I ordered a book a few days back, and just received it today. It's entitled The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage. It's written by a Japanese dominatrix who happened to have gone to Berkeley in her undergraduate years. It seems the more time I spend being associated with Berkeley, the cooler the school becomes. The book's actually pretty dry, much in the way the Kama Sutra is, which I imagine to be due to it's functional nature as a reference for proper style. On a humorous note, I'm finding all those years I spent in Boy Scouts proving themselves to have had some value as a number of knots referenced in the book (half hitches and whatnot) I'm already familiar with. And to think all those years I spent tying poles together I could've spent tying women to said poles. Oh, the indulgences of youth!
And while I'm on the topic of the finer things in life one can spend one's time on, it only seems reasonable to mention, at least for a moment, language. I've been spending a bit more of my time chatting and mailing some Japanese folks I've met here and have become friends with, and while I'm able to at least get my idea across most of the time, I'm still rather unsatisfied with what I'm able to do. There's no fine control of the language yet, no ability to mold it and shape it into whatever tool I need at the moment, be it to assuade or incite the passions. My words do not yet flow and pace themselves in such a way where reading them simply moves from beginning to end without pause, without need for breath or moments or any other such fanciful things as repose from the natural movement of syllables and sound. My study of Japanese still needs a lot of work before it'll be anything remotely resembling the tool that I want it to be, that catalyst of thought and feeling (or sometimes just thought without feelings or feelings without thought in that all too human way of never quite striking the proper balance one should maintain so as to keep from teetering or tottering this way and that).
The other day I was writing an essay and was trying to think of an expression in Japanese to properly convey the proper degree of trivial-ness a problem presented, and found myself unable to come up with anything that would do the job properly. I asked my tutor for help, but he couldn't really come up with anything either (though I should take a closer look at his revisions on my essay). It's odd; having to write a one to two page essay is a trivial task in English. Perhaps it's the way Japanese is structured, or the density with which sentences in the language are imbued, but a page or two in Japanese strikes me as having the expressive power of something resembling two to four pages in English. At the least, in the one page (per essay) I was somehow able to produce, I felt I had expressed an amount of thought easily equivalent to twice it's amount in English. What curiousness.
The ability to pluck the precise word that expresses my thought or feeling in the proper amount of vividness is a luxury my current Japanese ability can not yet afford.
While languages show their utility in the most rudimentary of words, language does not become art until one extends it with such precision and finely honed clarity in choice of word of pace and of structure that it becomes more than simply a stick to draw figures in the mud and instead a finely crafted brush that paints the very essence of life.
Can I hang a star in your sky, wish for you as it flies down it's curv-ed light
Into arms that've never known sin but hang heavy with the weight of years
With nary a word or whisper or glance or gaze
Can I hang a star in your sky, and ride it's bejeweled splendor to your side
So like I said a while ago, I fractured my right ring finger and tore off the bulk of the nail in the process. A month and a half later, the bone is mostly healed (it seems, though the doctors say it's still broken, mysteriously, but it won't really matter because it's just a ring finger). In the latter stages of healing, after I had taken off the bandage and whatnot (even though the doctors said I should probably leave it on...but we've already seen how good I am at doing what's good for me), I began to notice that if I breathed in deeply, upon exhaling the tip of my finger would hurt, as if the part that connects the end of the finger to the nail were tearing. Think of the part of your fingernail where the pink turns white, imagine it beginning to tear off, and you have an idea of what it felt like.
That was about a week ago, and now it doesn't really do that anymore. But there's a question that keeps pestering my mind.
Did I heal, or have my nerves just been numbed?
Being the non-linear thinker I tend to be from time to time, I wondered whether emotional trauma heals, or if one just goes numb. It seems that either way, the pain disappears little by little, fading into the background until it's quiet enough for you to tune it out of your daily life (at least, until something comes back to provoke the wound and tear the scab away to expose your bare, naked flesh). But going numb is an end, and healing is a beginning. I'd like to believe that, what with recent events, I'm healing, and not just going numb.
If reality gets any more real, I'm going to have to jump ship into delerium.
"One day I'll find the words to tell you..."
It's fascinating how some people can make your entire world at peace or tear it asunder. I'm caught between wanting to dive further into this whirlpool of emotion and staying my hand from setting myself up for a Fall.
Everytime I think I've finally got one on the world, that it's finally time for me to get mine, the world never fails to come around, show me who's boss, and proceed to make me it's bitch.
Come Friday, I will play air hockey until my arms fall off, sing until my throat tears and my lungs burst, and drink until I die.
Then I'm going to do it again.
You can tell a lot about a person by their collection of pornography.
There are the obvious things, like when somebody's into the bondage and domination type of pornography, you can probably make a guess that they either want to be dominated or dominate others. It shouldn't even need to be stated.
Think about it for a moment. What does your collection of pornography say about you? (and don't pretend you don't have one...)
I personally think a lot of pornography's rather questionable, especially when it comes to guys who say "I'm not gay, I watch straight porn all the time." (or something to that effect). But that seems a little sketchy to me. Take blowjob porn for example. Why on earth would you want to see that? It's a whole lot of dick (sometimes multiple dicks) and just some girl sucking on it/them. If you're into cock I'm sure you'd be plenty happy, but I think I'll pass on that. Or one can generalize even more, to porn with guys in it in general. I really hate it when there are guys in my porn. When I get porn, I want to see nothing but girl. Lots of girls. Girls next to girls, girls on girls, girls girls girls (voracious!). George Carlin had a skit on this once, but I've since forgotten the bulk of it (though the spirit remains).
Porn with guys is way too close to reality for me.
When you think about it, all you're really doing is watching some guy (i.e. not you) have sex/perform other sexual actions on a girl. If I wanted to see guys getting girls who clearly look too good for them I'd go outside. I see plenty of that on a day to day basis. I want my porn to be a delightful fantasy. I don't want reality, with it's more popular guys getting laid in twos and threes. That's just way too depressing.
It kind of makes me wonder if there's some sort of latent masochism going on in guys who like that sort of porn. Or maybe they're just voyeurists.
Anyone who's anyone knows that the best porn is with girls. It starts off with the girl coming out doing her little dance and whatnot, maybe a little striptease. Kind of a getting to know you bit. After a while it's kind of like she's your girl. Now in an ideal world where crappy porn doesn't exist this would continue for a bit, and then proceed to some lesbian action. Everyone loves lesbian action (don't even try to deny it). But in this flawed and poorly constructed reality, more often than not some guy pops out (and usually these are the kind of guys I'd like to punch just because they look like bastards) and starts banging your girl.
wtf?
There's something wrong with porn these days. I should run the porn industry, I'd make it so awesome.
One day, curiosity will undoubtedly get me killed. I'll try the wrong mix of alcohol and food, drink from the wrong bottle under the sink, or ask the wrong person the wrong question.
Take for example whether or not one should ask the girlfriend how far she might've gone with (insert past fling/relationship/etc.'s name here). While it might be amusing (and slightly arousing...just slightly) if the person from the past was a girl, more often than not it's a guy, and more often than not you find out things you really don't want to know anymore (but were dying to know just moments before).
So does one just let it go and not ask? Or does one give in to curiosity and blurt out the question, no matter how unpleasant the resulting answer might be?
With past "relationships" it didn't really bother me because I figured it was stuff from the past, and they made for amusing stories more than anything else. Either that or I just really didn't care too much about them...but I'd like to think that I cared, at least a bit. It seems a bit cruel and cold to say I didn't (but I wouldn't want to lie about it either). It'd be nice to believe for a moment that I'm not a creature driven simply by passions and animalistic urges (not to say those don't influence me too, but just something to go with that, like fries).
In this particular, current-event case, though, I'm maddeningly curious to know, and yet dreading the answer. It's kind of like that time when I was going online to find out if I had gotten into college or not...except I don't think I was as apprehensive then as I am about this issue. The school I had expected to get into had turned me down, and the school that I didn't expect to get into let me in (weird). Maybe now the person I expect to stay faithful will let me down, and I'll discover that someone I didn't...actually that doesn't really make sense, I'm not sure where I was going with that. The point is, there is no point, and trying to write coherently at 1:20am is futile. So give it up. Just don't give it up to him. Maybe her, but definitely not him.
I'm not sure if it's better to get left for a girl or a guy. On the one hand, if I get left for a girl, I can tell myself there's nothing I could have done, and it's not really my fault. But then maybe they were just dating me because I was girly. What a conundrum.
Now that my finger's recovered enough to give me two out of five fingers of my right hand, it's time for a little update.
This country is great. Sure, the media may have been lying to them since who knows how far back, but the way people carry themselves, particularly in their jobs, is just plain awesome.
So a little bit of background: Aroundabout here, you're supposed to do your absolute best at your job, no matter how trivial or insignificant that job may be (by American standards). There are certain speech patterns one uses when talking to people deemed "superior" (and the customer is *always* superior to the worker), so whenever you go to any sort of store or restaurant or whatnot you get to play big shot for a few minutes (as opposed to bottom rung trash when you're at the office).
Take for example the people who work at McDonald's. When you go up to them, it's not "Hi can I take your order," it's "We're terribly sorry for making you wait so long, please allow me to help you." After you pay and they give you your change they bow to you and thank you for letting them take your order. Then when they bring you your food it's again "We're terribly sorry for making you wait, here is your food." And as you leave, they yell to you "Thank you for coming." And not just the manager, *everyone* says it. Awesome.
Or consider the people who work at gas stations/auto tune-up places (unlike in America, the dealer is not the default place to go for maintaining your car...see Initial D for an idea of what it's like). You go do your thing (I have no idea what they say there) and as you prepare to drive off, the worker runs to the street and stops traffic for you, then bows to you a few times as you drive off. No way in hell you'll see that in America anytime soon. Awesome.
And then of course there are the more obvious things, like how tipping doesn't exist here. I don't quite recall the precise reason (if there is one) that that's the case, but my speculation is that it's because receiving tips makes it seem like you have to be bribed to provide better service, when you should be doing it because it's your job.
Anyways, this country is great. My roommate-of-sorts never stops with the "you could take over this entire country with just one platoon of the American army" or some such. And then we wonder why it is that Japanese people are able to make things that are infinitely superior to their American counterparts (cars, electronics, etc.). Crazy Americans. If Japanese populated the US I bet it'd be a) not hated by more than half the world, b) not so lazy and inefficient, and c) it'd have cooler cars. There aren't too many cars here in Japan, most people get around by bike, taxi, or train. And yet they have a pretty solid auto industry...I'd say I wonder where all those cars go, but there seems to be a pretty obvious answer.
I suppose this trip is really doing what it was supposed to, in "opening my eyes to different ways of life" or whatever. I hope this doesn't make me too (much more) cynical.