the lonely life of a coffee mug

Have you ever wondered all the things a single coffee mug knows?

Yes, your favorite one. The pale blue porcelain with the curving handle and the chip on it’s rim. The one you used to use every morning.

It is scalded again and again with boiling water, paying no mind to the heat for it cannot feel pain. It carries with it the mournings of the old lady who held it in her withering hands as she watched them take away her husband, who died on their anniversary. It has tasted the bitter salt of sorrow when it caught three of her tears in it’s belly.

And it was left on that tired kitchen table with the red checkered cloth, hastily packed away when the old lady never returned to tenderly wash it like she did every dewy morning. It was chipped on it’s way to the thrift store, carelessly tossed onto the shelf along with the other abandoned mugs. Lost among the porcelain orphans.

Until you.

You picked it up with the familiar fondness it knew from another life it could no long recall.

In the beginning you filled it with milk and honey, washed it carefully, placed it on the kitchen shelf. The sun rose and fell and it learned the ways of the house and the individuals who dwelled inside.

Now you sit alone on the counter at two in the morning with a glass full of scotch instead of your mug.

Haven’t you ever wondered what it knows? All the secrets of the house it learned when you left it on the counter those times you were late for work. The whispered tales of your five year old sister’s midnight escapades over a serving of hot chocolate. The sins of your father while he drank whiskey from the blue in the dark of the porch. The pain of your mother as her soapy hands washed away her husband’s confessions.

And it is left on the shelf until one cold morning when your father is looking for his coffee filters, an unwary elbow knocks it to the tile floor.

The ceramic splinters sigh in relief, the floor is hurriedly swept clean, no extra thought for the mug which once watched over the house.

It held the knowledge of many lives, kept the vows of infinite secrets.

A single, jagged blue piece winks in the early sun, forgotten, under the dusty side of the fridge.

the color of regret

The smell of an unfamiliar bed. The sound of people and cars on the street below. A warm presence to my left.

He shifted, groaned quietly in the stillness of his room. The only thing out of place was me.

A smooth arm curled around me. His face pressed into my hair, his nose in my ear. I could feel his heavy breath - deep, sound - somewhere between wake and sleep, ebbing and flowing like the tide of  a tired ocean against my waking mind.

My eyes, blurry from a night of deep sleep, rejected the morning light softened slightly by the mint walls that enclosed me in this room, which rested in the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto.

Secrets lay stuffed inside his dresser drawers, in the darkest corner of his closet, imprinted into pages of the books that lined the shelves, collecting dust under his bed, inside his basket of “things he will figure out later”.

I wondered if a silent thought of me was somewhere at the bottom of that basket - muted by his detachment, unimportant now that I was in his bed. Maybe it - along with all the others - had evaporated into the sky with the fog of the bay, forgotten.

The harsh glare of selfishness blurred the lines I dared not to cross as I reminded myself that he was not mine and I was not his. And that all my thoughts of him, however farfetched, had no other place to go other than my own basket of things I told myself I’d come back to later, although I knew I never would. No reason to break the deal I’d made with the devil.

Maybe my musings of this olive skinned creature lying next to me could drift up to the sky, into the space we had spoken of; the space where our thoughts of each other settled into the orbit of our planet, in the emptiness of the vast, black vacuum. The only thing we shared besides the need to tame the fires burning in the pit of our stomachs.

His dark eyelashes were so long, his lips barely parted, his skin so smooth.

Unpredictable like the boiling sea, all life hidden under miles of cold salt water. 

I knew I could never dive that deep. The brine would fill my lungs before I could even glimpse the first rainbow reef. The impenetrable, blue expanse would be like a blindfold over my dull brown eyes.

Feeling him pressed against me, unconsciously pulling me into him was like the calm before a storm. The air heavy with anticipation, the skyline looming with dark, rimed clouds. 

The thought of him is like a wine stain on a dress I can’t wear anymore.

Maybe I had known it would be this way. 

I felt the ocean sigh in my ear.

My heart skipped a beat - a single, lonely, unnoticed hiccup in the infinite thrum of rhythmic beats.

I took a deep breath and dove. And the last thing I saw before the water clouded my vision was a blur of mint green paint.

you don't need a silver fork to eat good food

my time is japan was cut short due to lack of funds. tex mex wasn't exactly my career choice, even if it meant staying in japan. getting paid once a month and serving sailors didn't quite cut it for me.
i've worked in the food business since my first job when i was 16 and i'm good at it, i've learned the trade very well, but to struggling to eat... i don't exactly consider that "living".
i wanted time and money to travel around kyushu or mainland japan, explore and understand my culture a little better, i wanted to be able to pay rent, i wanted to afford to eat at least one normal meal a day. a lot of the time i had to sit down and decide whether shampoo or an onigiri was more important.
the inner conflict of choosing between clean hair or a partially filled stomach, i always chose food. that kind of ultimatum didn't come up a lot but it did come up, especially with regular necessities like toothpaste or socks, things i had come by so easily back in the states.

once i made a huge sacrifice and spent about six thousand yen (around fifty dollars) to buy a new pair of converse because my old ones were two years old and literally falling apart. i postponed this purchase for about three weeks.
i would walk past the shoe store and just stare inside, wondering if new shoes were necessary, but every time pride prevailed and i would just keep on walking and convince myself that these old raggedy shoes would hold out and that they didn't look that bad. (they did look that bad and in the back of my mind i totally knew it.)
once i even entered the shop with tommy and when a lady came up to me and asked me if i needed help finding anything i ran away through the gobangai (kind of like an outlet/mall thing), out to the harbor, tommy in my wake.
the day of my monumental buy, my friend flannery had been with me. it was my day off and we were wandering around the gobangai trying on hats and groovy sunglasses when i finally just ballsed up and told him i had to buy new shoes. i don't think he understood the enormity of the situation - for me, anyway - until we were in the store for over thirty minutes, yet flannery remained patient and  consoled me as i walked around the rack of converse, wondering aloud if it was worth it.
i ended up buying a pair and after we left the store i kept saying, "i can't believe i bought them! wow! new shoes! this is crazy. i haven't had a new pair of shoes in two years! holy shit. i did it!" i felt a weight off my shoulders but also a little worried about my finances.
but, i still mentally kicked myself for about a week after that for spending more than five hundred yen on anything.

i pushed through this paycheck to paycheck lifestyle for three-ish months but by the time i was having to skip eating every other day or ask my best friend for money, that's when i knew it was time to go home, find my footing, and give school a shot.

don't get me wrong, there were many times when i would give in and go to a regular restaurant instead of grabbing a sandwich at a konbini (convenience store) and i never had a bad time. food is good. i love food. especially japanese food.
to be clear, it wasn't like i was starving the entire time. i was, to put it delicately, struggling. i guess that's the least over-dramatic word for my situation. (a lot of the time a friend would graciously pay for me.)
no matter where i went, whether it was sushi or ramen or good ol' family mart everything was good quality.

that's what i miss; the food.

as well as the people, walking everywhere, the culture, vending machines on every corner, customer service etc...

i've said many times if the food was not good, i don't think i'd love japan as much. it's a huge part of the culture and a part of me, i absolutely cannot get enough of it all.

below is some of the food i captured while in japan...

 onigiri bento box from lawson's

aloe yogurt and hot dog bread

from family mart

lawson's selection of bento boxes, sandwiches,
onigiri, musubi, salads, edamame, an endless
variety of microwavable food and so much more

a majority of japan's working population clear out lawsons', family marts, 7/11's and daily marts in their area during lunch time and after work. it's quick, easy, and freaking delicious.

this is where is what i lived off of 85% of the time. 

i remember once i met my friend, ken, after work outside of a daily mart which was on my route home. naturally i went in and bought a bottle of green tea, a sandwich and an onigiri. 

when he walked up he saw the plastic bag laughed and asked me, "aren't you sick of eating at family marts?"

in a way i was, but at the same time i imagined if i was in the same situation but in america, and i would take being this broke in japan over the states any day. 

eating at family mart was something of a treat to me as a kid in japan and it still was - even if i was a scared, couch-surfing teenager now.

want to learn a little more about these amazing japanese convenience stores? 

click here

japanese mcdonald's pretty much confirmed that
anything done in japan, is done the best.
quality. shit. 

 moyashi ramen at a hole in the wall
place tommy showed me

ra ra ramen

the most popular place to eat for sailors besides the sushi-go-ground in the gobangai, is raras.

it's basic ramen but for some reason americans can't get enough of this place. 

it's cheap, quick and good. about eight hundred to a thousand yen for a set with rice - fried or white - gyoza, and ramen.

the name is simply saying ramen but with a stutter. 

it's a little place, probably seats about 25 down a single counter where all the magic happens right in front of your eyes. when all the ships are in this place has a line out the door.

seriously, look at all the positive reviews on their facebook page 

click here

lamb kebab and orange soda at queen kebab

hummus and pita bread

this place is owned by the sweetest turkish guy ever. i couldn't get much of a conversation out of him or his brother who was there helping at the shop, because their english is so-so. but they have the kindest smiles and always make sure you're happy with your food. 

indian food in japan?

hell. yes.

shabu-shabu

essentially the same as korean hot-pot. 

you choose the broth - spicy or mild or both - and then order noodles, vegetables, all kinds of meat, tofu, rice cakes, and just dunk them in the pot and cook it all like that. 

it's mouth wateringly good.

lunch with lee and alex

i honestly don't remember what this place was called. it was on up a flight of stairs in the ginza. 

the menu was very mixed with authentic japanese food and japanese-style american food. about twelve hundred yen for my set.

that's beautiful nina in the blue!

bj was already hammered in this picture

and it was only 7pm

ohhh, tonchinkan. dimly lit, a bit cramped, and a super casual atmosphere, a traditional izakaya. like most bars and izakayas you can smoke inside, which was great for me because i ended up drunk off mango chu-his and asahi draft both times i went. 

it's so easy to rack up a big bill here, especially if your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you're already a little drunk.

frequented by japanese locals and americans alike, this place so damn popular that when all the ships are in you either have to make a reservation or wait outside for fourty-ish minutes.

this place is so popular the feedback on their facebook page is endlessly positive.

check it out here

also, don't know what an izakaya is? wikipedia to the rescue.

find out more here

my childhood favorite; okonomiyaki

this little vendor sold everything from takoyaki

to yakiudon to okonomiyaki all of which are mainly associated 

with the kansai and hiroshima areas of japan

one of my most favorite japanese dishes; udon

i'll eat fried, cold or hot. i don't even care

(note that this was airport food.... still awesome)

fried rice and gyoza in fukuoka

gyoza is a specialty in this city along with ramen

this doesn't really count as food

but i thought it was awesome... an asahi

vending machine? too bad it was out of service

the kujuku islands oyster festival was amazing.

there's a whole line up to get you set up to grill some oysters; first you go buy gloves, a pair of tongs, coals, a fan, a kilo or two of oysters. hey give you some chopsticks and a little bottle of oyster sauce for free.

with about five hundred grills and twelve hundred oyster enthusiasts - mostly japanese - this festival has a fall edition and winter edition, you can choose to sit under the huge awning or out under the sun - if it's out that day.

a worker will come light your coals and the rest is up to you.

there's also about a dozen of tents and booths set up on the opposite end of the field selling squid, an assortment of fish, onigiri, different kinds of meat on sticks, corn on the cob, pickled daikon, tofu on a stick, sweet potatoes and more, all of which you heat up or cook over the coals. these vendors also offer water, hot or cold bottles of tea, and beer. one tent was selling takoyaki and dessert crepes.

if this kind of event was to take place in the states there would be garbage everywhere, but here in japan? i don't think littering is even a word in the language. 

next to the massive white tent where you buy your essentials for the oyster roasting, there is an area dedicated to recycling not only the beer cans and water bottles, but also the oyster shells, tongs, chopsticks, gloves, plastic containers, and anything else that was used during your time there. 

everyone does their part and takes care of their own trash, cleans the grill they used and the area around it, and takes the garbage over to the recycling area, where workers all the used items and empty oyster shells into their own allotted box. 

the best, and i mean best, chinese food

i've ever had in my life. even my dad vouches

for this place and he's a picky dude

dessert anyone?

japan has this weird fixation on parfaits and this thing was

one of the strangest... things i've ever eaten. i don't even know

exactly what to call it. it was layers and layers 

of flavors and textures. each bit was a pleasant surprise.

a random picture i took inside a fish market

this place is in the gobangai and 

is a yakiniku restaurant that also offers absolutely

amazing lunch specials with such quality meat 

it melts in your mouth. i cry a little thinking

about this food.

wanna learn more about the traditional yakiniku of japan? let wikipedia enlighten you.

click here

one very cool experience i got in japan was this japanese potluck/bbq out in hasami, a very country town in kyushu. 

fish roasting, meat cooking, noodle eating, alcohol drinking. 

there was also roasted sweet potato and homemade onigiri.

my sister brought pumpkin pie which astounded our friend's friend's japanese family.

it was a blast and put my japanese to the test when i was conversing with our host, who kept pouring beer into my glass before i even see the bottom of it. he also gave me a small cup of watered down shochu, a japanese distilled alcohol. it's usually distilled from rice, buckwheat, or sweet potato. i was not a fan. it's definitely an acquired taste. 

our host and his wife had a huge, beautifully tended garden where they were growing daikon, carrots, negi, gobo, hakusai, mizuna, and more.

there was a little garage off to the side of the house where our host did his wood work.

there garden was at the foot of a mountain, and there was a small trail which led up a fence perimeter that right on the other side turned into wild forest and the wife told us not to go through the gate for there were inoshishi - wild boars - that roamed the forest and were dangerous.

japanese starbucks has seasonal drinks that

come out. there was a honey apricot frappuccino and

a whole set of drinks dedicated to sakura season.

my favorite was the matcha creme frappuccino.

a picnic for hanami

which literally translates into "flower looking".

the sakura season is a very big part of japanese

culture and it is tradition to get a picnic together

and go eat under the cherry blossom trees while they are in bloom.

this was my first hanami ever.

interested in learning more about sakura season and hanami?

click here 

honey flavored soft serve in beppu

the most beautiful, traditional, authentic, fresh japanese meal i ever had. 

this was paid for with the tips my coworkers and i earned

at tex mex. the seafood was pulled out of tanks,

chopped up and prepared, and served to us still struggling for breath

not really a food picture but this is the juice section 

in an elena (a chain  grocery store) in the gobangai

a snap of some pastries at the bakery
inside the the gobangai

why did i ever leave? ugh, writing this post made me hungry.

the closest place to me that has good japanese food is japan town in san francisco and that still doesn't really compare. 

i believe food is good for the soul. it is an essential to life, to survival, and now that it is so easy to come by people can take their time and create new and delicious things. cooking has become an art, a profession, and to some, a life style.

what defines good food? 

i am no food critic. i've never eaten at a five star restaurant or cooked a profoundly amazing dish, but i have eaten good food.

i believe what determines good food is the way it's made. 

no, i don't mean if it's made with expensive ingredients, or if it was made in a michelin star kitchen, or by someone with years of culinary experience...

i think it's something much simpler; if it was made with passion, made by somebody who really loves to cook. you can taste the difference in food when someone puts their heart into creating it.

for instance my aunt, a woman who is good at everything, makes magic happen in the kitchen. she is an amazing home cook who makes every single meal she cooks a great experience. she is so talented in the kitchen, she has made cooking her profession as a home ec. teacher.

she always says, "if you leave my house hungry it's not my fault!"

i came across a fantastic essay that was submitted to anthony bourdain's website - bourdainmediumraw. 

annmarie puts into words what i cannot..

"of course, cooking well happens in restaurants all over the world on a daily basis. cooking well also happens in homes of everyone still willing to create a meal for their family, friends or themselves. we cook well because we can. we cook well because feelings of being nourished and satisfied go hand in hand with love, passion, respect and the pure gratification that it brings into our lives. it's a simple as that."

(read the rest here)

and to all who cook because they love to, i salute you, for the food you cook feeds not only bodies but souls.

"one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, 

if one has not dined well."

to me 'drink responsibly' means don't spill it.

that first week at tommy's, only two things cured the perpetual anxiety of the daunting and unforeseen future. going to a bar and onigiri - curtesy of 7/11.

i pretended i didn't feel ashamed or like i was a burden to tommy and soon i convinced myself that i wasn't and found myself sitting at the kitchen table after i got off work, talking with him. 

for anybody who feels uncomfortable about a situation, take note: pretending things aren't awkward makes the other person think nothing is awkward therefor it literally isn't awkward.

fake it till you make it. overrated but so true.

one night he invited his friend, ruben, over to drink at the apartment.

i knew him through mutual friends from the flight deck of the BHR. we drank patron and apple flavored crown. i don't remember much of that night.

i will admit, i've never been much of a drinker, i preferred to stick to good old mary jane, but drinking in a new environment with new people made me appreciate social drinking and gave me a refined taste for alcohol.

there is a universally known cliche that has latched itself on to sailors (or seamen, as i learned they are called now, don't laugh, grow up, you're childish) about their endless drinking and vulgar mouths. i will tell you, there is a verifiable reason that that cliche exists, because even on a smaller than average base, they can still take over a town. hence a few rows of streets and a series of dim alley ways lit up by neon signs dedicated to their overt drinking habits called none other than, sailor town. 

yeah, you read that right, sailor town. an area of the city solely devoted to serving these alcohol crazed american party animals and boosting sasebo's economy by a single sailor spending hundreds of dollars a night.

don't get me wrong, the navy is not filled with only heavy drinkers and thirsty dudes looking for a one night stands. and not everybody who goes out on weekend nights are aiming to get belligerently drunk. there are countless casual drinkers who have something called self control (????). 

i think. i've only ever heard stories of these super humans. never actually met someone blessed with such a fabled virtue as self control. send me your story if you ever have.

but, this branch of the military is by far the most confusing one... see, you have the jar head marines, all the smart people go to air force and end up being the butt of every gay joke ever, the notoriously lewdly boys of the army... you get the picture, but the navy? it's a melting pot of styles, personalities, heritage, and ethnic diversity. 

i met seemingly every kind of person, all servants of uncle sam. everything from a closeted cross dressing man with kids and a wife to a new yorker with a raging inferiority complex and a hardcore drinking problem to a widely sought after ladykiller with a heart of gold and a good laugh. i won't name names, but i met all sorts of folk during my time in sasebo.

the tiny, cramped bars in the alleys of sailor town are mostly owned by filipina women, in sasebo on either work visas or permanent residence. ergo, the name filipino alley. things get rowdy in the streets on busy nights and only when i was with a handful of friends did i ever venture down these alleys.

i've heard rumors that a young man (or woman... i doubt they discriminate) can find ladies of the evening and pay her for her time in a private, discreetly hidden room above the bar that offers such services or take her back to his room. i've never actually witnessed a transaction go down, but i've heard enough to know that if you're feeling particularly lonely filipino alley is where you need to go. 

or a titty bar in sake town - but that is a story for another time.
sake town is on the opposite end of the ginza from sailor town. a column of streets consisting of izakayas, stand up bars, many unwilling to cater to geijin - foreigners - and most popular to sailors: a highly disreputable building of bars called lions tower, inhabited by (so i've heard) by call girls.

friday and saturday nights out in town when all the ships are in port are, in the most trivial sense of the word, is chaos. 

a friend of mine pretty much has the monopoly on sailor town, owning four of the most popular bars. his biggest, most successful, and probably best known bar by all e4s and below is jumbles. infamous for catering to young sailors until their wallets are empty, fights breaking out between people after one too many drinks, and slippery floors due to spilled booze. it was where i went when i wanted to party. 

more times than i can count i've witnessed the effects of too much alcohol crippling somebody there - passing out in the bathroom stall, passing out at the bar, passing out in the corner, passing outside on the street, basically passing out wherever alcohol says so. 

yes, i've had my share of embarrassingly drunk nights to the point i'm stumbling around, accidentally burning a friend on the arm with the cherry of my cigarette, sometimes to the point where i'm slurring my words.

but, most of my nights consisted of a few beers at g rock, talking with the bartenders who speak both japanese and english, occasionally striking up a conversation with another lone drinker, and sometimes getting a new friend out of it. i made a lot of friends this way, just casually conversing with someone down the bar from me.

sometimes, a couple heinekens would turn into a gin and tonic... and then a shot of tequila, maybe a few jack and cokes... finally, two or three lychee chu-his later i'd be jumping up and down like a five year old, begging my friends to stay out with me. (all my friends were in the navy and had an adorable curfew of 1 am.)
a perk of going out in japan for me was not having to drive, everything was in walking distance and completely safe, and if i was a bit too drunk to walk home i could just hail a cab and direct them to my place.

bar life was something i'd never experienced until japan.
the only kind of drinking i'd been around was at house parties with people my age or younger, chugging hard liquor from a bottle or shot gunning cans of beer, because apparently whoever can consume the most alcohol while staying conscious grants the drinker some type of superior social identity. sometimes staying conscious isn't even required, people will still give you props for blacking outside in the grass with your pants off and phone-less and your dignity long since flushed down the toilet from your first trip to the bathroom the night before. 

it's kind of hilarious and awesome, yet also completely degrading because more and more young people think this is a way to be deemed as cool. who exactly determines that you're cool anyway? you're still as cool as the person in the corner downing vodka like they really really hate their liver, if you're drinking orange soda, so.

getting a chance to sit at a bar, order a drink, have it served to me in a - mostly - civilized environment with others there for the same reason as me. it gave me a taste of adulthood without actually being a certified adult. a test run.

i miss being able to just order a beer, even when going out to eat here in america it is damn near infuriating to see a drink menu, knowing i can't order anything besides a virgin margarita or something similarly boring.

something about having such a big "first" in sasebo ties some sentimentality to drinking for me now. 

i had a becks the other night and did a mental kamapai to everybody i spent a night in sailor town with, whether it was with a lychee chu-hi at g rock or three shots of tequila, a couple of heinekens and a bucket of jack and coke at jumbles or a bottle of cheap red wine from 7/11 on my porch with my friend channing, i don't think i could have gained a better or more ample regard for drinking anywhere than i did in sasebo. it loosens people up, makes conversations more animated, adds some color to a regular night.
i wholeheartedly believe that a social gathering - formal or casual - can be improved with a couple drinks in hand.

"i'm giving up alcohol for a month.

wait, sorry. i worded that wrong.

i'm giving up. alcohol for a month."

start where you are. use what you have. do what you can.

i once read somewhere, "jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul".

my nineteen year old self experienced this first hand when i was left for nothing in sasebo, japan with fifteen hundred yen in my pocket by my self-righteous older sister in the most bitter january i could remember. 

when someone says the word adventure there is always a positive, almost giddy connotation. 

but in my case, when i was damn near abandoned by my own blood, standing in the spare room of a friend's friend's apartment whom i'd met only once, i did not feel any giddiness. only muted panic and the harsh sting of getting slapped in the face with the cold backhand of shock. 

 "this is real, you're not dreaming," i kept thinking to myself as i put my head between my knees, trying to stem the flow of anxiety that had begun leaking into my blank mind. i couldn't comprehend it - the enormity of my situation.

i was alone.

nobody should feel alone in a world with 7 billion other human beings.

but i did. i felt it in the deepest parts of my soul.

not once in my nineteen years had i ever had to 100% fend for myself. in fact, my dad had helped me with almost everything, financially to emotionally. i knew people from high school who were off in college on their own, like one of my best friends, people who had moved out of their parents' place and were out there doing "life". that wasn't me, i hadn't prepared myself for anything like this to happen. i had no backup plan and yet, here i was in fucking japan with my life stuffed into one oversized suitcase.

the spare room that i mentioned belonged to - my now good friend - tommy. 

i'd met him while getting a tour of the USS bonhomme richard (BHR) by my friend nina in the first week of january. the BHR is a small naval aircraft carrier who's homeport is "commander fleet activities sasebo" as it says on the sign by the front gate. both of them worked on the flight deck together.

i fleetingly met everyone who'd been on duty with nina the day i got a tour, including tommy who i had a brief conversation with while standing on the flight deck. i got a friend request from tommy on facebook later that day. i accepted it, not thinking for a second that i'd ever come crawling to him with a seemingly insurmountable favor which i thought would be my most desperate hour while in japan. 

i messaged him on facebook at the end of january (not even two weeks after initially meeting him) in pure desperation, swallowing my pride, the possibility of sleeping in the local park hanging over my head. i asked him if he knew of anyone with an apartment who'd would accept a roommate and payment for rent after i got paid from my job. at the time i had managed to snag a job at a shabby tex mex restaurant, which was mostly occupied by young sailors with a yearning for even a knock off taste of mexican-ish food.

tommy, with his never ending generosity, told me he had an extra room and not to worry about rent for the place was paid off for the next two and a half months as he had gotten new orders to go to washington in april. he told me to move in whenever and that he could meet me to show me the place.

nina was dying to help me out, but the BHR left for deployment in the middle of january and tommy - luckily for me - did not join them because he was set leave with his new orders before the ship returned to sasebo. 

after an awkward and hurried send off by my brother in law, who dropped me off at the foot of a steep staircase which would lead me to my new home, i found myself in tommy's spare room. the room which became my safe place for the next four weeks.

dusty, long since inhabited or cleaned, empty except for a mattress on the floor, a nice wooden dresser, an oblong body length mirror, a fan and now

me.

i opened my suitcase and began throwing clothes on the dusty floor, wishing to find something to distract me, to stop me from overthinking the moment. i found a pair of headphones. my hands were shaking, i won't even lie. i was preparing myself to go into defcon 1, full panic mode.

they were shaking as i stepped out onto the small balcony to have a smoke. the bitter wind that came up the hill from the bay hit me relentlessly. 

the looming panic seemed to ease as i took in my view; i could see all the way to the other mountain that enclosed most of sasebo in a little a half circle around the bay where the base was, i could see the little pinpricks of lights which were houses set on the mountains encircling the city, becoming more sparse and further apart the higher up the mountain they went. i could see the glow of base, the red and blue blinking lights out on the distant water, the flashing yellow sign of the love hotel on the eastern mountain, and car headlights like miniature fireflies flying in pairs going down the freeway.

the view from the porch. during the day, obviously

pictures couldn't quite capture the way it 

transformed at nighttime

i felt even smaller standing on there, looking at the world from a poorly lit porch. i was imaging all the little lives going on inside each light burning on the mountain, remorsefully accepting the fact that no one else felt my pain, my fear of what the hell was going to happen, for i am not one who likes to do anything without a plan. 

it was something i always prided myself with, being prepared, and if i wasn't i couldn't function and now i wasn't. i wasn't in the slightest. i was completely out of my comfort zone, lost in the sauce and not sure how to get out. wanting nothing more than to feel calm, ready.

and with those longing thoughts, came another... i think i realized there was no "getting out" only "getting through" and that is how i leveled with myself.

i wouldn't admit it then, but in retrospect, i secretly felt the most infinitesimal bit of hopeful excitement, that maybe this would all work out. 

there was something about having music playing in my ears, smoking a cigarette, taking in a view like that, soaking in the events of the day, that made me think, "this should be a movie." 

because, lets be honest, anything in life could be a movie if you just add a great soundtrack. 

these are some songs that i chose for my first night on the porch:

don't dream it's over - crowded house

lies - the black keys

goodbye yellow brick road - elton john

between the bars - elliot smith

girl from the north country - johnny cash & bob dylan

stop this train - john mayer

i had an internal monologue going and everything haha no i didn't.

okay, yes i did. 

maybe.

that night my life took a turn, a turn that i did not anticipate, a turn that changed me. for the better? i still don't know. how do you determine something like that? 

all i know is that the prospect of waking up the next day, going to work, and hitting the bar after and having a beer, was what i held on to, and that, my friends, is the trick to surviving.

when today becomes too much, you hold out for tomorrow.

and when tomorrow becomes today, you do it all over again.

tomorrow

(noun)

a mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation and achievement is stored