Grace Under Pressure

Break Me

I write “Break me,” on one side of my heart. On the other side of my heart, I write Hemingway’s definition of courage.

You know Hemingway’s definition of courage, don’t you?

Courage Is Not Gratitude

Gratitude is what sets you free, and freedom requires courage, but gratitude is not courage. Not as far as Hemingway was concerned.

Break Me

I step off the train in Higashi-Mukojima and walk out of the station. I am carrying two bags: One is from Muji. One is from a place called Marks & Web. Both of these are stores in Kita-Senju. Kita-Senju is four stops away from Higashi-Mukojima. I’ve gone to shopping (as the Japanese say) in Kita-Senju. I work in Ginza. I have all of Tokyo as my playground and Kita-Senju is not the greatest part of Tokyo. In fact, most people who live in Tokyo have probably never heard of Kita-Senju. So, why did I go there?

Week before last, I stopped at The Kaisha on my way to Shibuya. Ben asked where I was headed and I told him that I was going to Shibuya to buy a Halloween costume at Tokyu Hands. He replied, “There’s a Tokyu Hands in Kita-Senju.” I said, “Is there?” He asked, “Have you ever gotten on the train going the other way?”

Let me explain: I live in Higashi-Mukojima, which is a stop on the JR Tobu Line. At least five days a week, I board a Tobu Line train and head from northeast edge of Tokyo toward the center of the city to Asakusa. Higashi-Mukojima is one stop along the line. One end of the line is at Asakusa. I don’t even know (without looking) where the other end of the Tobu Line I take every day is.

Ben knows because his girlfriend lives on the same line (they met on the train). He also had some idea of where our line ends because he habitually falls asleep on trains and he has fallen asleep on the Tobu Line. “I woke up and looked around,” he says. Then he adds, his voice wondrous, “There were mountains.” One forgets, living in Tokyo, that such things as mountains exist. I look at concrete all day. It gets old.

Let me say further that I have grown comfortable with my routine. I have been doing the same thing for what seems like a long time (four months is a lifetime to The Brain and me), and I know things like what stores sell 1.5 liter bottles of Diet Coke and what the absolute last time is to leave my apartment to minimize my commute. I know where the stores are in Ginza (where I can afford to shop). I know where the curry place is and I would put money down on the fact that I could find the Lawson’s with my eyes closed. I know my routine--and I haven’t stepped out of it in several weeks.

Today, I decided to step out of routine. Instead of heading toward Asakusa, I would board my own train line going the other way. It doesn’t sound like so much, but this is still Japan. This is still the land of where getting on the train going the other way is an adventure.

So I went to Kita-Senju and shopped at Muji. To be fair, I have shopped at Muji before. Muji’s in Tokyo are like Mall-Warts in America, they’re everywhere. (Unlike Mall-warts, which do not exist in Japan as far as I have seen.) We were Aoyama with Seth last weekend, and Ben said to me, “Oh, here’s something I wanted to show you.” He indicated a store excitedly. “There’s the Aoyama Muji.” He added in a bored voice, “Which is just like any other Muji in Tokyo.” So, yes, I’ve been to Muji. And the Marks & Web purchases (hand lotion and body wash) were an impulse buy, but I remembered, in Kita-Senju, that I am in a different country. I know that sounds really stupid, doesn’t it?

On the way out of the station, I passed a kaiten sushi place. I thought, Mmmm, sushi, but I didn’t stop then. I wanted to look around the place a bit. I ended up as the Japanese say, “going to shopping.” I went to shopping at Muji and at Maruzen and I thought, “I hate going to shopping,” so then I decided to head over to the kaiten sushi place for lunch. At the kaiten sushi place, the help tried to speak Japanese to me and so did some of the customers. It made me remember that my Japanese skills are shite, yo. They’re shite.

I forget that little fact because I speak English for a living now, which amounts to speaking twelve hours of English a day. I speak more English in Japan than I did in America, and my coworkers are so Westernized (and I am so used to dealing with many different kinds of people) that I forget that this is Japan and that people speak Japanese in their Real Lives.

So, yes. I did speak the barest amount of Japanese today--enough to remind me that I need to get my shit together and start learning the language.

I am grateful for this reminder.

Courage Is Not About Speaking The Truth

Of course it takes courage to speak the truth. I don’t remember who said that the truth is so important that we have to use lies to protect it, but I love that sentiment. (Now that I think about it, it was Winston Churchill who I’m paraphrasing.)

Break Me

On Friday night, I teach a high-level class that is habitually attended by a group of businessmen (which includes my handsome businessman slash student boyfriend). On Friday night, we were to discuss politics. a new student showed up. I said to him, “My name is Brenda,” and shook his hand. I asked the other students to introduce themselves and then at the end, I gave him some information about myself. “Please ask me a question,” I said to him when I was finished talking about myself.

“What is New Mexico famous for?” he asked.

I answered with a standard list: Chile, Demi Moore, aliens (Roswell, yo, which people here know from the television show), White Sands. And, oh yeah. Have you heard of this place called Los Alamos?

No one had.

Remember, the topic was politics.

I wrote “Los Alamos, New Mexico” on the board. I explained, “Los Alamos is where something very important to Japan came from.” I wrote “The Manhattan Project” on the board. “Do you know this project?” I asked.

No one knew.

I said, “This is where two things that were very important to Japan came from.” I wrote the words “Fat Man and Little Boy” on the board.

The new student said, “Ahhh!”

I said, “Please explain.” He explained to the class that these were atomic bombs. I said, “These bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were made and tested in New Mexico.”

“The topic today, gentlemen, is politics.”

The discussion led around to Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, visiting Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine that commemorates the war dead and which is very controversial because those war dead include those men who invaded China. Now, as the Japanese try to establish relations with China, the prime minister’s yearly visit to the shrine is not appreciated by the Chinese. In fact, you could use the word enrage to describe the reaction to Koizumi’s visit and no one on the Chinese side would correct you.

It was a terrific class, and I thanked the new student for his contribution. He was embarrassed but pleased to be singled out.

After class, the handsome businessman made a point of monopolizing me until the other students were gone.

Courage Is Not The Ability To Comprehend A Given Situation

I don’t know that you can ever say you understand anything unless you understand it from the inside out. Hemingway, for example, writes that to write, first one must understand mankind and then one must learn to write well. Each, he says, takes a lifetime. I think I would only add that, before one can do either of these things, one must understand oneself. Under this system, which is completely unavoidable, one can pile lifetime upon lifetime and still not reach one’s goal.

Break Me

After class, the handsome businessman and I talked and talked and talked in The Kaisha lobby. We could each follow the conversation, participate in it, generate it. But neither of us could direct it.

Let me explain that statement. The handsome businessman is a relatively high-level student, relatively fluent. We spoke English and the conversation was ostensibly about how he could improve his skills. That part of the conversation was not incomprehensible, undirectable. What was beyond our skill level was the manipulation of the conversation’s subtext. Some of it was in English, some of it was in Japanese, some of it was universal.

What was English? Well, that part I understand and explain to you. He’s asking for help with his English and he’s doing it in such a way that he’s not asking for English practice in the classroom. He says he needs more practice to become fluent. His request catapults us into the universal part of the conversational subtext.

What was universal? His flirting with me, of course. He wanted to know more and he wanted that knowledge not to be classroom-based knowledge. He wanted it one-on-one. What was universal was the attraction between us and the desire to act on that attraction. What was universal was his testing of the waters, trying to find out if he would be able to act on that that desire, trying to find out if I would be receptive. His desire catapults us into the Japanese subtext of the conversation.

What was Japanese? What was Japanese was how he proceeded to test the waters. Let me say that The Vibe here is different. The Vibe in Japan is Japanese. It’s not the extension of the American independent in-your-face vibe, it’s an extention of the Japanese group mentality saving face vibe. I understand that much. And I understand a bit more, too.

I could figure out from context that a request was being made, but I could not figure out exactly what that request was. Did he just want to go drinking? Was he suggesting more one-on-one time? What activities would occupy that time? So those questions had to be answered. And, too, compared to American men, Japanese men tend to be very subtle. (And thank goodness, because the ones that aren't, like the rich architect, are scary.) In this case, that subtlety may be compounded by the fact that he is married. However, to explain, that expectation that married is a complication is mostly a function of my cultural experience. This is Japan I mean, and the men here, married or not, have what appears to me to be a lot of freedom in terms of sexual habits. For example, I have yet to meet a married man here who hesitates in the least to express desire for other women. This is not talk that goes on outside the classroom. I have yet to meet a married man who hesitates to talk in class about what kind of women they prefer to date. I know, for instance, that my handsome businessmen prefers women in their twenties for frivolous affairs, but for more serious affairs, he prefers women in their thirties. (He is forty-seven.)

But let’s leave those preferences for a moment. Let’s mix it up a bit instead:

My handsome businessman was trying and failing and trying and failing, but I was still encouraging. He could see that I was not rejecting him but he couldn’t quite figure out why he was failing to achieve his goal. He wasn’t getting frustrated but he also wasn’t able to get...to the point, I guess. This, I’ll just say, was my expectation of him. This, I’ll just say, did not influence him. It’s hard to explain this situation without giving many details, so I’ll tell you that basically what it came down to was a kind of negotiations between two people who are attracted to each other; one a relatively young, single woman and the other a married man who is absolutely without compunctions when it comes to staying out all night whenever he feels like it. We both wanted the same thing. We were both trying to figure out how to get it, but we were both laboring under the burden of culture. Neither of us could figure out how to navigate the borderland of intercultural desire because both of us were hindered by culture. His bag of tricks wasn’t working, but I wasn’t sure that I should break out my own bag of tricks.

It may not be important, but let me explain where I was coming from:

Where I’m from, it takes an extraordinary amount of...something, some skill or characteristic that I don’t have...on the part of women to forgive men who do what we call cheating. Where I’m from, it also takes an extraordinary amount of self-delusion or rationalization to cheat with a married man. Of course, there are plenty of people who cheat, plenty of men married to women who look the other way or, worse, forgive. There are plenty of women who say or think that he’ll leave her and who believe themselves (or the man) when they say (or hear) that it’s not just sex, it’s actually love.

I will add that this view of cheating is not at all gender specific. (I’m sticking with the genders of my own particular situation out of convenience.) It is, however, culturally specific. In the West, the guilt that we associate with cheating is a construct that arises from Christianity. That last bit is important. The bit about Christianity, I mean.

Let me shorthand it for you:

Japan is not a Christian country. Christian mores and Christian guilt, and ideas about sin and redemption, hell and heaven do not exist in Japan. Those are not Japanese ideas. The Japanese do not live these ideas in a way that Westerners are able to appreciate. They don’t live these ideas but it’s not because they rejected these ideas consciously. No. Nai. They don’t live these ideas because they were never exposed to them in the first place. They never acquired them and so they don’t live by them now.

Imagine that.

Imagine growing up in a society that has no basis in Christianity. Even if you are not a Christian, if you grew up in a Christian culture (or a culture that believes itself to be Christian), you are steeped in these ideas. They shape your perception of how you should and shouldn’t behave and of what you have to be ashamed about, what you have to feel guilty about. Imagine growing up without those idea(l)s.

I don’t know if you can. I can’t at this point and I’ve been trying for the last four months. Part of why I can’t is because imagining a life without the burden of a Western Christian cultural upbringing means, in part (and this is the part that is important to my understanding of the reluctance I have to become The Other Woman), having to think: How would I be if I didn’t have any guilt whatsoever about sexual matters? Because there is absolutely no guilt that I can discern about extramarital sex here. None.

If I were Japanese, we would already be lovers.

But I am not Japanese.

And The Vibe is different in this town. As he spoke, I wondered at what my own response and my responsibility were. I wondered (and still wonder) and he talked and talked, and perhaps it was, as Kazu would say, “That stupid Japanese way of thinking,” but neither of us could bring ourselves to be direct. Later, as The Brain and I pored over the conversation, I thought that it would have been nice had I been able to call a time out and remind him of the obvious and give him some advice. The obvious reminder would have been: I am not Japanese. I am American. I don’t understand the Japanese subtext of this conversation of ours, mister. The advice would have been: You need to be very direct with me.

But I am grateful, too, I didn't, couldn't stop the flow of the conversation, and that he wasn’t able to figure out on his own that he had to be more direct. Why am I grateful for this? Because I am not yet ready to make a decision about this matter--again.

Courage Is Not Analytical In Nature

After every questionable act, I ask, “Am I still me?”

Before every questionable act, I ask, “If I do this, will I still be me?”

I recognize that neither question is strictly necessary--or even helpful.

Break Me

Hemingway wrote that we are all broken. We are all broken, but some of us heal where we are broken, and then we are stronger in those places. I have sometimes been a drowning woman, have sometimes clung to that sentiment with a grip tighter than any grip I ever had on sanity.

Courage Is Not A Virtue

Hemingway writes that he is courageous in all the usual ways but that he is not, for example, toreador courageous. In one essay, he laments that he took his (then) wife to the bullfights in Pamplona because after she watched toreadors face down death all afternoon, there was no way that she could ever truly respect her husband again. He is grateful, in the end, that there are so few toreadors in this world--and so few wives who have seen toreadors at work.

How did Hemingway come to know his own levels of courageousness? By testing himself. He tested himself against war, deceit, lies, marriage, women. He tested himself against the world, the oceans, mountains, violence. He tested himself against the animal kingdom in all its manifestations. He tested himself in the boxing ring and in the bullfighting ring. But most importantly, he tested himself against words. Against writing. Against language. Most importantly, he tested himself against The Word.

His most important work wasn't done in Spain during the war, or in Havana during revolution. His most important work wasn't done in tiny boats on massive ocean swells. His most important work wasn't done as a reporter or a foot soldier or as a husband or father even. His most important work was done at the typewriter. His most important work was done with a pencil and paper. And though he traveled the world, he was always only ever looking for one thing: Himself.

But he seemed always to be trying to find out:

What is the difference between the truth and living the truth?

What is the difference between the word and the deed?

Always, always he was going head-to-head with life. Always, always he was praying for opportunities to test himself. Always, always he was writing on his heart what he learned.

I like to think that I have a few of the same things written on my heart now.

On one side of my heart, I’ve written Break me. On the other side of my heart, I’ve written Hemingway’s definition of courage.

Of course you know Hemingway’s definition of courage, right?

Right.