March 2017 – Page 3 – hannah ananas

Okinawa, but actually Baseboards

Okay, today was, put simply, an amazing day for me. I stood up for myself against myself and social pressures and blah-di-blah-blah, I wandered about, I found amazing things, and I never even made it to my intended destination. And it was fabulous.

However, I’ll not write about all of that tonight. I’m on my phone, and I find it cumbersome and somewhat annoying to write a lot on my phone, so I’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday, when I have my computer to use. Don’t worry, though, I took lots of pictures to remind me of what all I did today (a bit different for me, huh?), so those will help me write it all up rather accurately later on!

Instead, tonight I will write about baseboards.

As I was showering just now, here in the Air BnB, I started wondering about how they manage cleaning of the place between visitors. Naturally, I cut off that line of thinking almost instantly (because, of you know anything about me and cleanliness, you know I have super-mental-OCD when it comes to bathroom-related cleanliness). However, it reminded me of dirty I have found places to be in Japan.

Now, when I say that I find places here dirty, it doesn’t mean that Japan is generally gross all over the place – the average person likely wouldn’t notice a thing, except on the odd occasion. I mean things like door handles, hand towels, and all sorts of other little everyday things. Things like baseboards, for example.

I never thought much about baseboards (aside from ‘kicking the baseboard’ at the end of an outside turn in two-step (the partner dance, not the song that says it over and over again)) until I was visiting my high school boyfriend’s house one day. They were finishing with cleaning day at their house when I arrived, and his mom was assigning the final chores to him and his siblings.

“Do you want to vacuum, or do the baseboards?” she asked him.

I think he picked the vacuuming, but I’m not sure. I asked what she’d meant by “the baseboards”, and someone explained that it was running a wet paper towel or rag along all of the baseboards in the house, in order to get and keep them clean. I got to watch one of his siblings (perhaps it was his middle sister) then do just that, going along quickly on her knees, cleaning the baseboards.

After that, I began to wonder how my family’s baseboards stayed clean, seeing as I had never noticed anyone cleaning them in any way, and certainly not in the way my boyfriend’s family did it. I think I never asked anyone about this, but merely wondered privately what magic was at work.

Unfortunately, though, this opened me up to a whole new world of cleaning and cleanliness. As if I hadn’t already had enough criteria for what determined a place’s (and its residents’) cleanliness, I now had this new one called “baseboards”. Everywhere I went, of baseboards were in view, I was suddenly aware of how clean they were.

Nowadays, it has calmed down a bit, as it is no longer a new concept for me. However, I still notice them (and judge places and people by their cleanliness, of course). In Japan, they have often been unclean, sometimes even layered up with dirt and dust bunnies. (Actually, there is an extreme amount of dust bunnies at my schools – I don’t understand how they all develop, not why so many of them have to end up right by my desk, of all places.) And, every time I find these baseboards, two thoughts occur for me. Okay, well three.

1) Gross.

2) I want to leave now.

3) They need to get in board with John’s mom on this one.

(John is the old high school boyfriend, in case you didn’t gather that.)

And, since so many have proven unclean here, I’ve actually taken to avoiding looking at them. I hardly have I think about it anymore, I just realized – I simply don’t look at them. Thus I am able to maintain one small piece of this sanity a good handful of people in the world believe that I truly do have. 😛

So,… go check out cleaning your baseboards, kay? Or not. Just don’t invite me over, if you haven’t checked them and can guarantee their cleanliness. 😛
Post-a-day 2017

Becoming myself through depression

This depression thing sure is interesting.

Tonight, as I sat eating dinner on a beach, thinking about the last time I’d had meal on a beach (a topless beach in Barcelona, Spain), while staring at the water and the highway above it, I noticed how much myself I had been tonight.

I had spoken up proactively about not going to an izakaya (Japanese bar-restaurant), expressed easily why I didn’t want to go, and even answered questions about why (drinking nomihodai (all you can drink) is not one of my favorite things, and smoking just makes me miserable (most establishments allow smoking indoors in Japan, it seems)). And I did it all with a sense of easy, calm comfort. I was not afraid to be myself and to admit, ‘I don’t want that, and I don’t support it, so I’m not going to do it,’ although I have been so much in the past.

Although there are plenty of times at which I feel completely not myself with this whole depression thing, there are also times like tonight, when I feel more like myself than I have ever felt in certain areas of my life.

Perhaps it is the fact that I have been so not myself, and that I am really having to work on myself and my life, such that I can be rid of this overpowering funk that seems to control my life in such painful ways, that I am having breakthroughs in certain areas of my life. Because I have made this conscious effort, and continue each day to make it, to be… well, to be what, precisely? Is it to be myself again? Perhaps it is to be the best myself that I can be.

I suppose that only makes sense, right? I want to be the best “me” I can be, and so, eventually, that starts to happen. Even though the bottom-dwelling funks still occur, the breakthroughs are becoming stronger and stronger… I guess what I’m failing to say clearly is that, since I established that something was incredibly wrong in my life and that change – transformation, actually – needed to happen, I have been working to my core to make these alterations to create a transformed me and transformed life for me. And so, things that weren’t too bad before my depression are getting cleared up entirely now, because they are being addressed. (As opposed to being left alone before, since those particular areas/things were ‘good enough’ as they were.)

Anyway, I’m exhausted, so I’ll sleep now. Today was an interesting day for me both in terms of what happened, as well as how my mind had to work to manage it all. I found myself cursing and expressing utter dislike for Japan, as I stood in the cold, after missing a train at six in the morning (due to the system of how the trains are labeled, and its being completely unhelpful as Inwas rushing to make an important transfer), and yet I was able to let that be so while still being able to look forward to my trip. The first didn’t ruin the latter – they were separate entities. Things similar to this incident have happened all day long for me, and I handled each one similarly to this train scenario. A very tiring task mentally, when so many things go poorly in a single day. But it was almost unbelievable progress for me, and I am so happy, it makes me cry with relief (and a bit of exhaustion, too, of course).

So yeah… there’s that for today. 🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Across the Universe

A few years ago (and by “a few”, I actually mean ten, because I just looked it up, and it was October of 2007), the film Across the Universe was released. I was originally a bit skeptical, yet also excited. All I knew was that it was a film that used music from the Beatles, in order to tell a story of some sort. While talking about it with my cousin Jared one night, he informed me that the music was not being performed by the Beatles, but by new people. That is, the music was being re-done in order to be used in the film. In a world with loads of terrible song re-makes (think of the stars’ versions of classic songs found during the credits of films [especially Disney films]), I could only expect disappointment. Many a people had already created terrible versions of good songs. What kind of disgrace would come to the names of these fabulous Beatles songs? I was distraught. Why ruin something so good?

But then,… but then… my cousin said to me, “Hannah. They’re actually good.” What? How could that be? I mean, this is the Beatles we’re talking about here. How can someone cover the Beatles and not have it be far worse than the original? Jared had been skeptical at first, as well. But he had the earliest release of the soundtrack now, and he had been listening to it. It was good, he assured me.

So, standing in the living room, we pulled up the music (I think it was on his iPod, actually). I was terrified. And then, when Jim Sturgess lulled out from a silent background, “Close your eyes, and I’ll kiss you. Tomorrow, I’ll miss you…,” goosebumps made an appearance on me like never before.

I listened with intrigue and genuine delight as the songs progressed. T.V. Carpio, a woman, sang of wanting to hold your hand (something I had always dreamed about whenever I sang along to the song, my being a girl and all). Even Rachel Wood’s crystal voice rang through the music, whispering sweet nothings to my heart. The songs. These Beatles songs. Remade. They were just as Jared had said. They were actually good.

They were totally and completely different from the originals, yet their connection and influence from their origins were completely obvious (of course). Perhaps that is why there were so good in the first place. No one had tried to copy the Beatles. They had simply taken the Beatles’ songs and reinterpreted them, while – and this is key – always keeping the original experience of the songs in mind. So these songs were and still are Beatles songs, without occurring as covers. They weren’t like so-and-so’s cover of such-and-such song. They were something uniquely different, while still being beautifully the same. They were forever linked to the Beatles and the Beatles’ music, because they were still Beatles songs, but they were their own entity. They were, put simply, the music from Across the Universe.

Even today, whenever I listen to those songs, to that soundtrack, goosebumps abound, and I am filled with this somewhat unidentifiable sensation. It is as if, perhaps, my belly and chest are filled with… well, with warm happiness. It’s cheesy-sounding, of course, but I believe it to be completely true. The Beatles singing their songs fills me with joy and a desire to dance and sing along. The Across the Universe music fills me with warm happiness, along with the natural desire to sing along and bop around and smile hugely. They are like siblings from the same family, these two sets of Beatles music – they are so much alike and from the same place, and yet they are entirely different from one another. And I love them both.

Post-a-day 2017

Saturday Mornings

It is nights like tonight and weeks like this past week that have me wish for a Friday night and Saturday morning with my cat. We would typically stay up way late on Friday night, because I finally had no desired bedtime for once, although I was exhausted already from my week. And then, on Saturday morning, we both would sleep in.

It was always a sort of drowsy mix of hanging out and deep sleep, all the way to midday or early afternoon. I’d get up to use the bathroom now and again, maybe even put on a movie for a while before falling back to sleep, and off and on snuggle with my kitty cat. He would move around on the bed as he wished, sometimes putting good space between the two of us. However, for the most part, he would snuggle right up to me, usually against my head or neck (and sometimes actually on them), a sort of loving, pillow-like comfort, which I felt brought me a special sense of ease and calm similar to hot cocoa and a fire when it’s cold out.

Yeah, I miss that right now. I’m even nervous that he won’t really recognize or like me once I’m back home. Or that he’ll be lonely without other cats (his lives with three right now). Not much for me to do about that until I get back to the same town as he, right? Right.

Anyway, the point is that I want to sleep in tomorrow, and snuggle off and on with, I guess, my cat as I do that.
Post-a-day 2017

An Ode (or something like it) to My Underwear

I did some brief research on odes (“Hey, Siri. What’s an ode?”), and discovered that there is much too much remaining for me to learn about them in order actually to create one in the appropriate fashion. Therefore, I shall simply follow the idea of an ode, and express my love for and delight in my underwear on its worst of days.

My Underwear

Oh, dearest friend, how I love that you are mine!
Forever at my side, and front and back alike,
You give me comfort that cannot compare
alongside perplexity in your name: pair.

You come in oh, so many forms, from sport and short to lace and warmth,
I could never be bored by your ever-changing personality.
From your “Workout Wednesday” to your royal purple silky,
You empower and encourage in a secret just for me.

Sometimes I long to show you to the world, to let you out to see the sun!
Alas, the world cannot handle your greatness as of yet,
for fear of what their minds might create at the sight of you,
for, whether scraggly or sublime, you have an overpowering view.

‘Tis true, there are days, like today, I must say,
where you decide to keep an eye on things out here, in the world.
Not just the casual peek-a-boo you often do,
but a day-long stretch of you watching the world, and the world most certainly watching you.

In fact, perhaps those are the days I enjoy the most,
though they are seen as somewhat sultry or uncouth.
I get to share you with the world in an odd and subtle sort of boast,
for there is nothing I can do, but to enjoy the looks and to let you do you.

For though there is much other clothing to express parts of my spirit,
it is perhaps in you whom I delight the most.
As I change an outfit, or slip off my clothes at the end of the day,
it is you who greets me with surprising creativity, and in the funnest of ways.

So, fare thee well, dear underwear. I never like to see you go.
It is as though we become the best of friends together, as I’m sure you know.
You sometimes get too close or cut in on my blood’s efforts at flowing.
I love you nonetheless, oh, underwear, especially when you’re showing.

I am silly, aren’t I? ;D

Note: I feel a need to share about the fact that underwear also is very helpful in situations of forgotten swimsuits – on various occasions have they aided me in my swimming efforts, without causing offense to others nearby. 😛

Post-a-day 2017

A Window of Opportunity…?

“I have a question of morality… Is it morally sound to go out my window, and climb this scaffolding, to figure out where this guitar is coming from?”

A minute later, after a chuckled reassurance from my mother, that it was not an issue in terms of morality, I was off the phone and climbing out my bedroom window. The air was cold and smelled of rain and incense. Things were still wet in places from the day’s rain, but the scaffolding against my building – I think it was put there in order for the windows all to be replaced, but nothing seems to have happened yet, and it’s been up for a couple or few weeks now – was mostly dry. I slipped on my sandals as I stepped onto the scaffolding, and began my search for lights.

You see, I have been hearing this guitar playing these past few-ish weeks, and I haven’t been able to figure out from where it is coming. At first, I wasn’t sure if it actually was someone playing guitar, or just a recording that I was hearing. Actually, the very first time I heard it, I was already falling asleep, and so couldn’t fully register whether it were real or not. That is, of course, until I heard it while I was still awake one night. Then I knew I wasn’t imagining things. Sort of, anyway. I still could only hear this guitar late at night and from my bedroom. Whenever I opened my window to hear better, the noise from cars outside made it almost impossible to discern the source of the sound, let alone hear it. So, I still felt like I might have been just making up the guitar, because I so wanted to have someone nearby be a guitar player.

Until tonight, that is. I was on the phone with my mom, and I could hear it at the edge of my living room. I went into my bedroom, and it was even more audible. I checked the wound outside the window, and there were few enough cars, with space enough between them, that I could hear the guitar playing… and singing with it! So, I ditched the phone, grabbed my shoes, and went out.

Have you ever been in the middle of doing something, and suddenly wondered to yourself how you could have been so stupid as to do whatever it was you were currently doing? I climbed up decently well enough, and I even checked to make sure my legs could reach all the right places to be able to get back down. But the fact that it is 8 degrees (46 F) outside right now, and this metal scaffolding spent its days being rained upon, had me wondering if I weren’t just being incredibly stupid, climbing up it in my sandals and bare hands.

I discovered two windows with lights on, and quickly figured out from which one the sound was coming. I had to climb up two levels of scaffolding to reach the actual window, but I managed it. Of course, once I was pulling myself up to a point where I could just start to see inside the window, I wondered how terribly this could go, should someone inside see me. Screaming, shouting, and possibly objects being flung at me were certainly possibilities. Being kicked out of my apartment for being a stalker/total creep was another. And any chance at explaining myself was unlikely, as I could not have shed almost any light on my situation by using Japanese, and I knew I had a weak argument anyway – it is definitely abnormal to be doing what I was doing. I mean… come on. This is the stuff you find in movies. Stuff the stupid character does, and always gets caught doing.

So, I decided just to peek enough to figure out what kind of room it was. If it were a bedroom with doors shut, perhaps other people were sleeping. If it were a living room, sleeping people would be less likely. And, if it were a layout like my apartment, to where it would be a bedroom, but it had the door open to the living room, then it was quite likely that no one was asleep. And, if no one was asleep, then I could go upstairs and knock and be all, ‘Hey, let’s be buddies and play and sing music together.’

My concern of getting caught left me only figuring out that it was a different layout from my apartment, but that the room seemed to be a small one. What looked (based on windows and walls) to be the potential living room had its lights off. So, I climbed back down and into my bedroom (slipping off my sandals as I slid in the window, of course), and went to start some laundry and take a quick shower, so I could mull things over a bit.

After showering, I could still hear the guitar playing, so I dressed in pj-style clothes and my rain boots, and went upstairs. It turned out that what I had thought to be two apartments above me was actually only one, and I could hear my washing machine as I stood on their landing. (Odd that I can hear that, but almost never hear anything else, and neither do I get noise complaints of any kind.) Unfortunately, because of the sound of the washer, I couldn’t hear the guitar. At least, I think that’s why I couldn’t hear it anymore.

I was too concerned at just knocking on the door, when I wasn’t certain that the guitar was still being played. The lights were off just inside the door, so it was certainly possible that the player had actually gone to bed in the past few minutes. It was already after 11pm, after all. So, I went back downstairs, and checked to see if I could still hear the guitar.

Nothing. At least, I couldn’t quite tell. But, when my washer stopped a few minutes later, I didn’t hear the guitar anymore. (Gosh, this guitar thing is a complicated sort of mystery, I swear.) 😛

Now, after having laid out my clothes to dry, all the while thinking over my situation, I decided to wait another few days. If, by next week (I’m gone all weekend this weekend), I haven’t heard it again, I’ll put a note on their door. If, however, I do hear the guitar, I’ll go up as soon as I hear it, and knock on their door. Hopefully, I will be accepted and admitted, and wonderful jointly made music will ensue. And, hopefully, they (I think two people live upstairs) will be understanding, should they ever happen find out about my scaffolding adventure… or maybe it’s best that they just never find out… yeah…

Update: It is 00:18, and I am about to turn off my light to sleep. The guitar has suddenly returned, and in full force, with male singing. I’m exhausted, so I’m going to sleep. Plus, I’m already out of normal clothes and into my Sulley onesie. Next time. Next time.

Post-a-day 2017

FaceTime

Today (March 5th) is my brother’s birthday. He lives in Texas. My dad called me tonight, as a sort of reminder about my brother’s birthday. This is one thing I love about my dad’s side of the family – we all remind the family whenever it is someone’s birthday. There are funny bits to this, of course, because it often means that whoever’s birthday it is gets a load of messages and phone calls all at the same time, followed by the thought of, ‘Hmm… I wonder what message just went out to everyone.’ For example, when it is my sister’s husband’s birthday, my sister sends a group text to the family, telling us that it is his birthday. Within about five minutes, we have all either called or sent a birthday message to him. There’s no way we all just happen to think of his birthday at the same time, so our ‘cover’ is just plain nonexistent – we were clearly reminded of the birthday. But, the point is that we all care enough to wish the family member well on his/her birthday. My dad, I think, is the one who started this sort of tradition we have.

Another aspect of the birthday tradition that my dad created is the song “Birthday” by the Beatles. Every year, without fail, he finds some way to play the song for us on each of our birthdays. One year, my eldest sister had an early-morning flight, and so expected to miss the song, since it was always played at home. However, my dad surprised her with playing the song in the car on the way to the airport (at 6am). When I was abroad, he would Skype or telephone me, making sure to play the song at the start of the call.

Today, as he was talking to me to remind me about my brother’s birthday, he checked the sound of the song with me, to make sure I could hear it well enough. He said that he was planning to call my brother right after he got off the phone with me, and I saw that FaceTime had an option to add a call, so we went ahead and called my brother on FaceTime (I did, anyway), by clicking the “add call” button. However, it ended up not working the way an “add call” button suggests it might work, so I improvised.

Right now, I’m sitting with my laptop on my lap, my phone on the lap of my laptop. On my phone, I am FaceTime Video-ing with my brother. On my laptop, I am FaceTime Audio-ing with my dad. It is the middle of the night for me and the middle of the morning for my brother and dad. The three of us are talking as though we’re all just hanging out together. Right now, of course, the two of them are having a bit of their own chatting time, and I am typing. This points to what is possibly my favorite part of this: I, in Japan, am joining two people on a phone call, who are barely an hour or two apart from one another in Texas. I’m not even talking right now, but the whole reason they are able to talk to one another is because of me, over here in Japan. So, it’s kind of like their conversation is taking the long way around… the Really long way.

Or something like that, anyway. 😛

Post-a-day 2017

My Elephant

I snuggle at night with a large plush elephant from IKEA. He’s kind of a temporary substitute for my cat, his trunk usually resting across my neck throughout the night. My cat, who usually sleeps across my neck (when he is with me, of course), is kind of a temporary substitute for a person, I think.

But I still can’t imagine, no matter how creative I get with ideas, how a person could be as comfy or as cozy as my big stuffed animal or my soft, fluffy cat. Or be as adaptable as they are. I feel like I would just tell whoever it is to get off me and to give me space. Yet these animals are currently acting as sorts of placeholders for said whoever… quite a thought, me thinks.
Post-a-day 2017

Ooh, ah, ow!

Everything hurts. Like… really… everywhere that I have muscles hurts.

I’ve been going to my gym most days these past three-ish weeks, and my body hasn’t stopped hurting since that first Angels Training class on a Thursday afternoon. Mostly, it was only the lower half of my body. Now that I’ve gone to ballet and barbell workouts, I’ve got the full-body pains going. So much so, that belly dance class (my first!) was actually quite hard, simply because I could barely control my own muscles. Ugh. Just ugh!

It’s all really good, of course, because it’s just part of being healthy and getting fit again and all that yada-yada. That in no way changes the fact that everything hurts, and doing anything – even existing, let alone walking or going up and down stairs and such – hurts.

And, what am I doing tomorrow? Going back. And for an undetermined amount of time, too. I want to stay until the last class, because Tai Chi is quite fun and relaxing-uplifting, but I think I won’t. I have a Lindy Hop party/social happening in town tomorrow night, and I want to go to the lesson that is at the start of it, so I have to head out before Tai Chi even starts, if I want to make it on time to the Lindy dance lesson. I wonder if I’ll even be able to dance. I might just keel over in pain, and just fall asleep on the side of the dance floor after my first and only dance of the night.

Anyway, I’m actually unable to see clearly or straight right now, I’m so exhausted from this week. I think I went to bed close to or long past midnight …oh, my… since last Friday. Ugh. No wonder I’m so exhausted! Haha. Okay, goodnight!! 😀

Post-a-day 2017

Crushes & the imagination

I’ve got to say: There’s something really fun about having a crush.

Perhaps it’s the excitement and anticipation of wondering what, if anything, might happen. Will he end up confessing his undying love for me? Will he declare that I am the best person he has ever known, and that he cannot imagine life without me? Will he become my best guy friend for now, or even for the rest of my life? (Actually had this happen.) Will he end up being psycho? (Again, happened.) Will he even notice I exist? (Yep.) Will he completely ignore me, and go date some other, more sexy girl? (Happened.) Will he be the best guy I’ve ever known, yet never have a bit of interest in me? (Yup.) Is he actually gay? (This one, too.) Will he become a priest instead of dating me? (Really am speaking from experience, here. :P)

But then, perhaps part of it is also imagining life, should something actually come of the crush. Will we become this amazing couple, traveling the world together with a dog and a cat and a few kiddos? Will people wish they were we, or wish they had what we have? Will I get to announce our engagement to all of our family and friends? Will he turn out to be the man who breaks my heart? Will we spend weeks at a time visiting beautiful beaches together, living a picture perfect vacation life each time? Will I be the woman who breaks his heart? Will we do something fabulous in a big city together, and be super modern and hip with our furnishings and modern art? Will he turn out to be absolutely vain or utterly boring? Will we end up on a ranch together, raising kids who ride horses, and swinging into the nearby lake on sunny days? Will we be dancing, singing superstars (at least among all of our friends)? Will he end up being super jealous, that we can’t possibly stay together, because I couldn’t possibly give up my friends? Will I? Will we move into an old, renovated fire station, and be art and music hipsters who help save the world each day? The ideas go on and on, to any degree of crazy my imagination feels like going that particular day.

Perhaps it’s nature, perhaps it’s nurture, and perhaps it’s a bit of both, but I have these sorts of thoughts every time I have a crush. Even for the times where I have no intention, desire, or even opportunity for anything to come of the crush, these sorts of thoughts still rush to mind. It’s as though I have a sort of mobile-esque photo montage floating around my head, filled with snapshots from all of our potential life paths together.

For the most part, I enjoy the ideas without actually considering them to be a likely forecast of the future. Sure, they could happen. However, I find them all quite unlikely.(Though, I do admit that very upsetting scenarios also come to mind at times, and so I am always glad to know that those particular futures are very unlikely.) I think I just enjoy imagining how crazy and awesome a story it would be to tell everyone if such-and-such happened between whomever and me. ‘Kids, this is how Daddy and I met. Can you believe it?’ 😛
On a sort of tangent, this all kind of reminds me of how people say that women have had their weddings planned since they were little girls. I think we just have fun using our imaginations, and a wedding is just one particular outlet for them.

I’ve often thought about my own wedding, however I can never decide on any actual details. As soon as I think I want a certain style of white dress, I suddenly think I want a totally different style of green velveteen, or perhaps floral ochre… I think I just don’t really care about the results, because it isn’t actually something real happening – for the time being, it’s just a brain exercise… I love imagining various wedding scenarios for myself, of course. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m actually planning my own wedding. You know? Anyway… just some thoughts.

Crushes are fun, in part for their potential, and in great part for their role in the imagination-creativity game. I mean, what if he actually asks me out, and then confesses his love for me while we’re ice skating in the park, followed by our having hot cocoa, going horseback riding, and then dancing together all night to live music? It could totally happen. ; )

Post-a-day 2017