Occasional musings

zest
1. Enthusiasm.
2. The outer skin of a citrus fruit, used as a flavouring.

It's strange to be confronted with such an odd land, and the newness of everything can be a little overwhelming. A little like the blankness of the white box that I'm writing this blog into. Who wants to know about my language difficulties, and the fact I always feel like a stupid white man with his phrasebook, struggling to be polite and add a little more than the simple arigato that I seem to punctuate any kind of discussion with – that and hai, which I probably use far more than I should. The landscapes here are amazing though, and I try to take the opportunity to look at them as often as I can. The soft shapes of the forested mountains and the juxtaposition of geometric shapes when you look at a city really are equally beautiful, in different ways.

I've discovered a chain bookshop that has an English language section, and picked up a copy of Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Ablom, which will be a good read from the skimming I gave it on the train on the way home. It's not normally a book I would consider reading but with the rather more limited selection than normal it's almost refreshing to break away from the titles I would usually purchase.

There have been a few earthquakes recently, including a relatively large one that shook the flat and woke me up at two in the morning – scary in that I didn't know what to do, whether I should leave the flat, whether I should just go back to sleep. As I'm writing it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to check what I should do in the event of a massive earthquake. In the cupboard of the flat there's a rope ladder, presumably so I can fling it out of my window should the Big One hit. The smaller earthquakes are almost stranger – the very slight rocking that you have trouble realising are not just in your head.

I have done little writing yet, but some more drawing and so on. I'm fighting for the enthusiasm to get up and get my life going in the direction I want, rather than sitting back and going with the flow. Already in this book I bought have I found a quote that I rather like.

"Have I told you about the tension of opposites?" he says.
The tension of opposites?
"Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.
"A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle."
Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
"A wrestling match." He laughs, "Yes, I suppose you could describe life that way."
So which side wins, I ask?
"Which side wins?"
He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.
"Love wins. Love always wins."