October Revolution

This has been an odd month. As you may (or may not) know, I've started working at a junior high school. So five days a week I try to help 13-15 year olds work on their English. And, because Japanese companies don't pay you until the first monthly payday AFTER you've completed a month of work, I've continued to work at the shitty conversation school I was at before.
But there can be no important change without discomfort, yeah? And this has been a fairly important time for changing. I've changed my primary place of employment, my sleeping habits, my spending habits, my eating habits, the amount of time I spend on the train... It's been a pretty odd month.

And the most important change has been the least drastic one. Perhaps because of my relative isolation, the change in my feeling about that isolation has be been the strongest. Honestly, some days I can feel psychosis radiating off of me in waves. Unstoppable cascades of thought that would be impolite at best and immoral, indecent, blasphemous, treasonous and in plain bad taste at worst. It honestly surprises me that the one-on-one adult students can't sense this current of filth and madness that's running just beneath the banter about current movies and their plans for their next vacation.

Of course, in all fairness, they probably have other things on their minds than the mental state of the English conversation source they've rented for the hour. I mean, they have lives too, right?

But they're not the one's writing this blog, I am. So let's get the focus back where it belongs: on me.

I had a birthday recently. And maybe it's a sign of maturity (or impending adulthood...) that this year was remarkable for not being anything other than a pain in the ass. It wasn't my first year to buy smokes, porn, booze, guns, to rent cars or to be living in another country. It wasn't like I was expecting a great present, a big party, or some great feeling of maturity and wisdom.

Really, what this change felt like was an entirely arbitrary marking of time, with no deeper meaning. I'm older, but no wiser, richer,. stronger or healthier. Nothing's changed except one number I have to remember. Last year I might have said I'm one year closer to being dead, but I get the feeling that it's not gonna be old age that does me in, and it won't be something I can count towards.

But the point of this was supposed to be revolution, yes? Change. Removal of the old standards. The wholesale slaughter of the innnocents claimed as representatives of the old order in the name of progress. Let the streets of my mind flow with the blood of the counter-revolutionaries! This will change our mind for the better! Viva!