Tag: USA

God, bless me, please

I don’t know what it is, but something has me unconcerned on the whole.  I don’t quite have a place to live after this month.  I don’t quite have a well-enough-paying job as of this week.  I don’t have any health or dental insurance once I move back to Texas next month.  And yet, here I am, trying to get myself worked up, because I am not already concerned about these things. 

Why am I unconcerned?  I don’t know.  There is something in the air though, that tells me that everything is okay, everything will be perfect once I’m back home.  So, I am trusting.  I am keeping an open mind, and I am listening when things come up.

Let us see where this takes me next month…  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

The Body Talks

Let’s talk about sex, baby.

Well, sort of… That’s what my body kept saying to me today.

Today was a day in which my body felt like it was in a state of panic.  In a way, it was in a state of panic (or bordering on panic, anyway).  To my body, this panic was expressed as a painful desire, né need to procreate.  

“Hannah, I need to reproduce – it is what I am designed so well to do, and I’ve waited so long already… let me go!!”  

Sigh.

Such was the sort of conversation my body and I had today.  It complained and begged and reasoned, and I sighed and just accepted the complaints.

Now, the kicker to all of this is that I am almost entirely comfortable and at ease now (despite being quite sleepy).  Why is that?  The same reason (-ish) that my body has been panicky lately – I need physical contact in my life.  Good, real, physical contact, corporal contact, person-to-person skin-to-skin touch is an absolute necessity for me.

And living in Japan has given me almost none of that.  It has quite truly driven my body into a state of panic, in fact.  

How did I go from freak-out to calm?  I hung out with friends and went dancing with them.  In this time, I leaned on them, they leaned on me, we rubbed backs, hugged (the real kind), held hands, stood with our arms draped on one another’s shoulders or around the waist or hips, touched this or that spot on someone to get his/her attention.  In short, we had a nice amount of physical contact with one another.  No, it was not anything compared to what I am accustomed to having back in the US, – we are So touchy-touchy in Texas, and especially at dance there – however it was tremendous when compared to my average day and week of zero physical contact here in Japan.

I went to a dance event in Korea just a couple weekends ago.  I danced like crazy there, and I hugged people and had lots of physical contact with people who love me and whom I love.  I think that going from a weekend jammed full of corporal contact and love, back to the solitude and non-touching life I have here right now, my body had a sort of shock.  After having gone so many months with only a bit of physical contact here and there in a month, I was accustomed to it.  But, after spending a weekend filled with physical contact, it has been difficult to go back to the zero-touching lifestyle.

And so my body cried for a while, until it at last had some loving physical contact this afternoon and tonight, at which point it is ready to take on this next week (until I head to the beach next weekend, at which point the physical contact occasions will resume). 

So, instead of listening to the crybaby body make excuses about its evolution and its original design for existence, I just get myself some physical contact, some hugs and snuggles and such, and things work out beautifully.

Cheers to loving physical contact! ❤

Post-a-day 2017

Late-night FaveTime

Chitter chatter, pitter patter

What’s the latest news?

I’ve got the blues, you’ve got new shoes, and Mom is delighted (not) by her latest news.

The cats are cats, packing needs to be done, and there are classes I need to take.

It’s AM here and PM there, and kind of extremely late.

So, I’ll pack my clothes for my European tour, and you can head to sleep, and dream of days that are coming soon, when I’ll be by the pool, and you’ll be there with me, too.
Post-a-day 2017

Normal or normal?

I guess that whatever we are accustomed to having around us, ends up being what feels like “normal” to us.  Like how my life never seems to feel very exciting or special – it has become my experience of “normal”, and therefore can’t seem exceedingly exciting or abnormal to me.  

I regularly feel as though everyone can speak loads of languages, and so I’m nothing but average (or even below average) in that field.  But who are my acquaintances?  Well, we tend to end up spending time with people who, in some way or other, are quite similar to ourselves, do we not?  It is no wonder, then, that I have so many friends who are bi- and multilingual, and who have not only visited but lived in at least one country other than their own.  This isn’t to say, of course, that all of my friends meet this criteria.  Certainly not.  I just happen to have a lot of friends who do.

So, when I have a night like tonight, where my friends and I sound to an on-listener like we can’t seem to pick a language, as we constantly switch around between English (our one common language), French, and Japanese, I all too easily forget that this is not normal in the world.  Sure, it is normal for me and for my life, but that doesn’t mean that everyone does it regularly.  It doesn’t even mean that half the world could do it regularly, even if they wanted to do so.

Or perhaps they could.  I think, nonetheless, that I severely underappreciate my language abilities, by subconsciously expecting that the people who most closely surround me are an average sample of the whole.  What is normal for one person simply is what is around that person in life.  And two people with closely aligned lives might find the same things as one another to be normal.  So, of course the people who are out doing the same things I live to do, tend to see the world in a similar way to how I see it, and hold a subconscious standard of “normal” that is similar to my own.  That’s why our paths cross in the first place – we’re all into* this particular kind of awesome.

Filing a room with awesome people doesn’t mean that they aren’t all still awesome, just because the standard in the room is about equal.  It just means that you have an extra-awesome room that is full of a ton of awesome people.

I guess what I am aiming to say here is that, despite my feeling below-average and utterly “normal” and boring at times, I realize now that I am not viewing things outside of my nearest surroundings (so to speak), and that I realize that I am, in fact, awesome.  And I’m proud and happy about that.

Peace, y’all. ❤
Post-a-day 2017

A philosopher for the moment

Today, I did some fun things including showing up my friend at children’s games, but I don’t feel like sharing about that right now.  I feel like being philosophical, ponderous… something like that.  And yet, here I lie with almost no thoughts, no words in mind or even on their way.  I am listening to the guitar upstairs, and what sounds like company sharing in the music for once (it is Saturday night, after all).  I am somewhat worried about the next couple months, specifically regarding how they will unfold.  I fear regrets, especially for after I have left this country, and am back living in my own.  I fear my being wonderful and amazingly successful in my endeavors once I’m back there.  I fear letting go of my endeavors in exchange for something safe.  I fear not becoming myself, not being myself once I am back there in a seemingly unchanged world as an incredibly changed person.  Someone told us to take a picture of ourselves before we begin this time in Japan.  I had forgotten to do that before leaving home, but I took a picture in the elevator on my way down to our very first meeting on my first day of orientation here.  I wonder what I will see different in my final photo as I say goodbye to this place.  I know that the two people in the photos are similar, however, they are in no way the same.  I loved and still do love who the former person was, and I do not want to become her again.  

These are things that are sitting in my being right now.  If you would have asked me before I wrote this, what I was thinking, I couldn’t have told you.  But now, as I have written this, I can see clearly that this is what was resting in my mind, in my heart, in my bones and flesh and breath… in fact, somewhat restricting my breath…, and that that is why I do not care to share the joys of today, but feel myself to be of a philosophical persuasion at present.  I could have lived with the greats right now.
Post-a-day 2017 

Songs for Friends and Self

First off,

😀   Merry Christmas!   😀


Via the natural flow of thoughts in my head, I found myself singing a song that a friend and I wrote (to the tune of another song) as a goodbye present to another friend of ours a few years back.  This other friend was heading to the US for a semester abroad, and so we set up a sort of going away surprise in which everyone could participate.

It was Sylvia’s idea, the song.  She picked one of Gunnar’s favorite songs, and decided to write new words to it.  About an hour-ish before we were supposed to head out to meet up with other friends to practice the song, she had gotten only a few sentences into it, and so I ended up taking over and putting the bulk of it together.

We threw a thumbs up on it, and rushed off to rehearse with other friends.  At rehearsal, we changed a word or two to make things easier for folks, and organized our plan of action to get out the lyrics to everyone after Mass that evening (the going away party was taking place right after the young-ish adults Mass where we all went together).  The song ended up going beautifully and being a total hit – it was just as we’d hoped, and all was well as we sent our good friend on his way.

Now, I completely meant the words when I wrote them for our friend Gunnar.  However, a few weeks later, as I, myself, was leaving the country to go back to the US, the song suddenly sounded like something I had actually written for myself.  To this day, the song gets stuck in my head (although I have no recording of it, and have not since that month looked at the lyrics), and it, somehow, is always comforting – I miss living in Vienna terribly, but this song somehow makes everything okay how it is right now.  I guess God’s just good at making things work out that way.  🙂  I have this dual feeling that 1) if I move back to Vienna, I’ll never want to leave again, and 2) if I even visit Vienna, I’ll be utterly disappointed with how it compares to having lived there before and loving it so much then.  I think that, no matter what, I have to go back, though.  I’ll try a visit first – maybe next year for Christmas – and see how that goes, huh?  Sounds good to me.  🙂  Anyway…

Enjoy.       (To the tune of “Wherever You Will Go” by The Calling)

P.S.  BeFree is the name of the Mass we all attended, and which had brought most of us together as friends in Vienna

6. Jan 2013

VERSE 1

So lately, been wondering
Who will be there to take your place.
When you’re gone, we’ll need one
To play that music filled with grace.
If it really is God’s will,
Then we guess that you can go.
Just remember us back here
While you’re off in USA

CHORUS
If we could, then we would
Keep you  with us here in Wien.
But God sends you elsewhere,
So take care, have fun, and BeFree!

VERSE 2

Hopefully, you’ll find out
The way to make it back someday.
Until then, God bless you
And help you all throughout your days.
If it really is God’s will,
Then, Columbia, here he is!
And we hope that, while you’re out there,
The Lord’s grace still flows from you.

CHORUS

If we could, then we would
Keep you  with us here in Wien.
But God sends you elsewhere,
So take care, have fun, and BeFree!

BRIDGE

God give Gunnar your blessing.
Give him helping hands and friends.
Give him everything he needs!

CHORUS

If we could, then we would
Keep you  with us here in Wien.
But God sends you elsewhere,
So take care, have fun, and BeFree

VERSE 3

You’re leaving.  We’ll miss you,
but all our lives will still go on.
In your heart, in your mind,
May God be with you all the time.
If it really is God’s will,
Then we guess that you can go.
Just remember us back here
While you’re off in USA

CHORUS

If we could, then we would
Keep you  with us here in Wien
But God sends you elsewhere
So take care, have fun, and BeFree

If we could, then we would
Keep you  with us here in Wien
But God sends you elsewhere
So take care, have fun, and BeeeeFreeeeee

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