Writings:2008 NaNoWriMo novel, Dreams
table and kangaroo girl
8:01pm JST Saturday 1 November 2008 (day 14101)
Had a chance to get a used table from a friend, so I solicited the help of some friends to help me move it. Richard (Kiwi) was helping move it when I arrived (late) with my group, and he was upset. I placed my hand on his chest and made eye contact with him for a few minutes as he changed from hot and sweaty to normal; emotionally angry to spiritually enlightened; and from Richard the Kiwi to Kim Sawyer, my warrior brother.
I then apologized to the group for making them wait again, thanked them for their help, and suggested that if we get just one person on each corner of the table, we could lift it easily, or two smaller people on each corner, and a girl went to the opposite end and just picked it up, "or one strong person to just get the other end," and we started to carry it.
She wasn't as strong as I thought and she struggled a bit to carry it; I considered asking for help again from the group, but didn't.
- - - -
Riding in a train along a river, there were plenty of people on it, but no windows to keep us all inside. We could see down the cliff into the river, and I noted with some curiosity (and excitement) that PB was sailing along the river. It looked really far away; farther away than the river itself (or the river must be really wide?)
The train driver announced something about waterfalls that I didn't understand, and then suddenly I couldn't see PB, because the river was right up at our level; because I had been looking back at the ship, I didn't see the water falls! The train turned to cross the higher elevation river, so we could see the water flowing off to the right of the train, off the face of the cliff.
Rolling across some islands in the water, we went by a family of kangaroos, one of whom was a really cute blonde girl with kangaroo body (a centauroo?), who waved to the train as we passed by. She saw how the train had no sides, so she suggested helpfully: "be careful!" as we passed by, even though normally she would just wave like a character in a theme park.
I said I was being careful, but then noted another equally cute woman on the train, just in front of me; under the guise of being helpful, I scooped my arm around her waist to ensure she said on the train.
As we progressed, I wondered if it was appropriate to have my arm around her, but she didn't seem to mind, so I just stayed there. Nice.
Arrived a a party, someone announced we could see PB, which was parked in the river, visible from an onsen. I was all excited like, "really? where? where?" because it was my first time in this area.
A guy pointed and was like, "roughly that way," pointing up a hill, so I started out, taking a dirt road that led roughly that way. He was like, "no nononono," as if I should have known better.
And I was like, "fahkoff, so show me," and he proceeded to walk straight down the little slope to go up the hill. I realized I had forgotten my camera in my haste to follow, but he had one in his pocket and threw it back to me. We were soon climbing up a rickety ladder with a goat standing on it. He made it past the goat, and I made it past the goat more quickly, and then past my friend. As we arrived at the top of the ladder, I realized we were in the onsen area, with two naked old Japanese men standing in the water up to their knees, looking at us as if we might be invading their space.
We remained quiet, to support the atmosphere, but then everything changed when I saw the ship. She was there, just beyond the onsen, chillin' in a nub of the river fed by the onsen runoff. The onsen remained, and a dinner party appeared around it, complete with cocktail dresses and a grand piano. I started taking pictures, but couldn't get very good shots, so I started running as I kicked off my shoes behind the grand piano and arrived on the other side of the ship, where I called to the driver (the ship was just a speed boat now), asking him to turn sideways so I could see the PB logo.
He did, and I took pictures, listening to the sound of the click to know it had taken. The lighting was low, so I tried to keep the PB logo in place in the viewfinder as the light meter ticked up from 0.00 to 10.00 in about 2 seconds. I wasn't able to hold it quite correctly, but a few times I got some nearly crisp shots of the ship. I knew there should be a way to set the flash correctly, but didn't know how to do it.
school
3:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)
Classes continue as always. In gymnastics I wanted to add a new part to my routine, a double back layout. While I wore the safety harness, I was able to do the trick no problem, but it seemed to hold me down from doing it to my full ability. So when we took off the harness I launched way up into the air and overrotated so that I landed wrongly, like banged my butt and back and head, similar to my skating accident, but this time I maintained consciousness, and all my vital fluids, so that's a bonus. However, I stretched something in my spine, so our instructor suggested I find a yoga class to help it recover nicely.
Loads of homework in dj class; we are supposed to memorize the sounds on all the records in the station. I think it would be better to just download an imprint of them so we can actually see the sounds but the instructor was like, "back in my day we didn't have imprints blah blah," so if I do use that method, I better make sure I can still answer the questions in the way *he* wants them to be answered.
Blah.
Natalie the yogi
8:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)
Overheard a woman talking on her cell phone as we walked out of the school into the U-turn pickup area. She said she was meeting Natalie, so I asked if she was meeting Natalie Ferris.
The woman didn't know her Natalie's last name, but I didn't give up there. I askd about the nature of their meeting. "What does Natalie like to do?" I asked. "My Natalie likes salsa," I offered, after hearing they were going to meet for yoga. "I guess we know different Natalies."
I kept hanging around, though, basically wanting to expand my people skills. I asked how they had met, but I don't remember the answer. Her Natalie arrived in the area and called to complete the visual connection.
We saw her on the other side of the U-turn, and walked over to meet her. After they said HI, I was like, "HI; I'm Rob," and "I was wondering if I could join, if that would be okay."
Natalie asked her two students what they thought, and when they said it would be okay, I asked how much she would charge for one lesson. Natalie said, "ten dollars, so I guess that's 1000 yen." Ah; she hasn't been in Tokyo very long.
I said, "excellent; I'd like to join," and as a joke, I gave her 1000 Vietnamese dong. None of them noticed, but the original woman I had met said, "it's actually 10,000 yen."
Natalie put the 1000 dong in her wallet, and I was like, "wha?" in my mind, and then said, "Okay wait; I have a little problem." I first turned to Natalie, "you said 1000 yen, and as a joke I gave you 1000 dong. I figured the others would notice immediately and then I'd give you the correct amount."
I then turned to Natalie and the original woman. "But she says now that it's 10,000 yen, and I must admit that at this time I choose not to pay that much for a lesson, but I would like your card, so I can pay that much in the future."
flying away from the bombs and into Sarah
6:25am JST Thursday 6 November 2008 (day 14106)
With some rebels from some arm in a field in a neighborhood, chilling on a picknic bench, one of them fired a missile from our location to a location on the other side of the houses from us. A big arc of smoke showed exactly the trail of the missle, but when it detonated, destroying all the area over there, no one knew it came from our group, except for our bosses who kept telling us (Jei) not to do that. He replied each time that he understood, and then immediately did it again.
They radioed him again and he said it was an accident. This time we saw the victims: some dark skinned guy with full beard and no shirt ran out of his house and yelled toward the fire fighters to spray him with their hoses to douse him so the imminent explosion wouldn't kill him.
They sprayed his front side, and he turned around and they sprayed his back. He ran out of the scene and then we saw the explosion from afar, brighter than the first time. ONe of the guys commented, "was that a 50 megaton?" And Jei goes "yeah."
I decided I didn't want to be near these guys anymore, so I started to leave. They were like, "where you going?" cause we were trapped inside this cafeteria sized room. I was like, "I can fly," and I flew up toward the ceiling (where I had to be careful of some high tension wires) and they were all, "whoah! he can fly! he can fly!" and they were thinking I must have some secret occult powers that they wanted. I had no plans to give them any such power, so I blassted out through the brick wall of the auditorium and basically went horizontally through the building, smashing through wall after wall.
I noted with some curiosity that I normally flew vertically through floor-ceiling after floor-ceiling. I was having a bit of trouble getting my full flying power to come, so I remained fairly affected by gravity, and ended up in a room on the far side of the building.
I thought, "I'll say in here where I'll have just three crumbs of food," but was a bit surprised/happy to see there were actually three hamburgers in the room, discarded yet intact on the floor. I explored around the room a bit and noted a propane stove was left burning, and another open flame was in the corner of the room. I turned off the flame in the sink, and noted its nozzle protective grill was still red hot.
Around that time, Sarah from OZ came into the room and started fighting/wrestling with me, as we both knew the red hot item could be used as a weapon. I was surprised by her strength, but then I did something caressing, and had a little fondle and sucked gently on her nipple. She relented and we began to kiss and make out.
Forgetting Names
5:13pm JST Monday 10 November 2008 (day 14110)
Arrived at a party and a woman was like, "do you remember my name?" and I immediately said, "Ebe!" and she was like, "nooo!" so I go, "Yuki! Yoko! Miki!" and she was like, "it's Yuko...." so I was like, "Yuko!" but she was unimpressed.
A bit later, another girl was like, "do you remember my name?" and I go, "Yoko! Miki! Yuko! Yuki!" and she's like, "It's Ebe." and I was like, "I said Ebe first a while ago for Yuko, [if that counts for anything]," but it didn't.
There was some discussion about why who remembers what names, and I told my version. I was like,
1. "First, I'm a visual learner. If I just hear someone's name, I'm very likely to forget it in two seconds unless I visually spell it in my mind, or carefully learn the kanji.
2. "Second, when I talk to people, I'm shy, and I don't look at their face. I'm like, "this spot on the ground looks pretty good; I'll just look at it." And this is even more pronounced with Japanese culture. We're not supposed to make eye contact. If she's an おばさん then I look so far away that I'm like, this," and turned my head to look the opposite direction, "oh hello, nice to meet you!" as I waved in the direction of my invisible granny. The girls laughed, so I knew they could relate.
3. "Third, and this is part of Japanese culture, Japanese don't tend to individualize themselves. When every guy has short spikey hair, and every woman has shoulder length dyed brown hair, and everyone is like, "I'm an office worker," and, "I like sleeping in my free time," how am I to make a file in my brain? "I'll just file this one in 'expensive hair tired worker,' It's not helpful when everyone is in the same file!"
I wondered about taking pictures of everyone, and really trying to make an effort at remembering names. When I was first advising in YRUU, I would spend hours poring over the mugbooks, carefully remembering all the youths' names. I could usually end up remembering most of the major cities / churches, and some addresses.
Perhaps U-cow's site could be useful in this regard.
Miki
6:23pm JST Tuesday 11 November 2008 (day 14111)
In a vehicle on a highway, sitting along the sides of the carriage. No one had to drive. I found out that the amazing tour we had of the city via ship yesterday was arranged by the mom of the family, so I thanked her profusely, and mentioned to her husband that he was lucky.
I was showing off my life-sized marble track to the group, and one guy crawled in to see it in more detail. I had parts of i covered with cloth for the party, so he couldn't see where to step. He stood on a part that was only thin wood, and it cracked as I told him as he fell through. I said not to worry about it; there were no marble track bits on that part of the track. The structure was basically made of three wooden pallets as in a grocery store, all connected in a vertical stack, like shelves.
Miki offered me another slice of pizza. Her sister was there and offered me some chocolate topping. I took the chocolate topping with my fingers and tried to eat it. Miki was a bit shocked, "can you do that???" but i couldn't answer as I was eating. I had a slight spill and got chocolate on my face. I laughingly answered her, "therefore, no. I can't do it." She giggled and I smeared a bit of chocolate on her face and she laughed.
So great to see Miki so happy.
Colleen
8:08pm JST Wednesday 12 November 2008 (day 14112)
At a UU assembly, held in a rather large collection of buildings. I was walking barefootedly outside on a balcony, enjoying the feel of gentle wooden planks supporting each step.
- - - -
On a train with Colleen, I was writing her a letter by affixing plastic letters with clothespins to a coat hanger.
S I N C E Y O U ' L L H A V E A R A I N C O A T , W H A T M O R E C O U L D Y O U N E E D ?
As I was affixing the letters, I was thinking about several different things, including how I was going to send her the coathanger, how I appreciated that she'd understand my joke, how much more time I had before arriving at my station, and how we would joke about it later when I told her she should definitely bring Monty Bear, her huge stuffed bear she won at a carnival.
Then I realized Colleen was watching from the other side of the train, so I rotated the hanger so it was pointing right at her forehead so she wouldn't be able to read the note. She laughed and crossed her eyes, pretending that would give her enough angle to read it. Then I realized we were at Motosumiyoshi, so I got off the train, leaving the coat hanger note with Colleen.
Dr Stable
7:37pm JST Thursday 13 November 2008 (day 14113)
In a hospital, hearing a page overhead: "Dr Stable, we're having trouble getting the patient stabilized for surgery. Dr Stable, we're having trouble getting the patient stabilized for surgery."
I found myself intrigued that the Dr's name was the same as the anti-condition of the patient, and that they announced the Dr's name, but not the patient's name. I wondered if it was code for something else.
9:37pm JST
I just remembered
Finally got to see Ami after her mom's death. She was finally able to cry without concern for others nor her surroundings. I felt happy that I could support her in this way.
climbing, KTRU, PB
5:18pm JST Monday 17 November 2008 (day 14117)
Climbing up a trail with janette's quilt as my only item, there are pine trees around, but a clearing in which the trail is climbing up the hill. The trail is drit while the grass around is nice and green. There are curious animals who watch e climbing. I walk up for a ways, wondering why I don't have any stuff. Have I left something down below? I don't want to go down and look for it
- - - -
I'm in a bunk bed inside a cabin, with a guy from KTRU zonked out next to me. Two female DJs come in and it's determined that he should sleep on top of me. I know we know we're all best buds and nothing we do will change that, so I say something like, "come here," with arms open wide, and he lies on top of me in my arms and we're careful not to have our faces close together, but I can feel his junk on my knee, so I'm a bit creeped out by that, and move my face a bit further away, making sure I can get fresh air, and not wanting to contaminate his air with mine.
Station manager Meg comes in as we are all four puppy piled on top of each other (with me on the bottom) and she comes in just as we've gotten ourselves arranged. She's just about to shout, "to attenTION!" and a couple of us open one eye as if to say, "you're not going to make us climb out of our comfy puppy pile, are you?"
- - - -
Watching a video starring the GET teachers from my voyage:
Kris faces Angie who asks "did you cut my hair?" and Kris goes, "and I dyed it purple."
Then Natalie faces Kris who is like, "did you cut my hair?" and Natalie is like, "and I died it purple," but in a different way than above.
This continues for a bit, and I wonder why I don't remember making this video until I notice some teachers who were *not* on my voyage. I realize this must be from their previous voyage (47th).
The video continues with a presentation from dancers right out of flying carpet Arabia. One scene of their dance featured a guy with a long curving sword, with a spiral end. He whirled it around his arms for a second and then ritually cut a broomstick into three pieces, but did it so quickly and precisely that the stick didn't fall even though it was only being held by the ends.
