Nostalgia / Jealousy

It was an interesting morning.

Zazen went well. During the course of it I found myself entering into anger about Sarah. Like a cloud, I cloud pass through this anger with ease, and it vanished pretty quickly. Next up, as if it was hidden inside this anger, was the memory of my first (full) day in Japan, when Alexa and I wandered from Akihabara around the neighborhoods just east of the Sumida river; Ryogoku and Sumida; then back west, up to Asakusa. It was terribly nostalgic, and I shed tears. For some reason I focused on the memory of sitting on the steps of a memorial dedicated to people who had died in an earth quake. For some reason, that was an important moment. I can't say why. But the feeling was there and real and strong.

I had a good morning after this. I had a good time at the farmer's market. I felt more social than I usually do, and I ended up even chatting a little bit with a pottery vendor. He was an interesting old guy; his work is really amazing, and I ended up buying a couple pieces for Mary. The coloration is so fascinating. I find I could stare at them for hours. Definitely I will be coming back for more; probably as Christmas presents. But, anyway, it was a good feeling to focus on interacting with my environment, rather than feeling detached from it. I was not more or less connected this morning - the emphasis here is that I was not focusing on being alienated. Good thing to remember. Something to shoot for.

Something I do shoot for, in fact. With that in mind, I go to Zazen. It will be sleepy, but so be it. Tomorrow I'm going to visit Mountain Cloud; see if this is a group I want to be a part of. I haven't been back to Kando's group and, the more I've thought about it, the less I like the whole spiel. It's not outrageously terrible, but Kando's group is not what I am actively looking for: a group I can feel like I'm involved in as an equal. We'll see how it goes.

I want to write deeper; there is so much going on, but I always end up starting here so late.

Okay, one thing, then I'm going to zazen and bed.

I think some of my feelings for Sarah are getting distilled a little bit. That is to say, this situation is very complicated; there are a lot of projections and other things going on. So now one of these projections (or really a group of projections) is growing very clear to me. That's what I mean by distilling - a purifying process where different emotions are separated from one another.

What is this group of feelings? Ooh, it's a little sore to talk about in detail. But I can say in a general way that I don't just want to be close to Sarah; I am very jealous about who she is and what she does with her life. Ouch - this hurts to talk about - makes me feel very broken. I am realizing more and more these days that I have a habit of confusing my cause and effect reaction to a situation with an experience of a deeper feeling that exists between me and another person. This means that, very often, I feel the same way as a person because the feeling is essentially mutual. I might try to interpret it as my reaction, but it might just be something there, between us.

So it might be like this with this jealousy. I know she participates in it; I can feel it in her. It is our jealousy that we both create. I must ask myself: why am I feeling this way? What am I doing to contribute to it? Most importantly: do I want to continue to feel this way?

Just thought I'd note.

Good night.