WARM THOUGHTS

I was taking a walk minutes ago and I thought that I had hit the tropics. It is steamy hot outside!

Three memorable trains of thought from the walk:

First of all, I thought of a good blog post. It just suddenly hit me that I ought to write about this ‘Y’ topic. I thought of the contours for it and even began to contemplate title ideas. When I got back and sat down to write, something seemed odd and out of place. Only then did it strike me that I had already written about this in January. Conclusion no.1: I am a person of few ideas with a terrible memory who is likely to plagiarize her own writing. Conclusion no. 2: I should force myself occasionally to glance over my own blog. Unlike so many bloggers, I never reread anything of mine that is more than a day or two old.

Secondly, I thought about the email that I got this morning from Kyoto. It is from Mieko (Kazumi’s friend) and it says: “Last Saturday, we had an English Conversation Circle. You became a topic of conversation in the class. 'When Nina will be back again next year, we would like to invite her to our class.' we said.”
I had met at different times a total of four people from the English class at the Cultural Center of the town of Notogawa as they traveled to Kyoto to spend time with me and I had spoken to their teacher over the phone. I consider these “student meetings” no less important than the ones I had with university law students in Kyoto. However, something tells me that my funding source will not pay for me to travel back to Japan next year so that I can make an appearance at the English Conversation Circle of the Notogawa Cultural Center. Which is a shame.

Thirdly, I thought how fortunate it is that I have come to know a very kind soul who is computer savvy (and fellow blogger with a chirpy-looking kind of face; see sketch here) and who is willing to patiently explain to me the basics of the technology that I am using each day to blog with, thereby permitting me some degree of further experimentation with the size, shape and contents of the blog by the self-imposed June 1st deadline. In exchange I have offered to help him establish paternity rights over any nonmarital children that he may have (that is what I did for a number of years in my Legal Clinic). He has thus far not asked for such services, but you never know what the future may bring.