How Time Flies (a.k.a 日本語の手紙）

皆さん、こんばんは。


大学で勉強している専門は日本語なので、今日のポストは日本語で書いてみます。


Facebookで言ったとおり、日本人の千々岩先生は、先週の土曜に帰国なさいました。今までも、そんな感じがしないです。「また、あした会おう」、「先生が少しの時間だけ行ってきます」などの気がします。


さっき、Windows Live Messengerにロギンしました。そのメッセンジャーのプローフィール写真が、この一年ぐらい変えていないことは気づいたばかりでした。その写真は僕とJ.yoさんのしゃしんです。去年、千々岩先生と一緒に、初めての観光した時に、先生がその写真を撮ってくれました。
「ウワッ、もう一年か…ホントだ」と思いました。一年は、スッゴク早かった。千々岩先生と観光したばかりだと感じます。


考えると、この一年に、その写真を撮ったから、たくさんのことが起こりました。撮った時に、J.yoさんと付き合い始めたんです。あと10日だけ、一周年です。日本へ行けるのは全然思えませんでした。今年の7月に、大阪へ行くつもりです。
千々岩先生と一緒に観光したばかりと感じてますが、土曜日に代わりの甲田先生と観光する予定です。


ただ一年だけでも、こんなたくさんの事が起こった。


この一年前に撮った写真を見て、ちょっとなんか寂しくなります。なぜですか？ただ一年だけでも、千々岩先生はトッテモ良い教師だけでなく、みんなにとっても、大切な友人になれたからです。そんなに大切な友達が遠いところへ行ったら、確か寂しくなります。ですから、また大阪で会えるように、僕もみんなもガンバリマス！




ではまた。
ゼット・ヴァレンタイン


P.S
甲田先生も、友人になれること、お楽しみに！笑

More on Time (aka Memory Lane)

Nostalgia is a very unique feeling, don't you think? No, rather, time, and our perception of it, is something very unique. I mean, time can be fast or slow, depending on how we look at things. Of all things, I think the fabric of time is the most abstract.

The other day, I went to my old school (feels funny, calling it that. I've only graduated for a few months), using the same road I've always used. It's funny, how it felt like I hadn't used that road for a very long time, when in fact it had only been a few months, and the emotions I felt as I passed through it.
It felt strange, as if so much had changed in my life in a short amount of time, and yet that stretch of road still remained the same. I felt a sense of longing, and loss; a stretch of road that had been a part of my life for so long, and that day would possibly be the last time I passed through it. I started to imagine myself, 10 years from now, passing through that road again, imagining how it would feel.

Maybe I just have an over-active imagination, but that wasn't the first time my mind has wandered off like that. Once, I was just walking to the mall, a few blocks from my house. It was a nice day, clear, not too hot, a cold breeze blowing. I just looked around as I walked, taking in my surroundings, then in my mind it was like I saw the town's development, from a patch of land, urban development, the first houses, etc., and all this happened within a few seconds.

Another time, I was at my girlfriend's house. She has this stuffed toy that she told me she's had since she was a baby. She showed me the toy - which I gotta say must have seen better days - and thought it was really nice that she was able to keep something for so long - if it was me, I would've lost it ages ago.
Anyway, I took the toy in my hands, and I looked at it. That's all I did. Carefully. Like an archaeologist would study ancient symbols, I gazed into the toy, trying to unlock its stories. Then, a single sentence crossed through my head, one that every historian asks when stumbling upon an artifact:

"What is your story?"

Almost at once I could see - no, sense everything that toy has been through, without actually knowing what. It was almost as if all that time had been imprinted in that toy, almost waiting to be seen.

Looking back on these things, it makes me feel like the thing we know as "memory" may not simply be something that belongs to us living creatures. Maybe memory is something that we share with everything, and everyone else. Maybe memory is something that belongs to the Universe itself.
After all, aren't our memories what make us who we are? And what are we, if not part of this universe?

Imaginatively yours,
-Zet

P.S:
My other thoughts on memory:

- What if that "genetic memory" thing from Assassin's Creed (a video game) is real?
- Maybe what we think of as "past lives" are actually a form of ancestral/genetic memory.