State of the Lettow 2011-2012, and the outlook for a new year

[Lettow77]

Hello languish! I've been doing a great deal of the introspection to which I am so fond. I am in Memphis, and with precious little internet and visitation to Midtown, which seems a misremembered echo more than a place, I have been thinking about myself, my goals in life, and how this year has been.

It was a tough year. Just over a year ago I became single, and attendant to this was a change in my life goals. Being my father's son, the lawyer, lost its last appeal. It came to occupy a tragedy comparable to Ottomanism, utterly unable to answer the destabilization of nationalism and genuine ambitions on my part.

With my future career in doubt, I gave thought to being a professor. However, this was the year my Japanophilia boiled into a fever pitch- I had previously played visual novels, watched some anime, enjoyed reading about Japanese history, and had a good opinion of their culture. But this year it was institutionalized. Tea was imported, classes were taken, weekly quotas of cultural consumption were set. Japanese literature, anime, and strange philosophy- I found myself inundated. I still find myself inundated.

It was at this backdrop that I made my Vision Quest to the West. There I met real friends, who I speak to and get on well with even now. Influential figures who had embraced Japan already, albeit that it was an entirely Chinese circle.

The vision quest made me tired. I returned to Memphis a weary man who felt he had journeyed too far, and too much. Utah rejected me, to my sorrow. I returned with the doctrine of the Yukkuri, though. Everything must be slow, considered, and relaxed. Calm and tranquility can be achieved by modest ambitions, the avoidance of crisis or disagreement, and avoidance of luxury and the public eye. I found in this the expression of aspects of Southern life I had admired, and the reassuring answer to terrors of work that my father's example inspired in me.

In this year I had no real guidance. My father was and is sorely missed, but the Missus's mother was a loss as well. Planning a life around caring for the dear missus was a welcome tether. I did most everything myself this year.

Japanophilia and longstanding disaffection has led to me applying for my passport. The JET program, travel studies abroad, & etc all call to me. I'll happily work in a konbini if that is what is needed. I no longer desire anything more than the wage to live a very modest life, but it must be done in the sacred isles. America is no place for the intelligentsia.

I suppose at this point the future certainly is in Japan. Is it a single future? After feeble attempts to replace the missus, my longstanding prudishness, with the support of some of Japan's more fringe notions, has led to me renouncing physical desire. I do my best, and I regret to say I don't trust women as much as I should. Well, we'll see. My friends pressure me to try again when I am in the sacred isles, but it will suit me if I do not as well. Desire is the source of suffering, and I do my best to limit it. A quiet life less reliant on other people has less chance of disruption.

The (comparatively recent) decision to go to Japan on a permanent basis has been a salvation. Prior to that I had for a period of some months decided suicide was the best course, and I was preparing affairs re: the questing beast and a great work to make matters ready for my departure. I still don't loathe suicide, and gain much comfort from the idea that, not being greatly attached to life, I am in no position to be threatened by the loss of it. I fear unpleasant deaths, but removal from this world holds no horrors for me. It is an assurance comparable to what the piously religious feel, I believe.

Pursuit of this great work was primarily manifested in the form of sonnets I put tremendous expenditures of effort into- but these I have ultimately destroyed. Languish panned the quality of the fraction I published, and ultimately I wearied of the idea of making them in the absence of my mortality pushing me onward. I sent what I had to the questing beast, and then deleted them all from my computer.

Tea and the Yukkuri agree with me. Those close to me say they have been a calming influence, and indeed I feel myself much less hateful than I used to be. I am angry far less often, and primarily move from doldrums to euphoria. I spend enormous amounts of time sleeping, and other times am so happy I want to cry. This I share with my beautiful roommate, who has been my primary support. I am not sure I could do him enough justice.

So, I am going abroad, languish- joining that strange languish outremer that seems to be single-handedly trying to revive the western concession in the orient. I think 2012-2013 should be a much better year than what preceded it. If nothing else, I hope to make it to Japan before January of 2014.

  Thanks kindly to y'all for your support- It is wonderful to have someone to talk to, where everyone knows you and you know everyone. I don't imagine i'll leave languish as long as it exists.

[Ideologue]

Good luck.

Say, does your father, the lawyer, need a replacement son?

[Lettow77]

 No, I don't suppose so 

You could be a true comfort to my grandfather in his old age, however. Willing to work the farm and go to baptist church on sunday?

[Neil]

Good luck.

Say, does your father, the lawyer, need a replacement son?

Being dead, I'm pretty sure he's doesn't care.

[Ideologue]

Yikes.  Awkward.  Sorry, Lettow.

I misread that, and thought you just missed, you know, living at home.  Well, I am a perfect ass.

[Lettow77]

 No offense at all.  The greatest pain was sympathy-embarrassment for your sake. I abhor awkwardness and do my best to avoid other people feeling it when possible.

There isn't really a home anymore. A lack of one was one of the main factors to the VISION QUEST TO THE WEST. It is in some ways a blessing- with no ties that bind of any sort to anyone to speak of, I am free to do whatever I want, be it travel to the other side of the world permanently or kill myself, as the mood takes me. Other people have social obligations that I lack.  At this point, I am my primary obligation.

[CountDeMoney]

Good luck.

Say, does your father, the lawyer, need a replacement son?

"And he opens the round with a judo chop straight to the solar plexus...that's gotta sting, Mel!"
"Yes, Jim, but Lettow's taken more than that in life, this kid's a gamer!"

[Syt]

So, the demographic of Languish is transforming into
25% lawyers
25% homosexuals
25% English teachers in Asia
25% "other"

[CountDeMoney]

25% "other"

I prefer "miscellaneous", thank you.

[Ideologue]

So, the demographic of Languish is transforming into
25% lawyers
25% homosexuals
25% English teachers in Asia
25% "other"

Lot of overlapping sets.

[katmai]

Ide is gonna cover 3/4ths of it soon.

[CountDeMoney]

Ide is gonna cover 3/4ths of it soon.

I dunno, I think he's pretty adamantly heterosexual.

[katmai]

Korea was clearly a beard.

[Ideologue]

I think I've been pretty clear that if homosexuality was a possibility, I'd be on that like Martinus on toes.  Gay guys have got it made in the shade.  Oppressed?  Yeah, oppressed like a fox.

[CountDeMoney]

I think I've been pretty clear that if homosexuality was a possibility, I'd be on that like Martinus on toes.  Gay guys have got it made in the shade.  Oppressed?  Yeah, oppressed like a fox.

Yeah, the whole "we don't argue over the remote" stuff and all the easy sex makes the occasional chance for hate-crime victimization worth it.