Dear ones,
I finished a first draft of the novel last month and though I tried immediately to start the second one, the thing that came out of my fingers was flat and more than a little Disney (though I liked the odd twist it took, setting a hotel on the moon). Two weeks or so have passed since then and I feel the itch. The jealous feeling that comes on while reading, the turn towards pastels and illustration, anything that gets me close to making. Though it is more than a little uncomfortable, I cherish this feeling.
I am reassured when my body craves writing. It reassures me, tells me who I am. A feeling like being on summer vacation and having boredom coalesce, alchemically, into some kind of magic. Writing is who I am when no one is looking. It is who I am when nothing is happening. Without deadline or audience, my body leans toward the page.
So I’ve decided to write this little Substack to you all. Just a little missive, a collection of disorganized notes from our time here in Japan. An assignment I gave myself. If you’re not in the mood for a rambling series of vignettes, skip this. If you’re still here, I hope you enjoy.
—
Last April, when Mary and I conspired to align our vacation days such that the whole family would be in Japan together (an event that hadn’t yet occurred since Midori’s birth), I thought it would be special simply because it is always special to revisit the place of our birth with our closest loved ones. Instead, the time was made triply special by my sister’s nuptials. We spent a sundrenched winter Saturday putting on our best clothes, eating a long slow lunch with the family, taking so many photos to remember the day by.
It was, truly, a golden occasion. Normally, I feel anxious around big family celebrations. Traditionally, we do not do well on occasions that expect pomp and circumstance. I have always believed that we are a family that has thrived on normal Saturdays, on the day after the holiday, when there are no more obligations and everyone is breathing a little easier. But this day was different. Even though it was a formal occasion (we spent it in kimono, the product of my mother’s month-long labor, putting together the right undergarments and finding the right people to help us with the 着付け), I experienced the day like the narrator of Pet Milk 1 —at some curious remove, aware I was living a beautiful day I would return to, missing it even as I lived it.
I’m having trouble putting this all into words. I guess all I mean is: I am thinking still of the cold, wet on our cheeks, our hair done up and our makeup lightly patted on, walking toward the 喫茶 where we killed some time before going to put on our kimono, the sensation of seeing in my sister's face the beautiful woman she is, and also the little girl I knew her as once, layered over each other like a photograph in double exposure, aching with the love of it all.
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The other life event book ending this time is that I’m running a marathon in March. I wish I could say I am excited. But in all honesty, I am terrified. Why did I decide to do this? Will I even be able to complete it? I did my longest training run last week and have caused something in my hip to strain, giving me a hitching limp whenever I walk. I am being confronted by my body. It reminds me of birth, actually. Running this long is like labor; it forces your flesh to be sincere. You can’t muscle through without living it. Your body forces you to experience every single moment.
Maybe a more concrete way to talk about this is to say I am not finding the actual running very hard. I’m actually delighting in the running. I’ve seen so much of Tokyo and Nagoya simply by virtue of mileage covered on foot. The muscle memory of nearly nine years of competitive running has come back with surprising ease. If it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, I can do it.
No, the hard part is what surrounds the running. The mental fortitude, for example. On Friday, I forced my way through the last three miles of my twenty mile run by talking out loud to myself in a cadence I didn’t recognize. “Dig!” I commanded. “Anyone can run a mile!” “Kick this!” Slogans I’d forgotten, slogans that parroted the tone and timbre of all my coaches. I’m also finding the eating to be quite challenging. As someone with a past of disordered eating and a present of body dysmorphia, it’s hard to square the unspoken rules I have in my mind about what is an appropriate amount to eat with what the body demands when it is running 35 miles a week. When I ran 18 miles two weeks ago, I ended the run nearly delirious, unable to concentrate or understand directions, because I was dehydrated and had no more glycogen stores left. I need to eat more carbs and I need to be more encouraging of myself and I am finding those things challenging, I guess.
Still, I am learning (or realizing) some things. A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune of overhearing someone talk negatively about my body. They didn’t mean for me to hear and later apologized to me, but it spun me into a kind of body-horror-depression for a few days that I hadn’t experienced in years. I was annoyed by myself, to be honest. I am a working mother of a one year old baby! I do not have the time to wallow in self loathing!! And yet, it was as if my mind had flung open a drawer it couldn’t quite jam shut—all those old dialogues (You aren’t fit to be seen in public. You are an embarrassment to the people around you. You must exist less.) pouring out.
I was trapped in my funk and there was very little I could do to worm my way out of it. I faked it the best I could, smiling and laughing and eating meals that left me spinning with anxiety. It was exhausting. Finally, I went for one of my training runs. It sucked, the run. I was so tired, sleeping poorly, stress-addled. Five miles felt like 10. My legs were lead. I could have cried with frustration.
And then, out of nowhere, I thought to myself:
The part of my brain that can determine whether I have gained weight or not is irreparably broken. I will never be able to look at myself and understand what I actually look like. So, the only thing I can ask of myself is—am I living? Is my body moving? Is it eating, experiencing, breathing, functioning? Is it laughing, feeling, holding people it loves? If the answer is yes, then this is the only metric I can hope to get.
That’s what the running is doing, I think. That’s the part I find challenging, but I suspect is also rewarding. I am trying to reorder my attitude toward my physical self such that it focuses more on function, and less on form. This is not to say form doesn’t have its place, butI have lived a life obsessed, even haunted by form even though (and perhaps because) I cannot comprehend it. So, in running twenty miles and trying to figure out how to eat a piece of chicken and drink a bottle of water while jogging, I am learning a new way of being. Maybe this sounds defeatist, but I am finding it a relief.
(and if you’re a marathoner or long distance runner, any advice you have is much appreciated.)
—
The neighborhood we are staying in is in a much less developed area of Tokyo. No Shibuya Scrambles or shiny high-rises like Roppongi here. Instead there are small parks and family restaurants. I’ve become deeply attached to a mall by the station called Ito Yokado (a chain, owned by 7 and i holdings, the company that owns 7-11 convenience stores in Japan). I am writing this from the first floor Mister Donut, where the wifi is strong and coffee refills are free. Behind me, a mother of two gingerly navigates her stroller where her older child sleeps. Her baby is slung on her back, also sleeping in total contentment. The mother sits on the edge of her chair so as not to wake her baby, and eats two donuts with the exhausted contentment I recognize of a parent who has found themselves with an unexpected modicum of freedom, thanks to their child’s sudden naps.
Our days here are very normal. We wake up, we make breakfast, I do work, Jack does work, we make dinner, we take baths, we go to bed. We go to the supermarket and the post office, the library. We have a favorite park. There is a local public bath we get to as often as we can. It’s what we wanted. We wanted to live a normal life here, to audition what it might be like to live in Tokyo as a family of three.
I confess, though, I am sometimes assaulted by a deep and unyielding overwhelm. There’s a sense that we’re on the cusp of some great change in our life. don’t know if the change is about where we live, or what we do, or what we make (this novel I finished drafting, the further I get out from it, the more I’m like ???????? what did I make?!?!??). I suspect part of it is a global feeling of overwhelm too. The climate is collapsing; governments are committing indiscriminate genocide; the capitalism of previous generations seems less and less likely to sustain us.
And then, on the other side of it all, is the odd sensation that the older I get, the more beautiful life seems to be. My sister getting married. My daughter being born. My husband slowly picking up his second language, my first. Old friends laughing in dappled park-light. My parents, gray and white streaking their hair, jumping and leaping at the end of their morning jog when they think no one was watching, playing a private game, like children.
“We’re out to sea,” Jack said, the other day, when I told him this feeling. I know what he means. Land is no where in sight. We are swimming, treading water, moving forward, trying not to pay attention to the deep expanse of blue beneath our feet, all of the uncertainty that wells up inside of it. It’s heart-stopping, sometimes. Exhilarating and terrifying at once. We have no choice but to keep going. So we go on.
I send you love from where I swim. I hope the horizon is beautiful wherever you are.
Yours,
Nina
a perfect short story.