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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I love my new apartment. I might marry it.

I wish there were someone here with me, though. I miss having other people in the house with me. A sleepover would be perfect right now. We could make popcorn and make stupidly obvious observations and make each other laugh. We could drift into a deep conversation and maybe go with the current or maybe back off. If you were here, I would tell you that I'm full of hope right now, so full it's leaking out of me. I'd just give you a hug of joy because everything is right in my little sphere.

There were fireworks tonight. I've never been all that hot for fireworks, but I do remember the Death Cab concert on the fourth, and also the show over Puget Sound in Port Townsend, and also for Madrid's birthday, and once when there was a viewing party at the Ajirogi's house. I remember setting off fireworks in the street outside our house, especially the little pagoda type and the screaming-spinning ones and I remember Craig in the FLSR who blew off his hand and replaced it with a hook and stayed the happiest person I've ever known and who then drowned.

At the Death Cab concert, I was with another guy who'd recently come out. He wanted to get physical and I wasn't comfortable with that, but we sort of did anyway because Huntington Beach after dark in July is much colder than you would think. It was kind of an awkward night. I had taken the greyhound down there. Just for the weekend, just for that concert, just because I could.

The Puget Sound show was beautiful, but again, the guy I watched it with had a crush I didn't want to requite. I knew to bundle up that time though.

In Madrid, we'd been walking around all day and we were about to take a train back to Alcala de Henares when we heard the booms. We ran for two minutes back through the train station and popped out to a million red and green sparks in the air. Boom. Boomboomboom. BoomboomboomBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM it was the best show. Like cannonfire. Like we were going to die. My stomach felt sick from the shockwaves. Eventually it ended and we caught the last train of the night.

I miss you.

Today I half broke down in front of my Japanese teacher. Not understanding or being able to make myself understood makes me want to die a little; hide a little; kick in a little window with my bare right foot. It's been six months since my plane touched down in Tokyo and yes I understand much more than I did then, but even a two hundred percent increase isn't much when you start at one. Thus the tears.

The tears actually waited until I left her house, but they started welling up when she asked "How are you?"

Last night I was marveling at how awesome my life is. It's still awesome, but today I'm tired. Not depressed, just tired.

There was woodsmoke in the air on my walk home—the last night I'll ever walk up to this apartment—and I thought about my favorite date because that night there was also woodsmoke. It was back when I couldn't call a date a date without facing disciplinary action from BYU. We skewered bits of steak on sticks we'd sharpened. (Mostly he'd sharpened, I'm not handy with a knife.) We talked about dreams and hopes and what we'd done already. We didn't touch at all because we were both only half out of the closet and then there was BYU. I think probably we would touch now, if he weren't dating someone and I weren't in Japan and we were sitting by the fire roasting bits of steak in a park somewhere. Maybe not, though.

I love you.