Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!

today is february third, which means one thing in Japan: tomorrow is officially the first day of spring. they celebrate a holiday today called "Setsubun" to mark this seasonal paradigm shift. i don't quite fully understand it, but they throw roasted soybeans at invisible demons and shout the words "oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" which roughly translates to "demons out! luck in!". Thing is, I don't know what's stranger: the custom itself, or the time which they choose to celebrate it? I mean, growing up in the northeastern corridor of the United States, i am only accustomed to February being one of the coldest snowiest, rainiest, slushiest, most depressingly grey months of the damn year! i fucking abhor february, save for the fact that my boy Stu was born on the 17th day of it.

Really though, who in their right mind would even consider celebrating the coming of spring this early? but the fact of the matter is that the Japanese aren't very good at bluffing in the first place, and Setsubun is definitely no lie. much to my seasonally self-indulgent delight, spring really does come early here. as much as january wasn't exactly humid, it still never got very cold. the sky was blue every day and most mornings i was more than warm enough in a relatively thin leather jacket. but being from both the place and the culture that i am, i spent the whole month on subconscious pins and needles, anxious as to when the other shoe was going to drop. after all, I'm usually not much of a fatalist, but when it comes to shitty winter climates, i have pretty much resigned myself to the inevitable dismal shit i have to acclimate to every year around this time, and although i know i shouldn't let the air in my lungs out just yet, things are lookin up and feelin warm. every day i walk out of class and my skin is confused as to why it feels like april so soon. but hey, never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

this is all pretty positive, but to be honest, it floods me with all sorts of strangely familiar emotions i experience in some way for a short time every year. see, I have a strange relationship with seasons. i am hyper-aware of when they change, because of how they affect my morale and life while they, on the other hand, don't seem to notice me at all. they come and go as they please, never stopping to consider how they affect those around them. this doesn't bode well for me during the winter months in general, but something else occurred to me as i walked to tamachi station after class let out today: certain seasons remind me of certain people. at first i didn't pay close attention to this little detail, but it has been slowly creeping to the forefront of my mind ever since i figured out that the sun isn't going away any time soon. it isn't for any reason in particular, or at least not one that i know consciously, but i just get these feelings when i feel winter turning to spring, which makes me think about spring turning to summer, which makes me think of summer turning to autumn. when i first started to reminisce, only transparent memories flashed through my mind. However, when i began to meditate on these inclinations, i managed to match specific faces to each spell.

For starters, fuck winter. I know it's a little contradictory to my “appreciate every moment” sentiments, but I prefer to aprreciate the moment in a pair of sandals. there are a few people who tend to remind me of winter. i won't give out names, but judging by my rant about february above, you probably get the idea of which kind of characters might populate my mind when i think of this bleak season. But hey, just like bad gas, at least it always passes.

I never really thought about it, but Mima reminds me of fall. i think it has something to do with the red hair suggesting the changing leaves, as well as the fact that i spent a great deal of time at Hagy's Mill as a kid when school started up every year, watching the trees shed shades of orange, red, and yellow all over the grassy pennsylvania forest floor.

I associate spring, on the other hand, with Dulce. i know it seems strange to those in the know, as she should remind me of long days on 16^th avenue, at the beach, coming home with ocean water lodged deep in my ears and sand wedged between every crevice in my body, as well as late night barbecues, good surf, and kind herb every evening before bed. but she doesn't. rather, i always think of this one fragment of a memory in which we are sitting at a cafe on a beautiful day in late april, somewhere around the king of prussia mall. in this memory i am young, and have just discover boxer shorts, and the fact that sonic the hedgehog has his own comic book. we eat bistro sandwiches with my mom and sisters and i am as happy as i have ever been, basking in the newly warm 3:00 light coming through the large windows behind our booth. But the best part about this memory is that I remember anticipating summer, which was right around the corner.

There's really only one person i think of when it comes to summer. this may seem odd, because out of all of the seasons of the year (even including the indecisive little transitional ones which could almost be "micro-seasons" in their own right), summer is the season that is by far the most important to me as it has given birth year after year to some of the most profound experiences, habits, practices, and relationships, all of which have greatly contributed to the person I am today. With this in mind, logic would dictate that summer should lend itself to a plethora of different names and faces i have come across during my annual travels during these wonderful months. and yet, it is far more simple than that. The person i always think of is perhaps the only person i have ever met who appreciates summer more than me; the only person who can fully empathize with me when it is not here. Isn't that right, LM?

But to say that these people are just sort of there in my mind when I think of all this would be doing my emotions an injustice. Where to most, the changing weather patterns only really equate to changing wardrobe patterns, they speak to me in a very different way. I see them as an ephemeral progression of time, and it makes me feel a bit uneasy. It is as if the weather shifts to remind us that our lives are like that of the sakura flowers which have not yet bloomed on the tokyo cherry trees: beautiful and all-too short.

As I made this realization today, I came to another sad thought: my time in Nippon is almost like a mini version of my life as a whole. I arrived in this new world as an impressionable young being, blurry-eyed and overwhelmed. As time progresses, I mature in ways that help me better calibrate to the society around me. I go day by day, sometimes even forgetting how short my time is here, until today when I walked outside and was hit with the nostalgic sensation of warm sunlight on my face, and I realized that as elating as this is, it also means something far more sinister is taking place before my eyes: my precious time here is running out. And so I feel yet another jolt to my heart, and my mind turns to scrambled eggs. It seems like just yesterday I got here, and although I don't have to go just yet, I know that time looms over my head and it will come all too soon.

I know it sounds morbid, and i'll admit, the thought doesn't always fill me with white light, but just like anything else, it's all about the headspace with which you choose to approach it. I know that I am very tempted to feel sad about the fact that my life, as well as all of the various short lives within that life, is burning its temporal engine fuel with every breath I take, and sooner than I know it, there will be no more. But if I let this get to me, I would never get anything done. And so I figure, if my time in this place, and my life here will end in what seems to be a pretty short time in the grand scheme of things, then perhaps that is all the more reason to make the most of it. To be jovial, and content, and to offer value to those around me. To (fuck, try to) approach ever day like it's the last fun I'll ever have.

I know I say things like this a lot in this blog, but I truly feel that we are all, myself included, so busy running through our lives like there will always be a tomorrow, seldom ever stopping to appreciate today. The more time I spend in this city that never stops running, flashing, beeping, and working, the more I appreciate being able to just fucking STOP!..

...And chill. And smell the warm (go figure) February air. And when I think of this, it all becomes clear why I associate certain people with certain months of the year.

So to all those I have shared memory-worthy moments with as a traveler through my own young life and all of its various seasons, know this:

I missed you today. All of you. You guys make life worth living and home worth returning to.

Happy spring!

racing in place

There gets to a certain point at the end of everyday when the space between my eyes beneath the bridge of my nose starts to feel like a vacuum, sucking a good deal of my conscious awareness into it. My heart feels a faint jolt, and I have to remind myself to steady my breathing and calm down. This happens reliably at least once during the course of every night, and sometimes more. For those of you unfamiliar with such a sensation, it is the feeling of being incredibly overwhelmed due to all of your personal obligations whirling around your head at hyper-drive-ultra-speed. Now, I know that to the untrained eye, this would seem like a bad thing. Truth of the matter is that it's not particularly pleasant, but I have learned to welcome it because it's a sure fire sign that I am doing something right.

The fact of the matter is that there is not much worse for the human mind, body, and soul than boredom. Having nothing to do is depressing as all get-out. It zaps any motivation to do anything left in you, as I eats you from the inside out. But the opposite can be said for stress due to busyness. I mean, sure it IS totally awesome to have the occasional fuck-around time, when you can just kick back and be terribly unproductive, but this really only works in moderation. That's why you see folks who continue to work even after retirement living longer and more fulfilling lives.

I personally have found that I am always happier when I am barely able to tread water in the vast sea of life, rather than when I have nothing to do but float lazily by. The strange thing is that I have never been so motivated to be so free of all that used to hold me down in place as I have in Tokyo. Leaving behind my whole life for the umpteenth time just to start anew must have shocked my system in a stranger way than I had orginally thought. All of a sudden I find myself having in depth thoughts about the nature of my own tiny existence, as well as the social world that surrounds me. Perhaps burning my poor, stagnant, all-too-comfortable excuse for a life to the ground was exactly what I needed to start actually living. But living in this exciting new world of mine isn't as easy as it sounds. Just like any worthwhile thing, it requires care, thoughtfulness, devotion, and maintenance. For me, this means setting various goals having to do with all of the little lives that dwell inside me, forming an ecosystem all their own to make up my overall reality. These separate entities include, but are not limited to my athletic, romantic, artistic, social, and (for the first real time in two and a half years) my scholastic lives. It seems that although some work better together than others, each one competes in some way with the rest as to which is most vital to my overall well being.

Funny thing is, just like any ecosystem, a shaky balance must be respected in order for all of the life forms within it to survive and grow. I try to distribute my attention equally to all involved, doing my best to make sure not one aspect is overlooked. Now this would be an incredible amount of work anywhere, but in tokyo it is especially difficult. In a city that moves as fast as the self-seeking mind does, it is very easy to “miss a step and fall into the rapid river called fate” as Tite Kubo says. Basically, to stagnate and chode-ify. To be tempted by this boisterous technicolor beauty to just submit and spend the night at the local izakaya is sometimes too much to bear.

Luckily for me there is an unrest that I am quite familiar with which prevents me from giving into her. It starts as a knot in my chest and then works its way up my spinal cord until it reaches that space in the middle of my face that I mentioned before. Call it obsessive compulsive, or just plain restlessness, but for the life of me, I can't stop doing. My journals are filling up by the volume, my sketchbooks are falling apart at the seams (literally, I swear!) and my phone is blowing up with people trying to see what I'm gettin' into. For the first time in my life, I have found a purely positive form of busy.

The bottom line is that I have no free time anymore. I have so much life to live in what seems to be just a short amount of time to do so. Take from that what you will. And sure, would it be nice to be able to kick back every once in a while and watch a Kurosawa flick on my computer with no pangs of guilt creeping through every part of my body? No doubt, but fuck it, I'll sleep when i'm dead.