three days in poland

This gallery contains 10 photos.

what is essential is invisible to the eye

Hi Marisa,

I’ve been carrying on transcribing the scrapbooks that you left behind.  It’s taking quite a bit longer than I thought it would, partly because the sections in Japanese are not something I can do very easily, but mostly because almost every section brings back memories or associations.  Some of them are happy, some are sad; but all of them are warm, and bring me back to you.  It’s like walking into an empty room, but seeing a book on the table with a cup of tea and plate of biscuits next to it.  Someone has just been here, and they’ll be back anytime to pick up where they left off.

I don’t feel like I’m intruding any more when I read the writing you left behind.  I don’t think you mind me reading it.  I don’t feel as if I’m scavenging through your life; I feel like Indiana Jones deciphering clues that lead to a mythical treasure, or a scientist tracking down an elusive element which can only be seen by the effects it has.  Your stories “have holes”, to quote Kristin Hersh; I can never capture or quantify what you are, but I can see the shape from everything you’ve left behind.

I feel ashamed.  Everything that you did for me, all the ways that you supported me, and the countless times and ways that I imposed on you; and where was I when you needed me?  I hope that I gave you at least some support and joy in return.  I should have done so much more.  I think everyone feels like that when they lose someone.  Regret at unspoken words, and missed opportunities to listen, and just to be with the person.  Nothing huge or life changing; it won’t appear in any history books or be mentioned on the news; but it can still mean so much to someone.

People help each other in ways they don’t realise, sometimes.  Like a plant questing for the sun, we reach for the people we love and admire, and gain warmth and light from them; they help us grow, root and leaf.  We may never touch or understand each other, but something essential is passed between us.  And straining to reach each other is how we help each other, how we gain strength.  Knowing that we are in someone’s thoughts is water to the soul and shelter from the elements.

I wish I could have been a stronger sun for you, and shone more brightly.  I hope you know that I never stopped trying to reach you, even when we were on different sides of the planet.

You’ve gone.  The light you received wasn’t strong enough to help you survive.  I can’t stop reaching for you though, and I never will.  You may not be in these skies anymore –  I wonder where you’re travelling? – but your distant beams of pale starlight now provide, will always provide, celestial navigation.

Love you,

Jim

dear higashida san

kind of deep

So…consciousness is a strange thing.  It’s like building a shack in the middle of a vast desert, or a tiny island floating on a huge ocean.  We think we’re so in control, but our subconscious is always there, and can swamp our tiny efforts at self creation in an instant.  When we sleep, there’s a battle as we struggle to hold onto control and keep our sanity; because without the lies we tell ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to get through the day, let alone pay the bills and stuff like that.

Sleep has been good for me (mostly), but waking up has been hard.  I think I might prefer life in my subconscious, but realising that it’s not ‘real’ can be a horrible way to wake up.  I remember when I flew to Japan in December, I was sitting between two American soldiers – the woman was heavily pregnant and sitting on the aisle, and I guess the guy just wanted to be able to look out the window.  Anyway, I slept.  And when I woke up, I was looking straight at the woman and gave her the biggest, slowest, most heartfelt smile.  Which slipped, cracked, and dissolved when I remembered where I was and where I was going.  I don’t know what the woman thought, hope I didn’t freak her out too much…

I don’t remember what I was dreaming, but it felt real and safe and warm, like I was in the arms of love.  Is that what they mean, when they say that you will always have the people you love close to you, even after they die?  It doesn’t seem too bad, unless you have to get through the day and pay the bills and stuff like that.  We have consciousness as a filter so we can think about fairly limited things and keep functioning in the world; otherwise we’d just spend all our time gawping like acid heads at all the miraculous things around us (I think Terry Pratchett wrote something like that, can’t remember where I read it).

There’s another thing they say (who are they anyway?): sleep is like a little death.  Maybe that’s what happens when you die – you plunge into your subconscious and you find everything you lost, and you meet everyone you had a connection with.  Surely nothing is lost for ever; I picture a dusty warehouse with rows of shelves stretching as far as the eye can see, disappearing into the shadows.  (Seems like I might have seen something like that on the X-Files…).  When you die, the lights are turned on, the shadows start to dance, and your ghosts come to greet you.  Here’s the thing though: everything comes out, good, bad, mean-spirited, generous, sad, hilarious, golden moments and wasted opportunities.  What have you done all your life except create heaven or hell?  Because no matter how we struggle with our subconscious, it will rise up like the sea and swamp us at some time.

When people die, we keep them with us through our memories.  But when people die, maybe they take a part of us with them.  Do I exist somewhere in your warehouse, have I come out to dance with you in a world where there’s no struggling to keep on a mask (or having to pay bills and stuff)?  I hope so.

この太陽は夜も耀いて – this sun also shines at night

そうして道の上
ただの言葉だけが
ひとつ溶けだして
君に染みてゆく

この太陽は夜も耀いて
導く
幻が踊る街に
さよならの鐘が鳴る

鳥は地を歩き
海は空を流れ
沈んだ魂の
そばでうなずいた

この太陽は夜も耀いて
夢を見る
そして急ぐ君の目に
焼き付いてはなれない

終わりなくつづく歌
想いさえ越えてゆく
君の目に映るように
胸の奥開けたまま

急ぐわけもなく過去は消え去り
讃えるものならここにあるのさ

限りなく青い夜
心はもう空のまま
限りなく光あふれ
心はもう空のままなのさ

many scars

“deus ex machina

an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation – OED

Synopsis

‘Many Scars’ is analogous to multiple sclerosis inasmuch as it is written in the form of relapsing and remitting episodes, which progressively overlap as the story unfolds. The odd-numbered chapters are set over a two-month period in the recent past, while the even relate more distant events spanning the previous decade. Both strands gradually merge together and, in the final chapter, into the present.”

This was the synopsis that she sent to Daniel Goldsmith Associates in 2007. She hesitated over sending the manuscript, partly through lack of confidence in her writing, and partly because it told the story of her life and scars with raw honesty.

She received positive feedback from the literary consultants, and was encouraged to edit some parts before resubmitting the manuscript for a second reading. This was the letter she received:

‘Many Scars’ was one of the winners of a competition run by Daniel Goldsmith Associates. She was happy with the praise, although she was slightly miffed with the placement of her name on the website:

Although she did revise the manuscript, she decided not to resubmit it. Writing it had allowed her to make sense of her life, and made her want to write more. She was content with what she had produced, and felt she was ready to face the future, and start to write something new.

‘Many Scars’ can be read here:

why I know I will never invent a time machine…

…because I would go to 10th December, 2011.

Hey Chumpsey, how you doing?

Yeah, alright, you know, same old same old…how ’bout you?

Had a really shit week, which has finished with me handing in my notice to ARK.  Just back home now, and I’ll be working there for another month, after that I’ll be a free woman.

Jesus, really?  How come?  What happened?

Well, it’s a long story, and I don’t really want to go into it now.  Basically, it’s all over with ARK now though.  I’m gonna work there until 10th January, then…well, I dunno.  I’ll have to look for a place to live first.

Was it Elizabeth?  Did she do something crazy and alcoholic again?

Yeah, a bit…she went back on what she said she would do, and she’s doing something that I can’t agree with, and don’t want any part of.  She didn’t fire me, but I can’t carry on working for her, or have my name associated with the place.

You’re standing up for your professional ethics, huh.  That sounds like you.  Is it gonna be a busy month?

Nah, actually, I seem to have finally gotten on top of the work; there aren’t nearly as many dogs coming in from Fukushima, and it’s probably going to be an almost eerily quiet month after the madness this year.  Seriously, it’s just been non-stop…a few people at work have been saying that I look really unhealthy – I think I’ve lost too much weight again, and I’m just incredibly tired…

MS?

To be honest, I’m not sure.  I might have had a relapse, but I think I’m too tired to notice.

Jesus.  Fucking hell.  Well, it sounds like you’ve got to stop, argument or not.  It’s great that you’ve finished the work – I don’t think anyone else could have done it – but enough is enough, right?

Yeah…I’m worried about what’s gonna come when I stop working; I think “my ego’s writing cheques that my body just can’t cash” to quote Top Gun…I think I’m gonna crash, badly.

Have you spoken to papa?

No, not yet.  He’s probably gonna hit the roof, then tell me ‘I told you so’ quite a bit.  There’s no way I’m going to Kawanabe.  I think I’d just go nuts Jim, or me and papa would end up killing each other.  There’s a guy at work – the Colonel – who says he’s going to help me find a flat…but I dunno…

Where do you want to go?

Well, I was thinking of Hokkaido.  It’s just beautiful there.  I can see myself living in a shack on a beach somewhere, a million miles from anyone, just me and Taro.  I think I’m finished with veterinary now; maybe I could do some translation, and do some of my own writing as well.

That sounds…

Alternative?  Radical?  Crazy?  Unrealistic?

I’ll go for ‘alternative’…and pretty damn hippy-ish as well.  Seriously, if there’s anyone who deserves to just do what makes you happy, it’s you.  Papa’s finally living with family, so you don’t need to worry about checking up on him, and at least you’ve got a hopefully quiet month and you can think about what you want, right?

…yeah…

Hey, James is coming over to Japan soon, right?

Yeah, he’s coming in January, 10 days after I stop at ARK.

You’re going to Okinawa, right?

Yeah…Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.  I haven’t seen him in ages.  I wish he was coming now – a month seems like such a long time – but I can’t wait to see him again.

(And here I would change what I said…this is what I should have said, maybe these are the words that could have changed things, maybe you were waiting for me to say something – anything – to help you, to show how much I cared, to bring you back from despair and remind you that you always have a place and a home…)

Hmm…you know, I wanted to tell you…I really regret not being able to spend more time with you when we were in Japan – first there was the toothache thing, then the aborted day in Kyoto…I was really looking forward to pigging out with you and talking arse…

Yeah, well…

Well, I’ve got a two week holiday coming up – how about if I come over again?  You should have more time to hang out, right?  Work is quieter, you don’t have a marathon to run or any scary weddings to go to…

I’ll still be busy…

I can help you pack and stuff; and I can run interference on papa, keep him off your back…please?  I’d really love to just spend some time with my favourite sister.  As mama would say, ‘just to touch base’…

Eurgh.  Don’t you dare touch my base.  But you can’t – what about Pek Wan?

Well, she’s talking about going down to visit her sister in London; I’m sure she’d be cool with me going to visit you, ’cause she knows I’m not that bothered about going down there myself…

Really?  You’d better make sure, I don’t want to cause any domestic…

Hang on a sec…yep, she says it’s OK as long as I bring back another load of sembe and stuff.  And you know, she said to ask you – why don’t you come back with James?  You can stay here for three months, right?  We’ve got space, you can visit people or chill out here.  And you know there’s nothing like spending time with me and Pek Wan.  Watching Britain’s Got Talent and America’s Next Top Model for a few weeks is guaranteed to get you desperate to do anything, if only to stop your brain dribbling out from your ears…

That…yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea.  Well done Chumpsey!  Except it was Pek Wan’s idea of course.  Are you sure about coming over?  I can get your ticket…

Nah, I’ve got it this time.  I’ll look now…

Really, thanks Jim.  You have no idea how much this…seriously, thanks.

Alright…erm…

I feel like I don’t have the energy to carry on at work…and I’m scared of what’s going to happen when I stop going to work…but you’re right, I should see everyone in England…papa will probably love to look after Taro for a bit, and he’s got the obasan-tachi to look after him…

You’re like a deep-sea fish.

Huh?

We’ll bring you back to the surface, but we’ll have to do it slowly.  You’re so used to pressure, if there isn’t any, you’ll explode.

Yeah, I guess, something like that.

Right, got the ticket for Monday.  Fuck it, I’ll take a week off work and come over for three weeks.  I’ll see you in two days!  Prepare yourself for pigging out!

Jesus.  OK.  Send me the times and I’ll try and meet you at the airport.

OK.  Oh, Pek Wan wants me to tell you something as well.  We’re…ahem…we’re, well, she’s pregnant.  6 weeks.

That’s…that’s fantastic!  Have you told anyone yet?

Nope, you’re the first to know.  We want to keep it quiet until 20 weeks or so, you know, ’cause of last time…

Yeah.  But will she be going in for early scans and stuff?

Yeah, it’s all starting in January.  Really nervous, but quietly optimistic as well.

It’ll be different this time, I know it will.  Wait a minute…6 weeks?  You were in Japan 6 weeks ago!  You mean you little lovebites were…and I thought you were both tired ’cause of jet-lag!

Heh heh.

Under my roof!  For shame!

Your mama impression is getting scarily good there Marisa.  Actually, we were thinking of doing a Beckham, and naming the kid after the place…

Yoshikawa?

Myoken.

Funny-looking face?  You’d better fucking not, I swear I’ll disown you, then help Pek Wan beat you to death…

Would anything have helped?  I’ve spent three months thinking of all the different things I could have said to bring you back.  If only I’d realised how close to the cliff edge you were standing.  If only I could have pulled you back.  Were you reaching out a hand, hoping that I would catch you?  Or were you just waving and saying goodbye?  If I had a time machine, I would use it and do everything I could, and say everything I should have said.  I’ll never know, but I know I’ll always be thinking about it: What could I have done?  Would anything have helped?

boxes, photos, chumbawamba

I’ve read everything I can lay my hands on – letters, emails, blog posts, elephantasmagoria, translations and Many Scars.  There are so many things I remember.  There are also so many things I dimly remember, or don’t remember, or remember differently.  Everything touches a different chord or pulls a different string – I feel like a ball of yarn being played with by a dozen kittens.  I have no idea what I’m thinking; I can only wait for the next string to be pulled, and find myself yanked down some dimly lit alley of the murky past.  God, what an awful way to put it!  Here’s another way:

Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season.  Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass.  Near the shore the ice will hold you.  Slide out farther.  Farther.  Eventually you’ll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight.  The ice splinters under your feet.  Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs…I felt like the ice itself, suddenly shattered, with cracks spiraling out from where she had touched my chest.  The only reason I held together was because my thousand pieces were all leaning together.  If I moved, I would fall apart.

There are depths below, cold and dark with slow currents moving through.  I want to plunge in, but I’m afraid I won’t come back.  So, I understand this a bit more now:

While I survived by building walls, my best friend was busy putting his problems away in boxes.

I’ll think and feel and remember when I have time.  When will that be?  I doubt it will be at my convenience.

As he pointed out to me once, the trouble with walls is that they have a tendency to fall down, and the trouble with boxes is that they have lids that are prone to opening at the worst possible moment. (‘true love waits’, Many Scars)

I had a moment like that today.  I’d taken a film in to be processed.  It was black and white, so they had to send it to Germany, of all places.  They gave me a call today and I went to pick it up. I checked with the guy at Jessop’s that the negatives were back, then went to get a coffee and find a quiet place to look at the photos.  What would they be?  Photos of Taro, or family, or friends, or street scenes, or Hokkaido, or the mountains around Yoshikawa?  A message, a clue to what you were thinking, something to treasure, something to cry over?  I prepared myself for an onslaught of kittens yanking at my frayed ball of yarn.

There were no photos.  The negatives were back, with no images on any of them.  I don’t know why, but I hadn’t prepared myself for that, and the ice shattered into a million pieces, the lids came flying off the boxes, the walls came tumbling down.

I was walking around town when I sort of noticed myself and where I was.  Glasses fogged up, a bit of snot dribbling out of my nose.  Nice.  It being Wolverhampton, though, I don’t think anyone noticed; I probably blended in pretty well with the crowd.

And I’ve had a song stuck in my head – I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down.  Chumbawamba.  Chumbawamba helped bring me back to the surface.  How absolutely fucking mortifying.  I bet you’re pissing yourself, you’re never going to let me live it down (to the same tune).  Now I’m even more scared of opening the boxes in my head – what if the song comes out again?

Big love,

Jim

the endless spiral is broken

I’ve been meaning to write to you for a while.  I wasn’t going to write anything about mama here, just ’cause I thought it might not be what you’d want to hear.  Still, she’s really surprised me, and left me in a state of…I’m not quite sure.  Just when you think you’re used to her, she ups the ante spectacularly.  Quote of the day: ”I found myself crying a bit this afternoon.  I must be more upset than I thought.  Or maybe I’m just tired.”  Classic.  I don’t know what your reaction is, but mine was mixed: short laugh of disbelief, total fury, wanting to tell her to fuck off, resignation.  Anyway, this is the third day that I’ve spoken to her, and it’s just been getting more outrageous each day.  I’ll tell you about it later, and we can add it to the big book of mama’s quotes.

I’ve been thinking about a poem by Philip Larkin called An Arundel Tomb.  It’s about how history is written to suit the time.

And up the paths   

The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.   

Now, helpless in the hollow of   

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins   

Above their scrap of history,   

Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into   

Untruth.

It doesn’t matter how people remember.  As much as I love hearing your friends talk about you, and I feel as if I’m getting closer to you when I talk to them, there will be people who simply won’t remember you in the way that I do; who will, frankly, remember untruth.  What can you do? What’s important to me is what I remember and feel, and getting angry about people who should know better isn’t going to solve anything.

In a way, though, I feel grateful to mama.  What I was meaning to write was probably too painfully sentimental for you to appreciate.  You never did get my love of rom-coms, and I wouldn’t want to subject you to anything with remotely that kind of vibe.  Anger and morbid humour is probably more your cup of tea.  You’d probably tell me it’s a simple Jungian or Freudian displacement thing or something.  Maybe I’ll write mama a thank you card.
Still, I’ll probably lapse back into sentimentality next time I write.  As always, please be patient with me, and don’t take the piss too much.

Love,

Jim

around the funny-looking mountain, december 2011

The last photo – 5th December 2011

winter migration

enormous changes at the last minute

“I haven’t written for ages, but since last week a ridiculous amount of stuff has been happening.

Since the end of November, when my dad had his second brain haemorrhage a few days before he was finally, after a long, long wait of a year and a half, supposed to be going home to Japan, I have been thinking about how I might go back, too. My dad will have to wait at least another six months now before he can try again, but when he does, I’d like to be there for him. I just hope that isn’t too little, too late.

I haven’t lived in Japan for twenty-three years. I kind of speak Japanese; I can read and write it much better. But the main problem is I work in a field that is almost completely alien to Japanese society at large. I believe in things that the vast majority of Japanese people don’t.

I think I’ve mentioned that I like what I do. I find the thought of going back to Japan and starting again — doing something completely different, trying to fit in — extremely depressing. I spent most of Christmas and New Year lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Quietly, I’ve wanted to go back to Japan off and on for a while. But until recently I have always dismissed the idea, because I thought it would be impossible to go back and be who I am. And then there’s the dog, of course. I didn’t think I could bring myself to leave the dog behind. But since the end of November, like it or not, I haven’t been able to dismiss going back to Japan, because this isn’t just about me any more. Sitting in ICU with your dad and being told he might not wake up again changes a lot of things.

But I think I might have found a way to go back — and maybe make a difference, maybe even be happy. Hopefully, the dog could come, too. I sent my CV to a place in Osaka on Tuesday night, and since Wednesday there have been emails and telephone calls, the upshot of which is I am flying out to Japan for ten days next month to see if things might work out. Nothing is certain yet. It all sounds too good to be true, and I am waiting for the catch. But as someone I know pointed out to me the other day, maybe I deserve a little bit of good luck after all the bad stuff that’s happened over the last seven years. I don’t know if such a thing as luck really exists, and if it does I’m not sure I deserve it, but I hope they’re right.

Anyway, until I go next month, I’m going to try not to think about Japan too much. I’m going to read The Three Musketeers, get issue two of The Elephant Returns published, and start preparing my entries for the 7th Shizuoka International Translation Competition. I’m going to go to work, and try to be normal — I’m going to try not to be too happy or too sad.”

elephantasmagoria – friday, 11 january 2008

new beginning number four

well the exams are in the bag, and the government received my license application today. more to the point, the stuff from my old life was delivered to my new house this afternoon. my new van is parked outside, and there was a tray of dutch beer plus a congratulations card from my new boss waiting for me in the entrance. it has been the longest two years and four months, but now i only have a week left to get my act together before i start my new job

while i was waiting for the man from nitsu, i listened to the rain as i did some cleaning and filled the holes in the walls with clay. there is no internet in my new house for another month, and there will probably never be any mobile signal ever. i have to walk five or ten minutes down the road and into the woods if i want to use my phone. i like it here, and i think i’m going to be okay, but it was a huge relief when the truck finally came. as soon as the man left i opened my seven boxes (how did i fit twenty five years into seven boxes?) and made sure all the pictures of my best friend and my brother and my dog and my cat were there. i checked skeeter’s collar still smelled of skeeter. i found a few of his hairs, and the captain’s, too

like i said, i think i’m going to be okay – but moving was the easy part. now i have to move on, and do my best to make this my last new beginning for a while. i am trying not to be sad about how things haven’t worked out quite the way i intended. that’s the thing about new beginnings, they are mostly wishful thinking, with a tiny bit of hope

true love waits in haunted outtakes

“A long, long time ago, back in 2003, I was twenty-eight years old and — although I didn’t realize it at the time — a manic insomniac skeletal wreck. My boyfriend had enough and disappeared, but I hardly noticed. I don’t really remember, but even if I had noticed I doubt I would have cared very much. My life basically spiralled out of control around one impulse after another in those days, and I didn’t have the time for anyone apart from the dog, and later my best friend. I did two good things after my boyfriend left. One was to find my best friend again. The other was to sign up for a photography course. I’m not sure why I chose photography. I was never particularly artistic, and I hadn’t attempted to do anything even remotely creative for at least ten years. Photography was probably just another random idea I had at some point. I couldn’t seem to have the smallest idea back then without turning it in to a full scale mission.

To start with photography was the same as everything else and I tackled it in my usual headlong, deranged way, but when we started black and white, somewhere inside my head, almost inaudibly, something clicked. I went to college every Saturday morning, and afterwards, in my little pink Starlet, I would thunder down the length of the M5 and beyond with the dog to my best friend’s house. I would shoot maybe five or six rolls of HP-5 or Tri-X with my Nikon FM2 over the weekend, and drive home again at break-neck speed somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning. I would develop all the rolls of film in my bathroom on Monday night, and every other night after work and walking the dog I would go to the darkroom at college to make prints. I would spend hours on each print. Often I would start again from the beginning the following night. Photography was the one thing in my life I didn’t do in a rush. I didn’t care how long it took to get it right. I loved working in the darkroom. The best part was, after all the test strips and basic prints and flashing and dodging and burning, watching perfect images of my best friend and our weekends together taking form in the developer. I love the idea of life only really boiling down to light and a few chemicals. It makes a lot of things much easier to take. I don’t think photography made me ‘better’, exactly. It just gave me a way out of the incessant noise inside my head.

I lived like this for almost six months in 2004, from January to June. I handed in my workbook and portfolio, and that was the end of the access I had to the darkroom. It was also the end of my two year head-rush, the beginning of my worst come-down ever. I went to bed, only getting up when I had to to go through the motions of existence. I stopped photography. I stopped going to see my best friend. When I slowly started coming to another six months later, I lost the top half of the world in my left eye and, for better or for worse, my life as I had known it was finished for good.

But that’s another story. At the end of last month, I finally did something about my darkroom, or lack thereof. My bathroom is fine for processing films, but it’s just too cramped and unventilated for printing. So I’ve invested in a Nikon Coolscan, and the photographs I have posted here are my first efforts at scanning my old black and white negatives and playing with them in Gimp. I think they look pretty good. My tutor at college used to moan at me all the time about how dark and contrasty my prints were. I think he might be pleased with these. I ignored him in 2004, but I kind of see what he means now. In my defence, it was just the mood I was in at the time. I’m much more of a mellow person these days.”

elephantasmagoria – saturday, 10 november 2007

top ten most excellent adventures of lady russell the incontinent and sir morris the brave

1. skipping hand in hand in the witching hour across green park singing ‘the queen is dead’ at the top of our lungs

2. hitchhiking from london to amsterdam, where sir morris was nearly cut down by a tram in her prime

3. following the yellow brick road to zencentricity and dancing away the rent in space-time, with marching men, wide open eyes and mud on the face

4. uncovering the most closely guarded extraterrestrial secret of modern times involving finsbury park station

5. demonstrating what would happen if miles hunt and morrissey were collided with the ozric tentacles at high speed, by jamming on guitar and flute to ruined cassette tapes in ancient ghettoblaster

6. infiltrating various student union discos and the final year review and subverting them from within, with untimely illumination and absense of grease lightening

7. barely floating but not quite drowning at university, finally living to tell tall tales in spite of anaphylactic reactions and blows to the head

8. coming on holiday by mistake to redruth with our evil menagerie, and almost losing at least one ropey thing plus hound of hell to the sea

9. quixotic search for ratty smayflower amid the ponies and windmills, a constant battle against time and fading of writing on the wall

10. planning our elvis presley wedding and subsequent trailer park trash life, with allowance for two dogs, two cats, a big kitchen and a welcome mat

[please come and visit soon lady russell because i miss you xo]

what i don’t talk about when i talk about running

i started running last year to get rid of the incessant backchatter in my head. so the last thing i want is to add to the noise by talking about running. but here are a few things i can stop talking about as long as i run: sleeping friends in england. absent friends everywhere. what the hell i am doing here

mostly when i run i listen to my walkman full blast. radiohead is my usual running music, even though i hardly ever listen to them when i am not running anymore. i have also been known to run with, for example,  björk, the pixies, or nick cave & the bad seeds in my ears, depending on the mood i am in. but not pj harvey, not when i am running. and never ever ever patrick wolf, or at least never again

sometimes after i stop running i think about running a marathon

the louder the noise, the faster i have to run. today was a good day. i went for a long, slow run because there was the faintest buzzing in my head, but mostly because i felt like it. i could have kept on running forever today

stream of tokyo consciousness

shinkansen from shin-osaka → shinagawa. fuji-san under cloud except for very top. thinkharukers might have written story about shinagawa once. probably. hotel = dolphin hotel of old school sheep professor variety

round and round the yamanote line. harajuku girls yeah whatever gwen stefani, but yoyogi, yo that’s where the yo-yoing yogis are at. yo. i also like gotanda because there is a giant gnome there. exams are possibly appropriately in a place called sugamo = duck’s nest, quack quack

‘i hate students’. remember bob saying that while we were standing in foyer back in london nearly 12 years ago waiting to go in for finals. not much has changed. same old shite, different time zone, basically. not to mention century. and millenium. bloody hell

micachu mixtapes = face-pulling music on loop on mobile not at all phone. samples: ‘sensible, how can i make sense of bull’, ‘what do i do now my head’s fucked up, head’s fucked up, head’s fucked up’. giving me the munchies for overpriced waitrose belgian chocolate studded raisin and oat cookies though. also making me wish i could go back, back, back, to when i used to shapeshift and shift right back

anpan + matcha latte = new substitute for peanut butter and banana sandwich, maybe even religion

7-11 is rubbish compared to lawson

in tokyo trains run like clockwork but exams start 2 hours late

4 down 1 to go

[please excuse this. i wrote it on the back of various 7-11 receipts while i was bored and possibly losing it a little between exams today and yesterday. links to wikipedia because i can’t be arsed to explain]

optimistic

so here i am in japan. i have lived here now for almost a month. well, not exactly ‘lived’. mostly i have been killing time, waiting for next month, vaguely staring at notes as i try but fail not to be distracted by the internet, and life going on without me elsewhere, on the other side of the world while i sleep

don’t get me wrong, i am not sad. i feel like i have moved on, and there is no turning back. i am slowly but surely starting to remember even the hardest of times with fondness, and that, i think, is a sign of the distance i have travelled

the day after tomorrow i catch a bullet train to tokyo, to sit exams that have been over two years in the waiting. whether i pass or i fail, after next week my new life can finally begin. i cannot wait to start looking forward again, and not always back for a change

welcome to royston vasey

It has been a long over-a-month. I spent the rest of November cramming and earning a living, and as planned spent a weekend in London at the beginning of this month. The B&B did turn out to be a lot like Fawlty Towers, but I didn’t see any mice. I went to the Dome (sorry, O2 Arena) and saw Monkey, spent a wad of book tokens at Dillons (sorry, Waterstones), and hung out with a friend and his cat. All of these things were good, but the main reason I went to London of course was to sit exam number one, which was bad, and the less said about that the better, I think, at least until March, anyway, which is when the results come out.

I have spent most of the rest of this month eating, smoking, not sleeping, and watching crap TV with my housemates. Not much happened, until our house was burgled ten days ago. A lot of stuff was stolen, including the Nintendo Wii I did buy my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) for their wedding, after all. But the worst thing was the dog had had a molar surgically extracted the previous day, and he was in an opiate haze at home alone save for the cat — who isn’t much use in situations like these, or let’s face it in any situation, really — when the kitchen window was smashed in. The poor dog had a tubful of chews thrown at him, plus a measuring jug and a shovel. He would have been over the moon with the chews on any other day, but I can imagine the blank, painful expression he would have stared at the burglars with, plus the trail of bloody drool from his mouth, hence I suppose the jug and the shovel. He was cowering upstairs when I got home, with the cat jumping up and down on him. The landlord hasn’t fixed the kitchen window yet. Bob out of Twin Peaks came over, though, and hammered a whiteboard to the window frame, which made everything all right, obviously.

I spent Christmas with my best friend, which was nice, and about the only good thing that has happened since the good things that happened in London. As I was driving home on Boxing day in my brother’s little red car, I decided I was sick of feeling fat, sluggish, and all clogged up with tar and reality TV. I resolved that I am not going to let myself be dragged down to the depths to which my life has sunk of late, and especially not down to the depths of our mollusc and rodent infested house.

I didn’t do anything about my resolution yesterday because I had to go to work, but I woke up this morning and cleared all the rubbish (trampoline, mattresses, beer cans, glass, rubble, rotting food and worse) from the garden. I had a shower and washed my clothes. I haven’t watched any television today. I did some knitting. I have eaten my last piece of carrot cake. I am drinking my last cup of milky-sugary coffee. I will do something about stopping smoking next week, maybe. And studying for exam number two, because I am desperate not to never leave.

test voucher, flu jab, old people friends

I have been a madwoman on the verge of a nervous breakdown for most of this week. I was messing about on the internet on Sunday, and learned that seemingly everyone else had received their test vouchers for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test last Thursday. Mine was yet to arrive, and I became increasingly paranoid that my application had been rejected for some reason. I double checked with the Post Office that my letter had been delivered to SOAS. It had. I emailed SOAS to find out what was going on. No reply. I phoned the bank to see if my cheque had cleared. It hadn’t. I worried that maybe I hadn’t filled out the application form properly. Maybe my writing was too messy. Maybe my photos were wrong. Then I started to worry about what I was going to tell the people in Japan, one of whom is visiting Britain this week and I am seeing tomorrow, if I didn’t get to sit the exam this year.

Fortunately, my test voucher arrived on Tuesday morning, before my brain caved in on itself completely. I calmed down for long enough in the afternoon to book a couple of nights at a B&B in London in December. According to the reviews I read, there are a lot of mice at this B&B, which the manager claims are ‘normal’ in a traditional British hotel. I wonder if the manager is called Basil. I am looking forward to staying at this B&B, because it sounds like Fawlty Towers. After I thought about that for a while, I started to panic again, this time about passing the exam, or not as the case may be. I have been studying like mad since Tuesday night. I seem to remember joking last summer about peaking too soon. There is a Smiths song about how unfunny that joke is anymore. My English teacher brother will probably reprimand me later for how grammatically incorrect that last sentence is.

Fortunately, in amongst all this hyper-realism, I have had one surreality check this week. I went for my flu jab on Wednesday with the rest of the old and/or knackered. The doctor’s surgery was like a scene from blind willows and the sleeping woman. I don’t think I have sat in a room so full of old people before. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but as Mr Murakami put it, it was certainly very strange. I caught the eye of the one and only person of about my age sitting on the far side of the waiting room. He waved at me nervously, and I waved back. The last time I went to the doctor’s was when I was dizzy and having great difficulty remaining upright. As I lurched past, an old woman said to her old man friend, ‘She’s an alcoholic, she is.’ Her old man friend nodded sagely. I can’t wait until I am an old person. I hope when I am an old person I have lots of old people friends who I can sit around with and talk about old people things.

i’ll be a corpse in your bathtub

It has been a mixed week. I had been feeling non-specifically sad since returning from my best friend’s last week. Going back to work only made me feel worse, because work is a sad place to be at the moment. It has been like that for a while, and a lot of people have left, which has only made it more sad. I am planning to leave in two years time, but this week has been one of those weeks when two years seems like light years away.

I blame much of this non-specific sadness of mine on Philippe Petit. I haven’t been right since I went to see Man On Wire at the Light House the other week. It was a brilliant film, but it made me feel not imaginative or daring or French enough. I am not suggesting I want to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers. That would be impossible, of course, in more ways than one, besides which it has already been done. I want to do something different, that’s all, for no reason, just because — something imaginative and daring, and preferably French. I haven’t thought of anything good so far, but I am working on it.

This week hasn’t been all bad. On Thursday night I went to my brilliantly-named friend’s house for supper (bangers and mash, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and cauliflower cheese, plus chocolate fudge cake and custard for dessert), and talked about knitting and Heroes a lot. Last night I watched some new episodes of Heroes while I unravelled and re-knitted a scarf. Today I went to look at some houses with my brother and his wife. I have a feeling I will feel much less non-specifically sad once I escape the one-woman stomping herd of screaming ‘asthmatic’ chain-smoking elephants that is my upstairs neighbour, with any luck in less than two years time.

gezunteit

I am doing quite well with my list. After getting up ridiculously early and going to work yesterday morning, I sorted out the passport photos I need for my application to sit the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The seat in the photo booth was broken, so I had to lean forwards and hover to make my face and eyes fit in their designated places. In the photographs, I have a slightly furrowed brow, and look as though I am about to take off.

Then I went to the health food shop to buy dates and popping corn. I also went to a haberdashery (I like that word, it sounds like sneezing) and bought the wool for my next few knitting projects. Wool is expensive, but I was thinking about it on my way home, and at least it is less expensive than cigarettes. This big pile of wool cost less than all the cigarettes I used to smoke in a month.

It was tempting to start knitting when I got home, but I made myself fill out the JLPT application form, arrange a parcel to be redelivered, and write about The X Files instead. I’m not exactly sure why I am writing about The X Files. Maybe I thought it would be funny. Maybe I spent so much of my time watching them this summer, I want to have something to show for it. Or maybe, because I started writing about them, I feel the need to finish, which would be unfortunate, as I still have Season Nine to write about. Oh, and Season One. I just remembered I haven’t written about Season One yet.

After I gave up writing about The X Files last night, I read about how to make papier-mâché. I also looked on the internet for a new pair of trainers to replace my old falling apart ones, but I got bored and wrote a few e-mails instead. I asked my best friend if he knows what ‘Puis-je le donner un coup de pied?’ means. He thinks it means ‘Can you kick it?’, too, but he is about as rubbish as I am at French. He said he would check with l’homme Français, who from what I understand is still dans La France avec l’enfant.

I wrote an essay for The Elephant Returns today. I also sorted out the pictures for the translation. I went out to buy the Observer, but only to make papier-mâché with. I also bought flour. I picked up a chew for the dog, and also the duvet he wet himself on last month. Then I sat in the sun with the him for an hour, and finally finished reading The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. After I finish writing this, I am going to read the book I am reviewing for The Elephant Returns, in between having tea, going for a walk with the dog, and sleeping.

I only hope I can keep this up. I have one week left until I turn into a pumpkin.

a summer wasting

I spent the summer wasting, but, contrary to the Belle and Sebastian song, the sky has not been blue beyond compare. I don’t know where the summer has gone, or the blue sky, for that matter. I wish I could carry on in the same vein in the autumn, but sadly my wasting days are over as of the beginning of September, for various time-consuming ‘planet earth’ reasons that are too boring to explain.

I hate loose ends, and have written a big list of them I want to tie up by the end of August. The list seems both possible and impossible, both exciting and painful. I will keep this list to myself for the time being, because I have noticed that whenever I write about things I want to achieve in this blog, at best I don’t, and at worst I do the complete opposite. So I am only going to write about the things on my list once they are finished. I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned the list, but still.

Anyway, I might have a lot to write about over the next ten days, then again I might not. So far, I have cleaned the flat, stocked up the kitchen, and banned myself from buying the paper. I am ready to begin.

i made these

I have become obsessed with knitting. You may have noticed that I have a tendency to become obsessed with all manner of things, whether it be reading, writing, walking the dog, photography, the Guardian, going back to Japan, crosswords, Scrabble, or alien abduction. I become obsessed with these things because I have a constant need for something to concentrate on. It’s exhausting, but I have always been like this, and the alternative is worse. If I don’t have something to concentrate on, I start thinking bad thoughts, and when I start thinking bad thoughts, I stop being able to sleep.

Anyway, here are the three things I have made over the past less than two weeks. I like the thought that less than two weeks ago, these things were effectively just pieces of string. I like that, in the same way I like the idea that before I took them, my photographs were just light, and before I wrote them, my stories were just chemicals floating around in my head. [photos missing]

I am currently a knitter-in-training. I also want to learn how to crochet. Once I have mastered all the moves, I intend to rebel against patterns, and start creating random, ugly, and most probably useless works of art all of my own, like alien pets, sea monsters, and UFOs. They will only be works of art in my mind, of course. I am slightly worried that I am becoming obsessed with too many things. Perhaps I should give up crosswords for a while. And Scrabble, but only against my brother, who is currently thrashing me with TADPOLE, a 77 point word.

i am not sure i want to believe

I have survived my first week back at work. I am getting used to being dizzy. Whenever I move, I feel a bit like I am on a boat. But I have stopped being seasick now, and am unfazed when a wall or the floor rushes at me, as they are wont to do if I move too suddenly or fast. It really is possible to get used to anything, given time.

My UFO friend and I went to Dudley after work on Wednesday. We sat in a pub called the Bostin Fittle for several hours. ‘Bostin Fittle’ is a brilliant name for a pub. I was hungry for the first time in weeks, and ate a great big spicy bean burger and chips. Then my friend and I went to the cinema to see the new X Files film. It was bad, but not as bad as I thought it might be. It was silly, but more than anything I thought it was sad. Mulder and Scully seemed old, tired, slow and depressed. Scully’s face didn’t look quite right in a (I’m guessing) plastic surgery kind of way, and Mulder’s was wider than before. He looked better with a beard. There were no aliens, but, predictably, there were bad Russians. Not so predictably, there was a Rottweiler body with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier head grafted on at the neck, which reminded me of my dog, sort of.

I am glad I went to see the film, mostly because now I have watched all nine seasons again plus both of the films, I feel ready to get on with the rest of my life, at long last. I’m not sure about wanting to believe, but there are a lot of other things I want to do. I want to finish reading The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. I want to knit an alien illusion scarf. I want to put together the next issue of The Elephant Returns. I want to hurry up and pass those exams so I can go back to Japan. I seem to want to do something new every day at the moment. I was watching the Olympics earlier, and decided I want to be a Chinese gymnast. Who knows, maybe a good shake is what my vestibular system needs.

a death in the afternoon

Yesterday was manual handling day at work, which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. I am pleased to report that I was neither one of the two over-enthusiastic manual handlers who ripped their trousers at the crotch as they lowered themselves to pick up their load, suitably bent at their knees, of course, with legs spread unnaturally wide. One good thing about manual handling was that the course was held outside in the sunshine. Another was that it got us out of real work for the afternoon.

Not that I’m supposed to work in the afternoon (well, after two, anyway), but still. I left at about four. The trains were delayed because of a ‘fatality’ further up the line. The platform was crowded with people who were complaining amongst themselves about ‘selfishness’ and ‘disruption’ and so on. Apparently someone had jumped in front of a train. I wondered what might go through the mind of someone who chooses to jump in front of a train on a glorious summer afternoon. I couldn’t stop wondering about it all the way home. For one reason or other, I seem to be thinking about death a lot lately.

I got home just before six, had a bath, walked to the station again, and caught a train three quarters of the way back to work. I went out last night with some people from work, plus three people who have recently left. We went out for pizza. I manually handled an avocado, pine nut and spinach salad, cheese and tomato (sorry, Margherita) pizza, plus cheese cake with ice cream into my gaping maw. I was starving. It was about nine o’clock by the time our starters arrived. The three people who have left work recently didn’t seem much happier than the rest of us. I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing. Apart from making this observation, I talked a lot of arse, and made a pact with someone not to eat any more crap at work.

My brother sent a text as I was on my way home again. My brother kept the dog company for most of yesterday. He texted to say he had just taken the dog back to my flat, because the dog seemed bored. The dog always seems bored. My brother also offered to pick me up from the station. I am usually stubborn about walking back from the station, especially after eating too much food, but I graciously accepted last night, because I’d had enough of walking to and from the station by then, and also because it was pouring with rain.

I curled up with the dog when I got home at around eleven thirty. The dog seemed pleased to see me and went to sleep with his head resting on my big fat pizza belly. I read Yuriko Takeda’s Fuji Diary for a little while. I stopped when I got to the part where her dog dies. That part gets me every time. I didn’t want to think about death any more last night, so I put the book down and went to sleep instead.

they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

I have spent a satisfyingly boring day translating, reading the paper, loafing, eating far too many dates, and best of all not working or studying. Today was boring, but I wasn’t bored. Boredom isn’t always a bad thing. I’m not sure what they were doing upstairs earlier, but everything was vibrating. Apart from that it has been peaceful here, and I haven’t spoken a word to anyone, apart from the dog and the cat.

The Guardian was good today. There was a little book of Leonard Cohen lyrics, including one of the coolest songs of all time, First We Take Manhattan. There was also an article about Vilhelm Hammershøi in the review, including a big print of a painting I like, called Open Doors. I like this painting because it reminds me of a house my best friend used to rent in Cornwall, where we spent many a night together bending space and time, back when life was still interesting. The painting also reminds me of Twin Peaks. I might have to cut it out and stick it up on my wall.

I did the Sudoku, and also the whole of the Quick Crossword apart from one word: ‘Test metal for quality (5)’. The letters and spaces I have are A_S_E. If anyone can help, I would be most grateful.

I had a corn on the cob plus a jacket potato with falafel and hummus for tea tonight. Other than that, I don’t think anything exciting has happened. Oh, I have heard that someone found the copy of The Communist Manifesto I left on the train to work yesterday. They seem to have read it already and liked it better than I did.

The dog doesn’t want to go for a walk today. His legs are sore, I think. He has started chewing his right wrist again. He is upside down with his feet in the air at the moment, snoring his head off. The cat has finally left the building.

get me away from here, i’m dying

No, I’m not being overdramatic, I’m just listening to Belle and Sebastian again. But I really did feel like I was dying yesterday. Thankfully, I slept pretty well last night, because it was warm enough to leave the window open, which meant the evil ginger one could go in and out as he pleased without having to wake me up every five minutes, although he woke me up a few times anyway, just to be spiteful, I’m sure. I am still pretty tired, but not as tired as I was — still too tired to do yesterday’s Guardian Killer Sudoku, but not too tired to do the Classic.

Last week was a blur of dropped spreadsheets, cream cakes, and broken legs. I wound up working until about half past six on Friday, and my brother drove all the way over to pick me up afterwards, which is a good job really because I doubt I would have made it home otherwise. By the sound of things, my brother’s week was even worse than mine. Apart from having a crap time at work, on Wednesday he locked his keys in his car. Again. Luckily, as he was banging his head against a wall having exhausted all other options (bar paying someone an extortionate amount of money to break into the car), his girlfriend managed to spring the boot with some kind of big rubber band she found lying around. As far as I can tell, about the only good thing in my brother’s life at the moment is that he is fortunate enough to have a girlfriend who is like a cross between MacGyver and Delia Smith.

*

I have just spent the last ten minutes trying to think of the only good thing in my life, but nothing has sprung to mind. I know there must be something, but I seem to have forgotten what it is for the time being. I’m sure it will come back to me later.

Anyway. In the car on the way home on Friday night, my brother said he was worried about me, and that he thought I should go out and do something. He does have a point. I haven’t gone out and done anything for ages. The Breeders were in town the week before last, and last week I could have gone to see Björk. I would have liked that. The Orphanage was on at The Lighthouse as well, and there is still a photo exhibition at the art gallery I’d like to see. It isn’t that I don’t want to go out and do something — I don’t have the energy, that’s all. I thought about going out with the dog to see the horses this morning, but the dog has about as much energy as I do these days, so we wound up just loafing around instead.

But I like loafing around, and I think the dog does, too. This weekend, I have finished reading another book and started a new one. I have written two Goodreads reviews. I have also written more for The Elephant Returns, and Issue Four is beginning to take shape. Who knows, it might even be out some time next month. And, I was challenged to a game of Facebook Scrabble by my new imaginary friend. She is beating me at the moment, but I don’t mind, because I like my word (‘Orangy’). All in all, I have had a fine weekend of loafing around. Maybe I will go out and do something next weekend, then again maybe I won’t. Please don’t worry about me, though, because I’m doing okay.

the elephant’s graveyard

I was reading The Book of Disquiet last month, and I think I might have mentioned that if I could write as eloquently as Fernando Pessoa about boredom and loneliness, I wouldn’t get so depressed. But actually I’m not often depressed these days, or bored or lonely for that matter. I am at my happiest when I am by myself with time to kill. I am not very good at living, but I am an expert at killing time.

I liked The Book of Disquiet, and I am like Bernardo Soares in some ways. I am still working on my giant spreadsheet, so I am almost like an assistant book keeper. Bernardo Soares’ apartment on Rua dos Douradores sounds uncannily like where I live, and the grumpy old man I work for sounds a lot like Bernardo Soares’ boss, too. Like Bernardo Soares, I don’t interact with people very often outside of work, and I like it that way. I spend most of my life living in a dream — I have almost perfected the art of acting like a functional human being when my mind is a million miles away, as it usually is. I also write, and lately I have been writing a lot more on scraps of paper to remember things I want to type about at the weekend. I can’t type about them much anymore during the week, because I am too busy with my assistant book keeping.

But this is where I start to part company with Bernardo Soares. He is a lot cleverer than I am, and thinks a lot harder about all sorts of things. I am pretty stupid, and I rarely think about anything at all. Bernardo Soares takes himself extremely seriously, whereas I find myself ridiculous most of the time. And as I said, he writes beautifully (or at least Fernando Pessoa writes beautifully on his behalf), whereas my writing is all over the place, especially the punctuation. My brother is an English teacher, so maybe I should ask him to teach me how to use commas properly one day. I could ask him about semicolons, too, but I don’t really care about those, although I care about them a tiny bit more than colons, which I don’t care about at all.

Anyway, apart from being more like a Wes Anderson film, I would like Elephantasmagoria to be a kind of alternative Book of Disquiet, written for an imaginary readership of people like me, who by rights should be bored, lonely and depressed, but for whatever reason are not. They only get bored when they are too busy in the real world, and they only feel lonely when they have to spend too much time with other people. They are reasonably content the rest of the time, or indifferent at the very least.

For the benefit of these imaginary people, my version of Bernardo Soares’ Factless Autobiography is called The Elephant’s Graveyard, which is the name of the place inside my head where I spend much of my time, remembering things, sometimes forgetting, but always twisting them into something slightly different. If there are any real people like me out there, you are welcome to join us, as long as we can pretend you are imaginary, too. If you are really like me, I know you will understand.

one angry dwarf and 200 solemn faces

It was my turn to look after the emergency service again this afternoon. I wandered into the library on my way to the train station and looked for Ballboy in the music section. Thanks to Belle and Sebastian, I’ve been in the mood for listening to Ballboy since sometime last week, but I discovered last night that my CD of their first three EPs won’t play, for some reason. Ballboy is another Scottish band with inspired song titles, like ‘Donald in the Bushes with a Bag of Glue’, ‘Sex is Boring’, and ‘Essential Wear for Future Trips to Space’. But I couldn’t find Ballboy in the B section at the library, so I borrowed some Ben Folds Five and Frank Black instead.

The big, annual conference for sad people who do the same job as me has been on since last Wednesday, and when I was making my way to the bus stop after I got off the train, the streets were packed with overenthusiastic people in fluffy jumpers and corduroy trousers, with purple scrunchies in their hair and bright red rucksacks on their backs. I was just thinking how maybe working today was better than having to dive behind pot plants every five minutes to hide from unfortunate people I don’t want to speak to, when I saw three such people who were in my year at college heading straight at me. I had to think fast. There weren’t any pot plants, so I hid behind a statue instead. I don’t think they saw me. I couldn’t be bothered with anyone at college apart from my best friend, and these days I can be bothered even less to pretend to be friends with people I have nothing in common with, or nothing interesting in common with, anyway.

Whether it was because of the football or the Grand National, it was dead at work this afternoon, so for the most part I sat around upstairs talking to the others about karate and marshmallows, amongst other things. Deathly quiet is better than run off your feet, of course, but I prefer something in between, and I didn’t think this afternoon would ever end. Towards the end of the shift, I suddenly started to feel overwhelmingly tired and dizzy, and when I stood up because I finally had something to go and do downstairs, I felt about eight feet tall. I am five feet and three and a half inches tall, so eight feet felt like a long way up, and I thought I was going to be sick. This kind of thing happens to me from time to time, and more than anything else it makes me cross, because I feel cheated. If I wanted to feel like this I would get drunk. But I stopped drinking five years ago, so it doesn’t seem fair I should have to feel this way now.

I made it to six o’clock without falling over, thankfully. Back in town, I spotted the odd bright red rucksack, but there weren’t nearly as many about as before. Or maybe there were, but I didn’t see them. I couldn’t look up very often, because the hail that was pelting down from the sky hurt my face too much. My brother came and picked me up from the train station, so I didn’t have to walk all the way home. The dog and the cat both seemed more pleased to see me than usual. I suspect it was only because they were hungry, but I was touched, all the same. I like the dog, and even the cat, a lot more than I like most people, especially myself. I am less tired and dizzy now, but my fingers are buzzing. I am going to try my best to have a lie in tomorrow. I can’t remember the last time I had a lie in.

hang your head in shame and cry your life away

I have been listening to Belle and Sebastian’s EPs a lot this week. I have had their songs with pithy one-liners like ‘I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975’, and ‘There are people going hungry far away, they’ve got nothing on their plates, and you’re filling your fat face with every different kind of cake’, and ‘Stuart’s staying in and he thinks it’s a sin that he has to leave the house at all’ going round and round inside my head. It’s been that kind of week. I got in a fight with one of the punters at work on Monday. I snapped at one of the grumpy old men on Thursday. Today, I have been thinking bad thoughts about somebody else closer to home. Thinking bad thoughts about this person brought more Belle and Sebastian to mind, titles of their songs this time — ‘Judy is a Dickslap’, for instance, or ‘Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It’. The person who I’ve been thinking bad thoughts about isn’t called Judy, but their name rhymes with Judy, or at least I can make it, sort of.

I am generally pretty good at keeping the bad thoughts I think about people to myself, and usually they don’t last for long. But on Monday and yesterday I didn’t manage to keep them to myself, and the bad thoughts I have been thinking today won’t go away. They won’t go away, but they are shifting, and now I am starting to think bad thoughts about myself. This is what always happens. I feel justified to begin with, but I wind up feeling guilty. Eventually, I feel guilty enough to apologize, but when I do people have either forgotten I was horrible in the first place, didn’t even notice, or they don’t know what I am talking about because I never actually said anything in so many words. Which only makes me feel worse. I don’t know why it makes me feel worse, exactly. It might have something to do with the fact that people are so nice about how horrible I am. I think I’d feel a bit better if people were horrible back.

Apart from that, this week has been okay. In between the bad thoughts, I have been reasonably content. I noticed the daffodils are out in the Cholera Pit today. I don’t think they were out yesterday, but they might have been. Also, I have lived in Britain for exactly twenty-three years today. We moved here from Japan on this day in 1985. I can’t remember what I was like in 1985. I was probably about the same as I am now, only smaller, and I had better eyesight back then.

striving to be a purple person

I’ve reread some of the posts I’ve written over the last few months and am tempted to delete them. I didn’t like myself very much when I read what I’ve been writing. I felt a little ashamed. I seem to fluctuate between the red and the blue with nothing in between. I have been stuck at the red end of the spectrum ever since I returned from Japan. I have been festeringly angry. I wish I could be somewhere in between. Purple would be okay — purple like the walls of the all-night cafe in Soho where my best friend and I used to drink gigantic frothy mugs of hot chocolate in the midst of our nocturnal wanderings.

Still, I’m not going to delete the posts. Maybe I will be able to laugh at them in a couple of years’ time. I hope so. In the meantime I am going to try to distance myself from reality in this blog. That was always the intention, but what with the big things that have been happening since November, I have lost my way. I am going to try to forget about the big things, at least when I write. I am going to go back to writing about the small things.

Here are a few small things for starters. For supper last night I had baked mushrooms stuffed with avocado, rice, onion, basil and pepper. I made them myself and they were very nice. I think I’ve said this before but I love Friday nights. I listened to Steve Lamacq and Marc Riley, and Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour on 6 Music last night. The theme of Bob Dylan’s show was colours this time, funnily enough. For red he played Red Cadillac & A Black Moustache by Warren Smith, for blue House Of Blue Lights by Ella Mae Morse. He also played Deep Purple by The Ravens.

I am still reading Fernando Pessoa. I think I’d like myself better if I could write about boredom as beautifully as he does. But I’m getting a bit bored of The Book of Disquiet now. I feel like I have been reading it forever. It’s only been four weeks, really. I can’t remember the last time I made a book last four weeks.

save the whales and aliens

I am giving myself a quick break from the massive spreadsheet of nearly two thousand kanji and ten thousand words I am creating, in preparation for the exam I have to sit in December. I’m getting sick and tired and fed up already, and I still have a long way to go. And that’s not the best bit. I’m saving grammar till last. I say last, but then I have to make sure I’ve learned it all well enough to pass the exam. I think I am getting too old for studying for exams. I’ve never liked studying much. I was pretty good at it when I had to be at school and college, but that’s over ten years ago now. By the time I get home from work these days, my brain has turned to mush and I just want to sleep.

Apart from the obvious reason — that I want to get a license to work in Japan; I can’t sit the licensing exam until I’ve passed this one, and even then not till 2010 — this week I have been given two new reasons for forcing myself to stay awake to study. The first is an email I received a few days ago from my government friend (I wrote about him here). Before I wrote to him in Japanese, I sent a query in English via the English part of their website, on a form that said ‘We invite your opinions about whaling’. I thought it best to leave what I think about whaling out for the time being. Maybe I’ll come back to that once I’ve got the license safely in the bag. Anyway, this reply he finally sent, which wouldn’t surprise me if he’d spent the whole eight weeks composing, was extremely smug, and the English was godawful, what’s more. I’m going to study to spite this man. He should have to pass the Level 1 English Language Proficiency Test (if there is such a thing) before he is allowed to unleash his English on the world.

I heard the second reason on the news today on my way home. Apparently the British government is going ahead with rolling out their ID card scheme. The first people to be forced to carry them are to be non-EU foreign nationals. That would include me, then. The idea seems to be that no one will care much if people like me have to carry one, so there won’t be any fuss. Fine, but why not sew some kind of badge on our clothes instead: how about, I don’t know, an upside down alien with a axe sticking out of its head? Ordinarily, I don’t give a toss about being considered foreign despite the fact I’ve lived here for most of my life, but this kind of thing really pisses me off. The British government acts like they want me out, the Japanese government won’t let me back in, at least not to do a job I have been doing in Britain for almost ten years, even though there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of people who want to hire me out there, with or without a license. Thankfully, the opinions of the British and Japanese people I know don’t reflect those of their respective governments. Sadly, their opinions don’t count.

Right, I think I’m sufficiently angry now to go back to my spreadsheet. I will try not to write about politics next time, or the Japanese Language Proficiency test, either, for that matter.

enormous changes at the last minute

I haven’t written for ages, but since last week a ridiculous amount of stuff has been happening.

Since the end of November, when my dad had his second brain haemorrhage a few days before he was finally, after a long, long wait of a year and a half, supposed to be going home to Japan, I have been thinking about how I might go back, too. My dad will have to wait at least another six months now before he can try again, but when he does, I’d like to be there for him. I just hope that isn’t too little, too late.

I haven’t lived in Japan for twenty-three years. I kind of speak Japanese; I can read and write it much better. But the main problem is I work in a field that is almost completely alien to Japanese society at large. I believe in things that the vast majority of Japanese people don’t.

I think I’ve mentioned that I like what I do. I find the thought of going back to Japan and starting again — doing something completely different, trying to fit in — extremely depressing. I spent most of Christmas and New Year lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Quietly, I’ve wanted to go back to Japan off and on for a while. But until recently I have always dismissed the idea, because I thought it would be impossible to go back and be who I am. And then there’s the dog, of course. I didn’t think I could bring myself to leave the dog behind. But since the end of November, like it or not, I haven’t been able to dismiss going back to Japan, because this isn’t just about me any more. Sitting in ICU with your dad and being told he might not wake up again changes a lot of things.

But I think I might have found a way to go back — and maybe make a difference, maybe even be happy. Hopefully, the dog could come, too. I sent my CV to a place in Osaka on Tuesday night, and since Wednesday there have been emails and telephone calls, the upshot of which is I am flying out to Japan for ten days next month to see if things might work out. Nothing is certain yet. It all sounds too good to be true, and I am waiting for the catch. But as someone I know pointed out to me the other day, maybe I deserve a little bit of good luck after all the bad stuff that’s happened over the last seven years. I don’t know if such a thing as luck really exists, and if it does I’m not sure I deserve it, but I hope they’re right.

Anyway, until I go next month, I’m going to try not to think about Japan too much. I’m going to read The Three Musketeers, get issue two of The Elephant Returns published, and start preparing my entries for the 7th Shizuoka International Translation Competition. I’m going to go to work, and try to be normal — I’m going to try not to be too happy or too sad.

composure, hunger, lightbulb

I haven’t smoked now for almost fifty hours. I had a second cigarette out of that pack that I bought on Friday, and gave the rest to my brother. I could have killed someone (especially the cat) yesterday, but I feel better today. I put on my duffel coat and took the dog to see his dog friends at the park last night, and this morning we walked the other way to see the horses. The horses weren’t out, but the sunrise was pretty.

For the last three years or so I have not smoked more than I’ve smoked. The longest I stopped for was nine months. Before my dad had his second brain haemorrhage recently, I hadn’t smoked for over six months. I always start smoking when I start feeling out of control. For a little while, I’m probably not really but I feel a bit calmer and able to keep it together. And invariably, I keep it together for maybe a week and then I lose it completely, and it’s only once I stop smoking again, with great difficulty, that the noise in my head dies down and I feel not so much in control but ready to relinquish control. And then I can get on with life again, sort of, or just go with the flow.

I feel tired and funny at the moment, so for now I think I will just go with the flow. I am about half way through Mason & Dixon. I am playing an extremely slow-moving game of Scrabble with my brother at Facebook. My brother gave me a Guillermo del Toro collection for Christmas and I have watched Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone so far. My dad gave me some of his old vinyl and I have been listening to Johnny Cash at San Quentin. Someone from work gave me a Christmas pudding, and I was so hungry today I steamed it for an hour and a quarter (I don’t have a microwave oven) and ate half of it for lunch and the other half for supper. It was definitely better than porridge. I have moved the lightbulb from the hall into the bathroom, so I don’t have to go to the toilet in the dark any more. I am debating whether I have the energy to wander down to The Lighthouse in town to see The Darjeeling Limited tonight. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll get some sleep tonight.

brain fog, a bad day for caring, mason & dixon

I had to work this afternoon. My eyes opened at six but I felt all foggy in my head when I tried to get up, so I stayed in bed until eight. When I went outside with the dog it was foggy out there, too, and it was hard to know where the inside of my head ended and the real world began.

I work for a big charity and it so happened that the winter newsletter from head office came in the post this morning. On the front page was an even more sanctimonious than usual message to the masses from the Director General, or God, as she is better known, entitled ‘If Only…’ If only they understood, if only they cared, she evangelized. Oh, please. Why am I reading this? If only I didn’t have to go to work, I thought.

I fought my way through the heaving crowds to get there, and my shift began with a full scale riot in the waiting room. The punters started having a go at each other, and when they got bored of that they hurled abuse at us. I am convinced that there is something about Christmas that turns people into wankers. The first man I called in got angry with me because I couldn’t do everything he wanted me to do then and there. ‘I can’t come back in on Monday!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got things to do! Don’t you realize it’s Christmas?’ I started to explain what the emergency service was for, but he didn’t want to know. ‘I thought you were supposed to care!’ he barked, and stormed out.

The thing is, when I think about it for a minute, the job I do is pretty cool. I have to admit that I like what I do. And in my own way, I really do care. But I feel stupid saying that. Caring to me isn’t something you tell people you do. It certainly isn’t a competition. I don’t think I care any more or less than the next person. Everyone cares — if they didn’t care about something, they wouldn’t get up in the morning. They probably wouldn’t even be alive. So when people accuse me of not caring or tell me I should care more, I get confused. I have given up trying to work out what they mean. If I thought too hard about it, I could well stop caring.

Anyway, I didn’t get away from work when I was supposed to, but eventually I did, and on the bus back into town I started reading Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, which I bought yesterday thinking I needed a big story I could get lost in while the rest of the world is busy celebrating Christmas or fighting or whatever. So far, so good. After I got off the bus, as I wandered past the ice skaters and shuffled through all the drunk people at the German market towards the train station, in my head I finished writing a story I thought of last night. I might try writing it down for real tomorrow, if I care enough to get up, that is.

work, grumpy old men, grocery shopping

Back to work today. I say work but that isn’t as bad as it sounds, for the following reasons.

1. I only work until lunchtime. Walking out of work at lunchtime is one of the highlights of my day, and that in itself makes going to work worth all the effort.

2. Commuting takes me an hour and a half each way. About half of that is walking, the other half sitting on trains. Walking is exercise and exercise means I don’t feel so bad about eating. Trains are good for reading on. I read the Metro on the way to work, and whatever book I am in the middle of on my way home. I read The Old Tune by Samuel Beckett today, a play about grumpy old men. I liked it. I like grumpy old men. Where I work is a kind of repository for grumpy old men.

3. If I didn’t go to work, I would go days and even weeks (not months, not yet) without interacting with other people, and I would probably disappear into my head completely. I like disappearing into my head, but it can get a bit intense in there at times so it’s best to come out for periodic reality checks, if only for the sake of a bit of perspective. I don’t mind people, and there are a few I’d even say I like, but being with them for four hours a day is plenty for me. Some of the people I see at work make the inside of my head look quite pretty.

4. I earn enough money at work to live fairly comfortably in my little flat with the dog and the cat. I earn enough to be able to visit my best friend sometimes. I earn enough to save up for things like my film scanner and trips to Japan. I earn enough not to have to worry about making any money out of the things I like to do, like writing, for example, so when I get rejection letters I can just think, oh well.

There are other reasons probably, but those are the main ones I can think of off the top of my head. On my way home today I bought a week’s worth of food (all in all it came to £ 8.14, not bad for 7 bananas, 7 apples, 6 oranges, 2 onions, 2 carrots, 1 red pepper, 4 potatoes, 1 piece of ginger, 1 can of tomatoes, 1 tub of hummus, 1 big tub of yoghurt and 6 pitta breads, plus an apricot and almond bar thing to get me up the hill to my flat). I got back at about a quarter to three and after playing with the dog and the cat in the Cholera Pit and having some lunch I slept for two hours. After supper I wrote three emails, and now I’m writing this. So there was nothing bad about today. Well, except for the alarm going off at six in the morning. But I did wake up to New Order on BBC 6 Music (World, I think the track was), which wasn’t so bad. I hope Chris Hawkins plays Smokebelch by The Sabres of Paradise tomorrow at six. He did once, several months ago. Or maybe it was only a dream.

true love waits in haunted outtakes

A long, long time ago, back in 2003, I was twenty-eight years old and — although I didn’t realize it at the time — a manic insomniac skeletal wreck. My boyfriend had enough and disappeared, but I hardly noticed. I don’t really remember, but even if I had noticed I doubt I would have cared very much. My life basically spiralled out of control around one impulse after another in those days, and I didn’t have the time for anyone apart from the dog, and later my best friend. I did two good things after my boyfriend left. One was to find my best friend again. The other was to sign up for a photography course. I’m not sure why I chose photography. I was never particularly artistic, and I hadn’t attempted to do anything even remotely creative for at least ten years. Photography was probably just another random idea I had at some point. I couldn’t seem to have the smallest idea back then without turning it in to a full scale mission.

To start with photography was the same as everything else and I tackled it in my usual headlong, deranged way, but when we started black and white, somewhere inside my head, almost inaudibly, something clicked. I went to college every Saturday morning, and afterwards, in my little pink Starlet, I would thunder down the length of the M5 and beyond with the dog to my best friend’s house. I would shoot maybe five or six rolls of HP-5 or Tri-X with my Nikon FM2 over the weekend, and drive home again at break-neck speed somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning. I would develop all the rolls of film in my bathroom on Monday night, and every other night after work and walking the dog I would go to the darkroom at college to make prints. I would spend hours on each print. Often I would start again from the beginning the following night. Photography was the one thing in my life I didn’t do in a rush. I didn’t care how long it took to get it right. I loved working in the darkroom. The best part was, after all the test strips and basic prints and flashing and dodging and burning, watching perfect images of my best friend and our weekends together taking form in the developer. I love the idea of life only really boiling down to light and a few chemicals. It makes a lot of things much easier to take. I don’t think photography made me ‘better’, exactly. It just gave me a way out of the incessant noise inside my head.

I lived like this for almost six months in 2004, from January to June. I handed in my workbook and portfolio, and that was the end of the access I had to the darkroom. It was also the end of my two year head-rush, the beginning of my worst come-down ever. I went to bed, only getting up when I had to to go through the motions of existence. I stopped photography. I stopped going to see my best friend. When I slowly started coming to another six months later, I lost the top half of the world in my left eye and, for better or for worse, my life as I had known it was finished for good.

But that’s another story. At the end of last month, I finally did something about my darkroom, or lack thereof. My bathroom is fine for processing films, but it’s just too cramped and unventilated for printing. So I’ve invested in a Nikon Coolscan, and the photographs I have posted here are my first efforts at scanning my old black and white negatives and playing with them in Gimp. I think they look pretty good. My tutor at college used to moan at me all the time about how dark and contrasty my prints were. I think he might be pleased with these. I ignored him in 2004, but I kind of see what he means now. In my defence, it was just the mood I was in at the time. I’m much more of a mellow person these days.