Duolingo. (Just hit a 365-day streak, tyvm!)
I put in も—
あなたを永遠にも愛します。
Duo wants 永遠にあなたを愛します, but is も so wrong, when we mean forever? Even until forever.
Why we're using a masu form for someone we'll love forever is beyond me, but, hey; so is を, which tags you as the direct object of my loving. あなたのこと?
(My soft heart loves this song, of a pair of songs, which uses that construction in the context of love:)
I've received a gorgeous card with a golden dragonfly and am remembering a haiku from 書道 lessons—蛍 is a firefly, vs a dragonfly, but anyway:
大ボタル oobotaru
ゆらりゆらりと yurari yurari to
通りけり toorikeri
(Issa 一茶, Hachiban Nikki / Eighth Diary, Bunsei 2, 1819—I think)
a big lightning-bug is passing by, swaying
Or maybe lurching, right, left, right, left. -keri, if I recall correctly, is continuous; a moment of fireflying along, sort of stumbling along its 通 through the air, as bugs do.
"夏の世の闇の中を大きな蛍が悠々と光って飛んでゆく、の意。" (source, source, source; Issa chronology from the endlessly fabulous HaikuGuy, David G. Lanoue)
A big lightning-bug flies leisurely by, lighting the summer dark.
To be thought on.
A friend has bought a formerly owned book on Buddhist tsewa—very roughly, tenderness/compassion, or openness, of the heart—and discovered inside an inscription from the author, and asked me to look into it. Some success had, but here's my thought: Is tsewa related to お世話 (o-sewa)? The kanji are ateji, used for their phonemes (se, wa, plus o honorific) rather than their meaning (world, speech); this suggests it's borrowed from another language. A prelim look into etymologies (here, here, here) says o-sewa's origin isn't clear; derivation from busyness or from "common talk" isn't convincing. Openness, compassion, and care seem to suit お世話 very well, and it certainly wouldn't be the first instance—far from the first—of imported Buddhist terms fitted to Japanese speech, or maybe to monastic writing.
Or maybe there's no connection at all.
(Maybe it's Guanyin manifesting again; I could use some compassion and self-care. I'll move the pen-and-ink portrait I recently found on my street to a more prominent position. おんあろりきゃそわか.)
