let's get this train on the track

I fell off the blogging wagon for a little bit there. Kind of purposefully; I've been wanting it to find more of a direction. My life in Tokyo is starting to take shape. I went to Korea for a week to renew my visa, and then had a horrible time getting back through the Korean airport (a long story I've already told several times; trust me, not worth repeating). Anyhow, when I got back here I was really happy to be back, and I realized that this has begun to feel like my home. What does my title card for this blog say, something like "a place to empty myself when Tokyo fills me to the brim?" Ok, then.
Today I went to a temple for zazen meditation. A calm, nice monk walked us into and through the temple to the meditating room. Then he guided us through the steps, very deliberately. And when we were seated and ready (my friend Akiko and I), he adjusted our postures with precise and correct movements, then left the room.
You keep your eyes open; closing them can allow you to wander away from your center. There was a small dark hole in the wall facing me. The room was quiet, kind of astonishingly quiet, and dimly lit. As my eyes shifted in and out of focus I could see something flowing through the hole, could see all the stress and busy of this city emptying out of me, like from a painless wound.
Afterwards Aki and I wandered through the large and varied park right next door. It was a nice day, overcast but sunlit at the same time. We just talked; watched a wedding, a cat, enjoyed the people and the trees and the day. We ended up on a bench and had a long conversation about America and Japan. It's such an interesting and convoluted relationship at this point; a problematized love? A neurotic codependency? A bright future? It's something, and it's real. Our talk was of a fairly serious nature; and then I heard these two girls laughing, seated on a bench across from us. Just lost in play, happy in the moment.
People are part of these nations, but these nations are composed of nothing more than individual people. Those girls, the man who walked by with his dog, Aki and me. It was a nice day, now bending towards evening. The big ideas come down; let them hover around you, then float back up into the sky. Two people in a good place together; we got up and left to go eat some delicious sushi.

The night

It's the night. I'm in love with the beauty of the night. Lacework of a thousand Shadows, deep silhouettes against the sky; the color is not gone, it's just receded into enriched points, gathered itself like jewels in the darkness. When the wind blows, and the tops of the trees, and the tops of the trees are alive, are dancing and singing in the voices of trees, joy in living, rooted in the great struggle to survive.
It's not the bars and the cars and the neon lights, it's the softness of the dark, shy and sweet and...dangerous? Not the right word, not shrieking nor fear. But the light gathers in pools for a reason, because out there is wildness; the king is asleep, safely ensconced in a chamber of solitude, and hence the wildness emerges into the living world.
It is not that I dislike or fear the sun. Warmth, light, the glory of sunrise and the sunset grace with which the sun says goodbye, bows down. The shade beneath trees on a hot day, long and lazy. These are all gifts, the sun is the great life-giver.
But the night and I are kindred spirits.
full of secrets waiting to be found.
the night is lovely, and my soul rises to meet her forlorn majesty;
the night waits, and spins her dark secret fantasies: ghost flowers and
memories in the gardens of forgotten dream.