I had this fear, setting off. The dark, gray and white, japanese bite-the-bullet culture, embedded pride, and combined with the reminiscing of my youth in Japan as a frustrated preteen youth, all alluding to a dark summer ending and fall beginning, meanwhile doubting whether South Dakota in the winterish fall would help any. But on the plane I drifted off, and while we were leaving Sweet Virginia, I came to some subtle melody in the earphones, and in my heart i ebbed to have some human contact, that is, I look back to the past month and cherish my time w/ Bunty, Stephanie, Zack, and Jaimie, the whole REI lot and wonder, why it took me so long to make a true commune with my fellow man. But yes after a long progression @ REI I've come to a better understanding for my basic need of a healthy human contact. In ways, this past month has prepared me for my next new venture that I now embark on. Where, aside from a parellel fascination for the outdoors, outdoor activities, and and unhealthy and nerdy high of gear knowledge is NOT shared, and on top of all that there is a culture and language barrier. Yet the fear, so quickly turned its face. Now I have a ravid excitement. Maybe I will once again after longing, when thrown into the underbelly of the Japanese commute I will once again start fearing for my life.
quote for note:
yesterday is called history
tomorrow is a mystery
today is a gift
that's why it's called the present
（from kung fu panda!）
--
So Paul told me to keep a journal ad that's exactly what I'm doing. The sad/sick part is that I usually only end up truly writing when entering and leaving a country- [when entering] due to excitement, [when leaving] due to regret.
I am naive, evil as a serpant, stupid like a child. I am new and old. I am a helpless infant. I have no water no air. But I am nothing and I need nothing. Or so I think.I am so nothing that I need more that nothing. You are less then what you are when you needs are greater than what you as a person amount to.
Am I content to know that if I never existed the world would spin madly on in a perfectly beautiful way without me. (not that I in my infinite smallness could touch the chatter)? is it worth not existing? and what would I miss the most? life in the essence?
What if there was never a me? I don't know about you, but I would sure miss that! I would miss the life force, the me who is sometimes just a cloud of fury, in a passion for life, that I stir up a war for or against love/hate, objects, people, places. I love the spark of that that is me. I also love the aloneness of I, stuck inside myself; my soul a shanty boat floating- drifting in the vast and endless soul within me. It's sometimes that I realize how completely and utterly isolated I am within myself. But that is the great illusion (more on that in a bit). When I feel vast solitude, I begin to feel like I am wise and sole, standing high in my little dinghy. I am encapsulated within myself and I inside the earth, which is also trapped in the greater ether, the universe. Yet even though I am so completely inside the universe, part of it, part of this beautiful planet earth, and even, yes, part, and fully am myself, I am/seem so far, so far from any meaning derived from boundaries, therefore, definition, meaning, and ultimately reality. Because here I am, the sea and sky to all sides, inside so very much in the center. Yet I am isolated and alone. Maybe that what I feel is like without God. And though an illusion, the thought does well to drive me off. For the soul to “get” to God seems so far. Yet, God is near. When I open my eyes, he is a close as my next breath. He is in the room when I rather be alone, he is with me when I face the startling fears. He is near, he is here. God is everywhere. It's scary yet extraordinarily specific to think that as far as I am from any outlying post, for as many weeks as I have been adrift, God may seem far, but is instantly near. So if I, Lily, cease to exist or never existed, what I would miss the most is knowing God.
And more importantly once I "feel" God, what I would also miss, is that overwhelming rush of emotion- wonder, bafflement, confusion, awe, mouth-watering, hand-shaking feeling- to experience the love of God in wonder, because although God is Love, to me, God's love for the world, and specifically for me, is a mystery. So i want to stay alive.
a bird!
ducks. there are a lot of these as you will see
the lake:
the bike route on a sign: 
a hawk on the side of the path setting flight
a river
another duck
collecting shijimi
the beach at the start of the route
the bike. makes my butt hurt!
