Butterflies and rain

Today it rains. It rains in a way that even though you might have an umbrella, all it does is give the illusion of keeping you dry - meaning that you hair doesn't get wet. Everything that is lower than your elbows... No hope. Shoes? Better go barefoot. I tried to cram my shoes full of newspaper in the vain hope that they might dry sometime in the near future, but it might take some time. The same goes for my skirt, I so wish I'd have a radiator here on which I could put stuff to dry. Well, shikata ga nai. Can't be helped.

At least I solved the problem of practise space yesterday evening. I gathered my courage when leaving the zazenkai and went to ask jûshoku whether it would be possible for me to come there and practise a few times before my shinsa. I was a bit unsure about asking this in the first place, since even though I've been going to the temple now every week for some 5 or 6 weeks, in my books it's still a short time to start asking for favors. Luckily jûshoku himself is a budôka, and understood my problem (and it's a problem of me being unsure and stressed more than anything else), and promised that he'll "find me something, come whenever you want". There's 3 rooms I could use and one of them is bound to be empty, even though the hondô would be the best - the other ones have ceilings that might be a bit low for standing techniques (plus, I want to have a look at the bookshelf I've seen there... *g*). Anyways, I'm happy for anything I can get, and I'm planning to go there next tuesday evening. :)

I also took a friend with me yesterday. She wanted to come "just once to look how it's like, and please let's not stay there for very long, ok?" Ha, as if! We left after 1am, she was totally comfortable there speaking with people, and certainly wasn't nudging me in order to leave sooner than we did... And I think she's thinking of coming again. See how nice the place is? Anyone else want to come and try? *g* This time I also did buy the sûtra book, and at last wrote my name in the volunteering list for o-segaki-e, the memorial day we folded the letters for some weeks before. I'll have to leave a bit earlier to have enough time to go to practise, but I'm looking forward to seeing how a buddhist festival looks like - this far I've been only in shintô matsuri. It's also always more interesting to see things from the point of view of the arranging side, because that's when you get to the backstage, so to say. I just hope that I won't cause any heart attacks to old ladies - coming to a temple for memorial services and then being served tea by a foreigner could be a shock.

The conversations yesterday weren't bad either. First of all, I think I managed to explain my whole studies and topics of interest several times in japanese, and the people I was talking with faked understanding very convincingly. Good practise if I want to convince someone to help me with my research. Then we talked about tea, haiku and why Manabe-san decided to become a monk. And then some more of my studies and zen stuff (and impressed some japanese, which in itself isn't that hard to do - esp if you study zen and know something about it, gets them every time). A good evening, I must have understood at least 85% of everything I listened. I also got invited to 2 different tea ceremonies (the one they practise at Rinsenji, and another ryûha), and the offer for Kabuki is still on. There was also an invitation for a takigyô, shintô purification rituals done under a waterfall, but it falls on the exactly same date when I should be moving out from my dorm... Also, the guy who invited me is slightly weird (and that's something coming from me!), and I'm kind of "want to go but...", so I told him it's difficult but that I'll think about it and see whether it would be possible to arrange somehow. The perfect japanese answer, leaving everything open. There's so many interesting things happening after the zazenkai that you might almost forget why you came in the first place - to sit. And because I went for the introduction with my friend, I got to sit for maybe 5 minutes yesterday... Have to catch up on sitting time next monday morning.

Oh, and since there's been no bad poetry for such a long time, here's the one I did for yesterday:

羨むや　爽涼な君　夏の蝶 - I'm jealous! You look so refreshingly cool, Summer butterfly

Comments: This is actually the corrected version, since there wasn't that much wrong with it. This came to my head on tuesday, when it was nearly 30C and I was walking outside, feeling hot, sticky and overall uncomfortable - and then there's this light yellow butterfly flying by, looking so refreshingly cool and like it didn't feel the heat at all. And when I say that "it came to my head" it means that I sat with the idea yesterday for some 2-3 hrs before I had the poem itself pinned down. So, it's not easy, far from it.

I also bought a proper haiku handbook on tuesday (and a ton of other books - eternal thanks to Waseda and the scholarship money they pay for me!), so I hope I'll start catching this haiku business at some point. The haiku book claims to be for people who start with no previous knowledge whatsoever: 全然知らないから始める. Just what I need. I don't know how serious the japanese were when they forst gave me the kigo and told me to write something, but they seem to like my enthusiasm (everyone likes it when there's someone who is interested in the same things as they are). I'm surprising myself too with this poetry business. It's very educational trying to find words short enough, meaning mainly words consisting from 2 kanji, to express an image in your head, trying to pin it down... Not to mention that you need to find a situation where you can use some of the 3 words given for the week. It makes me look at my surroundings in a new way. It's a bit similar to blogging - in order not to deteriorate to the level of "I woke up, ate, and went to school", I need to observe the things I do and think in a slightly different manner, so as to be able to write about them in a manner that wouldn't be boring to read. You see, this ain't my personal diary - it's a completely constructed narrative. All the persons and events described might be fictional. Or then not. *g* (this is the sign I've been reading too much japanese literature)