How'd I forget about...

Red Meat? Oh, Milkman Dan and Pipe Smoking Ted, I'm glad to see you're still around.

How does one explain it?

A while ago, a few months before I was supposed to leave Japan, maybe, a thought occurred to me. Something about preparing to go, preparing to end the business of the second (third?) life I had tried to put together was not dissimilar to preparing to end that life, or at least that way of life. All the things that were supposed to be important, and the things that truly had become important to me, were not actually important enough to maintain. I would leave and everything around my old life would continue. just without me.

I did leave, and everything did continue without me.

It was kind of like getting dumped twice at once, but I was getting dumped from my own life, by my own life, as a result of my own choices.

Things left behind

Since leaving university, each time I've moved into a new house there has been a greater or lesser amount of stuff I've had to leave behind. But there's also been a greater or lesser amount of stuff left in the places I've moved into by the former occupants. Among other things abandoned in my then-new lodgings, I've found cinder blocks, unopened roach traps, stacks of scrap lumber, wicker ornaments, eyeglasses, Canadian pornography, healthy houseplants, frozen breast milk, mildewed futon cushions, dying houseplants, spy novels, dead houseplants and a 5 gallon (22 liter) glass water cooler bottle. Why would people take some things and leave others? What is judged as being valuable?

Did I tell you about the time I was forced to exchange my first driver's license for one from California? As the guy behind the counter took my old license, I asked him if it would be possible to mark it void or clip the corner or punch a hole in it or something so I could keep it as a memento. Without even looking up he jammed it into a shredder and said, "You got to let go of the past, baby."

What happened to you, man? You used to be beautiful...

I've alluded, in one way or another, to how little I was enjoying the last third of 2008. And you know what? It was my own damn fault. It was my job, my life, and my own damn, dumbass choices that put me there. Did I make mistakes? Oh hell yes. Maybe I'll put up some details of the worst parts later, but not today.

It occurred to me that parts of my past seem, in retrospect anyway, to have been jam-packed with fun, high-jinks, wacky misadventures, the odd comedic scrape, and more than a little learning. Especially in comparison with the last year or so. But it also occured to me that while I haven't been to a parasite museum in a couple of years, last year I did see the largest collection of pre-anaesthetic surgical tools and preserved pieces of syphilitic human anatomy I've ever heard of. Did I almost get run down by a forklift carrying a frozen 800-pound tuna at the world's biggest fish market? No. But I did visit one of the greatest collections of plundered antiquities in the world three times. Did I get to spend time with a bunch of interesting and intelligent people, including my wife, my parents and my brothers? Did I eat like a real, historical king? You damn right I did.

Today, like all days, is for getting on with it. I've got things to do, and not so much time to do them in. But I'm going to keep my eyes open, 'cause shit matters.

Small losses, somehow.

Tonight, a Saturday night, I find myself trying to clean up the room, which is not tidy, and clear up my desk, which is a mess, so that I might have enough space to prepare lesson plans for work on Monday. I don't know if I will have time to do either of those things tomorrow, since I have plans for the day with my wife.

Ordinarily, I like to think that the days of the week are irrelevant to me. Someone's lord may have rested on one day or another, but I try to do what I will when I will. There was a time when I taught lessons on Sunday night and drank gin on Monday mornings. I went on a trip with no plan, and found myself in Osaka, in a residential neighborhood full of middle-aged women touts, trying to lure in a fool in for a Thursday morning's romp on a hot summer day. As it turned out, all I really had come to Osaka for was an okonomiyaki, so I walked on, until I found a zoo, and a Ferris wheel, and a restaurant beneath the train tracks. The okonomiyaki was delicious, and the owner posed for photos, holding his special spatula high and smiling.

But something about spending this Saturday night on cleaning and preparation for work feels like a loss, like a defeat.

It feels like I'm allowing something important to get away from me, and without the right sort of compensation.