Something and Its Opposite

Something and its Opposite

posted October 15, 2006

They have several classes for the “special kids” here.

I was a special kid – up until I got too old to be called anything other than a weird old sack of man – but not as special as some.

My old classes usually consisted of someone telling me to listen to a recording of someone talking. “Try to pay attention to the person speaking, not the background noise” they`d say, and I`d say: “Oh!! – Sorry!? What?!”.
There`s this one kid here that has the same problem as me – though likely far worse because he has his own teacher to follow him around all the time, pull him off of things, and find him when he decides to initiate a game of hide and seek. I like that kid.

Anyway – the one class here cooks a lot. The other day they were selling bits of boiled pumpkin with grape Jello. Something that specially unique you just have to try – after verifying that the Jello is free of animal bones, of course.
It tastes like it sounds.

There`s a nice old man here who trips over a wastebasket every day. I would say it`s like that old old black and white t.v. show - where the father trips over that same piece of furniture every night, except that there are many wastebaskets here, and he usually trips over 2 or 3 of them.

His misfortune amuses me – slightly. This is for you:

There were all different kinds of clouds out when the weekend came. I waited around a bit and watched them, and eventually convinced myself that it wouldn`t rain on me if I went outside for a few hours. I hurried all the same
Verily – as I was leaving, it drizzled, and I thought of going back in, but then it stopped. So I started riding my bike up a mountain towards this nice temple I`d found when it rained on me the weekend before. The weather was nice enough for the 1st hour and I had a really good start to the picture I was painting. Then it rained again. Water and oil pant don`t mix well – I`ve tried painting through a storm before. The last time the backing I was using got warped from the water. This time I brought an umbrella. It`s hard to hold a small umbrella over yourself and a canvas - whilst holding a palette and operating a paintbrush, so I set the palette down. The picture, I thought, was looking an awful lot like something Edward Munch would have painted, but you`ll have to take my word for it.
I bent down to get a little more blue out of my bag, and a gust of wind blew my picture down; It fell right on top of my pallete. The palette was/ is smaller than the picture, so all the parts that didn`t get smeared in gobs of paint – including the blue I just squeezed out,….. all the rest of the painting had pine needles and gravel stuck to it.
Neither the wind nor rain showed any signs of stopping, I was wet and altogether dis-pleased with the state of things, so I headed back. On the way back the wind blew my poor disfigured painting free of the clip on my easel, and the car behind me very nearly ran over it.
I got home, and as it turns out, I had knocked a tube of green off of the shelf in the course of my hurrying out. I sealed it up, and cleaned up the mess, but there`s still a big green splatter on my floor. The tube sprung a leak as well – I know because when I put it back up on the shelf, it leaked down, and dripped on my nice pink suit.
I have a pink suit because my grandfather – who is partially colorblind, perhaps never understood what pink really is. He gave it to me.

Everybody always liked meeting my grandfather; He dressed like a dish of candy.

I wore a pink suit because it makes people happy to see a man in pink, and because my old company said that the people who wore suits to work were the ones who could expect to receive raises/ promotions. – the lying Ba%$ards!

I stopped wearing my pink suit when that joke wore off, and I stopped working at that company when they didn`t give me a raise.

(I`d like to stop wearing pants, but the winter is coming, and I worry about the consequences.)

I was having a fairly sucky day at that point, but I was expecting a complete turn around; I had a date in the evening.

This was the girl that didn`t meet me, that one time that that girl that I met said that she would meet me that one night - to go dancing.

In the intermittent period, she apologized for not showing up that time and suggested we meet up on this night instead,

….but she didn`t come this time either.

Apparently she went to the place with some friends of hers, but they didn`t have enough to pay the cover charge. My best friend hereabouts works there, - was in fact working the door there a good part of the evening: He got me in for free, I had money and a discount coupon in my pocket for her, and I got 6 or 7 of my 9 or 10 drinks for free while waiting for her to show. The last train back to my town was gone before she wrote to explain that she was back safely at home, not going to come this time either, …but she did suggest that we arrange to get together another time – to go dancing.

That was pretty funny of her.

My friend had a floor and some blankets for me to use, …after we got back from the place – which didn`t close until 5am. I don`t work there, but I swept the floor.

I`m a good sweeper, …and an adequate mopper.

I woke up alarmingly early + tried to sleep, but it just wasn`t taking. I got up, looked out the window, saw that it was a nice day out and started back to my small city. It would be a shame to waste a day as nice; It`ll be getting really cold here at some point, so I`d like to paint outside as much as I`m able before then. On my way to the station, however, I noticed the conglomeration of thick black - and imposing clouds hovering over the borders of my city.

I washed the stink of too many second hand cigarettes off of me and asked this other girl if she had any free time/ wanted to go out. This is the one that came to my 1st welcome party – that I didn`t have much opportunity to speak to. She gave me her address at the after sports day school party, where she used to work, where everyone poured drinks for me that I was obliged to drink and, … I can`t remember well, but don`t think I got to talk to her too much then either.

Anyway I waited around all of that day to see if it would rain or not, and finally went out and painted 2 pictures from the roof of my building`s parking garage in that last stretch of time before dark (”A Chill and a Mountain”, and “the Night - Suzaka”).
I think they`re good – if a little dark.

The next day was really nice!! I`d say it was ideal, but I didn`t wrestle any sexy girls in (vegetarian) Jello. The weather was nice. I fixed up that picture that had the gravel and pine needles stuck in it. I had a date with that other girl…

This was a long/ 3 day weekend, and she had to work through all of it, but still she suggested we meet up that night. It turns out that she only had a few hours off from work late in the evening – on a national holiday, and she brought an equally fazed co-worker along with her, but it was nice enough. I like it when they show up!

I suggested Indian food, because it`s generally safe for vegetarians, and it`s kind of ackward going some where with someone you hardly know and explaining to them why you aren`t eating anything.

They kept me pretty busy that week. I had to help another teacher practice a demonstration lesson she had to do, + I was at school until 8pm on Tuesday night, 7pm on Monday and Wednesday. I`m supposed to be at home/ goofing off come 4:30; I think I am turning Japanese. They had a little follow up meeting for an hour or 2 the one day that they wanted me to participate in. Typically I`m excluded from this sort of occurrence – with no resentment on my part, I can assure you! I – and perhaps everyone, were very surprised that I was able to understand everything – well not quite everything.

My older drinking Canadian friend was telling us one night (as we were drinking), how it hates it when people in the service industry always speak to him with honorific tenses; “Stop being polite!” he says, “I can`t understand you when you`re polite!”, and they chuckle… The girl I had the date with said we`d work out our plans for the next weekend after they were done with the big deal thing she was sorting out for that Friday. After the first meeting, I was made to go to that all day meeting she`d helped organize that day. It was – as I said ALLLLL day, + conducted almost exclusively in Japanese. I couldn`t tell you what anyone was saying at any point, or why they needed me – “the human paper weight” to be there, but during the one short break in the proceedings I asked her if she had anything going on that weekend,

…and she did,

…but not with me.

My newer drinking Canadian friend in Nagano city invited me along with him to his friend`s cabin deeper up in the mountains. It was something to do.

Then I painted 3 more pictures through the remainder of Saturday + Sunday`s daylight hours (”Fuganji Garden”, “Fuganji Falls”, + I forget just now).

- These are all really good pictures!

– But I`d still prefer to have a girlfriend – or someone sexy to wrestle in (all vegetarian) Jello with.
(And I`ve been saying that for years!)