Four
More
Sleeps.
It's a race with the clock and time has proved victorious before, I don't know why it would go any differently now. My apartment is littered with random things leftover from a mass deleting process that ended in a thirty foot trash drop. The blank walls stare back at me as if to help push me out of the way so time can get a head start. It's just not fair. I want to be able to control it but it is impossible. The noise becomes more audible. Maybe because there is less furniture. Maybe because I am hearing the silence for the first time in a while. Maybe because I am listening to the silence for the first time in a while. It has become more of a comfort to me than I ever thought and if there is nothing else I can take with me after this year, this new found relationship with myself will be plenty. I turned off the music so I can hear the sounds of me in this country that has been my home for the past year.
The frogs chatter noisily outside and a car drives by. My fan hums, my fingers click on the keyboard.In the morning I will be woken by one thousand buzzing cicadas and the stifling heat that has you breathing in water. I will roll off the futon onto the ground right next to it. It will be close to the last time I will wake up like that. In five days time I will be waking up to the sounds of footsteps, ringing phones, dogs barking, air so crisp it strings the lungs. I will be waking up on a bed instead of four inches off the ground. My head will be swirling with dreams of Japan. I will be confused, I will be elated, I will be deflated. I will go through the same process I did when I came here. Hurting is natural after a something good is over and although hurting is never looked forward to or enjoyed, it is the only way we can truly process and rid ourselves of unwanted feelings. In five days time I will be waking up to this person who I think I know, who I have seen in this bed before, in this house before, but it will not be the same person. It will be me one year older. One year away from everything I have ever known. One year come full circle back to the familiar and on to the new me.
It will probably feel like I have intense over acuteness of the senses. Well, I guess after jet lag kicks in. At least I hope for that. I want to see this place from a different perspective, I want to feel moved, I want to feel the passion that rolled around in me all year for this place and these people, I want to breathe and really and truly feel that crispness I have been longing for for so long. I want to be content with where I will be in life, I want to feel at peace with myself, even if it is just for a short time before time starts rearing it's ugly head once again. I want to know that I have done something grand and I can be proud of myself for it. I still don't know how I should feel because I am still here. It's always easier to get a better view if you take a few steps back. Which I will be doing. Right back over the ocean. Right back into the life that I have always lived.
In five days time I will not know the answer but I will feel closer to it. In five days time the blur of life will spin around and around me and if I sit still for too long it will pass me by. In five days time I will have to fall into the spinning blur for hopes that I can be a part of this chaos that went on without me while I was gone. In five days time I will not say good morning in Japanese, instead I will say it in English. In five days time I will not be engrossed with giant spiders or strange fashions. In five days time I will see the faces I have missed and then I will miss the faces I have seen. In five days time I will feel a champion at the language, I will conquer the roads not on my little red bike with the basket but in a big SUV with the air conditioner. In five days time I will look like everyone else and they will not pass me a second glance. In five days time I will hug the people who I have only seen through a web cam and then I will get online and not be able to hug the same person I was hugging yesterday. In five days time I will feel the thin air, feel the love around me, I will feel the heaviness of my heart, I will not no what to do. In five days time I will be in Colorado. In five days time Japan will be just a memory.
