postaday – Page 12 – hannah ananas

Opera, Veterans, and Travel

I have two things on my mind right now: opera and emotions.

Tonight, due to the gracious encouragement of a new acquaintance, I found myself attending a unique performance, called “Glory Denied” and put on by Houston Grand Opera and HGOco. The main character is a man in the Vietnam War, who becomes a prisoner of war for nine years, and then eventually returns to the USA. The story, essentially, is how his life falls apart throughout it all. It is sad and tragic, and the music only makes it more so. The setting of the performance being an old airplane hangar that has turned into a museum added to the show itself. The comedic and especially unique bit of the night was the fact that directions to the bathrooms included going “around the helicopter tail.”

Now, this opera was sad. Period. And I knew it was sad beforehand, so I made an effort to stay detached from it. I have a history of becoming too engulfed by something to be able to separate myself from it fully. When I read books, it is so easy for me to fall into the narrator’s experiences, that I find myself being agitated in life, if the narrator was agitated wherever I left off in my reading, or giddy and joyful, if that was his/her mood. I even take on phrases and mannerisms of the characters, and ask myself questions that I am accustomed to reading (or hearing, if it is an audiobook) from them. I’m not sure that I’ve been ever as on-edge, frown-y, tense, and distrusting as I was while listening to the Hunger Games audiobooks. Life was intense during that one. That is why I wanted to keep my distance tonight, because I know people have very intense experiences when it comes to war.

As I watched the opera, I found myself wondering if these people, the performers, ever have to deal with such a thing as I do. Do they have repercussions in their daily lives, due to the effect playing that particular character had on their mental state? Do they find themselves questioning their sanity, when they have been playing a character whose scale leans too far toward the insane? I wonder.

And I almost succeeded in staying separate from the emotions of the characters. I made it through most of the show safely, but then a surprising part hit me hard. As the main character begins pouring out the shattering sorrows of adjusting to a changed world, back in the USA after nine years of imprisonment, I was dragged into his experience. Tears rolled slowly down my face, unbidden. No, I have never been a POW nor even been in a war, but I have been in my own version of that same homecoming. No parades, no parties, no photos nor celebrations. Life around me is unchanged by my silent arrival to the country I call home. Did they even notice my return? The characters sang of the expectations a returning veteran might have of his family and friends, – that they be as loving and excited about him as they were when he left, and that they were missing and thinking of him as much as he was of them during his absence – and of the unstable feeling of returning to a physical world – one in which he had always felt stability – that has altered dramatically, and even unrecognizably in places.

I know this experience. Again, not the whole war and POW stuff. Certainly not that. Living abroad several times, I have been in my own version of this veteran’s experience after the war. I have learned and improved each time, and I have done my best in more recent years to prepare myself for how people will have changed by the time I return to Houston. No matter what I do, though, there is always a sort of anticipation, a hopeful expectation of how they will be. They will be the best versions of themselves with me, and their love will fill me constantly. They will be patient with me, and gentle. They will be interested in my experience since I have been gone. All of this, because they have missed me and thought longingly of me as I have of them, throughout all of my new struggles in this new life I was living temporarily. And then, when I arrive, finding that this is not the case, they are not as I had unconsciously expected, it is confusing. I recognize the place and the people, but they are both different from what I left, and I cannot quite see how or why. They have not been through what I have. They have not had my struggles. So why do they not comfort me and love me as I have so needed during my absence, as I so need now? They are different from how I remember them, from how they have existed in my mind while we have been apart. But so am I, and I see that they have mistaken who I am now, for an image they have built of me inside their own minds. They can see that I have changed, and I can see that they have changed, but we don’t understand one another’s change, and it is difficult to cope, to fathom, even. And there is always that extra edge of my experiences having been good reason for me to have changed, but theirs were not.

I have not been in the military nor in a war, but I know this small, unsettling, and somewhat worldview-shattering experience of coming home to a now-foreign home. As the lead character raged about his home being so not like the home he once knew, I was dragged into the pain, feeling my own current struggles of readjustment coming forth from deep inside. I am still living in his pain today, though I have been back for a few months. And it hurt even more still, as I saw that my own experience of struggle has lasted so long, although I was only gone for a year this time. How terribly long this period of struggle must have been for this man, must still be for veterans returning today. I went from peaceful times to peaceful times, and my pain still lingers. They likely did not and still do not have such peace on both ends.

I am forever grateful that veterans have made that sacrifice of ease, in order to do what they believed best to help the world at large. I am concerned that we do not do enough to help them with the latter end of their tours, with their returns and readjustments. It is difficult enough altering a regular lifestyle in one culture to a regular one in another culture, like what I have done so often. It is practically unfathomable to go from comfort to a war zone lifestyle, and then back to a house in a safe, city life lifestyle – is the brain ever ready to cope with a change so drastic and so quick? I found myself wanting to hug and hold the characters in the show all tightly to my chest, and to fill them all with love and acceptance of whoever they are and in whatever place they are mentally/emotionally/psychologically. ‘You are safe here, you are important here, and you are perfect as you are.’ I know it was only a show, but it exists only because the story itself is real, and all too common, I believe.

Post-a-day 2017

A quality life

Life is beautiful, and I am grateful to have a role in it. I worry at times that I am not using my gifts and talents to the fullest to benefit the world, and that I might reach the end of my life and feel I have not accomplished a satisfactory amount, given enough, created enough. Though, I suppose quality is greatly important in the matter. Nonetheless, is my current work in life (not necessarily my paid work, but my works, things I do in my life) of the quality that I want it to be? Am I being the quality person I want to be? Right now, I’m not sure. It is something I have not really considered, I think.

I suppose I will consider it now…

Post-a-day 2017

Oh, to be a lion…

I love “The Lion King”. And I mean this not as the average, casual use of the word love. I mean it in a deep down, somewhere inside of me is pulled by it kind of love. Toward my core, that is why my love for “The Lion King” resides. And it draws me.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be part of that circle of life, as presented in “The Lion King”. Certainly, I want to be a living part of it, but I want to be over there, actually in it, as opposed to over here, living in the regular world full of buildings and suits and such. I want to live with the lions in Africa. I want to be one of them, an honorary member, so to speak. Sure, our diets don’t exactly line up with one another, but that would be part of the beautiful balance of it all. I would love them, they would love me, and no one would be stealing anyone else’s food. Perfect.

Anyway, I realize how silly or odd this might sound. I get it. That in no way changes the desire I have to be part of whatever that magical world is that is presented in “The Lion King”, both the film and the stage musical. Perhaps it is that beautiful balance of power and majesty, combined with belonging, love, purpose, and community. Whatever the case, I have daydreamt of being with the lions for decades, and am still working on how to make something like that happen.

Roar.

Post-a-day 2017

Making space in my life

Today, I spent almost an hour going through clothes, organizing, folding, and putting them away into a dresser, etc., as well as going through four boxes of books and organizing them better and putting them onto a bookshelf. I have two new small sections of floor visible in my room.

That’s a message I just sent to my brother. Tomorrow onward, I have to spend at least 15 minutes each day, doing cleanup/clean-out in my bedroom and/or bathroom, six days a week. I am reporting the completed tasks to one of my brothers each day.

This has been one of the most difficult things in my life, moving to a near-minimalist lifestyle. We have this bit in our DNA, in our blood, that has us sit as though we need hoarding in our lives. My brothers and I have been intent on freeing ourselves from its grasp. I am the youngest, and have spent the most time with the family who exudes the gene so obviously, so I am the last to reach my own breaking point – I will live free of this. Now, I am simply dealing with my own laziness and exhaustion after a full day of work.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t able to get rid of things. I had clothing, among other things, that I did not want to wear. And yet, I could not get rid of it. Today, I noticed that, if the cashier girl had complemented my bracelet, I would have offered it to her willingly. And this isn’t just any bracelet – it’s one of the natural stone bracelets that I made. I love these bracelets. It is as though I am two different people in these two scenarios. The difference was what happened one day in my apartment.

I was looking around at my colorful explosion of clothing all over my wall bedroom floor. I enjoyed the color and the explosion at first, but I’d wanted it to go away after, at most, an hour…, and it hadn’t, and I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t even have enough space to store all of the clothes around me, so putting them away just wasn’t an actual option. After some amount of time, I found myself crying, sobbing, really. I don’t want this stuff, I cried to myself passionately, so why can’t I get rid of it? And then the revelation hit me: I would be wasting my mom’s hard-earned money.

My mom was a mom initially, once she started having children. After she and my dad split up, she had to take on a more full-time work schedule, on top of being a mom. And she was a massage therapist, so her work was physical labor. I grew up knowing that the money she earned took a good amount of effort. It kind of was “hard-earned money”. And, for me, if I ever were to get rid of something, I felt to my core that I was wasting my mom’s efforts. And it applied to just about anything I had, whether it had come from her or not. I just couldn’t get rid of anything, because I subconsciously saw it as a sort of slap to my mom’s face, theoretically, of course. That very day, when I found myself sobbing on the floor amongst my clothing, and I discovered this simple fact, I was able to begin getting rid of things. By the end of only a few days, I had two or three huge trash bags of clothing ready for donation. (My cousin went through them first, just to pull out whatever she would use gladly from it all, because we always do that, anyway, and then she dropped them off at the place by where she lived.)

After that week, my struggle has just been laziness. I have a couple decades worth of things that have been living at my mom’s house. I have gone through about 15 years’ worth of boxes and bags so far, and things are really looking up. I have accumulated less and less these past several years, and so I really only have about 7 years’ worth of things left to clear out. I know of, I believe, two boxes in the attic, and an unknown number hiding somewhere in the garage. Otherwise, I only have two and a half small boxes remaining in my room from childhood. The rest of the boxes are from my apartment, and I don’t exactly have a need to be unpacking kitchen supplies, nor getting rid of them, when I’ll just need them all again in another couple months. I do, however, want to verify that I don’t have any excesses in those boxes, though that will wait until I finish getting rid of all of the other stuff, and possibly until I am actually moving, depending on the timeframe.

My plan is to finish things with my bedroom by the 30th of December at 11:00p.m. Then, I’ll have January and February (and hopefully cool weather) to do whatever needs to be done with the garage and attic. After that, I can move to helping my mom with whatever I can around the rest of the house. And then, possibly, grad school begins, and I decide where I will reside.

Anyway, that’s just what’s on my mind right now. I feel good about what I accomplished tonight, though I know I need to take things slowly, which stresses me. If I spend too much time on it all, two things will happen. I will get burnt out quickly, and stop doing things altogether to clean up/out, and I will get too little sleep, and suffer for it. So, as much as I dislike taking so long on all of this, the task moves from daunting to doable, when I split it to 15 minutes a day, six days a week. And that means that I can have it all be happening while I’m still working over full=time. I’m looking for a beautiful and easy transition to January, and that includes a clean, clear, and organized room, with an easy place to work. So, I’m hopping to it, and I have my brother helping me to stay accountable, in spite of my laziness.

Post-a-day 2017

Pants at home

Tonight, a few friends and I got on the subject of housemates and the comfort of being pant-less at home (US pants, not British, of course). It reminded me of my first flatmate. When we lived together, it was a quickly-known thing that I ditched my pants almost immediately after I walked in the door after work.

Truly. It was part of my ‘arriving home’ routine, really. I would walk in the door (and shut it, of course), set down my stuff, take off my shoes, shove off my pants, toss them to the side, and then put my shoes on the shoe rack. Some days, I even would collapse forward onto the carpet after the pants-removal step, and sigh with exhaustion and relief. We live in Houston. It gets hot here, but the insides of buildings do not. At my job at that time, my classroom was guaranteed winter temperatures, so I was extra overdressed for the outside weather. Sometimes, I would be more peeling off my pants than sliding them off of me, it was so hot outside.

Since it was a well-known fact that I was pant-less almost the instant I arrived home each day, slight precautions were taken. One day, I received a message from my flatmate’s boyfriend, asking if I were home. He said that he was told he should text me before coming over, because I might not have any pants on. I think I let him know that I was home and all was appropriately dressed. He then added that perhaps he should have just not asked, and just shown up and caught me off guard. I chuckled hard at that one. I knew it was a joke, and he knew that I would understand it to be, so the comment was actually quite funny, instead of terrible, as almost any other person in the world would have caused it to be.

Thinking about all of this tonight had me notice how rarely I am pant-less nowadays. I guess I’m just not so hot outside anymore, that I want to strip the moment I arrive home. I also have little space of my own, in which I am even able to be pant-less. Though, I don’t recall being without pants/shorts very often in Japan… You know, I think I have moved to a slightly different style of pants/pant fit. The other bits are valid, too, to a certain degree, but so is this one. I found a pair of pants that I used to wear to school, and wore them tonight. It was warm out, but not hot. I remember peeling off these guys regularly in the afternoons. Yet, now, I can hardly imagine being able to peel them off, they are so loose on me. Have they stretched with the aging of sitting around? Have I lost weight in my legs? Both? This would not be the first pair of pants that has seemed oddly large on my legs lately, however, I still weigh what I have weight the past two-ish years. And I haven’t done enough exercise since moving back (I think, anyway) to have had such an impact on my body yet… have I? I don’t know, but, if I am losing fat in my legs, it’s for the better – my body needs it. Now just to trade that loss of fat with some gain of muscle and tone.

Anyway… this has gone a bit of a ways from being pant-less at home. I will leave this open for further consideration, and I will go to sleep now. Goodnight, world. Sweet breathing.

Post-a-day 2017

Happy Houston Astros Day

Today, as declared by our mayor for the city and our governor for the state, Houston Astros Day in Houston and in the entire State of Texas. Cool. Good job, Astros. We’re proud of you guys. We went to the parade and saw glimpses of the guys up on a fire truck or bus. We’ll have to watch it all again, but on a screen, and actually see how things looked. We knew we’d see likely little today, but we went more for the environment and togetherness and coolness of the event. I heard my name called from a tree above me at one point, and I was invited into the trees by a student from a school where I once worked here. And that was totally normal behavior for today.

Oh, and we were on the news, and we didn’t even try to be. If I had been all smiley, I likely would have been interviewed, too. It was too hot, and the wait between the parade and the ceremony was too long, for me to be smiley naturally, especially with a drunk guy shouting and smoking right next to me. It was a good day, nonetheless. The ladies standing behind us filled us in on all the details of everything relating to the Astros, and one of them gave me an idea to help me with the bracelets I make (totally unrelated to Astros, but relevant for the two bracelets I wore today, and the others I’ve made and make). I ate with some nice Venezuelans after all the parade stuff, and learned about the stars on their flag, and that tú is more common than usted, and that it is reversed in Colombia. I shared my table with three young people around my age. And I actually stood up to get their attention and to offer them the sharing of the space. They were grateful, and I was happy to have helped. We didn’t chat quite like the Venezuelans, who had previously occupied their seats, and I did, but that was okay. They were still nice, and my mom finally showed up soon after they sat down, and I interacted with her mostly, then. Yeah, it was a unique and good day. After such a lame situation with our public transit as today was, Houston will take seriously the benefits of it, and make ours real, instead of minuscule and only occasionally somewhat helpful.

I went straight to bed when we got home around 6:30, and slept for about three hours. Now I need to shower and go to bed for real, for the night.

I passed this car, when I was walking to the bathroom and restaurant/store where my mom and I ate after the parade festivities. The chalk was just sitting in a chalk box in the hood of the car. These guys decorated a bit quickly, and then ran back to their car on the street (traffic was incredibly slow). More people were walking up to the car as they left, and those people then began adding their own decorations to the car, using the provided chalk. This was so Houston.

My new goal is to befriend someone on the team. Think it’ll happen anytime soon? 😛

Post-a-day 2017

Japanese Animal Crackers

Because this small interaction with some of my Japan people was awesome, I thought I’d share it.

……………………………………….

Person 1:

Person 2: Cuuute. Where’s that from?

Person 3: Kawaii

Person 1:

Person 1: Animal crackers!

Person 4: M. Duck. We’re one step closer to learning the duck’s first name.

Person 4: Any bets on what it is?

Person 1: Haha, I thought the same thing

Hannah: Mallard duck

Person 4, simultaneously: Common sense says something nature-themed like Marigold, but I’m voting Marzipan

Person 4: Shh, no one asked for rationality.

Hannah: Okay, then. Obviously, it’s Msteven Duck

Hannah: The M is silent

Person 4: That’s the spirit

Hannah: Don’t you mean “mspirit”?

Hannah: :P.

Person 4: Hahah

Person 4: Touché

Sticker from Person 1: Punked?!

Later, from Person 1, again: Some of these are oddly specific, while some are not

……………….

I really do love Japan’s odd relationship with English.

Post-a-day 2017

La Traviata and the World Series

Tonight, I celebrated the Astros’ World Series win with a small group of people that included, but was not limited to, doctors, homosexuals, teachers, Romanians, and a temporary Houstonian, who is a godsend in the opera. I didn’t really know any of them – we all just love music, and opera specifically. At each intermission at the opera tonight, the screen typically reserved for the supertitles and announcements about Houston Grand Opera, displayed the score of the Astros-Dodgers game. During the curtain call, one of the leads showed the latest score on his hands, to relieve us all the worry. And, when a small group of us gathered for a ‘behind the music’ miniature interview with one of the performers, the game was discussed. The performer has only been in Houston a couple months, but he was as excited about the game as anyone else. And, when the official interview had ended, and we were all chatting, and the game ended, we all celebrated together like friends. And, in Houston, that is normal enough. And, I found the company to be so truly a representation of our town, that it made the win that much better. In Houston, just about anyone can talk to just about anyone. You look at groups of kids, and even people my age and up, and they’re often from all over the world, either directly so or by heritage. In Houston, we are diverse and we are loving. (This is person-to-person, not car-to-car, you see – people tend to forget that a car contains a person, so cars get treated way differently than people who are face-to-face.)

Anyway, I began to wonder if any of the players on the Astros team were actually from Houston. I’m not so sure any of them are from Houston. And, while that is a bit odd, seeing as Houston is celebrating their victory, it also is rather fitting. Houston is packed with people who are originally from it. People regularly come to Texas, and find themselves never wanting to leave (though, I know that this is my always the case). We are the most diverse city in the USA, and that can be observed not just walking the streets, but in looking at our baseball team. Those guys are from all over, just like the population of our city. I find it kind of cool, really.

Anyway, yay, Astros, and yay, for the fabulous operatic baritone that is George Petean!

Post-a-day 2017

Becoming Jack Black, teacherly

Yesterday, in class, as I walked around the room with a bass guitar strapped across me, and casually strummed while discussing students’s work on the boards with them, I realized that I was, indeed, being my own version of Jack Black from “School of Rock”. Sure, I was actually teaching the subject that the school hired me to teach, but we regularly have our moments of magical inspiration to discuss something that educates the students in an entirely different, but effective, way.

I commented about my discovery to a few students, and they grew excited about it. I jokingly began to sing about how “math is cool”, and the students declares that I should be Jack Black from “School of Rock”. I laughed, and we all shared a minute of delight at the idea, until I turned them back to their work on the boards.

The incident, though brief and seemingly inconsequential, marked something big for me. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but it was big.

When I first started teaching, I remember thinking, and then publicly commenting on Facebook, that one of my greatest fears in being a teacher, was being Jack Black in “School of Rock”. When I am lonely, I have tended to watch a film at night, and most nights. I was apparently in a school-related films phase, and had watched “School of Rock” shortly after watching “Mr. Holland’s Opus”. Where I had marveled at Richard Dreyfus’s character, I found utter panic and increasing dislike for Jack Black’s – one was an ideal teacher, and the other was the epitome of what not to do. I had enjoyed both films as a student, but my perspective of “teacher” had me see too many ways for Jack Black’s character to end up fired and/or imprisoned and/or forbidden from working in education ever again.

A dear friend had commented on that status in an unexpected way. Something to the effect of, ‘Are you sure you don’t mean ‘One of my greatest goals…’?’ She was not an uninformed individual, regarding education, and her comment had me truly take pause. Perhaps there was something to it, but I could hardly even consider the idea, due to how terrible so many of his actions were as a teacher.

This time…yesterday, things were different for me. When I labeled myself as Jack Black’s character, – I am currently a long-term substitute teacher, teaching math at a private school – I was actually delighted at the idea, and then surprised at my own response. What was once a dreadful idea that I could not even consider, had suddenly become an almost-ideal. I respected myself for such an idea, for my being my own version of him, that terrible teacher.

Clearly, something big has altered within me, for such an alteration to have occurred. But what?

I shall dream of it tonight…

P.S. It was a student’s bass, and I don’t even know why he had it at school…, I think.

Post-a-day 2017

Halloween sneakiness

Tomorrow, I’m going to school dressed as a student. No one else is dressing up for Halloween during the day… they’re all wearing Astros t-shirts with uniform bottoms. But that’s okay. I’ll enjoy being dressed as a student, whether other people appreciate it or not. I may even see about “getting in trouble”, doing things only teachers are allowed to do, but looking like a student. 😛

Post-a-day 2017