A week and more...

I had wanted to write something last Thursday which was the 1 week anniversary of my return to the 'States, but I was really busy I guess. Really busy. It's difficult to imagine how fast my daily-life responsibilities popped up and started to give me agitation.

I need to pick up my cello and practice. I need to do college essay work. I need to go to the dentist. I need to go to the orthodontist. I need to be happy all the time. I need to do this, I need to do that.

My mother was actually extremely giving last night as she let me go out to a late movie. I was actually pretty surprised that she let me do this because she's already loaded down with stress and I feel somewhat bad/cruel that I didn't just turn-around and reschedule with my friend, which would have been easier than let her be stressed out. Oh well...such is the idiot fucking brain of a teenager.

In a couple of minutes I'm going to need to get up, eat breakie, and go to the dentist. Every time I think of the dentist, I'm reminded of the fact that I need to get my wisdom teeth out. What a fucking drag. My parents never got their wisdom teeth pulled. My friend's older brother got them out and he was incapacitated for 3 days. Jeeez....I really don't want to have to deal with that crap. Things are stressful enough.

From our financial instability to my inability to get a job, I'm feeling very, very stressed out and also like an asshole. My brothers are growing up and I'm so nervous about how they'll turn out. I want them to be amazing people and do amazing things. Alex, I think, is so good at math and stuff and he's also clever when he's actually thinking that I know he'll go far. But I also hope that Sam develops into a strong, normal person. Not like his oldest brother who's decidedly abnormal on this inside. See? That's something I have to worry about as well.

No one reads this stupid blog, but I imagine that people do. I imagine that the more I post on it, the more it can become poetry. I think all of it can become poetry. And then I'll gather it all up and love it as my words regardless of whether or not people read it.

As my Japan adventure comes to a close, I've been trying to make a mental list of everything about me that's changed. Such a task is actually quite difficult, but there are many things I've noticed right off the bat.
Unfortunately, I've decided not to list them now; maybe I will later.

I'm excited to go home.
I'm not excited to leave.

....

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Japan

I.

Although I may never understand the deeper realities of these people, I am dipping beneath the surface, further than any foreigner could. Although I want to know more, I can be satisfied in knowing that these people are more human than anyone I have met here. This is the honest and profound truth and I couldn't have wished for anything better for the future of the country.

 

These people are the students of my homeroom class at the Japanese high school.

 

Moreover, I need to try and figure out why I am here now. Is it just to learn Japanese? I wonder...

I don]t want to just wake up in order to survive the day. I want to wake up and be excited. Not excited to get out of the house...

 

The real lessons of the trip are becoming apparent though: I need to learn to be more confident, without losing any tact. Furthermore, thee trip is a long, hard lesson in tact itself. Every day, everything I say has consequences. I am not exaggerating. Nor am I being unnecessarily dramatic.

 

It's funny: the things I had wished to accomplish would only have been dreams; but they came true indirectly because of this trip. To me, it will most likely remain unbelievable even many years later...

 

II.

It did become clear to me, about 11 days into the host family part of the trip, that I have been fatally hypocritical about adolescent social values.

 

To  those involved, and directly hurt by my hypocrisy, I'd like to apologize. It was not place to speak on something-no- to make judgement on something when I hadn't experienced it myself. For this, I am truly sorry. There aren't enough words in the English language to express how I feel. Because I assumed I was wise, without having any experience in the matter was hubris in its most wretched form.

 

I have transformed. I have evolved. I used to reject change, and now I crave it. I want to know more about loving than I ever wanted to know before. I want to be different, but still keep all the things that make me who I am..keep the good things, get rid of the bad things.

 

A cleansing.

 

From the time I started composing this entry until now, quite a bit has happened. I no longer dislike being in the house, and my relationship with my host mother is on the mend.

 

Predictably, I've also begun to have a greater appreciation for my country. I always loved America, even when its people are stupid. But how can you not love your own country, when the one you're living in has comics with octopuses having sex with teenage girls, special train cars for women because they get molested too often, has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and grown men and women live with their parents even in college?

 

I will write more later...probably closer to the end of the trip.

 

 

Star Trek

Now I want to see this movie...


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Romanza

There's only one song out there that actually makes me cry every time I hear it: Romanza by Andrea Bocelli.

http://tinyurl.com/r0manza

The whole album is amazing, but there's just that once song "Romanza" that gets me...
It's these lines especially:
And they call it love!
A thorn in the heart that gives no pain.
These people are in a desert
with the sand at the bottom of the heart.





Watch it in HQ...