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thither!
how do you know when it is time to take a stand for yourself? when do you recognize double standards in your relationships, and when do you risk bringing them up, risk the fighting or uncomfortaleness or stalemate that is sure to follow?
when do you decide that the person you are seeing is worth fighting for? when do you give up and just quit? i thought i had some of these questions answered. it is so frustrating to realize you have to ask them again and again, every time you start something new with someone.
i hate st louis. i wish i had this year back; i have fucked up royally since returning to america from japan. part of me just wants to run back there, to the last place i was really happy and organized and forward-looking, and start over.
i never realized that i was lazy and noncommittal about my life until now. i have always made decisions quickly and run with them. but here i sit, in the middle of winter in the middle of america, stagnating, friendless, bored, half in love, and that half makes things infinitely more complicated.
i am totally unable to make a decision about what to do next with my life. sometimes too many options are a lot worse than one bad one. i need a fairy to fly out the the ether, point, and say "thither you must go!"
id be packing tomorrow. sigh.
[ posted by kaycee at 02/03/2007 06:28:28 AM ] [ link ] [ 8 responses ]
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my new phobia.
yesterday steven and i went spelunking in these old abandoned mineshfts outside of st. louis. it was radical. we tied string to an old tractor and went twisting and turning into the side of a mountain. if we turned our flashlights off, the darkness was immediate and total. the only time i was afraid was when my string went too slack and i thought it might have broken. the bats overhead, oh, the oceans of squeaking winged rodenes, clinking and humming, disgruntled at the intrusion but nonplussed enough to stay suspended...
to get to this place, we had to walk down the railroad tracks, Stand By Me style, and then through i large field winking fireflies at us. then we squeezed through a fence and tiptoed acrossa rickety bridge. i swear i saw a giant turtle in the water as we crossed, but it might only have been the reflections of sunset on the water.
we emerged and held hands as our tennis shoes swished back across the grass to the tracks, laughing and making Indiana Jones jokes.
This morning i woke up a little stiff around the knees from crouching, and with one wicked bruise on my shin. i pulled my shirt over my head to get into the shower and notced a bloody spot on my collarbone. touching it was like touching a scab that tried to wiggle away from its inevitable picking.
(wiggle away?)
so...
i picked.
i picked a tick.
i picked a tick from my collarbone.
i picked A FUCKING TICK from my COLLARBONE!
i flung it into the sink and watched it crawl around, swollen with my blood, MY BLOOD, and then a squished itwith the end of steves roommates toothbrush and flushed its squirty remains down the drain.
this digressed into a massive cleansing of body, clothing, sheets, and anything else that had contact with the great cave adventure. i picked at every one of my dreadlocks at least twice, and even became obsessive and scratchy enough to cut off most of my pubic hair with child safety scissors... and that would be a lot more pull and a lot less snip.
and when steven came home from work, i worked him over like a monkey looking for... well, ticks.
i know what i am going to dream about tonight....
[ posted by kaycee at 06/29/2006 11:49:23 PM ] [ link ] [ 23 responses ]
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sigh...
so i suppose when you write a brutally honest letter to someone about how they have treated you badly, you should expect a bit of cruelty back.
this dude i fucked a couple of times started being really weird and not talking to me, so i told him off in a short and honest letter explaining why i wanted nothing more to do with him because he made me feel bad. bad because i dont like being ignored basically, and thats what he was doing. it is not an emotion i am well-aquainted with. loathed? hated? these are all tangible enough to keep in my pocket and roll around, clinking... but silence is like having no change and being stuck in a phonebooth in the rain, wanting to talk to.. well, anyone.
well im not being ignored anymore. i just received a rather bitter email (And i have gotten some bad ones in the past...). id post it here but i am not in the mood for anyone to look for any truth about me in it. at least my letter was truthful, and i tried to stay above the belt. this one was meant to hurt me for no reason except that i drew first blood, but it seems to me that i threw a snowball and he went and got the shovel.
fuck all this.
i really miss being in a relationship with steven. even when we were fighting, at least i knew what i was dealing with. and i knew that all the fighting was getting us someplace, towards something, and even if we didn;t make it, he was worth the effort.
all this wallowing about, second-guessing myself, tyring to figure out whats expected of me, trying to be myself even when i know that takes some getting used to for people... it is all just so hard.
now i am sitting here trying not to cry over a bunch of shit that i know isnt true about me but since it was said, it has to be taken into consideration. am i really creepy? ive never been called creepy before. am i really argumentative and needy? i'm not asking for opinions, here, im really just wanting to see the words in type so they look ridiculous as they sound.
it looks like this year is going to be a year of firsts. im already tired. im so tired of all the newness i dont even want to put on a new pair of socks. i am used to the holes in the bottoms of my old ones. yeah, the floor is cold, but they are so hard to deregulate from favorite item to burnable trash...
[ posted by kaycee at 01/20/2006 11:40:12 AM ] [ link ] [ 16 responses ]
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familiarity breeds complacency
i hate having a crush on someone. i fucking Loathe it.
i feel, in some ways, at the ripe old age of 26, that i am over it. or i should be past this gigglycarbonated feeling in my stomach. and groin.
i was with the same person for three years... we broke up last may, but he only left my life and my apartment 2 months ago. this means that i am just getting to the point where he is not the first thing i see in the morning, my first thought, first consideration, first action.
it isn't necessarily that love becomes a habit... it is more that the person you love becomes so deeply ingrained into your every move that you can easily forget that your life was different before.
it has taken me so long to realize that i have not been in love for a long time. i wanted to be, but it just didn't work.
this is sad...
and made even more sad by the idea that this, too, is going to have to be a new habit. something to wake up with in the morning, something to curl up against at night.
far from my first thought, but not far from my thoughts ever.
it isn't all bad. actually (sorry, boy...i really miss you but...) i love being alone.
i love rolling out of bed, running 6km, and then coming home and watching japanese cartoons and sweating and stretching all over the kitchen floor, knowing that i stink and knowing i don't care. i came home tonight and realized that, far from having to cook dinner for two, i could eat popcorn, pistachios, and Pez while watching a Lost rerun.
i love that i get bored after my hour-long bath crinkled-toe marathons and play guitar really badly at 11p.m (much to the chargrin of my polite, silent, japanese neighbors.)
i love going places by myself, saying no when i want to , not talking to anyone when i don't want to (this lasts for days sometimes...).
i don't have to "work things out," or feel uncomfortable about wanting sex more than someone else; i can go about on my rickety bike mumbling to myself in the grocery store about which miso to buy, because there is no one else to talk to but more because i don't give a Fuck about anything now.
i want to stick out my last japan days, enjoy em, and head the fuck home...
i have been doing all this, for so long, and then suddenly i have to get a fucking huge crush on a boy two hours away,
a boy with a good kiss and a pair of giant sunglasses.
suddenly, after my delightfully self-imposed break from all human contact besides the occasional phonecall, i am skimming my msn all the fucking time to see if he is around to talk.
i feel like a fucking jerk.... but i haven't done anything like this in such a long time.
familiarity breeds complacency.
when you are close enough to someone that you know how they will feel a lot of the time, you don't need msn to tell you when they want to talk, you dont have to wait aorund to see if they are going to think you are pretty, or fat, or funny, 24 hours later... they are expected to.
expectation. maybe thats what this all rolls itself up into.
what can you expect from people? people you love? people you just met? people you want to expect from, if even for 67 days...
and my boy is so unhappy, and he is my best friend, and that makes me feel even worse. i can't help him feel better, and i feel bad for feeling good.
[ posted by kaycee at 12/14/2005 12:17:29 PM ] [ link ] [ 0 responses ]
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a quick rant
it feels funny to come back and type here. it is cold again in my apartment and i think i have typed that before, back a year ago when the wind blew my laundry off the balcony and i burned too much kerosene. here i am again, inhaling the fumes and picking up laundry i now know is impossible to safely secure, and smiling.
i was in america for christmas, and it was a weird and ultimately unfriendly expreience. i was happy with my family, they are always lovely, but without a gaggle fo friends to go out with i was stuck with the cowboys and the snow. i got food poisoning at taco bell, even minus the dairy and meat, and was ill for three days. i stared forfornly at the Claussen dill pickles in the fridge, sighing, wishing i felt good enough to eat.
some things were nice. the supermarket ROCKS. such a wide variety of food is unheard of here. frozen veggie burgers??? hah, i have to make those here. and cheap vegetables??? artichokes? zucchini? perhaps deanna will know what i mean, but a red pepper for under 3 dollars is like a small miracle.
other things??? frankly, you guys, the volume on america needs to go way, WAY down. people are loud, and noisy, and cranky, and mean, and aggresive. going out for a beer was like a circus. i got to line-dance, and that was fun, but the lack of social graces is noticable, even compared to a sexist society such as this one.
my little sister was beautiful, and breckany looks hopeful, and i love my parents. after a year and a half, it was weird. i have changed. i respond differently. i dont want to roll my eyes at them anymore when we disagree, or storm out to smoke, and that seems to feel good. i like being friends with all of them, i dont miss the angst.
i taught a class on japan to my sisters 2nd grade class. i brought them all chopsticks and showed the kanji and answered questions about what animal names are. it feels funny, becayse japan feels so normal to me that i forget that it is far away to most people. weird. they were cute though, and they all knoe a dog says WAN WAN here.
i went to steves for a week. his parents are lovely. i cooked dinner for all 10 of them one night, and we drank too much beer and talked about video games. it felt familiar, like a vacation i would have taken back when i lived there. like a sleep-over. his friends are WAY to much like him. i like his friends. they are the most realistic, honest people i have met in a long time. and the st louis arch is big. really big.
i was glad to come home. glad that i call japan home. we are staying another year, it looks like. i will move up to mishima, though. im dont here in august. mishima is a change of pace and bigger, the people are nicer, the job is easier. and steve and i will get to live a minute, instead of 2 hours, from each other.
when you put a time limit on something, it all looks a little shinier. like the extra 5 dollar billi found in my pocket at the airport just before i left, i was so happy, because i bought a drink on the plane. and i knew that, a few hours later, it would be useless, but just then it was priceless . not that my time here is useless.. but it is becoming more special as a know that i wont ever do it again. working in this high school in rural japan has been really cool.
what else? i wish i could come and hang out with all the people i used to sit around with all night, laughing and watching stupid horror movies. it would be like a vacation. and for a long time i wanted it to be my life, and this to be my vacation, but it just isnt anymore. my life is here, and i hope to get vacations. a lot of them.
erin is coming though. that will be an excellent break. nite!
[ posted by kaycee at 02/04/2004 03:20:52 AM ] [ link ] [ 0 responses ]
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a quick rant
it feels funny to come back and type here. it is cold again in my apartment and i think i have typed that before, back a year ago when the wind blew my laundry off the balcony and i burned too much kerosene. here i am again, inhaling the fumes and picking up laundry i now know is impossible to safely secure, and smiling.
i was in america for christmas, and it was a weird and ultimately unfriendly expreience. i was happy with my family, they are always lovely, but without a gaggle fo friends to go out with i was stuck with the cowboys and the snow. i got food poisoning at taco bell, even minus the dairy and meat, and was ill for three days. i stared forfornly at the Claussen dill pickles in the fridge, sighing, wishing i felt good enough to eat.
some things were nice. the supermarket ROCKS. such a wide variety of food is unheard of here. frozen veggie burgers??? hah, i have to make those here. and cheap vegetables??? artichokes? zucchini? perhaps deanna will know what i mean, but a red pepper for under 3 dollars is like a small miracle.
other things??? frankly, you guys, the volume on america needs to go way, WAY down. people are loud, and noisy, and cranky, and mean, and aggresive. going out for a beer was like a circus. i got to line-dance, and that was fun, but the lack of social graces is noticable, even compared to a sexist society such as this one.
my little sister was beautiful, and breckany looks hopeful, and i love my parents. after a year and a half, it was weird. i have changed. i respond differently. i dont want to roll my eyes at them anymore when we disagree, or storm out to smoke, and that seems to feel good. i like being friends with all of them, i dont miss the angst.
i taught a class on japan to my sisters 2nd grade class. i brought them all chopsticks and showed the kanji and answered questions about what animal names are. it feels funny, becayse japan feels so normal to me that i forget that it is far away to most people. weird. they were cute though, and they all knoe a dog says WAN WAN here.
i went to steves for a week. his parents are lovely. i cooked dinner for all 10 of them one night, and we drank too much beer and talked about video games. it felt familiar, like a vacation i would have taken back when i lived there. like a sleep-over. his friends are WAY to much like him. i like his friends. they are the most realistic, honest people i have met in a long time. and the st louis arch is big. really big.
i was glad to come home. glad that i call japan home. we are staying another year, it looks like. i will move up to mishima, though. im dont here in august. mishima is a change of pace and bigger, the people are nicer, the job is easier. and steve and i will get to live a minute, instead of 2 hours, from each other.
when you put a time limit on something, it all looks a little shinier. like the extra 5 dollar billi found in my pocket at the airport just before i left, i was so happy, because i bought a drink on the plane. and i knew that, a few hours later, it would be useless, but just then it was priceless . not that my time here is useless.. but it is becoming more special as a know that i wont ever do it again. working in this high school in rural japan has been really cool.
what else? i wish i could come and hang out with all the people i used to sit around with all night, laughing and watching stupid horror movies. it would be like a vacation. and for a long time i wanted it to be my life, and this to be my vacation, but it just isnt anymore. my life is here, and i hope to get vacations. a lot of them.
erin is coming though. that will be an excellent break. nite!
[ posted by kaycee at 02/04/2004 03:14:08 AM ] [ link ] [ 0 responses ]
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how i was a rockstar sidekick
my friend eddie came to japan last weekend with the black label society. i am so proud of him.. he's a 23 year old kid who is doing everything he dreamed of when we sat sround at 14 writing music just cuz is was that or do drugs with all the other kids, we never wanted to be famous but somehow that made it even better...but then again i guess i am too...
deanna and i met up at the show. i am not a big fan of that band.. at ALL.. but hey, when do you get on a guest list like that? the show was sold out and it was surreal.. all these rockers and then business men who knew all the words and zakk wilde was screaming.. "this song goes out to saddam.. if you fuck with the best you die like the rest..."
awesome.
afterwards we went bar=hopping,. after lots of autograph signing from behind ropes.. even eddie had a fanclub, which was so funny... at some point i was having an extremely "deep" conversation with one of the roadies about the universe, saw 7 or 8 bars in all, we went to this one strage place which was filled totally with models.. real models from the abercrombie and fitch and W catalogues.. and we scribbled all over a poster on the wall, drank for free, and then ripped the poster down.. it's on my wall..
someone puked, someone disappeared, we did shots of crown royal and ebded up stumbing into the hard rock cafe in tokyo at 4am, it was closed but we just took over and played music and drank anyway cuz apparently no one says no to these people.. so fuckin weird... we fell into the door of the hotel at 6:30.. i fell asleep in the shower for a bit...
we left on the shinkansen at 7:30 for osaka, still wasted, bumping into each other, eddie had me on one arm and deanna on the other and we slept til they dumped us on a bus and took us to the club.. deanna and i wandered all day in osaka, laughing... hungover and queasy until dusk when we met up with eddie and went to a music store.. where eddie played guitar for these drooling kids and they followed us around, eddie and i got to play a little bit, i never forget what a fantastic musician he is but i love it anyway...
then we went ot the show.. up through the service entrance like real rockstars.. ha hah.. we watched the show from the sound booth.. geez eddie is good at what he does.. he even let me turn some knobs and play the after-show muisc and i was happy... god i just realized this all sounds so documentary - normal, there is no way to explain how chaotic and surreal it all was..
after the show we went to hard rock cafe in osaka so zakk could play an acoustic set and all these people were screaming and trying to get his attention, two kids even has black label tattoos and one with a tattoo of zakk running down his arm...it was odd to be on the other side of those ropes, you know? like i am a no one but i am sitting in this little roped off area with security guareds holding the crowd back, begging for a napkin...
then we went out again. more people. more free alcohol. more autographs. it was so surreal, we actually went back to the hotel with enough time to sleep for 2 hours this time, then we went to the train station.. and deanna and i got on the worng train, which left 4 minutes before eddies and the bands. so we didnt get to say goodbye.
that was so fucking sad. i cant even explain how miserable it was to ride home knowing i didnt really get to say thank you for the most insane, hysterical, fun weekend i have had in months...
i talked to eddie right before he flew back to america. and i am not embarassed to admit i cried like someone had died. a good reminder of how good yer friends are cans ometimes be really painful, too.
well, thats it i guess. i wish i could do that weekend justice. but it is still hazy.. i got home sunday afternoon and felt like id been away for weeks, dirty beat up exausted starving poisoned and giddy.
so. those guys were awesome. all the tour guys and the band were so fucking nice to us, they treated us like we belonged, even if they called us "eddie's hoes...".... well, it's something to tell the grandkids, anyway....
[ posted by kaycee at 04/25/2003 06:05:16 AM ] [ link ] [ 3 responses ]
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the prodigal killoggser
... i have been away so long. sorry. i have been super busy, partying with deanna and michael, getting ready for the new school year, going to hiroshima for a few days, and spending hours at a time on the phone with steve... and so the time goes by. i wish i could tell all the incredible things i have seen, especially in the hiroshima area, we went to a million shrines, into this cave with statues carved into the walls, pagodas, monks, and my new favorite food... a kind of japanese pizza with soba noodles and a yummy sauce...
things are really good here now.. all cherry blossoms and yellow fields of flowers, no more shitty heater and young people returning to this town for the summer of surfing which will start before we know it... going drinking with my teachers, all of us drunk and linking arms and singing the school song.. funny that i had to turn 23 and move to japan to have a sense of school pride! a kick-ass package from xmx, which made me feel like the most special girl in the world... wow, sometimes i am reminded about how fucking blessed i am... and my teeth will be very shiny thanks to the toothpaste!!!
it feels great to be happy, in so many ways... i think that sometimes i feel so serious, i feel the weight of being alone so much, being mostly illiterate, having a tough job.. and then i look at it a different way... my teachers calling restaurants ahead to make sure i get special vegan kaycee food, looking at a sign in kanji and being able to understand it a little more than i could have last month, shitty pop punk love songs on a cd from steve reminding me that i have so much to look forward to, every day.. a freshly-swept tatami floor and the sun coming in and suddenly i am really glad that i am here. only wish you guys could be here too.
i feel like i have written this kind of shit before. i promise to get some new material.. someday...
being in hiroshima was a little weird. this little old couple came up to us and said "you are welcome here" and i burst into tears cuz it is soo sad that they would even have to say that to us. watching the war news from here is an interesting experience and it id shiity and difficult.. but everyone knows where i stand and we put a certain face in the ashtray at school and put our cigarettes out on his face... it's the little gleeful moments, where the lines of communication open wide.. hah hah....
also, i have a pony tail. that doesnt mean anything to anyone who didnt know me when i had a shaved head with devil horns or dredlocks.. but it's a big deal to me. god, i am going straight-edge. i have also sent off a number of postcards.. if you want to be on the mailing list, lemme know. it is still my favorite thing. later gators!
[ posted by kaycee at 03/29/2003 10:26:05 PM ] [ link ] [ 1 responses ]
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relationships are for suckers...
tonight i slept again when i got home from work.. for three hours instead of five which is better???? i think???? i woke up disoriented and happy... i feel really good... my students are soo fun, and japan is lovely and steve sent me a wonderful letter and i wrote him back and he has good job leads and i think that having him here will totally change my life and the way i run my days but only in a good way..
funny how we haven't seen each other in two years but we can still be so in love and so ready to do this together.. this is mostly a shout-out because he says i dont talk about him enough on killoggs.. hah hah.. feels funny to be in love with someone thousands of miles away, especially as i can't really claim to have been in love before except with clark.. and when he left for oregon, at the same time as deanna left for france, it about killed me.. the scariest thing about loving someone for me is that most of the time it doesn't last.. and those of you who know me know i spent a whole lot of time fucking over my affairs, problably on purpose because i felt like ":relationships"were such bullshit, an excuse for people to act like idiots... or forget their friends..or forget themselves...
i have always put my friends first, a far bigger priority then and even now.. but at the same time i have to believe that it'll work this time.. that everything will be ok and he and i and japan is the best idea i have had in a long time... but sometimes there is some doubt in my head about how the whole thing goes.. all my friends have had serious relationships, lived with people, been a real couple, stayed together for years, i dunno, i haven't really done it before and i don't know what i'm doing but it still feels like the best idea in the world..
so i wonder about the people who have done it before and made it work. i want to know what it is that keeps us all together. i want to know how you keep looking at someone and knowing they are the best thing that has ever happened to you...
i also know people who have done the whole serious relationship thing and come out of it loathing the idea and i don't wanna go back to being who i was before... cranky and bitter and chaotic.. i am more stable than i have ever been i think.. just living and teaching adn smoking too many camel wide lights that my sister sends me and playing tag in the halls with my students even though i should act like a "teacher".. maybe that;s just it. maybe we live and have fun and we are just lucky if we can share it with someone? that sounds like a good idea to me now, maybe for the first time in my life,,,
sorry i am always so serious in my journals. it gets late and i am not sleepy yet and when i get offline my apartmet is all modest mouse and quiet... i am laughing all the time, even through the bad stuff... i can't put my finger on wh japan has made me so introspective and happy but i know being here is a big part of it.. the everyday challenge and learning is like fertilizer, you cant be the same and yet i can rememebr better then i could before?
[ posted by kaycee at 02/25/2003 08:14:37 AM ] [ link ] [ 13 responses ]
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dick is dead
my grandftaher died this weekend. my father waited til this mroning to call and tell me, so i got to leave school early and my supervisor wants to send flowers on behaf of the school, which is nice i think..
i wasnt very close to him, he left my grandmother when my dad was 7 and they didnt speak again til i was 12... i only met him once, and over the years, since i am so close to my grandma, i really had no interest in meeting him again... and now he's dead. and it is so weird because i feel like i should be more sad, or shouldnt be sad at all, i dont know how to feel...
so i slept. for five hours. and i dont wanna move at all. it'd be easier i think if there were people here i knew really well, all the times my friends have lost someone they knew we'd all drink a lot and talk about it and i cant do that here.. my school was really suprised that i wasnt returning to america for the memorial service, but i have alot to do here and anyway, what would i say to his new family? they dont even know me!!! i have all these aunts and uncles and cousins that i don't know, so wierd that he is a "blood" realtion or whatever but i don't know if i would even recognize him if i saw him now..
guess that won't happen... i dunno. i want to figure out where my sadness is coming from... is it regret? simple "someone is dead" sadness? maybe it's because i was such a jerk about him, i never wanted to see him as i am super loyal to my grandma and grandpa (i guess step-grandpa but not in my heart... HE is my grandftaher and i would know exactly why i was sad if he died.. and i'd be on a plane back to america instead of here in japan)... my father wanted to go out to california this summer to visit him and i refused... and now i won't have any more chances... so is it guilt?
it rained all day today. i wanna talk to someone but i dont know who to call. i'l lcall my daddy in a few hours to see how he is. he is really hurt i think and that, i know, is one reason i am sad. if there is anyone in the world who deserves happiness it is my father. i wish i could give him a hug.
[ posted by kaycee at 02/24/2003 06:42:35 AM ] [ link ] [ 3 responses ]
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i am too punk rock for this.. hah hah
so i thought posting would clear my head a bit but it didnt... i have already written a long letter to steve and talked to my friend simon but i have not had a worse day here since the dead cat fiasco...
just because this whole japanese system gets to me sometimes, i know it gets to any of us with any sense of personality over here, deanna had it even worse earlier this year but really!!! i work my ass of at this school, i have never worked so hard in my life, and i love my kids and my life here but, after the class of evil students with games and new words and dealing with treacherous volitile kids yelling and throwing shit and still trying to hold class...
no one said anything after the class except "tsukaresamadeshita".. the cliche "you must be tired"... and i dunno, i wanted soemone to say, hey, good job, that's a rough class and you got roped into the evaluation in the first place, i wanted someone to tell me what i could improve on besides a 10 minute criticism of my clothing somply becasue i am a womyn..
they would never say that shit to a man here, sounds harsh but it's true... i guess i should think that i must be doing ok if that's all they can complain about but FUCK!!!! a sweater jacket instead of a suit jacket, a jacket i have worn all year, and a shirt that came up when i moved a bit becaus my pants are all too big and yet i cant fit into size 2, the standard over here so buying pants is an adventure..
i went and cried for a long long long time... and then i had to leave the school so i could cry some more..
it wasnt the criticism or the class or anything, it was the horrible way i had to stand there and take it and that is sooooo outside my personality or even what i want to be doing in my life...
i wanted to quit today. i wanted to pick up and go "home." i can do a lot, i can match and stop swearing and brush my hair and not dye it and hide my tattoos and take my piercings out every morning and wear my indoor converse but i can't do much more without infringing on what i feel is my boundary and myself and if i sweater jacket is gonna do it then i dunno what the fuck i am doing here...
the vice-principal actually made me unhook the jacket so she could look at my shirt to make sure i wasn't wearing a shirt too short when i told her it was an accident, i had to stretch to erase the board...
it was humiliating and awful and i wanna stab someone.
meanwhile, half the teachers wear gym clothes to class and the students have their skirts rolled up to their asses and carry blankets...
i am sensing a strange irony here that seems to pass over the heads of the general public at my school and i am hurt and pissed off and dont know what to do.
on a happier note, i came home and drank some wine and tomorrow is another day...
and i am wearing my fucking sweater coat if it gets cold. and i am not gonna take the button deanna gave me off it, either.
the beach this weekend was lovely.
[ posted by kaycee at 02/17/2003 09:00:08 AM ] [ link ] [ 67 responses ]
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MYS=major yucky shite
so i found out today that i was one of the five people chosen to run the MYS Seminar next November. The MYS is a huge 3 day affair that all the English teachers in the prefecture are required to attend...
this i supposed to be a huge honor or some bullshit, and i guess it means that i am doing something really good job-wise, as i wasn't one of the 100 people to even apply for the privledge but someone decided to nominate and pick me anyway...
somehow though i am not feeling so flattered. all this means right now is that i am gonna have far more work to do than i already do now... which is a lot. i dont mean to bitch, they'll pay for my trips to shizuoka once a month, but it just requires a lot of bullshit discussion and planning and decisions and talking to a bunch of assholes that i dont really wanna befriend...
at the last MYS seminar i about freaked out.. it was horrible... lots of long-winded speeches and seminars and lesson-planning classes and these jerks that belong to the JET Programme, elitist fuckers, it's like a big club and their jobs aren't as busy or complicated as mine, they form these little cliques, i felt like i was plunked back into junior high school, toes turned in, drawing doodles in my notebook and waiting to go back to thte ricefields, where i belonged....
so maybe i can make it more fun this year??? i'll be positive about it. i'll think of it as an opprotunity.. yeah fucking right!!!!!
i made my famous chili last night. today i have so much left over, it's funny that i got so used to cooking for all the people in baton rouge that i dunno how to cook for one.. more like 7 or 8... simon and jeremy help out, but it ain't no vegan cook-off.. at least simon does the dishes, hah hah...
ok, positive list of things in japan.... let's enjoy positive thinking!
purikura (those funny photos i stick on letters)
sunset through the bamboo ,
the castle on the hill, kimono,
my students,
hugh,
deanna,
chu-hi,
ricefields,
little old womyne in hats,
learning japanese,
mt. fuji,
those other mountains,
my bikeride to school listening to steve-music,
letters and packages from home (i guess that doesn't count),
100 yen stores,
50 kinds of tofu,
train-rides at dusk,
text messagess on my ke-tai (cell phone),
jeremy and simon,
my kokatsu (heated blanket table),
the ocean,
love letters from my 15 year old student who still carries my books for me everyday,
phonecalls and roadtrips with deanna (she counts twice) we go on one this weekend!!!!,
my funny teachers,
stickers, postcards, toys,
speaking to people who have 6 fingers,
futons,
balconies...
engrish, laughing with the guys in the smoking room at school
kindness from strangers
the ramen shop
cheap bok choy
2 dollar packs of cigarettes
knowing i dont wanna be anywhere else
ok, i feel a little better. i love japan!
i wish i knew more people in the area. this guy named mochi keeps calling me but i can't talk to him... because my japanese sucks and because he is rebounding hardcore and i really dont wanna put my toe in that pile of soy sauce... i want steve to get here, i want something to change!!!! even japan can get a little stagnant when i work til 6 at night and go back at 7:30, i am so sleepy, i don't think i am cut out for this daily grind stuff forever...
they are gonna reinstate saturday classes at my school too.. it's gonna get sticky when they ask me to teach because i won't be getting paid anymore for it.. and i hat eto base it all on money but i feel like i pay my dues here... i don't need to show my work ethic six days a week... we'll see how that goes. one day at a time.....
[ posted by kaycee at 02/05/2003 05:07:46 AM ] [ link ] [ 8 responses ]
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bloody fingers and postcards
fingers are stalking me recently. i met the guy on the train with six fingers and drempt about him all last night... and then today one of my students accidentally slammed my finger in a locker and now it's all bloody and freaky-looking.. so it satisfies that brian sent me a package today with two horror movies in it.. so now i have a prop to go along with "Terror Toons" at least someone brian remembers my passion for shitty horror, I have a new habit of watching the most depressing movies possible just to se if i can keep from crying...ok, a'll admit it, "the icestorm" got me....
this weekend was great, save for the reggae party in haibara town which consisted of a bunch of japanese youth rapping about "haibara-drive-by, yo, yo, yo, word up to ya hoochies..." what the fuck is a "haibara drive-by?" yeah, haibara is the next town over, but the only drive-by we have here is maybe the mailman taking a corner too fast or some tea farmer in a miniature truck almost running me over on the bikepath...
sometimes i think the influence of american culture on japan is not doing these people any good..and in a way i am a part of that now... it's not weid for me to feel such distrust for my own culture but here it's a double-whammie...loathing and confusion and it's even worse because no one understands why it's so gross...
like at the music festival that deanna and i got our matching tattoos at, there was ahardcore band.. i obviously couldnt understand more than a few words, i mean, who can understand english hardcore much less japanese!!... but it's funny, "scenes" here dont have any meaning, it's all about fashion, the boys who dress like punks in my school listen to hip-hop and brittany spears, they have t-shirts that say "fuck don't eat meat" and then they wheel up on their scooters through the drive-thru at mc donalds...
i try to tell them about these things and they seem really concerned and then they turn around and crack open anotther set of disposable chopsticks and eat whale and turtle from their bento boxes... it is hard sometimes to balance out the strange dictotomy of them being totally unaware and yet so neat and compassionate...
steve has also dropped off the face of the earth. without email right now, and this makes life a little harder... funny the things we get used to, like a daily email, the things we count on, they get smaller and less significant to anyone else except ourselves, it used to be that events like parties and a night off work were something to look forward to, but at the same time college world just trucked along, all music and study and beer and people passed out on my floor with the cats... or new orleans life, a blur of bike rides and shows and laughing with erin...
and now i can get so down over having trouble with a sentence-structure in japanese, cry hysterically because my finger wont stop bleeding and i wanna go home but have to stay til 6:30 in meetings i don't understand anyway, and then shake with joy at a package and a letter from brian, or an email from an old friend, the way the moon hung tonight on my bikeride home, or the grin stuck on my face when the cashier at the grocery store knew i didnt want a plastic bag... our lives would be empty walls, a piece of paper and no pen, and an unplugged telephone without these details so maybe it's cool that i am noticing them more, i forgot to for a long time i realize, as i think back...
but it also makes their absence so much more apparent.. i find myself loooking hard for some sort of sign or signal, something small and rare that i can hold like an eraser in my pocket, rub with with my thumb until there is a groove i can feel and know is mine alone....
steve says i am probably just lonely, but i dont' believe that completely. i really am not. i love my friends here.... that i am so AMPED most of the time, more awake than i have ever been in some ways, but with this awakeness comes the flip-side.. that there are times when we have to keep ourselves awake on our own, that friends and love and scenery aren't gonna do it for us...
i had a dream the other night that josh and co. had a huge party in d.c. and i showed up unnannounced and no one recognized me... i took off my glasses and grinned but everyone said, "hey, did yo just move here?" weird...
so i guess with every exploration there is a downtime.. last night as i was riding the train home from hamamatsu, i was scribbling in my journal about how funny it is, that all i wanna do is go home sometimes, but i can't now i don't really wanna and i'd reget it if i did... holding the spaces between sadness and excitement are the hardest part.. saturday i ripped up a road atlas and tacked an entire wall with road maps..
so now when i lay in my futons and see all the places i have been, these little red blobs of kanss city and baton rouge and california and wyoming and new mexico and all the space in between a sea of browns and greens and blues, and Any place is good to go next, any place can be as memorable as this one and when it gets scary i think about all the people who i wil see again.. and while it scares the shit out of me to think that i may never live in the same places as the people i love, they wil always be there, someplace on that wall, and that makes evey trip worth the spaces in between...
so i promise to send more postcards! and i think someday we should have that party and i don't think i'll be so unrecognizable after all...
[ posted by kaycee at 02/03/2003 06:14:22 AM ] [ link ] [ 8 responses ]
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a quiet night on the ocean, and wordy as always
tonight i went to study with jeremy and ended up watching an american football game on the big ass t.v. in the restaurant, while listening to people slurp noodles and eating seaweed pizza with no cheese... nope, nothing has changed. i am still on the acid-trip which is japan. i got all freaked out by how BIG those guys playing are, i just dont see that sheer massiveness over here except when i watch sumo...
i don't want to go back to america for awhile, there is so much aggression over there, i am totally noticing that i have softened up a lot, i don't have the need to be tough and abrasive over here...
as jeremy says, " hey, maybe japan gives you a chance to lay yer mental porpupine spines down..." that makes a lot of sense to me... like in new orleans when i bumped into someone, they turned and flipped me off and i got pissed off for 20 minutes... here i run into someone in the grocery and we both say "oh! sumimasen! daijyobu?" sorry! are you ok? and then we both smile.... and it's ok....
today i also learned 10 new kanji, 20 new verbs and how to conjugate to address a superior (well, one of the thousands of ways, anyway...), called a student an asshole although i didn't mean to, wrote a long love letter, and saw a sunset so lovely that i cried with the dismemberment plan blaring in my headphones and a four year old on a bike sucking his thumb and staring at me, bought turtle food and a set of japanese refridgerator magnets...
yep, just another day.
the holidays went by too fast. deanna and i spent them sleeping in until one, drinking grand marnier in our coffee and listening to convacation of, eating good food and taking lots of footage with my video camera... and laughing, god it was so fucking good to LAUGH... a LOT....
for new year's we went to kyoto and couldn't be asked to stay in a hostel with a 10:30 curfew... so we found a cheap parking lot with no guard and slept in the car for two days... actually not too bad except for the wander over to the train station to brush our teeth...
there is a goddamn cafe du monde in kyoto and we had shitty coffee and bitched about there being a notable absence of, believe it or not, "where's the fuckign BEN-YAYS????" we went to a temple to hear the chimes, but for some reason there was a swat team there instad and the crowd was so bad we almost got trampled when this kid jumped onto the temple steps and tried to ring them anyway, and the cops started beating him up.. no, i am not kidding, it was a pretty whack way to ring in the new year...
but we found this insane little restaurant that was decorated like a log cabin and this guy showed me his ass, some other people showed other unmentionable parts and the lens on my camera almost cracked in shock, we drank sake like it was going out of style and i was rerminded yet again about how open and friendly and kind people are here... it is unexplainable, how familiar they try to make you feel.. in this other snazzy little place we stumbled into, the cooks made us free dessert and talked to us about whatever english they could string together, and then i started speaking japanese to them and they got so excited.. it is so cool, how if you make a little effort, people will go out of their way to encourage you and help you out...
on the other hand, i went to a party on friday night and had my ass grabbed, and i was so shocked and hurt that i didn't try to hit him... i know,, i know, completely out of character for me (as any of you who attended the botch show continue to tease me about), on the other hand he was this jerk-o fat guy from scotland so i dont think he counts at all... my friend simon kept telling him to back off, but how do you threaten a 300 pound guy in a kilt??? fuck....
class has been a little shitty lately, as i have torn a muscle in my leg.. so i can't run, i can barely drag my gimp leg up the stairs, an embarassing excursion, but my kids help carry my books and i wish i weren't so scared to go to the doctor, but i have only heard horror stories about them, esp. because you can't understand whenthey say "this is goona fucking hurt..." ack!!
i am glad that the spring is coming. it is really cold here, nothing close to poor deanna's experience, but still treacherous... and the spring is gonna bring with it some really cool stuff, if all moves in the direction it seems to now... it is funny that i had to come all the way to japan to realize i want to really be (love? yep...) with someone in america but isn't life funny and ironic like that? i feel completely out of character and over my head and my family is bitching at me for being impulsive but i think sometimes you suck up the bad shit and listen to the little tapping in yer chest that says if you don't try you'll regret it.. so i'm trying. full-throttle... (hey you, sorry if i was supposed to keep my mouth shut, but i can't help it... you told your friends, right? hah hah...)
i have turned into one of those idiots walking aorund tripping on pebbles because i am not paying attention, and it may be because my headphones are turned up too loud and it may be because i can't focus on anything but goofy sappy shit right now... everything seems so large and lovely and full of wishes, like the red sun ducking behind the castle at sunset, i watch it everyday now, across a stream and some bamboo, and i can't imagine what has brought me here but i can't imagine not being here and i don't feel like i understand anything right now, and for the first time in six months it isn't because i can't read very many kanji... sigh....
at least i am totally excited and happy, lonely a bit but maybe when we're lonely for awhile we appreciate twice as much when we're not... i know that sounds like therapeudic bullshit but i really am starting to notice that i appreciate things so much more, stuff that i used to take for granted.. a postcard, a long talk on the phone, a new piece of knowledge, a little kid with sticky fingers offering me a chuck of his chocolate bar, a kind word from a stranger or having enough fuel in the heater to get you thru the night... these things make is who we are, we would be empty and boring without them. and sometimes i forget to look and get sad and frustrated, and sometimes i feel like a fool for not appreciating things that i had or overlooked, and sometimes, more often now, i am simply astounded that i could be so lucky and life takes these weird twists for the better in these almost invisible ways...
so, on that angsty tangent, another aplogy to cricket for not calling this weekend, i will soon, i swear, now i am off to have another bowl of kim-chee rice tofu carrot stuff that looks gross but tastes delicious, a belated happy new year to you all starting the day.... nite nite...
[ posted by kaycee at 01/15/2003 09:03:21 AM ] [ link ] [ 5 responses ]
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okinawa and resolutions...
so i should have a lot to say now about the most fantastic trip i have ever been on but i am sooo tired.. being a teacher on a school trip means policing the halls and making sure boys stay on their side of the hotel and looking serious even if have no clue what the hell is going on in the teachers meetings and even so i had the best time... and got paid to do it!!!! hah hah hah ...
i saw josh's post about new years resolutions though, and got to thinking... also, i was greeted by a letter from erin and cricket and jeff when i got home tonight and it made me nostalgic... i want to come home for mardi gras but if i have people coming over in the spring i can't take time off for both so... alas, i might have to miss it. which will be really weird... i dunno, mardi gras has always been absolutely magical for me.
but nothing can compare to okinawa. we took a boat out to this deserted island and played in the sun.. of course, i couldn't because my tattoos would give my boss a fucking heart attack but i still got to run around and play with the kids, we found star fish and a strange spiky creature that turned pissed-off red when you touched it and kinda gapped its mouth at us... then we took it out to the rocks and set it free...
i ate goya and (tofu stirfry), which sorta looks like a cucumber with lots of bright bumps on it, and an inn keeper gave me a bootle of awamari, the strongest liquour i have ever tasted, as a gift, just because, as he said "your smile is pleasing happy." can you ask for a better compliment, even in non-broken english?
in the hotel every night, i hung out and had a beer with two womyn japanese teachers i hadnt really talked to before... we talked about boys, which is so funny to do in japanese, who is cute, who needs to grow up, who has slept with who, who they think i should date at the school... and although i feel like right now my heart is still in someone's o so american back pocket, as it always has been even when i was dating the confederate motorcycle psycho, (yeah, hard and sad and true), it was fun to gossip, a couple of womyn and a beer is so satisfying...
i bought lots of funny gifts for everyone, and explored a castle with one of the students who decided to adopt me.. she spent the week kinda walking two steps behind me, asking if i was "taijyobu?" ok? i could never have imagined that my life would lead me here...
so, i have tried to make a new list of resolutions, but i think thats pretty sad, no one keeps them, i know i wrote a bunch of them last year but i dont even rememeber what....except to lose weight (superficial, huh?) learn japanese, and be happy... so i guess i did it. i lost 20 pounds, i know a lot enough japanese to survive 4 days of speaking nothing but jaoanese on a school trip, and i am happy.
it is hard to see that sometimes, but when you sit in the sand munching on seaweed, getting a sunburn and writing kanji with a piece of coral with a couple of girls with their shoes off, chattering in a language you are beginning to understand... you look out at the stretch of ocean and shut yer eyes and you are happy. i dont ever want to forget that feeling. i dont think i can.
so my new years resolutions are to keep going.
to play in kyoto and go hiking when it warms up a bit.
to make new friends.
to harass the $600 out of my stupid ex-boyfriend (if anyone sees me kick him in the shins for me
and remind him he has no homor and lincoln rocks!)
to show josh great places to take pictures (as if he'd need help in japan!)
to put my video camera to good use
to keep running and stay thin (ok, one superficial entry is ok, right?)
and just to remember climbing throught that cave in okinawa, seeing the war memorial and all those photos of the dead children, and always remember that there is so much suffering in the world, i can't ever have it that bad.. i'll die in an earthquake first!
i still have things to do. i have old friends to talk to again, and wrecks to repair, in some ways when i think of my old life back home it feels so far away, i look at myself in the mirror and then at the photos erin sent me and the dissimiliarity is startling, both because i remember that life so clearly and also because my life here is so different, even down to brushing my hair in the morning and only wearing my piercings when my students cant' see, and also in that i don't do the same things.. i don't party as much... shit, i study to relax now and that used to be my LEAST favorite thing, i miss all the fun we all used to have but i wouldn't trade this stage for anything..
i dont' understand this whole growing up thing, i am still trying to figure out how much of it is permanent and how much is just going with the times.. at any rate, i can't wait to put dreds back into my hair when it gets long enough, and i'd love to drink beer at a show and know what has happened in my absence...
pictures to follow soon enough, tomorrow there is a big christmas party in fujieda so i am making antlers amd plan to stay up until 6am.. welcome to the new killoggs members!!!! if you read this far you are super-hardcore and it's good to see some life interjected into these blue walls again....
goodnight.
[ posted by kaycee at 12/13/2002 10:54:37 AM ] [ link ] [ 9 responses ]
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guess i'm a small town gal...
on sunday, i took the shinkansen to tokyo and went shopping in akihabara, the biggest electornics district in the eastern hemisphere... i kept thinking of my nerdy tech-pals, like josh, who would have died, gone to heaven, borrowed money from god, and returned to spend ALL of it... i have never seen such neat toys... and i myself bought a fancy-dancy digital video camera... now if i can ever figure out how it works, i will be all set... and deanna and i will be able to make festive DVDs for yer viewing pleasure!
wow... tokyo was just as insane the second time around. i can't believe that the subway system alone takes a master's degree to understand and the buildings could be so close together and tall and blinking... the first time we were there, on our arrival to japan, deanna said something like "now i know where the inspiration for bladerunner came from..."
she is sooo right... i keep expecting to see a young harrison ford grinning at me, slurping up noodles at a little ramen shop someplace... but instead the gaijin all seem a bit rude and unfriendly, they all look at me like i don't belong... and it's as if they do, somehow, perhaps it was the legwarmers on my arms, i thought i was rather tokyo-fashion... sigh....
my friend jeremy was taking the level three japanese proficency test, an INSANELY difficult endeavour which i plan to do next year... maybe... so i had the whole day free... i fixed my lomo so i had LOTS of fun with that... somehow tokyo feels less enormous from behind a lens, more managable in small significant chunks... maybe it is just that i have always been a small-town gal, i don't like it when i cannot see what the weather is doing until the rain begins to squeeze through the small hole left by the towering structures filled with narrow escalators and Lego statues of the Harry Potter gang (wow, someone had some serious time on their hands...)
somehow though, Tokyo isn't all it is cracked up to be. it is insane and busy and the people have that awful big-city glazed eye stare... jeremy and i were glad to catch the last bus home to the land of smiling bowing folks and the comfort of two-storey buildings and rice fields... i did find a shrine, smack dab in the middle of tokyo-land, and took some funny pictures of an old man feeding the pigeons... if i can ever figure out what to do after i get the http:// address set for the photo i would post them... yes, i am an idiot when it comes to computers. sue me.. and thank god for the beautiful simplicity of macintosh!
the days here slip by, so easily, i cannot believe that i have been here 4 months... i have done so much, so fast, sometimes it seems i cannot catch up with my own breath... today i got a cd and a letter from steve which made me shake with joy.. packages are good. and i dont wanna do anything after work these days except hang out in my house and read the instruction manual for my video camera... slow going and stressful... and i get freaked out at so much technological info innundating me all at once...
but this month will slip by, i go to okinawa next week and then one week before vacatiion... we are going to spend new year's in kyoto and now every day is painted with anticipation... i wish i weren't so lazy right now, i feel like i am running in slow-mo while the rest of the world is spinning by too fast, today i felt half-asleep. my students said "kaycee, tsukareta, ne?" you look so tired, kaycee...
i think i am. i need a vacation. i need some new sights and experiences... not that my everyday life is at ALL boring, but i feel like one of those sad single people who go home and read and fall asleep early... i never wanted to be one of those people, i always wondered, when i used to see them, what the hell they did with their time. i used to see my japanese teacher hanging out at highland coffees, and i would wonder, "is she lonely? what does she do with her days?"
and now i think i understand. and this understanding is interesting and sad at the same time... i want to go back to her now and say hello, buy her a cup of coffee, and make that small queit womyn feel a littel more like ameri | | |
