context
Another year gone by and despite having wandered, I remain still a restless wanderer.

After a late dinner with my family I sat with them in near silence watching TV. Finally, after midnight had passed and they went half-asleep to bed, I walked to the shrine that�s less than a block from my house and paid my respects to the gods. I thought it would be deserted, as the streets were quiet and I assumed everyone to be at home or out on larger feats. But there was a line, albeit small, and I waited with everyone else to ask for favor before the altar.

It was quiet and clear walking the streets. From far off corners of the city I could hear the temple gongs. The sky was bare, not the cloudy, rainy mess predicted for today. In a way, I was pleased to see the stars but also disappointed that I hadn�t gone by myself to Takao Mountain outside the city to climb and watch the sunrise. This is, after all, the only night of the year the trains keep running. As much as that would have been an escape, it�s not something I would have enjoyed much alone or, in fact, surrounded by people in what seems to be an ever-crowded landscape.

Yet as I stood in line before the shrine and looked for a moment at the northwest sky, even in the brightness of Shinjuku I saw as a crystalline flash arced down to the horizon and was gone. The Gods answer questions even before they are asked.

I dropped my ten yen coin into the box, shook the bell to wake the gods, bowed twice, clapped twice and bowed again to ask my favor.

Earlier tonight I sat in the bath in meditation and wondered if I should make a resolution. I�ve always been good at introspection but never at self-resolve. Then it occurred to me exactly what I should look for. Not a place that I fit into, not a mate to make me happy, not a chance to start again. As a friend put it only a day ago, all that anyone needs to understand themselves and the world is context. Without it, life is simply too big or too small for understanding. And me, I either see one depressing and hopeless forest or some tiny, scrubby nasty trees� unless, of course, I chance upon something wonderful right before my eyes and then, THEN the whole picture changes.

And so I asked for the strength to find perspective. For that will reveal to me the path before my eyes. Every moment is filled with everything� and as much as I want to see that all, the harder I try the more lost I become.

If I look back to before I came here, I realize that no amount of preparation could have given me any understanding of what I would find. No matter how much I studied or thought I comprehended Japan; no matter how much I loved anime, manga and the Japanese language, I could never have felt the real Japan. I had nothing but volumes of floating information and no context to put it in. Coming here solidified all that... and yet I am still so lost in all of it that I can't find a place for myself.

I want to find that feeling of solidification in my own life� to have just the right amount of perspective to remain realistic and functional but also to be nonjudgmental and open-minded. To see what I have before it goes away.

I walked away from the shrine and bought myself a fortune even though I told myself I wouldn�t. I paid my respects to the Inari shrines and opened the fortune. With no English translation, I didn�t know much of what it said but I know that the first line said this:

�After the rain, it becomes clear��

I tied my fortune beneath the biggest tree and walked the few minutes to my house, far from home but a little closer to understanding.