You have to cause a little pain to shed a little light.

I need honest feedback on how people view me, positive and negative, and what directions I ought to be going in.

IP logging is off, anon is on.

Updating? Psssh. Obviously that is not a thing i do. A quick update of the past forever:

-left Boston, moved back to PA
-moved to Japan

I mean, some other stuff probably happened in there, but the gist of things is that i'm on some kind of crazy Big Adventure that may or may not have been a good decision but it sure is an experience. It's been a little more than a month now since i left the States, and i wish i could say i felt like i was settled, but i don't. Only today have i finally gotten unpacked all the way and my apartment presentable enough to take pictures, which is pretty pathetic even by my standards. And before anyone says it, yes, i know that it's not clean but it's a vast improvement from how things have been.

( a bigillionty pictures of my actually rather boring apartment. )

Oh man, i'm pretending to be a girl by doing my nails! Yeah, i don't know what possessed me either, especially given how shaky my hands are.

( all things considered, they didn't come out horribly. )

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

You know what, let me just. Put a huge motherfucking disclaimer on this. NO ONE IS REQUIRED TO MEET MY STANDARDS. EVER. If i say i like you, then i do, regardless of whether or not you see yourself on any of these lists.

IN SUMMARY:


( day eight )

As a note, this post is a nice summary on a lot of my thoughts about friendship and understanding that i have been extremely poor at articulating. It's not 100% congruent with my thoughts, but still fairly accurate.

On to the meme.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

( day six )

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

This one is pretty boring. My mind is a pretty inane place.

( day four )

This day is hard.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

( day two )

Life...up...date?

I finalized my flight to Japan on Wednesday, which just seems completely insane when i think about it too hard, and have made loose moving arrangements. The whole 'packing to move' process is starting again. It doesn't seem like i've only been here since August, that everything changed so much in that time. It's even crazier to think of how much more there is to do. In a very literal and exact four months from now I'll be in Osaka dying of jetlag before starting teacher training.

In other my-life-is-ridiculous news, i landed the temp job that could turn into a real job that i'd wanted so damn badly just a few weeks too late. This kills me in so many ways. Everything is feast or famine with me. Going to Japan is absolutely what i want to do, but i'd be living a very different life if i'd gotten this position in October or November. So it goes, right? But i have to wonder about my karma sometimes. If i make it past the first round of JET screenings now i will just laugh and laugh and laugh. In the meantime, i've revamped their filing system, am completely redoing the executive dean's calendar, and am being trained for things i won't be around long enough to really need to know how to use. Life's funny little tragedies. I think they will be legitimately disappointed to lose me, which is strange and gratifying and sounds really egoistic, but you wouldn't even believe how bad the guy was who had the position before. This university has repeatedly refused to hire me, but the general competency level of people in similar positions doesn't seem to be high.

There was more ridiculousness over christmas, but i don't even know where to begin with that. suffice to say that i'm glad i went, because there'll be nothing to regret on my side later. But i think my grandfather may feel differently. Or maybe he won't. That said, it was good to see my grandmother, and i was regaled with stories of her time in Japan. She was stationed near Shiga Kogen in Nagano during the post-WWII occupation in a secretarial capacity for the army, and was very happy there during her service. There were souvenirs and cards and even a womens' magazine from the time, all of which were fascinating. But certainly the best part was when we got out of the limo service when we first arrived, just after midnight, and she looked at me and grinned and exclaimed Ohayou Gozaimasu! and i just about died.

and...there were other things, but i just spent an hour and a half in a meeting, so I've totally forgotten them all.

There is a thing about me that i sort of assume most people know, but then i think about it and realize well, maybe not. This thing is that i love stories, and not just book stories. Human stories, the sort of retellings of events and revelations of tiny details that let me assemble an idea of who and how someone really is. It's a thing i do, this analysis of people via details of behavior that i see or hear about. I create theories, guessing at parents and childhoods and the state of a stranger's bedroom, the cleanliness of the kitchen or whether they fold their laundry. It's like a game, to try and fill in the holes in unknown lives and then maybe someday find out whether i guessed right or wrong. Perhaps this isn't the nicest game to play, because it's so real and personal, but i've been doing it for so long now that it's second nature.

It's been a lovely weekend for stories, both the true kind and the fictional kind. One i can't share, and won't, save that my most gut reactions have been justified and some things i wondered were both more true and false than i'd imagined. But the one i can share is Habitation of the Blessed, by the rather majestic Cat Valente, known in these parts as yuki_onna.

Habitation is the first in a trilogy of novels that tell the story of Prester John, his compatriots, his wife, and the magical India-that-is-not-India of a mythology that i confess i know very little about. It's books within a book, and stories within stories, and other people have likely already done a better job than i could describing it.

One of the things i love about all of Valente's work is that her characters are so human, so full of idiosyncrasies and flaws and feelings that i can feel them out just as i do real people. I can create theories and see if the text bears them out, if i can guess motivations and loyalties and infidelities. In Habitation, the freaks and monsters have a humanity beyond that of the human, who is a monstrous and very mortal infant in a land where no one dies.

It's not an easy book. There are stories wrapped in stories, broken into pieces, and swathes of narration are missing by design. The prose is dense and thick and poetically lovely, and each narrator has a different voice. It's a story based on an established mythos, and it helps to have some background in it. While i know little of Prester John, my Catholic upbringing served me well for filling in some important details. I think the book would be less powerful without some background knowledge to rope the reader in, because so much of it is about the way events become fiction and how people twist happenings to make them metaphorical or allegorical or just prettier than the reality of things ever was. It helps to at least have the vague trappings of Christianity going in, because the power in it comes from the way 'knowledge' rubs against 'knowledge' and reality is somewhere between.

But i think it's a timely book, honestly. The internet is all aflutter with talk of bullying and righteousness and correctness and awareness, and Habitation is one of those stories that shows all sides of the way that those things go. There's the tenuous balance of manners and acceptance and understanding, and the way all those things can be tamped down by one loud voice sounding over them. John could stand in for so many things in this world, and in holding him accountable for what he does, i can only see how easy it is for people to be so blind that they (and by they i mean all of us, honestly) cannot accept that there are more things in this world ever dreamt of in our little philosophies, and that there ought to be room for all of them.

Okay, so, as i'm sure no one has noticed, i have been doing a mini-project of taking pictures lately. Right now it's over in a typepad blog, but shock of shocks, sixapart is fucking around with things and combining with other companies and using phrases like 'monetize your blog' so who knows how that's going to go. Anyway, i don't want to monetize my blog, i just  want to post random pictures because it's fun. But i also don't want to bug the crap out of people on my flist. So.

LET'S TRYING THIS AGAIN. ON TO THE SRS POLL. Sorry, ljers, you will have to click through to dw to vote because i'm an uncaring bitch who disrespects the value of a mouse click and also things only crosspost in one direction.