Klingsor's First Winter

My wife’s operation went well.

My son really misses my wife. It’s not that he goes “I want my mom”, but it’s more subtle. One, he seems a little more anxious than usual. He cries a lot easier. Two, after we do a video call, he always looks longingly into the phone wanting more. Three, he absolutely had enough of me trying to put him to sleep now. He was so overtired and just not having any of it.

There’s a lot I need to focus on, but man is my son taking all my energy.

If all goes well, my wife can leave the hospital in a few days. I really hope all goes well.

We are back from Canada.

The drive home from the airport was so incredibly stressful, my son couldn’t stop screaming.

Next time we won’t use the highway and we will stop as many times as he needs.

My wife and I were super stressed afterwards, but I didn’t really realize how stressed she was. Was an emotionally tough few days when we got back.

My wife is in the hospital from this morning for 5-7 days. She’ll have an operation tomorrow.

My son didn’t want to have a nap with me today until after 5pm which was tough. He’s now asleep though for the night.

My wife usually breastfeeds him in the middle of the night, so I do expect an hour or two of trying to get him back to sleep without that.

Our house and land contracts are signed. I’ll meet someone this weekend about selling our current house.

Things are tough right now, but I feel they will get better.

I’m going to join my son now in the bedroom despite it being very early. I need to get ready for that 1am wake up.

Nothing neat, but thoughts and feelings bubbling over.

Being home is so interesting. I kind of idolize my parents when I’m away, but sometimes can’t stand them when they are here. Two weeks non-stop is a bit tough though. There’s a lot to unpack.

Having a baby son makes me feel so vulnerable. I can’t die. I have to support him. I have to make sure everything is fine. I have to make sure he is loved. I have these weird dark thoughts imaging him alone in trouble and it is the most painful feeling ever. I want to always be there for him.

I realize Canada is tough for my wife. She doesn’t speak English really. My parents are tough for me but I know them. I’m trying my best to make her stay fine, but she gets stressed.

I’m worried I’ll never get properly organized. There’s so much I need to organize. I think that comes before everything else. I need to always have my mind and surroundings organized. I think I was semi-organized before, but with a son it feels impossible, but everyone does it.

I’m worried I left my roof balcony door open and that it’ll cost tens of millions of yen to fix and I won’t be able to move. I have to wait four more nights and a 10 hour flight to find out.

I’m hearing about baggage and feelings and people figuring things out and I get it, but I’m not understanding why people are talking about it out loud. I guess because we’re family and not strangers, but with being in Japan for so long my family can feel like strangers to me. I think that makes my parents sad, but I’m not really sure how to change it. We talk a lot though when I’m in Japan. Kind of weird.

My son is the grand unifier. Everyone loves him. Strangers love him. I’m often exhausted on this trip. I’m exhausted at home too honestly.

That’s it I think.

My main thought reading people throw scathing comments at one another on Twitter regarding Japan making Permanent Residency hard to attain is this:

You can understand how a country dictates its immigration policy and empathize with the people it negatively affects at the same time. Understanding the immigration policy doesn’t mean you have to treat anyone who’s negatively affected like trash, and empathizing with people doesn’t mean you have to call Japan a stupid country that you’ve always hated anyways.

Second, I see immigration like getting a job in many ways. A company isn’t required to hire everyone and a country isn’t required to let everyone in. A company hires someone when there is mutual benefit and a country lets someone in when there’s mutual benefit.

Likewise, going from a temp contract to a permanent contract is based on the company’s discretion. There may be amazing people who worked hard to be permanent, but the company isn’t in a position to have any more permanent workers, and so they have to turn down deserving people. It’s not fair to the people applying, but it is. (labor unions and courts could extend the metaphor and make it cloudy.)

Last, there’s no guarantee and this decreases the number of immigrants in Japan. When I moved to Japan, the idea to move here wasn’t popular for most, and now it’s incredibly popular. It’s feasible that with strict new rules Japan still accepts more immigrants and permanent residents than it did in 2005.

As an aside, my masters in 2013 was on Japanese immigration policy. I went in ready to discuss why it was so strict, and ultimately found that it was only strict to “unskilled workers”, but much less so than most Western countries (with the “back doors” available).

As another aside, I’ve had white people in my periphery complain that Indians are still allowed to get in while it’s impossible for white people. (I’ve heard this about Japan and Canada.) In my experience, non-Europeans are much more likely to do “the impossible”, and not expect things handed to them on a platter. The rules are the same for both.

That’s it. I wish the best for Japan and the non-Japanese people who want to live there permanently.

It’s my son’s second time in Canada.

It’s so far been much much more stressful than the first. For whatever reason, I have been needed to make him feel safe, which has confused my wife. On the second night now, he’s getting better and my wife and him have lots of fun, but when my parents come close, he still often runs to me.

Vancouver summer is cool, but Japanese summer in an air conditioned room is cooler. The window is open and a fan is blowing full blast as my son sleeps and my wife and I silently look into our phones. Smart phone addiction can wane when there is less stress.

My mom was looking forward to cuddle with my son, but he still cries when she goes near him. Really bad timing that his separation anxiety has taken off now. I feel it’s getting better though.

I have no real desire to engage with “Canada”. I may small talk where I think it is the custom, but I am not here to enjoy Canada, but to let my parents experience their grandchild and let my son… experience Canada, which means I should engage with Canada, doesn’t it. Perhaps when he is a little older.

With my wife not speaking much English these trips are hard on her, but we make it work.

I am often thinking about other people’s needs on such trips and not my own, which people are against.

My needs would be to have a beer and play on my PSP I brought.

It’s not going to happen, and that’s fine. Well, the beer part will happen, but not the playing PSP part.

We’re buying the land.

We’re building the house,

I’ll have an expensive mortgage until I’m in my 70’s.

I’ll need to have investments and savings in place to ensure it all works.

I will not be able to get sick of the absurdity corporate work.

I may have to even consider working for an American company, which I imagine is heartless. (The joys of blogging anonymously.)

But it’ll be a lovely house for my son to grow up in.

There’s a mountain right there to climb.

The beach and lakes are close enough for day trips.

My wife will have an amazing custom made bookshelf.

I will have a yard to putter in.

My video games will have a room to not be played in.

It’ll be a biggish house in a nice area.

Hopefully the world doesn’t go to complete shit.

I understand people who hated Trump and voted for him thinking of their portfolios.

I won’t quote Heart of Darkness, but like, it’s interesting.

My son has been asleep for two hours, as we got up at 4:30am. I didn’t sleep, but I doom scrolled, which was obviously poisoning to my brain, and I rested my eyes, and I played a Final Fantasy demo, and now I’m listening to records, spewing into my phone.

Whenever I close my eyes and hear my thoughts, I’m always surprised that the poison of the modern hasn’t completely destroyed my mind and it’s always there fighting to dance sporadically, connect thoughts and build self.

Kind of hard to explain.

Over the last decade or perhaps two I would google search and whatever else search John K Samson’s name in hope of new music I hadn’t heard. This would usually work every so often, but it hasn’t in the last few years.

He was interviewed for something maybe in the beginning of the year but I don’t know when and mentioned how writing new songs wasn’t for him and it mentioned cell phones being at shows being something he doesn’t like.

It made him sound like a normal human trying to find happiness and peace as opposed to this idol who is perfect in every way, which is good I guess, as I always assumed he’s perfect in every way and that’s not really fair.

None of this has any meaning to anyone that I can properly convey, but that’s okay.

Before I came to Japan, I listened to the Little Pictures EP all the time. It reminds me of a person I was then, and the hopes and dreams I had then, and how I don’t have those hopes and dreams now.

It reminds me of a life that never was where I rode my bicycle across Canada and got with the girl who liked me and I liked instead of staying in Japan forever. I sometimes look at the emails I sent her over the years and it’s a little embarrassing. (She’s doing good now I think, as am I.)

He wrote a poem called In Transit or something which featured the world liminal. I used this for a high school speech contest in 2009 or so, and Japanese high school kids were spending hours trying to recite it the best way. And this makes me so incredibly happy to think about. My fellow teacher and friend thought the whole thing was done, as he chose Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator speech for kids to do.

I shared the CBC sessions or whatever version of Utilities with another class, and I think they made fun of me for it. It was so weak and sappy maybe, but it’s a great song.

I guess John K Samson also reminds me of the four years I was a high school teacher in the countryside of Chiba.

There’s a Facebook friend I have who I have never really been close to, but we both like books and John K Samson and when I post a song of his she likes it and if she ever did I did the same. She comments when I posted the above mentioned article. We both wish him the best.

I haven’t properly listened to his music in many years. I bought two Weakerthans albums on vinyl, but I haven’t lost myself in them. I just listened to some songs of his old recordings that I must have illegally downloaded on Soulseek in 2004 or so.

Anyways, I’m going nowhere with any of this.

The people who are 15 years older are the heroes. I think I said that recently. I imagine he is 15 years older than me.

His last record, Winter Wheat has a line which I think is considered one of the better lines on the record and I felt the same without knowing that.

“We know this world is good enough because it has to be.”

But there’re many good lines.

From Little Pictures, Farewell Faded Memory sticks with me the most.

Just navel gazing as I put off showering and going to bed.

Thank you John K Samson for all the beautiful music. I wish you the best in everything you do.

He’s waking up a couple times a night again.

I thought this phase was done, but it is back and stronger than ever.

He likes sleeping on my hand, which is a little awkward.

He’s asleep now though, at 6:36am, so I have some precious morning alone time. This is different than any other alone time in the day, this is the most precious alone time. I look forward to this alone time becoming a regular thing in my life.

To just listen to records and drink tea and think about the day is what it is about.

We still haven’t bought the land. Maybe tomorrow? It the one we like gets sold to someone else, that would be our fault.

My son just cried out, but it looks like he may go back to sleep.

I may have a third cup of tea. I haven’t put on any records this morning because none of the records in the living room I really want to listen to, and I really don’t want to go to my room one floor down to think of a record to listen to.

Jawbreaker’s Dear You would be nice though.

He’s back asleep. Maybe I will bring Dear You up.

edit: he woke up right after publishing this.

My heroes shouldn’t be on social media. This is for us profane normal people.

My heroes are all 10-15 years older than me. The real trailblazers.

They shouldn’t be in any spotlight, those are for 20 and 30 year olds. What are they doing? They’re embarrassing themselves. Being on social media? Acting like a real human?

When I become a hero, I won’t be on social media.

I won’t write a blog.

I will be in obscurity. Loving life.

Oh my how less is so much more than more.

For example, does anyone need to read any of this? I can write it all out, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be shared.

My thoughts should be written in secrecy for my wife to find upon my death, with instructions for her to burn it all, and she will go behind my back and publish it.

And it will be panned.

I apologize for all the typos I make.

I’ll try and go through blog posts and get rid of them all dear Reader.