Dayset

Another Sunday in Paris. Nothing happened, so let's talk about another Monday in Paris.

The day is long. It's 9:34 PM and outside the window there's still a relatively pretty cloud formation with a nice gradient from gray, to sky blue, to gray, to the trees. Students, I think, run around in the stadium across the six-lane street, playing soccer on a hard surface. The feeling from having eaten a fourth baguette sandwich in four days, this time for dinner, is pleasant. Mango yogurt isn't as great as it sounds, but it probably helped get that feeling. With feelings you never know how they get there anyway.

Earlier today some students might have tried to start a bonfire on the campus of Nanterre in the spirit of the strike. Another train accident on line 9 delayed my host mother getting home, so my housemates and I went over to Carrefour, a supermarket that seems to be buried by the grassy park and baseball field above it, to find food to make our dinners. I got a baguette and some meat because I already had cheese and lettuce in the fridge, and mustard was available at home: €1.52 ($2.03). My host mother's sick and had a very long day at work that ended at about 8:15 PM. Geez. She's a soldier.

"No more lonely soldier." The phrase in my head has transformed itself from what it initially was when I was trying to sleep last night, "No more the silent soldier." I decided it would be better as "No longer the silent soldier" to make the meaning more clearly applied to me, but in any case I forgot to change my Facebook "self-introduction" thing where I'm counting down the days left in Paris with a small motivational phrase each day. Which means I've forgotten about one day. Actually, no, I'll use it tomorrow; I had something else prepared for today.

Sometimes people wonder what my motivations are and accuse me of things that I've never thought of doing. This is rare, though, and most frequently it's more actual that I imagine people accusing me of these things. So as to be able to rebut them if necessary. Maybe it's true, though, that those are my motivations. But if that's true then it's my heart, not my brain. And the heart is what I've learned I need to come to understand here.

The gradient of clouds has changed from diagonal to horizontal; at least that's how I see it. One horizontal line of gray, another of light sky blue, then trees. I haven't been this relaxed in awhile.

Another one of my uncles died today. This time he isn't one of my mother's brothers or sisters but he's a brother-in-law. So my Tita Ava lost her husband. He was 50 and just suddenly died of a heart attack. I don't want to be my cousins Yayan or Hannah right now (Yayan's slightly older than I am; Hannah is in high school or younger). That's awful. I don't want to know what that's like.

I have an offer to run tomorrow and get to the library. A dentist appointment on Thursday. Hopefully it'll stop the bacteria that are fucking up my teeth or giving me pain in my jaw or whatever they're doing now from running amok in my body. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have, but they're going up against one of the strongest versions of me I've ever known so they're in pretty big trouble.

Today I had a rare version of a nap, one that didn't end with a headache. And one that might even let me go back to sleep at a normal time again; that's pretty rare.

In Paris the time zooms by slowly.

2 puzzles solved, 1 formulated // Run away, run away!

I realized something now.

The back story of this doesn't need to be told really. All that needs to be said is that something that had a chance of ending without bitterness ended very bitterly. And I've been angry about it for about two days, not very sad but more angry. Not so much angry at myself but angry at the other person.

He's what I've come to understand.

One, there's a difference between sharing intimate details and sharing intimacy. I once fucked something up over someone I shared intimate details with and that hurt me to the core. This has also hurt me to the core, but differently. I just feel angry now. But I shared intimacy with that person, not only intimate details. A relationship with a person with whom you start out on a footing of sharing intimacy is never just going to be a simple friendship. You know the feelings and desire that you have for the person with whom you've already been intimate could be satisfied, and that adds a whole other emotional degree to the story. Hence, this is not an end to a regular friendship but rather to something different. To just call it a friendship is an insult to what it really is and to the word friendship. Neither one is superior (although there are some who don't agree with me on this), it's just that they're both very, very different. The thing that really hurts me about this is that I shared intimate details with that person that I haven't shared with anyone else. But there's always friends.

I guess you could argue that it could've been a friendship, but there just wasn't enough time for me. I would argue similarly that there wasn't enough time for him; he probably wouldn't agree with that or want to hear or see it. So it's over. I saw him, though, like what, 7 times? 8? Let me count... 7 times. Gee, a lucky number!

Two... all my life my friends have been almost exclusively straight guys. This being the era of analysis that bases itself on our differences rather than what we have in common (this is one thing that the French aspire to get right but don't), I noticed this and wondered what difference this makes. None. The difference exists when there is mutual attraction. I thought up until now it was potential mutual attraction. So when you're gay there's a difference, or when you get along without attraction to each other there's a difference. Wow, it didn't occur to me that this applies to my relationships with gay guys but it does. The idea of dealing with potential attraction, two-way or one-way in either direction, has always scared me and I'm not sure why. That's why I'm the most comfortable with straight guys (I don't know any gay women). But potential attraction really doesn't matter; either it's there or it's not, and there's no hiding it once you meet people. You just get along if it's not two ways. Why didn't I realize this before?? My point was gonna be that when guys talk about girls not understanding and vice-versa, it really doesn't have anything to do with one's gender but one's attraction. Maybe I'm wrong. Whatever, I'm just musing. But now I at least know that for me, with my friends, men or women gay or straight, unless there's mutual attraction, there's no difference caused in friendship. And that's a great thing.

And mutual attraction can do horrible, horrible things.

But getting back to this - I'm going to admit that the main reasons I decided to go to Japan instead of Italy for spring break were based on very shallow fears that have a lot to do with the above. For some reason, my mind feels like it's clearing up. I feel like it's because my real back-up, my real bailout, my real lifesaver, it's not where I am: it's my friends wherever I am. And that's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Thank you guys so much for your help. And my appreciation for you, not my frustration at what's happened, brings me to tears now. (and better tears, because they go away faster... and allow me to save face, save face most importantly from my own critical eye)

Heavy doubt clouds

It's time to write a freewrite.

I'm broken. I'm not sure where to go from here. I realized that whenever I need help, I run away from the people who could help me the most and I don't know why. It's absurd. I don't know why this is true but yeah. Maybe I'm looking for one person who can help me with everything, and I still can't find that one person. This doesn't mean a person for romance - perhaps a said person doesn't exist. But the aggravating thing is that I am RUNNING AWAY and this really sucks. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm being completely irresponsible because I don't understand what I'm supposed to be responsible for anymore. I'm throwing words out, fishing for possibilities and the words are too good; they get too much and they snap my line and I have to go fishing again. The ideas are too good. Where am I?

I'm worried, that's where I am. Worried about my sister. About my parents, but mostly about my sister. About my relationship with her. About how I don't want to leave her alone in a critical time just like I felt I was alone during high school. I remember how much being alone hurt me back then, and I really do not want her to go through the same awful, horrible feeling. I wish I could tell her right at this moment that she never has to be alone, that she could just tell me everything. And I would, but that would wake up my host parents, probably. Fuck this. They aren't my real parents. I need to get back home.

For Easter. But I have a ticket booked to Japan; we're waiting on the verification of the payment. Let me check and see how I would cancel the deal and get 90% of the ticket back (e.g. pay a penalty of $100!!!!)... I'd have to do that before the ticket gets back here. WHY do people allow me to mess things up like this? I don't understand this. I guess they don't know any better. Either. They don't know any better either.

How could my sister have her first SAT on the Wednesday of her one-week vacation? Who the hell had that idea? Oh, my God, I'm worried.

I haven't spent much time with her over all these years and I really know that time is running out for me to make things better, to fix things. There's nothing left to fix in Japan; everything is fine there. There's plenty that can be broken, though. Am I testing myself by having me walk through a room full of antiques to see whether I break any? YES, I am! What the hell am I doing?

None of this occurred to me (with my sister back home) until I called and spoke to her on the phone. And as I was speaking to her, I half-attentively booked my plane ticket to Japan. It actually might have been the very instant before I started speaking to her.

Why am I fated like this? No, it's not that. I'm just weak against fate. I think that after something's over there's no hope, or that I am about to see in full technicolor before me the awful horror picture of what I have just messed up playing itself out. THIS is what I fear the most: this horrible horror picture of my own making. When I was a kid I couldn't even look at embarrassing moments on the movie screen; I would literally turn my head around and bury it in the seat. Even nowadays I laugh it away as much as possible and sometimes can't look - but everybody does this. But me especially. There are these pseudo-PSAs (public service announcements) on the train that... well they aren't even pseudo-PSAs, I don't know what they're there for, but they say, anyway

...I just lost the rest of this freewrite because AIM restarted. Dammit. It was getting to be really really good shit. About me being swept away like a pillar of salt and falling like a tree in the woods - nobody's there to see it. And how I really hope that God takes care of my sister and the rest of my family at home, because I feel utterly powerless to play my role.

Dammit. I threw too many words out and I lost the meaning. But the feeling is still good.

I need to stop. Somewhere. Along. The line.

I added "of my own making" just now to the "horrible horror picture of my own making" part. One thing you should realize though is that nothing is ever just made by one person. There is always outside contribution, conspiracy with the outside.

Which means that I'm not completely responsible for everything I mess up and shouldn't feel like the only one who deserves to be stoned. And most importantly - I am not alone in this world.

The parts before "The line" were all written in my AIM profile.

z

I've narrowed it down to two plans - Italy for 2 weeks, or Japan for 2 weeks. Talking to my cousin on the phone made me miss Japan terribly and long for it such that I wanted to shift from Italy, which I had been leaning to. Honestly, I know nothing about Italy, and furthermore have felt out of control this whole time that I've been here. In Japan I'd know what I'd be doing and be in control and see people I love that I might never, no, won't ever see all together again. That's a little painful. Not as painful as some of the other things here have been, though, like the recent hay fever that prevents me from sleeping until I get deadly tired at 4 AM, and then I wonder how I manage to survive through the night, breathing in the pollen on my bedsheets or fighting with the pollen that's accumulated in my body, I dunno.

I guess too much shit that I can't fully handle myself has come up here, and that's what it is that's really bothering me. I feel like I haven't had a good grip on things while I've been here, like, there's nothing here to grip onto. Here's another Friday of not doing anything. Actually, no; I had frisbee and I did that for 2 weeks (not this week because, uh, spring break plans needed to be resolved further). Well, here's another day of not doing anything that I would find really awesomely fulfilling. How much am I going to have to exert myself to get what I want out of this trip? Is the problem not enough effort, too much effort, high expectations, what? There's nothing that I really feel like photographing here. That's another thing that's bothered me more than a bit: I just don't think Paris is as beautiful as even the non tourist destination city I was in back in Japan. There's something I'm not understanding here and I, well, just feel a hole in my chest that doesn't belong there.

I'm looking at pictures of Italy now and 心から(from my heart) there's this feeling that I actually really don't want to go there.

Yep, I think -- I'm not certain -- it's Japan. And if so, it's going to have been an interesting thing to look back on.

Wow. Where is this place that have I been for 3 months? It feels like Paris, France, but without the "France" part. It's never really felt like France.

Wow

I'm feeling really enlightened tonight. And when I feel enlightened it's really hard to hold onto the thoughts. So I'm going to write them as I think along, here.

I'm watching the only politician in the US who I can agree with ninety-nine percent of the time, that being Ron Paul. Specifically, I'm watching this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=67670E5727E6BFA4 You can tell he's going to be on his feet tonight because he starts off the video sounding pretty jovial and awake. Other times he isn't quite as good when he speaks, and he's no Obama (not that Obama ever really says anything when he speaks... it reminds me of paintings like Les romains de la décadence by Thomas Couture that everybody loves at the time but that everybody forgets because they say nothing important and contribute absolutely nothing to the progress or the development of the art), but this is pretty good as it is. It's the kind of speaker he was the night of one of the Fox News Republican debates, the one that really got me hooked onto him.

In the third video he's talking about how the bailout is throwing money at big companies instead of giving it directly to the people, while at the same time claiming to have an immediate effect on you and me. He concludes that they could have done exactly what they were talking about by "just getting rid of the income tax." Every liberal, and rightfully so, would call for a justification here. And I realized something: This is the exact same thing, except better than the bailout. In either case, the benefit is directly proportional to how much you earn. The dropping of the income tax (though sadly politically much less feasible) of course doesn't technically mean you earn more money; it means you lose less. But it has no effect on our national debt - pay attention, they're calling for a global monetary standard at G20, specifically China! Why is this a surprise? The whole global system couldn't rest on us forever. This is China calling bullshit with our citizens being permitted to stay rich on the backs of their citizens. What happens if we refuse to accept what they say? More importantly, what happens if we agree and then later want to back out? War? Global authoritarianism?

Or (this word means but in french), I guess it's really hard to explain these floating thoughts too. And I don't mean to say I know enough to be fully convinced of my own, um, convictions, but this is just what I'm thinking.

By the way, if you watch anything in the playlist, don't actually watch the video; the camera work is horrible, so just listen.

Here's how I see what he's talking about in regards to the Federal Reserve. If you try to prove something and it goes wrong, and your proof has n steps, you can blame it on the n-2th step (assuming that step exists) and claim that this step is the flaw. Well, that step may be flawed only because step 2 (assuming 2 is less than n-2) is flawed. Otherwise it would be perfectly acceptable. But if you take n-2 to be flawed in itself and then you try to do other math problems on the test assuming such, you might actually fail the test. This is similar to the problem with the US economy. Yes, it is wrong that certain regulations were eliminated from the economy. But this does not mean in general that regulation of businesses is a good idea and is necessary. If you go along with that, then you risk really killing your economy and your country in the future, near or far. If on the other hand you look back at the problems caused by the Federal Reserve's unchecked power, and its members' potential to be tied with the interests of big companies... ah.

This is what I'm pondering. Life doesn't give you an infinite amount of time to create an argument, and neither do teachers, so the argument I'm going to try to develop in my head is the one I believe in. You argue the other, I'll feel hurt, you'll feel hurt, so it goes. Someone's got to hurt eventually.

As for the income tax, well, apparently there's something constitutionally wrong with the amendment, and if that's true then it should be abolished. In any case, think about where the government money is going to: the rich, just not necessarily the same rich people. Yes, it allows poor people to keep their jobs. And if they lose their jobs, they're at the whim of charity again. Either way, though, it's getting money from the rich. I guess if you come to believe what I believe then you have to put faith in the idea that people will give sufficiently to charity in such a crisis.

I guess that's where my blind faith is going to have to go to complete the argument. It's tough believing and having hope for the future. Better than the alternative. Hmm... I have a slight headache.

The Strength

I have been under a spell of feeling not well this entire week, and I figured out today that I probably have hay fever thanks to Paris's seemingly nonexistent greenery and flowery. I'm pretty sure that I got sick simultaneously, though, so hopefully that part is gone. Well, I'm here and feeling decent at least, but very tired-like.

Damn, Paris is getting boring! It's probably because I didn't really hang out with anybody this weekend. Also, I haven't made spring break plans yet - should I visit Italy and London, or Japan? Shh... I think I might just travel alone to Amsterdam (bad idea???) to see Eurovision performers. Yes, specifically for that purpose. What, you act like I know much about Europe?

I guess I should browse the infinite internet or the really thick Lonely Planet guide for Europe in my room. But that's too much work.

I'm going to be home in exactly 2 months. It's 30/3, then it'll be 30/5, then 5/30, the (North) American way. Also kind of the Japanese way. Probably the Central African Republican way too? They have their embassy nearby my house.

This spring is going to be tough. It'll test my tolerance of myself, of other people, of new things, of old repeating things. I'm going to try going running tomorrow specifically because I want to know whether it'll help or hurt against the allergies. I was able to go through frisbee practice indoors on Friday, still sick, without much trouble. I didn't go Sunday because I wanted to get enough sleep to get over the sickness. Well, sleep doesn't kill allergies. A lack of sleep cheers them on, though.

I gained a little weight this weekend and I'm still really craving food. This is good for muscle building, but, um, weights are integral to that. Don't have those. Well, there's always the wooden exercise structures in the (now pollen-filled) Bois de Boulogne. And my Push-Up Pro grips. Fellas and femmes: don't buy these. They slide like nothing else; if you don't have a good surface, they will fail. Luckily, the carpet in the living room isn't too bad for them, but still... I need this shit for my wrists, man. I guess I'll have to buy Perfect Pushup when I get back.

In 2 months.

I stop a lot when I blog now. This isn't freewriting; it's more like stopwriting. At least the stops aren't that long. Keep in mind that when you are actually writing, with a pen, you can think as you're writing. I think it's a better process, actually. Lets your brain think things through before you get them down. Whereas typing, unfortunately...

I read a book about photography called La chambre claire by Roland Barthes. It was really good at first but I was left disappointed because all the author seemed capable of discussing was seeing the essence of his dead mother in a picture of her when she was 5 years old. It seriously went nowhere from there and was really weakly argued. He saw death in photography when you could easily just take a quick counterargument route and say, well, why can't you see life instead?

It's just that death is seen as a more serious topic and is more accepted as such in academia, I guess, despite the fact that the guy was trying to be as un-academic as possible. I guess when you're French and heavily embedded and submerged in all this academic shit there's not much you can do. This city is stuck in its history and seems to have too much of it to learn much from it. Those who have information overload are doomed to repeat it.

That's why I listen to Plies. It's my drank. "Just stand in front of me and pose. You touch mine, I touch yo's." Unfortunately, I'm losing my taste for the bad flavor. That's the difference between bad music and beer - somehow people can't tire of the latter's awful, look at me I'm a man I can have a bigger belly than you taste.

And alcohol sucks. All of it. At least when you have nobody to get frisky with in the meantime. But even then, it's really just unnecessary.

Peace.

I hate Sundays.

Sundays suck. Sunday is the day where nobody talks to me and I talk to no one else, and I'm isolated and all alone, stuck trying to do work or trying to get myself to do work that usually involves reading long sentences like this one except only in French, all day, and all night, up until 4-6 AM, which isn't any good for the 9:30 AM class I always have on Mondays or my sanity or my health; I usually end up going to class wanting to throw up or something.

Nobody is ever on Facebook. Maybe there are some messages left over from the night before, but after that there's nothing. I can't call home until it's rather late because nobody gets up in the morning on Sundays and there's a 5 hour time difference. Before that time I get nothing done.

In Paris, in 枚方, in Medford... there's no difference. It's all the same sad Sunday story.

There's a band called Taking Back Sunday; I think it's the best band name of this generation in music. I don't recall enjoying their songs very much, though.

I'd say this is a very selfish freewrite but I think it speaks for everyone. Sundays suck. Observe the Sabbath day or it will make it observe you.

I was gonna go to the Louvre today but I didn't go to bed early enough to do so and my feet and legs are still sore from not being stretched after frisbee practice, which rocked, Friday night. And that was a legit practice!

I guess I'm not gonna go back to Japan for spring break. But I haven't booked yet for the everyone's-gotta-do-it-travel-Europe vacation. Aaggh, where does the time go? I'm going to need this one so badly... another 3 weeks and I'm gone for 2 weeks and I'm back for 5 weeks and I'm gone. Goodbye, France. Never coming back.

At least I don't think so... Now, Japan, on the other hand... you might see me, look out. Wish they liked foreigners a little more so I could have a refuge in case we have another draft. Don't laugh; bad economies lead to bad wars. So stupid, why did I sign up for the selective service shit?

At least there's paisible Canada.

I hate Sundays.

Time to let go of something?

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T
A-L-E-X-B-E-R-R-I-A-N
Two different words.

It is just about the time I came to Paris for; I expected it much earlier, which is why I've been so thrown off and nervous here, yet it didn't come. Finally I have the chance to make friends with French people. Well, hopefully! I called the treasurer of the team again 20 minutes ago, read, 2:08 PM, to remind him about me going, and I think I woke him up. Fuck! He seems to be a nice person, though, and he told me to call back in half an hour. 5 minutes left? Wow, I'm so nervous. Well, I hope that's not another bad start!

I'm running out of starting time to make. I've been extending the countdown from the start of the race for awhile, and I haven't allowed the gun to fire. When it does fire I fear it might shoot faster than 330 m/s ± .6ºC at STP. That wouldn't be good.

Seriously, I've done nothing here. I've worked to understand things without doing school work. That doesn't work. Needs more (line) integrity. Over dS.

I'm about to go to a French library and do work. My friends are mostly not around this weekend, so I am again alone. Alone in a time of testing.

This is difficult. -2 minutes left. And not the phone call. Just being here is.

I'll be back for the summer...

Where I'm @ → now

I guess I'll give you an update on what's happened to me since Saturday.

Since then I've been pretty damn jovial. I've run in the forest park known as the Bois-de-Boulogne 4 days out of 5, and since they've got all these neat wooden exercise structures all over the place, I've been able to work my upper body too. Speaking of, I know I have no upper body whatsoever. Lifting weights would be a good start; that, however, would require signing up for a gym, and since I have no experience thereof I don't think that would be a good idea.

I climbed (obviously part of the way up) the tower of the Bastille the other day and that was pretty cool, but my upper body strength was all gone by then and it didn't help that I was carrying my bookbag, so I needed this French guy's help to get me up to the first platform. And man that was hard. I had no pull left in the muscles up near my shoulders because I had used it all earlier that day and this week. The guy who pulled me up was young, probably my age, as were all the other kids up there, boys, girls, all high school or college age. Really cool. This climb was possible due to the strike, another one of those general Paris strikes that I don't comprehend at all. Why can't they just write letters to their representatives en masse? Well, I guess they could also lobby like normal people, but I hate lobbyists and don't think they're essential to the government at all, especially not ours, not at the federal level where all that shit's supposed to be irrelevant via Amendments 9 and 10. Whatever.

I am way behind in my work. I am way behind in finding what to do for the summer, too. Great.

You know what's interesting with the title: if you look at it from the mathematician's point of view, you'd see a function that requires everything to start from a set of where I'm at, and then create something in the field of "now." I wonder if I can draw any symbolic meaning from that. I don't really feel like it, but okay. I don't think the function is bijective--- specifically it's not surjective (onto).

Munch on that.

New

Well, I told him I'm not hanging out with him anymore.

That should work.

No more emotional outbreaks in Paris, I hope. I'm free and 8 more weeks, not 8 more weeks and I'm free.

Peace.

Sigh. Every day I

Sigh. Every day I walk through the streets of this city and I find no evidence that anyone has ever loved anyone else. I see people cold, faces bold and defiant, of what? I see art and I don't see what other people see in it. I see museums, treasure troves of the richness of days past, an old, free currency that they give to me and that I can't spend. Nobody's telling me any stories that have any point to me. No love behind them; histories of conquering, histories of Napoleon, always Napoleon, histories of socialism and radicalism. People homeless, begging because the government won't let them get any other job. I won't go on about how the French government spends half its country's GDP. That's irrelevant right now.

I see groups of French people. They kiss each other, left cheek, right cheek when they see each other. No hugging-- that's considered too intimate. What? All I want is to be hugged. Fuck kisses. They talk amongst each other. When I go to Dauphine I talk to myself in my head beside them. This is torture. Thinking about this is torture. I want to throw up.

Two months of reluctance, and nothing of it. I am tired of looking sad so I don't want to look like an idiot any further. Sad idiots are always the ugliest. And yet that's what I have to be... ugly. Well, it's gotten ugly. I guess I'll have to remain that until I can blossom again.

Spring is coming; no evidence so far. Paris is a bunch of buildings all the same height; they won't let them grow any taller but they're tall as it is, what's the point? All the buildings look the same. Then some older building that I'm supposed to call a classic. No nature.

When French people see nature they want to conquer it. French gardens are all about man's power over nature. Obviously it's not over man's creative power over nature because the gardens are the most unnatural, ugly, boring pieces of shit I've ever seen. I'm sorry. I'm not happy. But when you remove nature from the whole mess, what is left? A bunch of concrete. It might as well be a modern city because there's no evidence, no tick, of humanity in it.

Old classics, old museums have nothing for me. My heart is not there. Sucking it into the dark recesses of the past-- imagine how many people had to suffer while the government pumped money into these things -- cannot make me feel any better. Everything here is tired. I need to get out.

And so I will. Far, far away. Far, from this old room with no sunlight permitted to enter whatsoever, far from this chamber that, if you think about it, I am enslaving me and my sadness in, hiding me and my horrible state from the public, from my family, from my homestay family and fellow students who live here with me. I'm too embarrassed to tell them the full story about how I've fucked up in Paris. Too embarrassed.

And I'm not happy here. Nature buried under immense stacks of building material and fake, inadequate love. And my nature is stuck under Paris's foundation too. Fuck this place.

I guess now I have to beg for salvation. No.
I'm going for a run. If not outside, in my mind.
But...

I almost got what I so badly wanted when I was happy. This was a week after I got here. Now I still want it and I'm not happy. Just one little thing can get me so depressed. I don't want to have a romance to rescue me from unhappiness. Because I know I'll never get such a thing. I just know it. I can't believe otherwise.

And it hurts. It hurts so bad.

アイディア

There's nothing more fucking annoying than the sound of the train passing by underground when you're trying to get to sleep or when you're trying to relax. Right now I'm trying to do the latter after failing the former.

Slept for two hours tonight, 12-2. Felt like I was awake the whole time. Could not get back to sleep afterward. Actually feel like sleeping now but have no faith that my body would cooperate with the obvious best idea.

I hate this, this state that I'm in. Yes, I'm pretty sure it has to do with the country that I'm in, too. Why did I come here? Did I really think I would fit in? I fit in like a sore thumb. There's no problem for me with sticking out like a thumb but if you're gonna be sore it's not worth the trouble, thanks. No, seriously; I like sticking out, but this is too much, just too much.

I played piano today, or keyboard rather. A good keyboard but still a Yamaha thing. My host father has it in my host mom's room, and I just never got around to asking him to play on it, finally forced myself to do so today. Sang and played a little. Saw a piano performance the day before, wasn't completely pleased but it at least got better and gave me something to constructively think about. The Yamaha he played on and/or the acoustics was/were totally inadequate. I felt like I could've played better. Probably could've two years ago when my technique was still there. I still could've done the easier Chopin pieces better; he had no touch for lyricism, at least not at the beginning of the performance.

Ugh, too tired to blog no more. I can at least go back to sleep, not back to bed (I'm in that)... this new BEP song is helping me relax. They're so good, the Black Eyed Peas.

La noche es after mí / Magnets

Long story short, I had about 3 hours of exercise in Japan per day if you add up all the biking and the frisbee. You might say biking and frisbee ain't shit, but frisbee for 1.5 hours is pretty considerable and biking involved a 1-gear bike and hills all over the place, and, naturally, being who I am, biking hard and fast, always. That's what I wish shopping in the US were like-- go out, buy only what you can fit in your bike basket and bookbag, go back home, and have spent very little money but very many calories. I apparently came home from frisbee I mean Japan looking much healthier than before, at least according to my aunt. I'm afraid I'm going to come back home from France looking rather gaunt like I always do after Tufts semesters. That's no good. Fuck.

Well, absent the (perfect amount of) exercise I have been staying up to horribly late hours and not gotten much out of Paris. I tried to go to bed at midnight four hours ago but that didn't work. Zzz. I'm tired now but who knows whether I'll be able to fall asleep?

You know, there's something about magnets. Their attraction depends on their distance, no matter what you put between them, as long as that thing doesn't exert too much magnetic force itself. You can put a terribly dense brick between two powerful magnets and they'll stick to the brick.

I might need some distance.

Inadequate (en)light(en)ing

On the right side of my bottom taskbar, which, by the way, is a plain, Windows-98-looking taskbar, with its gray coloring and the regular-looking start-menu button on the left, there is something that says EN. This is my keyboard language setting. If I hit CTRL SHIFT 4 this gives me JP. The two respectively stand for English and Japanese, as you might expect.

This letter is about too much "en."

I have finally figured out what I wanted here the most: the language experience. One of the most fun things about Japan was being able to have Japanese friends (for whom I am very grateful) and speak in Japanese all the time, everywhere. Japanese is a language where there are many ways to shorten statements and make them grammatically correct. On the other hand, when you're nervous because you have to talk to someone of higher social status than you, like a teacher or a boss, Japanese forces you to use a lot more filler, making longer sentences with less content, which in turn I think makes it actually easier to speak to such people. In any case, the language has ways of being polite built in; and if you fail to be grammatically polite, there's always the escape trap that you're a foreigner. This is what I got used to over four months over there in the land of the falling moon.

Here, though, par contre I have failed to get this language experience. There was an obvious outlet: however, being nervous, I have so far failed to pursue it. That outlet is frisbee. I allowed the excuse in my head that I was just getting started and the embarrassment of not being allowed to join this club would hit me too hard, since I wasn't used to Paris yet. Well, guess what? I'm still not comfortable here. No, not "not completely," just not comfortable period. Oops. I even bought cleats more than a week ago and still haven't done anything with them. Yes, there are clubs at the two public Parisian universities I go to, but I'm either not interested in any of them or I have no clue what they stand for (ASSIDU? JAPAD?). The answer is frisbee, and I'm finally hopefully going to gather my balls and go.

I have not exactly gotten into Parisian culture. 50% of the time people figure out my accent and start speaking to me in English, which in turn is a consequence of me not speaking French enough daily. This is obviously discouraging and a pain in the ass. Meanwhile, Paris is a city of tourists, period, and a small one at that. I'm trying to find some small, more charming niches where I can go every now and then and just enjoy myself. The Louvre isn't one of them, sorry. I'm not that big of a fan of looking at art. I don't get anything out of it because I'm not an artist. Most of what I get out of music is from being a musician. I listen to songs and hear how I would play them on the piano (which I generally do when I go home). I imagine how I would dance to them if I weren't in the middle of a train. Hell, I picture how I would throw DDR steps on them (THROW SOME D'S ON THAT). I think about how I would sing them, or I sing them. For art, I have no clue how the creative process works.

Most of the music I listen to is stuff from back home. This is no different from when I was in Japan, but a couple nights ago I had a solitary Japanese music listening party. That was fun. Paris dance radio is good, though, and I should listen to it. There's a radio right next to me, too (although the quality is shoddy...).

As for niches, well, there's the Filipino stores on Rue Mesnil, station Victor Hugo, where I went for the second time today. I can't name any more. I've been a lousy explorer and this room sucks and yet I feel like I've spent too much time in it. The only reason it sucks is that the lighting is shit. The main light is weak, and the lamps I have aren't that great. The worst part, though, is that the sun does not shine for me: when I wake up, there is barely any sunlight shining through my window, because my window opens out onto... well, a very, very small courtyard if you can call it that surrounded by buildings that go as high as they're allowed to by the Paris bureaucrat zombies. Which means NO SUNLIGHT, even at the peak of the day. Fucking awful.

Well, it's only awful because I haven't gotten over it and out into the world of sun that exists here, somewhere. I'd say Bois de Boulogne, but that's basically a forest...

You know what's funny? The temperature dropped here. Huh? It was a steady 10 degrees Celsius or higher all throughout February during the day, and when I went out today it was only 5. It's already temperate in Osaka, 11 degree high during a rainstorm. I thought it was going to snow there for a while. I forgot...

Well, I've got my first test coming up and it's going to be an interesting one. A test of supposedly three proofs for my Discrete Probabilities class at Dauphine. On Monday at 8 fucking 30 in the morning. That's all right, though. I can handle it.

Two days ago, though, as my host mother was questioning what was wrong, when I was supposed to go to the Louvre at 9 AM in the morning, I almost threw up when I was talking to her. Oops, don't go running and do tons of sit-ups and push-ups if you're just recovering from a cold and going to sleep one hour. The order in that sentence should be rearranged but you get what I'm saying.

And I'm dépensé. Spent and, to make a pun, out of thought.

No, I'm not thoughtless right now. There are many things on my mind. Just...

Losing it

Just a short update to denote that I am kind of off the deep end.

I slept about an hour and then got up to go eat breakfast and proceed to the Louvre. It is 10:25. I am not at the Louvre.

Guess I'm not the fighting kind... wouldn't mind it if you were by my side.

Short winter, long wait for spring

I think back to February, I mean December, when Titus and I wiped off my new used Japanese Playstation infested with tobacco with Swiffer wipes outside in the snow, in Vancouver, where it never snows, and where generally if I'm ever there in the winter it's February, not December. That was a good brief time.

I miss the days where I was in Japan fearing the oncoming onslaught of decision making that I would have to get done, never really making any decisions except at the last second, never finishing anything until after anyone else would do it, never really getting at what I wanted and finding out after it was already too late to go back what that desire was. I still don't know whether it would've been better to go back to Japan instead of going on to France; is that really a problem, though? Either one would've been good. Either would've brought hard times, and if these times in Paris are especially tough for me, well, I hope they'll reduce my quota for tough times in the future.

I never really faced snowfall in Japan. I think I saw snow, but I can't remember where. I know I heard it snowed in Kobe, but I never went to Kobe. No big loss. But then when I went to Vancouver, it snowed, and then nothing there in Boston. Then snow in Boston, and cold. Then Paris, and nothing. One day of snow, then nothing.

This isn't really winter, or maybe it is. But this isn't the sort of season that forces you to go inside to thaw your nose or threatens the existence of your future children, at least not for me in my experience. The biting pathetic fallacy isn't there. But the hard, lonely times are.

I went to Japanese class today and left it feeling lonely again. Then I realized--and it's important to note (cf Ashish) that you can't really ever get happy instantly after a realization or an epiphany when you're still lonely or sad--that if I left Japanese lonelier than I felt going into it, maybe it's not Japanese that I lack. Maybe it's not the culture or the food. Maybe it's not even my friends over there. Well, no, I think it includes that.

But maybe I can move on from Japan now. Maybe I can. And even if I do return for spring break... I won't feel a hole in my heart going back to France from Japan. C'est ça l'essentiel-- that's the essential part.

Is it a long wait until I feel rejuvenated again? Or is the rejuvenation just beginning? Maybe it is. Maybe I have to undergo a rebirth, but a rebirth in 3000 seeds, 2700 of which don't get planted, scattered away by the wind, and 231 of which get choked in the soil while the other 69 (that wasn't intentional) get what they need. And rebirth in 69 fold: awww yeahhhh.

I seriously might be taking myself less seriously. That seriously could be a seriously good thing. Started.

Home-back // Differences

I am going to establish a Filipino-ism: "Home-back." As opposed to "Back home." You know, you have "Back home," so why you not have "home-back"? Ha?

Home-back: the effect of reminiscing constantly over where home was for the last 6 months. This happens all the time for me, or at least ever since college. I reminisce over all the great times I had in Japan, even over the time I went with my economics class to Nagoya and when, well after that, we had a cake party to celebrate my professor for being so generous to us. I think about 7-Eleven and Japanese convenience stores (LAWSON's!!!), when we went to Lawson at 1:30 AM in the morning, me, Katie, and Tiki... oh... memories..

Red bean bread rolls... want... 食べたい。。。

Even as I was on my way home from the Paris club, I could not help but reminisce over Japan. This time was specifically 'cause they don't have anything, ANYTHING open 24 hours, except for this one little market across from where Melissa lives, God bless the guy who works there overnight despite all of Paris's very intrusive government probably strongly urging him not to. He allowed me to re-hydrate myself, and not for the asinine club price of 9 euros which is probably more than 10 dollars.

There are fundamental differences between French and Japanese culture, but one of them being this: there is something so good about how in Japan you are held back from having what you want for so long, and then you have it and it tastes so much better in the future. It is important to say that this doesn't work under all circumstances. However, in Japan it works so frequently and so well. For instance--almost all those snacks and FRESH PASTRIES in Japanese 7-Eleven stores have very little sugar. Still, find a more delicious snack in the world than the Yawaraka yellow pound cake thing that tastes like a Filipino dessert and nothing like pound cake. Find it. Good luck! French pastries are the shit, yes, if I'm not allergic to them. But they rely on sugar. And trust me, this wears on you when you go to 7-Eleven and have these delicious, filling snacks, but then play frisbee and are so hungry during the game and then you have a 15-minute downhill but still 15-minute bike ride home to your homestay where a delicious dinner is being very quickly prepared for you but is SOOOOO delicious that adjectives just aren't worth the time. I might as well omit "delicious." Just SOOOOOO. It was so wonderful. And that feeling of holding back, of waiting through the W = work = F·d (force times distance) exerted through awesome frisbee on the fuel of amazing 7-Eleven snacks that still provided very little sugar, to have a great dinner that made you feel good for being so healthy and was so delicious at the same time... just, so, good.

In France it's different. You still hold back, but I'm not sure at all that I'm necessarily getting something good for what I'm holding back for. And that's the problem I'm dealing with now. Sometime the slingshot has to snap back. I wonder whether I'm pulling back too far, pulling back just enough and taking a lot of time to do it, or just taking a lot of time to not really pull back very far.

We'll see.

Shallow

I bought cleats today at Decathlon for 35 euro, which is about 45 dollars, what the fuck? I don't care what they say, inflation is not an appropriate band-aid for the American economy. Go ask Iceland.

I bought cleats today at Decathlon for what looked like a really cheap price. I'm pretty happy about it, actually; what matters really isn't the amount it's worth in dollars now but the amount that it was worth before I changed the money. Oops, that's money I took out of my bank account instead of from the paper stack I brought over. So it was really 45 dollars. Fuck.

Oh well, that's fine. I bought cleats today at Decathlon, and that gives me some hope for frisbee. Obviously hope isn't the first thing on my mind right now, if the above indicates anything, but it's a good damn step. A damn good step.

Decathlon was really cheap for Paris clothing; I was really impressed and recommend anyone go there. In fact it was basically cheaper than prices you see in the States, which is what I was the most impressed about.

So shopping therapy did something to soulage my thoughts, my poison thoughts, today. I got a pair of gym shorts, gym pants, yet another thin coat (how many have I bought this year?), and those cleats. Yum. Need more gym-ish t-shirts. Oh, and the best part is jumping on clothes that are at the "end of the line" which is what the French literally is, I think. The ones that need to be sold so they can usher in the new.

I think French class helped just as much today. I finally have something concrete to do, although I don't really want to do it. That's okay.

Now it's time to plan my future for the billionth time in the last two years. I have to decide soon, soon soon where to go for Spring break and before Spring Break and after that. Oh, and let's not forget deciding on housing for Tufts, a wonderful university where res-life just don't understand. Sigh; these... every decision is so arbitrary yet every effect lasts so long, a year or so, a life or so...

I guess I just gotta go with it. Believe that there is only one route out there for me, but don't believe that it's pre-destined: believe that I have the free will to choose it, and yet that there is one will that will shine through from all other wills willing to expose themselves. And don't mince words, and go for it.

Haha, that shit's hard.

Why isn't

Why isn't the protagonist in Murakami's novels ever the one that runs away

I'm here lying in bed. Greg is lying in bed too; he came here to visit me in London and he's sleeping on a makeshift mattress on the floor that had better be really comfortable so that he doesn't wake up to me typing.

A few things on my mind right now
-Why do I walk around all day with people wondering if I'm all right? Am I a vampire? If so, am I alive? (end eurovision joke)
-When my mom came to Japan, she thought that I didn't know Japanese at all before I had come there. I had been studying it for two years. How much do we know each other, then?
-My words are dropping like 5000 pounds. Except for that last sentence. That is, my words are hitting heavier than they normally do, my exaggerations more extreme, my opinions more negative. Why is this happening? Well, I know reasons why. Is this necessary?
-I don't know what my exit is. It's not good to be on a highway and not know what your exit is. Exit from what? From just not being able to express myself, feel like I'm accomplishing something I want to accomplish here rather than that I want to get out of the way. For Japan, frisbee was one of the many exits that just came off. Life is not a highway because in life, you don't really have an idea of which exits are going to come next. Why am I using the highway metaphor? I don't know. I think I'm stepping around the argument.
-How long can I step around things before I start stepping in the right direction? Do I have to get forced in the right direction, as though I were on a street with dog shit spontaneously materializing, nearing 100% of the street, and I eventually were forced to detour onto a street that led somewhere else? At least in Paris other roads always lead somewhere. But my roads, um...

I'm obviously not anywhere that makes any sense to me right now. I am very conscious that my words either make no sense or are going nowhere very fast. So I'm brogging.

Did you know that Japan has the most blogs out of any country in the world, and it's for self-expression rather than for news commentary? See how much I have in common with Japan?

Haha, having something in common with a country. When you start to compare yourself to a commonality in a country (as a lot of people do with American patriotism) you know you're in trouble.

I miss Japan. 日本に戻りたい。 (I want to return to Japan.) Maybe I will.

I've had enough of random places. I need something to go back to. Paris can get visited without me. Unfortunately, I can't leave Paris.

I want to turn "unfortunately" into "fortunately" but how?? ???

Whatever happened to just getting it done
I used to quote random pop songs all the time during junior and senior years of high school in an attempt to figure things out with my life over away messages and profile changes. This didn't eventually help. It was just a bunch of hints. Wait, that doesn't make sense.

Let me be a teenager for a second.
One night stand
I thought I'd let you know
One night stand
I've gotta hit the road
One night stand
You've gotta let me go
'Cause I'M IN LOVE WITH ROCK AND ROLL!!
If I were in Japan or at home or at Tufts freshman year I would sing it. But I'm not.

Dammit.

Wasting my time (default) // 恥ずかしがりや

It's funny that there's a hit song from about 8 years ago called "Wasting My Time" by Default because I'm about to talk about both wasting my time and how it relates to 「default」という言葉(a word called default).

But I'm a weird person. I say I don't like to do things like watch movies because I think it's a waste of time--couldn't you spend those 1.5-2 hours doing something else? In reality, I'm neither thinking nor completely being honest. I completely lost interest in movies when during high school and before that I was too proud to go to movies with my parents or family and when I didn't have the means to go with friends alone to the movies. Or something. I had a weird social situation back then. Movies got left out of my life at one point and they never really made a comeback, or a convincing push for one. That's more like why I don't watch movies that much anymore. When I was a kid, why not? But still, when I watch movies, I anticipate them being over, or try to predict the story, or check how much time has passed.

I stopped playing video games together with my friends during high school, too, or at least the friends with whom I played them switched, which was sad because I had seen those friends all my life beforehand. Because of personal insecurities about being gay and coming out I stopped hanging out with those friends. The era of Goldeneye with three people in particular is long, long gone. But anyway... at that time, correspondingly I lost interest in playing video games by myself. (The lone exception is DDR.)

During high school, I had to read so much for class and do so much homework, and for some reason I threw myself completely 100% into this mess, trusting the school to take care of me as I did all the work for it... well, I got a prize for it and I will never forget giving that speech. But as a consequence I stopped reading on my own for pleasure. I read during the summers, but I still feel like I do it as an obligation when I read. (Haruki) Murakami is the lone exception. I read all of his books after the class I took on him was over--note, that means I only read him because I had to, although I DID choose to take that course--but since then, I have hardly read at all. Murakami, interestingly, writes about this, in a story (is it "Pinball, 1973"? or whatever the year was?) where he describes a girl who talks about how whenever she reads, it's more like an experience where she just wants to finish the task of getting to the next page. I often feel like that when I read. I can be very interested in a book, but I will still look at what page I'm at and tell myself I should be getting further, faster. Gone, maybe, are the times where I can just lose track of page numbers.

What's happened to me? A psychologist would diagnose me with ADD or something. Forget that. My diagnosis is that I'm afraid of wasting time. I'm even afraid of learning; I always ask myself whether I'm learning the right things. Actually, I think that back in high school I could lose the page number easily, maybe; either that or I was just good at motivating myself to go further when I was reading what I was assigned to read. But I think I'm afraid to get lost.

I am lost. When I and a group of people were drunk looking for a club a few nights ago, the other people were getting aggravated (I thought they needed to chill) that I was constantly checking the map and that I made the wrong decision on direction earlier on. No, I just constantly check. (It helps me win math problems. But not life problems.) What this shows is that when you're too afraid of getting lost, you can get lost anyway, and worse yet, you can get your ability to control your path taken away from you. That's actually what happened that night - I had to surrender the map to someone else. But in the larger, more abstract sense, this is what happened during high school. I don't know if it's happening now, but I certainly can't let it. My only choice now is to... get lost.

This is what Nadja does in Nadja by André Breton. Actually, she loses herself in free, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other thought to such an extent that she gets put in an insane asylum at the end, but Breton (as character) complains about it at the end--who can really tell who's insane and who's not insane? Why, furthermore, are the most free called insane? I saw a man reading this book today at the train station. I smiled. One of the more enlightening books I've (had to) read in recent times.

"Read" is a homo-something (homograph? homophone? or just gay?), just like "wind" and "Polish," although apparently that doesn't count because it's a proper noun. Apparently "read" doesn't count either because the two different possible pronunciations are just different conjugations of the same verb, but whatever, maybe it should. There's also "minute"; think about that the next time you see "Minute Rice." Wait, what's so unimportant about your rice? Also think about it when you see a sign that says "Entrance." Whoa, you hypnotized me!

Okay, enough, I'm done. I'm freewritten and I'm smiling.

Oh, the 恥ずかしがりや part- I was thinking about how I would explain to my host mother if the time ever came up (yes I do this sometimes for certain social situations) that I'm a shy person in French. I'm not sure whether embarras or embarrassé is the correct adjective, so I thought of an alternative and, my brain not completely wired right, I thought of the Japanese. 恥ずかしがりや (hazukashigariya) means "shy person," but you note that they get in one word what we get in two words. Either that or I just can't remember the synonyms in English for "shy person." The sense of the word, though, through the waves of Japanese culture, means "easily embarrassed," and not really just "shy person"; or at least that's what I instinctively think. Because in Japan, well, it seems like everyone's shy, at least after they're shamed into not acting like kids anymore. Shyness and being embarrassed are easily linked; it's really your ability to get over your embarrassment that sets you apart from other people. And 恥ずかしがりや is a perfect word to describe somebody who just anticipates horrible embarrassment and will try to avoid doing things as a result. That's me.

Respect

Respect. I haven't been respecting the people I should lately. I haven't had respect for things like traditions or French people or fiancés. And you know why?

It all starts with respect for yourself.

So that's it. I'm going to start making sure I respect myself, and to that end: no more alcohol. No more letting myself be carried away by that shit, and no more allowing it to be bought for me.

No more doubting my capabilities in French. Time to go after every French person with all the conversation I've got. No more "I'm too tired to do this" or "there's too much shit to do." No more "I fear bureaucracy." No more doubting that I can't get what I thought I had somewhere else down the road.

No more scared that if I break the truth and a crisis happens that I'll ruin everything in front of me. No more "I can't wait." No more "I have to wait." Wait, what?

No more waiting for summer to come by - I at least have gotten that right lately. No more I'm not sure what to right--I'm gay, okay? Glad that's over.

But it never is.

In any case, no more where am I. I know where I am, I know that certain crises are bound to happen and that I am an adult; I have no instinct that I can handle them now, but I need to develop one.

Let's get this started. Paris, Part 1. I am who I am and I forgot that worrying about other people's respect for me means I'm not letting me respect myself. Let's go.
Alex

Believe / 信じ

I'm not a nihilist, because I don't believe in nihilism. I believe in things, but I don't know what they are. It's going to take awhile for me to be able to believe again in something that I don't know what it's going to be. Christianity, Islam, Judaism: they all believe in something coming in the future. Is it Shintoism that doesn't?

What a lonely future, or life, then, if you're in Japan and you only believe in Shintoism. That's lonely.

When I was at Hope College, my professor figured out that I don't like talking about religion. This isn't something I have really realized until now. He was like, "You don't really care for religion, do you Alex?" I was like, "Well, technically I'm a confirmed Catholic," and he replied, "Technically I'm a confirmed Catholic, yeah," you and religion don't go together or something like that. Well, no, not really.

My half-Paris-boyfriend-whatever tells me he's completely spiritual but not religious. I am neither. And this is regrettable. I'm not a skeptic either, which leaves me somewhere on open ground, or as fresh meat for whichever school of thought grabs me first. That's a certain vulnerability. This might be part of the reason why I don't feel comfortable discussing religion or spirituality, but it's not. It just frustrates me that for me, the discussion just doesn't go anywhere.

I am in the most secular city in the world except for Pyongyang. But Paris is a world of its own.
I'm in a world without teachers. Most of them are on strike, because apparently that's the only way you can get laws changed around here. Uh... so I have to be my own teacher. But I can't do that. I always have to look for a teacher. Eventually I'm just going to have to look for that part of myself that is submerged in deep slime somewhere in my brain, that has become full of fat as slimy as the slime itself. That leader in me. That lead-er, the lead to my pencil, the lead to my bullet in my uncharged gun. Where is it? No, there's no point in asking that because I'm the only one who knows where it is. Until then I'll just chant nonsense and "a bay bay" while I turn over rocks.

No. Enough "a bay bay." It's time to do something that means something. And I always have to step back and find out what that is.

I won't name the inspiration, but every day I ask myself, "have I been living beyond my means?" And the answer is yes. Very sadly, yes. I have to find something productive, not reproductive, to do before I keep going on and doing things without stopping. The US needs to do the same. And when I can't look to my country for inspiration... well, could the Founders have done that? Haha, no. What a brave group of men and women.

So far behind. Wait,wait,wait,wait

I want to cut the spaces in between the commas. I want to go and get what I want right now. But I can't.

Too bad.

I'm about gone. I need to get my schedule ready for what is basically tomorrow and I really really don't know what I'm going to do about it. I'm pretty stressed out and the fact that I'm sick and that this week's fling is over is not good. I know that all I really really need to do is surf through the information on the web, on, yes, PDFs. I hate PDFs.

I can't even remember the classes I said I liked. I really don't remember. Uh, oh.

This methodology class is killing me and I'm in constant dread of the professor. I don't hate him, I just fear him.

I don't wish I were back in Japan, I don't wish I were home, I wish I were in Paris. I am. But my life here so far has been overwhelming. Too many new experiences and not enough time to catch them all and write them all down. Not enough time to catch up with them all and tie them all down. Not enough time for me.

This isn't easy. This is not easy.

Back to one. Back at one

I realize that here's how my personality partially works: there are lots of things that I pick and that I stick with for a long time, and then suddenly stop using, frequently on account of lost interest or impracticality. Among these are both of my Roots hats (now that I'm in Paris and it's cooooold, I have to wear the ear-covering hats), piano, single-player non-DDR video gaming, DDR (in Paris? impossible, and interest is going doooown), and probably things that I've completely forgotten about. With people, a similar thing can happen. That's the sort of thing I never want to ever happen again with my friends.

Just a note. To go further with where I want to go, I would have to make this private. I'm not going to do that. Sigh, I'm even making myself 外人 to my own blog. I shouldn't do that. But you all live in the same country, that of my blog, and I have to respect you, without knowing completely who you are or may be.

Do you know who you may be?

The disbelief I can't believe could've come out of me

I did something very un... well, I won't discuss it here. Let's just say I still can't believe I did it.

I've got tons of "work to clear," as my buddy Galen would say. I really don't know what on earth I'm supposed to do or why or what on earth I'm supposed to gain from it but fine, whatever. Just let me go to my universities and I'll be fine. I have to choose classes, too.

Paris has been relatively kind recently, warm. Well, it's warmed my heart but it sure is cold.

I wonder what's gonna happen one day when Facebook will actually be a networking tool and not a keep-in-touch-with-your-friends tool. Then it'll just be some useless thing and the warmness from it will fade.

The warmness from Facebook has already faded for just about everyone I've talked to who signed up for it two and a half years ago when they went to college; that is, if there was any warmness in the first place. There is for me. I couldn't keep in touch with my Japanese friends as easily otherwise, and I love each and every word I get from them. Email just isn't a good alternative, and Japanese people are probably afraid of the phone. Okay, sorry, that isn't a good thing to say. But the social interaction is a lot harder in Japan because of the society's weird dynamics.

I'm going to bed at bad hours. This has to stop. Going to bed at anywhere from 10:30 to 12:30 and waking up at 7:30 in Japan worked so well, it made my life feel fresh and easy. That needs to come back. Well, it doesn't need to, but life really should be lived like that.

Don't make any mistake, though: having a good sleep schedule isn't all you need to make life better; it's not sufficient on its own. But it can help--a LOT. Wish I had a good one during high school; would've made recovering from all the stress and social worries so much easier. Probably would've gotten me into some of the colleges I didn't get into, too. But I'm glad I'm going to Tufts. Tufts is perfect for where I am in my life and who I am as a person. Some part of me might've died somewhere else.

I went to Le Marais and ate fallafel and split up with the group I was with later. That's basically the events of most of the afternoon. Not much happened, compared to what happened after, which I won't talk about here. But it wasn't only bad although there were certainly elements of that haha, so don't worry, I'm fine.

Now I need to remember to call a dentist in the morning. Need my program's help on that. Okay. Whoo.

And now, after 1:12 AM, to do homework. That's too much like high school. That's why I'm doing sit ups and pushups in the morning now; aside from that they (should) improve my body (when I'm not sure that's the case; they've made my stomach bigger), they wake me up and slap me into shape. Now I need to start running after school. Hopefully I'll have less asinine class hours after I get started in actual French universities.

Peace.

What a weird country

Or city. Welcome to Paris, the most chic city in the world que je connaisse (that I know). I don't think that any 言葉 (kotoba, way of saying) for "feeling" (感情, kanjou) would work for the mixed pains and pleasures I've been feeling ever since I got to Paris. Let's start with today, of course.

Today I bought three drinks, two canned, one bottled, for 2.09€ (euro). The bottled water was 1€, the can of Lipton peach iced tea was .60€, and guess what that makes the can of 7UP? That's right, .49€. And these cans were the standard size, not those tiny things you get on a British Airways flight like the one I came on. (Those tiny cans serve a purpose: you don't have to drink an entire standard-sized can when you just want a normal, decently healthy amount of soda, and you're on a plane where that can poses a hazard and becomes an annoyance.) Were any of the other canned drinks as cheap as the iced tea or the 7UP? No. Why? I don't know. These weren't even sale prices, or at least if they were they didn't want you to notice.

I'm in another country where people tell me that sales mean cheap clothes, regardless of whether the starting price is always above 70€ and the discount never gets you down past 40€ (well, one went to 38€) and hardly ever past 100€. That's not cheap. America, by the way, is one of these countries. H&M is a very good exception here, in that you have some small chance of finding something you like. I bought a t-shirt and a coat today. I was dumb enough not to bring any of my thin, reasonably tight coats to keep me warm inside instead of either cold or hot or wearing a medium-sized coat that doesn't feel right to wear inside. I was also dumb enough to forget my scarf, and since I got a haircut just before I came here, I'm feeling the chill. The fact that everyone else is wearing a scarf is not helping.

My greatest pain so far was not getting locked out on the first day with lots of euros but no way to contact my host mother (or anyone else for that matter, except the police who, in their dishonesty, decided to let people park alongside a divider in the middle of the road and then ticket them ALL, instead of telling them to move when they were there the whole time). No, my greatest pain so far is the resurgence of what is apparently TMJ, which in turn is apparently inflammation of the jaw. Whatever it is, it suddenly came back with a roar, the morning after my first night here. The next night, I woke up at 5 AM and couldn't get to sleep because it was so painful. It's painful now, and it hurt all day and it makes me hate Paris, just because I have this impediment that's incessantly interrupting my pleasure. It used to feel like a sinus infection. Now it feels like a toothache. Son of a bitch. I guess I should've gone to the dentist before I came here, but oh well.

Last night I managed to position my alarm clock in such a way that the sound wires were loose in the back. Guess what that means? NO WAKE-UP CALL!! I woke up a few minutes after 1 PM, which was 20 minutes after my only class today started, and as it's 30 to 35 minutes to get to my class, that meant I didn't go to class. Lovely. Actually, I went, and when I got there I consulted with one of the directors of the program and she told me it basically wasn't a good idea to go in 30 minutes before the end of the class, which I was suspecting too. The class was 2 hours, which made it all the more aggravating that I missed it. If I arrived at 1:40, which was possible, I would've missed half the class and I would've been disheveled worse than the homeless guys here. Actually, the homeless people here dress pretty nicely, which is a testament to how even the more affordable clothes here look good; either that or how many expensive clothes people give away here. That's in turn a testament to how many things they buy. I still remember how big of a wardrobe my exchange student from 3+ years ago had. He was 14 at the time, too, and he had all these nice fancy clothes and possibly something for any occasion anywhere except a Navajo reservation pow-wow.

I think, perhaps because of the tooth pain, a little bit of my lost humor has returned (though I didn't notice I lost it), at least in the blogosphere. Either that or because it's because I have to speak in French all the time, and one of the best ways to find something new to say is to tell jokes. I just thought of that, and it's so true. It's something I've had to consciously think of here: how to communicate in French with what little I remember from my vocabulary. All the grammar stuff I remember, but I'm bad at vocabulary and I hardly recall most of the more complicated stuff I learned. I don't even remember what diriger means. Let's look it up in a French-English dictionary:

diriger [pronunciation alphabet I don't understand] vt (entreprise) to manage, run (...)

Thank you Collins French Dictionary Plus Grammar The complete two-in-one reference published in 1997, 2000, and latest reprint 2001, by HarperCollins Publishers, and printed in Great Britain. **** you MLA formatting.

Apparently "fuck" is a swear but ***** isn't (see above swear). Thanks federal radio regulations, which seem like they'd violate the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law...") to me. Possibly not. Haven't investigated the matter seriously enough.

In any case, I will swear freely and liberally here because the French don't seem to censor themselves on TV. In that spirit, I shouldn't either. Actually, I might anyway. It makes for better writing. This is even a common criticism in the rap world, where fans often criticize rappers who swear too much. It takes away from the finer content.

I haven't really hung out with anyone here yet, but that'll change soon. I hope to find some way to get back into frisbee, because I haven't really found any people that are both athletic (aside from running, zzzzzzzzzz) and fun here. You can't really tell when everyone dresses to impress, which hides a lot. Dressing to impress doesn't say much in Paris; you pretty much have to do it to fit in. Fitting in, of course, helps you protect yourself from getting robbed by a すり (suri, pickpocket), or from even worse things. It might hide you from yourself, though.

And that's why I don't wanna dress to impress.

But I heard some good dance music today. They have dance music radio here, and it was so. good. Boston, get with the program.