燕

Last spring I was able to go to a huge roller coaster park in Japan with some of my friends. Among the ten coasters in the park they also happen to have the world's largest wooden one; this is a view of it from the nearby Ferris wheel. I rode it once, but found that it gave me a pounding headache. Looks like I've gotten too old for wooden roller coasters. I did fine on the modern ones, though.

I might also have been more prone to headaches at the time, seeing as my parents were visiting. When my parents visited me in Japan I was usually in a state of high stress and constant sleep deprivation/exhaustion.

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Wednesdays are going to be my busy days; biweekly that means class from 9 AM to 9:30 PM, with an hour's break for lunch and dinner/transport each. And then walking 40 minutes home. Today was the first of them, and actually I found myself enjoying it. I like being busy; it makes me feel useful. Which explains why I so mercilessly over-scheduled myself while I lived in Japan; I did in fact enjoy it.

I've actually been rather lazy since coming to Scotland. I think I need to take further steps to remedy this.

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Over the vacation I had a chance for some long talks with my various family members, some of which were quite interesting.

( Regarding a conversation with my little brother with attendant thoughts which cover socialism in Sweden, the causes of the American Civil War, rappers, and lottery tickets. )

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I had half an hour during my busiest busy day in which to procure dinner. I wanted to go to the Black Medicine coffee house, because its name is so cool, but I ended up wandering the wrong way. I was thinking thoughts of going into the KFC-- I was running out of time-- it would be easy to order there-- but at the last second I gave in to the terrible yellow plastic beacon of a down-at-the-heels middle eastern place with cheap battered tables and faded posters of deserts on the walls.

And glad I was to have done so. Their baba ganoush was LOVELY. And I found out that the "sh" sound at the end has a bit of a hard "g" sound in it. I am enlightened!

. . . okay, nowhere near. But I get a little closer every day!

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I found some fun and interesting things on the internet recently. Let me share them with you!

A friend who is obsessed with a cartoon show called Phineas and Ferb linked me to this episode which makes reference to Carmell Dansen. At which point I told her that about two years ago Japan discovered this song in its original Swedish. And before long ALL OF JAPAN WAS INFECTED. It caught on so hugely that every anime currently on the air (and many who just have extremely obsessive fans) was making their own version of it (Jack Sparrow's at 2.16, fyi).

The same friend taught me a new French phrase!

déjà moo - the distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before

My stock of French phrases is growing once again! I can now add this gem of wisdom to my recently-acquired "tes moeurs crapuleuses" ("your sordid morals") and "tu cherches à corrompre mon paresseux" ("you are trying to corrupt my sloth"). Thankee, Patrick O'Brian!

This picture is my current desktop walllpaper. ( About which I said . . . )

( To which my adorable sister replied... )

She's so cute! <3

This comic is quite adorable.

Reading through Pandora Hearts led to this string of (mostly) non-spoiler comments on Facebook:

( Comments Ahoy! )

So. Had a migraine yesterday.

There have been batteries of tests, countless visits to doctors, blood samples, MRIs, you name it. During my first one, the most truly terrible of them all, I have vague memories of the large, featureless magnetic tube, of the doctors drawing over my scalp in red and blue wax pencil, of electrodes and sensors and needles. I didn't understand what was going on, just that I had a vague feeling that it had happened before, even though I didn't remember it.

It had happened before, about two weeks in the past. I didn't remember it because I wasn't really "there" at the time-- in fact I have no memory of those two weeks whatsoever, except possibly a brief flash of coherence during which I was begging someone, anyone, to make the pain stop.

My migraines aren't as bad anymore. In fact none of them have been as bad as that first one. They come once a year, maybe once every two years, they put you out on your back for a day, and that's that. Fact of life, just keep going.

Of course every time they're completely terrifying, but I've been having these for more than half my life now, so I know what's going on. The first sign is when my vision goes. I see half of words, half of the hand in front of my face, half of the world around me. The rest just isn't there, it stops.

The next thing that happens is I start losing feeling. It's always been in the left half of my body, only this time it was strange and it was the right half. My fingers are usually first; they tingle, and then go numb. I can move them, I can see them move, but the movements are clumsy because I can't feel anything. And then the numbness spreads until it's my whole arm. When it moves to my jaw and tongue things are bad; I can't talk. When it moves to my leg and foot, I can't walk. I can't feel the ground under me, or the muscles responding as my brain tells them to.

At this point I doubt I could speak coherently even if I were able to speak. I tried to send a text message to my friend to let her know what was up and couldn't hold a sentence in my head long enough to tap it out on the keys. I had to copy each word from the email I had just written, and even then I made many mistakes and kept having to go back. It doesn't feel this way from inside my head, but I don't think my brain functions properly when migraines are going on. I can't even copy a sentence from a screen or answer questions in a reasonable way.

Somewhere around there the pain starts hitting. In a way it's a relief, because it means that the frightening numbness is going away, and full vision is returning. Except for the fact that, well, it hurts. A lot.

It's hard to be more eloquent than that. This one wasn't as bad, it only hurt so much that I was naseuous with the pain. It didn't hurt as much as the times when the track of a bullet through my brain seemed a pleasure to imagine, no more than a sting that brings blessed relief in its wake.

It was just a little migraine. Not too bad. I'm on my feet and moving around the next day, no problem. I was on my feet and moving around yesterday night, even though every time I stood up my head started pounding.

No doctor has ever been able to figure out what to tell us to take. No doctor has ever been able to figure out what triggers them: stress, pork, chocolate, lack of stress, head trauma . . . there have been long lists of possibilities, but nothing's checked out. Nothing is consistant, so there's nothing we can avoid and so avoid migraines. No doctor knows what causes them: the latest guess is that we (my mother, myself, my siblings) are mutants.

Yep, we're mutants. Like the X-Men. Only instead of cool powers, we get headaches.

Fact of life. Just have to adjust for it and move on.

Valentine's Day is not a particularly relevant holiday for me. My favorite memory of the event is the one I spent drinking bitter in a 14th-century whorehouse, and this seems an adequate portrayal of my behavior on an occasion dedicated to romance.

Yesterday's February 14th had a very rocky start. I woke up late and had to run out, the signal boards were malfunctioning so I missed my train, a woman was throwing up on the platform, it started raining and didn't stop all day . . .

I spent the entire day singing, because lucifermourning called me to let me know that urizen proposed. She of course said yes.

Ah, dearest, you have no idea how happy I am for you. I wish you every conceivable joy, every good thing that this world has to offer. I would wish the same to your boy, but since he's marrying you there's really no need. It's strange, but somehow after 12 years of friendship I feel as if your happiness is mine as well. I've been going around bragging of it to all my colleagues and friends, who have greeted the news with a somewhat puzzled "um, good for her?"

Waited a day before posting to give you time to tell everyone yourself. :-D

In honor of this momentous occasion! Some pure, unadulterated Emrys/Nghia sap from the hitherto unacknowledged depths of my notebook. I will subsequently deny all knowledge of this snippet's existence. That other writings of a similarly repugnant and/or embarrassing nature might exist is obviously a vicious lie being spread by my enemies to discredit me.

( To drive the cold winter away. . . )

In my excitement over going home this year, I managed to forget the particularly volatile waters that potentially await me there.

Oh, there's the usual family things to deal with, negotiating a mix of not-always-harmonious personalities, that sort of thing. But now that I'm only in the States for two weeks out of any given year, my time is strictly limited. I only have those two weeks to ration out between family, friends, errands, and sleep. And, inevitably, someone ends up feeling jilted.

Well, not necessarily. The problem is really dealing with my father, who is deeply jealous of time I spend outside of the family during my visits. Of course I want to spend a lot of time with my family, but I also have a lot of friends that I want to see and catch up with. I want to get out of the house, I want to do fun things and eat at restaurants and generally enjoy myself. But if I spend time outside the family my father becomes steadily more sulky and upset with me.

And I have a lot of friends I need to spend time with. Certainly it's not unreasonable for them to ask for a chance to see me, for a day or two of my time when that's all they can have for an entire year. For my part I want to see them, I want to spend that time. But I'm constantly walking a tightrope between doing all the things I want to do and keeping my father happy.

The real irony of all this is that he doesn't really notice how much time I spend at home, or the times when he calls for me and I'm around to answer. What he notices is when I'm not there, when he calls and I'm off on some trip or other. I spent days sitting around the house doing not much of anything last year, I wasted hours on end waiting for him to finish with whatever he was doing so we could watch a movie together as we'd planned. But when I finally got tired of waiting and decided to accept a friend's invitation for a late-evening coffee, he became angry because I'd gone. Or he would come up with something he wanted to do with me the day before or the day of, and then would be hurt when I already had plans.

I know that the reason is because my father loves me and misses me desperately during the year when I'm away. I love him, and I miss him. But I wish he could be happy for the time that we do get to spend together and not make me feel guilty for the time when I go off to do something else. With him, the family is paramont, and friends are a poor second. He doesn't seem to realize that even though the family is very important, there are other things in my life that are not family-related that are also important to me. Or maybe he realizes it, but doesn't accept it.

This started to become a problem in high school, it became worse in college, and now . . . my friends don't see anything unreasonable in asking for a day or two of my time, and they're right, it's not unreasonable. I know they feel hurt and confused when I turn them down, or say that I can only stay for a few hours, or that I have to leave first thing in the morning after the sleepover. It's impossible to explain to them that I have to sit around the house doing nothing on the off chance that my family needs me for something. I can't even invite people over to sit with me, because it's rude to turn people out of the house when something else comes up, and because to my family that's almost the equivalent of me not being there.

I know for a fact that other families are not so demanding as mine, and that my friends don't have this problem, even the ones who live far away from their families. And I'm glad that my family loves me so much that they want me to spend as much time as possible with them. But I really wish that everyone, especially my father, would relax about it. I don't want to have to be constantly worrying about whether I'm keeping everyone happy, I don't want to have to keep my calendar clear on the off chance that someone will decide they want to go ice skating or whatever. I want to enjoy my vacation.

Unfortunately the reality is that I can't and have never been able to because I have to always be thinking about how I can satisfy everyone and keep things peaceful.

To my friends: please don't stop asking me to do things with you, or calling me, or anything. Just please understand and don't be disappointed if I have to turn you down or limit the amount of time I spend with you. And please forgive me if invitations, and especially come-over-to-my-house invitations, are not particularly forthcoming on my part. I value you highly and more, but dealing with my family can be a nightmare and a half when things get difficult.

I just finished the Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. LeGuin. The contented, full feeling that one gets after finishing an excellent book runs through me now, along with the certain knowledge that I'll never write anything half as good. Even if I spend my whole life trying, and I will.

This is in preparation for the new Studio Ghibli movie coming out . . . well, I don't know when at the moment, but since the ad campaign has begun it should be fairly soon. I'm unreasonably excited about it.

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When I die, I will be beyond wishing, but in the meantime, this is what I wish for when I am dead:

I prefer to be cremated. The reasons for this are both practical and not. In terms of practicality, cremation saves the cost of a coffin and a grave plot, both of which seem overly and unneccessarily expensive to me. No point in spending that much money on something that's just going to rot away in the ground, after all. From another standpoint, there's a certain amount of appeal to giving one's earthly remains over to the bright purity of fire. I don't understand what fire is-- a chemical reaction, I am told, and yet it seems to have a presence that science cannot account for. A being that isn't explained by the triangle of ingredients necessary to create it.

As for what is done with the ashes, if scattering proves easiest, then that's fine. But I think I would like it if they were buried in some kind of biodegradable container, and a tree planted over them-- an oak, I think, as my house growing up was surrounded by huge, beautiful oaks. I don't require any other memorial, and certainly no huge and showy gravestone-- if there must be something, a simple stone or plaque with my name on it is more than sufficient.

Funerals are important to the living, and so I would like to have one, but I'm not concerned with the specifics. Again, I don't want there to be a great deal of expense involved. A Christian one is fine if my family would prefer, as long as it's open to everyone (I don't see why it wouldn't be, but just in case). As long as it provides the opportunity for my various family and friends to get together, share their memories, and say a symbolic good-bye.

Afterwards, however, everyone is required to go out and eat an awesome meal, party, and have a good time! No sitting around boo-hooing, I won't stand for it. Well, I'll be dead, but if I were alive (and dead at the same time, because otherwise there'd be no reason for boo-hooing) I wouldn't stand for it!

People are also required to be sensible about their partying and drink lots of water with their alcohol, because anyone who wakes up the next morning with a hangover will wake up to hear my ghostly and merciless laughter, too.

Anyone who reads this journal knows by now that I don't really do the "random life updates" that are so common to livejournal. Political stuff and news articles? Yes. Travel writing? Yes. Introspection? Yes. Writings? Yes. Heavily disguised and confusing angst-rambles? Yes. Poetry postings? Yes. Photos? Yes. "This is what I did today and how my life is going"? Very, very rarely.

Well, why not?

I'm . . . not entirely certain. But it's not something that's unique to my livejournal, as you may well know if you talk to me in any medium outside it. I don't really talk about my everyday life much with other people-- not on the phone, not face-to-face, not in emails or letters or IM or whatever. Possibly because, as I live it every day, it doesn't seem particularly interesting to me, and hence I consider it even less interesting to other people.

I have often been accused of hypocrisy because, while I am disinclined to share the details of my existence, I am deeply interested in the details of my friends' and family's lives and insist on hearing about them. What no one seems to understand is that this is not hypocrisy, but two entirely different situations that do not bear comparison. Apples and oranges. The same goes for when I give advice to others that I do not follow myself. Firstly, your situation and mine are entirely different. Secondly, I fail to see how my failure to do what I should invalidates the fact that it should be done, by myself and by others.

. . . I suffer deeply from wordiness. All I wanted to say in the above is that I don't often do random life updates, but today I am!

School (work) has once again eaten my life. Obscurely this makes me happy-- I like nothing better than feeling that I'm needed and useful, and staying late and coming early and working constantly throughout the day fill me with contentment. I had a terrible time adjusting to spring vacation-- an entire month when I wasn't necessary at all! It was horribly depressing for the first week or so before I adjusted and kicked myself into pursuing my own projects, at which point I felt much better. I like to be busy, which is why I usually am. When I have nothing I'm supposed to be doing, I make things for myself to do.

Yes, I'm a workaholic. When a friend asked me to meet him during my lunch break, it took me a little while to remember that yes, I actually have one. Or I'm supposed to have one, anyway. Usually I just eat in about five minutes and go back to whatever I was doing.

So now I'm busy and happy to be so. Unfortunately, expending so much energy at school means that I have none left over for life details-- mental energy as much as physical. So for the past two weeks I've been going back to my apartment and either reading or playing video games until I fall asleep, usually without doing any cleaning or cooking or practicing or studying or emailing or writing or anything. It's not that I don't have time to do these things, it's just that they all seem to take too much effort and I'd rather sit around, thinking and doing not much at all.

Sometimes it seems like I'm a machine with only two settings: "go" and "dead."

Possible third setting: obsess over Yue. Because as I've said to majochan, a real fangirl never dies, she just gets distracted by other shiny things for a while.

Other possible third setting: kick ass in Kingdom Hearts 2. I am totally ruling that game. Possibly because I take vicious joy in pulverising enemies with my Big Stick o' Poking and never run away from battles. And I have my Big Book o' Cheating to make sure I don't miss any items, too! But I missed one back in Twilight Town and I can't go back for it and you have no idea how much pain that hole in my items list causes me. Oh, and I think Sora's voice is teh awesome.

. . . this would be another reason why I don't do random life updates. I'd rather obsess over other things than my life. Sometimes when I talk to other people I'm astounded by just how much time and energy they devote to themselves. I don't mean that I think they're selfish or self-centered, just that . . . they ponder conversations they've had in minute detail, plan future ones, deeply analyze their interactions with others, ruminate over possibilities and choices, and expend a great deal of energy just in being themselves. It's not something that I really understand. Why obsess over my own problems? Will thinking about them make them go away or really change anything when I can't actively do something about them? Not really. So I just shrug, figure that things will work out eventually, and go on with whatever I'm doing.

Likewise I see no need to try to be myself-- whatever it is that I'm doing, or thinking, or whatever, that's myself. How could I do something that isn't me? How could I be someone that isn't me? It doesn't make sense at all. I can pretend to feel something I don't feel, but that's still me doing the pretending. I can say something I don't really mean, but that's still me doing the talking. As much as I enjoy and indulge in philosophical conversations about what makes us who we are, I don't feel particularly confused or upset about it myself.

. . . even when I try to do random life entries, I end up not doing them. Um. Today I had a first year class with Kodama-sensei, it went okay. Last night I played Kingdom Hearts 2 and had gyoza and toast and cheese and . . . um, something else I don't remember for dinner. Yesterday I had two classes with Nomura-sensei, which were a bit awkward because I don't have a pattern worked out with her yet. This weekend I'm going to see RENT. Next weekend I'm going whitewater rafting in Gifu, and that week is the recontracting conference in Kobe, and I really need to study more and practice more, and . . .

. . . and I'm very, very bored with this. Since I'm bored with this, you must be too. So. BACK TO WORK!!!