EDITORIAL
Not 'Art for art's sake'

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

POEMS
Invisible Things
For King and Country
On the Way Home
We 21st Century Youths

Identities on the move: society, borders and me
- a ramble in the calm before the storm

Megumi Kanie

*This piece was written during August 2001, before the series of tragedies have overwhelmed the world.

Ican't sleep somehow tonight, and now I have picked up a piece of used paper to write something on its back to kill some time. Why can't I sleep...? One psychologist said that those who can't acknowledge their values without their social values easily get some symptoms because they gird themselves for society. It might happen - not only from a medical viewpoint. It may apply to me, for sure. I can tell others that people have values as they exist without doing anything, but I myself am not ready to accept that.

It is often discussed in religion - there is one religion which says that people are saved by good deeds and another in which they are saved by believing in God or something like that without doing anything. I would be the one who strive hard...chances are I had a keener 'social' sense of justice before than now. I should do something for society, I should do work for a better society, and so on. I wonder if it is called an oriental sense of value, or it follows in the wake of socialism.

I feel that both my strong interests in NGOs, Non-Governmental Organisations, and that hasty fret during high school come from there, like, why am I doing meaningless work whilst such things happen around the world. But now I have difficulty grasping 'the society'...what hell is the society? Why should I work for the society? ...While researching migration, I likely came into such a maze.

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