You Inner Faery Personality created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Sea Faery You are the beautiful and powerful Sea Faery.  A potent enchantress, none can resist your beauty or your charm, yet none can survive when your wrath is brought upon them.  On the lighter side however, you can sometimes be playful and whimsical, and the host of a wonderful party.          Sea Faery          95% Darkness Faery          90% Forest Faery          85% Wind Faery          85% Meadow Faery          80% Flower Faery          60% Mountain Faery          60% Mushroom Faery          50% River Faery          50% Mother Faery          45% Winter Faery          45%

I think the result of the test is interesting... (Can't resist tests - I'm an addict)

I like the description (who doesn't want to be mysterious and irresistible?), but it's just that I have a strange relationship with Sea. Or actually, I never think I have one, before I have to go on for a longer time without the scent of it. And then I suddenly realize how much I miss my Sea. Mainly the scent of the sea, since the Baltic Sea is quite quiet compared to the bigger seas.

I've been thinking for a long time that I should go and stay at our summer cottage for a longer time - it's situated on a smallish island with a smallish village, and there's pretty much nothing to do. Except of course chopping wood, carrying water and, well, being. I'm thinking about shutting myself there to write and do research for my MA thesis. Just to be and to see how it affects me. And to watch the sea.

But even though I'm fascinated by the sea, I can't swim. I don't like being IN the sea. I'm afraid of being in the sea. I like to jump in and out when coming from the sauna, but only if I know my feet will touch the bottom, and once when for some reason I couldn't feel the sand and my head went under the water, I panicked and spent the next 10 min trying to calm down - for a second my body had been sure it would drown.

I don't trust the sea to be nice. It needs a healthy amount of respect.

So, I certainly don't have anything against being a sea faery. And the following Darkness/ Forest & Wind -categories don't really surprise me either. Nice test. :) Thank you for DragonMuse from whom I nicked this...

I know I've been getting snide remarks for years about my bad posture in iai - the exact term having been "granny technique". I especially remember one certain iai seminar in England when a certain sensei, every time he passed by me, had to call me "obaasan". (Ok, it worked, I admit that. And snide remarks are what I've come to expect from old japanese men. Actually, I kind of feel betrayed if a whole iai seminar passes without any of them. But I still hear about it...)

But come and take a look on me now... Yesterday evening I REALLY looked like a proper 150-y.o. kotatsu-baachan - you know those old ladies that can be seen in Japan who walk with their backs at a 90 degree angle? Well, that's me right now. I will have my trusted chiropractitioner (is that a proper word?) crush me open on monday morning, but before that I'll be pretty much tied to bed (or the sofa, which however is too soft so that I can lie there for only some hours before having to escape upstairs on my futon) for the whole weekend. Well, obviously I already dragged my laptop here, I have my new and way-too-high-tech-phone to play with, books, someone to carry me coffee (ok, I have to get it myself, damn), my iTunes and almost everything one could hope to have to kill one's boredom. Except of course conversation, but hey, can't have everything, now can you?

Except that of course when one knows one can't be moving anywhere, the psychological (or something) need to do anything BUT lie still becomes overwhelming. It's strange that no matter how much I dream about being able to just spend time doing nothing but read, blog or whatever, when the time comes to do nothing but it it's actually the last thing I want to do. And this happens every damn time. (Nope, not the first time I'm down with back problems) But there's nothing to do but wait for monday and take some pills in the meantime.

And on top of everything else there's no food in the house. No bread, no eggs, nothing but 2 potatoes in the fridge (an ongoing joke in our family). So, on top of not being able to move, having a constant pain in my lower back, irritated by boredom, I'm also starving. :D Ok, it's not that bad, I'm only channeling all my boredom to my blogging, which is just too bad for anyone who reads this.

The main problem after the back pain itself, including the inability to walk, is that very soon the whole back from neck downwards is hurting, sometimes down until the knees. Actually the most painful part of the chiro isn't the point when the doctor cracks the back - the sound is sickening enough but it doesn't really hurt. What hurts is when he massages the back muscles open before the big cracking operation. That's when I shout from pain. Another problem is that if my neck muscles get cramped, I get huge headaches. So, in 2 days I should be a major pain in ass for everyone who is unfortunate enough to be near me. Including myself.

Thank gods (and bodhisattvas too, for that matter) I have the chiro first thing in monday morning.

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?

Something very unusual happened last night - or should I say this morning. I came home around 5am after a night out. Now, I know everyone will be just rolling their eyes and thinking that I really REALLY don't have a life since this doesn't happen more often, but who cares. The point is that I did do it yesterday and it was one of the best nights out I've ever had.

It all started with two bottles of sake, one small and one a bit bigger, Toyama Kôen and a thunderstorm. Never seen such lightnings in nature... I had promised to take a friend out for her birthday (which will be in August, but who cares?) and show her the Bôzu Bar, given of course that I'd be able to find it. Before going there, though, we had decided to get rid of 2 bottles of sake gotten as presents - sake is the ideal conversational drink and one just can't drink it alone, even less drink a bottle of it. So, to Toyama we go, and were kept happy with our bottles until 10.30pm while watching lightnings, bats and cute dogs. There were some annoying students and their singing practise included, but we didn't let it bother us too much - just spoke louder. *g* After having gotten rid of the sake (Otsukaresama!) the real adventure of finding Arakichô could begin...

And finding it was actually more easy than I would have thought. And finding the bar too. I must have been a scout or something in my previous life... *g* More sake ensued, with 2 bottles given as presents (now we must do the whole Toyama episode again - not that I complain), and the conversations got really interesting even with our level of japanese.

I just have this feeling of things like my return date picking up speed and getting nearer and nearer, and the nearer they come, the more things I have the possibility to do. For example, only last month I really started to do all kinds of things with the people from the zazenkai - like the tea ceremony for example. Now that I only have only 3 weeks left I get to know people who, on top of being great as company could be of so much use to in my research. *sigh* Why didn't I meet these people half a year ago?

And, for some strange reason Fugu-sensei had forgotten to mention that the all-too-adorable bôzu of the Bôzu has been to Komazawa. Why, oh why are my sensei such prime examples of the head-in-the-clouds scholar? Now, would I have known this beforehand... But there is nothing nicer than trying to isshôkenmei explain your weird interests in japanese to a good-looking guy, who not only listens to you and understands what you're trying to say (or fakes understanding so convincingly that I don't actually care whether it was real or not *g*), but also takes part in what's usually a monologue from your part making it to a conversation, and even agreeing with you. Oh, I could bask in that feeling for... *g* Ok, I promise I'll behave now.

Well, we got some new phone numbers, mixi IDs, set up a date for a visit to a Jôdoshin temple and some promises of introductions... A night's job well done. And let's not forget the sake we have to drown sooner or later. *g*