October 20th, 2004
109827880080910891
“You call this a storm?!” (Too much rain over paradise)
Japanese in general seem to believe that a hot bath can do wonders for one’s health, so much so in fact that nearly everyone in the family takes a soak in the tub before sleep. I’ve heard that it’s supposed to wash away the stress and trouble of the day, leaving one fresh and prepared for a wholesome night’s sleep.
I’m not sure exactly when, but sometime around the end of high school I stopped being able to spend any significant amount of time in the tub [when I think about it, about the same time when I started worrying about nearly everything], so much so in fact that if I stayed in more than ten minutes it became a physical struggle to remain there. This does not seem to speak well at all for my attainment of inner calm.
Accordingly, all attempts to enjoy hot water, onsen (hot spring) or otherwise, have just been a waste, and that makes me feel even worse. I usually try to read a book to get my mind off the fact I’m just sitting in water [wasting time as I can't help but see it], but I’m usually so uncomfortable I never get through more than five pages. This is a far cry from the days in my teens when I could spend literally hours in the bathroom, just tearing through a third of one of Terry Goodkind’s early novels. This was usually far long past the point when the water had grown tepid. Commonly, the deciding factor for me getting out in those situations was the fact that the bath had grown quite cold, and I had used every last warm drop in the heater.
So anyway I tried taking a bath again tonight, with of course the same results: full tub, six pages, out in eleven minutes practically clawing at the tile. I started reading Gulliver’s Travels because I thought something in my native language would be easy and satisfying. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Aside from the fact that reading the three hundred year-old English was depressingly confusing and laborious, it seemed entirely wrong that I was reading left to right from the top of the book.
This probably makes no sense to you, as it shouldn’t, but the truth is I’ve been reading vintage manga so fastidiously the past two months that I’ve grown completely unaccustomed to western print [Japanese material commonly reads right to left, from the "back" of the book to the "front"]. Sure, webpages are still left to right, top to bottom, but bound material is a whole new world of thinking paradigms. As if I needed anything else to bully my ego today.
I took off yesterday because I was exhausted and slept through my alarm like it wasn’t there. I thought the rest would do me well, but instead a typhoon came and it’s been raining ridiculously ever since. My health has fallen with the weather, and run into one of the overflowing drains downhill. I went to bed at eleven last night (eleven!) and went to work early, though feeling suspiciously depressed and powerless. Somewhere in the afternoon I got a fever and a sore throat, and lost my ability to think clearly. It doesn’t help that my glasses are nearly opaque from scratches. Anyway, I came home at five-thirty, sloshed the fifteen minutes home in the rain with my broken umbrella, and have been so lifeless I don’t even feel like playing a game.
My jinbei are still outside, now sopping wet in the cold, dirty, rain, and I’m running out of dishes and clean underwear. I have a bad feeling that even if I go to bed right now and don’t wake up until eight-thirty I’m still going to be useless. On top of it all I feel so guilty about not going to work that I can’t even begin to stage a recovery.
Moaning done. Poor attempt at rest now.
