Rehousing Challenge

I'M GETTING REHOUSED and I'm living in terror. I even know where the house is. It's within easy carting off distance of the nuthouse. I say that because everybody in that house will be raving mad (like me). So now I have to pack a bag or ten and try and feel positive. I don't actually feel very positive at all. When I found out I was in sheer terror, then I fell asleep. Then I'm meant to be changing drugs clinic (again) then I'm meant to change back (again). You see why I don't understand anything? It's incomprehensible.

I've decided yet again to try giving up "gear" for good. Yet again. It does nothing for me. I mean I can't feel the bloody stuff when I take it, so I know I'm wasting my time. I wish I had never got into heroin. I can't believe I'm here now. Me! Talking about me being on heroin. How ridiculous is that. I was never like Anna Grace Young in that all my heroes were junkies and all I ever wanted to do was try heroin. True, I had a sneaking fascination and if someone had presented the naive young me with Drugs of the World on a silver platter saying I could try just one, I probably would have tried the heroin. Because as far as I knew, heroin was the strongest drug there was. So that's the one I would have tried. When I did dabble in drugs, heroin was always in a class of its own. It wasn't available. It was frowned on. The way I saw it, if drugs were bad then all drugs were bad so if you were going to try drugs you might as well try heroin. The fascination was there, but that's all it was. I never intended to become a heroin addict.

If only I could relegate that crappy stuff to the same dustbin every other drug from my past has been chucked in, I'd be OK. I feel no compunction whatsoever to take any other drug ever. My brain can produce a free high anyhow (I now know). Why bother wasting money on drugs to be high? I now get more of a buzz out of Japanese than heroin. Which either says a lot about the Japanese language or a lot about heroin, I don't know.

I keep seeing Chinese characters, not just with my eyes closed but with them open. They appear against blank walls and doors while my head is dreaming. See, I'm a clairvoyant. I can see into life's mysteries... I used to own a crystal ball, but it got left behind in an old house, or stolen. I'm not sure which. I don't need a crystal to scry into, just a blank door will do.

Today, for the first time ever, I was leafing through my kanji dictionary, this huge list of radicals (the graphic components that make up characters) and there were so many of them I couldn't name. And I briefly experienced self-doubt. Usually I view the 2200 basic characters as a linguistic chocolate gateau, to gorge into.

I learned a new one today: 獣 kemono. It means "animal". Because ke can mean fur and a mono is a thing a 毛物 kemono could be a furry thing. Just a 着物 kimono literally means "something to wear". The Chinese reading of 物 mono is 物 butsu, the old slang word for heroin: worlds apart, the words are the same... Butsu means exactly the same as the English word "gear". Another word for animal is 動物 dōbutsu, a "moving thing". I like the way they're so basic in their vocabulary. When you know these words you can actually see the constituent meanings.

Now it's quarter past midnight and my head is spinning. I'm scared to death of moving house. What am I going to do? What's happening? What will happen? I tell myself it has to be a good thing.

PS far as I know the council hasn't OK'd it. So I still might not move. Then I'd be even more disappointed.

PPS far as I know, it's a normal house, not a tower block


An American akita.



These are akita-inus. In the film Hachi, starring Richard Gere, the baby Hachi (an akita) was played by a brushwood dog...