Fujiko Suda / Reflection

Fever

My fever was high. It's been a long time since I last was this sick. But then it gave me a sweet experience.

I was curled up in bed, in daze, dreaming in wakefulness. It felt warm, comfortable. An airplane flew by high above our home, and it's droning noise took me back 25 years ago to Seaside, Florida, lying on the beach in warm sun, the place with sugar white sand and green sea.

I was doing the best I can then. I didn't know where I was going, what the purpose of this life is about. Well, I am back again. Still doing the best I can. Still don't know where Iam going, what my purpose for this life is about. If I am to think in generally accepted perspective that I am supposed to be richer, live in better place, have more stuff around me as I grow older, I have failed completely. Not only have I not achieved such worldly success, but I seemed to have squandered my youth away, never realizing how beautiful I was physically, never learning to use my beauty as weapon to gain things.

Laying in my second son's bed in a small dark room, I felt so tranquil and happy, thinking these thoughts. I am somehow learning to accept happiness as I have, limit struggles to the time I need to fight. So I have lost my youth and beauty. But how wholesome, how sweet it is to accept the things as they are, to do what I need to do now knowing it will give me exactly the kind of tomorrow I need.

Things that interest you

Lst week, I told my friend who was not sure what to write about on his blog that he needs to write about things that really interest him. Otherwise, writing will not continue.

Well, well, I need to practice what I preach!

I
Can't
Think
Of
What
I
Want
To
Write
About

I have lots and lots of fun each day. Things still make me laugh. I meet cool and interesting people. Yet I am not moved to write. What's really intersting? Perhaps it will come.

Expressing in words

I've come to realize that on many occasions, especially on important occasions, I don't say what I really have in mind. I suspect most of people I know are like that. Is it because we are trying to protect ourselves? If we don't say what we really feel or think, then people can't ridicule or criticize our true feeling or thought. Maybe we cover up our true self because we are hurt easily. If other people ridicule what we say and not how we really feel, it's easier to bare it, because they are not ridiculing real us.

Or could it be that when we feel something, the immediate word that pops up in our heads that describe the feeling is simply off the mark? Our haphazar association between feelings and words? I remember reading in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins, that moans of dying soldier and man in ecstasy making love sound the same. I guess that means body reacts in the same manner for strong opposite feelings. Love and hate, joy and sorrow. Maybe we don't often mistake the words to express the strong feelings, but considering that, it seems understandable the mistakes we make in feeling-word association.

No wonder this world could feel like heaven or hell, that to express heaven, one must know hell. But going back to the fact that I don't say what I mean ... what would happen if I start to say what I really mean?

From Feynman's Rainbow

My scientist friend and I spoke the other day, and knowing how I revere Richard Feynman, he told me about Leonard Mlodinow's new book, Feynman's Rainbow. I immediately bought the book, and randomly browsed through it this morning.

"You're wasting your time," he said. "You don't learn how to discover things by reading books on it. And psychology is a bunch of bullshit." ... "What I would learn from your story is that if an ape can make a discovery, so can you."

I may not discover things by reading books only, but the combination of living and reading sure enhances my discovery! So very happy I met Feynman through books. So very happy I met my scientist friend.

Pursuit

I was vaguely thinking of how Ichiro loved baseball so much, he practiced 3 hours or more in batting practically everyday since he was 2nd grade in grade school. I am talking about starting such practice at age 8 and keep going throughout his school years, then onto his professional life. Then I thought of Tiger Woods, who did the similar sort of thing with golf.

Pursuing perfection were not the thing that drove them. It's the love of whatever they were doing.

When I first read about this, I thought, how great it must be to love something so much that you would want to keep doing it for hours, for days, for years! Today, I thought: how does it feel when these days of pursuit is over? When they become old. When they are injured. Being able to pursue what one loves is such a blessing in life. The thing I thought about today is, how does one go on living after that?

Beauty all around us

These are some of amazing beauty I noticed today:

Escalator at the Ueno station. How can these things work? Another feat of human invention. And the details of the ceiling of the station building near the Hard Rock Cafe area.

Rows of Himalean fir that had branches cut off so short, I wanted to cry when I saw them last winter. As I walked through them today, I noticed the branches did not look cut off at all. The trees were of the shape of narrower arrows pointing to the sky, compared to last year before they were trimmed, but they looked just as handsome as they used to be. I was so very relieved and wondered at the way nature worked.

The plum blossom shyly beginning to bloom. Pink red. Small but courageous early boom.

Just before the last of sunlight is completely gone for the day, the shreds of clouds in the gray sky are black, ponds and rivers are sliver.

Orion high up in the sky. Light of airplane slowly passing by the stars, becoming a part of the nightly stars' .

Misty full moon over a silouhette of stately leafless tree seen from the top of a hill. Feels like a sad but warm smile.