Catching Up...

It has been a long while since I stopped posting regurarly here...
I've been planning to post a Summer in Kyoto post with link to an Web album for a while now, but I still haven't finished selecting and uploading the photos...
It is actually already another season and I'm taking photos to be used in a prospective Second Autumn in Kyoto...

Meanwhile.
As those of you who know me personally, know, in September I went back home for a month. The heat in Kyoto was trully unbearable, and also I seriously needed to take a break from my not so great emotional state here. I needed to get some perspective, to think things over, to find some comfort among family and friends. I've been away from home for almost 10 years now, but this was the time when I really I felt terribly and desperately homesick.
Going back home was a good idea. Although my plans for mountain hiking, relaxation and rest mostly failed, and actually I had to deal with annoying and unpleasant things, it was still better than spending anothr month alone, lonely and depressed as I was in Kyoto.
Being home with my mom and my 20 year-old cat was simply healing.

Unfortunately at the end of my stay my grandma got sick and had to be taken to hospital. A few days after I was back already to Kyoto I learned that she passed away.
It's very hard to be away from home in a moment like this. Alone with your sadness and grief.
I loved her dearly and she will be very much missed.
My trip back home was very good, because I had a chance to see her a few times during my stay and actually in a way to say good bye.

Meanwhile, despite my intention to try to sort things out a little bit during the month back home, and to come up with some sort of decision about what to do in my life next, I didn't manage to gain much clarity.
In the first days, when I came back to Kyoto, I had made up my mind to disregard my emotional state and try to enjoy my stay in Kyoto more, instead of feeling sad and lost, as I have been feeling for a very long while now, but...the news of my grandmother's passing away simply put me back where I was, feeling lonely, downcast, sad....

Regardless of everything.
This month is really crucial to my life. I just need to pull myself together. Somehow.
I need to make an effort to find motivation and strenght, or at least organise myself to do what has to be done.
This and next month I'm applying for doctoral programs (to be starting from next year Fall 2011). As my sholarship here is until the end of Marh 2011, I need to decide what to do and where to go next.
It is a big crossroads actually.
I'm now in my 10 year of my "Journey to the East". I gained a lot of knowledge and insight, both academic and personal, but I also became disillusioned, disintegrated, on top of the disilusionment, I got very hurt and I don't know how to cope with all this. This 10 year self-inflicted exile, travelling to lands thousands of kilometers away, alone. No doubt that this is a spiritual journey, but I'm in the point where I feel great doubt, and confusion...