Comfort & Security

Foreword: I wrote this the day after I settled the details of my resignation. It was the moment I glimpsed the end of a dreadful long road that involved twilight interviews, clandestine visits to government offices, and an all too sobering realization that I really was alone here on the other side of the China sea.

In my mind, comfort is a place and a time. It is a Sunday afternoon outside the family room. It is warm. The sunshine brightens the green lawn, the trimmed hedges. Then comes a rustling. A gentle breeze cuts across the lawn, slips through the open foyer, lifting white lacy curtains, and whirls among sofas, picture frames, a fruit bowl, and the flowers in their flower vase. I would be sitting in a plump reading chair, an open book in my lap, and I would want nothing more.

Security, in my mind, is a place and a time. It is twilight in suburbia. It is in the creeping darkness of twilight, a spatter of dim lamps from pre-fabricated bungalows across the skyline. It is a little chilly. It is also quiet, save for the electric hum of the neighbor's appliances, and the errant cry of a grumpy child. I would be standing out there on the front porch of a friends place, or someone familiar, maybe with a cigarette in hand, or a phone after a call. I would look up to the sky, and the stars would look down on me, and I would realize I am in the middle of nowhere, and yet feel that I am exactly where I should be.

For the next few weeks, I am allowing fate to show me a different kind of life. Comfort will be the 8-minute walk to the station, my very own bathroom, kindly old ladies who say hello, a mattress, enough space for shoes. Security will be a change of pace, the promise of constancy, a view of the sea, a tower in the night, a time to seize the world.

Photo credit: Reading Chair With Book And Cup Of Coffee by Walt Maes

garbage week

The irony is not lost on me that the week I move out of the dorm is also the week I get trash duty. I take out the burnables on Tuesday, plastics on Wednesday, paper on Friday, and on Saturday I'll be hauling my personal "garbage" out on the curb for the moving truck to pick-up.

They say when you throw stuff away, you make space for new things, and it works out since I've got a lot of new things barging into my life these coming weeks.  But I'm a still little uncomfortable talking about these new changes, because most of these changes have to do with things I'd rather keep under wraps. Why the secrecy? Well, it's a number of things.

First, it's a matter of tact: I'm not the type to brag. All the people I respect don't have a habit of bragging. I think there's really nothing to gain from gloating aside from ill will, or in some cases, a punch in the face. I'm not really the fighting type, so I'd rather not risk it, too.

Secondly, it's a matter of obedience. I was instructed to keep a lid on it. I've actually told a few people, people I hold dear enough because they're my friends and they should know what's happening in my life. I owe their constant companionship that gesture. But the truth is I wish I could just tell everyone. Life is simpler with no secrets.

Lastly, and this one I'm still having a hard time with, I'm in denial. The move is only 1 week away, and the week after will be that day. Things are moving really quickly, to say the least. Though all the details are in place, there's still a long list of things left to be done. I'm taking it a day at a time, but it has been a rough ride so far.

But I'm proud of myself in a way. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and yet, with a little help from home and good friends, I've been managing well. Despite staying in a country with only a slip of paper keeping me away from deportation, a language that considers me illiterate, and a currency value pulling my income and assets down with it, I think I'll be alright.

Because here in Japan, there's always a way to make things work out. Someone's done the thinking and put some process in place to catch your fall. So those bags of garbage I'll take out tomorrow morning, the shelves of books I've amassed these past months , the printed photographs of friends I've been given, there's a place for everything and a home for everyone here.

And I'm on my way there.

Photo Credit: the Star

the Story in the Sea

There are stories out there that find us and touch us deeply, like an ocean wave that crests above us, slams down, engulfs our body, and recedes leaving an unsettling chill that remains long after the sea has dried off from our shivering skin.

These stories are fantastic, a trip around the limits of imagination. They take our hand and lead us out to the distant fringes of our lives, then invites us to stare into the darkness far and beyond.

I am left restless every time I find stories like this. I wonder, how a story so strange to me, so far removed from my dull life, could affect me so deeply.  How could mere words provoke me, how can it lure me out of worrying about schedules and deadlines and laundry and duty, and leave me spellbound, submerged in wonderment.

I can't help but wonder what it means. If it was meant to mean something. If it meant anything at all. Did I waste my time listening to the story, and now waste some more rationalizing it. Can a story not be purposeful and stay relevant?

And yet I feel the remnant chill of the sea, I feel the fibers of my being drenched and saturated by unfamiliar images, thoughts, and words. I am compelled to think about it, think about how something so far outside of my life, could make me feel so alive.

Photo credit: Awais Aftab

New Year Slur

I am kind of tipsy, which, in my opinion, is the best way to usher in the work week. In the same manner that we hastily tear-off bandages, and swiftly plunge syringe needles into our defenseless skin, a little fuzziness in the brain helps to muddle the concept of time. That is, before you know it, you're already manacled again to your computer desk and, by then, what's else is there to do but reply to the thousand nagging emails, and worry about the thousand things each of those emails were asking about.

But, it's not like I'll be drunk until tomorrow. No, no. I'll be on this fizzy trip for but a few hours before bed. I'll wonder what 2013 really means to me, wonder if I'd have noticed the year change if I'd have been locked up in a dark-dark cell for the past month or so.

Was there a difference? Have I grown? Have things changed? Will they ever change? And if they don't, why are we celebrating? What are all the fireworks for, aside from the vendors turning a profit on those 3 for 100peso roman candles that perform just as well as erectile dysfunction?

I believe everyone craves a fresh start. I do, too. There's nothing wrong with wanting a clean slate; a new year is equivalent to that. You buy a new calendar so you get to throw away that other one filled with stuff you managed to finish, promised to finish, forgot to finish, and a large amount of exclamation points in red-red ink for times that really mattered. You get a bonus with which you erase(and forgive) all/some/a portion/a smidgen of that credit card balance you've been racking up the whole year past. You get to greet old flames a happy new year, and get a curtly phrased reply back that tells you the cycle continues anew.

A new year is symbolic for people looking to do better, or to continue to do better. A new year is meaningful for people who haven't given up. A new year is a new cycle in the endless array of challenges life crams down our throats.

And for those of us who are brave enough to step into it with nary a drink in hand, my highest commendations to you. As for me, well, looking at the upheavals to come in 2013, I am of the impression that the days ahead may pass smoother with a bit of fire in my blood. Fire to stoke the passion, the courage, the embers of the once raging heart that made 2012 such a momentous year.

Cheers.

Photo credit: Cheers invites by YesterdayCafe

jaunt

Run past streets, and lit windows, and empty alleys, and streaks of moonlight, with the winter wind , with the fallen leaves, with the direction of this inner movement.  When there is no reason in sight, when nothing left feels right, when the world has resolved disappointingly  for those who seek to be calm, to release from within them an inner revelry, an inward combustion, the untameable revolution that dares to erupt outward, there is the infinite embrace of the night.

Rush through mingling throngs, swiftly through the riot of the crowd, like fleet-footed Peter-Pan dashing through the energetic strangers, slip through them, dive into the mass of people and physically encounter anonymity. Escape in between unknown smiles, unfamiliar laughter, into the thick of unjustified merriment. Relish the sensation of community, of being commonly unrelated, of being connected with unfamiliar company.  The moment you laugh together with someone, is when someone becomes less of a stranger and more of a friend.

Resign to the urban rhythm, the symphony of train schedules and trundling traffic.  Take off the mask of day-to-day drudgery and find below the steel surface, the beating heart of the city.  Conventions and ethics, traditions and responsibilities, are all held up by warm-bodied people, who beat, who hurt, who trudge-on, who are also capable of being amazing when given the chance, when you look through the surface, when you let your head slip beneath the waves, and let yourself be carried off in peace, held-up by your neighbors, your office-mates  your church-friends, the guys you see every Friday night. They're there with you, holding you up, against the ebb, against the flow, against the capricious tide, their hands will buoy you up just when you wish to breathe in a little more of life.

In the city, as in life, the streets are meant to be passed, they are transitional, the coincidental, they are there only to connect two points together, the road from office to home, the avenue from the grocery to the parking lot, the worn path from the park to the ice-cream shop, from where we are to where we want to go, and it's easy to shut the world out as we travel along.

Don't.

The joy of getting lost is seeing how far you can let yourself go, and even if you never find the way back, finding-out you're still entirely yourself.  And wherever that could be, you'll be alright.

Photo credit: Subway Crowd by iheartartichokes
BGM: We Found Love - Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris (Boyce Avenue piano acoustic cover)

tripping

I woke up, earlier than usual, with the flourescent light left on, and looked around in my room.  It was today, I remembered, the day before the weekend flurry from Tokyo, to Malaysia, to Singapore, to all these things I want to do, but can barely imagine doing, to venture into the unclear, yet entirely feasible, unknown. Today, the preparation opens up into execution. I get up and change for work.

At quarter to 8, I bid my goodbyes to the office folk, and warmly receive everyone's goodbyes back.  And with their goodbyes, there seems to be sandwiched within a hearty "good luck."  The ambitiousness of this trip is not lost on them--and neither on me for that matter.

Walking to the station, traversing Japan's railway system en route to the airport, not a stray thought is wasted on the circumstances that led to the trip, nor the circumstances that might occur during.  There are only destinations and time in my head, as I stand in line at the counter, stoic, among people chattering in yet another foreign language.  Behind the outward calm, inside my head, I've laid-out the weekend plan like a connect-the-dots puzzle, as time slowly draws a line from point-to-point. Like a constellation in the sky leading wayfarers of old, I focus on this and keep moving forward. Nothing else matters.

Malaysia is bustling, and warm.  I walk with pedestrians in bright shorts and loose shirts in the city where most structures look renovated, under renovation, or waiting to be renovated. Including the temples, the city is modern, but felt worn, like a respectable trophy, gilded in silver, detailed with gold, but with a thin, barely perceivable layer of dust and age.  In a few years time, the cityscape may change, but the atmosphere will cling to old roots, like lingering vapors of all the varied spices consumed so far in the history of this place.  The city felt authentic in that way.

And in the center of it, the Petronas tower loomed, erect in the twilight, a beacon of progress casting the light of a hundred-thousand bulbs and pin-lights and spotlights. It was purposely excessive, intentionally awe-inspiring. The city is consumed with innovation, and from out of it protrudes this.

The concert was marvelous. Sonorous melodies filled the concert hall of Petronas, as well as the ears of a young, yet precociously nostalgic audience.  The hall was packed with the smartly dressed youths, collectively reminiscing, remembering those intimate afternoons fighting for love, for glory, for justice.  Overhead, battles were waged and triumph secured on the silver screen coinciding with the revolutions of each piece, a visual composition to repeat and underscore the emotion and feelings freed by the music.  For a short time, we were slaves to our sentiments, captivated by the magic of a tale we grew with and, for a while now, have regrettably left behind.

The trip to Singapore the next day was hectic, and was a lesson in faith, and hope, and blind luck.  The journey on a taxi-less morning, from one distant corner of the city, to the equally distant international airport would have been disastrous if it weren't for a lone taxi with a 7am delivery of tea for the food center nearby.  I arrived at the check-in counter, now deserted save for the check-in staff, and thanked fate, providence, and God in between every exhausted pant for breath.

Singapore is convenient, efficiency made compact and kept in tasteful housing.  It was all business, but clean about it, too. I arrived with no incident save for an address lost inside a dead phone, easily remedied by a payphone call and a knowledgeable taxi driver.

At my sister's home, I saw family again and was overwhelmed with love. All the pent-up longing manifested in a loss for words.  I grew greedy, I guess, and wanted to listen and drink in the warmth of all of them, and if I spoke, I would have interrupted them being themselves. So I kept to myself, but smiled sincerely, and did my best to satisfy missing them for so long.

And I saw Lucas, barely a week old. Tender, warm, and quite restive, clearly comfortable here with my family. Seeing him, a mere baby, struck me with wonder, both at the thought of all the possibility yet to be realized, and all the challenges yet to be endured by this small, frail body. Motherhood is not a solely female attribute, it seems. It is sympathy, born from all our own travails while growing-up, a definitely universal and wholly human experience.

Though slightly delayed by a sudden wave of a hundred and fourteen Christian teenagers celebrating their confirmation at the Sunday mass we attended, I got to say my goodbye's properly and made my way to the airport on time, with an extra kiss and a hug to spare for my mom.  The plane took me back to Malaysia, and at midnight, ferried me back home, to Tokyo.

On the train from Narita airport, heading straight to work, I met a beautiful couple who had arrived that same day and, with their 8 hour layover, hoped to snatch a glimpse of Japan. I helped them as much as I could, told them to keep their pace brisk from the temple at Asakusa, down pedestrian crossing in Shibuya, among monolithic malls of Ginza, and at last at the historic grandeur of Tokyo station.

I thought it was my responsibility to repay the blessings wrought from the weekend, to pay it forward by bidding strangers a safe journey.  Because we've all been there, to that place where there is only the unfamiliar ahead, and the blind hope in our hearts lighting the way ever forward.

purloined

Hello, I am your conscience, on an errand commissioned by the pile of broken hearts you've accumulated in the closet, behind the vacuum cleaner.

They wanted to ask how it felt to sway a heart.  How does it feel to be like the midnight moon pulling from across the vastness of space, compelling the weather and the tides?  What is it like to be the breaching Spring that excites the fauna and flora into wild eruptions of color and fertility, to then faithfully shed and wither so beautifully?

How do you live with such influence, such power, over a man's most vital part?  Is it in your beguiling eyes? In your charming smile? In your reassuring voice? In the elegant harmony of all these things, orchestrated by the burning brilliance of your very soul? You radiate such warmth, like a line cast into the sea, that snags the willing fish, caught, never to recover.

Do you revel in the spectacle? Whenever you smile your secret smiles, is it because of the bemused wonderment of your own glamor, of your own glory?  Are you aware how your every word carries such uncanny forcefulness, such unfounded gravity; and how your every gesture, spouts volumes and volumes and volumes?

Can you sleep still, knowing hundreds, out there in the still night, moan, and cry, and thrash underneath rumpled bedcovers and overturned pillows in a soulful dance moved by the loss of their pilfered hearts?

A man should not be so compelling; there is no justice there.  From your neck should hang a placard, with ticks for every heart consumed and left behind, written in the red of freshly spilt blood. Would that suffice?

This is your conscience, a stray thought that tugs at your own equally-fragile heart, an unsettling reminder that one day, someday, the moon will ride across your starlit sky and the Spring will break out from within you.  And on that day there will be justice, in sufficient capacity.

beyond clovers

I noticed it was autumn outside my front door as I stepped out for another day of work. Nearby, an abandoned garden bed had become home to a wild overgrowth of clovers.  Tying my shoelace on the concrete ledge, I stole a glance out among the weeds and wondered if among the clovers hid an extra leaf.  If there were, I can feel its presences, here at the onset of autumn, simply because it has been quite a remarkable autumn so far:

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I've found the impetus to do some hardcore writing.  That meant I commit to creating a 50,000 word novel by the end of November--that's approximately 1,670 words per day--from absolutely nothing but the random firing of my synapses. Now, barely half-way at day 12 (20,040 words), I am still stuck at 4,000.  The month's not over, but I do hope optimism-fueled writing works just as well as an inspired one.

Also, my sister is giving birth this month to Lucas, which is such a wonderful, amazing thing.  I plan to visit and perform my uncle related duties in December. What those duties are, I have yet to know.  Most of the uncles in my life are people I meet in family reunions that ask me if I have a girlfriend yet; I could start with that.

But surprise, surprise. A friend of mine just invited me to Malaysia for the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert. They're based in the US, but had a stint in Australia and picked Malaysia as a stop-over on the way back home.  Seeing that the odds of having a ticket to Chicago, a US travel visa, and a holiday long-enough to accomodate the journey and the concert date was, by several leaps and bounds, less likely than me scrounging up money for a day-trip in Malaysia. I considered pulling the trigger.

Which made me feel stupid.  If I can manage to book a trip to Malaysia, then I can manage a trip to visit my wonderful, amazing nephew in Singapore, too--so, I did.

I am quite aware this trip will burn me out, I also, with a welcome heart, understand that this trip will be the most rewarding.  In that short weekend, family and nostalgia will come in mighty heapfuls, and I believe I have grown enough to know and appreciate with natural sincerity the value of both.

There's also church choir revving up for the 9 Carols event in December. So we're singing and practicing carols after Sunday mass every week, and I've learned to appreciate the time spent with people I've only gotten to know in such a short period, but who now seem to have opened their arms and welcomed me with sweet, sonorous music. Those Sunday's are quite magical, and much cherished.

And at work, they've asked me to be the booth dude at the company's job fair jaunt.  There'll be graduating students at Odaiba for 2 days, and I'll be taking a shift of telling everyone how wonderful it is to work in our company.  To this end, I've learned how to say "Let's build a bright future," "Let's build an amazing relationship," and, my favorite, "Let's work together, and have fun together,"  all in hopefully non-offending Japanese, or at least not creepy-uber-friendly-gaijin-might-be-looking-for-a-date Japanese.  These are just college kids after all.

I've been making some progress in gym, too.  Slow, but steadily getting meatier as the days go by.  I've upped my egg intake-four hardboiled eggs from two--and soon I won't feel as embarassed when surrounded by naked grandpa's with clearly-defined abs and bulging muscles.

Then there's also the Autumn outing that we're planning. With just the 3 of us--Murakami-san, our HR lady, Em, ever helpful and attentive, and I--we managed to plan a trip for 50 people for Autumn. We'll be going to Chiba to see the fall leaves in the valley, pick fruits from the trees, and watch the night descend on a village festooned with a thousand shimmering lights.

There's also some undercover details and goings-on's that won't do me well to discuss here, but, suffice to say, fills my stomach with butterflies and will come to a close soon. There are exciting days ahead, definitely.

All that and day-to-day work, dorm lead duties, nihonggo studies, and the constant battle against mediocrity, I think I'm managing pretty well so far.  But alas, there's still more work to be done.

So with a flourish, I finish tying my shoes, leave the hunt for four-leaf clovers behind, and step onto the road ahead.  If you think about it, roads are lucky, too, if your feet, your determination, your willing heart can take you far enough.

Photo credit: super-rats

The Epidemiology of Art

I believe the highest form of art manifests itself not only from within moldy libraries or padlocked museums. No. It escapes. By virtue so human, so inescapably practical, it enshrines itself in the lives of all who experience and bear witness to it. It sticks, it is virulent, it is a disease that clings to the soul and stains the subconscious.

Like a song, like that song I heard in the coffee shop.  Above the din of chattering strangers, the trampling of feet, the hoots and heavings of the espresso machine, a sly tune finds its way into my ear, down my spine, into my heart.

Within my head I exclaim, "Unbelievable! Is it talking to me? Why does it make so much sense? How could I have lived without it for so long? What is it's name?" And for that brief instant I believe that someone out there gets me--and they sang about it, too.

Touching someone, that's the power of art.

It's like someone managed to rein in all my hopes and fears, saddle it up with allegory, and then yoked it with metaphor.  I want that. There are days that I spin and spin, and all I wish for is some semblance of control, if for only a brief glimpse of understanding.  I hope to harvest insight through art.

And finding your art is a lot like rediscovering life: learning the best way to tell people what we see in our life led me to re-examining experiences and plunging into new ones, continuously and consciously hurtling along in this world we are all hopelessly trapped in and have no other recourse but to parrot.

And those who parrot well enough get a Pulitzer. No one cares if it's the truth, as long as everyone agrees an idea is infectious enough, catches fire among abandoned psyches and spreads like a pandemic--like the truth would.

This is the future. And in the future, any seemingly-truthful idea can scatter farther and faster than ever before. In this day and age, anyone can be an artist, anyone can have an opinion, and everyone has a mouthpiece. The world is primed for a revolution of thought. Where is your flag? Have you readied your sword? And what spoils go to the victor?

I realize now that art, literature, writing, they're all copycats, mere reflections and attempts to say something smart, pithy, interesting about life, another vague attempt to squeeze some meaning out of life, polish yet again another heavily worn facet of life.  Art is the sum of all our vented frustrations about being alive, a philosophy for the radical who prefer explanations framed, sculpted, and in rhyme.

And yet here I am, infected by terrors of my own existence and left no other choice but to write about it.

arrival

Foreword: I wrote this exactly one week after arriving in Japan.  And today is especially special since one year ago today , I stepped on Japanese soil and called it home.  And to answer the question posed at the end: I *have* grown, it's just everyone else I have to worry about.

It will be a few hours until the one-week mark since I've arrived in Japan.  I hope to celebrate with a bit of alcohol, and the traditional "kanpai!".

But before the beer erases what memories remain, and even if I did so fastidiously document with photographs these last few days, I think a narrative would still be necessary. And so, follows.

We arrived at 4 in the afternoon on the 11th of October, on a Tuesday adorned with an overcast sky and chilly winds.  Narita airport was the same as I remembered it: clean, convenient, straight-forward. And so was the commute.  Tired as we were having barely slept the night before, Karen and I fueled by excitement--of which all men are beset when entering the unfamiliar--stayed up through the 3 hour bus ride that took us from airport to office in Yokohama.

We stayed there for a bit, and headed home to our new dorm in Gumyouji: a restive suburb that, though populated by commercial outlets, doesn't lose its far-flung-from-the-city charm.  This place reminds me of Paranaque--minus the horrid commute, plus more old people.

The succeeding days were sleep deprived.  Between setting up my new room, hanging-out with everyone, setting up the new laptop, and, of course, the long office hours, there wasn't much time left to myself nor to write all the remarkable little details that glimmer with novelty for the newly migrated.

Suffice to say, the dorm-mates are adorable; work is demanding, but not unexpected; and everything that I've come to know and love about Japan is still Japan.

The Japan and work parts--soon to be integral parts of my life and have been subject to much thought and consideration--I already knew. But the wonderful surprise of having such amazing dorm-mates in such an amazing place as Gumyouji still fills me with awe and gratitude.  Loneliness here would not be the uphill battle I imagined.

The food, awesome as ever, also fills me with gratitude, and my stomach with, well, keeps it thoroughly busy.

This is a a new life and an awesome opportunity for something I've been thinking a lot about. I've been playing around with the idea of a "reset": a clean slate to work with all the wisdom earned so far.  It's my acid-test to see if I've grown enough to do it right--life, I mean.

I'll let you know when I do.