Thought: One Thousand Thirty-Five
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One. I feel such tenderness for you, though I should have been afraid of you.
I want to... introduce you to that strange person inside my chest. I'm certain you'd like him. You know, though feelings are deeply private... your touch grows constantly in my inner sanctum—this is the one place where you are mine alone.
The time I spend with you... just thinking of it helps me keep myself a little well. I can never forget the moments spent with you! Even now it feels... as if you're holding me within your chest... being without you would be far too difficult for me.
Two. I can't find you...
I can't write.
How are you?
I'm not well.
I want to be with you...
It's not possible.
Three. : Have you ever looked at me... with that kind of attention?
: I have.
: In the beginning, right? Your eyes held such anxiety then;
I had decided so many things, you know!
I would hold you close always,
I would listen with my ear pressed to your breath—
You too wanted to say "I love you" to me so many times.
None of this will happen.
I understand, being with me is deeply uncomfortable. I could give you nothing but irritation.
If I die, who will bring you the news? Will you look for me?—or will you remain hurt and angry?
Don't take these words seriously. I'm not that foolish... ha ha ha. If you ever discover—that I'm even more foolish than this... would you be utterly amazed then?
Four. At last, I've come to understand... in your life I am a lifeless pale object, easily discarded. You kept me in a corner, afraid that touching me would coat your hands with dust. So carefully you threw me out the window—so I might easily break and shatter.
It took so long to realize—that I am truly no one to you. In your beautiful moments—I am nowhere, in your busy hours too there's no trace of me... nor is my touch upon your tireless body. Seeking shelter against the ribs of your chest... only my breath grew heavy!
I'm terribly foolish perhaps! Yet I want you to be free from this pretense.
Five. I'm certainly chasing after a nightmare. But what I received... was beyond imagination—your love, regret transformed by intense waiting, and something... I had never achieved.
Had you truly accepted my incapacity? Even knowing all my ailments were worsening—you had said, "Everything's fine." But why did people call it a "problem"?
Being able to write those feelings only from a distance was a matter of fortune—"If you had tried to understand my pain, you would have hated me."
You once said I would have to walk with you through mud, wearing torn clothes. So you borrowed an old car—that day you first crushed the wounds of my body in deep embrace... the bleeding wouldn't stop at all.
I learned how much I love you. Of course, you had disappeared as soon as we reached that valley. At this moment, I am terribly thirsty...
I need to touch you.
Six. How quickly the beautiful times end, don't they? Why does it feel that such moments, even if a whole lifetime passes, never return again?
After that time... did I not remain well? Did no better time come... than those moments? Could I not keep myself happier... even once more than in that time?
I understand the present is going badly. So I consider myself fortunate thinking of those past moments. Now somehow... I can't enjoy any good moment, can't embed it in my mind that way. Even when time passes well, I can't appreciate it. That very sense has left me today.
The old people too seem changed—I can no longer find that sweet fragrance of their bodies. No one feels close. I couldn't properly make space in my life for new people... days with them too pass perfunctorily. All together, I am indeed an insufferable person.
I love someone terribly—I have no expectations from them... because they are better off at a distance. I don't want... to tell them my fears, don't want to say... how restless my chest remains for them.
I only know... they are much better without me—perhaps in their own way... where I exist nowhere.
Sometimes we distance ourselves from the person we love—I don't know what this accomplishes. But it creates an understanding with oneself.
I don't know why, but telling you about all these foolish feelings of mine nowadays feels somehow hesitant...
Still, you know, I want so much to see you up close! Holding you very tightly, I want to say once—you are my everything.
Seven. For me, religious practice has only one meaning—being good or wanting to be good. Beyond this, I generally have no concern with anything else. That much is each person's individual matter.
What use is it to me to know a good person's religion? What religion is greater than goodness?
What use is it to me to follow a bad person's religion? What irreligion is greater than wickedness?
Eight. A person who never speaks frankly, always remains silent; this doesn't mean they feel no pain from anything. They do feel pain, but they endure it. Not everyone can make noise and commotion, right? Understanding this is very important.
Not receiving love doesn't really harm a person, but suffering day after day makes a person gradually waste away. If you could see inside them, everyone would see there's nothing there, somehow blackened. One can live without love, but living without peace is very difficult.
The one who causes pain, behaves badly, keeps irritation and harshness constantly on their face—they too are not well. If they stepped away from all this, their own suffering would lessen first. This simple matter doesn't occur to them.
One shouldn't treat anyone this way, doing so is sin. Can anyone leave this world without atoning for sin?
Nine. Accept life with its anguish.
Thought: One Thousand Thirty-Six
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One. How lucky is the one who can always stay close to you! My fate is simply wretched.
Thank you—you showed mercy and told me 'I love you.'
If I could have you near, I'd never let you go!
Two. One cannot gaze into your eyes for very long. As if gradually, behind that deep...cold, yet piercing stare, you are perpetually becoming unprepared. At the moment of parting, throughout that entire time your eyes were brimming—as if someone had been suffocating themselves for ages, holding within tremendous pain, anger, or despair.
Faith wrapped in unbearable melancholy, terrible guilt, and a kind of vile curse...from all of which you still cannot free yourself...all this became perfectly clear, clearer and clearer in your eyes. Yet at your touch, all feelings of happiness should have come alive again.
The moment you left me—in a mixed cry of anguish my ribcage was tearing apart...with sorrow, self-reproach, and solitude.
Three. Even to the most intimate person within, one sometimes feels excessively burdensome, you know! In that sense, you have endured so much of me...how much longer can this go on?
Never think of me again...don't even let that blood-clot deep in your chest freeze for my sake. In the public display of excessive emotion...do you know how much agony there is in hiding the smile of mockery?
No! You know nothing of all this. That's why you have certainly lost me today.
Four. How strange are love's ways!
Where it found peace, where the soul's silent sleep comes,
it thinks—surely this is whom it loves well.
Yet its heart lies elsewhere,
at that nobleman's threshold...
where its life's treasure plays
contentedly with clods of earth.
Five. – How are you?
– Fine, really.
– Are you avoiding something?
– Does it seem so to you?
– I think you've covered the bleeding of inner layers upon layers beneath a veneer of happiness.
Six. Once humans were like free birds; they wandered as they pleased, laughed, sang. Like albatrosses they spread themselves across the entire sky, then returned precisely to their nests.
Even when I come to you, I feel so free. When I come to you, I somehow find words and non-words. Only with you do I place myself like a ritual offering, not to be taken back. Yet how you bless me and return me to myself.
How strange humans are, no? They want to build homes, but don't want to stay in them.
Seven. Rather than competing with bad people and winning, it's better to compete with good people and lose.
Eight. I begin to walk an alternative path...
This particular path is not for rest, but for liberation from irrationality.
Suddenly I notice...
This place is abandoned, my weary soul speaks only of you—creating needless chaos in my memory, and its meaning is also clear to me.
The reason is that hidden behind this weariness lies an inner awakening.
I am a person of deeply sensitive mind—your neglect throws me under countless conflicts and completely suffocates me.
In a scattered fear I keep staring...watching for your path.
Exactly at that moment what overwhelms my body and mind—is silence, peace...the desire to find you again for an instant.
But writhing in that desire for pure, simple existence, even my last drop of blood rolls away.
Nine. Until I touched you
it seemed to me
that having you was impossible.
Even until the moment before
I fell in love with you, it seemed—
you were quite ordinary.
Ten. I felt like talking to you terribly today,
so I touched some incomplete fragments of writing...
though I couldn't really say much.
Eleven. The very moment you realized
I had fallen terribly in love with you,
from that moment on
you thought me weak.
That very thought of yours—
drove me away from you.
Twelve. Teach your child to experience sorrow, to accept defeat easily. Explain that happiness-sorrow-victory-defeat are each parts of life.
Stop completely protecting them from sorrow or defeat. If you must protect them, protect them from danger, not from sorrow or defeat.
There will be losses and wins in life. If you don't let even a flower's scratch touch them like a butter doll, then suddenly some moderate sorrow or defeat that they can't easily accept might even make them suicidal.
Teach them to be strong, exactly like stone. So that even hard blows cannot break them.