It’s time to tear down some convention.

I didn’t really plan on things changing this fast, but they are. It’s a big change, so naturally I’m nervous. I’d probably be a fool if I wasn’t. Well, I’m a fool anyway but that’s beside the point.

Tomorrow I’m going to take my driving test. America doesn’t have an agreement with Japan like most industrialized nations that permits the simple conversion of a license. I’ve been talking about making this change for years, but it all came together in the last three weeks. Now I just have to pass the test, which is fabled among expatriates for its difficulty.

Bigger than this is that today it was also decided that I’m leaving Shibuya, my beloved home of eight years. Eight years of living in the shadow of the greatest metropolitan center in the world. Eight years of living alone, returning home each day after a long battle at work to spend a few humble hours in quiet. Eight years of making selfish decisions solely for my own comfort. Eight years of bachelorhood.

A new chapter begins June 14th, a new chapter of no longer running around with the freedom to do solely as I please with no one to answer to. A new chapter where I discover myself from learning about someone else. A new chapter where my worth is more than just what I can accomplish with my own two hands.

For a person who has spent so much of his life planning, waiting, and drawing up diagrams to explain it all, in the end the biggest changes are made not with the mind, but with the heart.

So I sit on the sofa, alone, in my quiet. With a microbrew in my hand and Music for Airports on the Hi-Fi, I start the goodbyes to the decade of my mind, before I start the welcomes to a decade of my heart.

Love is not a seasonal custom, or a pleasure to enjoy when one’s in the mood for it. Love is everlasting labor, and reward. It’s appreciating something special for what it is, and what it brings to you every day: in the pleasure of seeing something thrive, and the grace from having a chance to make something better of yourself, to make something other than yourself better. I’ll probably live to be eighty-four and still not fully understand this.

I bought a rose with the hope that we could grow together, and I’d gain a strength inside that I’d always lacked. I bought a rose as training for something more precious than the life of several thorny stems in earth. I bought a rose and watered it, put in the sun, talked to and fawned over it. After some time had passed, it gathered white spots after a week or so I skimmed some articles on-line which led me to buy a fungicide at the department store. I sprayed it on and walked away, later bothered with how long the milky chemicals glazed the once vibrant leaves. Branches grew brittle and snapped off, petals fell to the ground and every new blossom that formed was smaller and more anemic. From time to time when I had a minute and it would catch my attention I would prune away a little of the worst areas; laundry caught on a thorned twig quietly pleading for help.

Winter came and I was left with three meager sticks and dozen sickly leaves. It looked like I had lost again, and I was fated to never learn from my self-absorbed egotism. For the first time since high school I spent a cold winter alone, truly lost in an empty house.

Eventually the spring came and the warmth of the sun returned to my balcony. The same old uninvited vines clung to my railing planters and I began to think of how I’d eventually have to lay down some new marigolds and turnips to cool the summer afternoons. But one day when I wasn’t expecting it something changed. As I was sweeping the cruft from the last five months down towards the drain spout I bumped into that simple brown pot in the corner of ground. The long barren and unforking stalks of my rose were different– over two dozen chartreuse buds had appeared, and in those tiny, meager shoots I found more joy and surprise than all of the last year put together. The rose had taught me a lesson, though it wasn’t the one I thought I was looking for… love was undying, and had given even ungrateful me another chance. If love can keep hope for me, then there must be a way for me to keep hope for it.

Over time I began to find my place, through the kindness of others and the occasional burst of learning from my own stubborn demands that the world fit my narrow-minded vision of right and wrong. I moved from writing about stray cats and working on weekends to endless, repeated praise for trance music and what I quaintly cherished as community. Then at some point I decided to start doing something public with my photography, whether people recognized me for it or not, and thus we arrived at end of the decade. In the time since ubiquitous computing (to use a word that was en vogue with SIGCHI when I was in college), the fragmentation of platforms, portals, and people has made it harder and harder to be noticed, with each microtransaction of communication becoming far and far less meaningful, any rare original thought swallowed in a sea of chaff.

Sheepishly I now realize that I’ve probably driven away the three or four actual people I had reading this public journal with the advent of my adoption of that watered-down sinkhole of information exchange Facebook. I say so much more often so much less, that it leads me to wonder in twenty years’ time will my children find interest in reading my journal or my tweets? The answer is probably neither, but just the same I’m glad I took the time to sit down and actually think about what I was doing before six months went by and I was scratching my head why 2011 felt so much more empty than any of the other years in recent past.

It’s most likely not a coincidence that the speed and density of my current background music, The Plateaux of Mirror, is likely nearly half that of the floor-rattling trance I usually have on at this time of night. Thank you Mr. Eno for helping me collect my thoughts and appreciate the last forty minutes a little more.

Now the real irony is I started this entry meaning to write about love… but there we have it, the attention span of mankind pared to a millisecond.

But there is a flash, a moment, when that discovery is made, and all of the tumblers fall into place. The combination is complete– a maelstrom of fervor and ectasy is unlocked. The discovery of a lifetime, the infinite sequencing of the mind dissolved. My eternal key is Mat Zo’s 24 Hours. [Right around the three-minute mark my restraint unwinds....]

Me: こんばんは。 (Good evening.)
Kid: [僕のルックのワッペンをみる]どうしたの？マリオ好きの？ ([looking at the patches on my bag] You like Mario?)
Me: そうだよ。僕はゲームを作っている、仕事。 (Yeah, I make games. It’s my work.)
Kid: 何のゲーム？(What games?)
Me:「応援団」知ってる？(Do you know Ouendan?)
Kid:DSを持ってる。聞いたことある。(I have a DS. I’ve heard of it.)
Kid:チップ見せて。 (Show me the cartridge.)
Me:今無い、会社にある。(I don’t have it now, it’s at work.)
[子供はガムを出して渡す] ([Kid takes out a piece of gum and hands it to me.])
Me:これは何？ガム？ (What is this, gum?)
Me:ありがとう。(Thanks.)
Kid:じゃあ、またね。(Ok, see ya.)
Me:またね。(See ya.)
Kid:バイバイ。(Bye.)

The gum kid was so nonchalant, so cool. But not in an intentional, prepared way. He was just so natural and quiet, like it was the most obvious thing in the world to talk to me, and that we could understand each other, and that I liked gum.

The gum kid blew my mind. I want to be like him.

舌を巻いた。

I’ve been looking at these kind of skies and dreaming since high school. Is it that my life could always feel so inspired, or am I moved only in contrast to the leaden cloak I toil inside day in and out?

One thing I am sure of is that I’ll never grow out of this bittersweet heart. I’ve felt moved by life to the point I could go crazy since I was a teenager. I’ve worn mismatching socks every day for the last twelve years and never thought once about stopping. I still clumb up on curbs and low walls to walk an invisible balance beam. I catalogue scents and run my fingers over textured walls on the way home. I do none of these things just to sere as some superficial testament of my dedication to a fairytale god, I just do it because it’s who I am, and who I always will be.

Inefficient by design.

Originally I planned to stay up in Minami Aizu in my tent last night, but typhoon William sufficently washed out those plans so to speak. So I spent Monday, my first day off in nearly a month, getting acquainted with FFXII, which I quickly became hooked on and spent most all day playing. I did, however, scurry out of my blanket and tatami combination long enough to get a fairly nice bit of closing time shopping done, picking up a Snow Peak mess kit to go with my compact gas stove that I received from Rodney, as well as much needed replacement cargo straps for my Ferrino hiking pack.

Black and white film, foma RC paper, and too much imported beer. Another warm chat with the always bright checkout girl at Yamaya.

Though it’s very nearly gone from my everyday life, there are times when the magic of first coming to Japan returns for a fleeting moment like a faded odor from a childhood jacket. I exit Akihabara station and having fifteen minutes to transfer, scan the area sleepily for a convenience store.

The montage of unfamiliar signs; the nearly empty streets of early morning; the lack of time being relevant… Like a drunken bee at dusk, I stumble down into an Am/Pm for some sandwiches and token omiyage. My groggy gaze lingers on the neatly presed-together legs of a girl reading a magazine.

Royal jelly. Beauty tea. Otsuka pharmaceuticals.

Entering into the subway for a minute I am uncannily lost. The mulitple branching stairwells lead to the same platform and remind me of Silent Hill 3.

There are times when Japan doesn’t feel like Japan, usually times without architecture. The majority of people on subways at six in the morning; it could be almost anywhere. Bums the world around have similiar mannerisms, free from the pall of ethnic strata, more or less. But it rises… oh how the rays fall so corn yellow on the sea of crescent-tiled rooves. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a morning, it’s almost foreign to me. Three hours on a single section express train. The low sun is so reserved and distant.

Power lines, ginkoes, and scaffolding. Wet streets and danchi.

Sister Charles used to say that the skies in October were the bluest all year. This always filled me with a senseless kind of pride, simply because I was born in October, even though this had little to do with me.

Today is October the 27th. In three days I am going to be thirty years old. I wanted to spend a lot of this month celebrating and reflecting on this, but things were busier at work than October usually is and I had no time for much of anything. However, leaving that aside this week will be quiet and mostly reserved. I’ve been thinking of life and how simply you can change it. I could still be with the same someone a number of someones, but that doesn’t suit me now. To be honest, I see others making those kinds of commitments and I wonder are we so much in charge of our happiness? I used to think that finding someone and falling in love was rare and magical, something to desperately dream of. But after twelve years of dating, cheating, and heartbreak, I’m not sure I believe in courtly love anymore. Only the inexperience of relationships can lead one to search and hope for love. Now more than anything, love feels like a choice, the driving forces of which outside of loneliness or security I can’t fathom. I don’t say this because I’m bitter, I say it because I really can’t see it any other way. If that is innate cynicism, then I am sad and forlon that I made an environment to change me this way.

In Japanese, koi and ai (love viewed from the perspective of fancy and devotion, respectively) are separate things. My senpai at work once described koi as a feeling/circumtance, whereas ai was an action. Maybe in experience I’ve lost the ability to feel koi, but I’ve learned in practice what ai takes.

Does anyone over the age of thirty fall in love? Why do people marry? Why do people choose to remain with one person? I think the answer must exist, and if I talk to enough people I’ll find out this is just like any other question of human behaviour. I just need more outside influences to help me find peace in myself. It’s not impossible, just too ill-defined a problem space.

Rain. Fields. Cool autumn wind.

The rain in Fukushima is steady but light. If my mother were here, she’d say it’s a good day for ducks. Even though the weather maes taking pictures difficult, the overwhelming power of the countryside buoys my spirits. Rows of vegetables run into crimson and yellow underbrush. Tractors and very plain utility shed dot the landscape. Terraced fields of cur rice build into hillsides, and carpets of wet leaves reflect the occasionally passing car.

You inspired me to make something more of myself. Without directly telling me, you gave me a goal to shoot for; something so far and so high, I almost lost it in the sun. But it didn’t matter how many people said it was a long shot, or how much I was told that I should prepare myself for the chance that I wouldn’t make it. There was no chance. I knew what I had to do. I had to take the latent flame in my heart and make it erupt like magma. You were strict, but fair. You spoke unlike anyone I’d ever seen before, boldly and with such disarming confidence. You were everything to me, and everything I wanted to be.

I worked my tail off for a year and a half, inventing parts of myself that I never knew could exist, laying track just seconds before the fury of my momentum came rumbling down the rails leading to the stars. I built cities, castles, networks, and libraries. The roaring cavalcade of the human spirit reverberated through me and leapt onto all manner of media. I poured every drop of life I had in me into my CMU application package, and when I got that call in the hotel room in Seattle, the call that said I made it, I couldn’t believe it.

I was euphoric. I couldn’t believe it. But later, talking to you, you said that when you saw my portfolio, you knew at once that I had to be in the ETC. You knew right away that there was no doubt I belonged there, in that environment, so I could help build the amazing things you spoke of. To receive that kind of praise from you, it meant everything to me.

You have been, and always will be, my hero. Your vision and passion are unmatched, and you’ve changed more lives than you will ever know. You told me the most honest and straightforward things anyone had ever said to me, and you said them when I needed them most. It breaks my heart to hear about what’s happening in your life. I wish beyond words that there was something I could say or do that would make things different. You deserve so much more, more than I could make in a lifetime.

On Tuesday, you’ll be in my thoughts all day. Already, your spirit is in every noble thing I do. Next week, I will pray for you. But for now, I dedicate this, my first art exhibition, to you. You gave me the courage and determination to choose this path, and I will do all I can to honor that by giving every fiber of my life to being the very best I can be.

Thank you, Randy. This weekend is for you.

Forever your student,
Dave