Nothing of Note

I don't have much to say these days. I'm not sure why. It's not that there's been any lack of activity. It's probably more to do with the fact that I spend most of my work week writing, so when it comes to putting things down here, it's hard to think of things to write, my fingers start to pre-ache and I doubt my ability to write anything more compelling than what sets one law firm apart from the crowd (in truth, very little sets one law firm apart from another - they are either compassionate, aggressive, or professional, or slight variations on these three). So why am I sitting in front of my computer now? Why am I typing? I've no idea. Well, partly it's because when I drove over to MCAD to see if I could still access the computer room and log in to work on Photoshop, I found a class going on in there. I ended up over at the Spyhouse Coffee Shop on Nicollet. I've been coming to this place over the last couple weeks. I like it. I even bought one of their super cool retro mugs. Last month I was writing furiously to finish a short mystery I'd begun last spring. Overall, it's not bad, but it needs a lot of molding - the atmosphere is not right yet. I also need to develop it further. I think I might try and work it into a mystery novel and pitch it to one of the publishers that print off millions of mass market mysteries. I made the story local so it could perhaps be sold locally - all those Summit / Grand Ladies could sit in their coffee and tea shops reading my conventional drivel and smile with recognition of the local places I mention.

Another thing that has been fun is that I've gotten a bit Ghetto with my (still minimal) TV watching. The station of choice these days is "The CW" (Ooh! It sounds just like "The O.C."). I watch it for two reasons:

1st: I like watching "People's Court" with Judge Marilyn Milian - "The Hottest Judge on TV" so her show's intro says.

I like watching her because there is something comforting about seeing someone who has all the answers and is so sure of herself that she even shouts it. I admire people who can think through things quickly and clearly - I've never learned how to do this. I waiver and worry too much about reactions to my opinions. I like her cuz she's not crusty like Judge Judy. I think I take comfort in watching people open their mouths in disbelief when they realize that all their emotions and feelings don't have anything to do with justice. What they are looking for is mercy.

This reminds me of a quote by the late, great forgotten, Atheist turned Catholic apologist, G.K. Chesterton: "Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy." I wonder if it's true. I think the first part is. The part I keep coming back to is "most adults are wicked." Who of us wants to be defined in this way? Yet, these things go through my head cuz I'm not quite comfortable with the notion that we are all basically good. Given the opportunity, I think that I generally will act in a self-serving manner. I've had to be taught to be less so. Hopefully those of us with wicked streaks can find justice tempered by mercy.

At any rate, I didn't plan on writing all that.

2nd: Thank Allah for a good new show! I've gotten hooked on the CW's Monday night show "Aliens in America" about a Wisconsin family and the Pakistani exchange student who lives with them - they thought they were getting a European jock.

This show is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Raja is quite possibly one of the most sincerly charming, most hysterical characters I've seen in a while. Here's a preview clip:

I was going to try and end this blog by drawing some comparison between these two shows, between Marilyn and Raja and their views of the world, but that would get a bit too much like a sermon. And while I enjoy a good sermon (having grown up listening to my father in the pulpit at church every Sunday.), I am not a preacher and not good at composing sermons.

Day After Christmas Blues

Well, Christmas alone wasn't as bad as I thought - of course, getting to be with my family would have been wonderful, but things were still good. On Christmas Eve, I went with Stacy and Motoki (thanks for driving, Motoki!) to Jichiidai where one of my students, Yoko, attends church. We were met by Moto - one of our brilliant discussion students - outside of the church where the church choir was assembled. They sang carols outside until the service started. The service was really nice and Yoko played piano and sang with the choir. She even typed out the Japanese carol lyrics in Romaji (Romanized letters) so we could sing along. Another one of Stacy's students was there - she brought homemade marmalade for Stacy, Moto, and me - it was wonderful. The one funny thing was the fact that the candlelight service candles were not candlelight service size candles, but instead, birthday candle sized candles with pieces of foil wrapped around the base. Still, the service was much like the Christmas Eve candlelight services i am used to - it was nice.

Also, the students here at AEON have been so generous to me this Christmas. I got,
-2 green hats (from two different students)
-Tea
-Chocolates
-Pottery

On Saturday, some wonderful gifts arrived from my parents, and today I got cards and a package from my sis and one of my brothers. All weekend I have been talking to my family - On Christmas Eve night, I got on iChat with my brother in Houson and watched the kids open presents and even read a children's storybook version of the Christmas story to the kids - my brother held up the book to the video cam and I read it to them. It was the next best thing to being there. Today I talked with Becky while I opened up the stocking stuffers she sent to me.

All of this was great and tomorrow I will chat with the whole family at my folks house, yet today was a bit of a let-down. The weather today was, in a word, gloomy. Heavy rains started last night and got heavier throughout the day. The winds picked up and my shoes got soaked on the way to work. On the way home, I took the bus, but waiting for it, my suit got soaked, my shoes got resoaked, my backpack got soaked, and my umbrella nearly broke. I thought about it and realized that I am glad that I don't normally live in such a climate. In spite of the cold of Minnesota in January, I think I prefer it to the cold, clammy feeling of soaked shoes and socks as I go to work. Hopefully, things will clear up during my days off so I can enjoy the hot springs and the ski slopes.

First Week of Advent

Advent - the four Sundays before Christmas on the Christian calendar - started yesterday. Celebrating Advent has been a tradition in my family for years, and is one that I've continued on my own. It's generally considered a time of spiritual preparation for celebrating Christ's birth.

I was talking to one of my brothers on Skype the other day and we were both feeling rather disillusioned by the commercialism of the season - here in Japan it too is a holiday run by department stores. And in a predominantly nominal Buddhist culture, it has little religious significance. What we have here in Japan is a kind of hodge podge of ideas of what people think an American or European Christmas should look like, so it is generally mismatched, gaudy, and geared toward spending. This is fine if you are a person for whom the holiday holds no specific spiritual meaning - it's a nice time of year for spending time with family and giving and receiving gifts. But beyond the shopping, gifts, and Santas, all of which I enjoy, I need it to mean something more significant. I am far from perfect, and Christmas carols that talk about "...the dawn of redeeming grace..." or about how "...hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on Earth, good will to men..." stir something in me. So today I bought my four Advent candles - one to light each week - and will await Christmas in perhaps a more quiet, introspective way than I have in recent years.

I also wanted my apartment to look a little more festive than it did. So I bought a mini Christmas tree from the 100 Yen store and decorated it with some lights and little snowflake ornaments. Then I wrapped my garland of Danish flags (not "controversial" Danish cartoons, mind you) around the tree. I'm happy with the result. My little ten tatami mat-sized space of Japan looks a little warmer tonight:

P.S. I also made a plum pudding that is waiting to be eaten on Christmas Eve.

Big Mouth Hungry! EAT SMURFS!

You are sitting in your office waiting for one of your students to come to her conference with you. She's the only no show so far - well, you could count the student who told you yesterday that conferences would not be conveneint for him as he was going to the cities and could you please log on to D2L so that you can meet with him online to discuss his paper that he'll probably send as a microsoftworks document, so you can't read it anyway, but wait, he never sent it to begin with, and he wasn't terribly disturbed by the low grade on his first paper, so you don't even consider him. You are glad she didn't show up because it means you can work on your thesis revision and that chapter you haven't finished on your thesis. You are still a little anxious after the meeting you had with your advisor yesterday - you know you are behind and it bothers you; you just don't want her to call that to your attention. You want to be done with the damned thing, but that bout of chronic fatigue syndrome hits you every time you sit down to your computer to work. You can talk forever about CGR. You love to talk forever about CGR. "Goblin Market" is probably the one poem you really get. But when you sit down to your thesis, all the interest and energy flows out of you. You forget how to write a paper. No. Forget about forgetting how to write a paper; you forget how to write. You are still scarred (you almost wrote scared, but either works) after your experience writing papers for American lit last semester. You can still string together words, but suddenly people tell you you are illogical, that you make no sense. You know what you mean, but that counts for shit.

You remember reading the first part of a biography on Leonard Bernstein (you never got past the first six chapters because you have trouble finishing things). You remember how he attended some latin school for brilliant children of brilliant parents. You remember the story of how he wrote a brilliant paper the night before it was due, and how his teachers gushed at how innovative he was and how he took such an unorthodox approach to the assignment, that he received high marks. You wish you could sit at the piano and play the way he was playing at 10.

You think of your friend in New York who seems to live some sort of charmed life. Who can live on three hours of sleep a night and accomplishes more in five hours than you do in two weeks. Who writes cookbooks and caters meals for Oprah, and had a lion and a peacock for a pet when he was a child.

You are always tired. You don't get any exercise. You don't always get your work done. You always have an excuse. You fall asleep at your computer. You get a sore throat (You make sure to cough and sniffle when you tell your advisor this to add verisimilitude to your story. The story IS true, but you still feel bad for using the excuse). You had much more fun writing your paper for world novel this week. You parodied Jamaica Kincaid's writing style, writing in second person. As you write in the same mode now, you feel like a counterfeit. You enjoy this mode more, because it feels lazy. When you read your paper in class two nights ago, one person applauded you for it. Another said "funny." You were proud. You felt deflated when the professor questioned your emotional response to the book you parodied. You felt suddenly like you got the answer wrong, that your sense of well-being hinged on getting the right response. But you've always felt that way. You get tired of that, and always resolve not to care so much, but you still do. You feel more that your thesis is being written for your advisor's benefit than for yours. You realize of course that this is a problem, because how can you write with conviction about something when its written under the pressure of needing to do it for someone else? You try and convince yourself that your knowledge of this will be the thing that pushes you through it, and it will eventually. But you're not buying it right now.

Then your 4:00 appointment arrives - the student from Macedonia - and as you read through his paper (which should be a drudge because you are marking grammatical errors every three words, but isn't because his communication is clearer than most of your other students' - heck, it's clearer than your thesis) you begin to get lost his story of his father teaching him how to repair a gold ring. You are caught up in his story and can see this student's father sitting with him at a work bench teaching him how to solder, file, and polish. This student represents something for you, but you don't completely know what it is. You are glad you didn't send him packing to 101 for non-natives. Maybe he represents your desire for independence as well as connection (but the minute you write that, you don't believe it). Maybe you just wish you had a cool accent and not the non-accent you tried so hard to have so that you didn't have a Minnesotan one.

You think about a record your parents had when you were a child that described the ministry of the apostle Paul from the book of Acts(you feel embarrassed that you just admitted to something so churchy, but then you don't really care either). You remember the actor speaking for Paul recounting a vision he had one night where he saw a man standing there saying: "Come over to Macedonia and help us." You remember the meaning of the vision, but for some reason it registers differently now. Every time you see your student, you think of this dream of Paul's.

You wish you were in Macedonia.

Sunday Poems by Rossetti

These two poems are from a collection of sonnets called Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets. It's made up of (as the title suggests) 28 sonnets - one for each line of two sonnets. These are largely religious and reflective (and have been compared with the Holy Sonnets of John Donne). since it's Sunday and I didn't make it to church this morning, I thought I'd copy out a couple of poems (one sacred, one secular) that caught my attention when I was reading this morning:

Sonnet 4
So tired am I, so weary of today,
So unrefreshed from foregone weariness,
So overburdened by forseen distress,
So lagging and so stumbling on my way,
I scarce can rouse myself to watch or pray,
To hope or aim, or toil for more or less,--
Ah, always less and less, even while I press
Forward and toil and aim as best I may.
Half-starved of soul and heartsick utterly,
Yet lift I up my heart and soul and eyes
(Which fail in looking upward) toward the prize:
Me, Lord, Thou seest tho' I see not Thee;
Me now, as once the Thief in Paradise,
Even me, O Lord my Lord, remember me.

Sonnet 17

Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,
And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!
I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of foresight and of memory,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;
Oh weary impatient patience of my lot! --
Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?