MeghanIsMe

Rambles about the book I'm reading ("Regarding Saeki Sayaka: volume 1") and love:

At the start of the book I'm reading, the main character, Sayaka, is in (the Japanese equivalent of) elementary school. A girl she takes swimming lessons with keeps wanting to talk to her, and swim together with her, and make changes to the way she behaves so that Sayaka will like her more. Eventually, they have a moment where Sayaka realizes that this girl has a little kid sort of proto-crush on her. Sayaka's confused and terrified response to her own feelings in reciprocation is to decide that she must never see this girl again and to immediately quit her swimming lessons.

This sort of reminds me of a meme about a bunch of lesbians together at a party who are all talking about how they're looking for girlfriends, and then going home alone. When Sayaka is older, she'll fit right in!

In junior high (or the equivalent thereof, I think) another girl tells Sayaka she loves her and asks her to go out and her response is very different. It made me think about the ways I've felt when someone tells me they love me. I have a strong memory of the joy of Miriam telling me that for the first time. I have a strong memory of confusion and fear, like Sayaka but for very different reasons, when one of my ex's boyfriends told me that. I felt like I barely knew him and was being pushed into having a relationship with him and him saying that felt really wrong.

Sometimes people share a meme talking about how great it would be if we could tell people we don't have romantic feelings for that we love them: to be open about how important people are to us in non-romantic contexts. Intellectually, I think that would be wonderful. Emotionally, it's pretty scary. It's a big word that I don't feel like I'd know how to approach in that context. I think I'd either run away from it, or try to analyze it to death.

I don't really have a point. I just wanted to record thoughts and feelings I'm having about this book.

I empathize with Sayaka a lot. As a kid, she was better than her peers at everything she did. Not necessarily because she had more innate ability (though she might), but because she loved learning things and knowing things and improving skills. She took everything she was doing pretty seriously, unlike her peers, and took pride in being the best among kids her age at the things she did. As she got older, she realized that just putting effort into something doesn't mean you're going to be better than everyone else, or even most people, at it. I had to make that realization at some point, when I left elementary school or junior high where I could just ignore everything happening in class and still do fine on tests and assignments.

I think of all the characters in Bloom Into You and the related media, I feel the most kinship with Sayaka. I know she's going to have her heart broken by the end of this book and I'm kind of hurting for her already.

All sorts of stuff in my head this morning.

This talk of expressions of love and care remind me of a time over ten years ago now, when my then-wife's boyfriend told me that he loved me. It made no sense whatsoever to me. I felt like I barely knew him. It made me intensely uncomfortable.

These words we use. They mean so many things to so many people.

I had a wonderful couple of days with Danae, spent playing board games, eating with family, and enjoying each other's company. I even got a little school work done somewhere in there. This coming week is going to be spent mostly in Chicago attending the Association of American Geographers annual meeting, so it's going to be a lot of time away from home again. Hopefully I can still get some work done in the evenings on my laptop.

For now, I need to get to bed so I can get to campus early tomorrow. I submitted my AAG posters for printing, but I need to get there early and provide updated versions with some errors corrected. There doesn't seem to be a way to update jobs online.

Before bed, I have one more picture to share with you that I found as Danae and I were going through a couple of sets of photos looking for something to use for another purpose. This wasn't right for that use, but I like it too much not to post it. I kind of get lost in all the lines and shapes and spaces here, looking up at the ceiling of the sanctuary of Gary, Indiana's City Methodist Church. One of these days, I'll get to posting the rest of this set.





G'night!