– what we hold

even through
a litter of
malcontent,
petals curl.

– in the vancouver airport,

skylight reflected in the laplight of my computer screen. A wait of two more hours. Sprained ankle still throbbing slightly. Left Elroy under the covers this morning, though we gave him a scritch under the chin before we left. Was raining, as it has been, for the last few days. Dave taking my heavy bags to the car in the downpour. A Siberian Wallflower sits on a seat on the verandah, waiting to be planted. Maybe it will be planted.

Fukushima has had a third explosion, yet I want to attend my students’ graduation. Have I lived long enough to expose myself to radiation? And there are conflicting reports. It seems people carry on, and those who get sick are usually those waiting to be born, or those just easing their way into their lives. Of course all ages suffer, but we seem to get sick so much as we get older anyway. What gets us ultimately, or do we ease into that too?

I have too many bags as I am travelling to a place I am going to live again. I’ll get there about 10pm tonight/tomorrow depending on your view of the time zones. I guess it is tomorrow. I will sleep on the plane, and that will help things along. Lying on the floor last night with Dave, Elroy in the crook between us, me avoiding packing bags.

Restrictions and survival, huh? I do need to make my own money – and maybe Japan is not the place to do it at this point of time. Or I need to have something coming in. If I did have the discipline to write regularly and submit, I wonder how that’d go. But while things are tenuous in an official sense they remain tenuous in an official sense – if I can only be official in the States as a worker, I think I need to keep a practical and pragmatic view of that.

No need to sell the carpet from under my own feet just because it seems to be magically floating along at present. At the same time, no need to discount the loveliness, but with no safety net, it’s a lovely ride, but calls for a lot of trust. This I have, but until there are some safeguards, some regulations in place which guarantee my own future to some degree in a country that is not my own, that I share with another, then I must have faith such safeguards ultimately will be established, and also act as if they never will be, for my own self-preservation, if anything were ever to go wrong. The transition period will always find me vulnerable. My partner will probably die before me, not a nice thought, but is older than me. This won’t happen for a long time, but, what happens then? Return home, unrecognised in one country and probably homeless in either one. Or maybe I hit it big Statewide and somehow come into my own lame-suited (will put the accent in later) glory. It’s quite a big ask, but the experience is a good experience – yet, I need to continue to secure my own future.

It was a nice evening. I didn’t really want to leave. I don’t know what lies ahead. I don’t know how Japan is going to be. They are a very resilient people. The heartbreak of so much devastation, of one of the most beautiful areas of Japan, is going to take a few generations to overcome.

I like to lie down with Dave. I like how he makes me feel. Guess there are Carpenter and other tunes – and the right balance of individuality and self-preservation with joint-heartedness and compromise. Chemistry – always needed for a meal of sustenance. This is quickly written. Battery running low. May come back to it and edit severely later.