Hello all,
Sorry for the recent disappearance, some computer problems combined with my time in Spain led me to take a bit of a break from the computer which was rather well needed. In fact, I'm going to keep this entry rather short until I get a bit more settled.
Let me just say, it was very hard to leave Spain for multiple reasons not the least of which was that my fear of re-falling in love with the country that was well founded. Out of all the places I have been and aside from my first trip to Austin when I was 15, I can't think of a place that I have felt more at home than that country. Madrid proved to have a lot more life to it that I initially supposed. I was half expecting a business oriented metropolis with the masses walking around in suits for fun. Don't ask me where I developed this idea because I don't really know, I guess I was just not expecting it to have the cultural richness of Barcelona. Even though I was there over two weeks, I can't say that it does, but it is damn close. I saw so much and yet I saw so little of everything there. I was swept away by numerous cheap cups of coffee (Cafe con leche and cortados) at the the ubiquitous street cafes, watching people, reading books and in general enjoying the feeling of being outdoors in the heat. This and wandering around the cavernous streets sucked up most of my time and even though I managed to not step food into a single museum, I regret nothing of how I used my time there. Khanh was an amazing host and besides taking me out to several excellent meals (often courtesy of her company's credit card, name withheld) even managed a trip to the south to Cordoba and a small city that I forget the name of in the Costa del Sol. That part of my trip will stay with me a long while and I know that it is a country I will return to time and time again if not permanently.
So now I find myself in Japan once again. Penniless and jobless everything else is amazing, well, actually it's raining but that is minor. Keiko picked me up at the airport, introduced me to our new home which she won't move into for another couple weeks, Jet-lagged and sleepy eyed we walked around Jiyugaoka beginning our hunt for apartment amenities. This shouldn't take to long. In fact, let me put it into context. Anyone who remembers my last place in Austin with Michelle, well, think of the living room where she fit in two couches and the tv stand and all that? Well, that is the size of our apartment. For anyone who saw my place in Korea, it's maybe a tiny bit bigger, actually probably the same. I'm not sure how we're going to decorate the place yet, minimalism is a must, more than a couple chairs and the place will become unbearably crowded, remember, we're going to have two living here. This will be an interesting experience in many ways, but one I think will be reason for much joy. Joy with a capital J.
Friday was such a blur, rushing to the airport, worried that my luggage would be rejected due to weight, saying goodbye to Khanh, a four and a half hour layover in Munich (by far the best airport I can think of to be stranded in), then a blistering neck cramping 12 hours on the plane to Tokyo where I wasn't able to really sleep at all. Now, on the heals of Spain I find myself sitting in Shubuya Tokyo in a world (city world at least) that quite possibly could not be any more different. The streets are teaming with millions of people, the crosswalk alone must have contained a thousand outside the station, everyone seems under 30 and I walk lost among the people, simply searching for a place to rest. It's not as shocking this time I admit, it surprises even me how many places I've been in the last 4 months and how jumping ship to the opposite of where I've been seems but only a slight bump on a rather natural progression.
Tomorrow will be Monday May 16th. I'll shave, put on my suit and set out to begin looking for jobs as soon as I find a place to print out some resumes. I have no idea where I'll go, where hardly even to start nor do I know if it's a good idea to go fishing for jobs absent a visa or if that could get me into trouble, I guess I'll just have to find out. As for now, I need to leave to go meet Keiko so we can go buy a stove, look at refrigerators and a washing machine. It seems nearly impossible to eat anything under 7 dollars here which means that I need to start cooking ASAP.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
oblivious in the streets
This is not like any of my recent posts, more for me. I promise to post new pictures and whereabouts info soon. Feel free to skip this entry.
Yesterday and today I've talked to almost no one. Khanh is in Paris until tomorrow night and I've sort of been in a solitary mood. I've been engrossed in a book and just a little while ago finished going through it. Part of me feels like I'm wasting some of my time here but another part of me feels that I needed to have some time to myself, just to reflect on my thoughts. The book I was reading was a bit strange. It's a Japanese/British author, Kazuo Ishiguro, but takes place between London and Shanghai before WW II. It tells the story of a boy who whose parents disappeared when they were living in Shanghai when he was 10 years old. He's sent back to London and becomes a detective, and then later in his life returns to Shanghai to try and solve the mystery of his parents vanishing. That is fine and all, but so few details are given about his being a "celebrated detective" and characters are thrown in that are sometimes distracting. Furthermore, he doesn't seem like a true detective. I was sitting in a cafe reading the climax, and he's leading around a Japanese soldier who he thinks is his boyhood friend as troops are advancing through Shanghai. It all seemed so far fetched and his "friend" seemed to show no concrete signs of actually being the person he thought he was making me question the author's validity as a detective. I felt like in the following pages that I would discover that the narrator is in fact delusional and in a mental hospital.
I took a break to walk around, I found myself drifting through the streets, I was listening to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" album, and all of a sudden I started to question my surroundings, who I was and what I was doing here, or if in fact I was here at all. It was weird, even dreamlike, possibly because I was blocking out the real sounds of the world with a rather erratic music selection. I felt like when I let my eyes drift up from my moving feet that I found people looking at me in a curious way. I thought that perhaps a bird had lighted on my head and I'd failed to notice causing me to become quite a curiosity as I walked around. As I said, I've really not talked to anyone in two days, haven't seen a soul that I recognize, and as I was meandering through the streets, eventually back to the empty apartment, I just had this strange feeling that either I was crazy and imagining life, or that I was asleep and dreaming and everything around me was just really my imagination and I would awake in the morning to find myself in a different world where none of this was real. Have you ever had those moments? I used to think about it when I was younger. I mean, dreams don't really have a sense of time. Have you ever had a dream that seemed like it went on for days, months, even years only to find yourself wake up and see you've only been asleep for an hour or less? Have you ever thought (I used to think this sometimes when I was younger) that most or all of your life is actually one really long dream and that you might wake up at any minute, find yourself like 12 years old and forced to relive the the next 17 years of your life all over again? I know I still have dreams, you might even call them nightmares, where I find myself forced to return to high school because I didn't complete a math class for some reason. I suppose that might be my own personal version of hell, forced to return to high school as a student at 28 for a math class that now I have no recollection of since I haven't used Algebra or most forms of higher math in the last 10 years. When I have those dreams I always have to wake and remind myself that it's not real, only a dream. I think I hate those even more than "real" nightmares, the normal scary ones which I usually don't have very often.
Anyway, that aside from a trip to the grocery store, this was more or less my day. I sit now on the terrace that has demanded so much of my time here in Madrid, contemplating what to read or write next. It feels good to really be reading again, I have more to think about, I feel more inspired, I feel more alive. The only thing is that when I get in these moods, I tend to turn myself off from the outside world as my hermit like quality of the last few days show, but sometimes I need it.
Yesterday and today I've talked to almost no one. Khanh is in Paris until tomorrow night and I've sort of been in a solitary mood. I've been engrossed in a book and just a little while ago finished going through it. Part of me feels like I'm wasting some of my time here but another part of me feels that I needed to have some time to myself, just to reflect on my thoughts. The book I was reading was a bit strange. It's a Japanese/British author, Kazuo Ishiguro, but takes place between London and Shanghai before WW II. It tells the story of a boy who whose parents disappeared when they were living in Shanghai when he was 10 years old. He's sent back to London and becomes a detective, and then later in his life returns to Shanghai to try and solve the mystery of his parents vanishing. That is fine and all, but so few details are given about his being a "celebrated detective" and characters are thrown in that are sometimes distracting. Furthermore, he doesn't seem like a true detective. I was sitting in a cafe reading the climax, and he's leading around a Japanese soldier who he thinks is his boyhood friend as troops are advancing through Shanghai. It all seemed so far fetched and his "friend" seemed to show no concrete signs of actually being the person he thought he was making me question the author's validity as a detective. I felt like in the following pages that I would discover that the narrator is in fact delusional and in a mental hospital.
I took a break to walk around, I found myself drifting through the streets, I was listening to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" album, and all of a sudden I started to question my surroundings, who I was and what I was doing here, or if in fact I was here at all. It was weird, even dreamlike, possibly because I was blocking out the real sounds of the world with a rather erratic music selection. I felt like when I let my eyes drift up from my moving feet that I found people looking at me in a curious way. I thought that perhaps a bird had lighted on my head and I'd failed to notice causing me to become quite a curiosity as I walked around. As I said, I've really not talked to anyone in two days, haven't seen a soul that I recognize, and as I was meandering through the streets, eventually back to the empty apartment, I just had this strange feeling that either I was crazy and imagining life, or that I was asleep and dreaming and everything around me was just really my imagination and I would awake in the morning to find myself in a different world where none of this was real. Have you ever had those moments? I used to think about it when I was younger. I mean, dreams don't really have a sense of time. Have you ever had a dream that seemed like it went on for days, months, even years only to find yourself wake up and see you've only been asleep for an hour or less? Have you ever thought (I used to think this sometimes when I was younger) that most or all of your life is actually one really long dream and that you might wake up at any minute, find yourself like 12 years old and forced to relive the the next 17 years of your life all over again? I know I still have dreams, you might even call them nightmares, where I find myself forced to return to high school because I didn't complete a math class for some reason. I suppose that might be my own personal version of hell, forced to return to high school as a student at 28 for a math class that now I have no recollection of since I haven't used Algebra or most forms of higher math in the last 10 years. When I have those dreams I always have to wake and remind myself that it's not real, only a dream. I think I hate those even more than "real" nightmares, the normal scary ones which I usually don't have very often.
Anyway, that aside from a trip to the grocery store, this was more or less my day. I sit now on the terrace that has demanded so much of my time here in Madrid, contemplating what to read or write next. It feels good to really be reading again, I have more to think about, I feel more inspired, I feel more alive. The only thing is that when I get in these moods, I tend to turn myself off from the outside world as my hermit like quality of the last few days show, but sometimes I need it.
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