So I've spent the past few days mulling over how to write this post without sounding patronizing or self-indulgently obnoxious. I thought about tackling it straight on and being like I FOUND A JOB I'M SO AWESOME, but I mean seriously? Every grown adult in the world has some form of work, so how exactly does that make me special? Answer: it doesn't. Then I thought about waxing philosophic on the whole job search process, but didn't I already do that? And I haven't learned anything since then anyway other than it's all a crap shoot. There's also that feeling of disgust in yourself for thinking you're at all qualified to lecture other people on how to find work; who the hell do I think I am? I also haven't even taken the job yet because there's no final offer yet until I've met them, and I wouldn't want to take a job offer unless I've actually gone in person into an office and talked directly to my employer and coworkers. After that, I've cycled through any number of ways to try and start this post - I've recently finished Patti Smith's memoir and love letter to Robert Mapplethorpe Just Kids and got to thinking about art and New York; I still have that lingering theme of "dependence" left from my last post, and how I can use my new-found path to independence to further flesh that out; and a whole other host of thoughts about the folly of declaring yourself as exceptional, trying to find your calling, and feeling misunderstood - and all of them just sound like I am puffing up my chest and falling prey to that which I am criticizing.
But you know what? It's almost impossible for me to avoid sounding like I'm not being preachy about something that pretty much every adult has done - hell, something I already did 5+ years ago. And really, how many of my blog posts aren't in some way preachy: look at how great I am at partying! look at how much better I'm eating than you! my taste in music is better than yours! I can walk better than you! So ultimately what I've decided to do is get my big blogger shaker out, throw all those ideas in, shake it up and pour it out over some ice because it's so damn hot here and I can't think about drinking anything that doesn't come with ice. Let's see what kind of self-obsessed cocktail I come up with.
I'm just going to come right out and say that I am definitely relieved to find out I am still employable. I look at "Master of Arts in International Studies" on my resume and see it as almost a mark of shame and as just another reason for employers to ignore me. I've heard that any degree earns you 2-3 years of work experience (i.e. the equivalent of a B.A. would be 3 years of experience with a high school diploma, or a job requesting a master's - few and far between, let me tell you - translates to a B.A. with 3+ year on the job), but as for a Master's actually being the equivalent of having held down a 9-5 job? Oh please. If you look at anyone who has made a career of hiding out in the ivory tower you know they'd never survive 10 minutes anywhere else. Maybe there are some degrees that train you in practical job skills, but an M.A.I.S.? C'mon, we sit and try to carve out a niche of a niche subject that only we and a handful of other people care about so that we can feel a little special. No one has done work on 18th century agrarian business principles! Oh wait... yes they have. Shit, gotta keep looking.
I think my own doubts about the value of my long-time-in-coming post-graduate degree played into how I went about my job search. I didn't know that private industry would care to have an academic around and thought my best shot was to target non-profits that seem to advertise the value of research and the need for people with cross-cultural communication skills. But man, you want to talk about an exclusive world. I still don't know how you're supposed to crack into it since it's clear to me that many NGOs think of themselves as exceptional to any other form of business (private industry, government work, academia or otherwise) that only someone who has been on the inside of an NGO would know how to work effectively in an NGO. Any time I've gotten an interview with an NGO, they all focus on my short stint as an intern with a non-profit, and pretty much don't care to hear anything I've done as a student or in other jobs no matter how relevant I think it is. I haven't quite figured out how to leverage myself into that type of work, and I wonder if I ever will.
I'm also plagued with doubts about my abilities in the one skill I feel have the most leverage with, which would be in Japanese. I read and listen fine, but man, my speaking. I don't know why it thwarts me, but I think I mostly stand in my own way when it comes to actually expressing myself out loud in Japanese. It's times like these when I really regret the fact that I am so self-aware because it's almost like I am hanging on my every word, creating drag and tension, and my sentences come out as under-developed and lacking. I have had moments of clarity where there is flow and a consistent pace, and those have always come when I am not thinking about it so much. You of course don't want to let it fly and not give a damn about what you're saying (I know plenty of people like that and am certain I do not want to sound the way they do), but there is definitely a delicate balance you need to strike with awareness. But seeing as though it's the one skill I have that not everyone else does and the one skill I really want to continue to develop and refine, it's the one I have used to try and narrow my job search. There was a period of 8-9 months before graduate school where I was constantly on the search for work: anything would do. I was sending out up to 10 resumes and cover letters daily to just about anything I could find. But at this point now that I've spent so many years studying Japanese and also did my time in jobs I didn't care for, I feel like I am also at the point where I can stand to be a little picky. I've tried to keep my search focused on jobs that require language skills, which is as tiny as you'd expect. But then I remember how many people are so much better at Japanese than I am (or at least think are better at Japanese than I am... an inferiority complex is a vicious cycle), and I'm back to doubting myself. But that didn't stop me from applying anyway because what the hell else was I to do?
God if only there was a job that rewarded pop cultural knowledge.
Suffice it to say, it's been a pretty demoralizing job search to this point. Forgetting just myself for a second, so many of my friends are going through the same process and between the exhaustive interviews, meetings with recruiters, job fairs, and un-renewed contracts, it just makes you wonder what will happen to you. There are also those friends that are so ridiculously qualified for everything that seeing them succeed makes you wonder if you need to be just as good as they are to get anywhere. I know it never helps to compare yourself to others - everyone's job search is its own beast - but comparisons are almost impossible to avoid. How else am I supposed to figure out what I could/should be doing differently? At the same time, though, there are all the personal issues that inform how you go about looking for work: relocation costs? a certain city you can never imagine yourself living in (::cough:: LA ::cough::)? significant others that are actually significant (thankfully not an problem for me, but I know plenty of others where this is a real concern)? a home situation that you can no longer run from (shit)? All of these things that keeps us from being 風来坊 (it means a wanderer in a good sense; my host parents said it's more like a "free man" unhindered by social or familial constraints) and tie us down in a very concrete sense are their own set of limiting factors. At the same time, though, they are a lot harder to admit to... at least, they are for me.
I don't want to jinx the job I've found by saying too much, but I think it satisfies a lot of the requirements I have set out for myself. Japanese language is definitely involved, my work would revolve around travel (a passion I haven't really been able to satisfy due to my own financial constraints), I'd be back in NY (the right place for so many reasons), and the job itself sounds interesting and comes with its own challenges. But that's all I'm going to say until this is carved in stone and that's not for another couple of weeks when I'm back east, and even then I don't want to say too much. The internet is a tricksy place.
I'm down to my final week in Japan (in exactly a week, I'll be somewhere despondent in Narita waiting for my plane to take off in an hour), and with the way things are shaping up, I'm going to land in SeaTac (after a GOD AWFUL layover in fucking LAX again) and hit the ground running. If my flights go smoothly, I'll be back in Seattle 2:30pm on the 18th (pretty much the exact same time as I take-off from Narita) and trying to get my life in order while battling jet lag and disorientation. Upon arriving 3 weeks ago (really, it was 3 weeks ago already?) and wandering around Tokyo and meeting up with IUC buds, it really felt like I hadn't left. Life seemed to pick up right where it had left off even though I knew circumstances were completely different from what they were in March. I think my main issue with being back in Seattle was that I realized I was in kind of a living dream: that at some point I would look back on what I was doing and think "did that really happen?" I'm just wondering what my reaction to be being back in Seattle will be, especially considering I will have to hop on a plane not too long after landing in SeaTac to fly back out to NY for a bit. I have a very complicated negotiation dance to perform once I'm in NY and even before then, preparing the ground work for a move home if I do end up taking the job, but also remaining flexible enough in case things fall through. I'm also reluctant to ditch Seattle too quickly because I want to say a real good-bye to everyone I can (how many good-byes have I said in the past couple of years just to see everyone again, albeit unexpectedly), and also because there's a certain amount of freedom I will be surrendering once I leave. It all pretty much depends on how things go in New York and my start date... Ugh, I don't know how I am going to do this and I can't do anything about it now anyway.
But you know, I've always suspected that I would wind up back in ol' NY at one point or another, whether it was immediately after grad school or a few years down the road after I'd done a stint in another city. For a girl from the 'burbs, New York has always held a kind of fascination for me and it wasn't until recently that I actually began to take advantage of its proximity. I'm pretty sure it started not long after my first study abroad experience in 2005; it was my first real time commuting into a city and found the freedom to wander around and go where I wanted intoxicating. I loved being able to go where I wanted when I wanted and being able to find what I wanted without even knowing I wanted it in the first place. No need to worry about a car, public transport is amazing! My only contact with public transportation in Westchester was with the MTA buses and man... they suck. You still need a car just to get to the bus station, so what's the fucking point? But going around Nagoya, being able to quickly stop for an errand, and then hop into Sakae to do karaoke and nomihoudai was irresistible to me. So once I came back to the US and moved almost immediately into the wintry doldrums that is Rochester, NY about 8 months out of the year, I found myself bored out of my skull. I met some fun people that year and had good times where I could, but the fact Rochester has been in a consistent state of decline since the invention of the steam engine and the limited access provided by the public buses was suffocating. Where to go? What to do?
But eventually I moved back home and New York City was right there again. And I started to take advantage of it. Many of my college friends still live in and around the City and it is a very logical meeting point for everyone. It became even easier to get around when I started working in the city for 8-9 months. At the same time, though, I was very much still in my homebody-socially-anxious-anti-fun phase and venturing out into bars and clubs was still a few years down the road. I think what kind of hampered things was living in the suburbs since it was a pain in the neck to get in and out of the city on the train; plus, Westchester is full of this type of asshole and now they're invading the trains:
It wasn't until I lived in a city proper (i.e. Seattle) that I realized how much fucking fun you can have running between bars, clubs, and karaoke. I also took some pride in paying my rent, buying my own groceries, and generally living my life as best as I could afford. Independence! What I crave! And NYC has 24-hour subways: no more 終電 or 終バス??? Oh God, I'll never go home. Man, who needs a home when you're riding on a subway train.
It's a complicated task to try and explain New York to a Japanese person, though, since unless they've been there themselves, they all have an image of every street corner being something out of Midnight Cowboy. Case in point: my host parents. They're big on traveling and have been all around the world (Italy, New Zealand, Egypt among others), but as for America - despite their years of studying English - they've only been to the Grand Canyon on one of those very monitored overseas tours. I don't know they've actually been in an American city. New York is very appealing to them, but they are still convinced it's dangerous. Honestly, I have spent more nights in Seattle walking around at night feeling threatened than I ever have in NY. Sure there are certain areas where you're best not to tread, but the same goes for pretty much any city (for any travelers in Seattle: avoid 45th and the Ave, as well as Pine and 3rd and pretty much the entirety of Aurora Ave at night if you can help yourself), including Japan. New York isn't what it was 30-40 years ago, and is not the New York (CLUMSY TRANSITION ALERT) out of Patti Smith's Just Kids when 42nd street and Times Square was known for a different kind of tourism.
But the fascinating thing about Just Kids - leaving out her growth as an artist and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (as even more of an aside: how the hell did I not figure out he was gay right from the start? I am slow) - is that even despite the gritty image of New York as full of every kind of gypsy, low-life thug, amoral vagrant, and violent heathen than you'd ever want to know, Smith still captures a kind of naive optimism that can only exist in such a lawless environment. Sure New York still has its outlying artistic communities, but walking around the streets these days awash in a sea of white collars, expensive shoes and designer perfume, you realize the trade-off for law-and-order is that life itself necessarily has to find order. You need a registered address because how else are you going to pay your bills? You need your 401K because you expect to retire. Gotta have your taxes in order and your credit score nice and high if you ever expect to rent an apartment. How can you expect to find a job dressed like that? Hell, you can barely get into and live in the City without a way to secure a deposit and first-and-last month's rent, a job to pay for all this, and the ability to move yourself in. Meanwhile, when Patty Smith made the decision to leave suburban Jersey and move to Brooklyn in 1967, she saved up what she thought was enough money for a bus ticket, but it wasn't until she found her "thief's good luck sign" (a white leather wallet containing $32, enough money to get her from Philly to New York) that she was able to get herself out to Brooklyn to try and find some friends she had studying at the Pratt Institute. But hey! This was the age before the internet and cell phones, so she wasn't entirely sure where they were and thought she'd stay with them whenever it is she found them. Ultimately she took to sleeping in parks and hanging out with fellow vagrants until she was finally able to settle in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, I am obsessing about what to do with my boxes and boxes of shit I have in Seattle, worrying about airfare and shipping, and how to get myself settled in Westchester at least temporarily where I am assured a place to stay and comfortably looking for a place to live. I'll leave it up to you to point out the differences between 1967 and 2011.
Smith went to New York on the hope she "was an artist." That's it. No job, no place to live, and as she found out, not even enough money to get there. The conditions set before any young person now wanting to move to New York is that you have to have an address, you have to have a job unless you have some mysterious benefactor (in which case, can you give them my name? Kthnx), and you have to have the resources to get yourself settled. If you don't have a job or a place of your own, you at least need a phone number where potential employers can reach you if not the internet to pursue job postings and exchange emails. I'm sure there are ways to skirt around these requirements, but at least as I understand it from people I know who have moved to New York, you have to have a sense of order and purpose to make New York work for you. But back in the 60s, I am sure that Smith wasn't the only person who fled to NY on the hope of developing as an artist. At this point she hadn't even thought about starting the music career for which she is most famous; up through the early 70s, she was writing poetry and drawing, and it wasn't until '72 or '73 she realized that her poetry could fuse with rock 'n roll and translate to the stage. She didn't go into New York with an orderly plan: she was able to what we might retroactively call naivete (she never refers to it as such and I doubt she thinks of it that way) because of art. Maybe from our ordered sense of the world a pursuit like "art" sounds so vague and undefined that it can't be anything else but blind optimism that pushes one toward such a path. Modern cynicism has made the pursuit of art worthy only ex post facto; a young person who says they are going out into the world to pursue art sounds stupid, while someone established (someone "successful") who says they dedicated their life to pursuit of art sounds like an enlightened visionary. Questions that plague our modern lifestyle are "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "how are you going to further develop your career?" "marriage? kids? what kind of future do you see for yourself and how are you going to prepare for it?" Not one of these questions ever appears in the pages of Just Kids. You could try to say "well, it's easy to follow a whim when you're high," but Smith is very clear on her fear of needles and her delayed introduction to hashish in the 70s.
Her relationship with Mapplethorpe started by pure chance and on trust, as they had met briefly before and upon running into him on the street again with a science-fiction who clearly thought of their "date" as little more than food-for-sex exchange, Smith threw herself to Mapplethorpe declaring him her boyfriend and the 2 of them ran off. She didn't know anything about him other than he had good taste in jewelry, but they soon moved in and create art together. The thought of putting myself at the good graces of some person I met on the street once or twice before and moving in with him is just completely beyond anything I can fathom. Where's the careful calculation? Weighing the pros and cons? Or the annoying game of disinterest modern boys seems to require to keep their attention? It was definitely a different age, and reading Smith's recollections of the era left me with the impression that many of the famous names she met in those days (Warhol, Joplin, Hendrix, Reed among a host of minor characters that it made it possible for the big names to exist) in the famous places of the time (Hotel Chelsea, Max's Kansas City, CBGB's, Electric Lady Studios) came into her life as a result of being so free. The artistic community back then was permeable, always looking for new characters and new ideas. Hanging out by herself on a staircase at a party led Hendrix to take a second to talk to her about creating a universal language, and getting angry at her folksy hair drove her to give herself a Keith Richards-style 'do and earned the fawning attentions of the crowd of artists and drag queens hanging around Max's at the time. At one of her earliest gigs at the Other End, who else but Bob Dylan would come wandering through the crowd.
To me, what's amazing is that at least from the way Smith wrote Just Kids, this all just happened. She didn't sit at home in Jersey at 18 or 19 and plot her movements on how to make it in New York. "Making it" wasn't even her goal: art was. Meanwhile, it took me how many years to finally align my life in the right way to get back to Japan? Moving to Seattle meant needing to secure money and a purpose with the UW first. Of course, the next question that comes up about whether the only reason that things came as they did for Smith because she is truly talented. There is no question: she is. I'd be the last person to question that. I run into this question time and time again, and I remember one of my favorite piece of Mark Twain's. As an aside, I feel like I should like his whole body of work because Twain was such a wise ass, but dude just did not know when to shut up; if you want to know what I mean, try reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and tell me that ending isn't the most depressing waste of talent. It's a short story titled "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" (the other thing that drives me nuts about Twain is that he relied so much on gimmickry and high-blown premises to move the plot of his stories; again, see: A Connecticut Yankee), and is kind of a Divine Comedy for the 20th century. It's actually not that great of a story (it was the last he published), but the reason I come back to it is for one of its secondary themes.
Captain Stormfield dies and travels through space to get to Heaven where he meets a whole bunch of famous dead people and learns how the afterlife works (every person fulfills what is deemed their greatest talent). However, at some point I think Stormfield asks about the greatest writer in history, expecting to hear about Shakespeare or Homer, but is instead told about a cobbler who had not the resources or facilities to develop his poetry and is now upheld by the commonly recognized writers as the greatest who ever lived. Fame and wealth are the easiest ways to measure "success," but does that actually measure pure talent? Chance and opportunity are just as important to allow someone to hone their craft and find "success."
But herein lies a poisonous idea that I think moves within and between people largely unnoticed. It is simply this: everyone (and when I say this, I may have to limit this to Americans because I think this is endemic in the way we are socialized) wants to believe they are exceptional. It seems harmless enough to put it into words and everyone needs something that makes life worth living, and what an enchanting idea! Of all the people in the world, of all the people who ever lived, I am the one who is special. In Smith's case, she is more creative; others think they have a greater business sense; and others still think they're funnier, warmer, more romantic, and ultimately just have some superlative sense of the world around them. Others can't pinpoint exactly what it is; they just know they are special. So where is the problem? The problem, I believe, lies in the fact that people (Americans) believe they should be adequately compensated for their exceptional nature.
What is compensation? I think it relates to that loose idea of "success," but that too depends person to person. For most, it comes down to a question of fame and fortune. My talent makes me better than the common man, and the easiest way to do that is to be richer and better known than your average Joe. And on a steady diet of Hollywood movies and not enough actual contact with other people, those who believe themselves to be more romantic and passionate than others think they deserve a love greater than anything anyone has ever known. Hell, even Rob in High Fidelity declares himself to be exceptional in the fact that he is so unexceptional, that he's so spectacularly mediocre in everything (looks, smarts, social skills, etc) that this in itself makes him exceptional. I hope Hornby meant that as a huge ironic joke and without a note of sincerity because otherwise... I don't know how I would take that book any more.
But the thing is: no one deserves anything. No one is just going to hand it to you because you've designated yourself as have innately earned it. My father is the prime example of this, and this is the most I am going to talk about him here, so if you've tired of my brief mentions of him only to pull back immediately, listen up. Here is a man who thinks he deserves it all because he has some inborn greatness that makes him better than everyone else. Every single one of his failed Homer-esque-get-rich-quick-schemes - musician, poet, author, hand-carved fishing lures, and the last time I spoke to him, screenwriter - comes as a result of his thinking he is some kind of exceptional artist. And the only way he can explain his failure is that no one gets what he is trying to do, and that his failure is the world's fault, not his. Family be damned, we're talking about greatness here! The fact that also in one of our last conversations he was going on and on about Ayn Rand only reaffirms my belief that I am reading his character (or lack of it) correctly. The world and its constraints are holding me back! I must shake lose these chattels and be free to express myself!
Oh puh-LEASE. Unfortunately, he's not the only one out there; he's just the one I know best. Any man in his 50s who still believes that Ayn Rand had it right needs to have his head checked. I understand the appeal to middle-class white kids in their late teens, early 20s, but if you don't grow out of the Objectivist point of view at some point and laugh at how ridiculous it all seems (not to mention just how awful Rand was at writing, and how she must have talked to about 3 people in her life if she thought that's actually the way people communicate), then there's no helping you. You're going to make a lot of people miserable is all I can say. I realize there is something intoxicating about the idea of greatness and exceptionalism (ahem, American exceptionalism, anyone?), but it's a dangerous way to go think about other people. You are great, so you should only surround yourself with other great people, right? People just become a means to an end rather than exceptional in their own right. You're constantly looking to trade up the social ladder, which is hilarious to me since these are typically the people who claim to reject any established notion of society or authority. Howard Roark is just a naked blue-collar crazy dude jumping off a cliff at the start of The Fountainhead, and where does he end up? Playing with the upper crust in New York City. You've got an interesting notion of class there, Ms. Rand.
Ultimately this is where I was going to bring my thoughts about dependence, since I believe the reason why it makes me so uncomfortable to put upon people to help me out is because that's exactly what my father did. He of course had no idea that he was (what do you mean? He's a free artist!), but the only reason why he's anywhere today is because he used just about everyone around him for his own ends. He depended on his parents for money, he used my family to provide some stability so that he could create (also known as failure in his case), and he's also put upon a number of his friends over the years in order to try to leverage himself into a life he deemed himself worthy of (it's a wonder why he doesn't really have that many friends). I don't want to do that. I don't want to think for a second I'm anything like that, so when I feel dependent on someone for a place to stay, to help me move, or to clean up my most recent disaster, I get severe 違和感 and apologize profusely for being a pain in the ass. I can't stand the idea that I could be such a manipulator like my father because it's all a means to my great end! You're all contributing to my master work! You are the one who should be thankful!
If I am to bring in yet another reference, I have to bring in The Incredibles here. I love that movie, but not so much for the movie itself - though it is very stylishly done and really funny- but because it leaves me feeling very unsettled every single time I see it. I mean, the main villain in the movie is ultimately trying to make everyone equal, right? "When everyone is special, no one will be" Syndrome cackles as a shadow come over his face and walks off screen. That's his diabolic scheme? Sounds terribly Randian to me, but you are able to digest that idea in the context of the movie where special is defined by having or not having super powers. But in translating that to the actual world, I am left with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Defining what is great/special is a lot grayer, and I feel like Americans take it upon themselves to draw that big bold line right around the space in which they are standing. Maybe it's an reflection of my own inferiority complex, but I find it a lot easier to define what you're not great at: I'm shit at soccer, I can't use math to save my life, and I certainly can't write a blog post where I don't climb onto my soap box and yell at everyone. And I know for damn certain that I will be nothing like my father.
Umm, so my point... where did I put my point in all of this? Honestly, I've just thrown a whole lot of stuff against the wall and hope it stuck. I don't feel in any position to tell people what they can and can't do; I barely have enough control over getting myself to do stuff as it is. Ahhh control, where would my life be without it? But you know, at some points, I know it's better to all just let it go. My Japanese works better when I stop trying to make it dance like a marionette, and maybe life would be less arduous if I just learned to let it ride every once in awhile. Patti Smith did, and so did many of that artistic community of the late-60s to mid-70s that I so revere. I don't care much about their fame, but the fact that they could create the way they did. I wish I could do that. But I can't play guitar, my drawings are awful, and my writing is plagued with the worn cynicism, tired jokes, and obnoxious self-awareness of every blogger who thinks they've seen enough of the world to actually tell people how it is. There's no art in it, just the ability to talk longer than everyone else. I also fear I haven't reined myself in enough in this post and that I've said too much. But you know what, now it's out there and I can control it no longer. Drink it up, folks.
But you know what? It's almost impossible for me to avoid sounding like I'm not being preachy about something that pretty much every adult has done - hell, something I already did 5+ years ago. And really, how many of my blog posts aren't in some way preachy: look at how great I am at partying! look at how much better I'm eating than you! my taste in music is better than yours! I can walk better than you! So ultimately what I've decided to do is get my big blogger shaker out, throw all those ideas in, shake it up and pour it out over some ice because it's so damn hot here and I can't think about drinking anything that doesn't come with ice. Let's see what kind of self-obsessed cocktail I come up with.
I'm just going to come right out and say that I am definitely relieved to find out I am still employable. I look at "Master of Arts in International Studies" on my resume and see it as almost a mark of shame and as just another reason for employers to ignore me. I've heard that any degree earns you 2-3 years of work experience (i.e. the equivalent of a B.A. would be 3 years of experience with a high school diploma, or a job requesting a master's - few and far between, let me tell you - translates to a B.A. with 3+ year on the job), but as for a Master's actually being the equivalent of having held down a 9-5 job? Oh please. If you look at anyone who has made a career of hiding out in the ivory tower you know they'd never survive 10 minutes anywhere else. Maybe there are some degrees that train you in practical job skills, but an M.A.I.S.? C'mon, we sit and try to carve out a niche of a niche subject that only we and a handful of other people care about so that we can feel a little special. No one has done work on 18th century agrarian business principles! Oh wait... yes they have. Shit, gotta keep looking.
It's true... all of it
I'm also plagued with doubts about my abilities in the one skill I feel have the most leverage with, which would be in Japanese. I read and listen fine, but man, my speaking. I don't know why it thwarts me, but I think I mostly stand in my own way when it comes to actually expressing myself out loud in Japanese. It's times like these when I really regret the fact that I am so self-aware because it's almost like I am hanging on my every word, creating drag and tension, and my sentences come out as under-developed and lacking. I have had moments of clarity where there is flow and a consistent pace, and those have always come when I am not thinking about it so much. You of course don't want to let it fly and not give a damn about what you're saying (I know plenty of people like that and am certain I do not want to sound the way they do), but there is definitely a delicate balance you need to strike with awareness. But seeing as though it's the one skill I have that not everyone else does and the one skill I really want to continue to develop and refine, it's the one I have used to try and narrow my job search. There was a period of 8-9 months before graduate school where I was constantly on the search for work: anything would do. I was sending out up to 10 resumes and cover letters daily to just about anything I could find. But at this point now that I've spent so many years studying Japanese and also did my time in jobs I didn't care for, I feel like I am also at the point where I can stand to be a little picky. I've tried to keep my search focused on jobs that require language skills, which is as tiny as you'd expect. But then I remember how many people are so much better at Japanese than I am (or at least think are better at Japanese than I am... an inferiority complex is a vicious cycle), and I'm back to doubting myself. But that didn't stop me from applying anyway because what the hell else was I to do?
God if only there was a job that rewarded pop cultural knowledge.
Suffice it to say, it's been a pretty demoralizing job search to this point. Forgetting just myself for a second, so many of my friends are going through the same process and between the exhaustive interviews, meetings with recruiters, job fairs, and un-renewed contracts, it just makes you wonder what will happen to you. There are also those friends that are so ridiculously qualified for everything that seeing them succeed makes you wonder if you need to be just as good as they are to get anywhere. I know it never helps to compare yourself to others - everyone's job search is its own beast - but comparisons are almost impossible to avoid. How else am I supposed to figure out what I could/should be doing differently? At the same time, though, there are all the personal issues that inform how you go about looking for work: relocation costs? a certain city you can never imagine yourself living in (::cough:: LA ::cough::)? significant others that are actually significant (thankfully not an problem for me, but I know plenty of others where this is a real concern)? a home situation that you can no longer run from (shit)? All of these things that keeps us from being 風来坊 (it means a wanderer in a good sense; my host parents said it's more like a "free man" unhindered by social or familial constraints) and tie us down in a very concrete sense are their own set of limiting factors. At the same time, though, they are a lot harder to admit to... at least, they are for me.
I don't want to jinx the job I've found by saying too much, but I think it satisfies a lot of the requirements I have set out for myself. Japanese language is definitely involved, my work would revolve around travel (a passion I haven't really been able to satisfy due to my own financial constraints), I'd be back in NY (the right place for so many reasons), and the job itself sounds interesting and comes with its own challenges. But that's all I'm going to say until this is carved in stone and that's not for another couple of weeks when I'm back east, and even then I don't want to say too much. The internet is a tricksy place.
I'm down to my final week in Japan (in exactly a week, I'll be somewhere despondent in Narita waiting for my plane to take off in an hour), and with the way things are shaping up, I'm going to land in SeaTac (after a GOD AWFUL layover in fucking LAX again) and hit the ground running. If my flights go smoothly, I'll be back in Seattle 2:30pm on the 18th (pretty much the exact same time as I take-off from Narita) and trying to get my life in order while battling jet lag and disorientation. Upon arriving 3 weeks ago (really, it was 3 weeks ago already?) and wandering around Tokyo and meeting up with IUC buds, it really felt like I hadn't left. Life seemed to pick up right where it had left off even though I knew circumstances were completely different from what they were in March. I think my main issue with being back in Seattle was that I realized I was in kind of a living dream: that at some point I would look back on what I was doing and think "did that really happen?" I'm just wondering what my reaction to be being back in Seattle will be, especially considering I will have to hop on a plane not too long after landing in SeaTac to fly back out to NY for a bit. I have a very complicated negotiation dance to perform once I'm in NY and even before then, preparing the ground work for a move home if I do end up taking the job, but also remaining flexible enough in case things fall through. I'm also reluctant to ditch Seattle too quickly because I want to say a real good-bye to everyone I can (how many good-byes have I said in the past couple of years just to see everyone again, albeit unexpectedly), and also because there's a certain amount of freedom I will be surrendering once I leave. It all pretty much depends on how things go in New York and my start date... Ugh, I don't know how I am going to do this and I can't do anything about it now anyway.
But you know, I've always suspected that I would wind up back in ol' NY at one point or another, whether it was immediately after grad school or a few years down the road after I'd done a stint in another city. For a girl from the 'burbs, New York has always held a kind of fascination for me and it wasn't until recently that I actually began to take advantage of its proximity. I'm pretty sure it started not long after my first study abroad experience in 2005; it was my first real time commuting into a city and found the freedom to wander around and go where I wanted intoxicating. I loved being able to go where I wanted when I wanted and being able to find what I wanted without even knowing I wanted it in the first place. No need to worry about a car, public transport is amazing! My only contact with public transportation in Westchester was with the MTA buses and man... they suck. You still need a car just to get to the bus station, so what's the fucking point? But going around Nagoya, being able to quickly stop for an errand, and then hop into Sakae to do karaoke and nomihoudai was irresistible to me. So once I came back to the US and moved almost immediately into the wintry doldrums that is Rochester, NY about 8 months out of the year, I found myself bored out of my skull. I met some fun people that year and had good times where I could, but the fact Rochester has been in a consistent state of decline since the invention of the steam engine and the limited access provided by the public buses was suffocating. Where to go? What to do?
But eventually I moved back home and New York City was right there again. And I started to take advantage of it. Many of my college friends still live in and around the City and it is a very logical meeting point for everyone. It became even easier to get around when I started working in the city for 8-9 months. At the same time, though, I was very much still in my homebody-socially-anxious-anti-fun phase and venturing out into bars and clubs was still a few years down the road. I think what kind of hampered things was living in the suburbs since it was a pain in the neck to get in and out of the city on the train; plus, Westchester is full of this type of asshole and now they're invading the trains:
It's a complicated task to try and explain New York to a Japanese person, though, since unless they've been there themselves, they all have an image of every street corner being something out of Midnight Cowboy. Case in point: my host parents. They're big on traveling and have been all around the world (Italy, New Zealand, Egypt among others), but as for America - despite their years of studying English - they've only been to the Grand Canyon on one of those very monitored overseas tours. I don't know they've actually been in an American city. New York is very appealing to them, but they are still convinced it's dangerous. Honestly, I have spent more nights in Seattle walking around at night feeling threatened than I ever have in NY. Sure there are certain areas where you're best not to tread, but the same goes for pretty much any city (for any travelers in Seattle: avoid 45th and the Ave, as well as Pine and 3rd and pretty much the entirety of Aurora Ave at night if you can help yourself), including Japan. New York isn't what it was 30-40 years ago, and is not the New York (CLUMSY TRANSITION ALERT) out of Patti Smith's Just Kids when 42nd street and Times Square was known for a different kind of tourism.
But the fascinating thing about Just Kids - leaving out her growth as an artist and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (as even more of an aside: how the hell did I not figure out he was gay right from the start? I am slow) - is that even despite the gritty image of New York as full of every kind of gypsy, low-life thug, amoral vagrant, and violent heathen than you'd ever want to know, Smith still captures a kind of naive optimism that can only exist in such a lawless environment. Sure New York still has its outlying artistic communities, but walking around the streets these days awash in a sea of white collars, expensive shoes and designer perfume, you realize the trade-off for law-and-order is that life itself necessarily has to find order. You need a registered address because how else are you going to pay your bills? You need your 401K because you expect to retire. Gotta have your taxes in order and your credit score nice and high if you ever expect to rent an apartment. How can you expect to find a job dressed like that? Hell, you can barely get into and live in the City without a way to secure a deposit and first-and-last month's rent, a job to pay for all this, and the ability to move yourself in. Meanwhile, when Patty Smith made the decision to leave suburban Jersey and move to Brooklyn in 1967, she saved up what she thought was enough money for a bus ticket, but it wasn't until she found her "thief's good luck sign" (a white leather wallet containing $32, enough money to get her from Philly to New York) that she was able to get herself out to Brooklyn to try and find some friends she had studying at the Pratt Institute. But hey! This was the age before the internet and cell phones, so she wasn't entirely sure where they were and thought she'd stay with them whenever it is she found them. Ultimately she took to sleeping in parks and hanging out with fellow vagrants until she was finally able to settle in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, I am obsessing about what to do with my boxes and boxes of shit I have in Seattle, worrying about airfare and shipping, and how to get myself settled in Westchester at least temporarily where I am assured a place to stay and comfortably looking for a place to live. I'll leave it up to you to point out the differences between 1967 and 2011.
Smith went to New York on the hope she "was an artist." That's it. No job, no place to live, and as she found out, not even enough money to get there. The conditions set before any young person now wanting to move to New York is that you have to have an address, you have to have a job unless you have some mysterious benefactor (in which case, can you give them my name? Kthnx), and you have to have the resources to get yourself settled. If you don't have a job or a place of your own, you at least need a phone number where potential employers can reach you if not the internet to pursue job postings and exchange emails. I'm sure there are ways to skirt around these requirements, but at least as I understand it from people I know who have moved to New York, you have to have a sense of order and purpose to make New York work for you. But back in the 60s, I am sure that Smith wasn't the only person who fled to NY on the hope of developing as an artist. At this point she hadn't even thought about starting the music career for which she is most famous; up through the early 70s, she was writing poetry and drawing, and it wasn't until '72 or '73 she realized that her poetry could fuse with rock 'n roll and translate to the stage. She didn't go into New York with an orderly plan: she was able to what we might retroactively call naivete (she never refers to it as such and I doubt she thinks of it that way) because of art. Maybe from our ordered sense of the world a pursuit like "art" sounds so vague and undefined that it can't be anything else but blind optimism that pushes one toward such a path. Modern cynicism has made the pursuit of art worthy only ex post facto; a young person who says they are going out into the world to pursue art sounds stupid, while someone established (someone "successful") who says they dedicated their life to pursuit of art sounds like an enlightened visionary. Questions that plague our modern lifestyle are "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "how are you going to further develop your career?" "marriage? kids? what kind of future do you see for yourself and how are you going to prepare for it?" Not one of these questions ever appears in the pages of Just Kids. You could try to say "well, it's easy to follow a whim when you're high," but Smith is very clear on her fear of needles and her delayed introduction to hashish in the 70s.
Her relationship with Mapplethorpe started by pure chance and on trust, as they had met briefly before and upon running into him on the street again with a science-fiction who clearly thought of their "date" as little more than food-for-sex exchange, Smith threw herself to Mapplethorpe declaring him her boyfriend and the 2 of them ran off. She didn't know anything about him other than he had good taste in jewelry, but they soon moved in and create art together. The thought of putting myself at the good graces of some person I met on the street once or twice before and moving in with him is just completely beyond anything I can fathom. Where's the careful calculation? Weighing the pros and cons? Or the annoying game of disinterest modern boys seems to require to keep their attention? It was definitely a different age, and reading Smith's recollections of the era left me with the impression that many of the famous names she met in those days (Warhol, Joplin, Hendrix, Reed among a host of minor characters that it made it possible for the big names to exist) in the famous places of the time (Hotel Chelsea, Max's Kansas City, CBGB's, Electric Lady Studios) came into her life as a result of being so free. The artistic community back then was permeable, always looking for new characters and new ideas. Hanging out by herself on a staircase at a party led Hendrix to take a second to talk to her about creating a universal language, and getting angry at her folksy hair drove her to give herself a Keith Richards-style 'do and earned the fawning attentions of the crowd of artists and drag queens hanging around Max's at the time. At one of her earliest gigs at the Other End, who else but Bob Dylan would come wandering through the crowd.
To me, what's amazing is that at least from the way Smith wrote Just Kids, this all just happened. She didn't sit at home in Jersey at 18 or 19 and plot her movements on how to make it in New York. "Making it" wasn't even her goal: art was. Meanwhile, it took me how many years to finally align my life in the right way to get back to Japan? Moving to Seattle meant needing to secure money and a purpose with the UW first. Of course, the next question that comes up about whether the only reason that things came as they did for Smith because she is truly talented. There is no question: she is. I'd be the last person to question that. I run into this question time and time again, and I remember one of my favorite piece of Mark Twain's. As an aside, I feel like I should like his whole body of work because Twain was such a wise ass, but dude just did not know when to shut up; if you want to know what I mean, try reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and tell me that ending isn't the most depressing waste of talent. It's a short story titled "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" (the other thing that drives me nuts about Twain is that he relied so much on gimmickry and high-blown premises to move the plot of his stories; again, see: A Connecticut Yankee), and is kind of a Divine Comedy for the 20th century. It's actually not that great of a story (it was the last he published), but the reason I come back to it is for one of its secondary themes.
Captain Stormfield dies and travels through space to get to Heaven where he meets a whole bunch of famous dead people and learns how the afterlife works (every person fulfills what is deemed their greatest talent). However, at some point I think Stormfield asks about the greatest writer in history, expecting to hear about Shakespeare or Homer, but is instead told about a cobbler who had not the resources or facilities to develop his poetry and is now upheld by the commonly recognized writers as the greatest who ever lived. Fame and wealth are the easiest ways to measure "success," but does that actually measure pure talent? Chance and opportunity are just as important to allow someone to hone their craft and find "success."
But herein lies a poisonous idea that I think moves within and between people largely unnoticed. It is simply this: everyone (and when I say this, I may have to limit this to Americans because I think this is endemic in the way we are socialized) wants to believe they are exceptional. It seems harmless enough to put it into words and everyone needs something that makes life worth living, and what an enchanting idea! Of all the people in the world, of all the people who ever lived, I am the one who is special. In Smith's case, she is more creative; others think they have a greater business sense; and others still think they're funnier, warmer, more romantic, and ultimately just have some superlative sense of the world around them. Others can't pinpoint exactly what it is; they just know they are special. So where is the problem? The problem, I believe, lies in the fact that people (Americans) believe they should be adequately compensated for their exceptional nature.
What is compensation? I think it relates to that loose idea of "success," but that too depends person to person. For most, it comes down to a question of fame and fortune. My talent makes me better than the common man, and the easiest way to do that is to be richer and better known than your average Joe. And on a steady diet of Hollywood movies and not enough actual contact with other people, those who believe themselves to be more romantic and passionate than others think they deserve a love greater than anything anyone has ever known. Hell, even Rob in High Fidelity declares himself to be exceptional in the fact that he is so unexceptional, that he's so spectacularly mediocre in everything (looks, smarts, social skills, etc) that this in itself makes him exceptional. I hope Hornby meant that as a huge ironic joke and without a note of sincerity because otherwise... I don't know how I would take that book any more.
But the thing is: no one deserves anything. No one is just going to hand it to you because you've designated yourself as have innately earned it. My father is the prime example of this, and this is the most I am going to talk about him here, so if you've tired of my brief mentions of him only to pull back immediately, listen up. Here is a man who thinks he deserves it all because he has some inborn greatness that makes him better than everyone else. Every single one of his failed Homer-esque-get-rich-quick-schemes - musician, poet, author, hand-carved fishing lures, and the last time I spoke to him, screenwriter - comes as a result of his thinking he is some kind of exceptional artist. And the only way he can explain his failure is that no one gets what he is trying to do, and that his failure is the world's fault, not his. Family be damned, we're talking about greatness here! The fact that also in one of our last conversations he was going on and on about Ayn Rand only reaffirms my belief that I am reading his character (or lack of it) correctly. The world and its constraints are holding me back! I must shake lose these chattels and be free to express myself!
Ultimately this is where I was going to bring my thoughts about dependence, since I believe the reason why it makes me so uncomfortable to put upon people to help me out is because that's exactly what my father did. He of course had no idea that he was (what do you mean? He's a free artist!), but the only reason why he's anywhere today is because he used just about everyone around him for his own ends. He depended on his parents for money, he used my family to provide some stability so that he could create (also known as failure in his case), and he's also put upon a number of his friends over the years in order to try to leverage himself into a life he deemed himself worthy of (it's a wonder why he doesn't really have that many friends). I don't want to do that. I don't want to think for a second I'm anything like that, so when I feel dependent on someone for a place to stay, to help me move, or to clean up my most recent disaster, I get severe 違和感 and apologize profusely for being a pain in the ass. I can't stand the idea that I could be such a manipulator like my father because it's all a means to my great end! You're all contributing to my master work! You are the one who should be thankful!
If I am to bring in yet another reference, I have to bring in The Incredibles here. I love that movie, but not so much for the movie itself - though it is very stylishly done and really funny- but because it leaves me feeling very unsettled every single time I see it. I mean, the main villain in the movie is ultimately trying to make everyone equal, right? "When everyone is special, no one will be" Syndrome cackles as a shadow come over his face and walks off screen. That's his diabolic scheme? Sounds terribly Randian to me, but you are able to digest that idea in the context of the movie where special is defined by having or not having super powers. But in translating that to the actual world, I am left with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Defining what is great/special is a lot grayer, and I feel like Americans take it upon themselves to draw that big bold line right around the space in which they are standing. Maybe it's an reflection of my own inferiority complex, but I find it a lot easier to define what you're not great at: I'm shit at soccer, I can't use math to save my life, and I certainly can't write a blog post where I don't climb onto my soap box and yell at everyone. And I know for damn certain that I will be nothing like my father.
Umm, so my point... where did I put my point in all of this? Honestly, I've just thrown a whole lot of stuff against the wall and hope it stuck. I don't feel in any position to tell people what they can and can't do; I barely have enough control over getting myself to do stuff as it is. Ahhh control, where would my life be without it? But you know, at some points, I know it's better to all just let it go. My Japanese works better when I stop trying to make it dance like a marionette, and maybe life would be less arduous if I just learned to let it ride every once in awhile. Patti Smith did, and so did many of that artistic community of the late-60s to mid-70s that I so revere. I don't care much about their fame, but the fact that they could create the way they did. I wish I could do that. But I can't play guitar, my drawings are awful, and my writing is plagued with the worn cynicism, tired jokes, and obnoxious self-awareness of every blogger who thinks they've seen enough of the world to actually tell people how it is. There's no art in it, just the ability to talk longer than everyone else. I also fear I haven't reined myself in enough in this post and that I've said too much. But you know what, now it's out there and I can control it no longer. Drink it up, folks.
Since I can't figure out a good way to end this, I'm just going to leave you with a quote from Just Kids I posted earlier this week on Facebook. Smith was talking to her then "boyfriend" (I guess you can call him that, though she knew he was married with a child at the time) Sam Shepard about improvisation, but I feel like it applies to so much more:
"What if I mess up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"
"You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another."
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