quick post from tokyo:

i just found a kimono sale! i literally had a moment of frenzy, trying to identify the ones i was taking home with me. my heart was beating faster, i think i love kimonos more than any other item of clothing i have ever come across. i am coming down off kimono high. exhilerating, truly.

this is my last day as a 27-year-old. i watched high plains drifter this morning with my parents, with my oldest crush, clint eastwood. we’re about to leave our hotel and go into tokyo, maybe to the imperial palace, i have a thing for gardens and this is the place to have that thing. i don’t have the patience it would require to create and maintain the gardens i most love, yet. but i am storing it away, for when i retire.

i am also on the search for strawberry mochi, my favorite japanese snack.

tomorrow is my last blog posting day, in this daily format. i am a bit excited, like a certain relief is around the corner. and a bit nervous, that i may cease to exist in a way. but resolved…

do y’all document your dreams? my dream life here is amazing, finally far enough from work in distance and time that i am not dreaming about it, so all these other topics are floating up. old memories too, coming through the dreams, wanting to be relived, resolved. i don’t know if it works that way but, clearly some part of me believes it does.

i found a gray hair. i think it’s my first, unless my memory is worse than i thought. my mother said, ‘is it the gold one?’ – apparently i have a golden hair i can’t see on my head. but i found a silver one, gorgeous, and not very long. it made me smile, it’s about time. haven’t i earned at least that?

i haven’t smoked since i got here. haven’t felt the need. my strange relationship with cigarettes. i want to get an elegant cigarette holder and have nat sherman flavored cigarettes, one for a party, pure style, not even light it. something new.

yesterday i rode horses, did more archery – consistently placing my arrows in the red 🙂 – and even went to the driving range to see about golf. then at the hotel they have a sauna and a hot tub and a pool so you know where i spent the afternoon. my back still hurts some, but i loved having such a purely physical day. i may see about setting up an archery practice area in my backyard at home. but it also means a gym membership may be in my future again, cause y’all know how much i was loving the gym before i moved. rumor has it the ymca near my work has a pool.

my parents are telling me stories about the kind of child i was – how i was born alert against all conventional wisdom, with a head full of straight black hair that made drs tease me wondering if i’d stuck my finger in a socket. the curls didn’t come till my first trip to south carolina. i found baby pictures, it’s so strange to try and associate them with myself. to think of my parents, a good 5 years younger than i am now, sitting up nights with me and negotiating work, classes and childraising.

my father realized that he is now older than his mother was when she died. my mother is noticing the changes in her skin that can only be time. i can see them both aging, as i can now see the changes in my sisters which make me pause…but each one of us seems happier now than ever. my parents are like high schoolers.

so my little prayer, to close off an amazing year, is that life is consistent in it’s surprises and changes, and that i never forget that i’ve already survived so much.