of the massive walkway of Washington D.C.’s international airport, responding to the details of the scene around me, of the wild flurry of face colors and outbursts of random expressive dialogues. I first wanted to flee to a corner, but decided to just walk the course. I had not realized how deeply I had been internalizing my immediate environment overseas, my brain now scrambling to adjust to the flux between the quiet, mundane and (dare I admit?) homogenous feel of the noticeably harmonious processes and events at Japan’s airports and accommodations, to the in-your-ears, in-your-face haphazard scrimmage of mayhem that I had arrived at here again. I started forward thinking, “It’s not really quite as big a difference as all that. You’re just being overly sensitive right now...” I could not wait to be in safety again in meeting my family.
I went home to Tennessee for Christmas. Actually, I arrived home just a couple of days before we set out for Arkansas for Christmas. It was a family first, possibly to become a tradition if things played out well. The trip there gave me the opportunity to look around at all the space Americans take for granted. From the plane, I remember finally thinking of a decent example of imagery to help explain what it is like to view the suburban neighborhoods of the two countries from the sky: about a thousand of a Monopoly boardgame’s small green plastic ‘house’ pieces being crammed together to represent Japan, and a sporadic dotting of the land with the large red ‘hotel’ pieces for the States. Having said that even, I am not sure I could really give the full impression in just words.
We rented a large three room cottage sitting just on the shore of Lake Ouachita, looking out with several other cottages across the expanse of a mirrored sky and mountain range vista. My mother, a dear friend, my younger brother, my older brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew, and my niece. We decorated the house to where we could have made Christmas postcards out of the picture of the living room. My mother stirred up inticing aromas in the kitchen. Our friend looped an Eric Clapton blues and country concert on the television. My sister-in-law took turns with my older brother tending to the little ones. He traded places occasionally with my little brother in keeping the fireplace alive. I stepped out onto the back deck to watch the predusk mysts crawl up the hillside evergreen branches to pass over the mountaintops. In spite of all the family activity indoors, the mysts gave me an eery feeling - as if for a moment something in me believed it had not yet left Japan. I recognized it as that part of me that sometimes plays games, beckoning me to glance closely at a natural scene nearby and guess whether or not I would recognize it from Japan or the States; until giving it a closer look, there are times that I doubt I would.
Feeling a bit playful, I wrote everyone’s names on their presents from me in Chinese/Japanese characters. The process of selecting the characters, feeling lucky enough if I can find a combination that might express a coherent thought and still be aesthetically attractive, and feeling enlightened to find one that further actually describes something I see in the person I am creating it for, is one that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I felt doubly happy to find within me no expectations toward anyone else’s appreciation (although I was told it was indeed appreciated), just joyful to have taken the time for myself to try to communicate something to others both in how I think of them and in how a certain lingual portion of my mind now operates; the work was a greater reward than whatever reception it entailed.
Having taken that selfish moment for myself, I worked harder to pay close attention to where I was, what people were doing and saying, to not let the gestalts of my second home overseas distract me from what was actually happening around me now. My older brother introduced me to Alex Grey through an illustration book and video, and the three of us with my younger stayed up until the early morning hours discussing our impressions of this type art and relevant matters. We also talked about our intention for their visit to Japan, which was finally revealed to my younger brother as his graduation-to-be present. Even after my older brother keeled over into bed, the latter two of us stayed up the rest of the night to talk about our lives and futures and to clean the living room.
I have missed these conversations. The point to which I am inseparably attached to my brothers often goes unrecognized through our long periods of silence between us. I wonder at times if I have ever really tried to express this attachment to them, or if that is necessary. In any case, I look excitedly forward to the possibility of their visit, which will encompass a large variety of adventures I have been planning (but not overplanning) for us.
Sitting in a cheap Mexican restaurant branching from a motel we rented on the way back to Tennessee, my last night in the U.S. for now, I thought about the extension of our family in Mexico (calling it that by another case of inseparable attachment to two Mexican exchange students who lived with us in Tennessee years back) and other extensions spread all over the continent (an international web of attachments). I wondered if my family could ever see my stay in Japan as I see it, just an extension of the web to the other side of the globe, no more separated, no less attached. Perhaps some of them do.
I hugged them each in the airport before the security check, reminding myself to embrace them in the manner of embracing the fact that this could always possibly be the last time - not in the order of making predictions but of never taking anything like this for granted. I would not think to consider this if I did not love them as deeply as I do.
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