For the first time in a veeery long time, I just felt I wanted to offer thanks to the divine. I lighted a stick of incense, and hands palm to palm offered a silent thank you out there...

Whatever else might happen I'm happy to be alive - no matter how hard it might be from time to time. And for that I'm thankful.

I'm thankful that someone just reminded me yesterday that the point of life is to make the most of it - even though life is full of suffering and problems you must try to live it to the fullest.

Now when did I forget that again..?

I just can't help feeling that I'm being given some nudges by the divine 2-4...

And that if I don't react soon I'll be hit. Hard.

What is the probability of me meeting someone at the exact time I'm starting to fall apart, then I'm restored (more or less, but actually less) but left with the feeling that things DO change. Meeting someone who I feel instantly drawn to, and from whom I get the feeling that we might be so alike? Someone with whom I can talk and who I think understands some of the things I'm going through? Someone I feel for when I read his blog entries, the few ones he has - and catch myself feeling that he has written my thoughts there.

And now here's a catch you probably didn't wait for: there's actually 2 of these persons (ok, the blog thing applies to only the more problematic case), the other one being a girl I've known for some time but now become really close with. The other one... Well.

And as if this wasn't enough - just as I start to get down from my first high of these meetings and decide to do nothing much about it, to get back home and give my previous relationship still one chance (I wouldn't do anything radical by email, even though it would be easier...), what happens?

My man decides to pull off one of his sulking-angry-stunts basically blamig me for something (I still don't know what I'm supposed to have done this time) and trying to get me to paw and comfort his ego. Well, guess what? At the moment:

I. Just. Couldn't. Care. Less.

And I'm so tempted to tell him that that I won't respond his last email before something happens. To one way or the other. As I said, no rash decisions over email, but still...

And then I hear comments about leaving people, even encouraging me - some of them from the exact people from whom I want to hear them.

And just when it starts to bother me more and more that I can't share some sides of me with my current boyfriend, I first of all find someone with whom I can speak about anything literally the whole night through... And someone from whome I get the feelings that he's been there and might understand me in a way others usually don't.

Hints or just wishful thinking? Whatever they are, the timing is, as always, immaculate...

And on a lighter note...

After a long and rocky road with japanese poetry, I've finally found a poet I like. Yes, it's true, you heard correctly. Or should I say, I've found a poet I understand, at least in translation. Weeell... Understand some of her poems, because some of them are even harder to understand than the classical waka I've been complaining about before.

Yosano Akiko.

I mean, she's just brilliant. *g* She's a woman poet of the early 20th c. whose best-known poetic work, Midaregami, was published in 1901. And it's radically different from any other tanka I've read this far. She also wrote a modern translation of Genji Monogatari in the 1910's and Genji poetry. And in Midaregami, as you might already have figured out from the title of this blog entry, she writes love poetry (is there such a genre as lust poetry? Because if there is, that's what her poems are) about monks. And I'm just writing an essay about her poems and the tradition of longing for buddhist monks in Japanese literature... (Yes, it's an scholarly essay folks. I have proof from 11th c. onwards that watching out for hot young monks isn't a bad thing - on the contrary, there's enough precedents to make it a traditional form of art *g*)

I might have mentioned that buddhism isn't the dry sexless religion one might think when reading some boring explanations of it. Well, this poetess certainly has opened my eyes to poetry in a whole new way... *g* Here's one as an example, as translated by Carter:

Must you lecture me?
Must you expound your Way?
Enlighten me?
Put your karma away now -
I offer you hot blood.

Or the one that got me hooked to her for the first time, also translated by Carter:

Not even once
have you touched my soft flesh
coursing with hot blood.
Don't you feel a bit lonesome,
you - always preaching your Way?

At least something I understand! At last I've found the karmic bond between me and waka (I knew it must exist somewhere...). At last I can be a proper student of japanese culture. :D Now I need to find a favorite manga/anime, and I'll have everything covered (and while searching for the perfect manga about young handsome monks I'll just go by my manga Tannisho and the manga in which Shinran battles demons while wearing only a shredded loincloth).

Jpaan has it's own facebook/myspace -like website called Mixi. And there's  communities and groups you can join, just as with fb/ms. I've found one that describes my feeling exactly: It's name is でも生きています - "...but, I'm alive"

No matter what we might want, how hard it might be, well, we're still alive, and while being still alive, we should make that moment worth living. Just hang on there for a bit longer. And that's what I'm doing - hanging and trying to keep my head together between the elation, depression, panic and a complete "f*ck this all". I was just yesterday evening talking with a friend and she commented to me how completely I had changed since mid-May when we had been talking about love - how sure I had been about everything. Now she told me it was like talking to someone completely different. But, I've decided just to hang in there and do nothing - besides there are absolutely no signs that I migh stand the slightest chance, so...

Gah. Stupid me. But hey, I'm still alive. Better just to concentrate on my books, I know they love me, or something... Who needs guys anyways?

I really thought I'd left this already behind after the fight with panic attacks induced by my spiritual wonderings, but now we're again in the beginning.

I'm just feeling like nothing makes any sense. There's no deeper meaning in anything I'm doing at the moment, and I just don't know why I should care. And yet I do care, but the things I care aren't the things I'm supposed to care about.

I just feel completely lost, once again, not sure about anything.

And something is whispering in my ear that I'm too lucky to be entitled to this feeling. Outwardly everything is in order, so why should I be feeling like this? I should behave like a normal person and just go on about things happy and content, and not wonder about things like meaning of life and relationships.

And at the same time I just can't understand why EVERYONE isn't feeling like this? Is there something wrong with me or them? I can't feel the feelings I'm supposed to, while at the same moment feeling many many things I'm not supposed to, and no, I'm NOT only referring to the last post - that's only a part of it. Maybe I'm just f*cked up, because that would certainly explain many many things...

Why is life so difficult? Or should I ask myself, why am I making my life this difficult?

Should I just shut my feelings down, regarding all things, and go on living as everyone else supposes I should do? Or what? But if I do, am I being true to myself? And if I'm not even true to myself, what purpose is there in living in the first place, if you can't do it fully?