It took having a child to realize that I had a temper. Thought I was cool. The most difficult thing that I’ve ever done was become a father. And I did it in one of the strangest places in the world. The pressure to model Japanese societal standards has the force of a car crusher. It’s a homogenous country that refused to talk to the world for 200 years. Spending a lot of time alone makes you weird, ask anybody …
Category: Kantra
Haruki and Kantra’s perception of me, govern my values. I’d be fooling myself to pretend like foreign judgments aren’t crowding my peripheral. My wife is working crazy hours. I feel helpless watching her go through this bulshit. We have to switch roles. It’s like I’m walking around with my balls in my back pocket. I’m in awe of her. Shorty’s a hustler, “We do what we can do,” she tells me. Like a drafted soldier doing more than she can, …
The morning we left for Izu, Haruki was like, “I don’t want to become my mother,” she said. In the first couple of years of our marriage, I would’ve been like “The fuck is her problem? Every time we get ready to do something, you start acting brand new….” I would’ve suggested that we not go, that it’s a lot less stressful to not do a goddamn thing. I don’t want to become my father. The fight against the inevitable …
Back from a two-day stay at an Izu Shimoda beach resort, where American Commodore Mathew Perry and his “black ships” demanded that Japan open its ports or there’d be a war of cannons versus bows and arrows. The year was July 8, 1853. Izu was the point from which western dominance spread like a super nova. America’s giant imperialistic balls were swelling. Japan got up in their feelings about the foreign invasion. Before Perry, Japan had closed itself off to …
After finishing her first semester of school, Kantra’s out for the summer. It’s me and her again. It’s like she went away to college and moved back home. She likes to tell me what to do and talk a lot. This morning I was talking to Haruki about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. My friend sent me this article. I didn’t know about the plays and how that book was weaponized. “White girl? What did the black girl do?” Kantra asked. “Did …
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