February 17th, 2004
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Where did the time go?
I’ve been in Japan now for two hundred and fifty-one days. I think I’ve gotten some stuff together, and there’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t made hardly any progress with at all. I have a home, the beginnings of a domestic suite of appliances, half a dozen monthly payments, and a comfortable t-shirt. I like my hair, my pillow, and my bicycle. I spend most of my non-working time with a beautiful and caring girl, the rest on trains and in showers, trying to push away thoughts of frustration and loss.
It’s strange how time rises like a mountain; there are moments where I struggle with so much that I stand motionless, and others where it slides out from under my feet. As it becomes easier to be convenienced by a myriad of possibilities, the tide of indecision and partial completion rises then knocks me down. I’m ten years old and so afraid of the ocean. In thirty-four days I’ll be back in America again, for a week in the same place with fifty of former classmates on the other side, not looking for a job but trying to keep one, and maybe not staying up until 1:30 every night.
I think there’s a sunny place with a nice breeze and afternoon dreams that’s been running around in my head. Fortune is that I just may be able to hang a hook on it soon.
