Obviously, perhaps, I switched my name back to something vaguely not mine. Yes, anyone with a care will find out who I am. Do I fear to write things I fear may be watched? Well... yes, to a certain degree. For example, there can be no sharing with you all out and abroad about opinions I may have about class, and I already edit out quite a lot so I don't just use this place as a public soapbox for whining.
But sometimes I wonder how dishonest it is not to let you all know out there, those of you who are reading this to stay actually informed about us, that sometimes stuff is tough, and there is nothing I want more than a patient ear to hear me go off on one.
Lately, things have been busy, and stressful, and difficult. In some ways, I feel like I hardly have room to whine. I have people I know who are balancing what seems like a ridiculous amount of work, and I feel almost ashamed for wanting to cry and whine about how hard my life is. I struggle with a lot of resentment for people who don't seem to get how time-consuming parenting is. Especially since baby isn't the type to just go down for the night. Especially when we don't have baby in daycare, and likely won't until she hits a year. How an hour or two a day is hardly time enough for getting work done. How I am actually a really damn good student, a good researcher... if only I have the time to do it. When I have an hour to sort my thoughts, I feel like I regain some of my sanity, my enthusiasm for my subject matter... I wanted very strongly last semester to not have any exceptions made for me. I got all my work in on time, no begging for extensions. (Straight As, for what it matters in grad school.) I am trying to maintain the same attitude this semester, largely because I feel like I have fewer excuses.
But it doesn't stop me from getting really frustrated. Whether it is giving my all for a class I am not taking for credit and getting my feelings hurt over teacher favoritism, or wanting to scream at my time limitations--how can I bloody research a seminar paper if I have virtually no time to go the library? ...No one ever promised me this would be easy. I am planning on going back full time next semester, and this excites and terrifies me. In a way, I will luck out--I am going to be making a third of the courses LANGUAGE.
I am going to take Japanese. I am going to love it. Then I am going to take CLASSICAL Japanese, and love it. And maybe at some point, I will stop feeling so homesick.
Because that is the other part. The feeling of disconnect hasn't stopped. We are making some friends here, and are attending church, though our involvement doesn't feel like much yet. And the few warm days have me thinking of nothing but Japan. I miss the sweet smell of ume on the breeze, promising spring. The thought of a springtime without sakura makes me want to cry, the same way autumn without momiji felt empty. But I can't reverse time, nor can I return to the spots I left--the space I occupied is no longer available. The situation has completely changed. If I returned, say, to Minakuchi, what on earth would I do there? I know every road of that town walking. Or Hikone? The plum trees in the mysterious garden I never asked to enter, in the historical samurai house... they must be starting to bloom now. All my former students are growing up, and I am not getting to see it. But I would not return to that, either. I yearn for a place that has no place for me.
Someone once asked me if I was homesick for Japan, did that mean that I thought of it as home? ... I wish it were that simple. Like all things, it is suffused with profound ambivalence. What I miss is not what I despised when I lived there. What I yearned for here is not what makes me furious and frightened when I read the news.
At night, often as I feed the baby to sleep, I am swept away in vivid nightmares, waking dreams that reveal to me my powerlessness to protect the tiny creature who is my greatest gift. Is this a lack of faith? At such times I feel that being separated from my child would throw me into complete despair, total desperation. Is this instinct nature's way of assuring the protection of young? Will it lessen in intensity as she grows older, more capable of protecting herself? If I succumb to the fear, I will only create in her a dependency that I do not desire for her.
I am beginning to doubt my goals again. I thought this was what I wanted, to be back in school, to be studying this. But sitting in class, abstracting things which are real into theories, I grow frustrated. Was this what I wanted? Oftentimes it seems like everyone else has the right background for this work, and I don't. I don't even really know what I want to research. I have my interests. But my insights feel juvenile and unseasoned. More than ever, the question of applicability burns in me. The academy seems caught up in completely useless things. Is this some throwback to the academy as a place for the rich to find topics to fritter away their time? I feel like I need inspiration, and I need it fast, before I reject this whole pointless enterprise with a "So what?" I wanted to understand things. People. Culture. But I don't see anyone trying to understand, only make material another step again inaccessible and removed.
