Osaka, Japan

I’ve stopped waffling and drowning in my options. I took a stand and I’m going to Taiwan from October 3 to October 7 to get my visa renewed and stay another three months. Auntie was happy. She was on the phone in five minutes making my plane reservations. I will take that Japanese course at the Y.

Shiho has been sending me funny signals. I found it a little weird when she came right out and told me that she hasn’t been seeing her current boyfriend and doesn’t particularly miss him. She was also unsettled when I mentioned that I have an non-extendable plane ticket which expires on December 31st. Is it possible for us to get back together? I think I do love her. It’s possible. But I’m not pushing it. It’s something that I would let happen if it happens.

Osaka, Japan

Alcohol is fully functional again. I used to drink for a reason, then I stopped for a reason, and now I’ve started again for a reason. I still don’t consider it a problem, I haven’t lost control and it’s not like I’m trying to stop but can’t. It’s not quite as functional as it was in college when it made me focus and struggle for discipline and control. It provided a resistance and made me work to maintain my center. It’s a little different here. I’m using it to help deal with stress and I know that’s not really a good reason. I’m not using it affirmatively here, it’s more preventative to keep my mood swings in check.

Osaka, Japan

Things just got really tough. Whether or not I stay another three months became a major issue. Auntie played a part in it and the basis of it all is deciding what I should be doing for the rest of my life. As if I haven’t been placing a lot of thought into it already. But even with all my thought, results have been few. This is on top of several weeks of growing distrust and tension with the ‘rents. I’m suspicious of what they’ve been telling auntie or what they may have asked her to do. There is a Japanese language course at the YMCA in Umeda that starts on October 8, I have to decide what to do soon.

Financial independence must become my priority. They brought up the issue of money, everything for them is about money. I refuse to be indebted to the ‘rents in any way except financially. Money doesn’t express anything except a commercial exchange. Money is money. They can’t give money, call it love, and expect love or respect in return. They give money, someday I’ll pay it back. Are they paying for love and respect? I wonder what the market value is.

Osaka, Japan

I photocopy my letters to people to help straighten out my thoughts. My thoughts get so cloudy and confused sometimes, and what I write to other people is one way to keep track of my thoughts and feelings. But sometimes it confuses me more since it outlines all things that are so unsure. Stress has been the norm all the while here, but I haven’t let any of it on to Sakura. I briefly mentioned the stress I’m under and she asked, “Are you stressed?” That told me how little I tell her.

Sakura got her hair cut in a ‘60's looking retro bob. It looks really good. It fits her better than the hippie, folk-ish long hair she had. We have a spot in a popular live house soon, a place called “Chicken Jeorge’s” in Kobe. It’s no big deal. Sakura is singing and I’m strumming chords, yippee.

We’ve also gotten involved in another project. I don’t know what to make of it, it’s so weird. It’s writing music for a video game. I was asked if I could do it, but I didn’t think I was up to it, so I passed the project along to Sakura. I go along with her to keep her company. It’s some game about rabbits. They equipped her with a computer, a decent music program, a midi-controller keyboard, and a decent Roland sound module to help her compose. Not too shoddy. I could probably use something like that after I get back to the States.

Osaka, Japan

I’ve been having wild moods swings. I go from extreme moods to opposite extremes in the span of a few hours. My moods have become extremely sensitive to the slightest stimulus and it’s really hard to cope with. It is, however, helping me find the discipline to stop putting unnecessary credibility into moods and feelings. When you have strong feelings, they seem so real and they seem like all of reality. But when they go from extreme to opposite extreme within hours, you have to stop and question their reality.

If you’re caught up in the “reality” of your perspective, then mood swings are a roller-coaster ride and daily life is a nightmare. But if you’re investigating the essence of reality, then the mood swings just become a perspective and if you know it’s going to change soon, you don’t get so caught up in it. You just ride it out. I can’t trust my feelings here. They change too often. It rocks any sense of permanence or security in my feelings, and I can’t call them real or mine. Living like that is kind of uprooting. I kind of like it.

I think I’m changing in ways that I would have resisted a few months ago. Being in Japan is a great learning experience and it’s a lot healthier for me here than in the States. It’s rough here, but I know I could love it if I were with the right people or person. And I know I will love it after I go back.

I got a letter from Shiho and the sentiment it evoked manifested itself in the tune “My Girl” going through my head. I started writing a response, quoting the song, and while I was writing the letter, the song came on a television program I had on. It turns out that I had the line slightly, but significantly wrong. The actual line was better than what I thought it was.

Quite a coincidence, huh? What did Sachiko Murata call them in her book Tao of Islam? “Coincidences” are just as easily “qualitative analogies among created things.” And the analogies are of our similitude to god, the faces of god all around us, in us, and us, ourselves. Coincidences are only coincidence if we recognize them as such, and god is only what we recognize is god. God is manifested in coincidences.

In Richard Bach’s book, the concept is gravitation, not coincidence. All the things in our lives are in our lives because we gravitate towards what we recognize as important or special. Things in our lives have become a part of our lives because of what we projected of ourselves onto things outside of us, whether it be a person, hobby, or profession, etc. It’s the same process as recognizing god, and understanding that god is everything explains why there are no such things as coincidences as we understand them.

God is universal, there is no duality with god, and since god is everything, there is no duality period. There is no difference between god and me, and a table, and a pencil. Everything you can name is god, everything you can’t name is god. God is both the form and concept, the words in a sentence and what the sentence means. And, not or, the complete absence thereof.

Osaka, Japan

Days have been slow, there’s not much happening and I feel like I’m wasting a lot of time. Auntie and uncle have gone to Taiwan and their absence alleviates much of the stress, especially meal-time stress. At the same time, the isolation is profound. They seem to go to Taiwan pretty often.

It’s cloudy and rainy, and whenever it’s cloudy and rainy I go on a cleaning spree. It’s almost obsessive. Weather has a major effect on my mood and can totally slow me down or make me feel great. I don’t like that loss of control. Cleaning is coping. It’s taking back some control and it’s renewing and refreshing.

I stare into the mirror these days, staring until what I’m looking at becomes unfamiliar and unrecognizable. Why should it be familiar? We see our own faces less than anyone else’s in our daily lives. I stare and I could swear the features would be changing before my very eyes. The eyes are the scariest. Moist and glassy, so key in supplying the data for how we interpret the world. A window with me on one side and the rest of the world on the other. But it’s one way glass for the rest of the world. I can look out, but looking in, the rest of the world can’t see me, all they see is a moist, glassy black dot, inside a brown dot, sitting in a moist, glassy white field.

Staring into the mirror, I see from my side of the window what they see from their side of the window. And I can’t imagine that what they are seeing has anything to do with the me that I know on my side of the window. I know on the inside what I consider to be me. Staring into the mirror, I look at what everyone else considers to be me. I know the spirit, I am the spirit, they just see the house that holds the spirit, the manifestation of the spirit. There is such a stark difference between the spirit and what they see. What they see is just a marker, it’s not me at all.

I think of these things when I go walking around, to Umeda. So many people moving and going somewhere, doing something. The high ceilings of Umeda do not make for intimate acoustics. I walk around just concentrating on the sounds, not holding onto them, not focusing on any one sound, just listening to them, concentrating on them, and letting them go.

The sound is a big, monstrous thing that floats and mingles constantly in the air and is always changing, always perfect as clouds. Listen to the rhythm of footsteps, patterns in the traffic, white, life noises, arbitrary phrases that I hear but don’t understand. The effect is amazing in terms of perspective. Me, an observer who doesn’t belong and doesn’t fit in, but no one knows it.