Pizza and tears
...written on 03.30.03, @ 10:53 a.m.
Sun March 30, 2003
I was downstairs unlocking my bicycle when Min came around the corner. We both jumped a little in surprise. "Hi Min! How are you?" I asked. I saw his eyebrows furrow and he answered , "Ma . . . ma." I asked him why he wasn't feeling well and he turned to me, put his hand on his heart and said "iroiro" (various things). With that he headed up the stairs.
Hmmm. I had some errands I needed to run, but I resolved to pay him a visit when I got back to see how he was doing and if I could lighten his mood any.
A few hours later, a tray balanced on my knee, I knocked on his door. Min answered and when he saw the coffee and strawberry shortcake on the tray, he threw his arms up and screamed "Yeah!". He took the tray from me and asked me to join him. I ran back for my own cup of coffee and sat down at his table in the kitchen.
After we had talked for a while I asked him how he was feeling. He said he was feeling better, that a project at work was really getting him down. Later on in the conversation I picked up on some other trouble.
As usual, we were hammering out our communication via smatterings of Japanese, English and doodles in a notebook, and I had just finished a drawing of my attempts at a social life, when Min asked me "What about your Japanese life?"
That question hit me at a vulnerable moment and I began to cry. Min watched the tears fall through my knuckles and being the romantic artist that he is, was not afraid of my tears and pressed me with the question.
I guess I was thinking of many things at that point. Soon it will be time to decide if I want to extend my contract and stay in Japan for another six months to a year and What Japanese life? At work I teach English and American culture, at home I eat American comfort food that I order from a special place in Japan. I've stopped exploring, content to ride the same paths to work or to the same market. My attempts to sustain friendships with Japanese people have failed, I spend inordinate amounts of time at home, surfing the net, reading about teaching ideas or holding solataire DVD mara-watchathons.
Min tried to bolster my courage and hope. First he said my circle of Japanese friends was too small and when I said that those friends seemed to take a liking to the new American teachers I introduced them to, he then said that Japanese like new people. I had to laugh. He put on a Paula Cole song and said it was my song. The message was clear, "if it is to be, it is up to me."
Anyway we got over that little hump and Min suggested that we go out to eat, but I felt so cozy in his little kitchen that I told him I didn't want to leave. He ordered pizza for us and when it came I went back to my apartment and got some drinks. That pizza (which I have ordered many times before) tasted better than it ever had. Min liked it too.
After the pizza, Min continued to play a mini concert of his favorite songs for me. He put on some Joni Mitchell, and some others. Listening to the mellow background music, we continued our conversation on our personal philosophies of love.
Min asked me if I believed in a one True Love. He asked me if true love could contain jealousy. Can you love two or more people equally at the same time? He asked me what the most important thing was for love.
I said that I had many loves in my life, some at the same time and that I knew there would be more someday. I told him that I reencountered a long lost love here in Japan and that the years had changed us from that time past. We loved what we were, what we had, and that now we treasured each other as friends. I told him that communication was the most important thing, that it wasn't easy, that it required lots of work, but that work was challenging and it never failed to make me feel fresh and alive.
I explained through drawings how events can happen, but that it is our perception of those events that inspire our behavior. I showed him how Ladies A, B, and C might react to seeing him with Lady D. I told him how I would communicate my jealous feelings or any feelings for that matter. He kept nodding his head, making comments like "I see" and "Of course". He told me a snippet of conversation he had the other day with Lady A, and I understood a little more of the "iroiro" (various things) that were bothering him.
This morning I found a blue plastic bag hanging on my door. Inside was Laura Nyro's Live The Loom's Desire, a postcard of a cat and a two page note in Japanese with a little note in English at the top: (Let's home study my letter!)
I will study it later. The day is beautiful and I have new paths to make.