Carping the Diem

Been a bit busy lately... Busy, running from one place to another and when not running in desperate need of sleep. There's about 2 weeks left for me, of which 1 week in the dorm during which I should somehow manage to send all my 150+ books to Finalnd, pack up, give stuff to friends, write 2 essays, see my japanese friends and ... maybe have some sleep so that my head won't just blow off in the middle of it all. I can truthfully say that this is the busiest time of the whole damn year.

And it doesn't help a bit that the cold I got 3 weeks ago hasn't gone anywhere, and even though i once again went to the doctor at Waseda yesterday and got some new meds (only 2 kinds of pills this time, though), today my throat is sore and I'm just waitimg for my tea with honey to cool down enough so that I won't get any burns on top of the soreness I'm already having in there...

On the whole I'm not feeling so well, but I'm still hoping this is only a kind of returning to Finland- panic that will go away as soon as I set my foot on Helsinki airport. If not then... But that's a question for later then.

I've been so tired that I even skipped my zazen on wednesday evening (I can hear your horrified gasps there). I had gone with Ôkôchi-sensei to the primary school where he works as a kind of volunteer (volunteering is a big thing in Japan) and spent the day there watching the kid's classes, letting them ask me questions about Finland and listening politely to the teacher's comments about the superiority of the finnish school system - all of which was noce and the visit itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that I had to be at the school 8.15am, and the school was in Uraga - which meant that I had to wake up at 5am, once again. Then, given that last friday I'd been home at 5am from the bar (on saturday, that is), saturday evening I went to karaoke and ended up talking with Katja until 7am in the morning, had to wake up for morning zazen on monday at 5am, then taking my friends to Kamakura and later to Arakichô ending once again staying there until 3am, up for the japanese class on tuesday and in the evening to the tea ceremony until midnight (I almost slept through the whole thing - if I would have dared I'd have gone to the adjoining room that wasn't in use and taken a nap)... So by wednesday evening I was positively dead and decided to stay home, sleep and do some homework. I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 7am - and boy did that feel good!

I've come to realize that I really do need some sleep from time to time... *g* But the busy schedule continues: today tempura lesson, tomorrow zazen and then a whole day of essay writing, tuesday we're making karjalanpiirakat and bringing them to the Bôzu Bar to give them to some friends (and the night might prove to be long), wednesday evening zazen and as much writing as possible after waking up from the previous night's revelry, tuesday classes and out to eat, friday there would be another Goodbye-party... Oh, and I should pack, weigh my packages, write my essays and all kinds of things somewhere in between all this. *g* If someone knows where to buy a good and reasonably cheap cloning device, please let me know, ok?

My motivation for most of my courses has already gone, but now my self-control starts to slip too... Badly. I don't know. There's a very strong "I don't give a sh*t" -feeling all around me at the moment. Nothing works as it should, there's the lovely existential crisis lurking just behind the corner (I thought only writers, poets and sensitive people like that did get existential crisis, not bored and thick-skinned university students, but hey, I've been proven wrong previously too), and once again there are just time when I'd just want to sit quietly facing the wall and wait for the feeling of being really myself and not trying to impress anyone or trying to make anyone like me. I'm just becoming paranoid and depressed - a very nice end to a nice year in japan, I tell you.

Takada-sensei has been holding a seminar in Sweden and now he's in Finland, so we haven't been having any practise here, and most of my blog readers have probably been practising and thus not even noticed that there's a whole week without any posts. But I'm happy Takada will come back here - if iai doesn't keep my head together nothing will. There's nothing like someone laughing at you and trying to whip you verbally to a better result - there won't be any time to ponder stupid questions like "what is the meaning of my life?" Very relaxing... And there's zazen tomorrow, which will also be good for my mental health. How will I ever keep myself together back in Finland, I wonder...