...Departure

In two days I leave home for Tokyo, and won't return until mid-December. I will be spending the first few days in Tokyo before taking the Bullet Train to Kyoto, where I will study for the majority of the semester. I am staying with a Japanese family in Takatsuki, a city between Kyoto and Osaka. I may be taking a mid-semester break in a mountain village. I am spending the last three weeks on the tropical Bonin Islands, where I will be doing some kind of cultural study dealing with the people of the village there. In Kyoto, I will be studying the Japanese language intensely and taking a culture course at some point as well.

From now until I return, this blog will serve as a spot for me to put my thoughts on Japan. I don't know what more to say on the matter, other than... this should be interesting.

...Flying

Last night, for the first time in a while, I had a flying dream. I was in some kind of marathon going through a city not unlike Montreal. It was not a normal marathon though - all manner of people were in it, and not wearing running outfits, but whatever they wanted to wear. At the beginning of the race, I think I was somewhat in the lead, but I stopped at one point to carry a small boy who was taking part in the race, 'cause apparently I'm a nice guy like that. After a while, I put the boy down and was no longer near the lead. Moreover, the roads the race took were not set - people were going a bunch of different ways... but I had a general sense of direction as to where the end lay. At one point, I decided that it would be easier to take long strides instead of running - super unrealistic strides, of course, that would never work in real life. As I went on, the strides became crazy-long jumps. Sometimes I would jump really high and be afraid of losing control and falling down hard. Eventually I learned that the trick to controlling these jumps was to NOT BE AFRAID OF HEIGHTS. After that, jumping without coming back down for a while, also known as flying, came naturally. I found that it was easiest to fly while in a superman pose - with my arms out in front of me and my hands in fists. Flying wasn't easy, though. I would have to land occasionally - and to take off I sometimes had to take a number of leaping steps first, like in a triple jump. At one point I stopped by a building where a girl was eating lunch on a balcony high up. I had a conversation with her while hovering in the air. Then I decided to try my hand at telekinesis, since, in this vein of dreams, I had done that before*. So I levitated her Snapple bottle toward me, but was having trouble keeping it up, and had to catch before it fell down to the ground. I don't remember most of the rest of the dream... but I woke up without completing the race, or knowing what happened to the little boy or the girl. Any dream analysts out there?

*I have a theory that there are certain worlds that each of my dreams fall into. Each world contains it's own dream memory - maybe it's a certain part of the brain that's active. In any case, this world contains the knowledge of how to fly and use telekinesis.

batty's back!! oh man my dad wants to kill the bat. i hope i can get the stubborn bastard out of the house before he gets hurt. the bat, that is.

edit: batty is now back in the habitat he's accustomed to. my dad cornered him in sam's room and forcefully led him outside in a bath towel. bye bye batty. ooh but what if he left guano?!

1
oh, the cicadas are back.

2
there was a bat flying around my room last night around 4 am last night. i didn't realize that's what it was until i was mostly awake due to its constant banging into the wall. the bat was stupid, stubborn, afraid and confused. i think it came in through the chimney. it may still be somewhere in my house because i couldn't get it to leave.

3
18 days until Japan. maybe then i won't feel like a useless fool anymore.

...Creating a Routine

I just read an interesting article from Yoga Journal about an ancient health science and its take on modern life. I've never been into labeling or categorizing people, but I found this article interesting. According to ancient Ayurvedic teachings, there are three metabolic types, or doshas, among which people's health and certain parts of their personality are divided. The first type is vata, which is associated with the air/wind element. The others are fire-ruled pitta and earthy kapha. Vata deals with movement, pitta mostly with ambition, and kapha with being stable. Everyone is a unique combination of these three and, as with everything dealing with energy (which is, really, everything), a balance must be struck. Imbalances among the three doshas lead to problems.

The most common imbalance in modern society, and my main one, is a problem with vata. Today's omnipresent movement of information, ease of travel and overall excess of stimuli make this dosha difficult to balance. The typical "vata dominant" person is a tall, skinny, fast-talking person with lots of pent-up nervous energy, because that's what a vata imbalance creates - that inner tension. An imbalance of the pitta, in my mind, results in an excess of ambition and a reckless need to achieve, excell, succeed - or even divide and conquer. A balanced pitta is a very motivated person, probably a born leader, but an imbalance can tip the scale. Kapha-dominant people may have issues with getting stuck in one place. When balanced they are solid and have a firm foundation in life (unlike imbalanced vatas), but with an imbalance, they become so rooted that they have trouble making any kind of change to their life.

For me, being "vata-deranged" means having issues developing a routine and getting bored. I could never work an office job to save my life. I have trouble paying attention in class after a while once I become used to the environment. A kapha would have no problems developing a routine - but a troubled kapha would have issues breaking it. Part of my problems come from the rootless nature of my summer. I move back and forth from house to house, sometimes staying in the city, sometimes going away, and every day is different. Which is great, but it would have been nice to keep the job I had early this summer. I have come to hate predictability - but everyone needs a little bit of stability in their lives, or else they will experience physical and emotional instability. That much is known to Everyman. I think this hatred sprouted from my disenchantment with my social life a little while back. It seemed like we always did the same things; it was always the same people acting the same way; and the same predictable problems kept coming up. And no one seemed to have that bit of leadership that was needed to push a plan into action. This summer I have gladly not encountered any problem of that kind. So that part is good. However, going to bed and waking up at odd times, eating at random, and having a mess of random things to do at all times has turned out not to be too healthy.

So I guess this is a call to all you other vatas out there - if you want to get rid of all that nervous energy by yourself, exercise, eat and sleep regularly. The routine won't kill you, as I am just starting to find out. Though this is just the beginning so we'll see how long it will be before I get bored...

more on this here: An Ancient Cure for Modern Life