Today's Japanese lesson started in German. I stared at Kaneko-san's lips trying to find a glimmer of sense, a word, a phrase, a sound to which I could cling and even half-honestly nod my head and say, "Hai." Nothing. Perhaps it was the accent, or my admittedly modest grasp of German. Or maybe it was just context and expectation. When we finally got on the same page (and how did that happen, did it ever happen?) I found myself trying to explain to him why I had attended three universities and the fact that, despite being a woman, I don't actually do a lot of shopping for clothes for which I need to understand large numbers of Japanese yen. I pointed to the holes in my beloved 7-year-old black shirt.
I handed him my weekly "sakubun" in which I wrote about getting up in the morning, things that I did yesterday morning, or last evening, things that I do everyday, etc. (It was the topic of a chapter in one of my books.) "AicheePahKuuNoHohRuu....kaishyawa?" he asked. "Hai," I answered. ("HPAC Hall is my company," to which I bike everyday.) We're totally on the same page. I think he understands what Tae Kwon Do is, or at least I think he understands that I do sports. Which is mostly true. It's true in the same way that HPAC Hall is my company. I think we're getting somewhere. We're getting into some sort of rhythm of learning, even if one of us is behind the beat and the other ahead. And even if those roles aren't really clear and seem to change from lesson to lesson, or minute to minute. Two curved lines, dancing a parallel dance.
Just as I've come to feel a little more at home in Japan, I think I'm also coming to feel a tinge of homesickness. Perhaps it makes sense that these two things would arrive together. Perhaps the Russians brought it with them, tucked in their suggestion that the world is a place larger and more kaleidoscopic than I ever imagined and that home is something far more elusive than an address or nationality. Somehow it makes sense that home resides within a person, even if that place is something inside of them that resides on different ground than their feet. But then what is it? I find myself not only removed from a place that was familiar, but from a way of life. Things are so simple here. Unable to fully interact with my community and to take advantage of the space around me, I'm left with time. And a question of identity. I'm no longer a cello teacher, no longer a community organizer, no longer a student. In the interstice of provocative cultural experiences, this time in Japan is providing me a sort of long term vacation from "myself." What is left? Surely we are not merely the things that we put on a CV or profile page. Surely we are more than the things that we say, or that we think or believe. But then who are we? If we accept ourselves, and love ourselves, what is it that we accept and love? And if we feel love for another person, what is it in them that we love? Is it a body, or a mind, or an attitude, or a skill, or a mindset...? It is an unfamiliar place to tread, as unfamiliar as the external world around me. Who am I and who are you? And how do we interact in a way that transcends the circumstances that define us? Somewhere in there is home, infinitely familiar and infinitely unknowable. Maybe it's those same curved lines, doing their parallel dance.
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