Smile and Freefall

I’ve done some crazy stuff in my time. In elementary school, my best friend and I used to guzzle Sprite to see who could take the most successive sips. It burns like fire going down your throat, and is damn near unbearable by the sixth gulp. Try it. Then there was that time I dove off a trampoline into an above ground swimming pool and hit my head on the bottom. The world wouldn’t stop spinning for days. My sister tattled on me, and I was rushed to the emergency room and told I had a bruised brain, and the doctor scolded me and said I was lucky to be walking out of there and not cold and blue with a tag hanging from my toe. That wasn’t intentional, but it was still crazy, and ever since I’ve been prone to run-on sentences. And then on occasion, I’ll tell Sherry to just, like, punch me in the stomach as hard as she can so I can feel alive. And for a while I had a faux hawk, which was stupid. The point is, this ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve challenged my own fragile existence before. I’ve looked my own supposed mortality dead in the eyes and said, “Bullshit,” and called its bluff. But at this moment, turning and looking to Terry with his silvery mustache and tobacco stained teeth chomp chomp chomping at me, a maniacal fire in his eyes, I realize: this might be the stupidest shit I’ve done. A couple weeks ago, we took my brother-in-law sky diving for his birthday. Sherry and I jumped with him, and afterward on somewhat of a whim – cause sometimes you just gotta live your life on a cloud of whimsy – I enrolled myself in an elite and vigorous training regiment to get my skydiving license. Six classroom training hours and one week later, I’m 14,000 feet above ground with crazy ass Terry to my right and equally insane Ted to my left. I’m pretty sure Ted – at the risk of profiling – is an Italian dude from the east. He’s intimidating in a break-your-knees sorta way, and when I practiced incorrect form during ground training, he slapped me. But I think he likes me. I hope he does, cause I like him. Terry’s on the inside of the plane. Ted’s dangling like a windsock from the outside. I’m standing at the edge looking 14,000 below at the flat flat land of Texas and trying to remember to breathe and smile. In my classroom training, I memorized all sorts of procedures, hand signals and skydiving jargon. Greg was my instructor. Greg is a weathered old man. He has around 4,000 jumps under his belt. He had knee surgery about a week and half earlier, and he hobbled around all morning with the sound of painkillers shaking in the pocket of his sweatpants. “Just remember to breathe,” he told me. “Breathe and smile,” he said. “Smile and freefall.” Smile and freefall. “That’s a goddamned terrific philosophy on life, Greg.” I said. He grinned and winked. Keeping your calm, smiling and freefalling, is a lot easier on the ground, though. At 14,000 feet, in a purple jumpsuit, I kinda just wanna be back in bed with my wife. But the achievements in my life that I’m proudest of were without exception the scariest to face. Living abroad. Drinking the blood of a cobra. Winning back the heart of a woman who dumped me as a high school freshman. The goblin living inside me who makes me do these crazy things hisses at me, Because everyone else is too chicken shit, Papi. (He’s taken to calling me Papi lately.) I know I know I know, I say, enough already with the chicken shit speech, goblin. Terry gives me a head nod to begin my exit procedure. Deep breath. I look to Terry inside the plane and yell over the roaring wind. “CHECK IN!” He mouths the words “Ok”. I turn to Ted on the outside. “CHECK OUT!” Smiling like a mad man and flapping in the wind, Ted mouths “Ok”. I turn my head forward and look at my hands, which are gripping the door of the plane, one in, one out. Deep breath. I yell “UP!” and straighten my legs, “DOWN!” and bend my legs, “ARCH!” I step from the plane. Watching an airplane fly away as you plummet from the door at 100 miles per hour is a beautiful sight. I keep craning my neck, trying to see past Terry and watch the plane grow smaller and smaller like an eagle in the sky. Ted starts shaking my leg, and suddenly I remember that I’m not merely along for a tandem ride. I need to play an active role in this fall, but everything I learned in class has suddenly escaped me. All my thoughts are on sipping up as much oxygen as I can – like a little gold fish, glug glug. Ted gives me a hand signal. Fingers in a circle? What do fingers in a circle mean? Ted shakes his circled fingers at me, I’m afraid he’ll slap me again. Glug glug. Oh right, circle of awareness, check your altimeter! I turn my head to my wrist. “12,000 FEET!” I can’t hear my own voice, the wind rips past us like a bullet train. He sticks two fingers straight out. Two fingers? What do two fingers mean? Glug glug. Two fingers! Ted is adamant. He slaps my legs. Oh right, straighten your legs! He bares his teeth at me, reminding me to smile. SMILE YOU SONUVABITCH! I smile and freefall. He gives me the thumbs up. I turn to Terry on my right. He makes a fist at me. GODDAMNIT! WHAT DOES FIST MEAN? He shakes his fist. Oh right, glug glug, check your pilot chute! On the right side, at the base of my pack is a small piece of pvc pipe. It sticks out of a pouch. It’s connected to my pilot shoot, a small parachute the size of a trash can lid. At the necessary altitude – which today is 5,500 feet – I will grab hold of the pvc pipe and pull it, removing the pilot shoot from its pouch, and throw both out to the side. As the pilot shoot catches air, it will – god willing – create tension on the line and tug at my main canopy from the pack on my back. The tension will release a pin on the pack, and my main canopy will spring forth, fill with air, and I will drift gently back to earth. Ted violently shakes me, telling me to relax. Smile and freefall. At 6,000 feet I lock my eyes on my altimeter and watch the needle swiftly count down the feet. At 5,500 feet I wave goodbye to Terry and Ted, reach back, pull and throw my pvc pipe with all my might. Whoosh! The speed of my descent slows dramatically, and Terry and Ted fall fall fall to the ground. I look above me to confirm that my parachute is in working order. Is it there? Are there holes? Tangles in the lines? It’s in a flapping bundle, not completely open. I keep my eyes on it, waiting for it to inflate, flap flap flap, but nothing happens. As calmly as humanly possible, which isn’t terribly calmly, I begin running the emergency procedures through my head that will release me from my main parachute and deploy my emergency reserve. Flap flap flap, my parachute is still in a ball. And I’m still falling. And then by the grace of god it catches the right gust of wind and opens into a graceful arc. I watch it, and aside from the whomp whomp whomp sound of my beautiful, functional parachute, everything is silent. I’ve never heard so much silence. It’s almost deafening, damn near spiritual. I look down at my feet and try to comprehend the space separating the ground from my dirty Converse. Four thousand feet, my altimeter tells me. I swing my legs like a child in a booster seat. I’m directly above the drop zone. And then I’m a little upwind of the drop zone. And then I’m further upwind of the drop zone.

Like a helium balloon released by a careless child, the wind is carrying me away. My helmet is equipped with an earpiece. From the ground Terry is supposed to be communicating with me, guiding me back safely. I haven’t heard a word, though. My radio is broken. Try as I might, I can’t fight the winds (50 mile per hour gusts, I’m later told). I kick my legs and try to run back to the drop zone. I make tiny turns with my parachute, hoping to crab walk across the sky (only making things worse, I’m later told), but the wind continues to carry me further and further away, drifting across the sky, further and further from the airport. At 3,000 feet it becomes perfectly clear, there's no way in hell I'm landing anywhere close to where I'm supposed to land. With each second I watch the countryside below me drift by at 50 miles per hour. I look from one plot of farmland to another. Desperation swells in my throat. I soar over bodies of water, major roads and clusters of trees. I’m lucky if I land within 5 miles of the airport. My hands tremble. My breaths are shallow. I no longer want to go through with the remaining 24 jumps required to get my license. If I survive, which is doubtful, I wonder if I can donate to charity the other 13 jumps I've prepaid for. Shits, goddamns and other rueful words spew from my mouth.

At about 1,000 feet, I’m forced to pick a field in which to land. I’ve resigned myself to a long walk by this point, now I’m just focused on not killing myself. I follow the landing path I plotted just seconds earlier in my head, trembling my way through trees, miraculously approaching clear land, and at 300 feet am approaching the ground quickly, much too quickly, and suddenly there it is. Earth. With a thud I slam into the ground, bang my helmeted head and topple amongst the dirt, cacti and cow patties.

Oh sweet consciousness. After several wide-eyed and astonished breaths, I collect my canopy together in a bundle, carrying it like an armful of fresh laundry, and begin making my way several miles back to the airport. I wriggled on my belly under one barbed wire fence, then another. The sky is crystal clear today. The temperature is perfect. I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful day. Everything is silent. I’ve never heard so much silence. It’s almost deafening, damn near spiritual. I come upon a field full of cattle, hundreds of them, grazing, sleeping, lazily enjoying the impossible peace as I am. One cow notices me and stands. Then another. Then several more. Soon every cow, hundreds of them, have risen to their haunches and are facing me, batting their long lashes and silently imploring me to state my business. “I’m just passing through, cows." I tell them. “Just passing through.” I crick my neck. Adrenaline saved me from any immediate pain of my landing, but tomorrow I reckon I’ll feel as if I was hit by a bus. For now, though, I’m alive. Unless I’m not. I look at the cows. The cows look at me, hundreds of them. They hardly move, just the infrequent swish of a tail. There's something otherworldly about their serenity. Calm as Hindu cows, they assess my presence as if I've stumbled upon a gathering I wasn't properly invited to attend. A fox wedding. A teddy bear picnic.

Am I alive, cows? The cows don’t answer. I turn to look from where I came. In that direction there is only the horizon with no end in sight. In the other direction, cows. Hundreds of them.

Is it possible, cows, that I did not survive that landing? Is it possible that this moment of serenity and clarity and appreciation of all the universe has to offer is simply a final moment playing out endlessly, existing for an eternity in my severed cerebral cortex, while there's a flurry of activity around my mangled shell of a body, wailing and mourning, five stages of acceptance, the seasons pass, my ashes scatter on the wind?

Whatever, cows. Alive or dead, I'm seeing and smelling and hearing and touching the here and now. It's a good here and now, forever and ever amen.

This blog will be written in the third person of a facebook status update

Brandon was a fan of Detroit 7, he even scurried out and bought their album on iTunes after seeing them play. But then when he saw the lead singer crouched against the wall on the last night of SXSW, and he approached her humbly and politely and asked for a picture, she told him ‘Go away I’m having a conversation’. And now he feels a little like the Easter Bunny kicked him in the crotch.

White People Say the Darndest Things

My dad asked me yesterday evening, over a bowl of melted Velveeta and Rotel tomatoes, why I haven’t written any new blogs lately, and I told him it’s because I’ve been sitting in my underwear for the past three months, searching for jobs since returning to America, and I haven’t found the inspiration. But this morning I realized that isn’t entirely true. I was inspired on Christmas Eve by the friend of a family friend – an ex-military, Texas good ol' boy – as we stood sipping merlot around a kitchen island spread with finger foods of assorted textures and colors. He was asking Sherry and me about Japan, from which we had returned only two days prior, and this led to discussing general travel throughout Asia, which led to discussing our honeymoon in Thailand, which led to the question, directed at Sherry, “Are you Thai?” (Following the question, of course, “Are you Japanese?"), and to both Sherry said, “No, I’m Cambodian.” “Did you visit Cambodia while you were in Japan?” he asked. And we had, so we answered, “Yes.” And then I talked about how it was Sherry’s first time to Cambodia, and she confirmed and explained how she was born in a refuge camp in Thailand as her family was escaping genocide in Cambodia, at which point the ex-military, Texas good ol' boy’s son, who was also standing around the kitchen island sipping merlot, said “The Killing Fields is my favorite movie,” which is a strange thing to say, and we said “Really?” with quizzical expressions on our faces. And then the ex-military, Texas good ol' boy said something even stranger. He smiled and reminisced with a chuckle, “I bombed Cambodia.” And my Cambodian wife and I smiled.

My name's Brandon, and I would like to share.

An old Art Director from my previous life as an Ad Exec. stole my heart. That’s how the dream went anyway. I lay on my back atop a conference room table, my chest opened and the skin pulled back like a dissected frog’s, while he stood over me explaining that a person’s heart can be removed from the body for a brief period of time with no harm done. “You can actually hold your own heart in your hands and watch it beat,” he said. “The heart’s pretty neat like that.” He reached into my chest cavity and rummaged around, disconnecting my heart from it’s many important wires, and pulled it out and showed it to me as if I had just given birth to the thing. “See?” Sure enough, it was still beating, and I was still very much alive. “Bad ass,” I must’ve said or something to that effect as I watched my glistening heart contract in the palm of his hand, like a dry-heaving newborn pig. He began playing with my heart – pulling and pushing, stretching and twisting – to test the durability of my heart tissue. At one point he clamped his thumb and forefinger around it and squeezed the way you might squeeze a deflated balloon, making one end translucent and bulbous with excess air. He grinned and nodded maniacally at me. “Ain’t this just the coolest?” “Ok, Kyle,” I said. “Let’s go ahead and put my heart back.” He never did specify how long one could function without one’s heart, and I was beginning to feel lightheaded. “Right, right,” he said and focused his mania on my empty chest cavity. He placed my heart in, took a step back and eyed it perplexedly, then rotated it 90 degrees clockwise before nodding, pleased. I felt a strange tingling sensation in my lips. He fumbled with my inner circuitry, reattaching my heart to its various input and output connections as if connecting his DSL modem for the first time. “Please hurry, Kyle,” I said calmly, euphoria setting in. He mumbled to himself and traced the path of each important artery. “This one goes here, that one there, this one…” he trails off and does some counting on his fingers. “Hurry up, Kyle.” I can’t remember if he connected me in time.

Finish your blood.

Sra sau is a surprisingly smooth and refreshing Cambodian concoction. It’s a homemade rice wine, tastes much like Japanese sake, and is easy and dirt cheap to produce, thereby making it a favorite among the Cambodian working class looking to get tipsy. I, myself, have a zest for all things fermented, and only minutes ago, a messy-haired and strikingly pretty small Cambodian girl shuffled across the flimsy bamboo slats of this rural restaurant clutching my first glass of sra sau in both hands. It was full almost to the brim and swirled with her every step.

“Awkun,” I said in thanks then quickly emptied the glass. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage.

I’m now sitting Indian style on a straw mat, elevated 20 feet above a Cambodian swamp and gazing out at expansive rice fields and crystal blue skies when I finish my first glass and my second is delivered to me. It’s in a water bottle this time and is accompanied by a small convoy of four shoeless children and a shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks who is carrying a meat cleaver, a chopping block and a bulking and writhing plastic bag.

 Rewind to three days ago.

Sherry and I arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia and were ushered off the plane and into a taxi driven by a young, shaggy-haired and slouching man. “Where you from?” He asked in a gentle voice. “Ireland,” I said sticking to Sherry’s and mine agreed upon alibi without making even the slightest attempt at an accent. “What about your lady? She look Asian, yeah?” “Khmer, actually,” I said, delighted at my interracial marriage, and suddenly he too was delighted to have a fellow countryman in the backseat. “Bong aiyn Khmer?” he looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Cha. Yom Khmer.” Then Sherry slipped into a surprisingly fluent exchange with our driver, whose name was Bun, and watching the two chatter back and forth in unknown vowels and syllables and somehow understand and deliver the appropriate responses to one another, I fell in love with her all over again. My introduction to Sherry’s life killed her bilingual skills – or so I thought, and apparently so did she, because I could see the surprise in her eyes at how quickly her mother language was coming back.

“Ask him about cobra blood.” I murmured quietly from the corner of my mouth, because Bun also spoke English, and I was too shy to ask. Sherry shot me a reproachful look, as she's terrified, absolutely terrified of snakes, but did ask him a few minutes later. He did know of a place where I could consume a cobra’s life force – where they would kill a cobra in front of me, drain the blood from the body and serve it to me in a glass - and suddenly my spirits were lifted with the realization that this trip to a third world country wouldn’t merely be a trek through the predictable paved streets of South East Asian tourism.

Rewind to several years ago.

I suppose my obsession with drinking cobra blood began when I saw Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach. At the beginning of the movie, he narrates a montage and condemns travelers for visiting far off lands to simply do what they could do at home. Watch movies. Eat hamburgers. Speak English. Sleep in beds. Then cut to Leo in a dimly lit backroom somewhere in the bowels of Thailand, surrounded by several menacing Thais, one of which has an eye-patch, if memory serves. Leo boldly and unflinchingly slams back a shot of freshly drained cobra blood, bangs his hands on the table and makes a hasty exit.

“You have to do that,” said the goblin living inside me as I watched the scene. “No dude, that’s sick,” I said. “You have to do that,” he told me again with a gleam in his eye. “Why?” “Because everyone else is too chicken shit to.” “No, dude.” “Yes, man.” And the goblin was right. I did have to do that. And at some point over the years, drinking cobra blood was officially placed at the top of my unofficial things to do before I die list (along with getting a tebori back piece and getting shot three times by a Mexican gang). It became that mountain peak that was too tall and treacherous to climb. It became the line that separated the sensible person and what they are resigned to experience in a lifetime from the extraordinary person and what they are willing to subject themselves to in the spirit of being alive. It became the gauge that I compared what I was to what I wanted to be.

Fast forward to 45 minutes ago.

Bun pulled his silver Celica to a hut at the side of the road, rolled down his window and hollered (later translated for me by my darling, bilingual wife). “Hey! You got any snake!” The proprietors of the hut made a quick phone call – to the keeper of the snake, I assume – and there was one cobra restlessly waiting to be bled and devoured, anxious to merge his spirit with mine. So, we got out of the car as a lady ran at the same time from the restaurant and whizzed away on a moped to fetch the snake, and we made our way across the flimsy bamboo flooring of the restaurant and settled on a straw mat in a far corner. Four children stared at us from a distance, from behind a sofa. I asked Bun if I could have a glass of rice wine. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage.

Fast forward 25 minutes, to now.

Hanging awkwardly at the side of the shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks, the bulging plastic bag rotates just slightly with the restrained movements of its contents. It wriggles and writhes in a seemingly endless twisting of scales and sinew. In one brief twist of the bag I see the cobra’s hood flare, the telltale sign that it’s feeling threatened – rightfully so – and is ready to fight for its life. The man sets both the chopping block and meat cleaver on the bamboo floor and pulls a small aluminum wire from his pocket. He studies the cobra inside the bag and then with a sudden snake-like strike of his own, seizes the cobra’s head and pinches its mouth shut. He fits the aluminum wire around the snake’s neck, just behind its eyes, and briskly twists the loose ends together as if he’s sealing a bag of bread. Then the plastic bag is opened, the tail end removed and a female member of the family, who is to serve as the primary operator from this point forward, lifts the tail and stretches the snake horizontally. The shirtless man in pleated trousers still clutches the head within the bag. The snake is about four feet long and a glistening midnight black. The woman grabs the snake from the top and with a small cloth thoroughly swabs the oils off the length of its body. She then crouches down with the tail in her hands, lays it straight across the chopping block, picks up the meat cleaver and begins sawing.

A rooster crows incessantly. A baby cries in the distance.

Once it’s determined that the life vein has been adequately severed, the snake is held vertically over the water bottle of sra sau. The body contracts and relaxes. Twists and straightens, and losing its gracefulness, it cricks and jars like the links of a rusty chain. Our driver, Bun, steps in and together he and the woman squeeze the snake’s body between their fists, milking the blood into the water bottle, which is now a deep ruby red. When they finish about five minutes later, the empty shell of the snake is taken away, and the bloody bamboo flooring is doused with a bucket of water. Bun stands, swirls the bottle of blood and inspects it against the light like a seasoned winemaker.

It’s a lot of blood.

“I would like to share,” I say to Bun and make a nervous whirling motion with my arms, gesturing to everyone in sight. Bun looks confused. “I’d like to share.” I say again. It’s too much blood. “Chite, chite khneah.” Sherry says to clarify. “Chite khneah.” Bun smiles and examines the bottle again. “It’s good for two people,” he assures me and sits beside me on the straw mat.

Two glasses are brought out on a silver platter. One is a manly tumbler, which Bun pours the blood into first. The other, my glass, is a dainty snifter of sorts. “Any last words?” Sherry asks after Bun fills my glass and I study my drink. I do have last words. I have several.

What I want to do is release a throaty and cracking high-pitched mating call across the rice fields and into the jungles of Cambodia and deliver a diatribe on what it is to truly live and pound my chest and aggressively claim that King Kong ain’t got shit on me and go on and on about how I will wake up tomorrow a different man than I did today, better, faster, stronger, and then raise my glass and toast to truth, your truth and my truth, our personal truths, and finding these truths and following them to the end of the world if goddamned need be!

But instead I shrug and look to Sherry and the video camera she’s holding to document this experience, and I say, “There are no words.” I turn to Bun, who has his glass raised slightly and continues swirling the blood around and inspecting its density, flecks of the snake’s blood still splattered across his forearm. I raise my glass and nod. He does the same. We clink our glasses, toast in Sherry’s direction as well. And drink.

Much to my surprise, it actually tastes like my first glass of sra sau, but I shudder slightly still with the knowledge of what I just drank. I look at Bun as I finish mine and he takes the last swallow of his. Blood pools in the corners of his mouth. I wipe my mouth, smack my lips, and then I taste the blood. The unquestionable, undeniable metallic taste of blood lingers in my mouth, sticks to my cheeks and teeth, as if I just bit my tongue. I've been sucking on pennies.

Bun has disappeared. Sherry’s still shooting the video, narrating and asking me several questions, none of which I answer interestingly, eloquently or wittily. That’s what journals, memoirs and blogs are for. Before long Bun reappears with a small organ between his fingers, the snake’s gall bladder. He holds it over the water bottle and picks at the elastic skin of the organ as he explains how the bile inside will enrich the taste of the blood. He says something to Sherry in Cambodian, and she responds, “Bitter.” “Yes, yes. Bitter. It’s more bitter.” he says and breaks the skin of the gall bladder with his fingernails. The bile oozes out, glow-in-the-dark green like engine coolant, and dribbles into the bottle. We have a few more drinks, and it is in fact a bit more bitter, then Bun sets the bottle of blood on top of a karaoke machine in the corner and says, “We’ll leave the rest for later.”

As we emerge from the restaurant and into the sunlight, headed now to the floating village of Chong khneas, I bow emphatically to the family responsible for making me one with the cobra. “Awkun chranh, awkun chranh,” I say repeatedly. We walk toward the car, and Bun takes notice of the goofy white boy grin on my face. “You drunk?” he accuses and teases. Bun’s English is very good, but I’m not sure how to explain how monumental and important this afternoon has been for my personal evolution. “No, Bun,” I say. “Not drunk. Just happy. Very very happy.”

Fast forward to two hours from now.

While we’re away touring the floating village of Chong khneas, the family will cook the cobra and upon our return will present us with a cobra feast; stir fried cobra and cobra soup, from which I will pull sections of the body, peel away the rubbery earlobe-textured skin and devour the meat like catfish and then marvel at the engineering of the vertebrae. It’s like a child’s toy, I’ll giggle and wiggle it at Sherry, expecting confirmation, but she will just return a disparaging look and quietly scold me for playing with my food. Together, Bun and I will share several more shots of cobra blood laced with sra sau, each shot warmer and thicker and harder to take than the previous. With one drink left in the bottom of the bottle, Bun will instruct me in a fatherly tone, “Finish your blood,” and though the floating bits will make it damn near impossible to swallow, I will do as I’m told, with tears in my eyes.

Then we will drink several cans of Angkor beer, lie in hammocks and enjoy the breeze whizzing off the rice fields. Sherry will ask Bun about Cambodian weddings, and Bun will ask me about Obama, and I will ask Bun about Cambodia’s recent election. None of us will really pay too much attention to each other’s explanations. We’re all too full with the satisfaction that tomorrow we will wake up different people than we did today.

Links to a few of the videos, should you be so inclined: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=mR8pntlfVXc http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=doRPtQxN8zw

For the Record

I love Japan. And I love living in Japan, despite what my previous grumblings about old people in sun hats and censorship on pubic hair might have misled. (Really, I was only pissed that the dry cleaner was closed when I went to pick up my suit.) But even given my affinity for this country, teaching is an entirely different matter, and a career change that I anticipated would be immensely rewarding has been largely discouraging. Imagine, if you will, trying to explain to a confused and increasingly frightened Japanese child the verb ‘do’, one of the most fundamental words in the English language, without just flailing your goddamn arms about. So, ‘What did you do on Saturday?’ becomes, 'What (questioning shrug) did you (point point point) do (goddamn flailing) on Saturday (point to calendar)? Clearly, teaching is meant for someone with much more patience, tenderness and better control of their profanity, and it came to me one recent morning as I sat Indian style with a duck puppet on my left hand, calmly watching my student lick the bottom of his own foot: I don’t want to do this anymore. Around about the same time Sherry and I received matching folded letters in matching green envelopes from the corporate office. Mine was addressed to Brandon Sensei, Sherry’s to Sherry Sensei, and they were offers to renew our contracts for another year. Sherry and I conferred in a smoke-filled restaurant over a dinner of crab pizza and pork kimchee. I took a sip of my whiskey and she says ‘I want to quit’, and I say ‘I need to go to the bathroom but I don’t know where my shoes are’, and with that it was settled. The Jansas are coming home. We will return after the first of the year, which means I have approximately 5 months to master the art of ninja, embark on a mystical journey through the Shinto spirit realm and get a yakuza style back tattoo (Mt. Fuji set against the Cadillac insignia. Or vice versa). I will miss Japan tremendously, and reminiscences of our year here will remain a constant source of comfort throughout my life. But Sherry and I are ready for the next adventure. We miss family. We miss friends. And we have a small, white, mohawked pup at home whose absence has left a smoldering spot in our hearts, and who I'm anxious as all hell to get back to so I can have him plated with gold, chained, and hung around my neck in permanent adornment as if I were some bejeweled rapper from my iTunes playlist. Plus, I have a writing career to begin.

Troll

Uninspired. Haven’t felt much like writing. Discouraged. Two students told me the other day that I smelled. Then they said I was fat. Irritable. It’s rainy season and hot. Children are sticky and smell like pineapple. They form their fingers into guns and poke me in the anus. I don’t really care if they learn English anymore. I suppose this disheartened state I’ve found myself in is called homesickness. We’ve now been in Japan for five months, after all, and indeed there comes a time in all torrid romances when the kisses become routine, when the late night cuddling becomes cumbersome, the matching haircuts a bit misguided. Love loses its luster. Take big ears, for instance. Once so adorable on that girl you’ve been dating, holding her hair back so prominently, they were exactly what attracted you in the first place. So elfin and squishy between your fingers. But suddenly, while eating an IHOP breakfast, you notice that those ears look less elfin and more troll-like. It’s not that you love her any less, it’s just now you think she looks like a troll. So it is with my love affair with Japan. Love loses its luster. Dogs in peoples’ clothing. Old people in sun hats. The hours of the day being shown in military time. Censorship on pubic hair. These things have lost their charm as the months have gone by. And not a single person has mistaken me for Seth Green. Sigh. And yet, I keep reminding myself that these are the things I will miss when the time comes for me to leave this zany country. It’s like I tell Sherry when she complains of me overheating the taco shells or scratching my rear end for minutes on end. “One day I’ll be dead.” I say to her. “And these will be the very things you will miss most.” So it goes.