Where have you been?

In just two days from now, four friends will be arriving from 6,000 miles away, to spend a month with me in Nebraska.

Ne-Bra-Ska. Is that REALLY where I live?

There's a photo on the wall in my cubicle: it's of Hisayo and I, standing in a cafeteria on my final day at Senshu University. I'm wearing a pink shirt and tie. She's wearing a skirt and black shirt. We're hugging.

When I look at that photo I remember everything about that place so clearly, like I'm just stepping into that picture and walking around campus, back down that big hill... all the way to the bottom where the dormitory waits.

It's not so much the memory of the place or the people, or even the nostalgia that comes with recollecting a particularly funny or emotional moment. It's more like a deluge of images rushing into my mind so fast that there is no real "memory" but only a feeling. A feeling that resonates in my body.

Goosebumps and tingly hairs and dialated pupils. Foggy eyed stares and fast beating hearts... my body is remembering the feeling; ringing like a tuning fork struck on the edge of a table.

It's been on my mind a lot lately.

Last night I had a talk with Takayuki.

He's coming soon.

He says I've become a lot worse at speaking his language.

He's right.

My fingers tap tap tappity tap away at the keyboard and after 20 minutes I sort of come to the vague realization that, "Hmm, I'm actually reading this..."

It's amazing the kind of feelings seeing a simple character, or hearing a certain phrase can invoke. Just looking at it flash across the screen--even in a context wholly unrelated to any kind of memory--can bring out that psychosomatik response, that fluttering heartbeat and that shortness of breath.

Maybe it's not the memory, so much.

Maybe it's more anticipation.

That, "I'm going back," feeling slowly solidifying itself in your body's core because you know, well, it's going to happen and you are just going to LET it happen and--oh my god--will it be like it was before because that was just the greatest thing ever?? But it can never be like that CAN it? Not a second time around, no. Different of course... but how and who... will I meet? And... oh it's so wonderful and exciting and all those words we use to describe those great adventures before we've really thought them through, when they are still just ideas rolling around in our guts.

But there's more to looking at a photo than all that.

Because I think a lot about the HERE and NOW when I look at that cafeteria photo with those little ceiling lights poking out from around the edges.

The here and now that CAN'T exist over there.

The here and now that I love more than anything... and oh, why can't we just compound the two. Juxtapose that place--over there--and this place, right here, and make some kind of...

Well...

Then here wouldn't be HERE and THERE wouldn't be THERE and we wouldn't have hummingbird heartbeats when we let our minds drift to the places our bodies ache for.

Part of adventure is giving up the routine that you love, and giving up the security that you've come to know. Destroying the foundation you've built and not looking back. It's pulling your roots out and just moving for a bit, knowing that home is where you will come when it's all over and where you will piece your body back together... where you will come and wait until that restlessness drives you to do it all again.

Travel teaches us that nothing is forever.

And with that knowledge anything is possible, I think.

Because you can fight it and deny it and tell yourself whatever you want to pacify the doubts and prolong the pain.

But we are what we are, and what will be will be.

In the past few weeks I've taught myself to simply hold my head like I always do, and move forward, one foot after the other, because by trying to control something, you give up control of everything.

There is always hope.

And who knows what will happen?

And am I even talking about Japan?

And am I even talking about anything?

Don't worry.

... I'm talking to myself again.