My questions of the summer

Here are some questions I have personally or I have come across and have been unable to answer very well:

Why am I having such a hard time identifying new people who are open to fighting for real change?

Why is it so hard for me to plan ahead? Why does it feel like I'm just living day by day?

And some BIG questions:

- How do we know that what we are doing is fundamentally changing the system or is it just reform?
- How do I know if I am going in the right direction?
- Why is it every time I find myself doing things by myself; how can I change this concretely?

Comments

Yoshi said…

Most everyone gets stuck living day by day. It's just difficult to know what to do next. Unless you were asking in a context specific to you... in that case, I dunno.

Maybe it's time to try something big. Or maybe it's time to settle down... with a more permanent lifestyle. Each of which would require much planning and preparation.

August 17, 2010 at 11:56 AM

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t

obaachan

something came over me just now, as i finished writing holiday cards to ppl in japan. my grandmother is in a private hospital, blowing all her decades of savings in the high-income ward where she was placed when she collapsed from diabetes complications. she cycles in an out of good health according to my mother, who flies back and forth between DC and nagoya in the final months of her 30-year employment at the world bank. my mom bikes back and forth from the hospital to the little wooden row-house (長屋) that survived air-raids during WWII, virtually untouched since that time. back and forth in and out up and down how to break free of this incessant cycle of death and rebirth? only through struggle...

postcard poetry: here are some of my favorite postcards that i've sent to people so far 1

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.

speach tree

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