Adventurous People

While the commonplace belief that not much ever happens in this city may at times be true, on other occasions the social whirl picks up.  The latest of these eddies has had a bittersweet quality.  My exchange students completed their internships and yesterday graduated their programme.  Some are staying on for skiing and travel, others are returning home to the last of the humid Kanagawa summer immediately.

These young women are modest and tend, I think, to measure themselves by a deficit rather than a credit model.  One explained in her farewell speech how she had aimed in coming here to overcome her “weak points”, one of which she identified as speaking in public.  I don’t think their teachers see them in the fashion: we notice instead their persistence and resilience, their willingness to take hard knocks and refuse to give up.  I hope in their studies and work to come they have time to reflect more hopefully on what they’ve experienced and accomplished here.

Following that ceremony I took Señor Mojito and harvestdad to the farewell party for @mrpropellerhead, who leaves these shores in order to look after a Swiss supercomputer in this city.  While he is gracious enough to come back for my wedding, this shift means the end-of-year departure of his wife, my brideswoman @sparrownz, and all their children and animals.  What seemed an exciting but distant prospect now feels very real.  It seems difficult to believe that in a few months I won’t be able to stop by their home more or less as I please.  Such is life I suppose when one seeks the company of adventurous people; they tend to go on adventures.

Among the adventurous people I met at the party was @DannetteMarie, whose Twitter profile belies her legendary status, socially and academically, around these environs, not least now that she lives far away.  It can be a little unnerving for friends of friends to meet, but I was delighted finally to make her acquaintance.  The self-consciousness that fell upon the heartier members of the group upon learning one among them was a psychologist was a sporting context into which to make a conversation.

An adventurous character needn’t be defined by mobility, however, as made evident by a recent entry from LitLove.  Her account of two testing car-rides gives the reader a flavour of a different kind of challenge altogether.  Sometimes the body and imagination roam simultaneously, but on other occasions it’s one or the other alone.

I find it all so frustrating, because there’s a world of people out there who seem to travel all the time and barely notice it, who enjoy visiting lovely parts of the world and who even find it restful and relaxing to do so. It’s difficult to feel so limited, so eccentric and strange. But I cling to my fallback position, which is that I’ll go anywhere in my head, and my imagination has no boundaries. At least there, I have no sense of constraint.

Tagged as: adventure, farewells, travel