Golden Week

Everything has been a mad whirlwind of activity since school started back up. It turns out that junior high school is intense. And then there is still elementary school matters and kindergarten matters and work matters and studying for the big Japanese test matters and scheming to move matters. I get dizzy just thinking about my to-do lists.

So it was a great relief to have a proper sunny Golden Week last week, a bank holiday of three days wedged up against the weekend to make five solid days of no work or school. We didn't travel off the island (Sebastian has kendo club everyday which makes it hard to go anywhere) but managed to enjoy ourselves all the same.

Golden Week from Tiffany Key on Vimeo.

xo

At the seashore

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining one,
a suggestion of fishes and ships
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

-Pablo Neruda-

This I can say, we do need the sea.




As our fate unravels only to get tangled into tiresome knots, as all the petty facts of life clamber and claw over us, we need the sea to remind us of the truth. The waves do not knock down our fears or draw away our problems with the tide. We gain something greater, the reminder that we are but tiny phytoplankton with the life expectancy of just a few days.
That truth is incredibly liberating. With our perspective straightened, we are free to work on those knots and stand up under the weight of our nagging concerns.

Year of the Snake

Words.
I am experiencing a drought of words.

Or, perhaps, it is not for lack of words to string together.
Perhaps it is just that I have yet to successfully saddle and mount time. There is a bridle in place but my hands are caught and twisted in the reins. I'm being dragged around by a beastly stallion and I don't even have the sense to complain.
Is it a poor excuse? Perhaps.

It has almost been one year since I left teaching full-time. I never knew before how very short a year could be.

It has been two years since the disaster in Northern Japan. Two years since a tsunami washed away thousands of lives and my misconceptions of what I wanted in life.

I haven't been writing here because I have been busy elsewhere but without any tangible results to share. I know that this space is more of a process bulletin board but for my own idea of this online record of events, I would like to try and reach my own bizarre standards. Unfortunately, this means that I try to write here when the computer is free (unusual) and when my mind is clear (unlikely). Essentially impossible conditions in a small apartment crowded with littles.

The first post after an extended break is always the hardest. What do I tell and how much of it should I share?

Maybe if I break it into bite-sized bullet points then it will be simpler:

-Nico is graduating from kindergarten on Friday.
-Nico is starting elementary school in April.
-Sebastian will be a fourth grader.
-From April, I will teach part-time, Jason will teach part-time.
-I started a resin jewelry Etsy shop.
-We don't know how everything will work out.
-We don't know where we will end up. Everywhere is lovely and awful. We can no longer search outside of ourselves for utopia.
- I've been obsessed with this idea of Huxley's: "Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
-I cried watching this movie.
-Luca is a full-fledged walker who loves rice and vegetables. He also weighs almost 29 pounds.
-I am not reaching my writing quota. Getting the shop running has taken over all spare minutes. And there were not so many to begin with so I had to make some up. Like the minutes that fall after midnight.
-Jason bought a suit today and was highly disgruntled about it.
-The cherry blossoms will bloom soon. Again.

So, maybe that is good for now. I'll do my best to post at least twice a week from here on. For my own crazy standards, not for you, patient reader. I know that if you are reading this now, you're ready to wait me out.

xoxo

Dreaming in green

So now that we get to stay, we have to fulfill all those promises we made, the little IOUs to the Universe in exchange for the three-year visa that lines Colette's passport.

One of the main promises I kept making was to be more awake and aware. Obviously our life here is very fragile so I need to pay constant attention. I really, truly love Japan. I love the quiet, the attention to detail, the weeds left to grow everywhere, the glass bells and cicadas in the summertime. Even the soft and sour parts of Japan can fit into my heart. Yet, paying attention includes paying attention to my own needs, as well as appreciating my environment.

And one thing that I have been craving is wildness. Japan is a very wild country, though most might not consider it to be so. Step outside of the city limits and you will probably be in the mountains or standing in a rice field. For my nature loving family, living in the concretescape that is Nagoya can be a little soul-numbing. Don't get me wrong, Nagoya is a comfortable city, and less urban than Tokyo, Osaka, and even Fukuoka. But it is a city nonetheless. Living here can make you a little dazed, it can make trekking outside of the city limits seem troublesome. For us, a lot of the problem is based around scheduling. It is rare that all of us are free for explorations on the same day. So on Monday after our triumph at immigration, realizing my luck in having all three kids at the same time, we headed out of Nagoya a bit to see what a forest park looked like.

Upon arriving, we were reminded how everything is closed on Mondays in Japan, including forest parks.

So we ended up taking a lovely, albeit windswept, stroll around a small lake. Though no hike, it was such a good, sunshiny walk. We saw our first tanbo (dragonfly) of the season, along with skinks, ladybugs, water striders, and even a muskrat. Being outdoors with the kids (coupled with the release from the heaviness of worry I had been toting around for a few weeks) made it really a perfect afternoon. So perfect in fact, that I have decided to spend every chance we can going outside of the limits, into the unknown. Though Sebastian does request that we bring the nets next time, for as he said, "If I had known there were going to be insects, I would have been better prepared".

The dawn of mushi season

It's still a little early but the nets have made their way into our daily walks again, both boys ready for whatever will fly or jump their way. Or out of their way.



Right now, butterflies are the main thrill. Sebastian has learned how to catch them in his bare hands and in doing so has come to realize just how delicate they are, how easily their short lives can be ruined. He has returned to the net, preferring now to watch them briefly in the plastic mushi case before releasing them back to their clover and dandelions. It is in turn amazing for me to watch my son's innate respect for life blossom and grow.



Soon, we'll have mushi cases housing preying mantis and beetles, cicadas and grasshoppers stacked on shelves and cabinet tops. Everything will buzz and hum, tuning in harmony with summer. Dripping with sweat and determination, the kids will check every bush and tree trunk for more six legged creatures to invite home. The nets will seem like extensions of their bodies.



I would hardly recognize the season otherwise.