EMAIL CAN BE A GOOD THING!

Something I learned today: The blogging lawyer from St. Croix, V.I. wrote the following in an email that responded to an earlier post of mine:

We don't wear tropical shirts or sandals to court, but we DO wear them to the office (I have, in fact, worn sandy flip-flops to work). Most attorneys I know have one suit jacket that they keep in their office for court appearances and that's the extent of their formal, "lawyer" wardrobe.

Comment: I would enjoy wearing sandy flip-flops to work.

Another thing that I learned today: Nuts do not a dinner make.

Comment: if you forget to eat dinner by 9, you should not think that nuts will be a good alternative. You should make or get dinner after you remember.

Yet another thing I learned today: Even when you think your sister is not reading your blog, she may be reading your blog. One of the nice emails I got today came from her and in it she wrote:
“Your travel descriptions were great. You should be doing this for a living -- get paid to travel and write about it.” I include this quote not for any other reason but because I think it was a genuinely sweet thing for her to say and because it can serve as a lesson (see comment).

Comment: I should learn not to make assumptions, jump to conclusions and do all those other awful things one does in the absence of information. I should learn this and I WILL learn this. I PROMISE!!

And one more thing that I learned today: Online translations are amusing in their worthlessness. My new friend in Japan, Masahiko, who speaks almost no English, periodically writes in Japanese and then submits his note to an ‘automatic Net translator.’ Here are portions of his email from today:

Nina looks forward to meeting it by mail from now though it is lonely
because it came back to America.

Do your best, and come to Japan again in the next year though Nina is
thought work to become hard after the return, too.

Be relieved because both Kazumi and I are cheering it up.

Well, it mails it again.

I can only guess what my reply translated to in Japanese.

QUIZ: GIVERNY, OR NINA'S GARDEN YESTERDAY?

Too easy? I know, I know, it's not the one flower, it's the entirety that counts. Still, this is one heck of a pretty little columbine.

SECRETIVE

You’re darn right, Tonya, I cling to my private thoughts with true survivor-of-political-dictatorship (that it was communist is irrelevant) paranoia and out of a desperate need for guarded secrecy to ensure self-preservation (see Tonya’s blog here)! Of course I do! You never know, YOU NEVER KNOW who will stab your back today let alone tomorrow. I say ‘favorite this’ or ‘boo-hiss on that’ and it’ll make its way to the slimy hands of some holed-in bureaucrat who is then going to make sure that every employer, politician, and neighbor is aware of my proclivities and inclinations.

Same goes for friends, colleagues, students, loved ones. You tell them what you like or don’t like and you are liable to be smeared, ridiculed, maligned, taken apart limb by limb and given over to the dogs the next day. (I checked the closet and underneath the bed before I wrote that. YOU NEVER KNOW. That I am under the grip of acute paranoia can be evidenced by the fact that I have not moved more than two feet from my spot of 8 hours ago. I just don’t trust the next room, the corridor, they seem full of mechanical contraptions and eerie ghost like-shadows, waiting to NAB me.)

Saying the wrong thing is the biggest fear of anyone raised in troubled times, political and personal, and I belong to that group, yes I do and so no one, NO ONE will ever know what my favorite movie** is. Ever.*

*I was emboldened to mention movies that ruled my life at age 15, 16 and 18 (see Sunday post). That was risky enough. The fallout is just beginning to be felt.
**I also do agree that Blogger is but another marketer of Friendster-like connections. (btw, who are the Olson twins?)

WAKE UP, BEAR, IT’S CHRISTMAS!

So went the children’s story (I’m talking about VERY SMALL children) about a bear, who, because of hibernation, almost slept through the holiday. It is an irrelevant little book, with not much of a story line and, as I recall, rather straightforward illustrations.

But the title, for some reason, has stayed with me over the years. It pops up in my mind when I am walking through a day in a stupor brought on by little sleep and who knows what else and I think I need a jolt. Coffee is the substance of first choice, but to get to coffee, one must first arise and move toward a coffee container. And so there must be some motivation.

The book title, bizarrely enough, flashes in my head and there I have it! That jolt, that needed reminder that there is a day through which one must move in some state of alertness. Christmas or not, there is a day out there.

It’s strange what drivel and nonsense come back to either haunt us or help us in moments when the day seems too confusing and never-ending.

HAS THIS BLOG BECOME A RUNNING COMMENTARY ON CROISSANTS, CREEKS AND CULVERTS?

A friend and fellow blogger asked today why I had not posted a single word about my legal work in Japan. This is not the first time I got asked this question. It’s as if the ‘law’ has completely exited from this blog so that it can no longer even hold the title of ‘blawg.’ It cannot be called a bpoliticlog either. What happened?? Has the unbearable lightness of being me pulverized all ideas of any substance? Or at least pushed them aside into a complete state of dormancy? Have I entered into some kind of partnership with mr. Irrelevance and ms. Trivia?

As I said earlier, I am rethinking what this blog should be about. In Japan I was spending quite a lot of time on the non-work postings and it was impossible to imagine that anyone would want to read even more text than I had already included.

But that was then. Perhaps this week-end I’ll take a stab at creating some blogorder and in so doing I’ll allow space for the blawg that is within me. Perhaps I can then revisit this other side of my travels to Japan. Perhaps. Patience, patience, we have many a calm day before us.