill of watching the distance close as we drifted in parallel! I think we kind of drove him onto the exit ramp! Then he made a point of doing drifts for the middle section which we hadn’t really done too much before and it was a really rhythmic feeling going from one side to the next. But after 11 minutes, his engine was too hot so we had to back, and he had already done three heats that day, so that was it. I am so glad I have the video!

When we got back to the lot we sat around and talked about drifting technique, drifting culture, how to modify a miata so I can do drifting when I buy my rainbow miata someday (it needs more engine power, but it looks like the MX-5 is the way to go), where the secret drifting spots are around Tokyo and LA(!), and randomly, dermatology, as Suzuki-sensei turns out to be a dermatologist (thus he has two meanings for his honorific- doctor and umai (skillful) driving!). Ha! I was telling stories about my country-girl antics and explaining poison oak and my sensitive skin with dermographia (I had a raised scratch so I was demonstrating by drawing things on my arms) when he brought out a tube of hydrocortisone as a gift! I haven’t been able to find any here, so it was a perfect gift! So random! We just talked about random stuff for a while and then the track was being closed so I got a ride back to the station. Mio asked about my novel so I got to explain some of it, too, and she complimented me. By the time I got on the train I was full to bursting with good feelings. What a day!

History and Processing

Mio was totally surprised by how into it I was, and the kinds of questions I was asking. She told me she never expected that I would love it so much and asked me why I did. The best way I could think to explain was by telling stories of my own intuition with cars, like being able to pull my Elantra out of its hydroplaning spin back in 2004, when, at the moment I felt the car lose traction I suddenly executed some complicated maneuvers of shifting, breaking and accelerating that it felt like I had trained and memorized for just such an occasion. I remember being perfectly calm even though my heart was racing with adrenaline, and that time slowed enough that I was actually able to ’spot’, like in ballet, where I needed to intercept each spin to get the car back in control. A transcendental experience, actually, and I’ve had a few others like that with different physical feats which has really left me feeling like me and my body have a destiny that I am really missing out on by living my (increasingly less) sedentary life. That, and tales of my Fiat and speeding tickets seemed to clarify some of why I was enjoying myself so much.

People who knew me at 19 when I owned my skyblue  ‘77 Fiat X1/9 mid-engine convertible (I named her ‘Cassolette’- why will be left as an exercise for the curious reader, but it is NOT a cooking reference) will not be surprised that I have always been interested in cars- especially cars going very fast and doing things that require precision handling at high speeds. My Fiat was more often breaking than purring, but it was usually an incredibly sexy machine. Favorite moments include speeding along coast hwy 1 taking those tight turns with only a slight turn of the wrist; and discovering on the long straight stretch of hwy 5, after turning down the blasting music, that my car was actually skipping across the pavement doing 125mph/200kph without breaking a sweat; doing tight curve driving in empty lots; randomly driving from Santa Cruz to the Golden Gate at 3am… I loved that car, and I loved that my reaction time and body’s intuition with the machine allowed me to do these things which were… not without risk. I wanted to try more extreme things, but at the time, I was still terrified of authority  and ‘getting in trouble’ (still working on this one) and of course I had no one to teach me what to do, and without guidance, I had no one to help me evaluate how I could explore the edges of these skills without creating a dangerous situation for others on the road (not to mention myself). I was also in a period of my development where any perceived criticism of my character was absolutely devastating, so I tried to be perfectly good, with morally unquestionable (whatever that means) behavior, and I had it in my head that anyone who was not always acting in accordance with normal, mainstream, conservative, black-and-white paladin values was lacking moral fiber. I don’t need to tell you that this created immense internal conflict with my need to act with integrity and be myself- I mean, I knew that I wasn’t a bad person (in fact I knew I should be counted among the good people) AND I knew that I was about as alternative, sub-culture-identified, liberal  and light-grey-ethics as they get, even if I was as in the closet as I could stand about these things. My alternative aspects often burst out from hiding screaming to be seen and acknowledged, because I couldn’t deny them forever, but in general I was in denial about just how alternative I was and, more shockingly, just how okay with that I was! I only really figured this out of couple years ago, but when I was in college the pressure to conform won out, climaxing with my decision to marry another person trapped in this same inner conflict, walking that fence as best as we could manage together- neither of us admitting to each other or ourselves how little we actually liked the lawful good paladin lifestyle and would have been much more in our element as chaotic good/neutral rogues. It seemed like we had entered into an unconsious agreement to maintain this paladin status quo, because whenever either of us strayed too far toward free-spirited-greyness, the other would intervene with arguments and criticism until they rescinded their position and the boat stopped rocking (but we were miserable again in our facade). I was as guilty of this treatment as he was- which shows me that my own freedom and personal empowerment must have scared the hell out of me. It still does, actually, as in layers I discover what I really want out of life and just how far I’ll end up from what I was conditioned to believe about the ideal life if I follow through with my bliss. Which brings us back to drifting, because holy crap will I be blissful if I did stuff like that all day! It annoys me that all of this history and psychology is wrapped up in something as simple as “I like fast, dangerous, crazy badass stuff… surprise! Or not…”, but since everyone is a product of their conditioning to varying degrees, I suppose everyone might have a process like this if their world is blown open by pure awesome.

When I was explaining my enjoyment to Mio, I also told stories about how I inherited my love of dangerous science from my father, who was constantly chasing wildfires and lightning storms, blowing up things in our backyard, shocking people with static electricity, speeding down desert highways, showing off marksmanship, building strange contraptions and devices, picking up poisonous animals, finding nebulae with his telescope, and generally being a mad scientist with whatever he could get his hands on. He also greatly admired people who could do amazing things with their bodies, like gymnasts, martial artists, pilots, etc. I wish he had been able to fully embrace those aspects of himself because I think he would have been much happier as some sort of daredevil scientist artist inventor badass then an entrepreneurial farmer and corporate programmer; but him sharing his crazy science makes up the majority of my nostalgia with him. In my quest to free myself from mundane mediocrity, it is reassuring that I have a unique legacy like that to build on, and perhaps I can take my life farther toward those things than my father was able to do.

And finally, I began to understand something about my relationship to speed. Like, why are all the physical actions that impress me about speed and not strength, or dexterity and not endurance? When I first saw Donnie Yen and how fast he could move, I was hooked. When he delivers a brutal slam or kick or punch I am filled with glee in a way that is totally not there when Arnold or even Bruce Willis make something connect with force. Donnie Yen’s kick is the climax of a series of fluid, precise movements that build in momentum such that when he connects it has great force. But Bruce Willis just stands there and then knocks someone out with the brute strength of his punch. It is not the same at all to me. Even Tony Jaa, who is the most brutal martial artist I enjoy, doesn’t use pure strength- he uses gravity. Maybe it is because they are consciously using scientific principles that have been woven into their arts that I am moved- this blend of mind, art and body in all sorts of fields connects with something inside me in a way I can’t ignore and shouldn’t pretend isn’t what I am meant to be doing. I mean, I think the thing I miss most about weighing what I did before gaining the weight in 2000 was the fact I could move fast and that my core strength and reaction time allowed me to catch myself if I fell, so it felt safe to climb high, jump far, run down hills, dive, flip, roll, hang… verb verb verb. Being overweight and lacking core strength means that even when I have the motivation to add these verbs back into my life, my body cannot dependably handle them going wrong, so I’m afraid of getting injured. But embracing how much I love to move fast is a concrete motivation for getting in shape: “I want to be faster” pushes boundaries in a way that “I want to be stronger” or “I want to be thinner” doesn’t for me.

So not only was this experience amazing fun, but it obviously catalyzed a lot of deep thoughts about how I am living my life, who I really am and the incredible amount of potential my life has to be even more awesome that I have dared to dream! Somehow ‘breaking into the drifting world’ has given me permission to seek out other activities that I have always assumed were just for the people who got initiated into them in an early age or because they are part of a demographic I don’t match; but no one treated me like that at Mobara, so now I feel like I have a right to be awesome! take that!

In other news, I will most likely end up at the Musician’s Institute in LA for music school. I’ll be sending in my app next week and they’ll get back to me by July 8th so I can make arrangements. Easy financial aid, back to California where I have come to believe might be the only place in the world with the weather and ocean I need. Plus this program includes private lessons which was almost a deal breaker at BIMM for me. My only concerns are the cost of living (but I’ll be able to work full time since I won’t be on a student visa), LA being gross (but the school is in West Hollywood aka rich gayland and maybe I can swing living in Venice Beach or Santa Monica) and being on the wrong continent for the metal genre I want to join, but I’m sure it will be good enough.

And here is a painting of my rainbow fire aura to remind me of it.

Rainbow Flames, the aura of the fighter.

I am incredibly angry and disappointed, ESPECIALLY because I did a ton of research on which schools would accept the aid AND I confirmed it via phone and email on various occasions starting before I even applied. Of course, because I am Sequoia I will do something neat with my life regardless, but I can’t even tell you how much I wanted to go… how hard I worked to go.

Part of me has always had trouble believing I would be able to do this, and that part was coming up with alternate plans half-way through reading the letter. It’s nice that I have such a creative and forward-moving coping strategy, but I also need to mourn this particular dream if it’s really not going to happen. But I am going to wait for that until I know for sure from all parties involved.

Interestingly, I woke up today after having an unsettling dream and I was out of sorts all day today, and then I get this news right after journaling about how I need to really let in that I am going to be in music school in four months. Itai.

Favorite moment: An elderly student of Chris’ saying “kono bishoujo” gesturing to me by mistake, then seeing it was me and saying “chi gau!” Everyone laughed and said “chi gau ja nai!” and I couldn’t stop laughing for ages!

Translation- he referred to me as a beautiful woman when he was talking about someone who had been standing there a moment before, and when he saw it was a different person he said “wrong/different!”… which was easy to interpret as if he just discovered that I wasn’t beautiful after all! Then everyone stuck up for me saying it wasn’t wrong to say I was beautiful. Hilarity.

This guy also asked me to sing the Star Spangled Banner for him and was like really moved when i did. he was quite an interesting experience.
:)

I’m sad that Yukihiro (one of the managers at my school) is leaving as he’s my only real Japanese friend and tons of fun, but he’s moving up in the world so I wish him the best. Chris has been gone for many weeks and Tuesdays just aren’t the same, but since I will be leaving soon anyway, it almost makes it easier since it can’t be helped that they’re gone; sho ga nai. BUT! We promised to out to karaoke together before I leave so I mustn’t get shy and miss that opportunity!

With only 8 weekends left here, and needing to focus on arrangements for my transition to music school, I am only able to leave because I’m telling myself I’ll be back someday. I’ve spent most of this year working on projects that are mostly introverted (body and novel) and so I didn’t focus on learning the language or making friends or experiencing everything about Japan I came here to experience, but I can’t say I truly feel regret. I think my focus was just what it needed to be. I certainly know worlds more Japanese than when I arrived even with virtually no studying, so as long as I make sure to keep learning and practicing I’ll have no regrets there. I do wish I had saved more money, while at the same time, I wish I had bought more stuff that I am just going to have to import when I want it later. I have never felt so much kinship for items. And I wish I had increased my ability to find cool things in an urban setting more, but I bet having friends in the UK will help me out in that respect and the next time I’m here, I will be able to tackle Tokyo thoroughly. I know I am going to miss having so much time to do nothing but write my novel, even though that time will now be spent making music. The more I write the more I realize that it is as much a calling as singing, and I am watching myself get better and it is thrilling. It’s times like this that I honestly believe that I am one of those people who wouldn’t get bored if I were immortal.

Oh, and I’ve lost the 7 pounds I regained since hitting 180, so I’m back at 180 again and heading down. I went out and did purikura tonight and I’ll upload those once I trim the photos of the photos. A scanner would be nice, or an electronic file of the pics, but if that’s possible I have yet to figure out how. But I look and feel great. Hedonism works.

It has been so long since I have posted I don’t know where to start. I have been writing in notebooks like crazy since my computer died and it’s been totally nostalgic of junior high when I filled 16 notebooks with Darkwing Duck fanfic. My novel is going really well and I am learning a ton about myself in the process; my fear of anger and violence that is making all my characters sound like goodie two shoes, the true extent of my obsession with hair, my love of explaining things well, and a ton about my experience of romance, sexuality and beauty. In order to get to know my main characters, I am writing almost a full prequel about how they met- 19 years before the main story starts, and it is fascinating. I seem to have unearthed my particular style of falling in love and I think it’s awesome, and in perfect time for dating when I get to Brighton. But realizing everyone would not relate to falling in love this way is making the romances I’m writing extra fun to play with. technique-wise, I am simultaneously challenged by being able to express myself with precision and in expanding beyond my own truths to build variety into my story. I love this work.

And it is really the first thing in my life that I have truly practiced. I never used to write drafts or even revise, really. I was so sensitive to my own criticism that I would create something that given my innate talents was reasonably good compared to average, and then I would leave it alone and pretend I didn’t care if I could have made it better given more work (and self-honesty). If the thing I created didn’t even meet those standards, it got thrown away. But never have I just written to try and get whatever morsel I was aiming to express down on the page the best I could. Most of what I write reads like mediocre fanfic, and for the first time in my life I’m fine with that, because every now and then a phrase or image or line is so close to that spark of inspiration flitting behind my mind that I feel blessed with even the amount of talent I have- and for the first time I am not wishing I was a prodigy… I am looking forward to the crafting of this extension of myself. I think this shift is going to make all the difference in my creative endeavors, and whether I can make it as a professional musician. But even just in the moment, it gives me untold pleasure.

On the food and weight front I’ve been having a similar journey. I gained back about 7 pounds since hitting 180. I was definitely shaken up by my success and, actually, how easy it was. All I had to do was do things that felt great and then I would feel even greater and then it snowballed into super great time. But when I hit 180 and my body really began to feel so much like how it used to when I was fit… I guess I wasn’t quite ready and I back pedaled. Completely stopped being active and started eating crap again… it was bizarre. Then I tried to bully myself into doing my program again, telling myself that if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t be where I wanted when school started. It was ingeniously framed as motivational and empowering, but really it was just fear and future-tripping… black and white. I had forgotten about the joy I was feeling every day, in the present, at living an active and healthy life and feeling pretty every day. Well, thank the goddess, I finally remembered and have found my style again, and again it is easy. I bet that the next time it gets hard again, it will be because my old conditioning has slowly morphed my pleasure-oriented motivations into fear-and-shame-oriented self-bullying again. I am going to keep a look out for that, because it just doesn’t work, and it’s stressful as all hell. So the weight I regained is mostly gone and I’m on my way back down again, but that was a rough six weeks. Actually, writing about my philosophy through designing a culture in my novel has really helped me. As if a fictional group of people I designed somehow externally validate how I want to live my own life. Go figure. Maybe that’s what makes me a sci-fi/fantasy type person. Fiction is like distilled reality for me. Those of you who understand this will understand. And with that tautology, I end for now.