**DISCLAIMER: This post isn't intended to have hidden messages or jabs to the ribs. I'm just trying to be therapeutic here. What do I even have this thing for if I can't use it to get something off my chest. That said, carry on.**
It's interesting to me how quickly changes happen. For the first time since I made the decision, I regret not being in Japan right now. I would give a finger off my left hand (preferably the second to the last) to have nothing to do right now but plan an English lesson, ride my mamachari to buy twelve different kinds of mushrooms for my miso shiru at the local grocery and watch Japanese game shows from my teeny tiny Asian apartment.
Well, even as I type that, I know it's a lie. I wasn't supposed to go to Japan, damn it. I can't even hypothetically wish myself there without my stomach saying, "No! No! Don't you remember?! That's what we're NOT supposed to do!" So where the hell am I supposed to be then, Universe? Where?
But back to change--I guess it isn't change really. Just reality. Really. What I'm trying to say is, I wish I were back in school. As a student, most of my disillusionments were about other people....Wordsworth's disillusionments or Buddhism's disillusionments or my own disillusionments about something somewhat separate from me...like me becoming disillusioned about Greece or Turkey or some other far off person/place/thing. Now that it's just me, myself, and I sans textbooks and professors and students, my disillusionments are mostly about myself. I hate them. I'm sick of being under my own microscope. Someone give me something to research, something to write about besides my own dramatics.
So, in order to stay on the bright side of things, here is a list I am making myself write of ten things I can say I am honestly grateful for:
1. I'm not married.
2. I don't have to stay in Arizona forever.
3. I can be anywhere I want this fall. I just have to pick a place and find a job. People do it everyday. I'm going to be one of those people.
4. I am not who I was in 8th grade. Not even close.
5. I have never been in a plane wreck on the Andes.
6. I am not dead yet and thus still have ample probationary time to get righteous. Maybe. I guess nobody knows when they are going to go. Let me rephrase with: I'm grateful for probationary time. Period.
7. I get to see my family tomorrow. I get to take William to a movie.
8. I am in Sharon Morgan's house right now with Patch the Dog on my lap. This is one of the only places in the world I can feel consistently safe in. I think that this house can breathe, deep deep down. Maybe in the furnace or the water heater. But it definitely sighs from all that's happened and been discussed and been whispered inside its walls. Were I to write a book, this house would be a place of great symbolic pregnancy. I feel like I and this house are blood brothers, in a way. Jen, I know you know what I mean even though you wouldn't describe it quite like I am.
9. A stranger told me I looked like Winnie Cooper. I've still got it.
10. Finally, I'm grateful for this backpack I got for Christmas. I look at that backpack, and I see Escape. I see myself going somewhere...anywhere...and being able to live off only what I can fit in my backpack. I just need to secure a couple thousand more dollars as cushioning and then I'm out of Arizona, packing all my unessentials back into my parents' house and I'm out of here. Joe, Darren, keep talking up Europe at me.
Anyone who feels like coming with me is welcome to; I promise to be as chilled as freezer-burned taquitos (beef, not chicken).
9 comments:
Ha. There are many lies and many truths in your writing. I guess a lot of it depends on POV. I know I shouldn't comment so soon, but with a recently destroyed laptop, who knows when I can post? Who knows what the future brings? Why do ye quote Tenacious D?
I'm glad that you aren't in Japan...you need to be where you are, I'm sure of it. I am also sure that I am so jealous that you are going to Sharon's. I feel like I am ever going to get back there and that makes me sad. Instead, I am sitting in my really messy office (that will soon be the bedroom of my two unborn daughters, who I am NOT prepared for) in ugly Philadelphia, my back hurts, I have a pump that I stick into me twice a day so that I don't throw up all of the time and I have a stupid cold. Maybe I need to make a list of things that I am greatful for, huh? I am glad to see a new post...thanks for mentioning me...it made me feel special. Call if you want to talk...I'm always around.
Thanks Jen, I think I will. Sharon is right here asking how you are feeling and also, should she hire your brother. I'll have her call you, too. You are sorely missed and loved, and I wish I could at least take some of your back pain for me. I also have a cold though....so I guess we're connected that way.
Price........you are incorrigible. I feel responsible for your magnetized laptop even though I'm not. Still, you make truly beautiful leather goods--it's worth the sacrifice of piece of technology. Which you'll restore. I'm sure. Eventually. The future indeed. Such a grand blank expanse. Kinda like those white puzzles astronauts have to put together before they get to go into space. Kinda like that.
I'm no fatalist. Kismet is rubbish. I am sure that Japan would have yielded its own rarefied bounty, just as Arizona has. We always romanticize things that are far from us. I do it all the time. In 2 months, I should have been in Kiribati, living in a grass hut, fighting malaria, teaching kids how to read. Instead, I'll be living in a basement apartment in Idaho Falls, fighting off stagnation. This is the best of all possible worlds, because it is the one I chose. Your situation has many enviable qualities. Cut loose. Give the backpack hell.
Well I don't have anything that insightful to say that hasn't been said by someone much smarter than I. However, here's something about me. When I'm faced with a world of choices (i.e. a backpack, although I'd need way more than that) and no real responsibility to anyone but myself, I find that I doubt every decision I make. But then, when I'm strapped down with a kid, house, job, husband and I don't have many choices to make, I wish for that freedom. Even though I'm too much of a chicken to do anything to exciting...that and a homebody. Anyway, I had fun hanging out with you some this past week. I hope it happens again. Good luck back in AZ. And know that there are lots of people who know at least one thing you put up with ... Jason...
Thanks for your comments about my latest confessions. I'm bummed I didn't get to see you guys enough before you left. Hope you get their safe and find a pile of cinnamon bugs waiting for you.
i think you're neat.
I feel your dissidence. I have found it very difficult to feel complacent when my throughly stagnant life remains, oddly, still in flux. The "I wishes" are, and will, pile up into quite the hefty barricade. It will be nice to be headed in a direction that feels right...like north but metaphorically.
Again, you're neat.
oh yeah: Europe makes a backpack feel happy.
taquitos? best be sitting in the freezer.
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