when there's smoke...

I'm starting to get used to a lot of things here. The flashing neon lights around every corner and the octopus tentacles in the meat aisle of the grocery store don't really phase me anymore. I have even become accustomed to the way nobody in this culture seems to want to pick a fight with another person, no matter what the incredibly small and unimportant discretion, be it bumping into someone going the opposite direction in the train station, or even stepping on someone's shoe! (I know, right?! How could anybody possibly let that one go?!) Seriously though, western culture could learn a thing or two about the way these people deal with confrontation. But for that matter, so could my subconscious mind.

It's strangely fascinating what the mind does when it's adjusting to a new lifestyle in a new setting. Some people have crippling panic attacks, while others retreat into a shell of impenetrable introversion. I, personally, jolt out of bed every morning between the hours of 5 and 7 AM, just barely escaping the unpleasant faces of those who apparently want to cause me harm. Some of these faces belong to real people from my waking life, while others are completely fabricated, which I assume means they represent the intangible strife in my life. There were definitely certain things I expected to cause me discomfort while I was getting used to living in japan. Having recurring nightmares was not among them. But where there's smoke there's fire, and your subconscious mind never lies.

I have found that Whenever you start a new relationship, whether it's with a new person or a new place, you tend to take all of the emotional and mental baggage with you from your previous relationships. It takes time to get comfortable in a new setting, just like it takes time to learn to trust another person. With this in mind, It is simply profound, the kinds of emotional walls that seem to separate the parts of the psyche, some of which you never even knew you had.

On one hand, there is the part of you that exists in your waking life, which only seems to generate excitement for all of the new possibilities around you, and all of the potential interactions you will have. On the other hand, there is the part of you that resides within your dreaming life, which is apparently only capable of picking at your emotional scabs, as it reminds you of all the sadness and regret you feel for leaving behind the life and the people you knew back home, as well as all the stress they brought with them. It's as if there is only so much space in you're head, and all of the positivity is trying to take over, but the negativity refuses to just pack its shit and leave. Thus, in the never more true words of Zach, it throws a series of temper tantrums like an immature child that thinks it deserves all the attention, attacking you in your sleep when you are most vulnerable; when you can't run from it, rationalize it, or suppress it anymore. Talk about fighting dirty...

But in the end, when I wake up in a cold sweat, and I feel my heart beating out of my chest, I quickly wade back into coherent thought and I recite the one mantra I seem to know all too well: “it's just a dream... It' just a dream... IT'S JUST A DREAM!” And that's just it- they ARE just dreams and within a few short minutes of waking up, all the unpleasant details start to fade to the back of the very machine that generates them in the first place, and soon only a few unpleasant details will remain, leaving me with what I can only perceive to be a warning of sorts. It's as if all the little things in my head are trying to say “we are the demons you couldn't negotiate with. So keep that the fuck in mind the next time you choose the people you let in your life, and the issues you're gonna obsess over. Now take your punishment like a good little douche!”

I suppose I should just let it be. After all, they say that the mind functions a lot like a computer, and dreaming is its way of dumping the recycling bin when the hard drive is overloaded. And right now my mind is about as population-dense as tokyo, inhabited by an array of thoughts as colorful and diverse as the people who live in this city. Perhaps as unpleasant as the job may be, my psyche has apparently decided that it's time to clean house, cause god knows it's LONG overdue.