faulty vision

I haven’t said anything since the invasion of Iraq started, and that’s because I don’t really have anything to say that hasn’t been said better, elsewhere. That shouldn’t be taken to mean that I don’t have an opinion, because I do. It just means that there are many other people who are far more articulate and intelligent than I am, people who have thought out their issues and come up with educated, well-reasoned arguments for their positions. I haven’t done any of that.

Despite the fact that this is the first war that I’m truly mature enough to understand and take an interest in, my intelligence has dismayed me by failing all its childhood promise. In lieu of serious analysis and informed evaluation, it has descended to rendering complicated issues into third-grade simplicity, at times persuaded of mutually exclusive and unsupportable ideas. Much as I would like to think that I have a mind and a well-rounded education — presumption on the first part; outright falsehood on the second, because the day you meet a truly conservative classical musician is the day you warp back in time and shake hands with Wagner¹ — both have utterly failed me. Instead, I’m left with a series of visceral and outright irrational opinions, which I feel obligated to defend but would much rather not have to.

On the other hand, I’ve opened my reading to a whole, hitherto unexplored section of the web: political weblogs.

My leanings are certainly more to the left than my father’s, who was still quietly convinced that the Emperor was holy and Japanese Imperialism (while messy and violent and done in completely the wrong way) would have been a much better thing for all concerned than this bizarre international corruption of mediocrity brought about by Coca-Cola America. Ours was not a house in which political dialogue flourished, partly because my household had a superbly old-world Japanese attitude of ‘it can’t be helped,’ and partly because it’s hard to hold a real world political discussion with people who treasure a chart that traces the Japanese Imperial lineage back to God.

“Look!” Dad would say, pointing to one of the indecipherable cartouches on the chart. “You’re related to that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and there’s God, and that’s why we shouldn’t have to pay sales tax!”

I read John Scalzi on a regular basis, one of the handful of sites I hit to start out my day. I enjoy Scalzi’s “Whatever” because it’s thought-provoking without being enraging, which could either be a testament to his writing skills, or the affinity of our viewpoints. Lately, his format has changed to include links, which has proved to be an eye-opening experience for me. For all my self-proclaimed openness to new experiences, in practice I’ve a tendency to make my rut and roll in it, eyeing any new venture with a not entirely irrational apprehension and mistrust. I go to the same restaurants, order the same food, read the same books over and over, and to some extent this extends to web pages. Having established that there are some ten or so web journals (or, in deference to Mr. Scalzi’s preference, not-journals) that I like, I revisit them with dogged regularity, feeling disinclined to stray without some critical, trusted web road guide, complete with a Zagat-like classification system of stars.

With the combination of the war, Scalzi’s recommendations, and the sneaking suspicion that I was really stretching when I claimed to have a three-digit IQ, I’ve started doing a little exploring. Get this: it turns out there’s a whole world wide web out there. An entire panorama of political discussion has opened up, literally before my eyes. I’ve gobbled bits and pieces of weblog articles, chewed them up and spit them out: conservative, liberal, pro-war, anti-war. Here and there I’ll find someone who says something just right, and I’ll pick that up and stuff it into my disorganized brain with the realization that that’s exactly why I hold this opinion.

This is what we call the Garanimal² creation of an American. I could conceivably put together my own wardrobe of thought if I actually tried harder, but it’s so much easier — and fun — to match the little animals on the labels together and emerge with a complete outfit of ideas. Look! I’m a platypus!

My sister is driving back down to California today, having finished all but the last quarter or so of classes. She’s promised to bring me mochi, those sweet rice cakes — wonderful baked over a grill, doused in soy sauce and wrapped with toasted nori (seaweed); better still baked over a grill, then wrapped in a shiso (beefsteak, otherwise known as “perilla”) leaf and mentaiko, spicy fish roe, all wrapped in toasted nori — which I hoard greedily in my freezer and dole out in a miserly fashion as the whim takes me.

“Guess what!” she burbled when her phone call dragged me out of bed this morning. “I got a job in Pomona!”

“Abuwah?” I said blearily. I don’t do well in mornings.

“Well, outside of Pomona,” she amended. “Forest work. I’m going to break fire lines!”

Well. That was ducky. I woke up in an instant. “You’re going to do what?!”

“You know. I’m going to fight wildfires. When a fire is coming, I’m going to tear up brush and stuff so the fire can’t go any further.”

“Fire breaker,” I said flatly. “You’re going to be a fire breaker.”

“Four days on, three days off.”

“They’re going to put you up?”

“Well, they’ll charge me a dollar a night, but that’s because I’ll be sleeping in a camp, with a sleeping bag….”

There didn’t seem much to say to that. “That sounds horrible.”

Enthusiasm bubbled up in her voice again. “Are you kidding? It’s going to be fun!”

It’s odd how the mind plays tricks on you. I was pretty sure she sounded pleased.

1. Not that this is related to anything, but with all due respect to Lt. Col. United States Marine Corps Gil Ferguson on today’s NPR broadcast of Forum, conservative though he might have been, Wagner could’ve given Clinton lessons on the womanizing. As any woman can tell you, that particular fault seems to exist outside the moral and ideological spectrum, and a conservative can be just as liberal with his pecker as, well, a liberal. It is interesting though to note that while Democratic failings usually happen in the bedroom, Republican failings have more often been in the boardroom. Of the two, I’m inclined to think that the fault of philandering is the more comforting, partly because it’s more human. At least you can say with a straight face that you’re “in touch with the people.” The fifty percent with breasts, anyway.

[Go Back]

2. Garanimals are a phenomenon that I missed out on in my childhood. My family was, after all, quite poor for all their Japanese-ness; during the boom of the 80s when the Japanese were buying Hawaii and pretty much any North American landmark they could lay their hands on, I used to say — not entirely in jest — that we were the only poor Japanese people in the entire United States. At any rate, poverty meant that the clothes I wore were hand-me-downs from some other child that might (or more often might not) have been about the same size sometime in the past. Gratitude being a necessary quotient of sanity in the truly poor, my mother delighted over each gift of old outfits and throw it over my head. For all her graceful chic-ness during the 60s and 70s, Mom was utterly oblivious to color or design or fabric when it came to her own children. It wasn’t until middle school that we started being in a position where I could have new, store-bought clothes.

From Goodwill. New, see, was relative. What I wouldn’t have give for a pair of Wonder Woman underoos.

[Go Back]

I may have mentioned this before, but it is a matter of fact that every roommate I have ever had has ended up engaged while we were roommates. This makes no statement about the personalities or looks of my roommates — “Sure,” you’re thinking, “if your roommate is J.Lo, they probably got engaged six or seven times a year anyway,” — which have varied widely through the years. There have been some who were almost confirmed nuns, who subsequently fell to the Might of the Mating Mojo, and still others I sincerely thought were 24/7 lesbians of the cabbage-eating castrating kind. I also specify ‘engaged’ as opposed to ‘married,’ because there’s always a small gap between engagement and marriage. The Mojo doesn’t seem inclined to exert any effort beyond the production of a ring and promise. Anything further, it apparently thinks, is gravy.

“…which means that if you end up my roommate,” I told the Guy one night, “you might end up married.”

There was a vast, heavy silence. The Guy slowly started to look hunted.

After about a year of “all but name,” the Guy and I have finally moved in together. Officially. It’s been about that long since the Guy has spent any significant time in his own apartment; with his rent as high as it was, he was easily paying for the most expensive storage space and mailbox in all of Silicon Valley. Excuse me. Storage space, mailbox, and DSL connection.

It’s been almost two years since we first started dating. My lackadaisical grasp on time means I’m not sure exactly when we started, and unless Tara keeps a social calendar at least two years old, it’s likely we’ll never know. The Guy, who is equally fluid on remembering holidays and anniversaries, makes vague noises about Easter –April 25th, isn’t that? — before picking some arbitrary, invariably different date. Neither of us are big on celebration; I slept through Valentine’s Day, too tired from my trip to V—– to care about anything resembling romance.

Of course, there’s that whole ‘everything is on the 25th’ philosophy, which works so well for me. All we have to do is pick a month, and rewrite reality to suit us. I do it so often anyway, it hardly matters.

My other roommate, having gotten herself engaged on the strength of my Mojo — which I should really charge for, all things considered — and, possibly, her own personality, charm and looks, moved out the day after the Guy moved in.

A month previously, I mentioned to her that we had started looking at places together. “Not seriously,” I hastened to assure her. It took us two months of discussion and exchanging links to Craigslist ads before we actually went as far as to inspect a house for rent. At that rate, it would likely be another two years before we’d gotten organized enough to find something. “I just thought I ought to tell you.”

Wide-eyed, she went back to watching Friends. A few days later while I was down in V—-, henceforth known as “The Cow,” she sent me an email. “If I move out, would you and the Guy be interested in moving in?”

“Hell, yes,” I wrote back. And then called the Guy.

Of course, I immediately felt bad. The Guy, having spent all of his nights at my apartment since our first anniversary — also not commemorated by any recognition, reference, or celebration on our part — has basically been a third roommate, with some of the mess and none of the rent. “Are we driving you out?” I asked my roommate when I got back into town.

“Yes,” she said.

(I’m kidding. She didn’t really.)

The Guy sent out a bulletin, and on Friday gathered three friends, all conveniently unemployed, to help him with the moving. Six years of living in the same apartment had accumulated more than any man’s fair share of junk in a surprisingly small space. For two weeks before move-out day, he went every night to the apartment and called me at The Cow. (”The Cow.” You see how well that works out? So much more descriptive than ‘V—–.’ ‘I’m visiting The Cow.’ ‘I’m in The Cow.’ ‘I called from The Cow.’) “I packed another four boxes,” he’d report at 10:00 pm.

“Good for you!” I’d say.

“I’m heading home now.” It was already ‘Home.’ Of course, it had been ‘Home’ for a while already.

And the next night. “I packed another four boxes.”

Every night for two weeks. And when we all showed upon Friday to help him move, each person in turn stopped to stare at some part of the mess. One box held an ergonomic keyboard encrusted with the soda, crud, dust, and slime of several years. Two of his friends paused to gather around the box and poke at it with hangers. “He touches that thing?” one of them asked with mingled awe and disgust.

“He actually uses it,” I told them.

Usually, grown men don’t make this sound. This was an exceptional case. “Eeeeeeeeeeewww.”

I overheard one of them while I was moving a box out of the truck. “Thirty-six boxes?! How can you already have thirty-six boxes in the apartment when you haven’t even moved yet?” I came back from The Cow to find an entire wall of my apartment gobbled by boxes. Boxes of cables. Boxes of books. Two more boxes full of 200 more DVDs. And he hadn’t even moved yet.

It took three days to clean the mildew out of his bathroom. Two more days to empty his kitchen. At one point, I snapped and gobbled at him. “See! This is why I’m scared to have you move in! You’re a slob! A slob!”

After all, it had been at least a year since he’d done anything remotely resembling ‘living’ in that apartment. A word to the wise. Simple Green is amazing stuff. It’s natural, it’s biodegradeable, it’s lemony fresh! It cuts through any stain or spot, and can clean even the worst of your mold and mildew problems. (NotForUseInEnclosedSpaces, BreathingSentientBeingsShouldBeware, NotMeantForInhalation.)

It’s a week later, and we’re still unpacking. This past weekend I did sixteen loads of laundry. Heisenburg, watching me load the dryer for the ninth time, commented: “You’re turning into a woman.”

I swore at him. Damned invisible cat didn’t even turn a hair.

“Your mother will kill you,” he said smugly.

Clock’s ticking. Ask me if I’ve told her yet. Go ahead. Ask. Ask.

Heisenburg and I were looking at my living room. I haven’t seen much of Heisenburg lately; I suspect that the living room is part of the problem. We were having an argument about it. The entire place was full of boxes, disassembled furniture, and great, pregnant black garbage bags full of clothes.

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” I pointed out.

Heisenburg sniffed. “Nature is a slob.”

It seems worth mentioning that this last month, both my sister and my friend Flamingo had birthdays. Happy birthday, Sister and Flamingo!

I didn’t call either of them on their birthdays, being plunged into a dateless, timeless pocket of neverending time, by which you can tell that I was once more in V—- for the week. One week turned into one week-and-one day; I was on the weekend, and then back there for Sunday night to Monday evening. Or maybe Sunday night to Tuesday evening. Or maybe Wednesday evening. Or maybe….

This time, there being no Agricultural Fair, I was placed in a non-smoking room. When I opened the door for the first time, I got a peculiar whiff of tobacco smoke up the nose. The next day, I came back to the room to find that tobacco had disappeared, pounded into submission by the determined smell of Winter Blossom air freshener. The day after that, it smelled like men’s cologne.

I don’t know what the cleaning crew was doing in my room, but it seems pretty plain they were messing with me. I didn’t mind the cigarette smoke as much, it being the previous tenant’s fault rather than theirs. The Brut! For the Real Man! however, was over the top.

We won’t even talk about my dreams, which featured a gay, smoking Frenchman carrying flowers for my Parisian cabdriver.

Every phone call from my friends and my sister this past half month has started with, “Have you told her yet?”

To which I usually say something along the lines of “mumble mumble mumble.”

“You’re not ever going to tell her, are you?” my sister said accusingly, the other night.

“I keep forgetting,” I explained carefully. Heisenburg, busily washing his privates on the dining room table, eyed me skeptically from beneath his hind leg. In Seattle, my sister was doing much the same thing.

“Suuuuuuuure you are,” she said, drawling the phrase as only an Asian Tact Deficiency Syndrome sufferer can when attempting to wield sarcasm as a club of subtlety. The tail end of the ’suuure’ finished in the same time zone with Ohio.

“Is she around? Do you want me to tell her now?”

There was a small pause on the telephone while my sister grappled with that thought. “Better not,” she said, prudently. “I don’t want to deal with the fallout.”

No, I am not pregnant.

And I’m not engaged, either.

But boy, Mom’s not going to be happy with me.