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Another thing on my list...
Feb. 13th, 2005 08:17 pmI just read an article for one of my classes about the Shikoku Pilgrimage. It's actually by an American journalist who did it with a Japanese friend. See, the idea is that you go around a circuit of eighty-eight temples on the island of Shikoku, following the path taken by the saint Kobo Daishi. A lot of Japanese (mostly older people) still do it, either all at once or in sections. If you walk, which is of course the old way, it takes about two months. A lot of people take buses or something.
I'd actually like to do it walking - spend all that time away from everything else, not really searching for enlightenment but having a time in which my only concern is a simple one - going along the journey. It would also be cool to go on a circuit that people have been traveling for centuries, and seeing all those old temples. Of course, I would need to find a way to have things taken care of at home first, and I would need a companion who speaks both English and Japanese to go along with me. I probably won't be able to do it for years, by which time I may not have the energy to walk it, but I hope that when I can I'll do it anyway.
Since I feel the need to talk a little about the here and now, I will. Yesterday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scifantasy and I had a conversation - a short but still very important one. I surprised myself by admitting some things that I normally wouldn't have dared to say. Well, they needed to be said. Maybe it was just that I'd been thinking about it for the past few months, and I had to let it all out. Or it was the vodka I'd had about an hour before. I don't know, but I felt better afterwards.
In any case, while we haven't worked everything through (far from it), we've at least established - okay, admitted to each other - that we are confused about what we're supposed to do now. In the particular context of our relationship (or whatever) as it has been over the past couple of months, that admission was actually comforting for the both of us. The next step is...well, to figure out what the next step is, because we can't stay where we are.
Did that make any sense? Probably not.
I'd actually like to do it walking - spend all that time away from everything else, not really searching for enlightenment but having a time in which my only concern is a simple one - going along the journey. It would also be cool to go on a circuit that people have been traveling for centuries, and seeing all those old temples. Of course, I would need to find a way to have things taken care of at home first, and I would need a companion who speaks both English and Japanese to go along with me. I probably won't be able to do it for years, by which time I may not have the energy to walk it, but I hope that when I can I'll do it anyway.
Since I feel the need to talk a little about the here and now, I will. Yesterday
scifantasy and I had a conversation - a short but still very important one. I surprised myself by admitting some things that I normally wouldn't have dared to say. Well, they needed to be said. Maybe it was just that I'd been thinking about it for the past few months, and I had to let it all out. Or it was the vodka I'd had about an hour before. I don't know, but I felt better afterwards.In any case, while we haven't worked everything through (far from it), we've at least established - okay, admitted to each other - that we are confused about what we're supposed to do now. In the particular context of our relationship (or whatever) as it has been over the past couple of months, that admission was actually comforting for the both of us. The next step is...well, to figure out what the next step is, because we can't stay where we are.
Did that make any sense? Probably not.
