A reconstruction

Thieves are awful, comforts dear sister Beth. They probably saw you using your kindle and were just waiting for you to go for a swim so they could take your bag.

But I know what happens at the end of Moll Flanders. Underneath the kindle, and now probably lying in a skip somewhere, along with a peach, a plum, a Spiderman pencil and 9 carefully hidden euro, is a yellow child's exercise book that's been carried around with me for the last three months. If your house was burning down, what would you save. Not you, Moll.

Me in written form. Stolen, lost and gone. My dear, darling, cherished security blanket. Or a sick sort of memento mori, marking the passage of time.  But until they're written down, thoughts reformulated and verbalised, does anything really count?

At least it wasn't any of your creative writing, someone points out. True. But wasn't it? Isn't it all a creation? Edit for highlights, embellish and rearrange? Were Beth and Roby really making sandwiches that night I came home, or were they on the terrace, asocially smoking and you didn't actually chat til the morning?

I have only been recording versions of events. But I can't let this just go by. This is another version of what happened between May and August 2012.

1) I read stories to Talia and Brandon, cut Peera's food and took Eloie to the toilet.We lived in a gated community for rich white people and the families of ex-pats. In the village, I ate wonderful chicken soup every day for next to nothing, and got addicted to deep fried bananas. I lived with Ann, Anne and Fiona, a lovely Scottish girl who told me to go and do a TESOL. Anne was spiteful, the kind of person who provokes you to eat their cassava chips in private. We watched The Disney Channel and lazed by the pool and never had change for the bus. The brittle Kiwi slept with the local men who told her she was beautiful. The Swiss girl swam a kilometre every day. After a while, I wanted to leave.

2) Trace the line that runs from his cheekbone down to his chest. Comb your eyebrows with my nails. You rubbed the perspiration from my forehead when you took the motorcycle helmet off me, every time. You wondered what our children would look like and I laughed and rolled my eyes but silently wondered too. I would never know what Bangkok looked like if I'd stayed with you. We fought. I told you not to come down to the harbour so you didn't and I resented you for it. That ridiculous "bushman" toothbrush you used. Fashioned from bark, or the root of some particular plant or some such. Activated with water only, you kept telling me to google it but I didn't because I'd rather tease you and afterwards I got your cinnamon kiss.

3) Same-same but different. The same as all the other cities, with an additional Starbucks where there wasn't before. This time it's Olympic-shaped. My favourite second hand bookshop had become a branch of my favourite cafe, and I was unsure whether to rejoice or rail at the gentrification. My friends, my family and former colleagues, working harder and longer than ever before. Nobody minds that I keep buggering off all the time. They still want me. The Circle Line doesn't join up any more. A fiver for a vodka and tonic.

4) An overly charismatic tutor with blond floppy hair at first irritated me, then encouraged me and finally inspired. I watched him teach the upper-intermediate class and I listened to him to talk to the trainees about it afterwards and I thought: this man has a calling. I do not. If this were a seminary for the priesthood, I would go to him, after vespers, and say: Father Chris, sometimes, I worry. I look at priest like you, and I feel so far away from your passion for your God. Sometimes, I doubt, Father Chris, if I am cut out for this. I'm a cheat and a liar and in this for the wrong reasons. I shouldn't be here. I'll never be like you. And then, a few weeks later, I have become a curious Christian, flicking through theology textbooks instead of Facebook in the lunch hour, and starting to wonder how to go about climbing aboard this particular bandwagon and then I realise I'm already on it.

That's not really what happened though, I don't think. It's not the same river, twice. I can't tell. I will buy another exercise book tomorrow. It won't have that annoying duck on, because Spanish stationery stores are better stocked than their Bornean counterparts.

The physical compulsion is still there. The only thing to do is write about it. 

Intrapersonal teaching

By the beginning of Week 3, we are in love.

There is no one else in our world, no one else understands us, and our poor, tortured, over-worked souls. We spin a protective cocoon around N, who may or may not fail, and H, the loveliest teacher but incapable of paperwork, which is of course, how you assess a good teacher. The jet-lagged Americans are Not Eating and stagger gauntly into our arms after noontime naps. We are cranky and weepy and chase our tails in a circle of stress and only have eyes for each other. It is Teaching Boot Camp crossbred with Big Brother.

We are a we, there is no "I" in team, Jenny! Even I concede to this, and stop fighting against the group work because perhaps it is not so bad a thing to be part of. Or to be part of things. They are wonderfully tolerant of me though, and my Intrapersonal Learning Style (my official diagnosis). I don't run every day now, because we are eating dinner on each other's roof top terraces, conversing over cathedral chimes, or netbooking together in the little cafe overlooking the fishing boats in the harbour, watching the sunset.

Teaching is an hour or two of The Jenny Show, a few times a week. A ridiculously curtailed schedule, down from 25, but then it has to be planned, meticulously, and that plan presented with accompanying rationale. "Distill the essence of your pedagogy and its individual linguistic aims" and other archaically worded forms of assessment.

And afterwards observations, observations of how you walked around the room, where you stood and how high you held your lovingly photocopied hand-out up, up to the light and the TEFL Gods. Someone else has copied down your instructions for each activity, word for word. Did you look at each student equally, did you pick on Juan Carlo more than Juan Maria? You know how he hates that. Your voice is too loud, too soft, too kind when correcting or simply used too much. The timbre of it, though, is so rich, an exquisite brown russet shade, I could almost smell the autumn leaves...

We watch each other teach, most humiliating of all, and soon tire of constructive criticism. We do T-rex arms in a row at the back of the room to try to put our favourite trainee off. We give each other the name of a fish before each lesson, and try to shoehorn it into lessons somehow.

Do you like Spain? asks Diego in class one morning. I don't know, I tell him. It's true. I leave the house every day, blinkers on, hurrying through the streets and into the language centre, don't look at Spain, don't look at Spain.

I remember that I know how to read, and pull Life of Pi from the untouched communal bookshelf. I have no idea when you are supposed to have time to read. I find my kindle shoved in a forgotten drawer somewhere, along with the Spanish textbook and a cardigan and my diary and other things that I don't use anymore. Moll Flanders. That helps. And going on day trips at weekends, to Seville and Rhonda and Tarifa, the southern most tip of Spain, where you can see Africa. I write my Materials Assignment looking out over Tangier. Another country, another way.

Viva Espana

In the last week of the TESOL course, the refuse collectors of Andalusia go on strike. The cobbled streets of Cadiz reek as the city walls begin to rot. I vary my route to school each day, testing new corners, avoiding certain plazas where the stench of festering tapas scorches the nostrils and turns the stomach. The Tall Ships Races begin, and scabs are paid to remove the worst of it from this year's bicentennial city. And in all of it the heat, the relentless, unwavering, toneless heat.

Underneath it, there we are, with the highest population density in history of Cythnias on a teacher training course (two-thirteenths). Phonemes and phonics and aims (subsidiary, objective and stage aims) and on Wednesdays, the passive tense is learned. Teaching begins, real live Spanish people, named Jose and Fernando and Raquel. Organic, living things, students that question and second-guess their teacher. My omnipotent authority toppled. The Japanese reign is over.

We are together ten hours a day, a tiny group embracing, encouraging, feeding back, cheering on, taking supportive fag n stress breaks in the square. After the first week, the space between our bodies begins to dissolve as everyone starts to touch. First an arm squeeze, then a shoulder rub then a full on bodily embrace. They collapse inwards, constantly feeding pet pressure dragon. But it is a persona, a way of being, a something to hold on to. People walk out of their classes, unable to continue, deadlines are unmeetable, two public break downs, three private and a pregnancy scare. There is a tense called Future Perfect.

I run, so hard, the first week. The group work, the group mind, crushing and encompassing all. I'm a recovering introvert, I explain, I can't do the group sessions. At 7, I dart from the rooms, flippity flopping down the stairs, into the square with children on new bikes and little girls throwing popcorn in the air. Streets teem with the 40% unemployed, and I weave, home to the empty flat, I must leave it before the lovely other girls get home, I must be alone, change and get out, rush down to feel that velvet squish between my toes, on the sand. On the beach, I can stare out at an infinite stripe of sea and sky, not just the back of Cynthia P's head or deep down into Joaquim's workbook, but stretching headlong into the distance, running along with me.

20 minutes and then I can leave a pile of moist pink clothing under my usual rock and I slink into the sea like a retarded sea creature, my legs useless, my arms begging to be used, and then another half hour later, my body is as tired as my mind I've achieved some kind of equilibrium, I'm me again and I will wear my flamingo dress tomorrow.

Home, and Robyn and Beth are making sandwiches and doing dinosaur impressions. And I will apologise for my behaviour and join in.

Dry run

I am really good at going on holiday. It's one of my special skills I regret that I can't put on a CV. I know how and when to get the cheapest flight. What to pack, what not to pack. Flexibility of itinerary is paramount. Avoid this area, eat that, wear sunscreen, and no, you can't swim to the next beach along. It's always further than you think.

I arrive, impatient to hit the ground running, but God has other plans for me. There are a lot of things I need to break and struggle with and deportation to shirk.

Earlier, on a stopover, while rummaging in my overloaded bag for the nth time, I dislodge a bottle of perfume and it smashes spitefully to the floor. When I lived in Gotemba, I would only wear this at weekends, free from my small town constraints, adventuring around Tokyo in a heightened state of being, smothered in jasmine. But it is not to be taken with us, but left behind in a pool of broken black plastic and pink scent that always stained my skin. But I have made Kuala Lumpur airport smell beautiful.

In the quiet of the first unfamiliar morning, long divisive curtains marking the bunks and breeze between soft swinging linen, I shatter a powder compact into oblivion. Later, I will drop my tweezers, the only implement that stands between me and Groucho Marx, and blunt them. Flip flops that previously moulded themselves to my skin, and seemed to become part of my feet, rub and bleed and leave welts on my flesh. And that afternoon, as I rise out of the ocean, a small stray dog can be seen on the edge of the beach, marking its territory all over my dress and bag. It is still warm when I get to it, too late, and dark yellow. This will be hilarious in a week, surely.

And I am sulky, and dead inside, and tired and sad. Maybe I will just the waste the first week, I think, and maybe that will be OK. I have cheerful Canadians to carry me through. After tackling the beach, the three of us get Lebanese food and an ill-conceived strawberry shisha, then slip into the pool for a moonlight bathe. It is all too surreal for my confuddled heart to understand. I feel like I want to thank the boys for the pleasant day out I've had, but I really must be getting back to Japan now, to loiter in my apartment. There is washing up to be avoided and Gossip Girl to be watched in my pajamas. M to text on the phone I don't have anymore.

But it's had to ignore the scent of frangipans and the low swooping bats over our heads and the easy friendliness of my companions. Tomorrow will be better. Today was hardly awful.

Beginnings

Getting into Bali proves difficult. All it takes is a simple: "Can I see your exit ticket, please?" and all your carefully laid plans are undone. Or rather, the fact that you didn't carefully make any plans. That was half the charm.

"You don't know when you're going to be leaving Indonesia?" says Immigration Man incredulously. "Why didn't you know about this rule? Don't you have friends to tell you these things?" He's annoyed now, but it's the annoyance of a man who is going to let you in eventually, as long as you play your part, which in this case is meek, slightly startled, inoffensive woman. It's probably easier to do if you're not wearing a Ramones t-shirt.

As a solo traveller, the odds are almost never in your favour (certainly not financially - a single room for 90% the price of a double? Thanks). As a lone female you have to put up with even more. But there are occasions when, faced with some part of the bureaucratic process, the official will give you the once over, ask: "Is it just you? Oh... go on then," and wave you through, onto that plane you're stupidly late for, into that open bar on NYE and, on this occasion, through to Bali without an exit ticket. Or maybe Immigration Man just likes punk rock too.

I share the car to the hotel with the Canadian Graham and Geordie; one outgoing, bouncy friendliness, the latter quiet, brooding and beautiful. Men who travel in pairs on the road are often like this. It is as though there is not enough personality to go around and characteristics must be shared. G&G compliment each other beautifully, and I'm quite keen on their unit by the end of the ride.


G&G

Making friends on the road can be a delicate process. A day and a half without an English conversation renders you quite ill with verbal diarrhea, and thus seriously off putting to potential drinking partners. A certain amount of judgmentalness is called for, but not to Heathers proportions. Weigh up the other party quickly. If I go for drinks with this girl, is she going to spend the entire evening talking about her A level results? Do these people who want to have dinner with me have any idea of the value of the local currency? If I go to bed with that guy I just met, is the outcome going to be mutually beneficial?  (You should have answered: Yes, No, and, obviously, No again.)

In the dorm, I take off my Proper Shoes and put them in the bin. Tights, which seemed quite the thing in Tokyo, suddenly lose their appeal in 36^oC heat. I peel them off, almost snow-blinded by my white wintered flesh, and hit the strip with the boys. Sadly, it leads to the infamous Kuta district, which is the Costa del Sol of choice for the less discerning Australian chav. Huge lobster-pink men, either shirtless or mercifully covered with a singlet, line the streets swigging bottles of Bintang, the local brew. Hawkers force henna tattoos, fake Ray Bans and massage fliers on us. They touch you as you go by. Dry fingers trail down my sweating neck, tracing the line where their necklace or earrings will hang. Techno trance blares from empty superclubs. We fall onto the beach and pay to sit in chairs in the full strength of the midday sun and drink warm Bintang. For Hindus, Bali is the "Island of the Gods." I stare out at the rough sea and try to switch my brain to Holiday Mode. I'm not there yet.


Night falls as hemlines rise in Kuta

Partings

They cry so beautifully in mascara in the movies. An elegant trail of black, usually down only one cheek. A solitary tear. There is a Hollywood glamour about the thing, as glassy-eyed starlets passively allow their surroundings to crumble.

I'd stopped writing anything at all a few days before the move. That always means something's wrong. It was too much pressure every time I opened a blank page. Write your future. Prove it to yourself that you are making the correct decision, in elegant, confident prose. Such a waste, not to write at least something. But there was too much stress and shittiness that saw me fail financially, geographically and emotionally. Watching my possessions dwindle down to what could be posted or carried. I send a washing machine to the wrong friend's house and someone else mistakenly gets a microwave. I didn't want any of my deposit back anyway.

In the end, it is the note I write to M that opens me up again. She is supposed to be coming with me to the airport, but lies sleeping feverishly in bed while I pack. I sit down to write the kind of goodbye that is too rushed and written in scratchy pencil and conveys only 2% of what you love about the person. But it makes me cry anyway, by myself and then onto her white duvet as I lean over her wakened body and crush it with a hug. She tells me off for crying: tomorrow it will be sunshine and sea and men again and for all the tomorrows I choose.

In the cab through Yoyogi Uehara, I check my face in the mirror, and even in the dark, there is a smudged cloud under each eye, glassy and dazed. A gig is letting out at Shibuya O East, and the cab has to stop while we are thronged with goth lites in green hair. That morning, I'd gone to a photo exhibition in Ebisu, and it had seemed so exactly like a normal Sunday in Tokyo, with a matcha frappuccino afterwards, to celebrate the beginning of the summer. Nothing that gave the sense of an ending. On the bus away from the city there's "Little Red Corvette" by Prince, another questionable selection from the ipod to soundtrack this moment. There is no sense of release, only loss. Not even that, just nothing. I feel like writing about though, so things can't be so strange, but only in teenage melodramatic tones.

I look forward to descending into the flippancies of Travel Bitching, what I should have really named my blog. I know soon I will shrug off this emo mourning and I will want to write about the place I am in, beautiful men I latch on to and the heinous ones that take a shine to me. There will be mediocre sex and sunburn and lower back tattoos and banana daiquiris I pour into the pool when I get bored with them. The Romance of travel/adventure/exploration and solitude. There will be endless questions about Japan. People want to hear about green kit kats and false exoticism. Perhaps I will avoid mentioning it and let people think I have come from London. Nobody wants to hear my version of Japan while I am still sulking: land of instructions and some of the worst pizza I have ever eaten.

It would seem that a lot of people agree with me, as the flight is packed. The inflight magazine has an article on the Japanese cherry blossom, but I saw them a few days ago, on M's birthday, when she skived off work and we went and laid in Yoyogi under the first trees. So I don't need to read it. Finish. Tick.

Endings

Some things I will miss about Japan, Part 29c

• The chocolate peanut butter pie at that cafe in Sakuragicho that looks out over the big wheel in Yokohama. But then, everywhere looks out over the big wheel in Yokohama. It's the cafe that plays Nine Inch Nails followed by Bob Dylan and then the Spice Girls. Unasked for western nostalgia, whisking you back to another time without permission. You need time to prepare when you go back.
• At school, that kid who always writes "Fin" at the end of all his journals. God knows where he picked that up from. I see him in the corridors, having walking-backwards competitions with his friends, and at lunch, hiding his vegetables in his neighbour's carbohydrate.
• The Toyoko line. You should really stand at the front of the train to get off at Kikuna, but you have a better chance of getting a seat if you remain at the back and walk up. I always forget to walk up. On the way to shows, I am that crazy girl in the corner, silently mouthing the words to my set, or out loud if I'm really worried. On the way to conversation lessons with salarymen, I prep with articles about sweatshop workers in China, floods in Bangkok, collapse in Europe. The Toyoko line home from Nakameg.
• Mimi, a ball of unaffected energy and unconditional love.
• Dean & Delucca, Marunouchi. Your coffee always gave me epiphanies.
• The tedious everyday minutia that added up to a life for me and I thank it for that. At the end, during the packing and the almost ritualistic binning, I am left with just a dress that I can't bear to part with because it's so special or the pattern is beautiful or that I was so happy in it, and a pile of notebooks attempting to document My Life In Japan. A ¥6000 package sent home, and a little bag for the road. This is a little or a lot or nothing.
• The urban, yuppie cleanliness and disposable income I'm going to trade for unemployed, wandering homelessness. In these final days, I wonder whether I should get some kind of trinket to serve as a trophy. This is what it meant. But this is when people are most vulnerable to getting tattoos.
• It's difficult to summarise an experience until you are well out of it. How this is not how life works for most people, who don't have the luxury of A London Phase, The Japanese Phase and endless Malaysian Days. Most people just continue on, from day to day, in the same place with the same things, not needing anything to reflect on/from. "Japan" as some finite experience, now finished and neatly tied with a bow at its fruition. It's ongoing. You aren't allowed to have several lives, or even two. You have to drag around the same lead character wherever you go, moving from plot to plot, with the same tired old flaws that occasionally lessen and improve.
• It began with 12 simple kanji. Tree. Power. Man. Soil. Car. Emergency Exit.
• To have all my hopes and fears either confirmed or pacified by spending time with all those other people doing exactly the same thing as me. Travel in the hope of finding a narrative thread.
• Talking with a British guy, in a bar in Tokyo, who hasn't been home in a while, and that look they give you that says: "Oh yeah....I remember what you British girls are like!" and suddenly my personality has currency again.