六月十五日、二千七

June 15, 2007.
I woke up early by the sound of an alarm, equipped with puffy eyes from crying silently the night before as you were sleeping. I was purposely trying to wake you up actually, but even if you had, you didn't say anything. At this point we were separated by pillows. I gave in to what had become more of a chore than anything. I can't remember one detail from it, just that you were behind me. A mumble of a "bye" got no reply and I tried to go back to sleep.

I don't know what went through my head at this point, but there was some kind of revelation. I got up and started rummaging through piles of clothes and things to find everything that was mine. For the month or so before this I had slowly been collecting things around that were mine in hopes of this very moment, so I was probably a little ahead of my game. I began stuffing things into my huge tote bag. Miscellaneous socks, underwear, shirts, and even a sake set and a stuffed animal. I left the stuffed animal behind with a drawing and a note. "Take care of me," it said. Is that symbolic? I happen to think so.

And so we talked and called it quits after nearly 4 years, or at least I did. Sooner or later you would agree. Of course, we couldn't talk face to face or even with spoken words so it was nothing but little fragments of text messages we sent back and forth. I filled my car with things and ran into Mike on the way out. "Hey, do you know where my DVD is?," I asked and he just said "Uhoh." But we laughed and I was so excited. I cried after I left, turning onto Clark, looking at the graffiti that wasn't so fresh anymore. I cried up until dead man's curve, then that was it. I put on Dude Ranch and turned over a new leaf. I wrote down in words that filled an entire page, "Constants aren't so constant anymore."

Work started at 5pm and I told everyone what had happened and they all congratulated me. For the past few months Holly, Anthony, and just about everyone else I worked with had listened to my fairly hidden complaints and had given me advice that I finally followed. The puffiness went down, I got invited to a party after work*, I drank my first official single beer ever, and it was all scary and new and even though I had lost the majority of my "friends" in a single day, I had made new ones just then. I drove home at 2 or 3am and listened to the play list "home."



*...by Ryan, whom I've been dating now for a while.



♪ I just felt like getting this all down as my life has completely flipped around since this day and is now completely wonderful and pretty much amazing, to tell you the truth. Also, this is a very old picture of my feet. Looks like a corpse.

ミュジクのヅレクター

In my first week of being Music Director at 88.7fm WJCU, I've been confronted by promoters asking "Have you listened to this CD yet? What did you think?". As I dig through the pile, I hope it is a CD with a description of the front that blatantly says, "Sounds like Sufjan Stevens!," or "RIYL: Belle & Sebastian or The Beach Boys!". Sadly, it's the one with a snake on the front, by a band on no label. I lie and they tell me to put it for adds.

Then they ask me what my favorite bands are. (Just a few minutes ago I was screaming Brand New lyrics into my steering wheel with my left foot pounding on the floor and my right fist in the air.) I politely say, The Shins, Belle & Sebastian, The Decemberists, Mates of State, and Death Cab for Cutie.

The thing is, I have this problem with being ridiculously obsessed with music that is nostalgic to me. It's somewhat embarrassing and I'm sure if it was music just coming out now, I would absolutely hate it. Still, lyrics like, "A freight train to the right, feeling that sting of pride, it's fucking with me, it's fucking with you" and "I've seen more spine in jellyfish, I've seen more guts in eleven year old kids," could never be replaced by anything I've listened to in recent years. I could sing every Saves the Day song in my sleep. I can't count the number of times Brand New and Taking Back Sunday lyrics have shown up in texts/IMs sent and received over the past 5 years of my life. Me and Erik used to constantly send them back and forth. Cheshire Cat is the only CD I listened to for like, a year, and the song m+m's still makes me super happy. And of course, "Well I guess it all depends, undergarments."

So, even though I may tell you these are my favorite bands, just know that I can't break away from ridiculous pop/punk/emo/whatever you call it, and that on any given day you can find me in The Heights driving around screaming along to The Get Up Kids. I absolutely love it and I can't stop!



♪ My new job is extremely amazing. I get to talk to people about music all day, get all the new CD's I want along with buttons and posters and shtuff, learn about new, amazing bands, and the list goes on.

海遊館

The sky shone blacker than it ever had before, and so in turn the lake did too. Not one thing sat around for it to try to reflect, so it just decided to give in to the nothingness. The rain fell so hard that the tops of the waves blended into the whole mess of the night making it impossible to make sense of much. Feeling safe in a car equipped with fake grapes hanging from the mirror and birds velcroed to the ceiling, I shivered with a chill, and yet the armpits of my sweater seeped with sweat. Treble, muffled tones from The Forbidden Love EP remained somewhere hidden beneath the pounding of the rain. Staring into the nothingness of the night, we waited for a fish, a log, or something to come along with one of the waves, as that dent would have told the story forever. But alas, no picture would turn out, nor a dent, but the waves quickly began to overtake the break wall, and then the car. We were but fish in a tank, and the waves nothing more than the kid at the aquarium who bangs on the glass.

We are always taught that tapping on the glass is not friendly, but in reality maybe it is all the buzz in the tank. You know, it starts a bit of gossip and excitement. Shakes things up a little. Without a little smack, tap, and shake or two of the tank every once and a while, maybe the creatures inside would get so bored, and then so depressed, that something bad would happen. I don't know what, but maybe they would just give up on life or something. Anyways, everyone complains about Ohio weather, but in all reality, what would we do without a tap of the tank every now and then? Maybe I'm a crazy fish, but I think I need it to stay sane in this town.



♪ I just came across all of these ridiculous pictures I used to take when I was in high school. About 100 were of sunsets and about another 100 were of nothing more than average trees or the view out of my apartment window. All very mediocre. I thought how strange it was that I had taken all of these pictures. Maybe they were just to validate my emoness? Whatever the case, the one above made me laugh and think back to the hours (upon hours upon hours) spent at the CEI break wall in Eastlake. In rain storms, ice storms, or just plain fishing season, I constantly found myself there staring into the lake.



*Japanese can only have a word like 海遊館, or かいゆかん, or kaiyukan. "Playing in the sea pavilion"

期末試験週

On the weekend before final exams, Seminar House IV was filled with open Genki books of all levels. Mine remained contently shut under my table on the dusty tatami mat floor. Boxes appeared in the hallway that I could not help but look at out of the corner of my eye. "Unwanted belongings". Each box was for a different type of item and solely existed because Otousan and Okaasan knew that with all the shopping bags we carried home every day, there was no way we were making it home with all of the things we arrived with. How naive we were upon our arrival, in the hundred-degree heat of KIX.

And so it was December, and like I said before, the weekend before final exams. I decided to hit up Misa on my keitai (with the few Yen I had left on it), get a haircut with her in Kyoto, and spend the rest of the weekend at her parents house in Uji (hometown of green tea ice cream). The haircut (and half of the odd experiences of that weekend, really) are part of many other stories, but the way I avoided studying for those ridiculous exams are of this one. Going to Misa's meant being in a total culture clash and language battle. Her denshi jishou was out, open, and on, right between us at all times. I have never used so many gestures in my life. It was to the point of exhaustion. More or less, the visit consisted of this: point, say a word, realize she doesn't understand, punch it into the denshi jishou and out comes the word, still, after countless hours of this she seemed somewhat confused and I would realize that there was no hope in understanding. I would find myself slipping into Engrish and almost slap myself in the face for it.* For some reason, I bonded more with her 24 year old fire fighting sister who had never taken an English class in her life, compared to Misa who had taken English for years. Like I said, culture clash/language battle, but still I packed up and went to Kyoto that weekend to escape the dreadful winding down of the Seminar House and the studying that everybody else was doing.

On Sunday I returned to the Seminar House and me and my best gaijin companion Drew decided to skip out of studying for a few hours, head out to find Heian Jingu, and more or less, take pictures of ourselves walking on rocks in ponds. This excursion resulted in us getting lost like never before. Sanjo, backwards to Shijo, Gojo, Shichijo, and God only knows where we were that day. I wore the weight of my spoken exam on my shoulders and especially on my tired legs as we walked for miles not knowing where we would arrive next. Did I mention that I also had some of the worst PMS ever? I dodged into a kimono store because Drew didn't seem to be taking action on finding reliable directions, and so I finally got the directions we needed; a map on the back of a reciept that consisted of a drawing of 2 roads and a huge torii. I had no doubt I could find the huge torii. I was determined. I had spent the last few months pining over each and every torii in Fushimi Inari Jinja. I was in the middle of a ten-page paper about the beloved torii. It was on. And so, miles upon miles later, we arrived at Heian Jingu with no idea how to get home. Hopping a bus that drove slowly through the streets and past familiar sights, we finally arrived at Kyoto station as it began to get dark out. We spent even more hours there admiring the scene from the roof and the strange Kyoto tower we had somehow never heard of. I knew that I would never have enough time or ambition to study. At that point it did not even matter. We rode the train home on a line we had never known existed, and gawked at the amazing pictures we had taken on our strange adventure.

Arriving back at the Seminar House late that night, I was finally satisfied with Japan. My eyes lit up with amazement as I looked at the pictures from the whole weekend and proceeded to feindishly post them to facebook and skype my friends back home about them. From strange beauty salons and depaato's to amazing Christmas lights and scolding hot takoyaki makers to witnessing a traditional wedding and new parts of the city, I was finally content with the "Unwanted belongings" boxes and proceeded to fill them accordingly. A clock radio, my teddy bear, and a few shirts were only the beginning of my stockpile of "Unwanted belongings".

A desk in CIE awaited me on Monday morning and my final grade for Spoken Japanese was determined: a triumphant D+.



*I brought this home with me too. I somehow began to mix my L's and my R's and using small, fragments of sentences. This was the one thing that seemed to almost work! Surely this had to reflect upon my final papers I wrote for my classes in Japan and how I couldn't bear to watch American Television when I got home.



♪ Due to my current laziness and distraction from schoolwork from mono and tonsillitis, I seem to be falling into this same study mode. I have though, gotten a ridiculous amount of useless reading done.

クリブランドが大好き！

waking up at 9am by the obnoxious sound of a cell phone alarm clock, slightly hung over, i realized that the night before verified a prediction i have held in my mind for years now: cleveland is amazing in every aspect if and only if one is not even close to being sober.
also,
time: midnight-5am
place: the shoreway.
if anyone else has been in the passenger seat, preferably listening to wonderful music, in these conditions, you know what i mean. otherwise, get on this asap. you're missing out on one of the few great things to do in this city.
ever since i can remember, i've been venturing out to cleveland for some reason or another. when i was little my mom and i would skip school and work and she would take me to coventry where she (no doubt) blew through my child support in the green tomato and the old, cluttered, but amazing big fun. when i was in middle school it was my obsession with the local scene that took me out to cleveland. the skanktronics, rubber cement, so ricki, one short a dozen, etc. sneaking out to go to shows at the pit cleveland and knowing, in one way or another, just about everyone there. spending way too much time just to put on the blue dickies, orange get up kids shirt, rainbow belt, and black chucks that i could never seem to get off. although the scene died out ridiculously fast, high school came and so did fall out boy, the rxbandits, and a bunch of other bands i saw more times than i can remember. the grog shop moved after one of the most memorable (and sweaty) nights of my life, and coventry took on a transformation that would not only repave the sidewalks and street, but my perception and love of cleveland as well.
even though i still venture out to cleveland for shows (battle of the bands, minus the bear, and regina spektor within the last week), it will never be the same as it was when i was younger. i go to school, work and have just about a million other reasons to be in cleveland nowadays, but for some reason i am tied to the suburbs! (probably the worst of them all, at that. our downtown? the mall.) this brings me to next summer and my plan to rough it on my own for the first time in my life!* in the end, i can only hope that my friends will never cease in filling my gut with liquor so that i'll be able to see cleveland in the light where i can see it best.


*aside from japan, of course, where i was shoveled money by not only my john carroll tuition (mostly via loans), but also my family and who knows where else i got those thousands of dollars from exactly. this is a whole other story. i have no idea where that money went other than the most part had to of been blown on 1. alcohol 2. transportation 3. food... in that order, of course.


♪ a smattering of thoughts thanks to last week