January 11th, 2014.
I completely forgot about that piano that we found yesterday in one of the warehouses when Akashi and I were back there taking inventory. I guess talking with her kinda engrossed me a bit too much, but it's a mistake I don't mind making.
If you've ever taken some time to think about it, you come to realize just how wonderful of a feeling it is to make a mistake, and know that there's absolutely nothing that'll go wrong because of it. Too often in this world, if I make a mistake, tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people will die as a direct result. And it doesn't matter what kind of mistake - a mistake of ignorance, a mistake of carelessness, a mistake that you make that you couldn't have avoided making - and before you know it, the blood of innocents is poured on you.
If it were a blatant mistake of malicious intent, then that's deserved. Too often, though, that's not the case at all.
Back on track before I get all melancholy on myself again. I moved the piano over to my office so that I can play it whenever there's nothing to do and I don't feel like surfing the web on my laptop or something like that. Luckily, it's not like a grand piano or anything, it's a small wooden piano that's badly in need of tuning and other such maintenance. Samidare saw me pushing the piano on its creaky old little wheels across the dock and asked me what I was doing, so I told her. She offered to help, which I gladly accepted, and much to my shock, Samidare just picked up the entire fucking piano and carried the damn thing over her shoulder all the way to the office, where she rolled it in from there.
I mean, I know I shouldn't be surprised, but still, I bet you'd freak the fuck out if you saw a high school freshman girl pick up something as heavy as a piano like she were picking up a small box of school supplies.
I had Samidare place the piano against the wall, to the right of my desk where I sit. We got some wet towels to wipe all the dust and shit off the piano, and when we opened the top to check the condition of the strings inside, we found a den of rats inside, along with lots of decaying foliage and other gunk. The rats weren't very pleased that we were carrying around their entire home, and Samidare wasn't too thrilled to see them either, 'cause when the rats looked up at her, she put her hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming out loud and just backed away quickly.
Samidare is afraid of rats. You learn something new every day.
As the rats screeched at me to go the fuck away, I poked around the piano a bit and found out that behind the piano, there's a hole that got chewed through so that the rats could access the inside of the piano through there. I don't know how old the piano is, but it's old enough to have its wood brittle and soft enough for rats to chew through pretty easily, I'd imagine. The hole's really high up from the ground, so I'd imagine that the rats had like some sort of pedestal to reach up there. Whatever the case, I asked Samidare to help me take the rats somewhere else, but that was a bad mistake, 'cause she just ran outta my office as soon as I asked. Murakumo came storming into my office, and Ooyodo, who'd been away taking care of the supplies they helied in for this morning, came in quickly too, worried about what was going on. Murakumo thought that I was bullying or harassing Samidare by her frantic behavior, so I had to explain to them about the rats and everything.
Murakumo and Ooyodo relocated the rats' nest somewhere else. Outside of the base, there's a small forest, so they placed them over there while I cleaned out the inside of the piano. Samidare calmed down after the rats were taken away, so I asked her why she was so afraid of rats. I mean, ship girls don't get sick at all, they only get tired or exhausted, so it's unreasonable for her to be afraid of them. Samidare said she didn't know why, she was just afraid of them.
Unreasonable fear, huh. Paranoia, fear, worry, concern, uncertainty. I remember when I had them too. Fearful of things I shouldn't be fearful of, or being afraid of things that aren't likely to happen. I know a lot of guys who went back home with some sorta PTSD, some sort of shock trauma from war, from seeing shit that humans aren't meant to see. Fear is hard to get over, and it's clear as day if you take a look at any of them. It's not something you can just sit by a fireside and say all casual and shit with a long cigarette in your mouth and having your voice projected to millions across the country.
Fear is powerful, but only if you let it.
I guess I'm the odd one out in this. The military changed me to have no fear...but in the back of my head, I always find myself second-guessing myself. It's what I'd like to think, but do I really think I know what fear is? Do I really think I have the power to never be afraid? It's mighty convenient to think so. I've seen just as much shit as everyone else. I've seen a man's head explode when a fifty cal bullet goes through it. It shakes you right to the core, but I bounced back from it so that the next time I see someone's leg get blown off by an IED, it ain't so bad.
But is that strength and a defense from fear? Or is that simply desensitization?
It's hard to tell sometimes. Like, sometimes, I ask myself,
Do I know fear?
Do I know what fear isn't?
Like I said, it's really hard to tell, and it's because you're never sure if you're going to think of something even scarier than what you already know.
I'm ranting again. Not good.
Anyway, I tried to do some manual tuning myself, but I'm no virtuoso, so I'm gonna have to call in someone to fix the piano. Made sure to email someone over at headquarters regarding the issue, so hopefully they don't think that it's something that they can just toss off as some bullshit request and send someone over.
When Murakumo and Ooyodo came back, they asked me why I put a piano in my office, and I just told them that I wanted it there in case I was bored and felt like playing. They asked me if I even knew how to play the piano, and I told them I knew a little bit, enough to know a piece from Chopin and Bach or two. Ooyodo seemed really excited and asked me to play as soon as the piano gets tuned - turns out she's a big fan of orchestral music and stuff like that. I can imagine that, actually, that doesn't come off as a huge surprise.
She suggested that I hold a concert for the ship girls, but then I asked her about the kind of instrument I ought to play for said concert. So they asked me what kinds of instruments I knew how to play, and I just said piano and guitar. My mom forced me to learn piano from like, third grade I think it was, and I completed the Certificate of Merit in tenth grade. No shortage of piano recitals and stuff, I remember all those...memories I wish I didn't have, I embarrassed myself so badly during those days. Didn't help that I had some stage fright when I was a kid.
I learned guitar back at Hargrave and during my time in the navy. Someone in my dorm back at Hargrave had brought a banjo from home, so every Saturday night he'd bust it out and we'd build a small fire and make s'mores and sing army songs. I fiddled around with the guy's banjo with some permission, so I got the hang of it a little bit. Then when I joined the navy, some of my sailors aboard the Bunker Hill were playing the guitar one night out on patrol, so I joined in with them and had them teach me the strings. But other than that, I don't know much else.
Tonight at dinner, I chewed the inside of my lower lip in the same place three times in a row. It still fucking hurts - I can taste a bit of blood even now as I'm writing this. Normally I chew my lip while eating maybe once very month, every other month, something like that, but I've never chewed the same place three times in a row. Unbelievable...and from past experience, that'll stay a callous spot in my lip and annoy the hell outta me for the next two or three weeks, I can feel it.
So the reason why that's relevant's 'cause when I chewed my lip for a third time in a row, I swore out loud in Japanese. I dunno why - normally if I wanna cuss, I'll do it in English. But I suppose being around Japanese ship girls who all speak Japanese and compel me to speak as much as I can in Japanese too, I just kinda fell into it. Well, I guess it's good in the sense that it's a sign that my mind's starting to take Japanese speaking as second nature, which's what I want, seeing that I'll have to stay here for at least a couple years, but at the same time, it made Inazuma get on my case.
Inazuma told me that she didn't want me to swear if I could help it. She said that she'd been around a lot of other officers in the mainland who did nothing but smoke cigarettes and swear all day long, so she grew to dislike both of those things a lot. She doesn't have to worry about me smoking - I tried it once in the navy, one of my sailors offered me a cigarette once, but I didn't like it. My lungs and my nose really hate the smoke that comes outta that kinda crap. But I do have a bad habit of swearing a lot, and I know it myself. It's probably pretty fucking obvious throughout the journal - heh, irony.
So I guess I need to keep in mind not to swear when Inazuma's around. Or, you know, I could just try not to swear in general. I mean, it's not impossible, but...I get the feeling that Bush being considered a better president than he was is more likely to happen than me stopping my swearing. 'Murica, am I right. I guess it's thanks to him that I'm where I am now. Big fat fuckin' thanks...
Which reminds me, Samidare asked if I could get us a tea set so that she could serve me tea. I've gotta remember putting in the request order for it tomorrow. Hopefully I don't forget, and if I do, which I'd expect to happen, hopefully she'll remind me.