Words, Images, Thoughts, Emotions

I've put this off too long. I'm trying out my new reading glasses, it's the first real, beautiful day of Fall weather, and despite all the studying I have to do, blogging—Hiroshima—is more important. While I absolutely appreciate the opportunity I had to discuss everything with Allison on the 5-hour bus ride back to Osaka, I've come to realize that I have to write to really get everything out—speaking is not sufficient.

It's hard to say a day was “fun” when you spent it at an atomic bomb memorial; being late to the one planned event—the testimony of a hibakusha (atom bomb survivor)—because you thought it was NOT in the building you were already in; running to your bus only to find that the paper you have is not a ticket and you have to borrow 4250 円 to buy a new one; leaving half your dinner on a tray and shoving part of the rest in a plastic bag because your bus is going to leave without you if you don't; and arriving at your destination utterly exhausted, only to find you dropped your wallet somewhere. (Fortunately, I have wonderful Japanese friends to sort out the whole mess for me.) When “楽しかったけど、悲しかった” is all you know how to say, it makes sense, but is it true? When you see the physical and emotional damage inflicted on the people and place you've grown to love by the people of your home country, knowing that you're going to return and live there permanently...how do you square with that? When you're filled with anger seeing all the protests made by the Japanese to the Americans, asking them not to drop the bomb(s), and reading the letters of Americans showing no remorse after the fact, how do you ask for peace?

It was the paintings, mostly. The letters. The photos of melted skin on the dead and on the living. They made me want to scream and shout and break things and cry but I didn't, because I couldn't. And going to my anthro class two days later, talking about the ethics of war photography...it made me hate it. The Vietnamese girl ravaged by napalm. How do you stand by and take the photo? Maybe there's nothing you could've done, and in that moment you're just as angry and heart-broken and utterly frustrated that “your people” don't know what's happening, so you take the picture. But why are you there, photographer? Are “beautiful” and tear-jerking and striking photos worth it? I don't think we have the right. I don't think anthropology should even be conducted anymore.

Yet I have a film to make. I'm asking people I barely know, yet who are in Christ, to share their lives with the camera, with my class, with Kansai Gaidai at the very least—maybe the greater public of Hirakata-shi, too. I'm asking them to tell me what sets them apart, or to appear as if they have something in common that we don't. In a way, I suppose they do. I do not come directly from a family who speaks different languages than the one I know, who grew up outside of America, outside of “Western civilization”. What a terrible phrase. But there's an “us and a them” perspective projected on everyone in the process. It seems unavoidable in anthropology. So why can't we all just go out and see the world and have conversations and take it for what it is without analyzing everything “academically” or “logically”? We are all PEOPLE and ONE GOD CREATED US and though it's hard to cope with the differences sometimes why don't we TRY?

Academic writing, grade point averages...maybe at some point we need standards for those people who don't want or don't know how to be motivated; in a perfect world, everyone would just do their best to educate themselves, but that's not the case. In the real world, some people are turned off by education because they haven't been given something “interesting”, and they don't realize they can find that something by themselves. So we give them things to read and problems to solve but why don't they tell us that that's not all there is??

I don't know about school in general, but as far as the “scholarly” essays and articles we read—where 50 words, a semi-colon, a long hyphen and 17 vocab words that are only used by as many people in the U.S. on a weekly basis—it's a bunch of bullshit. If we're trying to educate each other, why don't we try to speak the same language as the people we want to educate? Why don't we make more of an effort?!

I'm not saying “dumb it down”. I of all people feel like I can testify to the beauty of language and everything you can do with it, how it changes over time. But when it gets to the point where the meaning or significance is lost on the reader, it's too much. It's meaningless. Your speech, if you write (speak) in such a way, is pretentious and inconsiderate and it only proves how overrated this “higher writing” is. Don't even get me started on privacy policies and tax forms and legal lingo.

Did you think this post was going to be about my weekend? In a way it is. I the photographer, the writer, the student, still take photos, still write essays about the nature of reality and the relation of life and fiction in [things like] Japanese literature (the name of my class)—themes that I myself don't fully comprehend—and take classes I'm not completely fascinated by. I even skip readings. I don't always speak Japanese [here], I don't always finish my homework, and I snap at people when I'm stressed. I desire physical relationships and satisfaction of the flesh in drinking and eating たとえば, and I get depressed. I never called the woman who lent me her bike on the second day I was here. I didn't try to mingle with EVERYONE on the Shikoku trip as best I could, and I was bitter, at first, about being so late after getting lost and “wasting time” looking for おみやげ that I couldn't get my wallet until two days after I lost it and I had to stay another night away from home. I hate that I had to borrow so much money, even if it will be easy to pay back. I hate that I had two Japanese people—three, actually—say I did something wrong or it was my fault, even if that was true. I still don't want to blame me. In the back of my mind I worry I won't get any of my money back (I still have to go to Osaka or Kyoto). I can't wait to go home where it's safe, where I can ski and wear what I want when I want, eat what/when/where I want, not feel bad about speaking English, not worry so much about money and where/how I can get glasses.

All of these things weigh on my mind. But somewhere in there, I see beauty. Shikoku island is truly beautiful. The udon is delicious like everyone says, and the flea market and the seaside cafe we went to were so warm and charming. The live cranes I saw at Hiroshima, juxtaposed with paper ones. The fact that I could share my heart with Haruka, that the people of this church I attend are not ordinary, simply “nice” people.

By now you probably know where I'm going with this. Everyone, or anyone can say “just appreciate the little things”. But whether those things would be truly there or no without God, I can't be sure, and whatever the “true” reality, I know that for me they would disappear. I don't think anything in my life that is truly good did not come from God. Maybe I still have regrets, but one day I won't. I believe that. And I'm going to keep on living as I do. Struggling and changing and loving and laughing and crying and speaking and writing and reading and praying and arguing and searching and messing up. But I will praise God. I feel it when I sing, when I write, when I can share my deeply personal experiences with another person. It doesn't have to be “about” God, to use the word “God”. It just comes from him, because it is good. Because it is from love.

I really need to recognize that expectations are pretty much unnecessary in life, when you just try your best to be considerate. When things get lost in translation—literally and figuratively—you keep going. You talk about it, you agree or you don't. You move on.

People and circumstances change. People say 'do your best' and at least 'try', or “there is no try” and “be perfect”—but how do you really know when your best is really your best? And if you don't try your hardest or do your best, yet find yourself not unsatisfied with the results, what do you do? I talk to God. I try to be honest with Him, but when He knows me better than I know myself, before and after myself, there's no way to not be honest anyway. He knows. And eventually I'll accept that. At times like those, I praise him. And I think that's enough. We may still feel like we're sort of stumbling through life, but that's okay, because He knows what's going on. If I disagree with Jehovah's Witnesses like the ones I accidentally entered into a conversation with in Hiroshima, or with Mormons or Muslims or Catholics or Jews or Unitarians or Hindus or Buddhists or Shintoists or “free spirits” (in the spiritual sense—a.k.a “anything goes”) or non-heterosexual people, that's it. They;re disagreements. And maybe we keep talking. Hopefully we keep talking. Let's accept each other as fellow human beings at least.

So what is the key? What is the point to this rant? Well, you read it. You decide. That right there is the true beauty of choice. We still have our own minds. We're not blind to the world around us—we all have a way of seeing. We live here. That's just the way it is.

Maybe something amazing will happen in your life. Maybe something traumatic, something you'll never even talk about. It's all part of the human experience. I'm not really trying to philosophize here—these are just my thoughts. Sure, I hope to make an impact on SOMEONE in this life, just like everyone else, but when and where and who and how is probably, in large part, not for me to decide. So why do we have this desire to influence, to impact, on any level? I think we all want to be understood. We want someone to affirm our beliefs by believing it too. We desire relationships, because we were built that way, not to want to be alone. We need each other. So let's acknowledge that and see what happens.