cimorene

once we drove back from a bakery--i think on the bus on the way back from mt. fuji--called 'bread from the heart.' you see a lot of that kind of thing there. i kept a diary of funny english--this was before i'd heard of engrish. lots of good things come from the heart, apparently.

also english poetry is superior to spanish. poetry always sounds more profound to me in spanish, which might just be because it's prettier.

let me tell a story. i've mentioned it before, so close your ears or whatever. 11th grade a japanese girl named mayumi lived with us for a whole year. the japanese are naturally reticent, but i was in the midst of a passionate love affair with japan. i thought i wanted to live there for the rest of my life and i wanted to start then. the problem was that mayumi WASN'T japan; she was a rather shy japanese girl, one with a wry sense of humor, a delicate sensibility for fashion and social niceties, a deeply-ingrained sense of racial superiority, and... well. not a lot in common with me, though she was very intelligent. for months we barely talked, but i drove her to school and we ate lunch together every day all year. some lunches we didn't talk. but there was--there was something between us even then. a kind of bond. we enjoyed being together. we knew we cared. after a few months we were more open. still spent a lot of time apart--me obsessively doing homework, her locked in her room. but i never went anywhere alone, anywhere. the gas station? mayumi, want to drive down the block? wal-mart for nail-polish, on a whim? the grocery store? the mall--three times in one weekend without EVER buying anything? brilliant. we loved each other in spite of these differences. i was wild for japan; she found me an application. i spent that summer--6 weeks--living with her family in nishinomiya and we bonded even more there, talking all night long over the little kitchen table eating yogurt icecream.

she cried the day i left and hugged me. we were sisters, we said. they didn't want me to leave, any of her family, and i didn't want to go. she had missed me the two weeks after i went to japan before she left my family; what would the year be like?

but i KNEW i was going to amherst, which has a partnership with dooshisha university in kyoto. mayumi's papa graduated from there. i was going to go there junior year. i was going to see her, like, every week. i was still planning to teach english there for three years after college.

i've realized now that not only do i not want to do those things--not even study abroad in japan--i don't want to continue to study japanese. it's been my focus, like, my 'thing' for longer than writing has (or for longer than i admitted the latter)--for SO LONG. it would be as if the world had been jerked out from under me, but it already was. moving away from home last year, that first anxiety attack, that semester of hell--i'm not the same person i was then at all.

but i still miss her.

hello, everyone. i'm neurotic and highly anxious, and elitist, which i sometimes feel guilty for and sometimes don't. i don't like people, i suck at making friends, but i'm fiercely clingy and loyal to the ones i have. the internet practically keeps me alive, for several reasons and through a handful of people.

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