I saw another rainbow today. This time from my very late bus home.
Life prevails.
I haven’t been getting enough sleep. During my commute I get so tired that my eyes blur while I sit on the bus. In & out & in & out of wakefulness, but not enough to feel rested. My body & my life feels like a machine that is falling into disrepair; a car that you’re stuck with because all you can afford are repairs, never enough money for another car. And it just keeps going. I’m tired.
My life feels like a sunk cost fallacy.
Today was better. The kids were so happy to see me. Stupid, but I’ve felt so insecure, so much like an outsider, like an unsightly attachment, a tumor or the ugly conjoined twin. I’ve felt too big & simultaneously that I am not big enough. Mostly though, I’ve been preoccupied with the thought that everyone hates me, even the children. Today they were so happy to see me though. They hugged me, they asked where I was last Thursday, they asked if I was going on the field trip; when I popped over to one of the other classrooms, they smiled & pointed & said It’s Miss Vashti! It’s Miss Vashti! It felt like today mattered, like what I was doing mattered, that I am capable of being missed.
I just want what I’m doing to matter.
I don’t feel as scared anymore. I feel a sense of honesty.
Look: I tried to write to you twice earlier and gave up. Normally my writing to you is one of my more conscious and deliberate literary efforts, but I can’t do that this time. I am full of self doubt and inarticulable feelings, so I am going to send you a wall of text, perhaps with a few paragraph breaks. It’s more authentic this way. You asked how I was feeling on the phone & that is when I chose to end the call. Forgive me. I felt us approaching things that I did not want to say out loud. I am going to say something really clumsy to you, and I don’t want it to hurt your feelings, but I think it’s necessary to say, okay? ... I don’t know how I want you to respond to that or how I expect you to respond to that, but it is something that I have apparently been thinking. I also don’t like saying that I’m suicidal. I think about killing myself all the time, but I have no intentions to do so. So don’t worry about that. A week or two ago, I don’t know how long because of my lack of writing and my dissolving sense of time, I sobbed myself to sleep, violently, for two or three nights in a row. I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely just wanted to die. I have this way of thinking that I don’t know how to describe, where even if I am not feeling any suicidal intent in the moment, I feel afraid that I will lose control, will become impulsive, and will kill myself. I’ve never tried to kill myself. This is not a way of thinking that makes sense. But it’s my way of thinking. It’s… very consistent. I have this bad habit of saying “if I am still alive” by a certain date, no matter how soon or how distant. I am always afraid that I will do the wrong impulsive thing & do something very regrettable. Anyways, one of those nights, my last night of crying myself to sleep, I decided very simply that I will just drop out of school before I kill myself. A lot of my anxieties have centered around the fact that I have been treating my nonexistent future suicide as an inevitability. I don’t even know if that makes sense, if what I’m saying makes sense. That first week of student teaching, I just had this very clear & distinct thought that I am going to want to kill myself. I’m not going to try to explain this to you, because I don’t know how to. I think to myself several times a day I want to hang myself. I’m not going to hang myself, but at a certain point, it gets very tiring, in the same way I think about wrecking my car every time I go driving. I have been feeling very anxious for a prolonged period of time. It is very physical. I can’t escape it. If I think about the future, a week ahead, even a day ahead, I feel sick. If I think further than that, months or a year, I cry, automatically. The present moment isn’t a refuge either; I feel sick & tense & I’ve lost so much weight. I didn’t realize how much weight I’d lost till after I talked to you I went home & changed my clothes & my pair of pants fell to my ankles; they couldn’t even cling to my stomach or my hips or my ass. Before it was just a number, but now I feel like a scarecrow. My mom gave me something for the dark circles under my eyes when I went to visit. I didn’t ask her to give me anything. All I’ve been eating are sweets which simultaneously are the only things that give me any sort of pleasure but make me feel disgusting. My teeth feel disgusting. My stomach feels disgusting. I’m not even crying anymore. I don’t know how to tell you how I feel. I feel so empty of anything & everything. I feel hopeless. I feel like any future I have I will ruin for myself. I dislike myself. Everything feels meaningless. When I manage to stave off the feeling of meaninglessness, it doesn’t feel meaningful; it feels like a distraction. The harder I work, the further away everything is. I want to throw up. I feel almost no sense of self. And I feel like a disappointment. The more I work towards school the further away I feel from myself. All of these things that I thought I was happily immune to, commutes and deadlines and these external pressures, I’m not. My life is bland, empty, and it is nothing special. Nothing about it feels distinctly mine. I get on that bus in the morning before the sun has risen and look at these tired people and feel separate from them, and bad for them, but I’m not separate from them. There’s nothing special here, nothing that is mine. I don’t know whose life I am living. All of this & I haven’t come close to telling you how I really feel.
I saw a rainbow today & cried. I could’ve fallen to my knees. With a sudden clarity, I couldn’t believe that I wanted to kill myself. Everything’s alright. Everything will be alright. I’m going to make it. I just thought to myself again & again, Life is so bad, but I am so happy to be here.
I am back to writing again, je te jure. I used to feel a little knot of jealousy somewhere between my stomach & my throat whenever I’d read or hear someone saying that they’ve been too busy to write, sorry. “Oh, to be someone busy with a life,” I would think to myself. For the first time I’ve understood that we have two lives: Our outer lives & our inner lives. When I write & write & write about my small & mundane world, that is a life, it’s my life, my inner life. We have no choice but to live, something in us makes sure of that. The mind will compensate for any stillness in our outer world.
Lately, I have been overcome by my outer life. The only times that this has happened before has been during my travels, when I have been too busy being happy to write; An overwhelm of the outer life. Its opposite is to be too depressed to write; An overwhelm of the inner life. I’ve found myself with increasing & increasing speed waiting at the bus stop between between the two: My outer life being so full of deadlines & commutes (unhappy travels), obligations, where the only writing I can manage is a calendar & a to do list & the weight of my inner life in response, an intense depression & the worst anxiety that I have felt in a long time. Since my stupid fucking life has consisted of sad adult numbers & dates, I will phrase this in numbers: I have been so thoroughly full of my own misery & anxiety that I have lost my appetite & ten pounds. More numbers: I wake up at 5:15 in the morning & get home at 5:45 in the evening. More numbers: We’ve had the hottest days of the year this past week, melted together, 100+ degrees every day, 105, 108. More numbers: The bus is late & I wait for ten, twenty minutes in the heat. More numbers: My commute is an hour and a half one way. More numbers: I am taking six classes.
My last set of numbers: My room has been messy for at least a week, maybe two. Today I sat on my floor & did my laundry. I rewatched Little Miss Sunshine (2006). I felt (a semblance of being) alright for the first time in a while. I wish I could explain it. It’s already so far away from me.
I can’t sleep at night & think about killing myself a lot, but I already decided that I’ll drop out of school before I kill myself. It’s only one more year until I have my degree, but somehow, the more I work toward my dreams the farther away they seem. It’s like I’m sinking into them.
Oh God, please let the days of sleeping on the bus add up to something. And the stomach pains. The empty feeling. The noise from headphones. The sore neck.
I am not in a place where I can write. It is hard to write from a hole in the ground. I watched this movie this month, Fantastic Mr. Fox, & I didn’t particularly like it, but the protagonist says: “I don't want to live in a hole anymore.” & I keep saying to myself: “I don’t want to live in a hole anymore.” No relation.
Coins can grow mold. I had forgotten that fact. I read that one yen coins can float on water, which seemed to me the perfect wish-receptacle, like a limitless wishing well, (so a “prayer-well”). I filled a teacup with water & set it on my bedside table. Some of the coins were able to float & some sank to the bottom of the cup. The ones that could float formed two concentric circles that resembled a flower. Every night before bed & every morning that I woke up, I admired my teacup of floating coins. (Bouquet). Then after some days, they began to grow mold, and so I emptied the prayer-well and the coins are still sitting on my bedside table. They’re clean, but I don’t know what to do with them now.
I have this red candle that I pray with and it has melted in an odd way. The red looks like flesh to me, but when light shines on it, it looks like an angel’s wings. It’s grotesque & beautiful at the same time. That’s life.
The AC in my bedroom is cold, but it still feels like August. I’m listening to one of my favorite albums on a small speaker. (Okurimono by Hyakkei).
I read some of my old diary entries today. I sounded so different; I was so different. Identity isn’t what we think it is. We can just be different. There’s nothing to uphold. All I have to do is be different. I can just be what I want. Isn’t that frightening-freeing-exhilarating? Our fixation on identity kills our identity. Our fixation on the self kills the self. If we go looking too closely for our selves, we find that no one is home. Our self is out living.
Normal day, maybe even good. Slept in again. I went grocery shopping & stole a donut. It was 88 cents, so there was no reason to steal it. I carried my new notebook around, the one I’ve put off writing in for no reason. I wrote a grocery list in it, so I’m free now.
I hurt my back again. To say I “hurt my back again,” implies some sort of new injury, but it hurts in the same place I hurt myself in October. I was cleaning my closet. I didn’t lift anything heavy, just clothes. And then it hurt terribly. The doctor told me some time ago that I am not to take any Acetaminophenprofen because I was vomiting up blood from a stomach ulcer, and I have dutifully listened to the doctor, something I don’t normally do, because throwing up blood is something I never want to do again. Even when I hurt myself in October that first time, pain for weeks, when I could not lift my arm, I didn’t take it. Today I took some. It did not help.
After it did not help, I laid in my bed, flat on my back, and I began crying. I can’t even tell you what I was crying about. I was in pain, but I was not crying out of pain. The pain isn’t new. It’s monotonous. (And “pain” isn’t exactly right. I’m in pain, but it’s more than that. It feels like something in me isn’t put together right. It feels like when you force a doll’s joint too far, only in my human-woman body. It’s moving, breathing, with discomfort & the feeling that something is going to snap if I do something wrong, and I don’t know what’s right & what’s wrong to do. It has a bad sensation of inevitability that I carry around. Dread.) It was too uncomfortable to curl in on myself in animal fashion, so I cried, on my back, looking at the ceiling fan. My tears fell into my ears. I would press my eyes shut & when I would open them again, more tears would fall. It sounded like a bathtub or a conch shell. I fell asleep.
I woke up & I drove. Life doesn’t stop when we’re in pain, even though it should. I had to pick up a prescription that isn’t mine. Surely someone else should’ve done it, because it hurts to use my arm, but I had to go. I stopped for boba at this place by our old apartment, from when we were happier, or from when we were miserable in a more definite & specific way. Cookies & cream boba. Miniature tea sets & sock monkeys. It was nostalgic. It was good. I thought that I would be in too much pain to cook for myself, and because there is no one who would cook for me, in pain or in sickness, I stopped for ramen again. On the drive it began to rain. It was strangely absent of any anxiety. The sky was beautiful on the way back, because of the rain, maybe, but it had stopped by then. The sky was lavender.
Upon arriving home, I poured my ramen into plastic tupperware & when my sister asked me why, I told her it was because I wanted to eat it at the park, watching the sunset. She laughed. The sunset really was captivating. It was hard not to look at the sky the entire time I drove home. The reason I didn’t eat at the park was because I thought it would hurt too badly to make the walk, even if it’s only a few minutes.
I will sleep flat on my back tonight & I will wake up again tomorrow.
We can so easily forget what is important to us. I have this tray of jewelry in my room & yesterday I found a necklace I bought in Japan in plain sight. This pretty little bow necklace. Whenever I see it, it always seems to me that it can grant wishes. I don’t know why, but it is a wish granting necklace. A few weeks of not wearing it & I’d forgotten about it. It makes me a little embarrassed to forget important things, but there is also a unique joy in finding them again, in saying that “I used to love this song!”
I’ve been sleeping a lot this past week, but not in a guilty way. I wake up in the morning & decide that I’d like to sleep some more, and so I do. I’ve been falling asleep flat on my back, & doing stretches. It doesn't hurt as badly anymore. Now it hurts like your feet after walking for a long time; nothing to cry about.
The school that I will be student teaching at is going to be an hour from my house, in one of the biggest cities in the country. I’m afraid that I’m going to die in a car accident.
It’s really strange, because a month from now I won’t be afraid at all. It’ll just be a part of my everyday life.
I have a love
I have a love for this world
A kind of love that will break my heart
A kind of love that reconstructs and remodels the past
That adds a dryness to the dry August grass
That adds the sunshine to the magnifying glass
And makes me fight for something that just can't last
(Into Eternity, Jens Lekman)
Today was unpleasant, but it was good. I am happy content. I am self-assured. In this moment, I know myself.
A lot of my life seems to be test scores now, and time spent at school, and hours spent on schoolwork: numbers which seem not even too mundane, but too paperwork-y, too clerical, too dismal to bother recording. It’s not a comfortable way to live, feeling that your life isn’t worth words or photographs or a prayer before bed. This feeling is new. I don’t know how to hold it yet.
Lately my inner self feels stillborn.
...
I promise to try this month. Something has felt deeply encouraging about the inevitability of August, like I’ve been waiting for something.
I haven’t been writing, but no shame about it, though I do hate it. Mundane reasons: I’ve wanted to kill myself all month; I’ve been overly busy with coursework; Long commutes; I’ve been getting over a spiritual cold.
I’m not ready to write the way I normally do yet, but some important things have happened:
Yesterday I took a nap & had a dream about cleaning a wall. I was on my knees in a bathroom scrubbing a wall with a washcloth. The wall had a sort of discoloration to it, and I didn’t want to scrub the wall, but I had to. I felt the wall rub against my knuckles through the wet washcloth. I started to enjoy myself, almost. I had a sense of pride in doing something with my hands, something necessary. In my dream, the wall became cleaner and cleaner in frames. Snapshots of a lighter & lighter wall were in my dream, my hand out of the frame. I woke up feeling like I knew what to do.
Today at the used bookstore, I found a paper crane. I said to a friend earlier this month that I need to start doing things, doing things with my hands, how I’ve never been able to fold a decent paper crane, how I’ve always wanted to make a senbazuru. I’ve really been thinking about it, my most mundane and timid fantasy: To become good enough at folding paper cranes that there comes a sort of automacity to it, but without giving up the mindfulness of it. I don’t know how to describe it to you, the fact that I have all of these sheets of origami paper and no origami cranes. Another part of it then is that I want to do what I say I am going to do, and I want to try something & be good at it. That’s not why the crane meant something to me though, not really. It’s because there were actually paper cranes all over the store. Once I saw one, I was able to see the rest. They were hidden in plain view. It only took noticing one to notice them everywhere. I took one with me. A purple one. It has its head held high. I’ve been asking myself whether I need to become more prideful or more humble, but now I know what to do: I need to be like the purple paper crane.
I took a shower this evening and then went on a walk right after, something I wasn’t planning to do. I just did. And I saw a deer. A deer in the neighborhood. I’ve never seen a deer in the neighborhood. I wish I could write how it felt. That’s part of the non-writing; I struggle to record spiritual thoughts & feelings, because they are a relatively new part of my life, and they are intensely personal. On the train to school this month, nearly every day pressing tears from my eyes, I would pray for deer. And before when I would take the train, I would really see deer each ride. This month though, they were absent. It was nothing short of desolation of the heart. It was hard to continue. Tonight though, I saw a deer. I’ve lived here for years & have never seen one. It was worth it. I was so happy. It was a sign from God.
I told my friend a few days ago while I was cooking a dinner that ended up being so good that it made me weep that I thought life was worth living again. She asked me to explain, but I don’t know how yet. I know it’s true, but I don’t know why.
Overly talkative, weepy, destitution of the spirit, bluntnumbness of thoughts that prevents any decent introspection, tears, tears, tears, mild sleep deprivation every night for many nights: This is the best I’ve been, felt, this month, though it isn’t good at all. When I lay in bed, I have the acute realization that I will die one day. I always know this of course, but there’s a difference between knowing & really knowing. It’s like seeing a picture of the ocean, or a kid’s drawing of it, and seeing the real ocean, its immensity. How terrifying it is. Unknowable, and more unknowable the more you approach it. Like looking through binoculars the wrong way, like Ivan Ilyich facing the wrong way on the train. Wrong way, but I don’t know what to do... Confusing, truthful business & I become more & more scared & confused.
Dawn breaks like a bone through skin every morning. I have a routine where riding on the train to school, I press my palms to my eyes as if I am trying to stop a wound.
Spoke to a friend about my belief that my stuffed frog has a soul. She asked if my other stuffed animals have souls & no, of course they don’t. I think my frog has a soul ‘cause I gave him a soul… I was looking at old photos, and I saw some where my frog was still new, still had that dewy softness. It was a couple of years ago. Now his short fur is a bit more clumpy now, a bit matted; it would be a struggle to comb him… but he fits so naturally now in the crook of my arm, where you draw blood, as if he’s in a chokehold. And I bring him to school with me. He sits on the train with me. If I leave him at home, I tuck him into my bed in the morning. I love this stuffed frog. And that was a choice. And I think he has a bit of a soul now, a bit of mine maybe, like radiation sickness.
This radiation sickness, I think it’s a small light. I’m realizing that it is more up to me than I had thought to give things meaning, and that the longer I go on, the more meaning there is to be found. Even in this abject sadness, it’s as though everything is sick & infected with meaning. It’s hard for me to tell myself that none of this matters, even if it feels like it doesn’t matter. I wish I were dead, but at the same time, I get scared to drive because I think I’ll get in a car accident. Things aren’t as simple as they seem.
Yesterday evening, I was driving & singing, & I started crying. I’ve never cried while singing before. It was “Postcards to Italy” by Beirut: “The shattered soul / Following close but nearly twice as slow.” At that point my voice started to waver & get pulled thin by emotion, and hearing my own voice was awful. It was pathetic sounding. Small. All I could do was try not to cry so I could drive. My crying & my sadness has had more practical constraints lately: Don’t cry in front of your classmates. Stop those tears on the train. Blink away your tears like windshield wipers & look at the road.
To make sense of my own sadness, I find myself trying to describe it to someone in my head, one of my loneliest habits: Walking through water. Like having stones tied to you in water. Like tying stones to yourself in water. Waterlogged corpse. Lack of a candle’s flame.
I am so sad.
Hey God, can You please open up your second mouth again? Or even the first one? I miss listening to You. There are cicadas, but their noise isn’t reaching me, even when they howl dying on the sidewalk. My desk creaks when I lean on it to type. At night the ceiling fan is so loud that I think it will collapse on me, but it’s not scary during the day. My sister complained about the noise from my room at night; I think she can hear me crying through the wall.
I have this hole underneath the right half of my ribcage where my sense of self is leaking out. I don’t have dreams anymore. I have aspirations, maybe, but I don’t think I genuinely believe in any sort of life for myself. Most of my aspirations involve things ending, me leaving. I don’t look forward to anything. I just don’t. I try to make things better, but I don’t really care. The feelings aren’t there. I don’t know what feelings I’m supposed to have. I have this general sense of desolation. Sometimes I think things can get better, but no matter what, I cannot convince myself that this life that I have right now is worth anything. I don’t enjoy anything. Sometimes I can distract myself. I read books sometimes. Sometimes they make me cry. Sometimes they hold my attention. They’re all from a list though, like everything else. A list of things that I want to do, or read, but I don’t actually feel like I want to do them. There’s no emotional component. It was a decision that I made. I just make decisions lately. And choose things. I don’t really know how to choose things. Everything is becoming increasingly arbitrary. There are lots of things that I want to be, but they all amount to me feeling happy. Not even happy, fulfilled. I want to feel a sense of fulfillment. I feel empty. Everyone told me the dinner I made tasted so good, but it didn’t taste like anything to me. I just followed directions on a page. All I do is follow directions. Every day I go to school, I stop at a grocery store and get a coffee & some sort of pastry or snack. I don’t even think I enjoy it. I just used to enjoy it. I used to draw pictures and take pictures and I had this diary that I would paste movie tickets, receipts in; I would get dressed every day even if I was just going on a walk around the neighborhood; I loved putting keychains on my bag & I would go to the library; I would go to movies; I loved to drink boba or sit in coffee shops; When I went on walks I would take photos of the sky. My whole phone used to be just a glorified camera. I don’t do any of that anymore. When I do, it’s a contrivance, an effort to go back to who I used to be. I wish I could say that I would rather be here. I don’t know if I was happier then, if I can say that, but I can say with truth that as bad as I felt, I tried to get out. I thought a better future was possible. And instead I am here, now.
In the bath, I remembered that one time I drew a tiger wearing red sneakers, & I photocopied it & pasted it all around the neighborhood. I don’t do things like that anymore. I’ve become much more adult & I mean that as denigration… I’m tired all the time, and weepy, but not the way a kid cries. It’s not as a reaction to anything, not a tantrum; it’s just being. In some ways I am still childish: I’m forgetting how to write & I won’t clean my room.
Some people from school told me that I should try to relax; another told me to get some sleep. Maybe I should listen to them.
Two specific sadnesses from this weekend:
I got in an argument with my sister this week & told her that when I cooked for her, I’d do it while I was upset so the food would taste worse. She laughed & said it only tasted worse to me, because I was in a bad mood. This revelation has brought me a newfound sadness; that my food is right & that it is just me that is wrong.
I went out to get green onions from the garden to find that one of them was blossoming. I didn’t know they did that. Carrothope. It felt revelatory. (I am realizing that I’ve used the term “revelation” twice, for two opposite feelings). I could barely bear to cut the other ones that are not blooming, because how am I ever to eat a green onion again now that I know they grow flowers? How are we so unhappy while green onions grow flowers?
I didn’t do anything today. Schoolwork. That’s it. Something feels like it’s dissolving, and like it’s lacking borders. Things don’t feel like the right size. I have found myself past the point of crying. I am just a dog chasing its tail, just a dog chasing its tail, just a dog chasing its tail.
I can’t do this. Something has to change. I have to change... I say it all with such conviction and such authority, but I am just confused. Just a dog chasing its tail.
Woke up to a thunderstorm. Slow drive to the train station. Something wrong with the car: When I touched the volume or AC, it would skip my song. I found it novel and was not bothered by it. Navy blue velvet dress, purple pants, navy blue socks, mary janes. Blue period. Empty & quiet train. We read. I read a book. Everyone else read a book. My stuffed frog became uncomfortably damp from the rain, but I still held him. I drank canned coffee in class. Teacher looked at my test scores & asked me what happened. Admitted to sobbing in the middle of the test. Anxiety attack on the way home. Asked if I was going to have a heart attack. Stupid, I know.
Lacking automacity in writing. In living. My days are hard. In class without thinking, I said one day at a time is the only way that I can crawl between the days.
My motto lately: “Nothing to kill ourselves over!”
Today on the train, in my sadness I prayed in shaky intervals of “Help me.” & “Please.” I saw a deer. That is my answer.
Next to me on the train, a man talking about Californian birds, that he thought he’d seen them all, but he found three more.
Looking at my naked body in the mirror this evening, I thought: “Soft animal.”
I have these semblances of feeling that are like stillborn emotions.
People used to believe that the heart made all of our decisions. In Egyptian mythology, your heart would be weighed against a feather after you died. Mine feels so sick & atrophied that it’s not a fair contest; even someone as awful as me could win against a feather.
I went looking for rainbows today. I’ve always hated myself for never doing what I say I’ll do, but maybe it's not so bad: I keep telling myself to give up already, but instead I went on a walk today, because I was sure that I would see a rainbow. I didn’t. I thought I would, just by virtue of my intense desperation & hunger, (Can desperation really be a virtue?), but desperation is different for me than it is for others. The more desperate I am, the less I’ll accept. It’s going so long without food that your own hunger makes you sick to your stomach. If I were feeling better, July rain would’ve been enough. It’s like I want to make myself inconsolable.
I think to myself that by some miracle, as I cross these empty streets, a car will swoop in like a bird & take me away from it all. And how something like that wouldn’t be my fault.
I keep thinking about how much easier it would all be if I were dead; I keep thinking about how I just have to endure. I think these things at the same time.
I had to press tears from my eyes on the way to school this morning. Read more of Le Petit Prince. Listened to A Good Man Is Hard to Find for half of the journey, on a loop. The line “And so I go to hell, I wait for it” brought me back to attention every time.
I cried as I did laundry for an hour and a half or so. I feel broken. There is no other way to describe this.
Last night, as I was praying before bed, I saw this beautiful purple glow in my room. That doesn’t feel like it means anything right now.
Go to bed late. Wake up early. Your clothes are on the floor, clean & dirty, no pile; your floor is the pile. Feel like you’re forgetting something. Take the train. Take your camera, but don’t take any pictures. Nothing in your life feels like it merits a photo. You feel stupid taking photos, but you feel stupid leaving your camera. Do your assignment late on the train, because you forgot about it. It’s your first assignment. It’s late. Say you’ll make a planner today. You’ve said that for a week. Say you’ll put stickers in it. You think it will help. You think so every time. You’ve never kept a planner for more than a month.
I almost started crying while I was making dinner. Udon.
...
I started crying after dinner.
I used to be different, which sounds stupid when I write it, but listen: I used to love the train, (maybe when my world was a lot smaller); I would listen to the same two or three albums each morning; I carried my stuffed frog around; I got dressed in the morning, I mean, I thought about what I wore & it made me happy; I played Animal Crossing on my DS like it was of ritual importance… What happened? Emily Dickinson wrote, “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself,” & I am out with cadaver dogs, looking for myself. I don’t think this is nostalgia pulling one of those sheer juggling cloths over my eyes, & it’s not a wand with ribbons. This is something real, and something that is gone. I’m depressed. I mean I’m actually depressed. I think I have been, for a while. October, November last year? I felt happy in January, but it felt like I was in competition with myself, like I was triumphing over myself. Triumph and happiness aren’t the same. Triumph is at the expense of something. I don’t like this constant need for self overcoming. I don’t think I like myself. I don’t ever feel proud of myself, or satisfied. I rid myself of all of these material desires only to replace it with… ego. Is that what this is? I was thinking to myself earlier in my messy room, on my messy bed, on my messy floor, that I don’t want to think about myself anymore. I don’t think it helps.
“Just because I’m choosy about what I want—in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things—doesn’t mean I’m not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I’m more so!” & Emily Dickinson again: “You keep talking about ego... This is God’s universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what’s ego and what isn’t. What about your beloved Epictetus? Or your beloved Emily Dickinson? You want your Emily, every time she has an urge to write a poem, to just sit down and say a prayer till her nasty, egotistical urge goes away? No, of course you don’t!”
I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I listened to the song “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Sufjan Stevens while I was driving to the thrift store today & it was as though I was hearing it for the first time. It was as though I was hearing any music for the first time. I bought clothes. I was supposed to buy clothes for teaching, but instead I bought things I liked. I shoplifted a bag of candles. I never pray anymore. And not out of a sense of contentment.
It started raining while I was on a walk, well, more than raining. My last morning in Japan, it rained torrentially. I was so sick with fright as I was leaving, till we got locked out of the house with my luggage inside, and standing on the front porch, I felt the rain on my skin and was okay. I couldn’t help but smile. Cold rain. Cold rain there, cold rain here. It was so wet that my pants stuck to my legs from the knees down, slowly drying as the Shinkansen got delayed. E came with me. She didn’t have to, but she did, because I get so scared when I travel. The fact that she packed my bags the night before & went all the way to the airport in Tokyo… It meant a lot to me. It made me feel really loved. Out of everything she’s done for me, it means the most, even more than the four leaf clover she gave me.
It rained on the day I went to Nasushiobara, too. I went alone. I spent the night in a capsule hotel in Akihabara and took an early Shinkansen. That was the day that I went to N’s Yard, to the Yoshitomo Nara museum. I felt so weird, but so happy, that on the way there with my head against the rainy train window, I began to cry, just a bit, softly. I cried a lot in Japan, but it was all soft, even when it was out of a sense of anxiety or of how fleeting everything was. The rain made me so happy. It rained in Tokyo as I left. I had been doing well on the trains before, but E, her sister, & I went to Tokyo the day prior & I panicked on the way there. That fear carried over till I was on the way to Nasushiobara. I felt sick that morning after waking up in my hotel, and on the way to the station, it began to rain & I felt a bit better. Instead of going straight to the station, I walked around a bit in the early morning light, rainy, hazy.
It rained while I was at the museum in Nasushiobara too. It stopped for a bit between when I got off the bullet train & when I got a taxi, and then stopped again as I walked through the museum. There’s this big window that looks out at an outdoor sculpture, and right after I had passed it, I heard rain, on the roof, such a beautiful sound. I turned back and watched the rain for a bit, through the window. I think I paid more attention to the rain than the sculpture. (Sorry Yoshitomo Nara.) The museum meant a lot to me, so much that I cried out of happiness on the way there, because I was actually going, me, a once shut-in, but the rain made it something so special… It reminded me of Oregon. It was really green there, and the sound of rain in the taxi made me think of my grandfather’s tin roof. It’s not a feeling I can share, even through writing.
It took me almost an hour to get out of bed this morning. I didn’t even go back to sleep, & I wasn’t tired. I just laid there with my eyes shut, my eyes open, on my side, on my back. I don’t know why.
Miso soup for breakfast. When I was in Japan, E would make miso soup & green tea for breakfast every day. Some mornings, we would eat with her grandmother. I never actually learned her name while I was there. She was always either ばば (baba) or お母さん (okaasan). Baba would sit in this massage chair (that I never saw turned on) in front of the TV while E & I would sit on the floor. The TV was normally playing old samurai movies, or sometimes just commercials. E would bring the tea in on a round, wooden tray. Sometimes she would bring the teapot, but sometimes just the cups. We used the same cups each day. Well, E would always grab me the same cup, a blue Snoopy yunomi. When I served myself tea & couldn’t find Snoopy, I would grab a pink Marroncream one.
E’s mom had this huge cabinet full of dishes. When I think of her house now, I think of the cabinet. The kitchen in the first room you walk into, and maybe it was because the house was so small & the cabinet so big, but it made an impression on me. It was a giant china cabinet, full of all sorts of little dishes. I don’t think I ever saw fine china, though I’m sure there was some hidden away, but there were so many little cups & so many little plates, but mostly cups. Her mom collects cups & mugs. That was actually my parting gift to her mom: A little Snoopy cup that came with a little stand. I emphasize “little,” because there wasn’t a lot of room in the house & I wanted to get something unobtrusive.
The other thing you begin to notice in the house are all of the calendars: There were multiple calendars, in every room, every hallway, normally three minimum. In Japan, the toilet is in its own separate closet from the bathroom, and even the toilet had a calendar. I remember it, because some English on it read: “Forgive us of our debts, for we have forgiven our debtors.” In the actual bathroom, next to the sink, there was a small calendar with illustrations of teeth, from a dentist’s office I’m sure. In the upstairs hallways between E’s room & her mom’s room, there was a calendar that depicted miniatures, you know, tiny little doll-sized furniture, but more artistic. None of the calendars had any writing, except for the one in the kitchen.
I’ve only been in the States again for about a week now, but I miss E. Not necessarily in a lonely way, (loneliness is one of the few emotions that I haven’t felt this week), but I just wish she were here, even if we weren’t spending time together. The fact that she’s so far away just makes me sort of sad. We don’t spend a lot of time together when she’s here, twenty minutes away from me, but I don’t know… I just feel conscious of the distance between us. I do wish we could talk though, in person. Maybe not even talk. I just want to sit in her passenger seat. When I’m overwhelmed, that’s what I think about, her passenger seat.
Mirin, sake, miso paste, dashi powder, nori, furikake… I can finally cook almost anything I want. I’m not going to have as much free time this next year as I complete school, but one of the things that I am most serious about is cooking, all the time. I have to eat, so I want it to be splendid. That’s a good way to live: If I have to do it, then I want it to be splendid.
I’m just going to try to do things well: I’ll clean my room. I’ll make my bed. I’ll cook & eat until I’m full. I’ll hang my clothes. I won’t hang myself. I’ll go to bed early. I’ll write in my diary. I’ll take notes. I’ll carry my camera & chopstick set in my bag. I’ll wear Mary Janes to school with matching socks. I’ll read even if I don’t have the time. I’ll get my strength back & I’ll walk out of here. I’ll live my way into a better life, slowly, without even realizing.
Strange sense of déjà vu waking up this morning, but so nice that I didn’t want to get out of bed. Something about the fan in my room… It made it feel like an autumn day. The only thing I could think was: “Life isn’t so bad. I have to keep living until autumn.”
Lately my heart has been something to burn my hand on. Everything I feel makes me flinch, yet my writing has become so absent of any emotion & so perfunctory that it disgusts me, (which is to say that I disgust myself).
I watched a fireworks show in my neighborhood. I anticipated that I would cry, as everything has been making me cry, but I was empty of anything at all. My stovetop heart was off. I thought of the fireworks we did together in Japan that last night; I thought of myself standing in the same place two years ago, three years ago & crying; I thought of how beautiful the fireworks were & how their lack of effect gave me a weird feeling in the stomach, a consciousness of something that I was lacking, and nothing happened. It’s almost as though I wasn’t there at all, that I was watching it through a glass, or through someone else.
I came home & found my sister’s dog trembling in the bathroom. She was panting so hard that her paws & a circle of dirty tile around her was wet with her saliva. I sat down & I pet her for half an hour, until she laid down. Seeing her made me think of myself.