2009-10-31 - 1:47 p.m.
I can't remember ever having wanted to steal something so badly before. It is a masterpiece. I want it, but know that it can never be mine. I think about trying to make one myself but know that it would take me a lifetime to do it. (Here, I imagine myself cloistered in some manner of monastery. I have long since given up on any semblance of personal hygiene. My hands are caked with blood and filth. My hair is matted and the smells coming from me discourage anyone from coming near. Not that they would want to. I've long since dismissed me as, at best, a hopeless eccentric and people avoid talking to me knowing that any attempt to will only be rewarded with incoherent ramblings about calico tsunamis.)
I covet it.
"It" is an earthquake quilt hanging up at, suitably enough, the Shizuoka Earthquake Preparedness Centre. There is no card or plaque identifying who made it.
In the quilt, a bus engulfed in flames drives off the edge of a freeway. Tall buildings lean at precarious angles. Tsunamis pound the coastline. Shards of glass and debris fly everywhere. I am amazed and delighted that someone so accomplished in the art of quilting has chosen this as their subject matter.
I want it. I want it so badly it hurts.
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I get 95% on the quiz. My teacher thinks that I have written the Chinese hieroglyphic character representing north incorrectly. In actual fact, I was so ridiculously well-prepared for this test that I could dispute this grade if I wanted to. I know that I have written the character for north as it appears in font (and, incidentally, our textbook) and I know exactly which line should move where to take what I have written from the realm of type to that of handwriting.
My former selves would've done it. They would have made my teacher listen to an explanation of why I wrote what I did during or after class and, utterly unconcerned with whether or not that teacher agreed, they would've felt right and justified in doing so.
But I am not my former selves. I'm more sensitive to my tendency towards being, for lack of a better word, gauche and I'm learning to reel it back from time to time rather than plodding forth under the assumption that everyone else finds my behavior as amusing as I do. Today I find myself reflecting upon the fact that I am tall and pretty and funny and smart whilst my classmates represent only combinations of these traits and to lesser degrees. I don't need to get 100% on quizzes. I'll get the highest mark in the class on the next quiz too. (And I did.)
(And here I would like to recognize the work of a man named Wada who was hired by my company to improve efficiency and promptly decided that, without ever having met me, his proposal would include demoting me. This has left me with a lot more free time than I had before, a new ability to pick and choose which responsibilities I do and do not want to take on at work, and has enabled me to go back to school as well. Thanks Wada!)
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I met Shuhei's mom for coffee last week, trying to enlist some outside help. It thought it would be good for Shuhei (then out of work for two months and counting) to hear that he needs to get his shit together from someone other than me. Shuhei's mom listened to everything I wanted to say, promised that she would talk to Shuhei and sent me home with a bagful of magic crackers. (Later she convinced Shuhei to stay at her place for a couple of days. He came home with diarrhea, but also much sweeter than he had been when he left and with two interviews lined up, one of which has since hired him. Thankfully.)
The crackers are the most important ingredient in a dish called senbei jiru, a soup that is the local specialty of Hachinohe. Here, you should know that local specialties are a big deal to people here. Senbei jiru is a big deal. And magic crackers, you'd better believe it, are a big deal too.
Shuhei's mom says that they're the best crackers she's found for making senbei jiru and I believe her. They got soggy in the soup, but somehow remained chewy. Most crackers don't seem to have a saturation point. They just get soggier and soggier until they've transformed into an identifiable mush.
Each cracker is handmade by a man in his seventies who lives in Sannohe. Probably he will die soon and no one is interested in taking over his business. When he dies, magic crackers will die with him.
I made a potful of senbei jiru, left a bowl for Shuhei and took the rest over to my friends Brandis and Tomo. I had to go there anyways to pick up the rest of the things that I'd left there after an especially nasty argument with Shuhei, after which I'd decided to sleepover at their place. I was grateful to have soup to bring with me. I don't want to be a person who bitches and bickers with their underemployed husband and then leaves in a huff. I'd much rather be a girl who makes soup filled with magic crackers and shares it with people she cares about.
