Month: April 2017

A New Self in an old place

I find it amazing how it is somewhat terrifying to face an old circumstance as a new person.  When one has changed so much – one could even say that a transformation has occurred, at times – that the behaviors previously associated with a certain circumstance seem incredibly strange, not you, almost foreign.  And yet… when the circumstances present themselves for the first time since this transformation of the self, the transformation seems to rush to the corner, preparing to cower and disappear until the circumstances go away.

I say all of this, because I find myself tonight in one of those circumstances.  I was once a very active member in this portion of the dance community.  Who I was and how I was when I last was really involved, they are completely different from who and how I am now.  Especially through all of my struggles, and my rustling self-improvement and self-empowerment these past 8-ish months, I am not the same person as I was back then, in the dance world.  However, tonight is the first time that I am really back in that world – it is the first time the new self meets the old circumstances.

And so, as I began tonight’s events with the dance community, my comfortable calm from earlier in the evening began quickly to quaver, giving me a sense of panic, overall discomfort, and rather short breaths.

However, I was able to notice these things happening to me, almost as though I were metely an observer of the events, and not the one actually experiencing them.  In doing that, I was able to make sense of the situation – I began to panic, because panicky stress was who I was being when last I was in this world of dance.  I had never known this world as the new self, and it was so second-nature for me to behave the old way, as I had done it so often for so long.

So, instead of panicking further about my panicking, or letting the old ways take hold, I thanked them for sharing their thoughts, and evaluated the actual situation in front of me.  Do I actually care about such-and-such?  No, not really.  Other people see it differently, though.  Am I okay with that?  Yes, I actually am.  Okie doke.

And suddenly I am free of the stress, and I get to be myself again, and freely so.  And it is wonderful.  It is still a bit terrifying, thinking of going fully back into this world in the coming months and year.  However, this rough but groundbreaking start was a great way to get the ball rolling, and to encourage and empower me to be my true self, no matter what.
Post-a-day 2017

Shaving

The last time I recall shaving my underarms was in late January, when I attended a friend’s wedding celebration.  This is not to gross out anyone, but just to share this brief bit of my journey so far in my endeavor to be comfortable with my natural body.  That being said, I continue…

The hair was not too long, and I always kept it all clean.  I recently began wondering if I were, in fact, just plain tired of having the hair, if I weren’t ready to shave it all off, just so I could not have to think about it ever, wondering if it is visible and freaking out someone nearby.  However, as I shaved it all off tonight, in preparation for warm and balmy Singapore and a weekend of likely-to-be-sweaty dancing, I was rather surprised.  Rather than being filled with the usual feeling of freedom and easiness that typically comes with shaving my underarms, I felt something quite different inside me – I felt a sense of… well… was it loss? I’m not sure exactly, but the sensation was something peculiar, as though what was happening was quite odd and almost uncomfortable, unnatural.  I felt so exposed, and incredibly so, once the hair was dissappeared, I was unsure of myself and my relationship with the hair.  Had I somehow become accustomed to having his hair I have been rather looking forward to ditching?  I’m beginning to think so…, and I think I’m liking the feeling.  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Rain and Love

Last night, as I was heading out from school, I left the well-lit library to find incredibly dark hallways.  As I passed an adjoining hallway, I joked with a group of girls who seemed to be heading in my direction.  We all headed down the hallway and downstairs in a goofy, laughing group, and were met at the front doors by a group of students and pouring rain.  I sighed at the rain, and began to accept my wet and cold fate, but slowly.  I was mostly concerned about my backpack and the fact that I’d only just this week left home without my backpack rain cover.

“No umbrella?” one of the girls asked me.

“Nope.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too!”

There were several other nods to these statements.

“Six people. One umbrella.”  They all laughed, and I with them.

I quickly corrected the ‘too’ to ‘neither’, and we all set out to the entranceway’s outdoor covering, where another group of students was standing around.  With only a brief pause, as though to psych ourselves up, we then shot out into the rain with squeals and laughter and sloshes and splashes in what seemed like every direction.

As we bounded down the hill, I fell behind with calls for being careful on the slippery slope that had developed from our driveway.  One girl called out to me, and urged me closer to her.  She was on her own now, the pack of howling girls just ahead.  But she had the umbrella, so I had little hesitation in joining her beneath it.

As we made our final descent to the train station, she struggled through bits of English to inform me that her grandmother’s car would be waiting for her after the bus, and so she only needed to get to the bus at the station, and then would not need her umbrella, so would I please take it?  I eventually acquiesced, thanked gratefully, and told her to come to my desk the next day to pick up her umbrella.  She was delighted, and so was I.  I was delighted beyond reason at the scenario itself, and I was naturally excited that the contents of my bag were now safe.  What an evening!  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Baby Blue Eyes

Today, I met the other half of my new students at my base school.  It being their first lesson with me, the bulk of the lesson was designed around a sort of self-introduction on my part.

We did some fun warm-ups, – I must say that there is nothing quite like watching a group of girls suddenly start waving their hands in the air, shouting, “Money!  Moneyyyy!  Moneyyy!” over and over again – followed by a PowerPoint of ten fun questions about me.  No, these kids don’t know me or much anything about me beyond what can be seen, but that’s the whole fun of having them decide answers to questions about me.  I set it up, of course, in a natural flow of easy answers in the beginning and complex ones by the end.  So, things like my height, my eye color, whether I can eat natto (a local specialty that foreigners typically not only hate, but cannot even manage to eat), pets and siblings, places I’ve lived and languages I speak…, those sorts of things.  It does a rather good job of giving me a feel for the students’ abilities and comfort levels with English, as well as allowing them to have and understand a somewhat well-rounded background for me (even if it is a rather well-rounded background that only tells them that there is a whole lot more to me than could be expected, and that I’m totally awesome and utterly weird compared to what they’re used to having in their daily lives here).

That being said, – this is a kind of long set-up, I know, but bear with me – one might think that students would have all sorts of questions to ask me about me and my life.  And they actually do, really.  However, they all have a desire greater than wanting to know more information about me, something they want to do first.  And that desire is the point of this set-up.

This afternoon, after school, I was walking across the outdoor walkway, heading to pick up something across the school grounds.  One of the students from one of today’s classes happened to be walking in the opposite direction on the walkway.  As our paths began to cross, I greeted him, as I usually do with my kids, and he responded happily.  However, he had an air of hesitation about him, and so I paused with raised eyebrows to see what was up.

He stood silently at first, but soon began, “Could you…,” mumbles in Japanese, then mumbles, “… show me…,” before coming out with the full sentence, “Could you show me… your eyes?”

I kid you not – this is Japan.  Being accustomed to the never-ending desire my students all seem to have to gaze into my blue eyes, I smiled brightly, granted him an, “Of course!”, and opened my eyes wide.  The sun just might have given them a bit of a sparkle for this little guy to enjoy.  For a good, true five seconds, he stared, amazed, at my eyes.  Then, having verified the truth of my blue eyes, he thanked me and said his goodbye, heading off on his original path.

Adorable.  Just plain adorable, these kiddos.
Post-a-day 2017

Eggs and Trilingual Songs

While dying eggs for Easter tonight, my friend and I were listening to and singing along to various songs from various musicals.  For the most part, this was all in English.  However, when I decided that, judging the songs and musicals we’d had so far, it was time for a bit of Frozen, this all changed.

Frozen, you see, happens to be one musical that this friend doesn’t know too well in English, but really only knows in Japanese.  I, naturally, picked up all the words in English due to the extreme cultural love of the songs back in the US.  And, to make things more exciting, and to test our true knowledge of the songs, I happen only to have the soundtrack in French. (I know, I’m a special one.)

So, what does that all mean?  Well, it means that my friend and I had a grand ole time singing along in Japanese and English to a song in French, both of us laughing regularly as we did our best to focus on the words we knew that we knew, but seemed so incredibly difficult to get out.  I’m not sure that I have ever focused so much just to sing along to a song before tonight.  It was somewhat intense and absolutely delightful.  I’d totally do that again.  😀
Post-a-day 2017

a day’s checklist?

You know the days when, at home in the evening, you feel like you have nothing left to do?  Tonight feels like that to me.  I’m sitting on the floor in my living room, wondering what else to do.  Certainly, I have at least ten legitimate things I could do right now, – work on my rainstick or flute or swords, paint the painting I’ve had in mind for the past few days, clean something, wash some clothes, dye some more eggs, listen to my audiobook, read my current daytime book, etc. – however, I don’t feel a need to do any of them.  My experience is similar to that of cleaning days as a child.  We would get a list of things to clean and/or organize around the house, and cross off each one as we completed it, leaving us satisfying exhausted at the end of all the cleaning – our list was all marked off, and we had truly accomplished a good handful of beneficial tasks.  We could settle down on the sofa with something to eat and drink, and pass out at will.  Today, for whatever reason, has felt like one of those days.  And I didn’t even clean anything.

But I still have that sense of accomplishment and completion, combined with a happy exhaustion.  I keep glancing around, checking if there’s something wanting me to do it.  And I keep coming up with nothing – I did everything for today, is the thought I keep having and distrusting.  But I think who I was today is what allowed me to have such a sense of success and task-completion for the day.  I wore the clothes, and did the activities, I talked with people, I tried things, I wandered, and, above all, I feared, yet still did it all.  I experienced fear so much today, it was ridiculous, but the best part about it is that I accepted the fear almost every time, and just went onward anyway – I went for what mattered to me, even in the face of fear.  And so, naturally, I am incredibly exhausted, but also incredibly satisfied and content.  I have done my duty for today, and now I can rest.  When I wake, it will be a new day.  Happy Easter, Folks.

Peace

Hannah

 

Post-a-day 2017

 

Good Books

A good book is one that makes you want to stay up as late as possible reading it, even when you know that you get to spend all the next day reading it, anyway.  So, logically, you’d go to bed, so you can wake up earlier and read…, but the book is so good, that you just don’t want to stop.  Yeah, I’m reading a series of those right now, and I have to force myself to do other things in life, instead of just sitting around, reading constantly.  This is a good feeling… a very good feeling.  😛
Post-a-day 2017

What I want to do with a good chunk of my daily time

I really just want to write books.  Period.  I don’t know how to start, and I don’t know what topic to use for the book, or even in what style to write the book (well, books, really).  And I realize that needn’t matter.  I’m still not writing a book, though.  Let alone books.

So, what’s up with that?  

Can we handle that?  Like… Now?

Please, and thank you, my dearest self.  And, for now, goodnight.  Sleep tight.  Sweet dreams.  See you when you wake up.
Post-a-day 2017

Japanese Verlan

Tonight, I learned that Japanese has its own version of French’s verlan.  For those unaware, verlan is, for the most part, splitting a word in half, and then putting the second half first.  So, the word l’envers, splits to l’en and vers.  Keeping in mind the pronunciation of each part, you switch them to vers+len, and then alter spelling to keep the same sounds, giving you ver+lan, verlan.  Thus you have the word for backwards, l’envers, in verlan.  As I mentioned, I learned tonight that Japanese has its own version of this same concept.

The sentence I was given was the following:

I ate sushi with a woman in Roppongi.

Onna to roppongi de sushi wo tabetta.

That is the original, normal version. The slang version was then as follows:

Naon to ginroppon de shiisuu tabetta.

ナオンとギロッポンでシースー食った

The funny thing to me about this slang, is the users of it.  The friend who was informing me of this slang mentioned later that “[h]igh school students don’t say that.  Elder people may understand. Remember this.”  And so I have learned the slang of the current 30+-year-olds in Japan.  We think, anyway.  He told me to test it out, so I could see who understood it.  We’ll see how well that goes over – I had a fancy Japanese word to use at the hanami (Sakura-viewing picnic) this past weekend, and everyone just assumed a mishearing or misunderstanding had taken place on their side, because why would a foreigner know such a fancy word, hmm????  😛  But I think this one has better potential for fun.  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Feelings of accomplishment

This week has been quite busy for me, and I have found myself working on various artsy projects, producing some very neat results (e.g. I’ve made one and a half pair of legwarmers in the past day and a half.  And I’ve already worn the one pair today.).  However, I have had a strong experience of being unaccomplished at the end of each day.

I sit at work, wondering what I can do with this desire, this need to do something… Anything, it feels like.  I just need to do something productive.  Or so it feels.  However, as I have gone to bed late each night, after working on these various art projects, I have still felt rather unaccomplished.  This has happened to me before, so I started wondering what I’ve done in the past to handle such uneasiness of mind.  As I’ve thought about it this evening, in the middle of working on my legwarmers and rain stick, I’ve begun to realize that the sense of accomplishment desired is not the one connected to producing physical results – it is more of the emotional sort.  That is, I long to be accomplished emotionally.

When I take into account the fact that I have had very little communication with others at work this past week, it only makes all too much sense.  I’m around people all day, but I do not interact with them much with words, which leaves me emotionally lonely, and emotionally unaccomplished.  And so, what do I do tonight?  I speak these words aloud to my phone, instead of typing them, so as to experience a sense of telling a story to another, as though I were speaking to you right now, instead of merely writing, and your reading it at another time.

I suppose this is one thing I shall not miss come August.
Post-a-day 2017