on symbols and salvation

"The image of the tree still quite frequently appears in the imaginary universes of the nonreligious man; it is a cipher of his deeper life, of the drama that is plahyed out in his unconscious and that concerns the integrity of his psychomental life and hence his own existence. But as long as the symbol of the tree does not awaken his total consciousness and "open" it to the universe, it cannot be said to have completely fulfilled its function. It has only partly "saved" him from his individual situation -- for example, by enabling him to resolve a deep crisis and restoring his temporarily threatened psychic equilibrium; but it has not yet raise him to spirituality -- that is, it has not succeeded in revealing one of the structures of the real to him."
- The Sacred & the Profane, Mircea Eliade (212)

discretion, aversion

Since "the pillow knows all"
we slept without a pillow.
Still my reputation
reaches to the skies
like a dust storm.

- Lady Ise

More ocean imagery

Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.

- Marichiko

on women like oceans and utility

Doesn't he realize
that I am not
like the swaying kelp
in the surf,
where the seaweed gatherer
can come as often as he wants.

- Ono No Komachi

on lovers leaving

In the dusk
The road is hard to see.
Wait 'till moonrise,
So I can watch you go.

- Oyakeme, A Girl of Buzen, Manyoshu