Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea

What do you want to be when you grow up? What should you do if you don't like the person you have become? I think my younger self had a very different view of who I was going to be, and I now fall far short of that person. To be honest, I view myself as a loser at this point. I don't work (except for commissions), I'm not currently studying, I have no motivation, and I've lost my focus. I feel like I don't even know myself. Perhaps I am being too harsh — all the time I spent studying last year was worthwhile — but I can't help feeling this way.

The worst thing is that I think I disappointed my eight, ten and seventeen-year-old self. They are who I compare myself to most, not previous classmates as my mother likes to do. Recently, I've felt like I'm adrift in the ocean with no sense of direction and no wind to drive me forward. I wake up late, eat unhealthy food, spend the day doing nothing, and I don't even want to fall asleep at the end of it all, as if I am afraid of facing my subconscious and looking into my own eyes in the mirror.

Benny is growing old and going blind, and I'm constantly afraid he's going to die.

It had been three days since they had left Shirakawa-go behind. However, as they descended the colorful mountains of Gifu-ken, Zensyou, unlike his only companion in every way, seemed to have his mind frequently turned to what had happened within the picturesque surroundings of the human settlement before their departure.

That was why he began to spend less time in the air, deprived of the agility afforded by his now-freed wings, capable of stretching as far as he wished, and instead joined behind the monk's slow trek along the unpaved paths that caravans create when arriving and departing from the city, if it could even be called that. An amatsukami descending from the plain of the high sky to greet the earthly realm.

This kind of behavior was unusual — after all, he wasn't known for his patience. On the contrary, the tengu always took the chance to leave and touch the sun at the first sign of boredom or delay. What didn't entertain him was as if he were dead.

Though, even after so long trapped in his awkward form, the view of his surroundings from ground level was, nevertheless, a novelty. Still, despite the landscape around him waiting to be explored more fully, his thoughts and eyes ended up wandering, as if spellbound, to the yamabōzu. Zensyou knew that the man, as the ningen referred to himself, had already noticed the eccentricity of his actions and was just waiting for him to give in to curiosity. And he proved it, lingering to pick weeds near his feet and stopping to bow to the jizō at every fork in the road.

Zensyou was not known for his patience, and so it did not take long for the restlessness that grew like a wave in his chest to overflow faster than the time it takes for incense to burn.

There were no more onigiri left.

The afternoon was coming to an end when they stop to rest in the shade of a group of trees away from the winding, beaten road. The breeze was sharp and tinged with scents he had almost forgotten after weeks of breathing human waste, aggravated by the lack of the mask that finally adorned his face — a miserable thing that was guarded almost paranoically, kept close to him at all times.

Now, stretched out on a thick oak branch with the bark biting into his clothes, the yōkai could only smell burning wood; the one the monk was tending to at the roots of the tree, far from where he laid amid the thick autumn leaves. In the background, if he listened carefully enough, he could also hear Doushin's voice reciting prayers over the rustling of the grass, calm and steady, flowing as a stream.

“—May all beings be well and safe, may they be at ease. Whatever living beings there may be, moving or immobile, without exception, large, medium or small, minute or substantial, visible or invisible, living near or far, born or yet to be born; may all beings be happy…”

Yawning and with heavy eyelids, he is dismayed to realize that he misses the village's thin wool mattress. The gassho-zukuri structures — ironically, "like hands in prayer" — were small but solidly built, cozy, and provided good protection from the cold wind, with triangular roofs that would help against the snow drifts that would fall in the coming months. Furthermore, he daydreams about feathers adorning his arms and sharp claws at his fingertips. Lately, Zensyou finds that misses plenty of things he thought he had left behind already.

The crickets sing as he angles his head, taking in both the moon, white as rice — or the round face of a courtesan — and Doushin’s tiny figure bellow Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto’s shine.

How easy it is to get used to things, he thinks. He should have known better at this point.

Perhaps, if he had been more inclined toward other desires, like the messengers of Inari, Zensyou could have enjoyed the night in the warmth of other bodies, instead of beside the crackling fire during his stay. The monk is fortunate that the tricks the tengu considers worthy are, for the most part, harmless. Under different circumstances, they would never reach any destination, for one reason or another.

One thing he is grateful for, at least, is the clergyman's regular bathing routine. Zensyou doesn't think he could have endured following around a mobile pile of garbage, however interesting it might have been. On the other hand, the yamabōzu's eating habits annoyed him, as he soon discovered that there was nothing worth stealing: kōya-dōfu, daikon eaten plain and unsalted, and, lastly, a pitiful amount of hoshi-gome.

Thus, it was not without contempt that Zensyou learned that, in order not to starve, he would have to resort to hunting his own meals. So, as he slowly cleaned the pieces of flesh and bird blood stuck to his claws, the creature was not surprised to find the monk on the ground with nothing more than a bite-sized meal.

But, to be fair, he was the one who benefited most from human generosity, if the yōkai tried to said so politely.

It took some effort not to laugh at the sincere expression of the young woman, the innkeeper's granddaughter, when she stopped to hand them a bag with some eggs, rice and a couple of fish at the doorstep of the establishment. He recalls watching with amusement out of the corner of his eye as his companion accepted the gift, his hands clasped together and back slightly bent. However, Zensyou’s amusement was short-lived — lasting only a day — until the last portion was digested and hunger finally set in.

The offer was meager compared to the services offered by the monk, almost to the point of being offensive to someone not as humble. In his opinion, neither the blood that ended up staining his clothes nor the scorching glare from the mikō during the whole affair were suddenly made more valuable by the ear-splitting cries of the writhing, worm-like red offspring.

A piece of burning wood crackles loudly before the tengu's voice breaks the calm atmosphere.

“I have seen a thousand wonders,” he begins, a beat after the end of the meditation. Bellow, the monk, with his back straight and eyes closed, does not pause his routine. His shoulders and neck muscles rise with each inhalation and then relax, as if a weight had been lifted by the wind. At the same time, his fingers card through his prayer beads, spherical wooden nenju that gleam like little stars. “And I have lived a million lifetimes.”

It’s seamless, the way Doushin breaths out, a statue gaining life for a single second. “Evil persists for thousands of years.”

Today, on the way to the mall where I have my therapy sessions on Saturdays, at eleven in the morning, I was looking out the car window while my mom was driving (I'm still afraid to do it myself, so I ride as a passenger). I usually spend my time on my phone during these trips, but today, perhaps because of the little disagreement we had when we were going down in the elevator of our building, I decided to do something else. When we stopped at a traffic light — one that I remember almost getting hit by a bus at the intersection when she ran a red light one morning on our way to prep school — I saw a very strange flower, with an inner part, a pistil or stamen or something like that, from what I remember from high school biology classes, very pronounced, like a block of cooked cassava. After commenting on the peculiar cassava flower, fortunately our little silent war had a truce.

Later, when I was waiting to be called into the therapist's office, a woman sitting next to me was talking to the receptionist about the death of an Elon, and I, maria fifi (nosy) as I am, wondered, are they talking about Elon Musk? I even Googled it right away, but then they clarified for me, without knowing, that it was a local TV presenter who had died of stomach cancer; the girl commented that it was how her father had died too: they remove the person's entire stomach, it's horrible.

It was during that same wait that I started reading the book I bought yesterday when I went to see David at the movies with my aunt, my brother, and some cousins. It's a children's movie, animated, but well done. It had some really cool symbolism that you can see if you pay attention — the colors of the clothes, certain allegories about fabrics and animals, etc. — and I also liked the character designs, especially the Malaquitas (a semi-nomadic people who kidnapped the Israelites in the movie to make them slaves). The use of sheep and goat skulls, in addition to bones, symbolizes the death of the “sheep of God” that the film uses a lot, especially with David being a shepherd. After the movie, my cousins wanted to go to the arcade, which, to my surprise, had been completely renovated. I just didn't like that they changed it to a very modern vibe — cream-colored walls, light wood details, and ferns. It doesn't have much to do with games and children. My cousins spent their time there running from one toy to another and on a big one, Time Machine or something like that, which spun around its axis, like a hardcore carousel, while my brother, our older cousin, and I waited sitting down. In my opinion, it looked pretty nauseating.

After the kids relaxed a bit, we went to the bookstore. Actually, I had gone there wanting to buy a book on marine biology, but since it was a very spontaneous trip, I hadn't researched it beforehand, and I ended up not finding anything on the subject. In the end, I ended up buying a book on Japanese mythology, Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn, and one of those Chinese cultivation BL novels, The Emperor's Strategy by Yu Xiao Lan Shan, which apparently even has an animated version. It was either that or Mo Dao Zu Shi since they didn't have The Tale of Genji and I already knew the premise of the former.

How have you been, my friend? You've been on my mind a lot recently. My thoughts keep drifting to you. Not much has been happening on my end – I've been trying to wake up before 10 am, doing some drawing, reading and writing, and trying not to worry about my test results. Yesterday, though, was special: it was Benny's thirteenth birthday. It was a very simple affair, though. He woke me up at 8am as usual, and then I went back to sleep.

Recently, I have been plagued by the desire to read good books (and less fan fiction) so that I can improve my own writing. Do you have any recommendations? I trust your taste. I keep jumping between unfinished projects and creating new ones. The newest is a short story about a Shinbutsu-shūgō monk and a tengu travelling together. It's supposed to be about faith in humanity and compassion, but I'm still thinking about the themes I want to explore. For now, I have only written 700 words.

I also started watching Avatar: The Way of Water with my brother and father, but I didn't finish it with them. Movies like this one sometimes make me really sad. While I do think the franchise is full of despair and pain, and I recognise the importance of exploring the themes it does, it's still a difficult watch. It feels as if all the films are meant to portray suffering, and that nothing will ever get better. For me, it kills any hope. It's not a pleasant experience.