Kaohsiung, Taiwan

What should I make of or say about the 25 year spanning dance between me and my cousin? It’s all weird, strange pieces fitting together, unpredictable reactions, outright confession, none of it really uncomfortable, some unease perhaps, nothing inappropriate, lots of figuring out and often independently being on the same page. There has been tension and frustration, denial and revision, too. All of it making some weird sense and resonating in echoes of memories that are not ours.

She gave me another piece of the puzzle of us I’ve been putting together through the years, and I also gave her an important piece of the puzzle she’s been putting together, and it’s the same puzzle. She told me she’s always had a strange, resonant attraction to Japan, in particular the cultural history and Kyoto. She says that when she went there, she felt a very strong connection to the city. How I could not have known this for all these years is beyond me. My own attraction to Japan is well-documented and out in the open, and that we never discussed this same resonant thing in both of us is pretty fucking odd (denial?). For me, the connection I felt is to the landscape. It's just wildly exciting to stand on Japanese soil, breathe in the air, and it's just comfortable and familiar, like I belong(ed) there.

That jigsaw piece completed such a large part of my puzzle that I had to share it with her. She didn't have that part of the puzzle at all, even though I thought I had mentioned it to her years ago. It was basic to my thesis that we had been a couple in a past life and we had a really good relationship. I mean really good. Mm-mm good. Spiritually good. Now I'm fine-tuning my scenario with a locale and thinking it was in Japan. Along with a bunch of other unrelated, amorphous impressions and foo-foo mystical conjuring, it just all makes some weird, perfect sense.

We've been admiring this newly completed section of puzzle for several days, and she's really happy with it; relieved. I haven't struggled with my attraction to her because it's always been easy realizing we are first and foremost cousins now. The attraction is something from something else completely, and what that was happened and is now past. She had a more complicated time with it, as it persisted through her having relationships, me having relationships, she getting married and having kids, and now my pursuing the monastic path. But this theory is making a lot of sense to her, too, and it's helping her feelings a lot.

She's not just my cousin. We're just cousins now. There's nothing weird or creepy about the love and connection between us. Being cousins just defines how we behave towards each other for the rest of the world. I found tucked at the back of a bookshelf here, the copy of Illusions that I got for her when we first started working all the weirdness out. That's probably why I thought she also figured out the past lives/past relationship thing.

And tomorrow I fly to Japan to meet up with Madoka, with whom I also feel a connection that goes beyond our scientific knowledge of the way the world works. Beyond genetics, biology, chemistry, evolution, DNA, and is fully unprovable, subjective, impression-based, imaginary, and who is to tell me it's not just as real?