There is a difference between being alone and feeling alone; being isolated and feeling isolated; being rejected and feeling rejected. Reality and emotive perception have no relation, except that which the mind projects. Eliminate the projection, and the reality allows itself to become revealed.
Only I can permit this reality to become revealed; only I can perceive, how can another remove this perception from me, if I cannot myself? No one can rely on me, if I do not rely on myself. No one can be helped by me, if I do not help myself.
No one can help me not feel alone, if I cannot do it myself. Being alone is a function of reality and circumstance; feeling alone is a function of myself, not dependent upon external stimuli. This feeling is one I must remove myself. I cannot be two, if I cannot be one.
[Note to self – it’s probably not a coincidence that so many of my better diary entries were written in August. I obviously have more time to think and write at that time of year!]
What strange turns my life has taken. Never would I have in a million years expected to be here, now, in this apartment, typing on an extended keyboard into a Japanese computer, in a Japanese city, listening to the same Cure tape I was listening to back in 1996. Has it actually been 8 years?
Ten years ago I was playing role playing games and drinking in Robbins lounge, getting ready to pack everything I owned into a moving van to move to Ann Arbor. A city I didn’t know, with no money for deposit or rent, or a job. Without a clue. Totally hopeless. Instead of exploring the city, I stayed in my bedroom and played games or typed. What was I thinking? I can’t even get in touch with the few people I met there. Even the ones I knew at ND are either gone back where they came from or no longer answer my emails.
I can still picture them all in my mind. I can still see the rooms I lived in, all the way back home. Even the freshman dorm room which no longer exists, since they tore the building down. How can that be?
It must be this which makes us human; the ability to take the visual and turn it into mental. The capacity to make emotional connections between the world outside and the world inside. The belief that there are two worlds. This makes us human, and at the same time it makes us separate. It is a false belief, that we are not of the outside. Yet there is no returning. Once we start, we can never stop. Even changing languages doesn’t help. We merely start over again from a new perspective, still outside the outside.
I’ve kept a journal (OK, a diary) for many, many years now. It first started in September 1984 as a junior high school 1st year (7th grade) English assignment — each day, we would be given a writing prompt and at the end of the 10-week term (quarterly system back then), the English teacher would look it over and write feedback.
At least, that was the idea. In mid-October my family moved to a county and school system about 60 miles away (it’s more complicated — we couldn’t move in to the new house at first and so my siblings and I were looked after by various relatives, so we didn’t go to school for about nine to ten days). The new school didn’t use journals at all. English class was boring. Grammar and sentence diagramming.
So I kept writing at home, almost on a daily basis in the beginning.
But I’ve been fairly inconsistent over the years. I filled several notebooks, all different sizes and shapes. I stopped writing in one notebook at some point in 1999 when I moved to Japan and started another one. Then some time in 2004 I decided it was a waste of paper not to finish the 1999 one. Then I filled it up and started typing in a Word file. Then I went to Montreal four years ago and started writing in paper notebooks again.
It’s, quite frankly, a great big mess.
But there are some good ideas in these notebooks, and lots and lots of bizarre poems that I swear I do not remember writing. (Also at least half a dozen attempts at “automatic writing.” If you don’t know what that is, look it up.)
So from time to time, I’ll post some bits and pieces here. Just for safe-keeping.
Who knows? I may wind up publishing some of it at some point. Or at least drop some of it into the mouths of future SciFi characters.
Comet Nishimura’s orbit means that this is likely its first and final trip through the inner solar system. It is possible that the comet originated outside our star system, which would make it the third known interstellar object ever detected, following ‘Oumuamua — which some astronomers speculatively suggested was an alien spacecraft — and Comet 2I/Borisov.
Discovered just two weeks ago by an amateur Japanese astronomer (after whom the comet is now named), the comet Nishimura will approach Earth at its closest on September 13th. But it will be at its brightest about five days later as it approaches the Sun.
Its fate?
Astronomers don’t know when the possible interstellar interloper will depart the solar system. However, it is also possible that the intense force of the comet’s solar slingshot will rip its solid nucleus apart, according to NASA.
Also, its nucleus gives off a “green glow,” which is the result of sunlight breaking apart dicarbon, or diatomic carbon. So getcher geek on, chemical lab rats!
A NASA mission has observed a supermassive black hole pointing its highly energetic jet straight toward Earth. Don’t panic just yet, though. As fearsome as this cosmic event is, it’s located at a very safe distance of about 400 million light-years away.
Yeah, minor surgery. On March 3, 2020, I had a benign tumor the size of a gum ball removed from my left shoulder.
It had been created by repeated rubbing of my shoulder bag strap on sweaty skin. Or rather on sweaty shirt over sweaty skin. I walk half an hour back and forth the train station to my workplace each morning and evening, and the summers in Kyoto are hot hot hot.
So there I was lying on a surgeon’s bed, getting my shoulder skin snipped into three pieces and pried open. My blood pressure shot up to 190 at one point. The surgeons told me to relax.
Uh. Yeah. They didn’t tell me how close the tumor was to a major artery, but I could make an educated guess.
There was a cloth screen between my face and my shoulder so that I couldn’t see what they were doing. And of course they had numbed the entire area and I couldn’t move my left arm at all.
But it was an unpleasant experience. No pain, but I could of course still hear the clip clip clipping of scissors on skin. And I have an imagination.
(Fwiw I have written a short story based on getting my wisdom teeth taken out—also with local rather than general anesthesia—though I didn’t include the factoid that my root tips shot across the room like tiny cannonballs and were never found again).
Fortunately, the surgery was successful— they even showed me the tumor (it looked like a tiny blancmange, and now you’ll have that image in your mind next time you eat one). They even asked me if if wanted to keep it (um, no thanks).
And afterwards the scar was barely visible, so good a job they did with the stitches.
Two days after the surgery, we went into lockdown and had to wear masks everywhere.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
Now this is an interesting prompt.
1. Organic gardening
I’ve been gardening for just over ten years now. My father had an organically-grown garden for several decades, and I’ve been able to get a lot of advice from him on how to grow vegetables without using chemically-based fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides.
To be honest, sometimes the insects and the weather do get the best of the plants. But at least I know what’s in them, and I can keep the soil healthy as well.
Everything in this photo was organically grown. Well, not the bowls…
2. Composting
Part of gardening is using compost, or rotten food scraps, as fertilizer. We recycle any food left uneaten as well as the bits of vegetables that are often tossed into the garbage, things like roots, insides of peppers, the ends of beans, and of course egg shells.
Egg shells can be reused to help bushes as well, due to their calcium content. Although I have found that the shells need to be rinsed before chucking them near the stem of bushes. Otherwise we get some unwelcome animal nightlife…
3. Reuse reuse reuse
Any clothing we no longer have a use for (kids got too big, Dad spilled coffee on a favorite shirt or cooking oil on a favorite pair of shorts, a towel that frayed and is too dangerous to use…) we do one of two things:
(i) recycle with our local school’s monthly clothing pick up, or
(ii) turn it into rags that can be used to clean up spills rather than use kitchen paper towels.
We also get a lot of plastic bags — and I do mean a lot — because practically everything in Japan comes wrapped in plastic. Cookies and sweets are all wrapped individually. Vegetables are wrapped in plastic. Even meat from the store winds up in separate plastic bags (just in case they leak on the way home).
So we reuse as many of the plastic bags as possible, typically to collect household trash (especially during allergy season!). And, of course, to collect plastic, plastic bottles, cans and bottles for recycling.
4. Bath water
Like most homes in Japan, we have a pump attached to our clothes washer. Japanese are accustomed to taking evening baths (I don’t; at least, not in summer, since the water makes me sweat and then I have to take a shower all over again). The next morning, we reuse the bath water to wash clothes.
5. No AC or dryers
Strictly speaking, we do use the AC on occasion. But we designed our home to have lots of sliding doors between rooms and wide windows and balcony doors. That way, we can just open up everything and have a nice breeze come down the mountain behind us. The house stays relatively cool even during the hot sticky summer months and we can avoid using air conditioning (except when it rains and we have to close windows).
We also hang out clothing to dry to avoid using the dryer. It’s better for clothing, anyway, and in addition to not wasting electricity, lowers our utility bills.
These are just a few examples. It’s not much, but a little bit here and there adds up to a lot over time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go throw some used egg shells under the tomato plants. 🍅 🥚
The link below includes a night sky in Montana, which makes little sense when the researchers were in Beijing and Honolulu…
“The first-generation star we observed has the potential to become the oldest star we have ever seen,” said Alexander Heger, a professor in the school of physics and astronomy at Monash University in Australia who was part of the research team. “It probably had only lived for 2 1/2 million years and then exploded.”
Oh, and it also was discovered to be 260 times the size of our own Sun…just as theorized.
More importantly, this involved scientists from three different countries (China, Japan, and Australia), sharing information and working together for science.
Imagine if that spirit of cooperation could be extended into other domains…
…Ispace engineers observed that the estimated remaining propellant was “at the lower threshold and shortly afterward the descent speed rapidly increased.”
M Thomas Apple Author Page 