blue and brown books

It is Thursday, 6.26.08 and it is humid and hot.

I’m definitely feeling how boring these have become, and how boring my life has become as a result of being busy and slightly social. I miss being a bit solitary and confined with my books and my paper and pen. I haven’t done that in a while and I’m feeling really… stupid? Boring? Off? The truth, I guess, is that it’s good to be out with people and conversing and talking. The bad news is that I do get slightly sick of having to be ‘on’.

This is going to be an interesting one…

Today I gave a demo for Summer lessons and it went a lot better than the last time. I caught some lunch with Petar and Rhonda and I went to teach class. I was exhausted by the end, and not used to teaching what ended up being about 7 classes today. I’m dreading Summer School. I met Petar at Down Under for a drink and we went to his place and I ate a grilled cheese. We played Pixel Junk for a few hours, and I came home.

But today, thinking back to my bike ride home, zooming past a woman shaking out her futon on the 6th story of her apartment, a shrine, a graveyard a man walking his small orange Shiba Inu, crossing over the bridge that spans an artificially carved-out river, looking in bright yellow windows from the dim dark blue Japan night I realized how used to these things I am and how startling and awkward and perhaps horrific home will feel. I imagine them fat and loud and ridiculously uneducated. This, I imagine, has a lot to do with how I don’t speak enough Japanese to hear such uneducated-ness or cruelty, or ignorance, but this is not entirely the issue.

I’ve been on vacation from real life. Engaging with people in general, and living with human beings who ought to be told better, or thought of in better ways. I am, still, convinced that people are always engaged in what they believe are the right things to do/make/say/thing. The benefit of doubt is what we ought to be upholding as a social system at large, and, where we feel the need, ought to correct things we legitimately take issue with. I’m in a strange situation where I feel like I miss the people I abhor. Now, abhor is a strong word, but it’s meant to emphasize my distaste with the way I’ve been living and eating and using public transportation and treating my girlfriend and my dogs.

What am I saying?
You know that scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray says to his wife on the phone (something to the effect of)  “I want to start eating right… I just want to be a better person”? That’s totally me right now. This is rambling and I am sorry, but I just feel that now more than ever I want to engage and be engaged again.