Today I think I'd have to sit by you quietly for a while before saying anything. I'm listening to "Alejate" by Josh Groban, which just now is the most beautiful and heartbreaking song I know of. I'm not heartbroken, but I just finished a book that involved an opera singer and Spanish, so it's appropriate.

I broke up with my ikebana teacher today. I have a bad habit of making people think I'm interested in things I'm not interested in, or I'm bad at communicating when my interest wanes. In this case it waned two months ago, but she kept doing nice things for me and smiling and talking like we'd be together forever and I didn't know how to end it. But I did, today, over coffee at Starbucks, after a flower exhibition in Tokyo. It was awkward and ugly to me although she probably is just irritated I didn't tell her sooner. She had just introduced me to three of her fellow teachers, and I could see the pride ooze out of her when she said, "Yes, this is my American student. He comes all the way from Kanagawa (two hours away by train)." I was burning up with embarrassment as she said this because I'd already planned to tell her today that, yeah, two hours each way is really too much and I'm not coming anymore.

There's more to it, but the story bores me, so I imagine you're not enthralled either.

My students had a chorus festival yesterday, and when the first group of third graders (U.S. high school freshmen) began singing a Capella, I got big time shivers. They were spectacular. I watched from the teachers' row of chairs, and I tell you what, when I was in college I couldn't have imagined myself watching these awkwardly adolescent people belt out these shocking notes. It makes me think that there's absolutely no point in planning more than a year or so into the future. In the past few months, I've been seriously considering joining the Navy when I finish up here, now that DADT isn't there anymore. I'd never contemplated that before, just like I'd never contemplated the vigor of a fourteen year old conductor leading his class through a set of ominous and slightly anime-sounding vibrations. I guess my vision is broken.

Yeah, the Navy. As a cryptology officer. It's safe to assume that I'll be trilingual by the time I finish up here. I can see myself translating, and I can't see myself doing much else. But it's just an idea, and there are eighteen months between then and now. I have one other goal I'm requiring of myself before I apply, too: I want to finish massage school. That idea's been dogging me for too long (since I was seventeen) and if I keep putting it off I'll always wonder why it keeps popping into my mind and whether I would have taken to the reality as readily as the idea.

Probably I should focus more on life here and now instead of projecting. I will. I'll work harder on here and now. Now that ikebana's not in the way.

Well, hugs. It's bedtime.

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