Desaturated, and Still Showing Up

Today feels solemn.

I'm not sure whether it's the rain, or a mind that won't settle, or simply a heart that's quieter than usual — but something today feels muted. Like a slightly desaturated copy of yesterday, the colours still there but turned down, the edges softer than they should be.

These days arrive once in a while. They always have. And they still manage to make me stop and wonder about everything at once — which is not always the most productive use of a rainy afternoon, but it seems to be what today requires.

The school is good. Training is good. And yet friendships feel scarce in a way I notice more on days like this — not absent, but perhaps not reaching the depth I quietly desire. Which, if I'm honest with myself, may have something to do with me. I tend to keep to myself. Play my cards close. Hold most people at a comfortable distance, and then wonder, vaguely, why the distance remains.

When I put it that plainly, the question answers itself. There is nothing to fix today. Just a feeling to live with, honestly, before returning to the one thing I reliably know — practice.

And practice was good. All day, genuinely good. I moved through the new form with something close to ease, and ran it from the beginning to where I currently am — about twenty-five minutes of continuous movement. The longest form I have ever learned, and beautiful in a way that only reveals itself when you're actually inside it. Though it also clearly showed that my legs are not yet strong enough. Work to be done. There is always work to be done. That particular fact seems to be one of the few true constants in a life spent reaching toward something without a fixed end.

My friend left at lunchtime.

There were tears. There always are, in a place like this — a place that has a way of building connections that feel capable of changing what you believed was possible, quietly and without asking permission. We said goodbye the way you do when you're not entirely sure goodbye is the right word for it.

I hope we meet again. I think we might. The time we spent together — talking, practising, existing in the same space without effort — felt easy in the particular way that good things feel easy. Not uncomplicated. Just right. That kind of friendship doesn't disappear. It simply waits, patiently, for the next moment it's needed.

Goodbyes are hard. They are also, somehow, always followed by something new.

The expansion I have felt over these past eighteen months — the kind that reaches into places you didn't know needed reaching — has everything to do with this school, these teachings, and the people who pass through it. Not all of it has been kind. Some of the lessons have genuinely hurt. But no one ever grew by remaining permanently comfortable, and I stopped expecting otherwise a long time ago.

The rain is still falling. Tomorrow will be different. That is enough for now.