Life is Suffering

It's late, real late, and I can't sleep. I haven't been able to sleep for a few days now, coupled with buying a knife I don't really want, and the loss of my grandfather have made for a pretty shitty week. It's hard to believe that I left L.A. in September with two grandparents and will return, god willing, in April with no grandparents. My fair-weather traveling ship has sprung more leaks than I have fingers to stuff them with, and my body and mind are left numb. I walked around today with a thick layer of gauze between my brain and skull. My ears heard voices standing next to me as though they were on some opposite shore. My eyes roamed the quaint Kyoto streets but saw only grey tones. Why do we have children at all? Buddha was right, life is suffering, and no amount or quality of good times makes the hard times worth the struggle. I'm sorry to sound so depressing but my oars have broken 5000 miles from anywhere familiar.

My grandfather was a great man, and a great collector. I think now about his basement in Cape Cod and wonder for the first time, "Was there any logic to it? Was it only fishing lures of a certain diameter and stripe, or any fishing lure the ocean cast off? How rusty did a tool have to be for him to pass it up? And why bring home the abandoned strands of last years Mardi Gras? Were they precious to him, or were they just objects that sparkled in the sand?"