how was your holiday? mine was lovely. i gave three or four days of my life to Haruki Marakami's 1Q84 reading all day and doing nothing else. (except meditating and doing yoga and eating chocolate which is apparently all you need to eat to survive)  its 1000 pgs. i haven't gotten sucked into a book like that in ages. totally immersed. i realized though, deep into it, that it was about very lonely people. people who were never loved or touched or held. I think that loneliness in japan is something very different then what we have here. something i do not truly know or understand. there are so many people in this world! each of them with an aching heart! each of them struggling against odds to stay alive, and for what? (something else i took from the book) not for themselves. once we have our basic needs covered, its not enough to live just for ourselves. we want to live for someone or something else. we know how small and meaningless we are, but if we can redirect that powerlessness (a recurring theme in the novel) even if only for ourselves, and tell ourselves we live for someone else, we have a purpose. we need a purpose.

in a universe expanding, constructed of pure randomness and particles of light, wouldn't it be nice if we had a purpose? if there was real meaning?

every single individual is on this journey of discovery. growing up. figuring shit out. gathering scars and palimpsest histories across their skin and in their hearts. why? why do we have to go on learning the same lessons over and over again? why does it always hurt to be disappointed? even when you thought you knew what to expect? what are habits? and what's crazy is that we carry with us not only our own pain and suffering, but that of our ancestors. amalgamations, conglomerations, sedimentary layers of all of the people who came before you, all of THEIR SHIT.

how do we deal with this?

we keep the shit moving. (this is a hypothesis just developing in me, it's not right or wrong). but i have decided that anything that is repressed, can be harmful. it creates a node. it blocks the energetic flow. the stories must be told, passed down, so that they may evolve. continuing to grow and respond to the ever changing environment. not be buried in the mud of our subconscious. anything that is repressed, can be harmful. all emotion must be allowed to flow through the body. acknowledged. not judged. note taken. observing. stress is blockage. anxiety is loss of focus and perspective. we are just creatures. little soft bodied beings. we bring air into our lungs and we give off light. this is our gift. we flow through the tips of our fingers and tongues. we take in the world through our orifices. we are magical beings. we conceive and give birth to beautiful creations.

i don't know what it means. i don't know why. why i have to be this way. why life is about coping. and how everyone who comes into this world is hurt by it. experiences pain. or why those sensations manifest feelings of isolation. how is it that the oldest feelings in the world, the ones that we have been feeling for millennia, still make us feel isolated? because rage and anger and shame and guilt block passageways. they redirect the energy flowing out and create traffic jams in the body and heart and mind. clots. knots. dams.

but we humans are also gifted with the power to control that. it always gets away from us, but we can always reign it back in. start again. no love lost. attentiveness. listening. listening to the body. through discipline. letting the storm swirl and slow to a stop and letting the dust settle...what remains? just you. still here. like you were. a body. sensation. fluttering. aching. pumping. inconsequential. containing the secrets of the universe in your very self. at the razors edge where body meets mind: an open heart. pure joy. simply alive.