Fear and Love and Kanji

The Fear
Its been a chaotic week. The travel day and readjustment to the magical world have been both enlightening and frustrating. I've been accomplishing things, yet at the same time feeling that time has been slipping by too fast!

I felt myself getting strangled by old fears and habits- avoiding the things I both need and want to do by being too worried about the possibility of failure. I've even missed taijitsu practice for most of the week (well, one day the group missed me...). I'm told Mercury is in retrograde... which makes sense because its playing havoc with flow in communications. The ones I expect to have are either not there, short or very unclear and the most wonderful, spontaneous encounters are bringing in so much abundance.

My biggest lesson this week? Face up to those fears and the multiverse delivers in amazing ways! With that in mind, I would like to share one of my prayers with you- not one of my own making, but from a world not unlike our own and a story like nothing else. This is the Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear, from Dune by Frank Herbert:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

The Love
And what better way to face your fears than with the help of your friends?! The wonderful love and support that I feel from the community in this land is amazing and things just start to fall into place when I engage with them. I am so grateful for Matthieu's boundless energy and enthusiasm, as well as his wonderful ability to facilitate an evening of expression and personal exploration- it is truly inspirational and I need to give him a special thanks for helping keep me on track!

I could go on for several posts with stories of all the love I've received since getting home- Creature the pirate, who inspired another comic strip and always lightens the mood; Kyla, faerie goddess, who　reminded me that play and love can be found everywhere, so long as we live authentically; the lovely babes at the beach (Ally Cat and Jillian!)... because relaxing isn't relaxing without smart, beautiful women; and all the rest of the Wild Things that have crept into my life... thank you for your love and I LOVE YOU ALL!

and last... but not at all least..

The Kanji

Is going well! I'm up to 276, which is a little under the pace I would have liked, but I'm keeping up on my daily reviews and the whole system is getting easier as I get more familiar with it. The infatuation with it seems to have stuck... I was drawing kanji in the sand at the beach yesterday, both to practice and to amuse myself. Its WAY more fun than writing in English! Immersion has been good, not great (I still need an mp3 player and more portable text material) but I'm getting at least 8 hrs of exposure a day! I'm weakest still in the reading and writing- I haven't applied myself at all to the katakana, for example, and I'm still slow with translating what I hear into the right symbols, but I've been at it less than a month. I'm sure I'll be OK!

Anyhow, its time for Foxxy to sleep- I have a big day tomorrow! Meeting cousin James in the morning, other adventures throughout the day! Stat tuned for more magic!