Friday, August 24, 2007

to miss what once you loathed

After four long years of English Literature at Uni, I miss Shakespeare - how crazy is that?!

I just finished reading Huxley`s `Brave New World,` wherein John the Savage criticizes civilization with his snippets of self-taught Shakespeare. I am quite excited to report that I had pangs of desire to read those of the Bard`s plays that I haven`t yet read, and even - hard to believe, I know - to reread some of those I have. Sadly, the Complete Works I was going to steal from my father and stuff in my bag was one of the ten or so books that simply could not fit. Othello, The Tempest; Macbeth and Hamlet once more: they shall have to wait.

That is, after all, the point of going away, right? To miss what once you loathed.


I am also very excited for my parents to visit at the end of September - NOT to say I loathed them before I left home. Again, I`m just saying that going away gives me the opportunity to miss them. Already more than before I look forward to each email and phone call from friends and family back home.

See, I`m trying to be only positive this post because, really, I do have a lot of positive things to say.

I have been enjoying my little set up immensely. I have started developping mini-routines for waking up in the morning, and meal times, and reading, and - did I mention I have a coffee maker? Caffeine bring man who push button much happiness.

I eagerly anticipate many new and exciting adventures over the course of the year. Primarily, just being here.
I also do want to learn some functional japanese literacy and vocabulary - which will be a long haul, I assure you.
Then there is teaching for the first time in my life, more on that later (term starts in two days).
Then there are the other adventures that the Hokkaido Association of people like me (HAJET) brings: specifically, a pan-Japan soccer tourny, a musical if I can get up the nerves and energy, and hopefully a Habitat for Humanity trip sometime in the spring, which is something I have always wanted to do.

Of course, I have yet to pay even my first months rent, so I have no idea how far my salary will actually stretch. And, I have yet to start my real job, teaching, which is the purported purpose of my being here in the first place.

It`s been basically three weeks since I left home, so if I came home after a year, it would be only 49 left before I went back! I am definitely not even thinking about whether I would want to stay another year or not, though some people are already swearing that one won`t be enough for them.
As I promised myself, I won`t even attempt to evaluate anything so large-scale as my life or the future until at least a month into living here. But with time in Tokyo and more orientation here in Sapporo, and then this liminal quasi-existence of not-really-working every day, I feel like I might need to wait for a month after school starts before evaluating what has, by then, been a real, lived month.

And yes, just pushing self-evaluation back a month, and then another month, and so on, is a method of living that can go on indefinitely. I have learned in the past, for me personally at least, that the less I evaluate and think philosophically, the better for the spirit of living in the moment, and the less existential angst.

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