See, I always think too much to decide the title and never actually start writing the blog itself...

I didn't know that Blogger had a function to auto save the draft every few minutes. Actually, I just realized that because I've been staring at my screen for more than ten minutes without typing a letter. This is fucking unfair. You know what? Having to write blog posts in English every Tuesday and Thursday and being judged by Geoffrey and Maggie, and ONLY by Geoffrey and Maggie, is a lot more of a hell to me than to sacrifice an hour of my sleep and run up to East Rock twice a week.

Amen.

Whenever I go back to my hometown Fukuoka, I visit my Zen Master. He has been my mentor since  I was 13. When I visit him, we would discuss life, drink green tea in his beautiful garden, play around with his Bonsai Trees, and meditate.  I remember him telling me once that the first step to reach the state of "Emptiness" is to listen to every single sound around you when you medite. So today I tried. On top of the East Rock, I sat down with Geoffrey and closed my eyes. And I listened. 

I was surprised that there were just so many sounds around me that I never paid attention to. Not all of them were necessarily pleasing, but it felt like I opened a secret door to the hidden backstage of life. It was such a refreshing experience to find out the sound of Geoffrey scratching his knee, tires of a car scratching the concrete ground, a piece of leaf falling down on the grass, and the morning breeze penetrating my Tshirt. I had believed for the longest time that the world  would be way less vivid and attractive if I was blind, but today I was able to think that it might be not as bad as I think. On the way back I tried listening to my iPod so that I could maintain my speed, but after listening to all the beautiful sounds of life and earth, even Michael Jackson sounded too noisy and unpleasant. 

Maybe the world without vision is as fascinating as, if not more fascinating than, the world with both sound and vision. Who knows?  I don't want to miss out on these beautiful sounds around me that I can always listen to anymore. It's so much more interesting than Pandora or Spotify. Starting today, I'm going to start listening. 

"Shit, it's already 1:30? fuckkkkkk" I'm listening to my suite mate in our common room. Indeed, I need to study too. 

32 hours till our next Run. 

35.5 hours till my math midterm. 

9 hours till my morning class tomorrow. 

6 hours worth of work to do tonight. 

Fuck my life. Seriously, this blog is such a pain in the ass.