The past five months have felt like a slighty blurred, pastel colored dream. It seems like only last week I was charging up the stairs to the first shrine I'd ever seen, and only a week before that I was saying goodbye to my gentleman-friend on a Philadelphia train platform and completely freaking out.
Despite every effort to be as engaged and focussed on the world around me as I can possibly be, my mental images of home feel far more real then, say, the view out of the Keio elevator:
On clearer days you can see Mt Fuji
I think once a bit of time has passed I'll be more able to figure out what I have learned and what has changed in my brains. As it stands, it's only my hands that feel different-- doing everything digitally (heh) has given me smooth white fingers and shiny grown-out nails for the first time in my life.
There's a lot of things I won't miss about Japan-- having the vocabulary of a two year old being the biggest. But I will also be so glad to see the chaos and boisterousness of New York, the constant, acceptable blow-off of steam, and freedom to be my own goofy self without offending everyone in a ten yard radius with my laugh.
I've never built up steam so much and so fast as I have in Japan. My friends and I went to karaoke all the time, since sitting in a dark room and yelling for a few hours is one of the few socially acceptable ways to relieve tension. While maybe not apparent on the surface, I think being far from home was a constant, low level stressor for a lot of us. It certainly was for me.
But I will miss a lot, too. I will miss good, cheap food, I will miss immaculate trains, I will miss flawless infrastructure. I'll miss the magic light in narrow evening streets, with the flags filtering the sun.
One of the few named streets in Hiyoshi
I will miss the extraordinary friends I made here and I will miss meeting people from every country and background imaginable on a daily basis. I'll miss being within walking distance to school. I will miss Mt Fuji on the horizon. I wish New York had a sacred mountain.
I'll miss those blues, too.
Yesterday I went hiking in Kamakura (a town full of shrines near the ocean) and was struck by how old the land felt. The path was worn several feet into the soft rock in some places:
That's rock, not mud.
I have hiked a lot in New York State and elsewhere, and the woods there feel new, for want of a better word. The trees are younger, generally, and any human artifacts tend to be garbage. Of course there are traces of First Nations here and there, but I think their lack of continuity- of anything in common, really- with the present culture makes them feel much more remote. Here, the weight of thousands of years is in the air, the paths have been walked continuously for centuries, and the caves are undisturbed.
Some famous guy is in that urn, I think.
I like that sense of present history a lot. It's what attracted me most about Europe, too. I need to read up on Japanese history and mythology much more. I read some books, but not nearly enough (the English language bookstore situation is dire).
Today I went to Ueno Park at golden hour and it was particularly golden:
Even the gold bits were gold
I've been re-visiting places I like to say goodbye, and it occurred to me that all my favorite spots are over 100 years old, usually by a lot. Some modern designer I am!
Those colors, though
I still haven't written about those bands in Kyoto. I think I'll do a massive post about all the things I forgot to post about on the airplane. Unless I get a window seat.
--I
No comments:
Post a Comment