The White Peril 白禍

So Eric Scheie's been sending me hits for the last 24 hours, and (borderline-hermit that I am) I just thought for the first time five minutes ago, Maybe I could...uh, like, capitalize on this. I could post something, right? The problem is, this is my veg day.

For the last nine days, I've been switched on all the time. Either I was hanging out with my parents, or we were out for dinner, or we were shopping, or I was reading to my friends' daughter (I read her Make Way for Ducklings soon after she was born a few years ago; this weekend she wanted me to read a book called Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. We appear to be developing a bird theme. Just wait till she's fifteen and I introduce her to Hitchcock!), or my friends and I were reprising our college road trips in adult form by driving through Maryland while singing along with Graceland. Now, obviously, these were all things I enjoyed, with people I value greatly, and I'm grateful to be able to take two full weeks of vacation time together to do them at leisure. But I've had no alone time, really, and last night, after arriving at my friend's place (where I lived when I was in grad school) and going out to dinner with him and his lovely girlfriend, I realized I was going to go insane if I didn't spend today alone in a room.

So I did. I sat (mostly lay, actually) in the apartment, surrounded by the sounds of Murray Hill, and read some, and napped some, and ate nutrition-free food. The thoughts that ran through my head were on the order of Frusen Gladje ice cream used to be *so* yummy. It's a shame Haagen Dazs outcompeted it, especially with those naff containers.... Um, so, yeah. I've had a post kind of kicking around for the last few days, but it's not gelling. Much easier to quote news articles and muse over Japan-China relations.

I'm not sure where this is going, exactly. Maybe I should try to come up with My Super-Coolest Post Ever, or something, and that will keep me from sounding like a ditz. I mean, because I'll be working on rewriting and editing, I won't be publishing posts that make me sound like a ditz. In case you thought I'd post something non-ditzy, which is not very likely. Okay, Friend's Lovely Girlfriend has arrived home and is offering me, bless her heart, a glass of wine. I have this feeling it might make me more coherent.

30 November 19:05 EST

With a bunch of college friends in NJ, and probably going down to DC overnight before heading up to the City.

My poor friends in Dallas are wondering whether I'm actually planning to see them (still am!) or it was all just a scam. Someday I'll tell you about trying to use my JAL mileage club/credit card to get a ticket through JAL America. (See, it's a foreign-issued credit card--no, I'm not joking; I can't use my JAL card to order a JAL ticket on-line or over the phone if the flight originates outside Japan. You know, you think you have all the dumb-ass rules figured out after eight years of no-you-can't-do-that, but there's always one lying in wait somewhere. Luckily, there's a JAL office in New York, so I plan to stand in the middle of it and scream until someone issues me a ticket--with miles, honey--on the card issued by his own airline.)

28 November 11:30 EST

Oh, one last thing before I turn in: WTF is it with people not turning off their brights until you're close enough to shake hands? Over the last few years, it's happened to me more and more, and tonight coming back up from Bucks County, it was just dumbfounding. I mean, of the fifteen or so cars I passed, maybe three remembered to switch off their high beams from a distance of a few hundred feet. The rest were close enough for me to get a good look at their hood ornaments before they moved. I do understand that sometimes you don't see the next car until you come over a hill or around a bend where the woods are dense--the whole reason you need high beams is that back roads crest, dip, and curve all over the place, after all. And sometimes, you're just being absentminded and you forget until the oncoming car flashes its lights at you. I've been guilty of that myself. I find it hard to believe that was the case for a dozen people, practically in a row, on the same stretch of road, though.

27 November 04:33 EST

I met Eric at Classical Values in one of SE Pennsylvania's restored downtowns today, and he's as mellow in person as he is on his blog. Cute, too, even without the deal-clinching accessories, which I can assure you he didn't bring to Starbucks.

I, however, will never be mistaken for mellow, so our initial greeting ran, lamentably, something like this:

E: Sean? Hi! Glad to meet you!
S: Eric? How do you do? Can you believe the parking around here? I think I'm going to have to go down and move my car--I'm in this one-hour space at the bottom of the hill. There was one metered place open, acres of room, but I've never paralleled my mother's new jeep before, and I overdid my workout yesterday--my neck won't turn the whole way, yeah?--so I just had to find somewhere to pull in. I was going to go into the municipal lot here, but you know, it's full--I figured I'd circle back around a few times, because it's afternoon, and people are leaving, right? No luck, though. Total madhouse. So I figured it would suck if you were waiting 20 minutes and wondering whether you were going to be stood up, and I decided just to take the next opening I saw--let me tell you, it's in Ultima Thule. I totally ran up the hill--and over a few streets. I hope I can still find the thing. [breath] Uh, so how are you?

At this point, Eric could have been forgiven for assuming a cloudy look and saying, "I'm sorry, my name is Erik...uh, Williams. With a k. You must be looking for someone else. Hope you're not waiting here too long!" And then bolting. Luckily for me, he's a tolerant sort, and we ended up having a great afternoon and a charming end to Thanksgiving week.

26 November 21:24 EST

Before I forget, Atsushi says Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. (He may have just meant everyone in my family, but I'll take the liberty of assuming he meant everyone I know in America. In addition to conveying his good wishes, I had to remember to give my parents the gift he sent along with me, since he couldn't make it, which was a rooster figurine. It wasn't a random choice: 2005 will be the Year of the Rooster according to the Chinese zodiac, which Japan also uses. Yes, I'm aware that rooster isn't the word that's usually used to translate it in this context, but it somehow didn't seem like the best idea to address my parents in bright tones with the line, "It's a cock from Atsushi, for good luck in the new year!")

Since we had, as always, the traditional turkey/cranberry sauce/football dinner with my father's side of the family on Sunday, today was open to play with a little. It being my first time home on Thanksgiving for a good seven years, my parents decided to base dinner around (1) what I don't get to eat much in Japan and (2) what Mom wouldn't have to clean up after. So we went out for steaks. My parents and little brother are fun to be around; there was hilarity as well as meat, potatoes, drink, and thanksgiving.

But unfortunately for me, whiskey + wine + port + jet lag = ZZZZZZZZ, and I ended up falling asleep before the best part of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. (What do you mean, "Which one?"? When Peppermint Patty flips out over getting cereal for Thanksgiving dinner, of course. Do I have to walk you guys through every flippin' thing?) Still, it was a good day overall.

The other part of jet lag is, having had a two-hour nap, I'm now ready for a workout. Maybe I'll take the flashlight and go for a walk--the rain seems to have died down.

Happy last few minutes of Thanksgiving, all.

25 November 23:54 EST

Arrived safely at my parents' place yesterday, after a turbulence-free flight but slightly rocky communication about where to pick me up. (I'd planned to rent a car, but I was feeling the lag already when we landed and didn't know whether I could trust myself on two hours of interstates right then.) Am drunk on the expansiveness of everything, from the roads to the cars to the food packages, as always when I first arrive. The cats, whose room I'm using, don't quite remember me from last year, which has led to a lot of disdainfully curious Siamese staring in my direction.

Also, did you know you can get Atkins Diet-approved versions of everything? Last night, I was like, "Uh, is this Carb Count Dairy Beverage something I'm right in considering...milk?" But I'm adjusting. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

21 November 10:18 EST

Where are all these people searching for "white peril" coming from? Did the History Channel run a special about colonialism in East Asia, or something? Did some OSU professor with an intro-level lecture class of 500 assign a paper about China's and Japan's encounters with Westernization? I'm not hubristical enough to think they're all looking for this site.

Okay, you caught me. I'm hubristical enough--but I'm not deluded. And in any case, you can't complain when people are blundering into your site by putting its title into a search engine...especially when (as anyone else with a blog can tell you) some of the searches you find in your referral logs make you feel you need a shower followed by an alcohol bath followed by irradiation. I'm no prude, but I'm positively grateful to the sicko contingent for having, so far this month, limited itself to the relatively benign "chikan videos groping."

Darn. Two interesting comments (one about the remilitarization of Japan, and the other, by e-mail, about how tribalism makes gay public figures close ranks to help out scumbags) in a single day, and I can't respond. I mean, I have the time, but all my mental energy is absorbed by work. I've been listening to Olivia's Greatest Hits, Volume 2 for what must be...jeez...a week and a half? And that's it. Olivia on Repeat All, because I'm in a groove that has to keep running for a few days. I've hardly been hearing what's playing into my ears, anyway. (Well, I did catch myself squaring my shoulders and giving the come-hither smirk at my monitor while mouthing along to "Make a Move on Me" once.) In fact, I haven't even remembered to press Skip when "Xanadu" comes on. And I always remember to skip "Xanadu" because I HATE THAT SONG.

Anyway, I'll be back to normal in a few days. Isn't it great that Arafat's still dead?

I'm in one of my obsessive-workaholic phases: I bang away at the keyboard and Google and print and redline and swear under my breath and pace for hours and hours, and then I have to stop before my quality control starts to slip.

But by that point, I'm always so keyed up that I have to keep going. I do housework like a madman. I inhale my food. I gulp drinks (the other day I swilled a fresh cup of tea so quickly I thought I was going to asphyxiate from blisters in my throat). I walk like a locomotive up Meiji Avenue between Shibuya and Shinjuku. The other night, I arrived at one of my favorite bars after chugging for 50 minutes and was still so jazzed I ended up yammering about the election to some guy I hardly know. (At least it helped counteract my apparent general reputation for aloofness, but that's a topic for another day.)

What's really bizarre is that I don't need more sleep than usual. In fact, I was awakened by indigestion before dawn on Sunday and wound up pounding out a long, verbose post, then going back to bed and getting up at my normal time. The rest of the time Atsushi was home, he kept me relaxed and grounded as always. Only once while we were watching CNN did I make an ungallant comment at one of the reporters and stalk to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

But then he went back to Kyushu, taking his Force Field of Calm with him. Three hours later, when he e-mailed to say he'd landed, I was 1.5 liters of Coke to the worse and was flitting among a half-dozen books open on the coffee table. After I'd rehydrated, I had a workout and pounded the hell out of myself (in the challenging way, not the self-destructive way).

These stretches are always weird for me. I'm not nervous or worried or unhappy; there's nothing bad about the way I feel. I'm just so charged. I wonder whether following election day will help or hurt. I do know that if I have to keep listening to the inane patter on CNN, I will be pounding the hell out of something that is not my muscles. ("The candidates have been really working the swing states hard, but there are questions about whether they've been successful at convincing voters." Well, unless they persuaded people to stay home or go Nader, one of them must've been successful, you stu...uh...ma'am. See, Atsushi can keep me sort-of-calm, even from afar.)