Fragment, Fragments, Fragmented, Secrets, Not So Secrets, and Confessions

In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.--Oscar Wilde

Fragments

I returned from Japan (and Thailand) three months ago and have done little since returning. Certainly, I've done nothing that would outwardly appear to be productive. I've spent long stretches sitting, no intent, or surfing the web. I've eaten, exercised or not, slept or not, seen friends--but mostly not. I found on my return a stable of people who had forgotten me and I didn't have the interest or energy to reinsert myself into their lives just yet.

And besides, I've been wanting to be alone. Why? Because inside me, things were madly breaking up and shifting around. It wouldn't seem that a year away could change so much (and to be truthful, it didn't change what's at my core) but it changed enough that making sense of it has been difficult. At 33, to crack apart and put together the pieces in such an alien place, was difficult. Japan was a kind of sledgehammer, a place where women are soundly--almost willingly--second class, where women over thirty are invisible, but where Western women are so rare as to be revered. Japan was a kind of fairyland, a place where familiar talismans didn’t work, where I was mute, where the only language I could speak fluently was sold by the hour for someone else’s profit.

Three Hundred and Fifty-Five Days Ago and One Hundred Days Ago, Fragmented

Looking through pictures a year old, I am amazed at the big-city brilliance of Ginza on a cool October night. And I remember.

I remember the man whose fortune-telling table sat on the sidewalk along Harumi-dori. He had a round, pocked, pleasant face, and he was going bald, and he always wore a grayish-brown suit and a white shirt and dark tie, and each night after work on my way to the subway entrance I said good evening to him, and each night he half-bowed from his folding chair and said good evening in return.

Ah, I remember this and I feel my heart breaking. Finally breaking. I want it to ooze out Japan when it does.

The fortune teller was a middle-aged man who earned his living reading palms on the streets of the richest neighborhood in the most expensive city in the world. Even from a distance, I could see that each extended palm was a silent and unbreakable oath to retain the inability to know oneself from within. I could see that each outstretched hand was a mute witness to what someone must necessarily feel to be so attached to a seemingly inexplicable fate.

On my last night in Ginza, I stopped at the fortuneteller's table. I was leaving Japan in a few days and was already in transit, living out of my suitcases in a hotel in Ningyocho, saying goodbye to the people around me. Post-Japan, I was facing an endless stretch of days with limited understanding and unfamiliar consequences and I was grasping at any tool to gain any kind of knowledge. I simply wanted to know more.

I stopped at his table and I bowed and said good evening. I asked him in Japanese if he spoke English. He shook his head slightly and replied, I’m sorry, no. I thanked him, excused myself and went on, having only reinforced my understanding that self-reliance is one of the few dependable tools any given situation.

Yesterday, I thought: Can you identify the moment when it all goes wrong? And, if you can, is there anything that can be done or should be done about it?

Secrets and Confessions

Yesterday, I bought a round trip ticket to Singapore. The travel time is just over one day--almost 25 hours--and on the way out, I will transit through San Francisco and Tokyo. I will arrive in Singapore in the evening and I will check into a hotel and wait for the Handsome Businessman to arrive the next day.

Yes, it’s him--the handsome, married businessman--that I’m going to meet.

A few hours after buying the ticket, I regretted it. I was filled with a familiar regret that follow each bad decision I make knowingly. I don't want to feel that feeling again.

I spoke with him after and told him that our relationship would end after we saw each other in Singapore.

He has no choice but to agree.

Not So Secret

Soon after returning from Japan, I emailed him and we began a relationship that follows all the conventional rules of both adulterous and long-distance relationships. At the time I began it, and with each subsequent decision to continue, I held within me the belief that I had nothing else or was worthy of nothing else. At the time I decided to continue, I wasn’t ready to let go of the life I had in Japan. There, there had been lessons worth learning, and a kind of independent life, regardless of the frustrations.

And too, I wanted to believe him when he said he loved me, even though I knew it wasn’t true. I just wanted anyone to say it. i was flattered by his behavior, by the attention, by his attraction. But over time that's changed so that now staying in the relationship is a kind of burden on my heart. I don't want to feel this way either, don't want to add to the baggege, to the bad karma.

I’m ready to move on from old beliefs, old constraints. I want something more, something for me.

I will go to Singapore. I will see him. I will say goodbye to him. And I will move on.

I told him this last night, including some of the reasons--though not all of the reasons. Some things can't be translated into simplified English and I was too tired to try and explain. Some reasons I want him to know and some I don't care if he knows and some I don't want him to know. I don't want him to have even the slightest hint of some of the true reasons I am ending this.

I said what I could and he struggled to understand and asked questions that I answered or didn't, and then I asked him his feelings.

This is what he said:

Him: I want you to look at me for a while--

But on the other hand, I want you to be happy.

I can’t say correctly, but many ideas come up.

But I want you to be happy. And I not angry now

Yes.

Yeah. Yes. Ok. Can you hang up now?

Yes. Yes, I’m ready now. I'm read to hang up, now.