i am such a nerd

It is a difficult thing to obsess over language, to revel in the complexities of word choice and pacing, rhythm and syntax, to find joy in the underlying meaning behind a delicately crafted juxtoposition of verbiage (to recognize when you are grammatically incorrect, and do nothing to reverse it, because sometimes it just SOUNDS good), and then...

to enter a land where the most complex statement you can make runs parallel to "Even though it is hot outside, he still plays tennis!". And it's not only that your level of fluency would amuse only a grade schooler, but you spend countless hours each day engrossed in the construction and repetition of such sentences. Where is my poetry? Where is my lyricism? No wonder I find myself disappointed and frustrated on a daily basis.

The English language is my lover, my confidante. We understand each other, we exist through each other. Japanese will forever remain my partially retarded stepchild, even on my best days.

If I were stranded on a desert island, I would bring with me the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction, my favorite Annie Dillard essays, and a collection of the year's most excellent magazine writing. I do believe Japan is the closest thing to my desert island I will ever come to.

So, when I'm finished writing Japanese essays entitled "My Favorite Store in Kichijoji" and studying for oral examinations on "How To Help A Friend Prepare for A Trip to Kyoto," I relax by reading Living Like Weasels, or Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Over and over. *sigh*

As I depart to go hammer into my skull the best example for the Japanese proverb equal to "When in Rome...", I leave with you a little gem from Sallie Tisdale's essay, "On Being Text":

"Most of a writer's decisions are unconscious. A stroke of paint here, a switch to a minor key there, the use of flaccid instead of soft. At this level, expression simply appears; it is expression expressing itself, images, ideas, states of mind and feeling being acted out, evoked, displayed. An idea appears, connects to another, a layer appears and then another--suddenly there is a leap--Ah-ha! This connects to this, this idea hides under this idea, and if I move this detail to the end, then suddenly the whole tone becomes suspenseful. I don't know how one knows the right word or the right tense, how exactly I know when a sentence needs two fewer or one more syllable. I can go on about rhythm and prosody, about mood and tone, but sometimes one just has to take the gifts the world gives us.

Maybe literature lives only in the reader--born in the writer's changing life, taking its breath in the reader's changing life, a different story for each person who reads it. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears, does it make a sound? Who cares? Until I open the book, there are no words inside."