Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....

....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.

The Shooting Star Project

The four leaf clover is a freak of nature. I realized this, when, while walking to school today, I noticed a patch of clover and thought, "I wonder if there's a 4-leaf in there. I should pick it." It was already a lucky day since I saw Mt. Fuji with ridiculous clarity when I was leaving my apartment. First time in a while too. Guess that answers my usual Wednesday speculation...

As I scanned the clover patch, my next thought was, "Man! These things are freakishly huge! Maybe they're not really clover..." (I don't know shit about plants after all) And then, despite no desire whatsoever to actually arrive at school, my impatient nature took over and I decided to give up and get going. Because I wasn't going to find a 4-leaf clover. Because nobody ever finds a 4-leaf clover in real life. Because it's an anomaly. A freak of nature.

But for some reason, everybody thinks 4-leaf clovers are cool. Like.......7-toed cats or something....they shouldn't exist, but they do.

Grow?

Recently, I think I've been changing a lot really fast. Like, in my head, that is. So many things happened this Spring that I wanted to write about. I had good opening lines for so many stories in my head. And more things just kept happening. I kept telling myself, I'll do it soon. I'll do it later. I'll do it........sometime.......eventually. And now they're mostly forgotten.

I went to Comiket & it was awesome. I went on vacation with my friends. I went on vacation with my dad. I started a new project for work on a whim & somehow got a lot of good attention because of it. The new school term started & I had to say goodbye to some of my favorite students ever. I almost did a few things that could've turned out really badly. No time to dwell on it now though. The days keep moving forward.

Recently, I think about drawing more and more. Think about how I wish I was doing it when I'm stuck doing something else. Or when I'm stuck wasting time because I have to be somewhere in order to keep things working right. I think I'd be pretty happy if I could do nothing but draw all day long. Too bad there are things like dishes and laundry and life keeping me from doing it.

I've taken to writing stuff in a notebook during school. Just random stuff that comes into my head. It's nothing good, writing wise. I'm really bored at my current school, but I can't bring myself to do anything to get involved since I'm only there for 10 more days. It was only 19 to begin with. Kinda sad when you think about it. So I study, & write stuff, & pretend to study, & count the hours.

It's less than a month now till my 30th birthday. Strangely, I'm not all that concerned about it. I thought I would be, the way people hype it up so much, but I'm not. I find myself looking forward to my birthday the same as every year. It's my birthday after all. It's the day I always loved most but wouldn't tell anyone else about. At first I thought I'd like to just be 30 & get it over with so I could stop being 29 & worrying about turning 30, but now I guess I can't help but be a kid about my birthday.

Recently, I feel like my mind is working too quickly. Speeding almost. It's not a bad feeling, but sometimes a scary one. It jumps from place to place without any permission from me whatsoever. I can't seem to focus as well as I'd like to, in an impatient sort of way. I can't seem to say or even think about things clearly.

It always amazes me the amount of things other people are able to do. Like, all at once, all in one day, they just work on stuff, and accomplish stuff. Me, I spend more time thinking than anything else. It's overwhelming at times, all the stuff in my head. I wonder if I could turn it off, if then I'd be able to spend more time doing stuff.

I remember one thing I wanted to write.

I looked at this picture from our trip to Kobe a while after we got back & I thought, "This would look completely different if someone else had taken it." If Sarah took it, Pin, Brian & I would all be grinning like idiots with our arms around each other's shoulders. If Pin took it, it'd be all cool & artistic, with the other three of us all in contrasting views. If Brian took it.....well, none of us would be in it most likely. Just the tower & some random Japanese chick he thought was hot. My perspective is always this one though.

Let Stop the Pendulum

Maybe the best day of our lives...immortalized in poster form on AJ's wall.

I think I have the flu. There've been two different strains going around my school for the past 2 weeks. I think I've got the worse one. The one with stomach problems. Not that I care. I'm still going to Tokyo tomorrow. In 8 hours actually. I most likely won't sleep again before that either since I only woke up 2 hours ago from a 16 hour marathon. It wasn't as nice as it sounds. Oh well, I've got a lot to do to get ready for something I've been looking forward to for years so I'm not gonna worry about it now. Monday on the other hand might suck a lot.

Recently I've been doing some strange things. Things I never thought I would, especially without even realizing it till the habit was well formed & ridiculously hard to break. For starters, I've been wearing my contacts almost every day. Of course, that's what I should do, right? Seeing is good. But after having them for a year & a half & only wearing them once a week at most before this winter, it's kind of surprising that I have no problem with it anymore. They used to hurt. And now, they don't. To the point that I don't even notice them for most of the day. The eyedrops I used to pour in constantly have become a rather unnecessary & wasteful habit now. But I'm scared that one day I'll be so unbothered by having little slivers of plastic in my eye that I'll forget about them completely & wake up with my eyes crusted shut like my uncle did that one time when I was visiting him as a kid. One of the creepiest things I've ever seen.

As a result of being able to see all day long, and liking it (imagine that...), I've started wearing my glasses more too. I come home, take out my contacts, spend about an hour doing stuff around the house & realize I'm frustrated by the low clarity of my vision. So I put my glasses on. I've hated wearing glasses for 12 years! Something is seriously wrong with me. Shit, it's probably because I'm getting old. Less than 2 months from 30 now...

The last new habit is a bit less comically bad. More like actually bad. Shockingly bad really. I've been grinding my teeth. I didn't even realize I was doing it until my "twin" told me. I mean, I knew I was doing something with my teeth, but I wouldn't have described it as grinding. I said my jaw hurt. I thought it was from the way I'd been....clicking my teeth. Shifting them, if you will, back and forth so that my wisdom teeth felt like they might be on the verge of becoming loose. They're not really of course, but I like the funny, sore feeling it produces in my gums. He just stared at me & said, "You're grinding your teeth." Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And I was like, "NO! No........I'm not.......grinding is like.......like, grinding. You push them together, and......and.......huh.........." Crap. I love my teeth!

But as I know all too well, Newton's whatever number law says, "A body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force." And once I start doing something I can't stop until something makes me. Or vice versa. Once I stop doing something, I can't start up again unless something, or someone forces me to. It can be a bit of a problem sometimes...

"Are you happy where you're standing still? Do you really want the sugar pill? I'll wake up tomorrow & I'll start. Tonight it feels so hard."

End of Hypnosis8 (the Transfixion)

A weird thing happened today. I went to a class I wasn't scheduled for to help the teacher finish the interviews we'd started earlier in the week. When we were done she was going to do some boring textbook stuff so she said I could leave. As I was walking down the hall I heard someone speaking English in one of the other classrooms. Speaking it very clearly & quickly, not the way a Japanese person would. Besides which, I knew where the English teacher was, I'd just left her.

So I stuck my head in. It was my favorite 1st grade homeroom after all, they wouldn't mind. The P.E. coach was showing them a video since it was a rainy day & nearly a third of the class was out sick anyway. It was a tape of an NBA game. How old I couldn't say. The Wizards & the Hawks, I think it was. I don't particularly like basketball so I couldn't really tell you anything about them, except that Michael Jordan was in the video.

The teacher didn't notice me for a while, but of course the kids did & they kept glancing back now & then to see if I was still there. I stayed until almost the end of class watching it with them. The funny thing is, I really don't like basketball at all. My dad & brother love it, & so do a couple of my friends but for me it's currently (and pretty much always has been) my least favorite of the big 4. Baseball being #1 of course & hockey being #2 since there's skating involved. It was cold & I was standing in the doorway, but I couldn't bring myself to leave. I was more focused on that game than the newest Gundam 00 epsiode.

About 10 minutes into it I realized there was someone speaking Japanese on the tape too. I'd naturally tuned in to my native language without realizing anything else was even there. I'd stood there the entire time thinking how interesting it was that the coach chose to show the kids something in English & wondering if maybe it was easier for them to get something out of if they were more focused on watching the players since they couldn't understand the commentary. I'd completely missed the Japanese overlay as I debated what I would tell them if one of them asked me if I could understand what was being said.

From that point on it was a struggle to hear only one language at a time. Once I was aware that two people were speaking it became impossible to separate the sounds from each other, but I still couldn't leave the room. I wanted so badly to zero in on that familiar, rough, American voice again that I even closed my eyes for a while. But it was too late. I began to hear a mixture of English & Japanese words that made no sense at all when put together.

Instead of leaving, I opened my eyes & watched. I can't say I got any more love for the game out of it, but I saw the way the kids looked at it, awestruck, & tried to see it through their eyes. Imagined what it must be like to be a 13 year old Japanese girl & see all those tall, muscular, bald black men playing a sport in an arena cheered on by thousands of tall, noisy white people. Somehow I'm starting to get why they think we're so cool.

Broken Coda

• limitor capacity malfunction

• human contact overload

• system crash iminent

• backup data not found

• reboot failed

• reboot failed

• ____________________

my brain works like a computer....