I’ve written quite a few songs and thought I’d get them out into the public ear. The recording is terrible and my guitar playing really needs a lot of work, but if any of you are interested, please take a moment to listen.

Evening Love

Fuji

Geese In Flight

Take Your Time

When You Love Someone

Words of Farewell

A little less than a month ago I turned forty eight. That morning I woke and lay in my bed as the dawn lit up my bedroom window and thought about nothing, just letting my breath draw in and release. I lay like that for a long time, until the town morning bell, which always sounded at 6:00, brought me back to this world and it was time to get up and head to work.

I hadn’t expected a memorable day. I had to work, after all, and most days at work left a lot to be desired in terms of getting through it with any sense of accomplishment. But for some reason my birthday seemed to shine this time, and by the time I got home later in the evening I couldn’t have asked for better time spent. All day students whom I hadn’t imagined thought twice about me outside of class dropped by to talk and wish me happy birthday, and two of them, who have started to become real friends, even asked me to join them for lunch and had a makeshift celebration waiting for me. All the well-wishes and casual greetings followed exactly the way I like interactions between people: simple and unpretentious.

It’s been a harrowing few months since I last wrote here. Harrowing and wonderful, all in one. Back in August, after the weeks of being bedridden with an infected leg I met a woman online who changed my life. Neither of us had expected it. One moment we were writing a few emails back and forth, the next minute we met and couldn’t stop talking with one another. It seemed everything clicked… our ability to open up to one another, our interests, our attraction as a man and a woman, our goals, even the way we laughed and got angry at one another… it all worked as if we were made for each other.

But like all these dreams, reality held its end of the bargain and we had to take a hard look at whether or not we really could make this work. She has a child and before anything else that is what we, especially she, had to consider. On top of that we lived a considerable distance apart and it wasn’t easy to both pay for and make the time for the journey as often as we wanted. More and more I felt that if we wanted the relationship to work then I had to take the plunge and head out to live near where she did, so we had enough time with one another, but also to make it possible to get to know her daughter.

Things didn’t work out that way, at least not yet. She wants time to think it over now and to decide whether to stay with me or not. We haven’t seen each other for more than a month now and for the past two weeks she asked me not to contact her. The waiting is absolute agony. While I perfectly understand why she needs to do that, the thought that the only woman in my life whom I, now 48, have ever been absolutely sure of might now slip out of my grasp just when I found her, hurts more than I can put into words. I have enough experience in life to know that there is nothing I can do but wait and hope, but I wonder what my life will be like afterwards if she leaves. I have never met a woman who made me feel this way before… so much so that for the first time I realize how much I’ve needed and wanted a family, even if the child is not my own, and, to my surprise, I’m not scared at all about dealing with the obstacles of living with a child. I even welcome the prospect of getting to know her daughter, with all the reactions the daughter will have… so the chance of my meeting another person like this is quite slim. And the truth is I just don’t want anyone else. I can’t imagine anyone else.

All my life until now my life has been about me. Even when I got married, it was mainly about me. I’ve always focused on what I wanted and put my money and time into pursuits that mainly interested me and often didn’t take into account what my partner needed or wanted. Though I’ve always been aware of and tried hard to work on my partners’ feelings, often I stopped short and hurt the people who were closest to me. It was only recently as I was forced to take a good, hard look at who I am and what I wanted, needed, and had to do for my and my partner’s future, that I suddenly came face-to-face with my own selfishness. It was like a big, scary ogre just sitting there waiting to ruin everything. And I realized that all my life I had never really held something that was more important to me than I was myself, that I would unreservedly give my life for. Now I have. And I’m shaking with rue and humility. How small I am. And how much a fool I have been.

Last week my wife and I made the final decision to get divorced. It’s been a very long time coming, especially with these last two years living apart, still not one hundred percent sure. We both still love each other very much and perhaps that is part of what has made it so difficult to face. Neither of us wants to hurt the other or see the other hurt. Probably if we hated one another breaking up would be so much easier. We don’t hate each other, though, and never could. But for so long now we have coexisted with no real communication and no sense of being a man and woman together and no plans or goals whatsoever, the breakup was inevitable. And probably better for both of us. When we sat talking together last weekend we both openly hoped the other would find a partner so that neither of us would end up alone. I guess this is a different kind of love, one that let’s one another go without jealously guarding the bond.

Reaching forty eight has opened my eyes to the passage of time. And little of it there is left. I realized on the morning of my birthday that there weren’t many breaths like that to go and that each one of them was precious from now on. Maybe that is why the whole birthday was so peaceful and full of joy, and for those moments I was very aware of how special every single detail of being alive was, that nothing was wasted or insignificant. It didn’t really matter if I was standing on top of a mountain or lying in a bed somewhere, all of the different manifestations of living held a complete mandala of time all its own, and it was perhaps my responsibility to recognize the preciousness in whatever situation I found myself in. As the younger years fall away behind me surely there must be value in what I have learned so far? Perhaps that being alive, loving someone, and being loved, are all that really matter.

I can wait. Wait for her, wait for a daughter’s trust to flower, wait through the night for the dawn to come, wait for whatever I thought I knew about myself. Even wait for my wife to gather up the courage to say good bye. It no longer matters what I think or what I want things to be, what matters is that the ones I love are safe, that I can see why the dawn is so beautiful, and that, when all is done, I can admit that I really didn’t matter at all, that none of it was ever about me.

It’s been raining hard for four weeks now and made it impossible to enjoy camping, but for the last two days things have gotten totally nuts. Record rains with constant thunder and lightning. Most areas have been getting about 100 millimeters in one hour, one area got 200 millimeters this morning. Earlier today many areas in Japan were inundated in major floods. Houses have been washed away and thousands of people have been evacuated. The area that I live in, Sammu city, Chiba prefecture, is set to have rivers overflow their banks tonight and all the trains have stopped. I wouldn’t even think of going up to the mountains again this week. Mudslides and landslides are bringing mountainsides down everywhere.

I’ve never seen anything like this in Japan. Just seeing how easily all the trappings of society get completely turned upside down makes me wonder what will happen when the sea levels really begin to rise. We are so fragile.

i am on the train writing from my cell phone. an hour ago i took off in the night from my apartment in the country to the train station, to head into tokyo before heading out for a five-day walk in the mountains west of tokyo early tomorrow morning.

for three weeks now thunderstorms with incredible lightning displays accompanied by the heaviest torrential rains on record and, when not raining, the highest temperatures on record, have been hammering the islands. even as i write the train rides through a lashing rain that obscures the lights of the city outside, but lights up every now and then with flashes of daylight. thunder pounds against the roof of the train.

it’s almost a dream, sailing blithely through the night land while the gods stamp about among the rooftops, hurling spears and roaring in anger. around me in the train car passengers doze and glance up sleepily when a lightning bolt stabs the roof of an apartment hi-rise. the world could be sinking into the sea for all they see. in the seats across from me a baby snoozes in the arms of her mother while the mother watches tv (the olympics most likely) on her cell phone. nothing is really there.

the rains and lightning may hold me back from climbing this week; i’ll have to keep an eye on the sky. but at least i’ve broken out of this two-week shell and will feel whatever may come against my skin. there is nothing like the rake of the immediate world.

For those of you on Facebook I’ve just had a feed opened up there to connect to this blog. It’ll keep the two more interconnected, since I have a lot of my online conversations on Facebook. Drop by and say hello and also help to confirm my blog there by signing on.

I never thought I’d be ready to sign on with a social networking site, but Facebook has been amazing in helping me get back in touch with friends I had long ago lost touch with, including several very old friends from 35 years ago when I was a boy in Tokyo. And the list keeps growing. If anything Facebook is where I can stay in touch with people I have few opportunities of seeing. And makes the world feel a smidgeon smaller. Or bigger, depending on how you see it.