The Persistence Of Vision

This entry was written in bits and pieces over four or five days, so it's choppy and rough. Skip it if you've got anything even remotely better to do: like finally dust your refrigerator coils or something....

This Will Sound Crazy, But It's How I Live My Life: Interior Monologue, Take One

I have begun reading Vladimir Nabokov's novel King, Queen, Knave. In it, Nabokov talks about how life is a many layered dream and that each time one thinks one is awakening to reality, how that is really just an ascendency or descendency to another part of the dream.

I try, as always, to relate the literature to my life. This is the Tokyo, Japan, part of my dream. The first layers were of the frightening pleasure of experiencing this place alone, trying to find my bearings solo. These days, I'm trying to see myself in relation to others here. What is my place in this place. How do others see me and what can I learn from this?

Interestingly enough, yesterday morning (the day after I wrote the above two paragraphs), I lost my left contact lens. I knew as soon as I dropped it that it was gone. (I thought later: Did I not find it because I knew I wouldn't?) Because I was getting ready for work, I had only a limited search time so I searched and found nothing. I finally had to break out one of my spare pairs. It could have been an expensive mistake. (As I have said, there are many expensiive mistakes in Tokyo.)

However, I chose not to see it as a mistake, chose not to pay for a mistake, but to pay for a lesson. All lessons cost something (see also: No free lunches) one way or another. Here's how that breaks down:

Of course, from every event roads lead out in every direction. From the event of losing a contact lens, the road forks almost immediately: Get angry or not get angry. I started down the get angry road, which is what that kind of frantic searching and panic as you can't find something that's relatively important and expensive to replace will do for you. (I will explain that in America, I probably wouldn't have worried: A new pair of lenses are relatively easy to replace with a little hassle and a little money. I would have a doctor who speaks English and a system that I have navigated before to contend with. Here? The doctors so much speak English as Japanese. My simple bit of Japanese couldn't possibly take me through the process of getting a new pair of lenses. I'd have to make an appointment, get an eye exam, order lenses. This would require the help of one of the bilingual teachers (who, don't get me wrong, are exceedingly helpful). What I'm saying is that a relatively simple process like replacing a contact lens is, in Japan, more complicated than it would otherwise be in America. That is true for everything that I do here, every action that I take from changing a lightbulb to buying lunch in a restaurant to going to the doctor.)

I could get angry or frustrated over this--and everything here--but, honto, I haven't the time or the energy anymore to be that kind of person. Instead, I chose to put my energy into exploring what lesson it was that I had just paid for with a lost contact lens.

I read somewhere (in all my varied readings) that the right side of the body is self-referential and the left refers to others. I won't go into a long, complicated explanation here, but since reading that, I've come to see my left eye as the eye that sees others and my right eye as the eye that sees myself. As a symbolic action in the dream that is my waking life, losing my left contact lens was about the loss of vision, my vision as it relates to others. (Just hang through the parts that sound crazy, is my advice to you.) I was, it seems, about to change how it is that people see me or how I see how people see me.

For example, yesterday, after losing the contact lens:

Each day, we have a short meeting at work. Each day the manager tells us about the days numbers, the okane (money), the counseling sessions scheduled for that day. Each day, we end the meeting with a hearty "Yoh-oh!" followed by a single, loud clap. (It's sort of like in sports, when you all pile a hand in and someone says, "Break!" and you break and go off to do your thing.) Each day, the manager calls out a new person to deliver the "Yoh-Oh!" and yesterday, he called on me. I did the "Yoh-Oh!" and everyone clapped once, loudly, and then the manager said, "Thank you, O-nee'san!" Huh? Thank you, honorable older sister?

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

I'm still taking every invitation that comes my way. Last night, none did, so I came home and slept off the onset of a cold that has many students in its clutches. Tonight, it meant drinking at the bar on the 7th floor of the Yurakucho Kaisha with students from the Ginza Kaisha. (I know, you're saying: Wait a minute, I thougt you worked at the Ginza Kaisha. Well, I work in Ginza at the Yurakucho Kaisha. The Ginza Kaisha is also in Ginza, about three minutes away "by walk." Honto, ni. That is how lazy you get with an efficient train and subway station. The Yurakucho Kaisha is a minute walk from Yurakucho Station and less than thirty seconds walk from the nearest Ginza subway line exit. The Ginza Kaisha is also less than thirty seconds from the nearest Ginza line station, but is a distressing four minutes walk from Yurakucho station.)

Anyway, that's right: Drinking with students and other foreign teachers at the bar on the 7th floor. The foreign teachers, at the end of nine hour days of speaking English with students, clustered at one end of the table and tried desperately to have conversations with each other in rapid, shorthand English. it's not that we were trying to be rude to the students, but honto ni, sometimes its like that scene from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale when Ofwarren is having her baby and the handmaids take the opportunity to pass on the news to each other via whispers and quickly spoken conversation. By the end of any given week, we're all pretty much sick of speaking English like robots, so we take each opportunity to speak the way...well, the way we do with other English speakers.

Chotto drunk still, ne?

Anyway, so after a bit of bitching to the other English teachers, I went over and sat at the end with, you guessed it, a bunch of Japanese businessmen. Honestly, I don't know what made me do it, but I started to make fun of them. Where did you learn your English? I asked. They answered, very seriously. And where did you learn your Japanese? I asked. They drew themselves up and some kind of current passed through the group as they decided that it was a joke. Do you speak Japanese? one of them asked. Yes, I replied, I learned it at Berlitz. They laughed. What do you know in Japanese? they asked. I told them what little Japanese I knew. They were amazed. Some food came to the table and I picked up my chopsticks. Please, I said, do not compliment me on my use of chopsticks. Thank you, I said.

They asked if I would come to Ginza school and I stuck a serious look on my face and said, No, it's too far, isn't it? Also, the teachers are snobs. They hooted. Too far? I sipped at my biru. Too far, I repeated. Too far? they asked. I said, I said too far. It is too far for me to walk. One of them realized I was joking. He said, You can take a taxi. i said, Good idea. So you will pay for the taxi? His friends laughed. What is snobs? they asked.

What Is Snobs, Indeed?

It's not early necessarily, but I am up. I should have gone to the gym and didn't, and now I'm sitting around my apartment nursing a bit of a hangover with a mixture of instant coffee and splenda (thanks, Grenkle!) that is so thick it resembles a kind of coffee pudding in my cup. Ahhhh!

Some people from home (and by that, I mean Albuquerque) have expressed concern that I have been drinking a bit much. And, honto, yes, I have. I have been drinking a bit much for the last two weeks or so. That amounts to going out about three times a week. (I go to the gym more than this, by the way.) I will say that I appreciate your concern, and....Well, let's just say that I appreciate your concern and leave it at that. I recognize your worries. I do. And I recognize the possibilities that prompt those worries. I do. And I am grateful for and to you all for them.

That is to say: I'm fine.