|
sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
|
What Did Her Visa Say About Her Specialization?
As Specialist In HUMAN. I stopped in the parking lot to rip open the FedEx envelope. It contained an extra passport photo that I had erroneously sent and my passport. My Certificate of Eligibility (COE) had been stapled very neatly onto one page. On the next page was my work visa. I haven't looked very closely at it, afraid that it might disappear if I do. Hold on. I'll go get it. The work visa itself is a sticker, about the size of a single passport page. It is very subtly hued, like some countries' money. There is a flower at the top, possibly a cherry blossom. The flowers float in front of what could be a depiction of Fuji-san. These are highly stylized depictions of the national symbols of Japan, and as such, they are difficult for me to say with certainty, "This is a cherry blossom. This is Mt. Fuji." (Yes, of course I know that if it were a stylized American eagle, stars and stripes in subtle pinks and blues, I could say with certainty, "This is an American eagle. These are elements of the American flag.") My picture is on the left, a black-and-white copy of my passport photo. This little sticker tells the world that I am allowed into Japan for a "stay(s)" of one year and gives me a three month window of opportunity to enter Japan. I see the word "SINGLE" and wonder if that is marital status, which seems strange. But no, a look at the fine print shows that "SINGLE" is actually the "no. of entries" I am allowed. This little sticker tells the world that I have a category. That category is "(E) AS SPECIALIST IN HUMAN./INT. SERV" (I don't know what that means, really. Probably "HUMAN." is short for humanities. "INT. SERV" is probably international services. Right? Does that sound right? Sounds important, anyway. And I like the idea of specializing in "HUMAN." It makes me sound so much more alien.) We Can Do It I just recalled the bemused smile of my Takai Sensei when asked if she were superior to us because she was Japanese. She seemed not so much taken aback by the question as she was unsure of how to answer it politely. How to say in a diplomatic manner, "Of course." We teased her so often that we did not take offense at her attitude. (And I still don't, I feel I should say here.) We took her English skills for granted, teased her for any linguistic shortcomings, for mixing up R and L's (Yes, I got used to being "SA-BU-RIN-GU-A" instead of Sublingua). We forgot how difficult is was--even minutes after any attempts at Japanese--to learn to speak another language with fluency. Why remember that now? When I think of Sensei (and she was my first sensei, the person who springs to mind whenever I hear the word sensei, so that any other person who I have called sensei is a cheap imitation at best), I think now of the amazing adventure her life had been. She met her American husband in Israel, where they were both studying. Their marriage lasted a few years, long enough to produce two children, a son and a daughter. (One of The Kaisha interviewees told me that a friend of his had dated Sensei's daughter in high school and I was amused because I had only ever met the little girl once, when she was eight and I was in high school.) Sensei hid her divorce from her parents in Japan. She did this with the help of her husband, who would say she was in the shower or out when they called. She got a job teaching high schoolers Japanese in the evenings so that she could go to school (for her MA or PhD, I don't recall) during the day. After her children were raised, she moved to Washington. (More news from the fellow interviewee.) What is remarkable to me about this woman and her life is the ease with which she left Japan, her home, and came to a far off place and made her way. Everything you hear about the Japanese suggests their undying loyalty to the collective. They seem like individual ants then somehow, don't they? (I am probably indulging here in the most blatant racism you've seen in a while. But see above in re: Sensei's bemused smile.) Individual ants don't survive very long away from the other ants, do they? But Sensei thrived. I guess I also see her now with a different set of eyes. I'm fairly close to the age she was when I first met her. She was a 30-something then. I am a 30-something now. Though her adventure began almost a decade before mine is going to, I think The Brain, casting about for comfortable patterns to ease the anxiety that arises when I consider leaving the country, thinks back to Sensei. The Brain sees that she did it and that allows It to say, We can do it too. It's that kind of Rosie the Riveter approach that won us the war, isn't it? (Think I with a bemused smile.) Bemused And Grateful Too I am grateful for Sensei, for all senseis. I am grateful for Rosie, for Max, for Lew, for Kev and Kel, for all adventurers. I am grateful for the woman at FedEx who smiled at me yesterday. I am grateful for the morning delivery to The Big House of The New York Times. I am grateful to the man I heard on NPR yesterday, a Brit, who, when asked if someone was a "shoe-in" for a position, replied in an inherently superior-sounding accent, "We don't use use the term 'shoe-in,' but I know what you mean." (Let me educate you, he was saying, probably with a bemused smile.) And I am grateful for the education.
More lies:
|
|||||