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Loneliness is a maw, a vacuum, a solar riptide that no one else can feel.
I picked up the Golden Fool while I was in the bookstore today. It's easy to forget just how much impact that particular series had on me back when I was reading them two years ago. That I was quite literally useless with depression for two weeks after I finished the last one. Something about them was so visceral, they had such a hold on me, and when I finished the last one . . . I just couldn't do anything. I just lay on my bed and stared at the wall.
Flipping through tonight . . . I don't think I'm ready to reread them. Not yet, anyway. Not when just reading certain passages has so strong an effect on me.
I wandered through the shelves of books. There's always a large section of books on understanding the Japanese and Japan, which seems futile and insulting both to me. As if you could understand a nation full of people just by reading someone's book! As if the Japanese are a completely different species, an alien race, impossible for the uninitiated to relate to! As if the author has discovered The Key, and they're going to share it with you! All you have to do is sit down with the book and "the Japanese" will be laid out like a map before you!
There's only one way to understand people, any people any where. And that's by spending the time and effort to get to know them, to learn about their lives. That's by being curious and open-minded, by listening and paying attention.
Not that reading books won't help with this, but I think it's extremely arrogant and insulting of the various authors first to make the assumption that they Know The Japanese, second to put a group of people to which they do not belong into an arbitrary category with modes of behavior that said people have not defined, and third to preach to others what they should think about said group of people.
Shelves and shelves of books, on travel and architecture and poetry and history, on religion and myth and language. My inadequacy is a knife cutting away at the core of me. So much to know, and how little I know, and how lazy and lacking in discipline, ambition and desire leading only to the knowledge of my inadequacy and failure. Around and around and around.
And loneliness on the cold, bustling street, surrounded by flashing lights and all the impersonal lure of consumerism. Using items to define your being. Exchanging money for identity.
I don't tend to talk about my problems much. I think that the real reason for this is because I don't see them as having solutions, and there is nothing that anyone can do to help. Helpful suggestions are not helpful at all; they lead me back to the endless loop of inadequacy, and worse, they make me angry at the good intentions of another. Better, then, not to speak.
This too shall pass.
And the unbalanced scale of interpersonal relationships I hate as well, the sliding back and forth. I cannot stand it when people care about me, I am not worthy of it. Care too much, and I back away, unable to understand, unable to accept. I think I can only love that which cannot love me. The stars, cats, music and martial arts that I have no real talent for, poetry that pulls blood from the stone of my heart.
Love only those who can never love you back.
I picked up the Golden Fool while I was in the bookstore today. It's easy to forget just how much impact that particular series had on me back when I was reading them two years ago. That I was quite literally useless with depression for two weeks after I finished the last one. Something about them was so visceral, they had such a hold on me, and when I finished the last one . . . I just couldn't do anything. I just lay on my bed and stared at the wall.
Flipping through tonight . . . I don't think I'm ready to reread them. Not yet, anyway. Not when just reading certain passages has so strong an effect on me.
I wandered through the shelves of books. There's always a large section of books on understanding the Japanese and Japan, which seems futile and insulting both to me. As if you could understand a nation full of people just by reading someone's book! As if the Japanese are a completely different species, an alien race, impossible for the uninitiated to relate to! As if the author has discovered The Key, and they're going to share it with you! All you have to do is sit down with the book and "the Japanese" will be laid out like a map before you!
There's only one way to understand people, any people any where. And that's by spending the time and effort to get to know them, to learn about their lives. That's by being curious and open-minded, by listening and paying attention.
Not that reading books won't help with this, but I think it's extremely arrogant and insulting of the various authors first to make the assumption that they Know The Japanese, second to put a group of people to which they do not belong into an arbitrary category with modes of behavior that said people have not defined, and third to preach to others what they should think about said group of people.
Shelves and shelves of books, on travel and architecture and poetry and history, on religion and myth and language. My inadequacy is a knife cutting away at the core of me. So much to know, and how little I know, and how lazy and lacking in discipline, ambition and desire leading only to the knowledge of my inadequacy and failure. Around and around and around.
And loneliness on the cold, bustling street, surrounded by flashing lights and all the impersonal lure of consumerism. Using items to define your being. Exchanging money for identity.
I don't tend to talk about my problems much. I think that the real reason for this is because I don't see them as having solutions, and there is nothing that anyone can do to help. Helpful suggestions are not helpful at all; they lead me back to the endless loop of inadequacy, and worse, they make me angry at the good intentions of another. Better, then, not to speak.
This too shall pass.
And the unbalanced scale of interpersonal relationships I hate as well, the sliding back and forth. I cannot stand it when people care about me, I am not worthy of it. Care too much, and I back away, unable to understand, unable to accept. I think I can only love that which cannot love me. The stars, cats, music and martial arts that I have no real talent for, poetry that pulls blood from the stone of my heart.
Love only those who can never love you back.
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