Taking the Leap

July 29, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 20 Comments 

I guess it was bound to hap­pen. Af­ter years of un­cer­tainty and long­ing to make changes in my life the peb­ble un­der the boul­der that had been hold­ing in­evitabil­ity back fi­nally let loose and the whole mess has started to come crash­ing down. It’s been two months since I was laid off from my ten-​​year teach­ing job, and very coldly at that. In hind­sight I re­al­ize now that I’ve been a fool to hang on so long there; where I’d thought that I ac­tu­ally meant some­thing to the up­per level oth­ers I was work­ing with, came the blow be­tween the eyes that I was noth­ing but a con­ve­nient cog. It’s quite sober­ing to wake up to your own delusions.

On the same week I lost my job God played an­other hand, brush­ing away the rust from the spin­ning cir­cle of doubt in my re­la­tion­ship with my wife. And, as such things in­evitably go, with it came a tor­rent of pain and guilt, things which have or­bited my life for far too long. The di­vorce now waits upon our con­ve­nience, which some­how never re­ally seems to be the right time. How do you fi­nally lay down the ul­ti­ma­tum to some­one whom you still love and re­spect, and whom you never wanted harm or, to be bru­tally hon­est with my­self, aban­don? Four­teen years. It seems like a lifetime.

That same week my di­a­betes took a bad turn for the worse, with blood sug­ars reach­ing into the stratos­phere. I woke up one night with a pain in my stom­ach so bad I couldn’t walk. I kept retch­ing up food and couldn’t stop cough­ing. This be­ing Japan, with a two-​​month wait un­til my doc­tor would have an open­ing to see me, I was ut­terly ter­ri­fied about at­tempt­ing to go see the doc­tor for help, and, with the ex­pe­ri­ences I’ve had un­til now, just be­ing given the same use­less runaround about how to deal with my di­a­betic is­sues. So I de­cided to clamp down hard on my­self and just do what had to be done. First I looked up pos­si­ble di­a­betic com­pli­ca­tions with my symp­toms and found in­for­ma­tion on gas­tro­pare­sis, a re­sult of neu­ropa­thy, or di­a­betic nerve dam­age from too much pro­longed high sug­ars. I im­me­di­ately cut out all sugar, ex­ces­sive fat, high glycemic in­dex foods, cof­fee, al­co­hol, and any snacks, and upped my in­take of veg­eta­bles. I ate only what was nec­es­sary and no more, al­ways go­ing to bed slightly hun­gry. I started ex­er­cis­ing, run­ning every day, do­ing lots of stretches, weight lift­ing, and re­lax­ation ex­er­cises. I com­pletely stopped go­ing to restau­rants and in­stead of tak­ing the train all the way from one place to an­other started get­ting off the train early and walk­ing home.

The re­sults are as­tound­ing, for me, and in­spir­ing. I’ve lost three kilo­grams so far, gained some mus­cle, and can run ten kilo­me­ters again with­out huff­ing and puff­ing. The gas­tro­pare­sis has com­pletely dis­ap­peared and when I vis­ited my doc­tor last week I was in­formed that for the first time in about a year my blood glu­cose lev­els have fallen halfway to the ideal level.

In the mean­time I man­aged to se­cure a new job at a uni­ver­sity out in the coun­try. It’s not quite in the moun­tain­ous area I was hop­ing to start liv­ing in, but the job seems in­ter­est­ing and re­spectable, with quite a few more chal­lenges than I’ve had un­til now. It’s a chance to fi­nally start mov­ing in the di­rec­tion I’ve been need­ing to go, to pay off debts, to gain some valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence, to do some trav­el­ing, and per­haps meet some in­ter­est­ing peo­ple and make much-​​needed friends.

So I’ll be mov­ing in Sep­tem­ber, mak­ing the break from this aw­ful apart­ment I’ve been rail­ing against for four years. And most likely a sep­a­ra­tion from my wife. That is the part that shakes my con­fi­dence and re­solve. I don’t know if I have the courage to do it. Or the mean­ness of spirit. Or the blind­ers of a self­ish fool. I know lots of peo­ple have got­ten di­vorces, but I hon­estly don’t know how they man­age to sur­vive it or even know in their heart of hearts that they are mak­ing the right de­ci­sion. Af­ter all, my wife is a kind, gen­tle woman who loves life and likes her­self. I’ve learned a lot from her. I can’t imag­ine life with­out her.

But life has to feel right, I guess. I can’t for­get my­self or stop try­ing to find my per­sonal bal­ance. It’s been un­bal­anced for so long that I no longer re­ally know what bal­ance it is that I am seek­ing. I keep look­ing back at old mem­o­ries of when I was happy and try to work them into who I am now and find that they just don’t go far enough. I need to chal­lenge my­self with new goals and new ways of per­ceiv­ing. And to find some kind of nour­ish­ment that will wipe away my grow­ing cyn­i­cism. I sense strongly that a much more rig­or­ous con­nec­tion with the nat­ural world is im­per­a­tive to my sense of ful­fill­ment. But the ques­tion is “How?” How can I be close to the nat­ural world and make a liv­ing at the same time? Must it al­ways be an un­ac­cept­able com­pro­mise? Must I al­ways be where I don’t want to be? Must I al­ways set­tle for jobs that, as my mother re­cently stated, “most peo­ple in the world are not happy with”.

What is it ex­actly that makes up a sat­is­fy­ing and mean­ing­ful life? Is it still pos­si­ble to reach the end of my life and say, “Yes, I lived my life fully and as best I could.” and to die with a full heart? Is the mod­ern tem­plate for what con­sti­tutes a “suc­cess­ful” life the only op­tion? For so much of what I see seems com­pletely in­sane to me. So much of what so many peo­ple think of as im­por­tant seems dull and with­out imag­i­na­tion, ap­a­thetic and blind to the world around.

I look out of my win­dow and watch a bum­ble­bee gather nec­tar from the flow­ers in the gar­den. The flow­ers bend un­der its weight and tip back their petals in per­fect con­for­mance to the bumblebee’s act, as if ge­net­i­cally every­thing was danc­ing to the same tune. A rob­ber fly makes passes at the bum­ble­bee, but turns back, per­ceiv­ing the dan­ger. Hov­er­flies and skip­pers flit among the fronds, whizzing through one another’s tra­jec­to­ries and cir­cling these is­lands of green. A sul­fur but­ter­fly flut­ters along the ground, lay­ing eggs. And be­yond the houses come the elec­tric buzzing of ci­cadas and the throaty calls of jun­gle crows. And I don’t know why but so of­ten when I see such sim­ple things I want to start weep­ing, as if I rec­og­nize that I am no longer a part of that world, but I need des­per­ately to get back to it. It is a world that ex­ists in and of it­self, all com­po­nents and mem­bers shar­ing in the work­ings of its web. Hu­mans are part of this, I know in my head, but the pres­ence of peo­ple al­ways feels like a jar­ring off key note. I keep ask­ing my­self, “Where do I fit in? Why do I feel so unnat­ural?”

Per­haps that is why the teach­ings of the Bud­dha ring so much more rel­e­vantly with me than those of Christ. They talk of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with this world rather than the next. They say live to­day, here, rather than to­mor­row and there.

Ah, a black swal­low­tail de­scends from the rain clouds into the gar­den like a dark an­gel, beat­ing her filmy wings above the reach­ing hands of leaves. Then she is fol­lowed by a tiger swal­low­tail. And I have it. This one place, like all places, of­fers food for the gods. To find your own place, you have but to make your own, unique of­fer­ing. It is the thanks that makes life worth­while, not the satisfaction.

Bristles

July 21, 2006 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

What a way to wake up in the morn­ing. There I was watch­ing the news the other night when Japan’s main news sta­tion NHK was fo­cus­ing on the best rain­wear to use in the re­cent tor­ren­tial rains and think­ing, “Boy, every­one is just itch­ing for some­thing aw­ful to hap­pen again.” Then I wake up, turn on the news for the weather (a huge del­uge is pre­dicted un­til the end of the week, with record flood­ing), and come across this, North Ko­rea launch­ing six mis­siles to­ward Japan.

All of them fell into the Sea of Japan, but as yet no one is sure if they were in­tended to fail or if they just hadn’t worked. Need­less to say, the re­sponse has been one of re­served alarm, every­one rush­ing about on TV try­ing to fig­ure out if this re­ally is a threat or to give their opin­ions on Kim Il Jong’s in­ten­tions. The Japan­ese news is nat­u­rally di­rectly con­cerned with Japan’s own safety, and the mood on TV and from my friends send­ing me e-​​mails, is of grave con­cern. One of the NHK panel ex­perts stated that be­tween the launch­ing of the mis­siles and their reach­ing their tar­get the re­sponse time is, at longest, 4 min­utes, three be­ing the av­er­age. The fact that even af­ter hav­ing launched an as­sumed 6 mis­siles no one is re­ally sure ex­actly how many were launched.

And yet, the gen­eral mood is one of de­lib­er­a­tion and for­bear­ance, rather than the out­right “Bomb them into the Stone Age” re­sponse of some other coun­tries I know.

Watch­ing the Amer­i­can (sup­pos­edly “in­ter­na­tional”) news typ­i­cally their re­sponse is “What dan­ger does this pose to the US?” Not even any men­tion of what dan­ger this much more im­me­di­ately poses to Japan and even more so, South Ko­rea, at and over which the mis­siles were launched. CNN hauled up the old 2002 Bush pro­nounce­ments of “The Axis of Evil”, tak­ing the op­por­tu­nity to jus­tify all that Bush has done over the last five years. Never mind that these mis­siles were ac­tu­ally launched and people’s con­cerns here de­serve more at­ten­tion than, for once, the eter­nal and all-​​pervading para­noia of the US.

Mean­while us mere mor­tals here on the ground are feel­ing our mor­tal­ity. Some­times it seems the jug­gler has all the knives up in the air and his hands are no longer as deft as they used to be.