Maia Nebula!

2010-12-11T21:01:00.000+09:00

Season Finale

2010-12-08T17:24:00.005+09:00

Don't blame it on John Lennon.
Don't blame it on Tsukuba.
Don't blame it on the weather.
Don't blame it on my thesis.
Don't blame it on my lack of inspiration.
Don't blame it on a broken heart.

You'll find me again soon—just not here.

Rewrite

2010-12-01T16:54:00.015+09:00

Silence, like a blank paper, gives way to a faint trace of whispers. My swift steps into the station. I'm boarding the victory train—an escape from nonexistence. Her music is coming with me, diving into the white, digging hope out of the void. Looking for you. Her watercolor voice paints a deep turquoise river for me to follow, and we glide under the light traversing the brush-like branches. She's drawing an enormous stone bridge that could've held carriages and white wigs if it weren't a product of this now that she's talking about. A now long gone. She speaks of towns whose names I am bound not to remember, empty stations waiting for no one. Her voice is placing houses on the mountains, and I'd swear it's just a painting if I didn't see cars moving in the distance. You promised you would buy me Arabian sweets. You promised you would take me shopping for cheese. She sings about these promises—about a hand in the dark walking me through an impossible tunnel, about the blue sky and the tree against the window. She sings about a russet hill touching the horizon, and about you forgetting my name. I'm expectant. I wonder how you look like standing on the platform—but I cannot find out. I've listened to this song so many times, yet it always runs too short. In hopes for a faint glimpse of your face I play it over and over. Return to point zero. Dashing into the station. I'm riding that train forever: we will never meet again.

The Right Things

2010-11-25T17:27:00.004+09:00

some people have congregated
around the right books

knitted eyebrows
hands holding chins

discussing about
the solidity of characters
the sharp social criticism
the fine storytelling skills
the themes of life and death and love
revisited.

some others are pondering
about the right album

slowly bobbing heads
huge earphones like a toreador's hat

applauding how it
departs from earlier tradition
experiments with different genres
achieves a new sound
deserves its place
among this year's revelations.

and me

I'm alone
on a crossroad

surrounded by water
and headless rice stalks

completely incapable of
analyzing
describing
naming
daring to conjecture what could be
the right afternoon light.

It's Over

2010-11-22T20:20:00.004+09:00

But don't feel so bad,
I still think about
Your boobs from time to time.

Tsukuba: Here Be Monsters

2010-10-28T23:05:00.001+09:00

Ever since 1973 small tumors have been sprouting at an alarming speed amidst a large patch of untamed green, and every summer an army of vines and bushes fights these lumps to no avail like weakened T-cells at the height of an incurable syndrome. They try in vain to engulf these rotten gray crusts, the external symptom of an inexplicable disease. The origin: a parasite species, Homo sapiens. Diagnosis: progress. Some call it the future.

As seen by the very parasites that inhabit it, Tsukuba—or at least its southern half—is a promise taken from a sci-fi movie. It is here where it becomes apparent that the Triumph of Humankind has reached an apex, and to prove it, rockets and research facilities have been planted here and there, hiding the old rice fields. After all, it was here were the world was supposed to witness how the future would look like—one year before Challenger came down burning like a cautionary tale from the future itself. However, in spite of the shortcomings of evolution, this side of the city decided to remain eternally hopeful. They do not know they are invading this land, for their improvement on the landscape is all they know about the role of humans in time and space. The hordes of children learning to walk across the parks and malls on Sundays are proof of this faith in what has already been accomplished. But of course, they would not venture into the north side of the city.

If Michael Ende’s crumbling Fantasia and the Nothing were to be recreated somewhere in real life, northern Tsukuba would be an ideal candidate. It is home to a university famous for its record amounts of students precipitating from tall buildings every year, as if it were fashionable not only to talk about rain but also to emulate it. A glance into its dorms can make the cheeriest of students forget at once the very purpose of life. Far from every possible source of entertainment, they constitute the last frontier in this territory. The thick forests and mountains of junk surrounding them remind both visitors and residents that Tsukuba is a city on the edge of the world, the last hope if there ever was any. For someone whose home is originally located at the other side of the Pacific or the Eurasian continent, this is the place where old maps should never have removed the “here be monsters” sign. Those who live in this unfortunate zone are reminded every day of their condition of pathogens to nature, having to compete for scraps of space with giant spiders, cockroaches, stray cats and mold. They are the eternal colonizers of a post-apocalyptic backyard where all the unfulfilled dreams of the south were left to rot under the scorching summer sun. There is a particle accelerator somewhere around to remind the miserable dwellers of the north that not all is bad and the future’s still here, but if the south is a tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the north is more of a mixture between Mad Max and Blade Runner. Watch out for the kibble.

This city was supposed to be a perfect plan. Every street, every building, every park, everything was part of an intricate web of urban harmony projected by some of the most skillful architects in the country. Hadn’t Brasilia been built this way too? An oasis of civilization emerging from the savage jungle. And yet people keep hanging themselves in desperation for its deadly lack of chaos. Apparently human beings still need their dose of spontaneity in order to survive. But spontaneity how, if the streets are empty save for the occasional student on a bicycle. Everybody’s locked up, trying to escape from the sight of this wreckage, even if children pop up every weekend as though part of a Huxleyan entertainment program. The future, clean as we may want it to be, degenerates into hopelessness when isolated from real life. Whoever dreamed of this place certainly thought of the future, but probably of a future after the extinction of the human race.

Alone

2010-10-19T08:00:00.001+09:00

I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.

I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;

With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.

—Sara Teasdale

Tsukuba is what happens when the world gives up on you.

2010-10-18T05:50:00.003+09:00

Bathyscaphe

2010-10-13T18:55:00.002+09:00

I sent a bathyscaphe down your heart
To see if I could find myself
Amongst your memories.

It was a selfish thing, I know,
This quest for mirrors—

But I did learn my lesson,
As nothing is reflected
In the dark.

Exile

2010-10-12T17:10:00.004+09:00

The grass began to grow back sooner than expected, but by then they had already fled to places where they could maintain the illusion of living on a parallel timeline. Names had been scratched off phonebooks, and lovers they had relinquished in the middle of the night had all but melted into an unreliable mesh of fingers and tongues. At random times they stopped mid-step and wondered what it would be like to go back and start anew, or what if it had never happened—but it was too late. And yet, they wondered.

A Dream Deferred

2010-10-11T08:48:00.002+09:00

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes

Food for Thought

2010-10-04T18:47:00.008+09:00

There probably isn't much merit in promising the future to somebody. After all, the future is as stable as Io's surface. What is truly remarkable is when you meet someone whose company you really enjoy but who doesn't want to promise anything beyond what's already there, and you're an idiot going about with your stupid romantic ideals, and you act all apocalyptic and tell them you know what get lost, I need my promises and you're not giving any, and you go your merry way and probably get to hear what you wanted to hear from someone else eventually but sooner or later all the dreamy wooing explodes in your face quite inexplicably, and you become the downcast type kicking pebbles when by chance you run into this person again and you find out that they don't hate you, and you ask them why, can't you see I'm an idiot, and they're like no, you're not, I think you're pretty cool actually, and you understand that the future's indeed as stable as Io's surface but if there were such thing as the ability to trace a line and decide who to walk it with it'd be that person, and you're absolutely sure you wouldn't want to be an idiot ever ever again lest you screw up this teeny tiny chance that life's just given you, because even if your own stupid romantic ideals have exploded in your face and you still have some heavy luggage to deal with, you can't deny how incredibly lucky you are. Now that is something to ponder about.

Monster

2010-09-26T12:20:00.025+09:00

I did not know how to play the game when I was a child, and still don't. I don't know how to be human. I thought I'd somehow learned with time and devoted imitation, but then I discovered that I lacked one fundamental trait: love. Nonetheless, I've managed to stumble into other people's paths and walk by their side as though riding a roller coaster, my chest pounding dizzy with dreams. Were my feelings back then real or was it yet another simulacrum for me to feign normalcy? I'll never know—I don't think I'll try again, lest they find out what I really am: a hollow soul. An island. A horrible amorphous formation of dry rocks where no lost bird would ever want to land. I was banished into this cave in order to prevent more people from getting hurt, and yet I've slashed a few curious passersby with claws I've never been able to locate on my body. I watch them bleed to death and I don't understand what's going on, I don't understand the warm liquid splattered on my face. Every new presence is a menace. I'm not afraid of them but of what'll happen to them if they come any closer. Now you're looking at me with that compassionate face, confident that your infinite mercy will bring change to this mess. You're not the first but I do wish you were the last. I've heard "I don't bite" all too many times. I know full well that you don't, but I do. If I were you I'd run away. Now run. Run.

Isn't Life Funny?

2010-09-22T14:33:00.005+09:00

And by funny I mean it's been telling us some awful joke that's turned everybody silent and's frozen spoons mid-flight. Party's over. Good luck staring at your shoes.

The Automated Girl of Your Dreams

2010-09-18T11:27:00.004+09:00

Today I woke up to find the sky painted a pleasant pastel blue. In days like this one would want to go out and soak up the sun, but autumn mornings are filled with smoke and my lungs are a bit delicate, so no can do. I don't know how people survive here with all the slash-and-burn sort of thing going on. It's quite awful, I tell you. You know? I had taken up jogging at sunrise some time ago but had to quit because it was getting impossible to breathe, let alone run. It's such a shame.

So how are you doing? Fine? I'm doing fantastic.

(Sadness? Anger? Me? Oh, puh-lease!)

Promise

2010-09-15T19:08:00.008+09:00

We were going to be friends. I was absolutely sure about that. I was going to teach him songs. I was going to go visit his father and play with him instead. I was going to write a book that he might have liked. A book about llamas. He was going to think of me as weird yet cool. One day he would trust me enough to ask me a question. Any question would be fine. Twenty years from now, I was going to call his father on the phone and say "I told you."

Now that the deluge has turned dreams into debris, I think I should still keep my promise, even if slightly different. Twenty years from now, I am going to call his father on the phone and say "I'm still here."

Her Morning Ritual

2010-09-11T14:00:00.004+09:00

They sleep right on the floor. At least that's how the futon has come to feel now that it's old and flat. The alarm goes off at 6:15. He moans and twitches his mouth, trying to cling to the last bits of slumber, but when he feels her waist shifting under his arm, he has no option but to open his eyes and watch. Her getting up is a slow progression of body parts emerging bit by bit from a familiar underworld. Her left hand rubs her face rather violently and then brushes back her ruffled hair. A sudden jerk pulls her torso up like a puppet that's been suddenly picked up from the bottom of a chest. The subtle muscles in her arms bulge tensely under her weight. Her arched back plays tug-of-war against tiredness until her head falls forward. Now her breasts droop over the folds of her belly. Sometimes —when she lies on her back, for instance— they look like perfect domes made of pudding. He loves their malleability, how soft their skin feels—but wait, she is already hurling herself up and stumbling dizzily into the day. From here he can see the stubble on her legs. If he looked up, he would be able to catch a glimpse of cellulite dimples up her shorts. One step, then another, and she's gone.

When she sleeps, all wrinkles and bulges are smoothed down, safely concealed under the covers. He runs his hand down her back and tries to explain to himself how the fragility of this hidden topography becomes a revelation of strength every morning. She's never given a thought to those first minutes of her waking life, but as soon as she disappears it becomes clear that he can't wait for the next day to watch the spectacle all over again.

Erase Me

2010-09-05T18:59:00.001+09:00

I hate it when they try to showcase “all sizes” in pictures of women (because they’re being all condescending, “embracing” “real women”) but still turn their faces into some sort of unrecognizable photoshop blob. The skin, our shield, our battlefield, is being reduced by the media to this pristine untouched satin sheet. Thus, even if they have the guts to display you—you with the saggy boobs, you with the bulky hips—, all signs of individuality (hair, scars, wrinkles) will be erased from you. We’re encouraged to achieve perfection through the removal of ‘blemishes’ because our skin is not meant to tell stories. Not only are we still lacking voice out there but our bodies do too.

Letting Go

2010-08-31T17:40:00.005+09:00

The certainty of the end has got to be the saddest thing. Or I don't know. I've heard of people who remain serene when they know there is nothing left to do, no solution to their life-threatening condition, and they just let go. Letting go is important. But how to do it is the question.

Once I felt invincible about the possibilities that love offered, no matter how hard it seemed to keep it going. It was in my hands. Distance was a terrible obstacle, but I was sure I had the means to overcome it. But that was only one variable I could control against thousands of others. Time and lack of reciprocity, for instance. Or let's not call it that way, but rather... much more enthusiasm on one side than the other. One side believes in love as a miracle to be conquered against all odds, the other thinks of love as merely incidental. It works right here right now where we found it or it doesn't work at all. Unfortunately (the word is an understatement), I cannot offer right here right now to anybody —unless they were willing to come here, which would of course be absolutely wonderful—. And there's no word about alternatives to make paths intersect. Perhaps my brief presence does not elicit any sort of hope nor craving for a longer future together from anybody.

So here I am, letting go. At least I'm not clinging to it desperately. One lesson I've learned before is that cats that cling to curtains sooner or later rip them with their claws. However, I still wish life were a tad more benevolent towards me in terms of creating opportunities to experience shared domesticity. Oh well. Someday, I guess.

The Pen Is a Mighty Sword

2010-08-12T07:35:00.003+09:00

Fear. A pencil in my hand. Fear. It's a pointy thing, a pencil. At any moment it'll slash my other wrist and slice my fingers. Terror. Why am I wielding such a dangerous weapon? Don't they forbid these things? Some tyrants do, indeed. I feel responsible. There's a whole box of them, and I could just use them anytime. Ha! Ha! Ha! Evil laughter! The universe is right here for me to create and destroy at will. I'll show you how.

A line on a piece of paper. The horizon. Your name on the line. Now you own this desert. I'll give you this window to a desert where your name rises like the sun. Your name is daylight, didn't you know? Everything that's touched by your name is your kingdom. Everything that's touched by your name is my world.

Gigantic Gruesome Girl from Outer Space

2010-07-01T20:36:00.000+09:00

Today I tried on a pair of shorts that were too tight. I was thinking that I had mistakenly picked a size S, but then I checked the label and realized they were size L. This meant I was bigger than the last chance to wear that piece of clothing. But how come, if I’m no bigger than the average Impressionist nude?

I’m not thin. I have a round belly and skin folds. I’m soft to the touch. I’m mostly comfortable with my body, but every time I’m unable to find clothes that fit me I feel like I’m being reminded that my appearance is tragedy. Gigantic gruesome girl from outer space. It doesn’t even matter if another human being finds me attractive as I am—what they’re telling me with their ever-shrinking sizes is that everything about me is wrong, especially eating and getting pleasure from food. Hunger pangs and self-deprecation, that’s what life should be about, right? The fact that I’m not actively seeking to alter my shape into compactness is unacceptable to a society that keeps trying to convince women that they should only strive to become a passive agent of titillation. Thus, in order to trick me into continuous self-punishment for my being comfortable with my own human nature, they make it look as if I had to dress in tents.

I am not horrible nor too big for any standards. It’s hard to say it with true conviction after I’ve been led to believe that I’m meant to fit clothes and not the other way around, and that not fitting is a huge character flaw that must be fixed at once. But I shall repeat it until it rolls smoothly off my tongue. I will not give in to self-hatred.

Sonic Boom

2010-06-27T07:19:00.004+09:00

Noises come from the other side of the wall. It could be my neighbor's fist against the concrete. I'm terrorized. A primitive form of communication, a request for me to erase my interference in his acoustic space—just when I thought I had finally appropriated a few cubic meters of air.

Bang, bang.
His drumming will sew my mouth shut. It will turn stringed instruments into mere fancy boxes. Sooner or later it will bid me to stop breathing, lest my existence is far too noisy for his comfort.

Bang, bang.
A chair squeaks. My neck crunches. Space, enter, double-click.

Bang, bang.
Is it him? Or is it my heart?

Pond

2010-06-25T10:44:00.004+09:00

Life unfolds in front of me,
untouchable and limpid.

A murder of crows melts
into dizzy ripples.

Cold, wet hands
smudge the hot trails
on my cheeks.

I cannot reach down
for the sky.

Mirror

2010-05-31T12:25:00.006+09:00

Their bodies were still entwined when they looked up: there was a mirror on the ceiling. They had heard before that the sight would be gross, that they'd try to look away.

But it was nothing like that.

They couldn't stop gazing, not an ounce of shame in their eyes. It was them, and nothing could be more beautiful.

Bulbous

2010-05-27T17:52:00.006+09:00

She says that sometimes my cheeks look puffy when I wake up. Today is one of those days, so I smile and my nose goes all bulbous. I wish there were a way she could always warn me about this happening—or not; a way for her to look at my face every morning, every morning, first thing in the morning.

That Ominous Moment

2010-05-01T11:55:00.003+09:00

When you discover that you're powerless against fate—
Or rather, against somebody who never affixed the word 'forever' to your name.

Leap Year (11:11)

2010-04-25T10:09:00.001+09:00

Perhaps I wasn't meant to settle for やってみよう.

大学会館

2010-03-02T04:21:00.004+09:00

There comes a time when you must say goodbye—even if only temporarily—to a human being with whom you discovered goodbye was not an option. Since you cannot do much about fate (for the time being), you have no choice but to follow this person down to the very end of your road together, kiss your last kiss, then turn around and walk back to normalcy (i.e., the way things were before they appeared in your life). You gulp down the tears and let them harden like amber. Even if you’ve never suffered from an embolism or kidney stones, you must be able to picture how painful it must be to have a foreign object stuck inside you, impeding the free flow of whatever it was that made it comfortable for you to live alone. This crazy pebble is full of memories and hopes for the future making of new memories. It hurts, but in a way you're glad it hurts. It's life at its fullest. Love.

Fade

2010-02-20T21:39:00.002+09:00

One day this long trip will come to an end, and I will no longer be of your interest. Your morbid curiosity for a girl who lost her mind on the other side of the planet will recede, and you will slowly get up from your chairs and leave the theater. Look at her. She lives where we live, she eats what we eat, her heart is perpetually broken—what good is she now that all-too-common body is surrounded by Roman letters?

I once escorted a friend of mine to dinner with some friends of his. It was a rather uneventful gathering, except that for the duration of the meal I was invisible to them. At some point they introduced me to a newcomer as a nameless being, undeserving of recognition as a human—until my friend mentioned my current whereabouts. As he (not I) pronounced the two magic syllables, I sprung to life from thin air before their eyes. That's how I understood I represent nothing but shock value to most of the people I meet. Once it's gone, I'll be gone as well.

It should be okay, I guess. Le monde sans moi, c'est la même chose.

My Other Half Speaks

2010-02-14T11:56:00.006+09:00

(Not my other half as in my romantic partner, for I am a complete being with or without him.)

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
—Sylvia Plath, "Ariel"

Do you remember, dear, this thing called gender studies? You probably do, because you talk about it all the time. Do you remember how crazy you are about this subject and how you would like to do research on it and talk about it and teach people about it and help the world change even the tiniest bit in terms of it? It is as inherent to you as writing, singing, and drawing. Try wiping it out of your head for a while. Can you simply quit this thing that drives your desire for knowledge, a passion that even gets you in trouble with other people? Can you?

Do you also remember that you are very good at what you do (that is, when you actually do it)? Sit down, write a paper: most chances are that it will be excellent, and you know it. This fear of yours is nothing more than a fear of yourself. You know very well that you are your own worst enemy, and you're letting the enemy win. Take the word "stasis" and do something beautiful with it! You think that education ruined your creativity, but look at yourself: you're back at sketching, you're singing again, and you never actually stopped writing. This blog is witness to it. Anger, frustration, forget all that. You're flourishing rather than withering.

Feel the ideas flowing through your fingers, listen to the endless pit-pat on the keyboard, see how words rain. You can summon this rain.

The future is far ahead—why worry about it? Why listen to all those who push you into something that's never worked out for you? Were you ever planning on coming to Japan? Dreaming, yes, but planning? How did you end up in Hawaii? Was that ever among your plans? Dreams, yes, but plans?

Don't be scared. Take it one step at a time. Soon you'll be done with this weird, weird dream called Japan. Who knows what'll come next? Isn't it exciting to expect the surprise?

Stasis

2010-02-13T17:40:00.008+09:00

I think I've just had an epiphany. To some of you (my three readers) this might come off as obvious, but it wasn't for me until now.

As some of you may know, I've been struggling with school for the past year. I've been spending the last twelve months staring at a computer screen for hours on end, paralyzed, dreaming of other stuff I'd like to be writing instead (or singing, or drawing). I have found no remedy for this paralysis so far. I like to call it the Stasis because it reminds me of Sylvia Plath's "Ariel". Some would rather call it stupidity, though, and some laziness. Some have thought less of me for not caring to read Derrida hard enough to understand his Différance, and even I have come to doubt my own capacities for not feeling like doing actual literature-related work. After all, literature is my major, and it has been so for the past seven years or more. What you may not know is that I wasn't exactly an English major when I started college in Iowa. I was a Writing major. I took a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop, along with Shakespeare and other English literature subjects. I got my poetry published in the school magazine. Overall I was happy with that, because my ultimate dream was to have my stories published. But then I went back home and all that got shut down, leading me into another kind of stasis: one where I was a good student, but a terrible writer. In fact, I didn't write anything at all, except for this blog and the one in Spanish. I distrusted my creative abilities so bad that, in terms of drawing, I wouldn't sketch anything beyond the blank spaces around my class notes.

Now that I have spent almost four years of my life in almost complete seclusion, I have come to understand lots of things about myself. And the landslide of epiphanies is frightening.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with computers and space. I wanted to become an astronomer or a software engineer. However, I didn't become either. I've been trying to find out lately why I didn't end up a scientist if I watched Cosmos and read Cimpec magazine and programmed as a child. Was I some kind of failed promise to the world of science? However, as I gazed at a breathtaking picture of M42 the other day, I understood: I'm content with the beauty of it all. It is for astrophysicists to explain the hierarchical formation of galaxies, but it is for me to picture them in my head, and turn those pictures into words, and let others dream my dreams, and perchance even incite them to have dreams of their own.

Maybe this stasis is my mind speaking to me, begging me to pull off from a path pointing to what I should become, dragging me back to my real passion. I shall not regard it as failure if I don't become a researcher. However, it has been very stupid of me to ignore the voices that have been speaking to me since such an early age. I mean, I relinquished all forms of social life to write a novel for two years during high school and I still don't get it?

Maybe it's not a mistake on my behalf. Maybe I was meant to walk this long path in order to finally gather the strength to walk into the void of accepting myself for who I am and not who I'm supposed to be.

Having said this, on to the pen, to the guitar, to the sketchbook!

The Brain in Love

2010-02-13T17:06:00.001+09:00

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you.
Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.
Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you.
Consumed by fire of my love for you.
I remember what you said to me,
I am thinking of your love for me.
I am torn by your love for me.
Pain and more pain.
Where are you going with my love?
I am told you will go from here.
I am told you will leave me here.
My body is numb with grief.
Remember what I said, my love
Goodbye, my love,
Goodbye.

—Anonymous Kwakiutl poem, 1896

Interesting

2010-01-21T12:31:00.003+09:00

Apparently the answer to the question is

get the hell out of Japan!!!

A Brain Like a Bowl of Warm Oatmeal

2010-01-20T11:57:00.006+09:00

I hate it when things stop making sense.

I wish I cared about how Kate Chopin's "Désirée's Baby" exemplifies the power of race in society in light of Ian F. Haney López's "The Social Construction of Race." I'm trying hard not to think about it as to work on it as an ant would mindlessly drag a half-bitten leaf, but this bland blank brain just won't take it in.

Is there some clue that I'm failing to understand? I'm looking for that hidden arrow pointing towards the true direction of my life, some sort of untapped talent or at least something that doesn't paralyze me with fear and/or boredom. The waters of my mind are infested with eels, and not even thick-skinned crocodiles can dive in to help me find that treasured epiphany everybody seems to have at some point in their youth when they just know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Everybody seems so full of resolve, and I only stare at waves leaving algae on a faraway shore like an endless offering to an unknown god. If only the waves would bring me something too.

2010

2010-01-01T22:23:00.003+09:00

My God, it's full of stars!

Good Morning, Girl!

2009-12-13T19:18:00.004+09:00

I'm trying to snooze because I've opened my eyes at 7am despite having fallen asleep at 3am, and it's unfair with my mind that my body is so used to waking up early no matter what. It's Sunday, after all, so I should try to get some more rest. I toss and turn with the music on, so whenever there's a song that doesn't mingle well with my dreams, I have to move my arm and press a button to change it, resetting the whole cycle. Suddenly, the phone rings.

"Good morning, girl!" says a cheerful voice at the other side of the line. I recognize that voice all too well, and I laugh. I always laugh when I hear him. It's not that there's anything funny about him, but it's rather related to the joy he brings.

He's speaking in English. He's talking really fast and I don't understand everything he's saying, partly because I'm partly deaf, and partly because I'm partly sleepy. He tells me all about his recent nightly outing and this club full of teenagers and twelve francs for the entrance and altogether eighteen francs or something and I've no idea how much in yen is one Swiss franc so I mistakenly assume from his tone that it must be expensive. I'm listening intently, stupidly wondering why we're having this conversation in English, as if I had forgotten our custom of alternating languages indistinctly. It could've very well been French: then I would've been in real trouble. I'm doing my best to recover that language from the shipwreck of oblivion in order to broaden our verbal spectrum.

He's still talking and I'm not saying much. I'm a zombie with Asperger's: I love that he's calling but can't understand why he's doing so. All the love in my heart is not enough to make up for my chronic social autism, so I interpret this sudden bout of upbeat verbosity as—

"Are you drunk?"

The Current State of Things

2009-12-10T11:00:00.006+09:00

Every morning I wake up thinking exactly the same thing: how strange it is to be in love! Not to merely reciprocate someone else's unexpected fondness, but to spontaneously begin to feel something warm flowing inside like a new kind of blood. In the shower, on the wall, there is a jelly octopus clasping its tentacles around a fish, attesting his earlier presence in my home. I stare at it and think: how strange, indeed! To be happy and not to doubt for one second that this joy is real, to know that there is no need to look hard in order to find the tiniest remnant of a reddish cinder—for everything, everything around me seems to nod and say: he loves you too!

EC

2009-12-08T22:33:00.004+09:00

What right does anyone but me have over my body? Who decides what my future should look like and how I should handle my relationships? Why is everyone revolving around us women and judging us as if we didn't have minds of our own, as if our bodies didn't belong to us?

Emergency contraception has been prohibited in Colombia, and my head is boiling with anger. I'm angry because a society that will not take responsibility over its hungry and uneducated children is telling us that it'd rather have more unhappy citizens (both mothers and children) abandoned to their luck than give a woman freedom to make a decision over her own priorities.

To use the "child as God's miracle" as an argument against abortion and/or emergency contraception is to deny the fact that children are human beings and not just cute little pets to cuddle. It's like getting married for the sole joy of having a wedding. Children don't only need the smile of a loving mother (who will of course be thrilled to have her life truncated because of this unwanted step) in order to thrive, but also slightly more basic things like food and clothes and good education, which in many cases the mother cannot provide. I wonder if those who go preaching about how beautiful it is to have a baby know what it really means to give birth to a person. A person's lifetime usually spans a few decades, so I don't see what's so fantastic about letting yourself and somebody else down from their very appearance on Earth and for so, so, so long.

I refuse to let tissue grow inside me if it is bound to become a fundamentally unhappy human being. My parents have given me so many opportunities and so much joy that I cannot conceive the idea of denying my own children the amazing kind of life I have had. I cannot fathom why anyone should be denied such right, and most important, why women should be denied the right to treat their bodies as what they are: their own.

In Colombia, a woman's future is deemed to be worth less than that of a pair of cells. This is how important we are to those who rule over us.

Nowhere Woman

2009-12-06T20:50:00.003+09:00

Sometimes I feel like, despite having done my fair share of travelling, I haven't actually been anywhere. Maybe it's just because every time I've planned to travel I've ended up in the middle of nowhere.

考えの浅い人の告白

2009-12-05T16:21:00.006+09:00

I took those heavy books to our trip because I didn't want to come out to you as shallow, which I ended up doing anyway. You had written a dedication on the book you had sent me—you perceived me as intelligent, interesting, and strong, it said—and I wanted to live up to that image. And the problem was exactly that: trying to emulate that person you had conceived out of my writing. My usual disregard for other people's opinions about me suddenly turned into an uncomfortable bout of self-conscience, perhaps because I was so fascinated with you, or the idea of you, or even the mere possibility of having someone to be corny with after all this time.

I mention this, even though it doesn't matter anymore, because it still stings. It still stings that I actually thought less of myself in your presence because you were such a big scholar and I was just an undergrad student who knew nothing about anything. After all, you—you of all people, genius among geniuses, crème de la crème—had chosen me for this holiday fling, and I didn't know if I'd be able to measure up to your standards, so I thought I'd cover up my tiny ignorant self with academic books and unfinished homework at a time when I was even doubting whether I had chosen the right path for my future. I was a fool to think myself unworthy of you, because eventually you deemed me so.

So there you have it. I am shallow, and I don't get jokes, and I seldom exercise. I'm non-conformist and grouchy, and I don't read nearly as much as you do. But you should have seen all that naturally coming out of me, and not oozing through the cracks of my imperfect mask of shame. I'm sorry I tried so hard to please you.

What bothers me the most is that I still see you in my dreams, and in those dreams you finally take me for who I am. But who cares now whether you could like me or not in spite of myself? A writer could not ever spend her life beside a man who lives in utter silence.

冷却ファン交換

2009-11-30T09:34:00.007+09:00

My computer sort of died on me last week. Actually, it was the fan that died; the computer still worked as long as I left the hair dryer running on cold mode behind it. Aside from the unbearable noise it was an acceptable solution, but I took it to Tokyo for repair, anyway. The chosen place was, of course, not the Apple Store, as ¥45000 for a fan change didn't sound too good, especially knowing that I could perform the operation myself if only it didn't take so long to get the spare part shipped from America. So I went to this tiny, tiny place at a back alley in Akihabara and left it there. The guy at the shop was really nice--the whole thing reminded me of my desire to become a computer technician (not an engineer) while pursuing my Literature degree. I wanted to take clothes making lessons as well, but I never got to fulfill these plans because of the scholarship. So anyway, here I am now with no computer, waiting for a phone call to rush back to Tokyo, hoping that everything turns out fine in the end and I can go back to my usual compuuterized life.

These days haven't been so hard, though. I've spent my time reading books, playing guitar, and even discovering new pastimes: My first attempt at bijouterie this morning has been succesful. I'm now wearing trinkets I've made myself!

I'm actually grateful for this obstacle, for it has taken me away from what was looking like an addiction, back to more creative endeavors.

It also helps to receive phone calls from Cavorite from time to time. This means I won't have time to forget that voice and that laugh that stir swarms of multicolored butterflies in my stomach. Have I mentioned that he makes me so very happy? Well, he does.

2009-11-10T17:27:00.003+09:00

The cute French TA (who suddenly lost all his charm) called upon my boss and me for a meeting about my TA job. After rambling about paperwork, he suddenly mentioned something about my salary. I'm supposed to agree that I'm being overpaid. "Are you OK with receiving this much money? Don't you think it's too much?" Well, why didn't you decide that before hiring me? Why are you forcing your ill-timed point of view on me?

I can't really write anymore about this. It's so frustrating I'm speechless.

I lost you, but I regained myself.

2009-10-18T08:45:00.001+09:00

Nabusimake

2009-10-12T11:10:00.008+09:00

He always wakes up at the wrong hours, as if time were not a matter pertaining to him. Trapped in a bedroom with wooden floors by his own accord, he sings to himself.

He talks about TV as though he were encountering it for the first time in his life, and I love the fascination coming out of his pretty voice when he describes such a boring everyday thing. Enormously wide-eyed, he blushes when he hears my stupid jokes—but then he surpasses them, causing me to twitch my mouth in that silly bewildered face he finds so much fun to watch.

Our life together is a one-page story of dances through frozen food aisles, lost glasses, and strange findings of coins.

And yet, I'm starting to miss him.

North-North

2009-10-02T15:36:00.005+09:00

Sometimes I ponder about love.

I caught a glimpse of love last summer. My camera froze a pair of faces smiling cheek to cheek under the midday sun, and there they are, looking at the world all dreamy from their perfect flat landscape. But here where we breathe and walk those mouths no longer smile, and if they do, they do on their own, submerged in different shades of blue. The magnet attached to my little heart seems too feeble to attract another one in order to beat together. Or maybe I'm stuck in a North-North situation: try as hard as you can, you simply cannot join two magnets if they're not facing opposite poles. And I wish the metaphor made sense, but I'm always the opposite, never the same—yet I'm always repelling whatever moth approaches my flame.

Sometimes I think I'm meant to be alone forever. It doesn't really strike me as a tragedy, as I have plenty of things to do on my own. I've got stories to write, and pictures to take, and drawings to make. However, sometimes I do wish for stupid things like cheek-to-cheek smiles. The kind that last. I wish for a North-South.

Graphite

2009-09-19T08:34:00.004+09:00

I guess, dear Olavia, that you are condemned to walk around with a pencil stuck in your heart.

Try wrenching it out—you'll die within minutes. You will have to let it vibrate with every beat, accept it as a part of you. Perhaps if you let the graphite meld with your blood, one day you'll be able to transfer your bruises onto paper. And if you can stand it, pain will have acquired a whole new meaning.

2009-09-15T17:48:00.004+09:00

"What a delightful thing it is," so ran my thoughts, "to have done with study! Now I may really enjoy myself! I know as much as any girl in our school, and since it is the best school in England, I must know all that it can ever be necessary for a lady to know. I will not trouble my head ever again with learning anything; but read novels and amuse myself for the rest of my life."

This noble resolve lasted, I fancy, a few months, and then depth below depth of my ignorance revealed itself very unpleasantly!

Frances Power Cobbe, Autobiography (1894)

2009-09-13T15:30:00.010+09:00

Manchmal fühle ich mich, als ob ich fliegen könnte.

頑張って！

2009-09-12T15:40:00.000+09:00

"Ganbatte!" was one of the first words I learned in Japanese. Minori had taught it to me when we were together in Iowa. Back then, I was like a little puppy who could make itself understood when hungry, thirsty or tired in this new language. I think Minori had fun trying to teach me new tricks; I was his pet, this girl who had recently left her third-world home to see the world–or cornfields–for a lark. Somewhere around that time I was dubbed "Acosta-sensei," by our friend Kotaro, maybe out of irony.

After I returned to Colombia in 2003, my bond with Japan was reduced to Minori and his boxes full of candy, occasional e-mails from Kotaro, and the fervent dream of experiencing myself the things I had only been able to live by proxy. I still thought fondly of the expression which reminded me of a man I loved and inspired me to hang on to whatever goals I had. To me, "ganbatte!" was not just a wish: it was a philosophy. The reason for this could be found in Minori's tendency to deepen even the shallowest ideas. I still cherish this man and admire him a lot. His achievements illustrate what the word used to represent for me.

However, now that I've been living in Japan for the past three years and a half, the meaning of "ganbatte!" has faded as it no longer represents something special nor dear to me, just as the nickname Acosta-sensei doesn't ring a bell anymore since I lost contact with Kotaro. Everyone around me wishes each other to hang on, whether the feat is big or small. I find no fault for this loss in the word nor Japanese society, but it's just the sacrifice that dissociation brings.

And so this blog goes on, almost devoid of change (after all, what's in a name?). It is still the same collection of excerpts from the story of a girl who once looked up in wonder at a star cluster whose existence her eyes found to doubt. That girl still looks up, fascinated at the myriad of twinkling marvels she could never even hope to fathom, and yet gathering inspiration from them to lay down scrambled lines on random pieces of paper.

2009-09-12T15:33:00.002+09:00

If you're looking for Olavia Kite, you can find her here: http://aspleiades.blogspot.com.

Not much of a change, but a change nonetheless.

Mad Girl's Love Song

2009-09-08T06:52:00.001+09:00

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

—Sylvia Plath

I Shall Not Care

2009-09-07T01:01:00.001+09:00

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you shall lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

—Sara Teasdale

2009-09-06T06:42:00.001+09:00

As if I didn't know yours is the system with the weakest radio waves. An enclosed system that emits no light.

Stilte

2009-09-03T13:15:00.001+09:00

Silence comes back into the room and makes herself comfortable.

She looks like one of those long glamorous girls from the 1920s, all dressed in white, leaning sideways on my bed as if it were a chaise longue. She blinks slowly with those dreamy eyes of hers and glances at me, at the wall, at the window.

I'd like to tell her that she's got the wrong address, that she shouldn't be here, but she's wise enough to distinguish the cold, stale air as inviting incense, the mess on the floor as a trail to the bright red spot where my venae cavae lead.

Tonight I shall have a dream, and she won't be in it. Oh, temporary solace for her lips of winter morning!

Urumqi

2009-09-02T21:32:00.004+09:00

I fell in love, and my love had the taste of goodbye. The tip of my tongue was stung with bittersweet longing.

To be far from every coast, to be helpless and unable to even fathom the hope of blue merging in blue...

2009-08-15T15:02:00.000+09:00

蟲

2009-06-18T19:15:00.004+09:00

The sole purpose of this post is to remember forever the night I cycled with Yurika through a country road. The uncontrollable green kept lashing my legs, seeking to slap my face, and the cars by our side were swerving, praying not to cause an accident. We slid downhill like drops of liquid pouring out of a bottle into the immensity of the rice paddies. If I were to remember only one thing about June, I thought while gazing at the charcoal-colored landscape around us, may it be this ride.

We ate at an almost empty restaurant where they asked us what language we were speaking in. "Many languages," she said. Indeed, Spanish and Portuguese and Japanese and English were intermingling freely in our conversation.

When it was time to go back we took a different path, one I knew from my trips to the City Hall. It was extremely dark and quiet, but there was nothing to fear, just like in a dream. It was full of uncertain trees following us with their summery scent. During the day this road looks like those I saw in Vietnam. The exuberance of the vegetation defies all human advances, as the vines swiftly wrapped around wires would prove.

Sometimes Tsukuba overwhelms me with a beauty I could not fathom when I first set foot here. Perplexed and intoxicated, I ride on.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

2009-06-08T07:58:00.006+09:00

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

—Walt Whitman

Silk

2009-05-15T20:06:00.003+09:00

Indescribable beauty. Words being woven together like threads of silk to talk about silk. It's hard to recover from this shock, so much beauty contained in 90 pages or so. It came in a bright green envelope, postmarked from Sweden. I can't even write properly about it.

I devoured the book in about an hour. After I turned the last page and met that blank stare from the book that ended, I sat in silence in my room, images still dancing in my head. Paths and forests and eyes that meet. Eyes that meet. I've wandered those streets, I've heard those trees sing the wind. And yet they've been rendered magical by a hand thousands of kilometers away. I'm astounded.

Will I ever be able to ignite sparks from words like that?

Morning Has Broken

2009-05-11T07:14:00.006+09:00

I love dawn. Everything starts anew from a touch of gold on the grass, a quiet fire in the sky. Being able to see sunrise from my window is one of my favorite things about this apartment. Sometimes I even get up early just to see the horizon come alive; I've been doing it quite often since I moved in here. The sight was even soothing in times of internal murk. I may have been left alone in a snowstorm all right, but the beauty of daybreak never failed.

I've been fixing things lately. The feeling of plenitude that struck me amid the water in Waikiki doesn't seem to be leaving, and I'm glad it has managed to stay. All it took for the clouds to dissipate was a couple of huge decisions on the course of my life. When I met Prof. Lambert to discuss a few of them, I knew I was taking a huge step away from the shadows. Career prospects, foreign languages, what to do with my slowly reawakening creative drive, everything seems to have fallen into place all of a sudden. Who knew that staring at a radiotelescope could be so effective?

This weekend I went to Shibuya to meet one of my best friends and her boyfriend. We gathered at an Irish pub and ate shepherd's pie and apple crumble. Then we walked around the familiar streets which had become so alien to me. Suddenly I realized that I was enjoying it pretty much like during my first days in Japan, when I would venture out of language school after class to walk around these packed streets and stare at all the little details decorating the whirling crowd. It's like the world is coming back to shape, sunshine hitting strong again, a fresh coat of paint on this faded landscape.

It's like daybreak after a long, cold night.

1999

2009-04-23T07:08:00.005+09:00

We are, all of us, alone
Though not uncommon,
In our singularity.
Touching
We become tangent to
Cirles of common experience
Co-incident,
Defining of collective tangency
Circles
Reciprocal in their subtle
Redefinition of us.
In tangency
We are never less alone,
But no longer
Only.
—Gene Mattingly

I've been looking for this poem for exactly ten years, after I found it in my geometry book in high school. Wow, has it really been that long? I was fifteen and I practically owned two of the whiteboards in my classroom. Every day I'd write a quote on one of them, and the other one I simply used to draw whenever I pleased. I used to draw cartoons of my friends, from which I planned to make a series called 'The Zoo'. I don't know where the name came from, it simply did. One of my friends still talks about it with me.

I was already Olavia Kite back then. When I came up with the name I thought I'd use it for a character in a story, but I liked it so much that I decided to keep it for myself. Olavia Kite. The Beatles reference is obvious. My parents gave me a calligraphy pen with the pseudonym engraved on it for my fifteenth birthday. They knew it would stick forever.

That was the year I travelled out of the country for the first time. Chicago shined with a splendor that made me promise myself I'd go back to see it closely—and I did, three years later. I didn't realize back then that my dreams tend to come true, so I wished away.

1999 was also the year Clown committed suicide. He had a deep voice, I still can remember it pretty clearly, even though his face has faded. He was one of those online acquaintances who marked my teenage years. I may have been isolated when younger, but I never was completely alone. I guess the same thing applies now that I've embraced Tsukuba solitude.

Ten years have passed, and memories flow like water from a broken pipe. I can't even organize them, all soaked in reminiscence.

International Women's Day

2009-03-08T07:14:00.004+09:00

"8th of March is the day of the rebellion of the working women against the kitchen slavery. Down with the oppression and narrow-mindedness of the household work!"

Oyster

2009-03-04T09:05:00.005+09:00

My heart looks like an oyster. An open oyster, a big mouth waiting for a little bit of debris to fall inside in order to turn it into a milky pearl. Stuck in the silky sand, it beats in a perpetual gasp, facing the blinding turquoise and the fleeting silhouettes of fish. I've tried filling it with words, but they run like blobs of ink in the water. Words will never cake in this soft, pink, hungry surface. Yet they're all I have, so I keep pouring them in hopes that something will stick. An image, a promise perhaps.

There go my memories of things yet to happen. Watch them leave me as they dilute into the ocean, see their graceful volute flight.

Uh-Oh

2009-02-26T20:00:00.001+09:00

Have I been looking in the wrong direction all along?

1s2

2009-01-20T14:35:00.005+09:00

He sleeps; I think of him. It has been pouring nonstop, and the streets become cluttered with cars and people soaked in misfortune. So they say. I cannot picture the wet chaos from my side of the world, for a raging wave of dry wind bangs on my window, an escaped convict desperate for refuge. The skin on my legs is dry and wrinkled, and suddenly I've grown old below the knees. Such a scene is unfathomable for someone resigned to sleep to the white noise of water. The heavy sensation of each other's presence is unavoidable—memories linger on streets we have never walked together, words we've never spoken echo with a distinctive ring. But a quick move of the eye is enough to shatter the all-too-comforting mirage.

We may be like electrons, spinning on the same orbit of thinning hope, yet never meeting. We may be casting yearning looks at each other, stretching our arms out to pretend we can overcome a seemingly infinite diameter. It is the very force of our attraction that keeps us apart. Or—who knows, life keeps smirking at the jokes it plays on us—we may the fateful mismatch of an electron and a positron, and we are doomed to annihilation as we stride and stumble toward each other.

Perhaps I'm too naïve to grasp the risks we are running in our desperate quest. After all, who am I to understand particles? Swirling in eternal uncertainty, subject to forces we are barely able to identify—aren't we all made that way? Maybe a sage will point out that this desire will lead us into utter destruction. But how can we call it destruction, if all we will become once we meet is light?

Dickey Chapelle

2009-01-03T20:37:00.005+09:00

I've just noticed that my glasses somewhat resemble Dickey Chapelle's. I don't have much more to say on this subject, except that I'm pretty sure the Vietnam I saw was so, so different from the one she captured with her brave camera. She was one truly admirable woman.

Död Pixel

2008-11-14T17:16:00.005+09:00

I'm so terribly tired of this creative crisis. I haven't written a story in years. I started to write something sort of fun right before leaving for Japan. And then, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Some people ask me to write, but there is something behind me, a deep voice telling me that nobody would want to turn a page full of letters originally scribbled by this boring caricature of an aspiring writer. My punching of keys is not fruitful. I stare at the walls of my apartment in search for something beyond the white patterns. Then another day dawns and I look for the sky in search for blue, for colors, for anything to be worthy of being read years later. Maybe this fear of writing is just as my fear of speaking. Maybe I'm not too different from that girl from the TV show who was an amazing model yet let her nerves get on to her and failed to deliver. My words are my enemy. I live surrounded by daggers, I spit them, I bleed from my tongue, and I'm terrified to feel my entrails being slit at the same time as I yearn to see the shining silver when it finally catches the light.

I am so scared of wasting my life in this state of nothingness. I am nobody. I certainly am nobody, having learned nothing from these years in confinement. The autumn leaves turn crimson red, fire and wind and the sky and who the hell am I if but a student who never pays attention in class and wishes for a story yet never has the courage to sit down and write it? All I ever talk about in my writings is myself. Me, me, me. I am Mariana, stretching herself in her blue velvet gown, completely sure that nobody ever will come up to the tower where she spends her days. Oh, Millais, that woman you painted was not her, it was me! Let me stretch my back once more, my hips hurt, my heart aches. This is not life—it's just some program resembling life where you wake up, walk, feed yourself and occasionally share a laugh with another character. It's like Mario Bros. Mario walks straight ahead within that world, jumping and bumping, apparently having a blast in his adventure, yet there is no possibility for him to move out of his designated realm. Mario is not a hero. Mario is bored out of his mind to walk over the same brown soil, catching the same old mushroom from the same old brick block, listening to the same insane background music (like that idiotic background music from the bakery at school), moving forward yet always coming back to an indefinite beginning.

I need something to remind me that I'm still a human being and not just some pixel blotch. Look at me! Can you see me? Can you see this thing I wrote? Does it mean anything to you? No, it does not, for it doesn't exist. It's part of this program I'm trapped in, and you were expecting it. You know it by heart, and you'd like to skip it. Press the reset button and your path will inevitably bring you back to the point where you'll be able to read it all over again.

Sequoia/Birch

2008-10-20T08:23:00.004+09:00

Everybody wants me to be a robust sequoia in the middle of a deserted land. Such a sight is a necessary symbol of hope, some strength in the midst of despair. Nobody can deny how miraculous it is for a beautiful centennial tree to withstand the hardships of existing in the middle of caked lumps of sand. It is useful, too, when nothing else is available. Some will take a piece of me to keep their hearth burning. Some will expect me to keep standing despite having carved a tunnel right out of my core, just for the fun of driving through. Others will even hope to dance on my stump when I fall, if that is ever to happen. After all, aren't sequoias supposed to live forever?

To everyone's great disappointment, though, I am more of a decaying birch in a forest. It looks just like the rest of them, tall and scar-stricken, watching deer run by. However, it is festering inside. In silent pain it feels itself vanish. When the hollow carcass finally gives out, it will swoon in the middle of the woods—swoosh!—a whisper which nobody will hear. A decomposed log, a cylindrical wooden puzzle facing the sun and the dew and the mud, it will be soon covered in moss and disappear forever, long before anybody can tell there ever was a birch where there now lies nothing.

Le petit déjeuner sur le tatami

2008-09-21T22:23:00.003+09:00

I didn't feel the earthquake, even though I woke up long before it occurred. I was busy getting my room ready for my guest, whom I had invited for breakfast. As I finished washing the last dishes and vacuuming the last corners, I imagined for the briefest moment that this person would forget about the appointment or oversleep and not arrive. After all, invitations to breakfast are quite uncommon—at least in this country, I think. He was amazingly punctual, though. We had French toast with fried bacon, coffee, and juice. I must say that in spite of some people's disbelief, I do cook quite well, and my French toast is amazing. Conversation flowed in three languages, and breakfast turned into lunch which turned into dinner. He helped me draw the curtains at sunset, heard me play a couple of songs on the guitar before noon, and loved the cheese empanada with sugar (leftover from the ones we had made with my sempai and my neighbor last night).

I might cook again soon. We have plans to go get sushi when the weather gets better.

Now What?

2008-08-31T14:57:00.002+09:00

A sea of utter loneliness expands before me. All which lies ahead of me is covered with a cold, white blanket of uncertainty. Even these words fall into oblivion in no apparent order—crazy suicidal hooks of ink jumping from a cliff. My heart is a limp balloon hanging from a mess of cobweb strings in an empty chest. People around me mutter goodbye, as do objects and sunny mornings. That charred leaf falling from a maple tree is a reminder of the decaying beauty that hung on to its own charm for too long.

Unbelieving

2008-08-01T00:13:00.005+09:00

You said you don't believe I'm alone. Of course I'm not completely alone, you silly—but you clearly aren't among those who keep me company.

Blame It on the Boogie

2008-06-23T06:15:00.004+09:00

I love it when I suddenly have the impulse of jumping out of my chair to grab the guitar and sing. Just like in the old times! I don't know if this is caused by all the expectation, but music has a different flavor now. Maybe it's music's fault that I can't concentrate anymore. I'm typing up some boring report about who knows what, and suddenly it's Daryl Hall singing "Dreamtime". Back to the 80's, to my long, straight hair and miniskirts, posing for my aunt in my grandma's then gigantic backyard. It hasn't changed at all, but as I grew, it shrank.

Why do I keep talking about Daryl Hall? Maybe it's because his song (this particular song) never changed in me the way Karate Kid or my grandma's backyard did. I think I feel exactly the same sort of elation when I listen to it now than I did when I saw it featured in a Dtv Halloween special. I remember they took very onyrical segments from Disney movies, like Beethoven's Sixth Symphony from Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland. In fact, I cannot really remember the latter movie save the scenes used for this music video, just as I can't remember Snow White except for that scene in the forest with Pat Benatar's "You Better Run." Nobody can tell me there's no Pat Benatar in Snow White. It's all Dtv's fault. Music's fault, you see; my perspective's so distorted now from all the songs in my head.

I spent the whole weekend listening to Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U," haunted by her voice like I never was before. It's as if it were an entirely new song, even though they played it tirelessly (perhaps still do) in the adult contemporary radio station I used to listen to throughout my teenage years. It's nice to discover new magic from old music. I think I did like O'Connor when the song came out in 1990, though. I remember getting a little angry at a magazine where I read her shaved head was 'out'. Funny to be a kid at a time when Barry Manilow was a subject for gossip...

I know I should get back to work, but I'm going to make a quick stop by the guitar first. Most probably the music and fresh sunshine will get me back on track.

If I have no words left for myself, how the hell am I supposed to find words for others?

2008-06-09T07:02:00.002+09:00

To hell with homework.

Rouen

2008-05-18T17:45:00.005+09:00

I'm thinking of nameless blue flowers bleeding blue, blue like the diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element. Then there are little blossoms of chantilly and pink and magenta, like an old Laura Ashley dress in the afternoon sun. And finally those surreal irises whose violet never shows on camera, how strange. I'll never remember them the way they really were if I rely on modern pictures and not Impressionist paintings or my own tricky mind.

Monet's art evolved from the almost photographic to pure color. It's as if he slowly acquired the ability to abstract color from everything he saw. Towards the end, shapes became completely disposable, and only light remained. Such a revelation takes forever to grasp, and yet he did! He was even able to express it brilliantly. Having been able to see that process of reduction (there was a huge Monet exhibition last year in Tokyo), of discarding the unnecessary and keeping the essential was fascinating.

Sometimes I wish I could keep a certain color, a certain light forever. The best camera cannot do that. Photoshop it as much as you want—it may become prettier and livelier, but not the same as the one you saw. I stare into that azalea bud covered in dew, and I know there will never be another chance to catch that vivid magenta if it's not through my eyes. And even then my mind will slowly blur it, distort it, wash it away. I wonder what will become of that azalea in twenty years.

I find myself at a loss with flowers, it seems. Unlike Monet, I find myself at a loss with spring altogether.

A Memory, a Mantra

2008-04-18T19:11:00.002+09:00

I can turn old memories into new memories. All I need to do is concentrate really hard, look forward to that which happened long ago,... and buy a plane ticket.

2008-04-17T07:56:00.003+09:00

What's the use of all this sunlight if it's not drawing squares on your neck? What's the use of all this space if you're not lying beside me?

"Dr. Chandra, Will I Dream?"

2008-03-20T21:16:00.003+09:00

Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

Astronauts

2008-03-10T10:22:00.005+09:00

I picture them floating through cylindrical black and white chambers, chasing flying food balls like amoeba, orbiting around a marbled cobalt blue hemisphere. In utmost silence they dive into the void—slow-motion underwater ballet for medieval knights—and fix a solar panel or weld an antenna.

Thousands of flickering lights—stars among the stars—surround a crumpled picture. A family of three: the little boy with missing teeth and a crew cut now wears his yellow sleeves rolled up and walks a pretty girl with a pink cardigan down the street. Heavy memories in weightless nights, comforting yet useless to confront the mystery of a deceitfully unwavering crystal ball. How does it feel to see it all—that godly omnipresence from the distant skies—and yet miss every milestone of your loved ones' lives?

It is an undeniable feat, going where no one had dared to go before. People talk about these travelling heroes from their rocking chairs on cool verandas, watching their own children run and stumble on the grass. Meanwhile, there where they point with dreamy fingers, the loneliness within blends with the outside darkness, and no sun is strong enough to illuminate the spreading black ink of perpetual quietude.

I think I understand them, even though they're nothing but a blurred sketch in my mind. I do—for in drifting away, I, too, have felt the weight of my heart compelling me back home.

Uninspired

2008-02-23T12:52:00.003+09:00

My words don't want to leave my mind.
Like motorbiker acrobats they roll around the inside of my head,
Crystal bingo ballots holding out for an ever-secret winner number.
My words yearn for endings in magenta and yellow.
But white is the most frightening of all beginnings,
And in panic and anxiety they roll and roll and roll.
It's snowy out there:
A white sheet of paper has covered the fields with emptiness,
And no plum buds dot the air to signal the end of winter.
I am a cocoon, lazing on the junction of two bare branches,
Concocting petals in my entrails while asleep.
I could stay like this forever.
But if a single streak of sun slithers through a crack
—Not much more is needed
To let the icy blue skies drown my pupils—
My womb shall explode in a storm of magenta and yellow
Diffusing like fireworks on the coldness of the ground.
White is the most frightening of all beginnings,
And in hopes of flying, my words roll and roll and roll.

2008-02-14T09:05:00.002+09:00

I woke up early to not do my homework. You see, the thing is I hate studying. I've done it for too long, and the only thing that's come out of it is utter boredom. A few friends, too, but those were made outside of the classroom.

Inside the Room

2008-01-21T14:26:00.000+09:00

I have a giant calendar with the map of Japan, but it fell off the wall some days ago. I tried to put it back in place, but it kept falling again and again, so I've let it drift around the room. It doesn't look graceful at all. It lingers on top of boxes and suitcases like a stiff lady who refuses to lie on her chaise longue. Behind it, my guitar has fainted against the bookshelf. I look at it and wonder if I'll ever play it again. The thought of my nasty neighbor listening to me is enough to make me desist. I miss singing, though. I remember all those afternoons after school when I'd play for hours on end. I used to write songs. We performed some of them live once.

I have a lot of new books from Maruzen, but as long as I'm not done with Tsukiji I will feel guilty for entering the fascinating world of Ha Jin or getting lost in Asimov's futuristic imperial universe instead of clapping at this American anthropologist who had to stop taking his Japanese students on field trips because they understood fish merchants' language less than he did. It took a soothing explanation from another anthropologist (thanks, Gianrico) for me to retake the book... less than a week before my presentation. It doesn't matter, though. I hate doing stuff I'm not interested in.

I miss reading just as I miss playing music. Just as I miss writing—but I'm writing right now. However, this story is nothing but my story, that boring tale about a girl who has finally begun to hear the words in her head again after maybe years of silence. One day, this story will become one about somebody else, and the setting will not be the dying grayness of this abandoned yet inhabited forest—or maybe it will be so, with a different name and a different way to fight the coldness which refuses to leave the room despite the poor efforts made by that old coughing heating device. I'm starting to believe the machine is allied with the weather to spite me. Maybe the neighbor has summoned evil spirits to make this winter ever so bitter inside this room, only inside this room.

The suffering —and the rambling— should not go on forever. I must go out and face the wind, if only for a little while.

Me, Myself and I

2008-01-16T19:50:00.000+09:00

I waste time at the computer because I'm scared of the enormous rocky slope that I'm supposed to climb if I am to get any better at anything. I suddenly remembered Chee Siang at Mount Annupuri and how windy and foggy it was there. I eat like crazy because I have lost all sense of distinction as to what is nutritious and what is merely soothing. I have an acoustic version of a Franz Ferdinand song after which one can hear Alex Kapranos's sexy voice saluting over the beginning of another song which is abruptly cut. I just found out the stray beginning belongs to Bloc Party's Pioneers, and that it was on my playlist since who knows when. I wish I could write more and worry less. I want to travel again. I don't want fancy plates and glasses on my future dining table, or at least I cannot afford them if I want to carry out my adventurous travel plans for the near future. I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and it was like a revelation. I might never become fluent at German because I cannot make any sense out of what they are trying to teach me in class. I don't want my life to be fixed by diplomats' wives. I inexplicably ran out of money, but I suspect a friend's impending debt might be behind this sudden shortage. I miss Friday lunch with my German teacher and the nice Ecuadorian guy who happens to be a teacher too, just not in my faculty. I should read that Murakami book that's lying on the floor and promptly return it to its owner, except that if I did then we'd run out of excuses to say hello. I want to go home. I heard the room phone ringing at midnight last night, but I did not care to answer it because no one is supposed to know my room's extension number, and those who know it are not supposed to call at such ungodly hours. I burn incense, stick after stick, craving for exotic scents like someone would crave for nicotine. I listen to Franz Ferdinand incessantly: it makes days sunnier, nights calmer, and bicycle rides more enjoyable. I want loads of sushi. I hate the author of Tsukiji and his "I am American but I speak better Japanese than the Emperor" attitude. I have cold feet. I have a heater that doesn't work. I should sleep now.

Fast Forward

2008-01-15T09:35:00.000+09:00

If only it were July.

We would slouch on our favorite sofa, grab a few magazines and let the afternoon go by in silence. Watch the stream of time trickle away, together. Can't we skip this half-year? I could definitely do without six months of reruns. It's the same day every day—no change in seclusion, save for the bowing sun staring longer at me, peering through a curtain of bare branches.

Munich and Lhasa can wait for the triumphant arrival of our fastened hands, can't it? So much time is wasted in waiting! Let's cut this long, boring film and show the interesting bits only. Two months out of twelve. How about those fifteen days too? Fog and food and frozen friends. Too bad you weren't there, I'll take you someday—someday, nothing but the distant future. We're stuck in a prologue, page after page it's a thrilling promise, but when will the real story begin?

If only it were July.

Beijing, January 1st, 2008

2008-01-09T23:08:00.000+09:00

I looked into the eyes of beauty, and my own eyes could not take it. I found myself surrounded by the chanting voices of the past, of true happiness; such a simple yet precious couple of seconds becoming engraved in my fondest memories. Thus, my cold, sick head melted like candlewax, and a silver pool of warm tears covered the ground where I once stood.

Humahuaqueño en Tsukuba

2007-12-14T23:59:00.000+09:00

There's a new book in my room.

Okay, it's not new. It's somebody else's. Somebody who was sitting in front of the gym, smoking, and suddenly called my name. He invited me to coffee in his dorm room, where he taught me how to play a Peruvian song on the guitar and talked about his favorite books, his job, and how he tends to ask people questions, even if he doesn't know them.

I asked if I could borrow the score for the song he taught me. The coffee was quite tasty, or maybe it was the attention which made it good. Later I asked if I could borrow one of his Haruki Murakami books. His voice was soothing, and his friendliness was simply unbelievable for a time when I've been feeling like a social pariah.

Once again, I've been miraculously acknowledged as a human being.

お洒落

2007-12-12T19:43:00.000+09:00

My outfit today: orange turtleneck sweater, beige knee-high a-line skirt, brown tights, brown with orange polka dots over knee socks, black boots, beige sherpa jacket.

My classmates' unexpected verdict: "oshare!" (fashionable)

I guess for once I was not some untouchable incomprehensible thing from outer space, and my tastes were actually compatible with theirs.

2007-12-05T02:30:00.001+09:00

I had homework to do, but I watched Magnolia instead.

Three-Day Weekend

2007-11-25T22:15:00.001+09:00

One day I can see Tokyo and Yokohama at the same time,

The next I'm chasing a hug through the Chuo line,

And the other I'm bedridden with fever.

Ósýnilegur

2007-11-09T21:39:00.000+09:00

Silence. Hundreds of eyes look at me to find walls at a longer distance. I tried to speak earlier this morning, but a hollow whistle came out instead of my voice, and it was disregarded as a whimsical current flowing through a narrow hall. I've already begun to turn yellowish and transparent. Mirrors seem to be whispering my presence, and I cling to them as if an imprint were to remain where I once stood.

My skin is turning into a thin crust of liquor puris and dead cells. Underneath it nothing remains: there is no snake crawling out of the rejected coating. I cannot take a bath anymore, lest the water turns me into a giant hangnail. The wind will blow tomorrow morning and this body will be reduced to a floating swirl of repulsive flakes.

Whoever dreamed of fooling the laws of physics never felt the need to be acknowledged as a human being.

The European Couple

2007-10-19T17:53:00.000+09:00

The European couple drag their suitcases along the road, clinging to their backpacks. They're tall and thin, much like the yellowing trees beside them. Not a single smile is drawn on their faces.

The European couple cross the bridge on their bicycles, on their way to who knows where—the library, most probably.

The European couple sit on a bench outside the library. I can see them from the window as my fingers feed words into a white keyboard. I'm hungry. The girl wears a small dishwater blond bun on top of her head. Or maybe that's the guy. Or both. They look alike, except that he is much taller than her, and scruffy blondish hairs cover his face in patches.

The European couple pass me by at the library entrance. The guy smells like summer chased him with water and soap but he was faster. I wonder how the girl can cope with that. She wears a long skirt and rather short stockings. They're holding hands. They move their lips, but I can't hear their voices; I don't know what language they speak, where they come from. I don't know why they're here, or how long they'll stay. I don't even know if they really are European.

For some strange reason, I've been running into this pair of unknown people almost every day for the past few months. Meeting them, watching them for a brief moment before getting lost in the crowd is encountering the dramatization of a wish of mine for the future. A pair of bikes, a pair of interlinked hands. A familiar face at the other side of the window, glancing at me, waiting for me to look up and say hello. The discovery of far-off lands in company.

But it is their life I'm witnessing, not mine. As I realize this, my eyes lose grasp of their presence. It won't be hard for them to vanish from my mind once again—the usual elements of a landscape are so easily forgotten!

Looking away, I'm bound to resume my activities in this world of odds, of lonely prime numbers.

Santa Rosa de Lima

2007-10-05T19:55:00.000+09:00

Among the countless saints in the Catholic calendar, Santa Rosa de Lima (Saint Rose of Lima) is a truly frightening example of extreme penance. Her insatiable urge for mortification led her to wear a metal spiked crown concealed by roses and an iron chain around her waist. As if this weren't enough, she built a bed of broken glass, stone, potsherds, and thorns, where she would lay when she could no longer stand. "She admitted that the thought of lying down on it made her tremble with dread" (Wikipedia).

There is absolutely no point of comparison between a pious woman who spends about fourteen years in extreme voluntary pain and a somewhat cowardly student who stares at her gigantic violaceous toe in utmost fear of having a broken bone. She even gets it X-rayed to discard major injuries. Nevertheless, despite the unimportance of her wounds, she tends to feel her stomach tumble with fear at the mere thought of having to ride her new bicycle again. Another bruise to add to the collection? Another opportunity to watch T-cells in action, live?

I learned today that Bob Marley died of a broken toe. Okay, it was cancer, but the origin was an untreated wound on his hallux (big toe). I heard this from my sempai (one of those European-looking Colombians—can't decide whether he's good-looking or not) while waiting to be called at the bank, of all places. Well, history states that Bob Marley got a melanoma from a soccer wound, but his religion didn't let him have the toe amputated (a man shall not be dismantled, is the idea), so the cancer metastasized to his brain, lungs, liver, and stomach. The sempai didn't tell me all that, of course; he just talked an untreated soccer wound which turned into cancer and killed him because he wouldn't get it amputated. The rest is Wikipedia.

The process of learning how to ride a bike is not limited to the numerous tries that lead to finally maintaining once's balance on a mechanism which has not been fully explained by physicians. There's also the gaining of confidence on a slim vehicle that looks like it will collapse at once and could never hold someone straight up, let alone carry them to places, so how the heck it's supposed to take me safe and sound uphill and downhill is beyond me (and many other, much more educated people). And yet, I must trust it! No matter how many times I fall, crash, or scratch, I simply cannot give up. The pain will go away eventually, but the bike will still be there next morning, quietly standing in front of the dorm, waiting to be unleashed. Untamed beast with double suspension, I can't help but free you, and together we glide into the dangerous world of reckless riders and semi-destroyed paved roads.

I decided not to ride my bike today... and I missed it. I'm sure Santa Rosa wouldn't have thought the same of her bed.

Poorna viraam?

2007-09-17T16:31:00.000+09:00

Thinking of endings is not so painful when they haven't sunk deep in your heart yet. There is no clear future, anyway, so it's not as if there had been a substantial change. The present from now on, that's what changes... Come to think of it, even foggy things are subject to violent transition.

The worst endings are those which you're unsure of. Is it over? I've written the last full stop to this story, but... so much more can be written on the subject, so many words can still come out of the hero's lips. Yet, not all of them will be pleasant. Well, you don't write anymore when you've already had a happy ending. After all, nobody wants to know how Prince Charming ran out of milk one morning and blamed it all on the Princess, who used the opportunity to show her husband the lipstick stains on his purple cloak and the very white (albeit rough) palm of her hand. But this is no happy ending, nor its epilogue.

This time I think I'm sure. I think. You see? I'm not sure. I've blabbered once again, and it's all due to this sort of self-imposed silence. I wish I could turn this heart of mine into something useful, but I just let it pump words out, sealed in my body. Characters go astray as they navigate scarlet torrents in search for tissues to nest in. There goes a T, anchored in the diaphragma, causing me hiccups. And that A has found its way to pierce a thigh and generating an uneasiness when I walk. And that O, so round, spinning in my brain, slowly cutting through bravery and turning bicycles into untamed dragons. If only blood-letting were still practiced,... I'd gladly give my leg to the literary leech and watch as an old porcelain bowl fills up with blood and tears and feelings and thoughts.

The end. It doesn't hurt so much when the audience in the cinema remains in front of the silver screen, waiting not for the sequel but for the same movie to resume. Nevertheless... is anybody planning to call the boy at the projector to tell everyone that the show is over? And if they did, what then? What is a lone cinema enthusiast to do with his time and a pair of empty pockets?

Perhaps, around the corner, the lonely movie-goer will bump into that bashful girl who was sitting beside him all through the show. And maybe, after a few seconds of awkward silence and fleeting glances, he will recognize in her the beautiful heroine the whole theater was cheering at. We're not all what we seem. We're not all what we pretend to be. We're so much more (and much better) than that.

The end.

Somebody please turn on the projector and let us know what will happen to the handsome young man after he tells his inconsolable lover that she must believe him when he says things are getting better—because, come to think of it, they are.

Awakenings

2007-09-17T16:09:00.001+09:00

I had a dream about going home. People over here were asking me how come I was going back so often as I got ready to leave. But of course, this dream had to end, just the way all of them do.

While regaining consciousness, I slowly opened my eyes, thinking:

"Where am I? Hopefully not Tsuk—ughhhhhhh..."

2007-09-05T20:01:00.001+09:00

My voice, this unopened gift
Is a guitar longing to be strummed
By the tender hands of a hello...

Extended Family

2007-08-12T00:08:00.000+09:00

I love my siblings-in-law.

A Summer Confession

2007-08-02T14:01:00.000+09:00

It's strange but, in this very moment, I don't miss Japan the least bit.

Loose Threads

2007-07-18T12:59:00.000+09:00

I wish I had a lot to say. The trains and hunger and loneliness have been replaced by buses and feasts and one kiss after another. I must wear a single t-shirt underneath the winter jacket, for when the cold morning is gone, a scorching sun attacks from over the rooftops, beneath the windows, and on his forehead. People talk on the bus, people sell stuff on the bus, people sing along to the songs on the radio on the bus.

Shopwindows are full of tight, bright colored clothes. Everything is cheap, but there is nothing I can wear, nothing I might want to buy. So far, my money has only been spent on food. I've (re)tried quite a few dishes, and there's still a lot coming up. I'm gaining weight.

My bed is as comfortable as I remember it; maybe more. I must give it a good use, so I'll go to sleep now.

Geburtstag

2007-07-05T23:16:00.000+09:00

It's my birthday today. I feel like dancing, like singing really loud. I feel like taking a thousand pictures, like slamming my guitar and remembering all the songs I used to play after school in my grandma's house.

It feels so good to wake up at the sound of my parents walking into my room... it's home. Home sweet home, home cold home, my sister listening to electronic music, cheese and fruits in the refrigerator, space to walk around.

Home. Not the streets and the strangers, but the cozy little house in the outskirts of a small South American capital city.

It's my birthday today, and I feel like not leaving this space, like letting the music invade it until the sun flies over to the other side of the planet, or until jetlag knocks me out.

Liburutegi

2007-06-26T20:54:00.000+09:00

A Kite-Hahn gig.

Innumerable, spotless windows
give way to red wine sofas,
shelves of curious Siddharthas
and indomitable Quixotes.

The warm dimness of the passageways
is a series of wooden mines
where the light within mossy pages
awaits to be unleashed.

Kamala sits expectantly,
her womb aching for streams of honeycomb,
and dreams of technicolor exuberance
wantonly desire the burnt grass plains of Spain.

At the far end of the musty hall
a lonely bewitched pair of eyes
flutters away from a million worlds and suns
back into the dull sound of rain.

Countdown

2007-06-18T18:08:00.000+09:00

Two days to wake up from a nightmare called Odradek.

Five days to gasp in awe in the middle of a psychedelic Monet dreamworld.

Fifteen days to step into my very own reverie, if only for the blink of one summer.