Ominous sense of thunder

This is the most thunder-sounding thunder I've ever heard. It's so thunder-y it sounds almost artificial, like something that you would hear in bad vampire movies... But no, it looks real enough. I also suspect that it's the source of my headache, since it wouldn't be the first time my headaches and thunder coincidentally happen at the same time.

I've been blogging lately about zen, in such an extent that I seem to be practically living at Rinsenji. This isn't the case, however, I assure you. It's just that my life when not at the temple has been quite boring. I've been going to lectures, practising iai and stressing about almost everything. It's a wonder I'm still as sane as I am (and some might say that that's not much even on my better days... *g*). But, to show that I haven't gone shukke (leave home and go to a temple as a monk - or in my case as a nun) yet, I'll try to write something about iai for change.

As I might have mentioned, my shinsa is next saturday. Compared to what people go through in Finland (I'm soon going to send a petition to the Finnish Gov. that the country's name would be officially changed to Finalnd - as that's the way I write it almost every time) mine seems to be a very simple affair - if not for anything else then for the scale of the event. In Finland the dan-gradings are held once a year, the last day of Takada-sensei's summer seminar. This means that there could be some 15-20 people grading, many of the older students plus extra audience watching - and of course there's the scary sensei who, as everyone knows, is particularly strict and who no one really knows. In here on the other hand I got a special permission to grade separately from all the others - meaning that my dan-grading is added to the kyû-gradings of Takada-sensei's dôjô. My grading will be in the end of our normal practise, there will be no extra audience and I've had some time to get used to sensei and to realize that he's a human being after all. Yes, he is - but don't go telling him I said this. *g* Of course the other routines are the same as in Finland, techniques 10 minutes before the beginning of the shinsa, any mistakes and he will fail me etc etc... Plus, I had to write my written exam in japanese and by hand. At least I now know the kanji for all the kata names etc. - more useless information to fill my head (as if there wasn't enough of it already - on saturday I impressed a german guy of our zazenkai by explaining him what was written on a grave-like stone that was actually a gravestone for all the souls without anyone to look after them. Almost everyone who came in the Sejikie of saturday offered incense first at that stone and only then went to wash the family graves and he wondered whether it was the gravestone of the jûshoku's family. His spoken japanese is way better than mine, but with all the practically useless buddhist information that lives in my head...).

Another difference is that I got to practise the memorizing of the 5 kata this weekend, as Rumi-sensei gave me "fake-shinsa" to do: 5 techniques on paper and 5-10 min to commit them to memory, and then commenting on my performance of them. I did 3 of those on both saturday and sunday, and failed only once. :D I also turned in my written exam on saturday. Now it's just the real thing on saturday, and then there's one thing less to stress about. Also, tomorrow I will get rid of my beloved poetry essay, so that's a bonus too.

See, my life isn't all zen after all! It's just that I don't HAVE a life...

What else... I managed to cut myself quite nicely with my iaitô on sunday - now how stupid is that? Remind me of this if I start talking about buying a real sword some day. We were supposed to have sunday free of practise, and I had already planned to have a quiet day writing, but then Rumi-sensei had managed to arrange us to the Nakada Goryô Jinja, and as it was done pretty much for those of us who had the shinsa coming (meaning, me included), I couldn't really skip it - just as I had to skip the party at Rinsenji on saturday evening because of the practise. Ok, more practise is good, but the downside of practising there in front of the jinja in the open air was ... something small and annoying - mosquitoes. Those ****ers ate my left ankle in 10 minutes. I mean, 6 bites on my left ankle, and nothing else. What's wrong with my right ankle, may I ask? Or why did they choose me? The bites didn't bother me that much yesterday, but today they are itching like hell, and the interesting thing is that one is exactly on top of the spot that rubs against the floor when doing iai (everyone who has done any iai from seiza/tatehiza should know what I'm talking about - and no one else probably won't...). Now how nice is that, that must be the part that will get most irritated during practising... What I'm wondering is that given how dry and thick the skin is on that spot, why on earth did the mosquito choose that exact spot? You'd think the skin beside it would have been easier... Did it feel the need to show off, or something? "Look how strong my whatever-you-call-that-thing-they use-to-bite is!" Geez...