Sometimes the empty days are very full. Nothing scheduled, no housemates around. Yesterday, I became very restless, frustrated with myself. I made myself take the bo outside to practice and to meditate. I was focused on the basic pendular movement of moshikiye, of the difference in its motion when each hand pushes as opposed to when each hand pulls. One end scraped concrete and stripped a patch of wood off the bo

This was a shock and a pain I could not quite grasp. The fresh-torn wood was fragrant as though of trees growing in a distant woods.

My frustration with my self grew, and I felt the kind of psychic pain I haven’t felt in some weeks. I let myself tantrum for a while, then took myself into the chill late afternoon to the ocean.

That gradually brought peace until I became disheartened by an incident described in the next post. But before I left the ocean, I turned around and took one last glance. The geese calligraphy was still glowing in the sky. I felt moved to do the
‘ah!’ part of tenshingoso, and did this in a rather rusty way. Then I did the whole series, moving softly, starting with Ah!--forgetting only the initial Um.

And with this wordless body-prayer, suffering emptied from me, leaving only lightness of being.

So. Anyway. I wrote a draft of the poem last night, and awoke at 4:30 AM thinking of the boy and wrote the prose. What follows are some of the pieces of writing from my empty day.