absence does not always make the heart grow fonder

It seems that absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.

When you're apart from a lover for a while, sometimes you come to realize how much they mean to you; sometimes you come to realize you can get by without them. While I was doing the former, thinking about Cathy quite a bit while I was in Japan, coming to understand how much her presence has meant to me the past few years, she was doing the latter, rethinking whether the whole dynamic of our relationship was working for her, and concluding that it wasn't.

So on my return I'm not just entering in to a whole new sort of relationship with my home country, but also into a new "just friends" one with my lover of the past several years.

Change. There you go.

So I'm a bit sad about that.

Ok, more than a bit.

Not really much more to say about it, still processing I guess.

Right now I'm on the train up to New York for black belt clinic at Honbu. It occurs to me that this would be an absolutely unacceptable ride in Japan; rough jouncy tracks, loud people shouting into cell phones, trains dirty (by Japanese standards) inside and out; freezing over air-conditioning. (Really, turning the AC thermostat up to 76 would save so much energy...)

By the way, I lost almost ten pounds while I was in Japan. Perhaps going to a different country is an extreme weight-loss plan, but walking everywhere and eating smaller portions and less junk, burns off the fat. I haven't weighed 145lbs since I was in high school. If I can maintain about that, it ought to be good for me.