When it comes to art, what is important is, of course, daily training, but more than anything, things like intuition, inspiration, and so on are important. So, even if you train hard every day, it's meaningless if inspiration doesn't come to you.
I have admired art since I was young, but I never thought I would become an artist. However, I always had an artistic inclination within me, and so I have lived my life placing importance on intuition and inspiration.
So, to compensate for that, I didn't really put in much effort, or in terms of daily training, or anything like that, but to be honest, I didn't do much.
The reason is that if you work hard but don't find inspiration, your efforts will be wasted.
It was the same when I studied at school. For example, when I studied probability in high school, I wrote all my exam answers intuitively. Also, at that time, most exams were multiple choice, so I thought that I was good at this because I had been training my intuition every day, so I marked the answers intuitively.
During this time, I prayed to Dainichi Nyorai in my heart, chanted some random mantra I'd made up, and made sure to practice abdominal breathing.So, what was the result?I'm sure you can guess, I wasn't blessed with any talent to begin with, and I failed to get passing marks in any of my subjects.In desperation, I abandoned my studies, started drinking and causing mayhem, and eventually I even degenerated into becoming a punk rocker.
However, the child's character is formed by the age of three. His way of thinking, which values intuition and instinct and disdains daily effort, still stubbornly remains even now, well past the age of 60, and he continues to make the same mistakes he did in school.
I am now keenly aware of this fact as I look at the water tank (sink) of a sink, commonly known as a kitchen sink.
There are many different types of equipment in a home. Among them, the sink is probably the most frequently used, along with the toilet. What happens when equipment is used frequently is that it gradually becomes dirty. To put it more bluntly, it becomes covered in filth.
What happens to a person when they live in filth?
I don't know. I don't know about that. But in my case, it definitely messed with my mind. I felt like a lost cause, and no matter what I did, I felt like a worm wriggling in filth, and I couldn't feel positive.
So to prevent this, we need to make an effort every day to clean it immediately if we notice it getting a little dirty, but as I said, I have a chronic illness that makes it impossible for me to make that effort every day, and by the time I noticed, our sink was so covered in filth that it was beyond repair.
That's not to say that slime or black mold had formed. Even I wouldn't leave it for that long, but the minerals in the tap water had solidified and stuck to it.
Some people might be disappointed and think, "Is that all?", but apparently if it goes too far it becomes extremely filthy, and in the industry it is called scale dirt, but my dirt is even filthier than scale, it looks like the dried and hardened saliva of a filthy beast, and it sticks thickly all over the surface, and when I look at it I can't help but feel like there are germs there that are eating away at your mind.
In fact, it actually makes me feel depressed.
Every time I see it, I think to myself, "I'm no good. I'm a pig possessed by an evil spirit." Such thoughts come to mind, and I'm becoming a failure both spiritually and financially.
I thought that this would not work, so I decided to do something about it, and when I washed the dishes, I tried scrubbing it with a sponge. However, the stains were not the kind that could be removed with such a quick fix, and I could not see any improvement.
Well, I didn't think that was the case, so I wasn't too disappointed, and after doing some research, I decided to give it a try. By research, I didn't mean reading through literature or asking an expert for advice, I just did a quick search. I found that it would be good to dissolve something called "citric acid" in water and sprinkle it on the sink. The reason it's good is that the animal drool that's stuck to the sink is alkaline, and the acid in citric acid will dissolve it.
I believed it so blindly that I abandoned all work, went to SM (a supermarket), and bought a product called "Citric Acid for Cleaning." There were 280 tiles in a six-inch brown paper bag, and it cost 280 yen. The Eco Eco Azarak was in a paper bag instead of a plastic bag, and I don't know if it was expensive or cheap, but the pricing was honest and thoughtful, making it a product that I really liked.
The instructions on the back of the bag say, "Apply citric acid to a damp sponge and scrub. After cleaning, rinse thoroughly with water." I tried doing as instructed, but surprisingly, the dirt didn't come off.
This may sound like the citric acid guy is lying, but he's not. That's how dirty my fish tank was. So I had no choice but to give up and die.
I didn't think so. I have a tendency to be impatient, but once I get hung up on something, the more meaningless it is, the more obsessed I become, and I can't stop. So I stubbornly went to a hardware store (home improvement store) and bought a product called "Professional Recommended Ultra Hard Cleaner for Scale and Water Scale." This time, it came in a plastic container and cost 1,500 yen for 260 tiles. The fact that it didn't seem to care about being eco-friendly, the aggressive price, the name, and the reassuring words "Professional Recommended" all combined to give me a sense of confidence that "this time it'll be fine."
I soaked a sponge in the cleaner and leaned over to scrub it. The whole sink became cloudy. I waited a few minutes and then rinsed it off with water.
The filthy beast's drool had completely disappeared and the sink was sparkling clean.
That's what I want to say, but hmm. The dirt has certainly lightened, but traces of it remain, almost like a curse, and have not completely disappeared. Hmm. Hmm. It's true that I no longer feel like dying. But I also don't feel like I can live. The frogs in the pond are croaking with a sound that sounds like grains rolling. Wondering if it might be, I prayed to Medicine Buddha in my mind and strained my ears. As expected, no inspiration came. Hmm.
