2023/01/16 English

BGM: U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name

Today was a day off. This morning I went to the hospital and see my doctor. I confessed my problems to him. He recommended that I walk and do stretch exercises to sleep well. Moving my body would work well. After that I got medicines, and I went to AEON and read Yoshimichi Nakajima's "Textbook of Philosophy" there. This time I found that this book tells me about the issues I am interested in. What is me, what is language, what is time, etc? Once I read this book again and again so it might influence my thoughts. For me, as this book describes, the fact that today becomes yesterday or now becomes the past is wonderful. Of course, I can't solve this problem. But I can't stop thinking. It must be an illness.

At the Miraiya bookstore in Aeon, I bought Masakazu Ide's book "How do autistic people see the world?". Reading it, I found that this book explains how autistic people's brain is different from neurotypical people's through various experiments. It is really great. I sometimes think that my sense is "default" to other people's. But it is wrong. Other people live with their senses. It says that we have different senses from each other. That is not strange. It is our characters based on our personalities.

This book also explains how we feel the time. The time I feel and others do might be different. For example, the expert baseball sometimes says that "that ball seems to be stopped". The way of feeling the time of the expert, in other words, one of the ways of feeling the time, it might be real. I can feel the time very shortly so never be able to make the plan within a year. It might come from this kind of fact. I learned that it is related to "time resolution". I felt impressed by this book and thought I should write the world I can understand or feel. I also want to write the time I feel because it might work for various autistic people. Should I write them as a novel?

This evening I felt nothing to do so spent the time wastefully. I can't have any good idea about that kind of free time. Reading Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet", I thought if this life would be good. I read the same books again and again... I want to read books I have never read. Tolstoy, Dickens, Barzac, etc. But these authors' books don't attract me. It doesn't attract my current mood. I want to read Ramachandran's "Phantoms in the Brain". In short, I read what I want, I live what I want, and I do what I do. Even if that life wouldn't make me someone... A really wasteful life. But c'est la vie.

2023/01/15 English

BGM: pupa - Creaks

This morning I got quiet because I read a piece of sad news. Yukihiro Takahashi passed away. I am just a listener of Yellow Magic Orchestra(YMO), so I can't follow his solo albums or side projects. In short, I am just an "immature" listener. But by listening to the YMO again I learned that their music is the battles within their "colorful" talents. In my opinion, YMO has enough value to be the "Japanese Beatles". Yukihiro Takahashi's sense of pop is great as Ryuichi Sakamoto's sweet melodies and Haruomi Hosono's profound ambiance. I love his soft voice. R.I.P.

Today was the day for me to attend the meeting about autism. I had to update ZOOM to join (my computer is old enough to get along with... poverty sucks!). I talked about "Taipa" as the "Time performance" at another meeting I had last Thursday. The members gave me various opinions actively. A person said that the opinion which says "training must be a waste of time" should be discussed by multiple aspects between "it's right" and "it's too extreme". In short, we can't decide or judge whether that opinion is simply good or bad. I was impressed that the comment is right so I have to reflect on my presentation. I have to think about my opinion steadily with having a few processes. I want to think deeply from multiple stances.

After the meeting, in my free time, I went to the library and borrowed Bin Kimura's books which were recommended on Facebook, and I enjoyed myself. I read Shinsuke Shimojo's "Subliminal Mind" and learned about cognitive dissonance. It says that I can't keep paradoxical opinions in my mind so I can't stop being assertive myself. For example, the opinion that says "drinking alcohol too much would hurt me", "I want to stop drinking a lot" and "alcohol must be a good medicine" is paradoxical. One side would beat the other one. Once I had this kind of conflict in myself many times, and tried to believe that "drinking must not be harmful". It is a bitter memory for me.

Quoting various dates from many experiments, Shinsuke Shimojo's book tries to explain the complication or ambiguity of our cognition. I treat myself as one personality, but can I say that I am the person who understands myself the most? My memory or recognition might tell mistakes or lies. Or "subliminal" things which already appear in this book's title would tell me a lie. I guess my way of learning the world would be different from others. This opinion might be able to be connected to the topic of qualia. "The red thing I watch is different from another person's"? If it's so, then it would be almost the same as Wittgenstein's philosophy. They are getting into one in my mind.

2023/01/14 English

BGM: 新居昭乃 - 覚醒都市

Today I worked early. This morning, suddenly I got an idea that says "who am I?". When I go to the company, people treat me as an employee. We make a contract, and they record me as a member of the database. They even pay me money because of my work, and people around me say I am a companion. Perhaps as a stranger, an alien... but in the connection apart from my company people treat me as another person. The difference in temperature between those relationships is so wide that I doubt (I even feel vertigo) if we belong to the same country or the same culture. Probably, we are actually speaking the same language but live from different points of view. We might move from different operation systems... that might be true.

Who am I? I am (indeed, although this is an extreme idea) a point that is made within the network of many people in this world. Just like the personal computer and smartphone I have are the points of the network of the internet. I am here. I am writing my thoughts from my thinking system by my will. But those ideas I am writing are based on other people's existence. The action of other people, those are from tenderness or evil, are flooded into my thoughts, and becomes the opinions like this. I am such a great liquid. Maybe I don't have any "solid" ego?

Because of being bullied in school, I once denied other people themselves. Making friends was for me just "attachment" too much, therefore, losing my ego or originality. Indeed, this kind of thinking is for me just "childish" and "idiotic". I guess that other people would open my door and bloom my talent. Just like the meeting of Morrissey and Marr, John and Paul, etc. Me, my life would end without any trial of writing English like this if I didn't meet my friends. I would disappoint my whole life, but just strictly believed that "I have a talent but this world can't approve of it". As you know, this kind of idea brings us that "I am right because this world is so strange". What a ridiculous idea!

This evening I read Oliver Sacks' "The River Consciousness". It is really a human touch collection of essays that brings me his warm heart or warm breathing. Especially, I am interested in the episode that says to us that our memory might tell lies because they are put into our minds apart from the fact, of what actually happened. But even if that reality is, "We should choose our recognized world as truth instead of the facts" or "People have their truths" are not my opinion. If I chose that kind of the extreme point of view, I would lose something certainly. I want to live now honestly and take real experience into my mind. Then, my past would become meaningful. I want to live like that.

2023/01/13 English

BGM: 詩人の血 - バレンタイン

I worked late today. This morning I read Shinsuke Shimojo's "What is consciousness?". A very profound book. Although it is an old book, it still asks us various problems to think about. I had an interest in the part which tells us about Prozac, which once became a popular topic in Japan. Is it happy to take that kind of mental pill and try to "uplift" our minds every day? I can't deny Prozac because I go to the clinic to get medicines since I was a college student. But I also doubt if life in medicines to keep on "uplifting" every day is happy. If I change these "medicines" to "alcohol" and "drugs"? Indeed, this might be a rough discussion.

I started meeting my doctor and getting medicines because I read Wataru Tsurumi's "Tuning personality manual". He explains that mental clinics are not strange places. They are really useful places for us to live happy lives. So I started going there. Exactly, medicines help me. That is a simple fact. But, I have to be careful that medicines give me temporary curing even if I can make my mood "uplift" or "fix". That is another fact. I have to face my problems seriously and try to change myself, then I would become happy. I believe so now.

Once, when I was at the bottom of my life, alcohol was the last hope for me. I blamed myself who being soaked in alcohol like that. Yes, I even imagined that alcohol would bring me to heaven. I couldn't imagine that except for alcohol there was no hope in me. Now I understand that it was because of my addictive mind. That mind let me say so therefore it was not from my will (indeed, I need more discussion to explain this). Now, I sometimes regret my young drunken days because I can feel there are tired guts in my body. I never think that my drunken days were not happy. Is it not the same as life with Prozac?

Today I met my job coach at a meeting at my company. We tried to find various problems in my job and solve them. At my workplace, I sometimes feel I am lonely. Because I am an autistic person therefore I am an outsider... but that character as an outsider works usefully there. Today I could learn how I could do my work for my company, therefore, I got a certain self-confidence. In Japanese, happiness is "Shiawase". "Awase" means "connection". So the connection with the things outside brings happiness to us... that is the meaning. I can connect myself to others. So now I can understand that I am happy.

2023/01/12 English

BGM: b-flower - Both Sides, Now

It was a day off today. I read Tetsuya Furuta's "Do philosophy the usual words", and I thought that we can learn how to write Japanese once again from this book. I was attracted by the part where he tries to write "Easy Japanese", which means the Japanese for foreigners. I know a few teachers of Japanese so thought this is good for them to read. Furuta tells us that he actually accepts the possibility of "Easy Japanese", but also writes its possibility of becoming like the concept "Newspeak" that appears in George Orwell's "1984". Thinking about the violence which is in "re-written words to be too easy". It really impressed me.

If I understand that "Newspeak" is "the words that are too easy violently" or "the words that are too simple not to misread" (although this is embarrassing I have never read "1984"! so tell me if I am misunderstanding), then I can understand how different "Newspeak" and "Easy Japanese" are. Because "Easy Japanese" is not the concept that denies other styles of writing by saying "this is the absolute one" so "we must write things like this". "Easy Japanese" understands various "poor writings" (like this writing I am doing). But it actually does its role as the trial of "alternative writing".

So I understand that "Easy Japanese" has a fresh essence that cultivates the Japanese language itself. Of course, it shouldn't avoid an alternative way of writing as Furuta worries, but I never feel that danger in "Easy Japanese". But I won't say that Furuta's discussion is nonsense. The worries Furuta tells me in this book appear as other phenomenons as "violently easy writings". For example, the subtitles which say personalities talking too clearly in Japanese TV programs or on YouTube (I feel that they are schizophrenic). Or a lot of Katakana that describe foreign words (this topic is also written in Furuta's book). I want to think about them again. It is a good book as Furuta's other works.

This evening I attended an online meeting on ZOOM, and I did a presentation about the word "Time Performance" or "Taipa" and Michael Ende's book "Momo". Saving time and avoiding various waste is the meaning of "Taipa". But my life actually has a lot of wasteful time ("I have never learned anything in my college life" "I drank a lot of alcohol and spent an enormous time and money" etc). But regretting them products nothing. The grey gentlemen in "Momo" would blame me for saying "your life itself is wasteful". But I learned that wasteful time with this body therefore can understand how it is wasteful. Then it wasn't wasteful for me completely. I could learn this so it was a great time.

2023/01/11 English

BGM: Cutemen - Love Deeep Inside

Today I worked late. I read Toshiaki Kosakai's "Phantom of God" a little this morning and found it thrilling. He writes that we can choose our death. We can die if we want. Of course, in my opinion, this discussion has a critical weakness. I can't say "you can die" to the people who wish for their death, who want to choose their death. Because they would have regretted their decision. You might have a lot of regret about the past decision you did. We can make mistakes, and that is the meaning of being human beings. I want to seek for another word for the people who wish their death. But I don't want to blame this author. It has great worth. Don't feel it, fight it.

I thought of the words "While there is life there is hope". "Whatever will be, will be". Once the doctor of the clinic said to me that "someday good luck comes to you". That kind of "luck" can have a great role in our life? Talking that to the people who should face their miserable situation... Good luck will come. But it's cruel, isn't it? Our life depends on our luck? Then life is basically nonsense, isn't it? I thought this.

Once Chesterton said that "The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen". Me, I met my friends fatally at 40, and I started writing memos in English and also face my autism. So it might be true that our life is like a lottery. We say that "Do the likeliest, and God will do the best". Life might depend on our luck. Then I want to do my best, and not rely on my luck. This must sound like a paradox, but that's a life I guess.

"Atmosphere is the thing we breathe, not what we read" I can remember these words from a friend of mine. I can't read the atmosphere so can understand this quote's meaning. I basically can't do any small talk because of autism, so I have to live as an alien. Then I choose to be the first penguin in our group. I believe in my potential power as Number Girl sings. I am just a student of philosophy so I naturally doubt everything, therefore it is difficult. But life is wonderful because it has many chances of miracles. Or I should say that our life is basically a miracle!

2023/01/10 English

BGM: Radiohead - My Iron Lung

Today I thought of the phrase "Do what you like". Probably it came from the reading of Toshiaki Kosakai's book. "Do what I like"... I have chosen the writing as "what I like". I have certainly kept on writing following Kafka and Rilke. I even thought that it could be my job. But...Do I will give up if I noticed that it wouldn't come true? This question brought me the answer that I wouldn't stop it. Because writing is pleasant, that's all. It just satisfies me simply so I would keep on doing it in my life.

When I was young and seeking my job as a freshman, I watched Masayoshi Son, the leader of the Japanese company Softbank, speaking to us that "Keep your dream". After that, my job hunting had to be stopped and I started drinking alcohol as I always write. Me, as the person who believed that it must be a loser, Masayoshi Son's that speaking sounded like a "winner's logic". You can say that beautiful thing because you are a winner... In other words, I believed that I must be weak and a chosen one in a miserable life, so I even believed I was a really powerless slacker.

I remember Radiohead's great song "Planet Telex". It says about the message from the cruel voice that says "Everything is broken, everyone is broken". I can't say that this song is nonsense because I even feel that this daily life might be dominated by a message. The message is "Keep your dream". You might hate me, but I say that if the message "Keep your dream" chased and crushed you, then you should fight against it and try to say that "I have no dream" or "Life is nonsense". Maybe that would be the beginning of your life.

Dreams might work as a kind of curse. Keeping your dream might let you understand the gap between your real state and dream, therefore you feel sick. Keeping your dream without understanding your limit might become a pressure. It makes you feel miserable because your life wouldn't go as your dream declares... But you might not be able to throw away the hope of "Dreams come true". At least, I never had any big dream or purpose. Every day I make this tiny achievement. About this diary, I have never made any big goals such as "I will keep on writing this during this year". Writing day by day, and becomes a great achievement. That's my way.