Thursday, April 26, 2007
Finding Sleep ... within Chaos
Came back from NYC on the 8 am Greyhound yesterday after a quick 1.5-day trip and got in at 1 pm. Went home, quickly changed, then off to my appointment with a student plus a 1.5-hour-long lecture and an hour-long meeting afterwards. Gotta stop by the department's spring party at 5 pm, check out a few books from YCL, and then head home to an apartment of disarray, so much so that the cleaning process would have to be postponed until the section of the week is done in less than 10 hours.Completely collapsed in bed and went unconscious for a few good hours before my own very capricious biological clock suddenly woke me up before the cell phone alarm did its magic (strangely. I missed all the other alarm ringing before). By the time dinner was heated in the microwave, the clock had just ticked mid-night. A long night of section prep and miscellaneous academic studying had yet to begin.
This morning at 11 am, the new tenant for the apartment came by the sign the lease and talk about moving arrangement with my landlady. I stayed quietly in the bedroom, still trying to scramble last-min section notes together. My landlady came in and informed me that the first pink magnolia blossom in the backyard has just shown its head, and very soon the backyard will be filled with dazzling tulips. Spring is not only in the air but in everyone's mood and mind as well - except that the temperature isn't going to give spring much of a good face; in one day we are going to be back to low 40's, as I was told.
Ah, so it's that time of the year approaching again. In a few weeks time, I'll see myself buried within bubble wraps, tissue papers, duck tapes, and big and small cardboard boxes picked up from the street, performing my annual ritual of packing, moving, shipping, and storing. One question that I've already given up asking would be - when will this process end?
Perhaps a more manageable task right now is simply to find some decent hours of sleep among the whirlwind of chaos that I have been living within for weeks, even though tonight, I need to pack up for a conference at Yale and off I go, leaving my apartment in disarray for a few more days.
At least spring is here. Soon, summer will be knocking on my door ... and then - hopefully - the beautiful ajisai will be the first thing that welcomes me when I step out of my 5-tatami-large studio apartment in Tokyo.
Yet another new page in life, about to begin.
梅ちゃん at 2:09:00 AM
3 Comments
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at 4/26/07, 4:13 AM
said... everything's gonna be fine
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at 4/30/07, 5:30 AM
Chat Noir said... ajisai...i was scribbling the flowers in my memory the other day...all set in finding housing in tokyo? hope that u have a better trip and a not so tight schedule going back to boston from ny.
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at 4/30/07, 8:17 AM
refresh_daemon said...
your book has many short chapters. ;-)