Salisbury Steak, Myst, and Loss.

The mind is a beautiful, awful thing. While I recently was watching a play through of a Myst game, I had a realization that was more distinct than most.

Growing up, I had a close friend. Someone I trusted and felt fine with sharing the awkward and equally uncomfortable aspects of growing up. I still carry memories of their house, the forts we made and the names we gave them. One spot, in a piney tree in and adjacent woods, was the leisure spot.

I remember how sad he was when in grade school, a girl didn’t show up to dance with him. I remember a spelling bee when I was in the lead and he alluded to how God had helped me find the answers. I remember a time when (upon eating a candy that was shaped like glue) and we got reported for snorting it (again, which we didn’t do), we had to write an apology message during recess.

I remember the hunger craving the cheap Salisbury steak and how I always wanted another can of Josta soda. I still do. And how going to a convention with his family, I tried bear jerky, alligator jerky, and several others. I remember the cold pizza for breakfast before a day at a theme park where I didn’t want to ride the tall rides.

Playing Myst with him and seeing the early internet. Listening to a recording of George Carlin and finding the offensive language fun and shocking. His family having a hot tub, and his moving away as we talked of Nintendo 64.

I remember these things clearly but I also remember drifting apart. How when going swimming at a riverbank with my cousins, he tried beer, and seemed focused on just having access to such things. Most of all I remember the moment of realization that a friend didn’t want to be with me so much as the things around me. I remember that loss.

It’s a terrible feeling to feel like an extra piece in someone else’s chase for satisfaction, and I stopped calling them. The friendship eventually dissolved over time. I don’t know what happened to them or if we would have stayed close had I followed the same vices and thoughts. But I still remember that distinct pain of not being wanted, and it’s stuck with me, though I’ve grown to understand personal wants and needs

Civil Dawn

For years, decades

they have sat in powerful positions

and at dinner tables never once unset.

They have slowly gone deaf

from the music only they can listen to.

They cannot hear the earth,

nor the hungry people on it,

nor the mother crying from exhaustion,

nor the child without support,

the family without a winter’s heat,

the home without a home.

Even as the crowd lifted them higher

and higher,

they grew to not hear them

or their cries for fairness.

They chose to define fairness in unfair ways,

to separate and choose issues or people

like putting food on a plate.

Their instinct turned to control

and controlling control,

even with it a silver plate

they remained hungry.

But reigns end,

Kings fall.

The exhausted people can pull enough energy

to pull them all down,

to mouth the words asking for equity

or scream the injustices.

oh, country.

Your foreign soil is beautiful but broken,

just as my native land is.

The systems just as broken,

just as full of bias and dismissal.

Just as built by foreigners who love

stronger than the workers beside them,

built up by the women torn down,

grown by the children never raised,

fed by the father who didn’t eat,

backed by the people they turned their backs on.

We, you, I

have built the country,

not out of duty, but blood and sacrifice.

Where we go.

I think the future is uncertain because we keep referencing the past to decide where to go.

Japan’s systems are constantly looking to old traditions and outdated thinking and trying to apply those things in a modern lens.

It’s odd. Japanese people themselves are frequently comfortable with foreigners, different customs, modifying the status quo or adapting to outside views. The media, government and corporations are not.

Those adaptations, such as women’s rights, gay rights or even something as mundane as tattoos aren’t immediately rejected by most everyday people. Those things are immediately rejected by the most comfortable in the most comfortable positions, however.

It’s easy to see and difficult to fix, however, the standardization of inequality. As a foreigner living I. Japan, I am aware of unfair wages, lack of benefits and lack of protections. Likewise, even Japanese women are aware of the inequality of being forced into being homemakers or having to work multiple part time jobs while not receiving childcare or benefits. The people at the top don’t see that, and as thus, do not care or wish for change.

I recently read about Thailand moving further towards legalization of marijuana. Regardless of cultural conservatism or moral focus, they are approaching a jump that many countries have already taken. That is, if it’s not hurting anyone and also makes a lot of money, why not?

Japan, however has very few voices toward that issue, not strictly due to the people themselves, but the government’s control over the identity of the country. There are many pushing for it, but they remain unheard because they lack the voice of media or acknowledgement of government.

This, however, is also vastly artificial since prior to post WW2 occupation, Japan used it medicinally, and it was even a component of class in ancient Japan. Wealthy people had access to alcohol and the lower classes had access to cannabis. The entire history is conveniently forgotten. So therefore the argument that is frequently brought up about how traditional values are the only ones that matter is mute. Those traditional values have been modified for modern convenience of the few.

It’s a confirmation bias that affects everyone. it has nothing to do with true history or true traditions. it’s been co-opted to define current systems as correct, not an introspection of past and present viewpoints.

Issues as simple as a woman keeping her maiden name, gay marriage, paternal leave from work, or even a raise in minimum wage are being refused any advancement within the system. They aren’t even being addressed as the defense of “traditional values” as immediately volleyed at them by both the government and the heavily government confirming media.

I love Japan. I love the people and the acknowledgment of history. However the lack of true understanding of that history and the lack of sympathy for those outside the strict ideal are hurting the country and its people to its core. They are crippling it automatically when people are asking for freedoms.

I will keep fighting to showcase these imbalances. Women deserve more, foreign workers who give their all deserve more, children and even the systems that are in place now deserve more, but the hungry will rarely be fed by the well-fed. I fight these problems because I love this country.