sa sa sa BEATBOX

Luther is too alive to function.

.

Import store

I bought a jar of pickles at the import store. I put it in the fridge to cool it down. A couple days later, I tried to open the jar, but the lid was on too tight. So I put it back. I waited another day or so and tried again. But I wasn't strong enough. So I put it back. The next week I decided to try again. I took the jar out, placed it firmly in my grip and twisted as hard as I could. The lid didn't budge. So now I decided to try something crafty. I took the end of a spoon, placed it under the lid and pushed. I heard a popping noise and the lid came off. I thought to myself, "Tools. They're what separate man, from the monkeys." I reached my hand into the jar and grabbed a hold of a pickle. But when I tried taking my hand out, it was stuck. That pickle jar was on my hand for 3 days until I bashed it against a wall and it broke off. And I thought to myself, "Walls. They're what separate man, from pickle jars."

.

Hmm... I just read what I posted last night - wow, I was pretty tired.

.

A Real World chat

Hey - this is something I haven't really done yet with this blog. I've always come on here with something in mind that I want to say, and fleshing it out with a lot of editing. But tonight, I'm just going to journal...

My mind is a million miles from here. I say a million, but really I mean 6,000. I'm not in Kambara, Japan anymore. I am sooo set on leaving, on moving on to what's next.

I love it here in Japan, don't get me wrong. I do. I want to be both places though. I like being here, but I really want to be back in America - the good ol' USA. I will be - in 4 months.

I've just got myself too over-involved. At one point I had had a lot of free time, so instead of picking up an activity or two I picked up like 7. And now I just don't want to being doing much of anything. I just want to chill out in Japan, ride my bicycle, sit on the sea wall and stare out at the ocean, write, play my guitar...and reflect - reflect because I am leaving, and I realize that. I didn't even get back to my apartment until more than 2 hours after sunset today. It's hard to miss the sun.

I stayed up until almost 5am watching episodes of "The Real World -Brooklyn" 2 nights ago. Then last night I fell asleep at 5:30pm and didn't wake up until 6 this morning. Now I'm up again still and it's almost 3... I guess watching The Real World pulled me away from Japan for a few hours. I was watching TV! And the people were speaking some language I understand! And not only that, but I was getting the social nuances - I was picking up on the consequences of their actions - I was assembling it and fitting it into a moral, social and cultural puzzle - one with which I'm familiar and care to even try to understand.

This all sounds a bit weird, even to me. I don't know what I'm writing right now, nor do I even want to try and figure it out. I've been in a TOtally different culture and silenced myself inside a language I don't understand for almost 2 years now. Seriously. Where did those 2 years go? What are they? How have I changed? What was the purpose for being here? The big purpose? What is the list of lessons I've learned? What relationships am I going to take away from this?

I fall in love every day.

I AM sick of my job. I am looking forward to not doing something where I don't have any semblance of an impact on the learning of any individual around me. Nobody really learns English in Japan, and very few even care. There's just no need for English, and the systems and methods for teaching it are broken. I'm mostly here to give Japanese people access to a "foreigner." And I get petted regularly. Apparently "foreigners" have soft hair.

Sorry, that's a bit of venting. I mostly don't have anything bad to say. But Japanese people in general are quite naive about the world around them. Very few people are interested in knowing me at all. And those who are want to know me so they can practice their English, not because they think "Luther Flagstad" is an interesting person. Heck, most people don't even know I have a last name. Or they think I'm "Mr. Rusa." (The Japanse pronunciation of Luther). I have found Japan to be, in general, quite cold.

Not to say I haven't had my prejudices and flat-out, crazy cultural experiences of my own. I need to see the world, and I'm doing it. Let's hope I haven't been too ethnocentric.

Yeah - I'm just tired (and it is 2:53 am) - I don't want to go sit at my desk tomorrow. This weekend isn't going to be much better. I teach English for my volunteer club on Friday night (7pm-10:30pm), I go hang out at a camp in Fujieda all day Saturday, I get back so I can go to church early on Sunday morning (get up at 8am), then come back for a pot luck dinner late afternoon - then I'll probably have some NAJET work or school work to get ready for the week. These things seem like they'd be fun, but when I'm only doing things I said I'd do, everything starts feeling like an obligation and nothing is fun anymore. I have to use the wee hours of the night if I want some time to just chill out, and then I'm super tired the next day. I don't even have a chance to work out anymore, and I'm supposed to be walking 100km the end of May.

I've discovered that it takes exactly 4 days (no more) for my apartment to go from spotless clean to pig-sty messy. Not that there's dirt, but just everything is everywhere. I need to learn to put things back when I take them out and use them. Hmm...that's a big life lesson I wish I had learned when I was about 9 years old. But there was always someone there to pick everything up for me, even if I was told to do it. So I never learned. It will probably take until I get married (or at least engaged) to start picking up things on a daily basis. (And if you're reading this, my future wife - yep, that's how it's going to be - and if you're reading this from the future my current wife - am I better?).

That's one of the goals for next year when I move back to the states. (no, not clean silly...) Find a wife. I will be actively seeking to get married. So I've been starting to do a lot of things about and for myself since about November to get ready to impose myself upon another human being. Let's hope she takes the whole package and says it's good enough. I'm totally ready to start moving in that direction - I'm just going to start looking, and when I find that special someone I'm going to start pursuing.

Ok, getting super tired now... (3:03).

That's about all the updates I can think of at this hour. It sums it up pretty good I guess. My mind is far from here, I've totally given up speaking Japanese (never had a friend that wanted to teach me or hang out with me in Japanese anyway), I'm sick of crawling into an empty bed night after night - I've got more to give than only I can receive, and it would be nice to stop letting that fade away into the ethereal nonsense of my apartment.

Time to do something about everything. Only 4 more months...


.

.

I had a GREAT night tonight - I almost called and canceled my Japanese lesson at Ihara-nihongo-no-kai, but decided to go instead. It turned out that this week was actually a yasumi (break) but my conversation partner Furuyasan had told me that there was. So he was there, and 2 of his friends from his old job (Furuya-san is a retired police officer) and those 2 women's high-school aged daughters. One of the girls will be attending Ihara next year. I had seen Gotenyama all lit up for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) and so suggested that we all walk over there. We ended up sitting in the jiyuseki section, having konbini snacks and chatting. Then me and the girls hiked up to the tsuribashi (suspension bridge). It was really fun just talking and joking and learning some Japanese. After, we came back to the sukoyaka center, Furuya's friends left, and he invited me over for some coffee with him and his wife. We sat under their kotatsu (warm-table - we don't have these in the states) and watched a crazy Japanese show called "taimu shoku" (time shock) where celebrities are strapped into a contraption and asked questions, and if they don't get enough right they get spun around in a 3-d "torunado." Some 56-year-old Japanese dude dressed as a woman won the game. (His name was Peter.)

I'm really starting to feel the weight of the fact that I'm leaving Japan in 4 months. There are a lot of things I wish I could stay and do, and I'm going to miss a lot when I move away.

.

.

This is all worth it - everything I do is worth it.

.

Passion

It just hit me. It just clicked. It just all came together, moments ago. I have thought, for years, that I am passionless. I have told myself that I'm 80% good at everything, but not 100% good at anything. I've never found an activity that I could see myself doing every day. I have agonized over this thought for a long time, wishing there was a career, a cause, a sport, or something that I could give myself to in order to find meaning in my daily life. And now it's hit me: My passion is for Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about a career, I'm not joining the ministry, I haven't decided to enroll in seminary. I'm talking about passion - a daily living, a daily purpose, a unifying cause which rules over everything, and under which my daily life plays out.

Recently I've been learning how anything I do can be and should be done to the glory of God, and how offering my body as a living sacrifice is how I am to spiritually worship my Creator. I've been learning and hearing new things through sermons and messages from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I've been reading good books and memorizing scripture. I've been wondering about my career, what kind of a job I should get after the JET Program, and how my calling to be a diplomat is supposed to play out practically and be satisfying. I was worried that I couldn't do it, and I was worried that I wouldn't find joy in it, if and when I got there. But tonight I was reading Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, and it taken me many days and about 50 pages into the book before that book's specific message suddenly finished the picture, finally tied the last knot on the shoelace that pulled together my vehicle for purposeful motion for the rest of my life.

I've been running with shoes untied for so long, slipping and stumbling, turning my ankle and losing my purpose as it falls off behind me and I go tumbling down some God-forsaken path. The sentence in Piper's book read: "Don't coast through life without a passion." and I had been been doing this, looking for something to focus on, never being satisfied with anything, and feeling all the worse and inadequate for it.

But I see it now! The real and true something. The thing that's not a what, but a look to the whom. It's all for the praise and glory of Jesus, and in this I get the joy and the fullness of life! There are no compartments to my life, and I will not define each aspect of my life on its own merits and its own purpose. I now have the purpose, and therefore anything I do will have purpose because it's done unto Jesus. I am no longer passionless because again, the definition of passion is not found in what I do, but to whom I do it.

This is all very new to me, and I have a lot of thinking to do, and a lot of thoughts that must be mastered by this truth that I have discovered. I simply had to come on and share this tonight because it is going to absolutely revolutionise the way I see my purpose in my career, my job, my family, my hobbies and my daily life.

.