a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

Definitely burnout.

The original plan was to head home in the middle of March; if we’re out by the middle of the month we don’t have to pay that month’s rent, plus we have to be out by the third week anyway to make room for new tenants, and I would’ve come up just short of the year. Which was bugging me for awhile.

Now? Not so much.

The “year” was a fairly arbitrary, if symbolic, period of time. It has nice psychological borders. You can say, “I did that thing for a year,” and it carries a certain semantic value, in a way that “eleven months” doesn’t. It’s not a big difference, but that sense of come-full-circle resonates strongly in people. The incomplete troubles and makes it seem insignificant; I could say I was there for a month, or for a year, and they would both carry roughly the same sentiment: “This amount of time.” Eleven is odd (not to mention prime, and I won’t delve into the weirdness of that), and aggravates the mind like a burr picked up from passing an overreaching flower.

But aggravate it must, cos I’m goin’ back to Portland in early February.

This is the first time I’ve been away from “home” – in this case the familiar, namely good ol’ ‘merica – for this length of time. It was meant to be a kind of springboard for a much longer period away from the familiar, but I really feel it has run its course; I am done here. Part of this is not having hiked around and talked to the people in the countryside for awhile (which shall be rectified and reported before too long) and being stuck too long with the crazy city-people; part of this is health, which has deteriorated a little this term in stages and worn on me; and part of it is simply some unquantifiable, “Yeah. I’ve been here long enough. It’s time to move again.” Which I get from time to time, and expect to continue suffering for.. oh.. the rest of my life.

The fire’s gone out.. for awhile. I always imagined I’d kick off from the States and never really go back, ‘cept for marriages and funerals and the other ceremonies the cultural/familial demands. ‘ve come to find it’s a little more tricky than that. And maybe that’s just Japan and its excessive psychosis (which shall be explored in a soon-to-be entry), but I think I’ll have a string of excursions – of months or years – with interludes of home, and rest, and “sanity” (or so speaketh ethnocentrism; thanks, Professor).

The remaining time, which now, early in the morning, seems remarkably short, shall be spent in a few last expeditions; some hangings-out; and probably a get-together which the folk still around (bunch of Japanese friends are overseas this term for study, and friends from the dorm went home at the end of the last one). We’ll see if I can get some of that ol’ updatin’ done again, to finish off this chronography.. until the next one.