I may not have made it out there until the end of the month, but I did make good on my vow to hit up the three VA-11 HALL-A collabo bars in Akihabara!
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Get the Look: Academia
Standard“No-sleep beauty” is a little different for academics.
For the rest of the world, the goal of “no-sleep beauty” is “pretending you weren’t out all night.” For academics, it’s just the opposite–concealing that you got a full night’s sleep. I’ve taken graduate courses at three schools in three countries now, and what they all have in common is the Suffering Olympics, the unending cycle of one-upmanship about who’s working hardest and sleeping least. Thus, there are two uses for makeup when you’re an academic: to look like you’re not dying, or to look like you are.
Ok, and job interviews, but that’s in the center of the Venn diagram.
If you look like you’ve been, gods forbid, taking care of your physical and emotional needs, you will be accused of being that worst of all things: “unserious.” The ultimate mark of academic virtue and prowess is the sublimation of all your own needs into your work.
But what if you could practice self-care AND retain the respect of your cohort? Climb on board Kusano Iori’s All-Night Anxiety Express and learn how to get the haggard, sallow face of a Truly Devoted Academic!
ペルセウス座流星群の夜に
Standard夏すぎて秋きにけらしひさかたの雲咲く空に星が降る夜
On the night of the Perseids meteor shower
The summer has passed, and I find autumn has come; the night when stars fall in the sky where distant clouds bloom
院生に侍りける時、真夏の雨といふことを詠ませ侍りけるに
Standard彦星に今年もあへぬ織姫の涙は空に涌き零れつつ
When attending on a graduate student and asked to compose on the topic “summer rain”
Unable again this year to meet the Shepherd Boy, the Weaver Princess’s tears well up and spill over in the sky
こひのうたとて
Standardかきつばたいと面白く咲きたるに覚ゆるはただ「男、ありけり」
Composed as a love poem
Prompted by the irises blooming elegantly, all I can recall is, “long ago, there was a man…”
解釈/Interpretation
伊勢物語の第9段に連想する。
Alludes to the 9th section of Ise Monogatari.
The first post is always the most awkward.
StandardHi, Internet. My name is Iori and I’m a writer.
Hi, Iori.
It started when I was a kid. I had too many feelings; I couldn’t find any way to squash them down and make them fit into such a tiny body. So I started vomiting them up on scrap paper, on post-its, on blank Word documents.
I couldn’t quit if I tried.
I’m not sure I write about things so much as around them. I write around existing in the diaspora, about having or not having or gaining or losing a sense of place. I write around my relationship to the kami. I write around waiting and solitude and yearning.
But mainly I write stories where girls make out with each other in space. Sometimes they even have racing ships.
