Goodbye Yoshizawa.

While Yossy remains my first love in J-pop idoling for her amazing confidence, humor, singing, looks, and general existence I must admit something that I've been thinking about for a few weeks now. Something that could change the way I feel about my purpose on this earth, perhaps the goal of my mere soul on this planet.

I present to you, my new reason to live, the girl to whom I must find and disclose my true feelings, my new idol love interest AKB48 Team K's Akimoto Sayaka:

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

I'll sear the days that I spend with you into my chest  
So that I'll be all right even if I don't recall them
Even if I were to fall in love with someone else, someday  
You'd always be special and important to me  
And this season would come around again  
Within the endless time, the fact that I was able to meet you  
Made me stronger than anything else
Even if I were to make a desperate run for tomorrow 
You'd always be special and important to me  
And this season would come about again 


Here are some pieces of things I'm reading right now:

• Ellen Gilchrist, "Nineteen Forty One":

"Get your jodhpurs on, honey," her father said. He was sitting on the gate. 
"Mr.Trumbo is bringing his little girl over here to ride."  

"I can't," she said. "I'm menstruating."

"Oh, my God," he said, and climbed down off the fence, hoping to get to her before she said it again and the boys heard it. "ARIANE," he screamed toward the house. "ARRIIIIIANNNEEE, get out here and get this child. Who told you that?" he demanded, taking her by the arm. "Who told you a thing like that?" His face was as red as the sun. Rhoda's mother came running out of the house and across the yard and swooped her up. "Where does she learn those things?" he was saying. "Who told her that? Who told her such a thing?"

"Sherry Nettleship's Aunt told us all about it," Rhoda said. "You can't ever go swimming and blood runs down your legs. And you can't ride horses or anything like that. I've been doing it all morning. There's blood all over the sidewalk. Go look for yourself." It was an inspiration. Actually, Rhoda had spilled red Kool-Aid while she was making fire. That was what had drawn the ants. "You can die if you aren't careful," she continued. "Anything can happen when you menstruate."

• Neil Gaiman, "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock"
  

It was six months later. Richard had been bar mitzvahed and would be changing schools soon. He and J.B.C. MacBride were sitting on the grass outside the school in the early evening, reading books. Richard's parents were late picking him up from school. Richard was reading The English Assassin. MacBride was engrossed in The Devil Rides Out. Richard found himself squinting at the page. It wasn't properly dark yet, but he couldn't read anymore. Everything was turning into grays.

"Mac? What do you want to be when you grow up?"

The evening was warm, and the grass was dry and comfortable.

"I don't know. A writer, maybe. Like Michael Moorcock. Or T.H. White. How about you?"

Richard sat and thought. The sky was a violet-gray, and a ghost moon hung high in it, like a sliver of a dream. He pulled up a blade of grass and slowly shredded it between his fingers, bit by bit. He couldn't say "A writer" as well now. It would seem like he was copying. And he didn't want to be a writer. Not really. There were other things to be.

"When I grow up," he said, pensively, eventually, "I want to be a wolf."

"It'll never happen," said MacBride.

"Maybe not," said Richard. "We'll see."

The lights went on in the school windows, one by one, making the violet sky seem darker than it was before, and the summer evening was gentle and quiet. At that time of year, the day lasts forever, and the night never really comes.

"I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests as a wolf at night," said Richard, mostly to himself. "I'd never hurt anyone. Not that kind of wolf. I'd just run and run forever in the moonlight, through the trees, and never get tired or out of breath, and never have to stop. That's what I want to be when I grow up ..."

He pulled up another long stalk of grass, expertly stripped the blades from it, and slowly began to chew the stem and the two children sat alone in the gray twilight, side by side, and waited for the future to start.

• Love Letter by Otsu Hiyori