"flare"

i felt i felt a feeling
and it wanted out
and so i let it out

i believed in the beauty of it
believed without seeing it
the way it found its shape
naturally
a clawing flame
a spreading blossom
the traces shaping wind

and you said i had a flare
a flare for it
and i was happy
and you were happy
to leave it at that

but small time passed
and it was apparent
that neither you nor i
were content with flares
and expression needed
refinement and a
continual abstraction
of some subtler quality,

and what's more
something called sincerity.

flares are brilliant,
but i needed to burn long
and bleed.

all true art is about bleeding
it seems
after it stops being fun
and natural
after the flare is gone...

but i miss the days
when i still could feel
and all i had to do
was let it out

let me out.

waste

as they unball my thread
with all its snarls and tangles
one of them will comment or complain
at what a waste so much it was
how a tie could have been made here
instead of the vacillating turn away
that became gordian, yanked
and made the reachable tantalus-close.

oh, one will pip, this speaks skeinfuls
of the sin of inefficiency, and
perhaps, of cowardice, laziness, the
hesitancy of mortal men to grasp
themselves in a pinch, and pass the
eye of the needled moment, to
ultimately fail and fray and stray again
and yet again.
i could have woven many lives,
and a far more tapestried world
from the looping life of just this one.

and one will snicker and tsk tsk,
and with a snip, give a snide remark,
tumbling the greater part of a life
to the silent floor:

what a waste.

uninspire

freeze tag the moment between
hitch the flow beneath the tongue
feel the bubble painting red within
the pulse to build a thundering plea

breathing's quite so overrated
so much agains, it's not happening
and happens too easy to be appreciated
so unseen the air grows stale
and carbon-filled the world is
uncomfortably warming

so i'll stop and freeze between
and see what it takes to hold
one sea within from one sea without
and feel the violence of doors
that hold back the commerce
of inevitable tides.

sadness numbs me
plumbs me to the
depths i'd rather not
swim from, so very
sans the light and air
and so very cold.

the moon the lonely moon
reflecting satellite
tonight won't show
won't cast
its face so wan into
this black sea
won't fish for
sympathy, nor analogy
for me.

and without even
crescent hooks
to draw me
the worms so
hungry feast on
me.

one crappy poem from "marsilani2": ode to phlegm

the one entry from marsilani2 that i decided to return to marsilani. nothing worth anything.

ode to phlegm
thanks to you,
my words have more weight
a resonance and a vibrato
that rattles like sabers-
what i say carries
the urgency of car bombs
waiting to go off.

how you goad me
to open my reticent self
how your mysterious fingers
itch the throat in me to roar-
and it is only the desperate courtesy in me
that turns to uninhabited corners
to bid you out.

will you stay?
will you leave?
my stubborn guest, sometimes i think
(as with all who overstay)
god made you to teach us
the appreciation of
the clear and the
empty.

quiet rain
i imagine one cloud
connects you and i-
how, moments back,
the drop that now cries a trail on you
was sibling to the wet stain
on my walking shoes.

flatline

flatline under me
be there for me to fall to
when the pulse in me subsides
i've got to know there's
some place left to be
after it's gone
when all is said and done
allow me to "do not disturb"
horizon with no fall and risin'.

flatline under me
you know that i aspire to be
so steadfast and so calm
there's little in this world
and me to count on more than
few tomorrows
too much hope, and too much sorrows
i want to not feel so extended,
wounded, and down or up-ended
allow me to "do not disturb"
horizon with no fall and risin'.

lyrics: irresponse

tomorrow is another day
and i'll waste it just the same- i'll pay
when everything is due- but now
there're other things- i wonder how

they made it.
somehow they made it.
they built a solid ground from wishes
shiny porcelain wedding dishes
held up through we kids
held up under rough knife skids
held up by the stupid things we did
held up fairly well
until we broke them
we really broke them.

but tomorrow is another day
i won't repeat the life that they
consumed in empty gut frustration
pretend i haven't obligation

they made it.
somehow they made it.
they build a solid ground from wishes
and on it i proclaimed my vicious
thankless independence from them
claimed the skies that they had risen
were all my own to fly in
i forgot to see them dyin'
yup, they held up fairly well
until we broke them
we really broke them.

bikini sports ponchin

crazy video.

unfoldment
like wet wings
fresh from the coccoon
you are born:
heavy
and strange
and vulnerable.

impossibly clinging
and shivering,
the air is aswarm
with accusation and
a questioning
of your being:

"what right have you?
how dare you live?
aren't you ashamed?"

at first, it is easy
to ball inwards
like lips sucked in teeth
or a fist holding nothing
saying "yes yes yes" to everyone
while something inside
silent "no's."

but, despite your efforts,
there is a drying
and an unfoldment
that you cannot hide
as inevitable as flowers
opening to sun and sex and death
or eyes to eventual blindness.

and now you are clinging desperately
not from the weight of wings
but the weight of the wind that catches them.

hold on, how you try,
but you can't.

never had a choice,
never had a chance
against what you could not resist:

yourself.

snippet

today, aiden accidentally pissed on his shirt when he was using the bathroom... except i didn't know about it until i was carrying him, chest to chest. i asked him, "when did you get your shirt wet?" he responded: "i didn't have a watch."

echoes down the drain

have you ever read "tikki tikki tembo" (or something like that)? children's book. read it. it has a remarkable resonance with what i'd like to write: amphibious. or maybe i'm just imagining things...

by the way, with regards to the kappa, which, for some reason or other, i seem to be fixated on... there are several theories regarding the origin of the kappa. one has to do with aborted or drowned children, who floated down the river (the bloated anuses of drowned corpses, by the way, served as evidence of the manner in which kappa "fed"). another has to do with the portuguese (?) monks who visited japan, whose robes were called "capa," and whose tonsured heads probably resembled bowls...

the notion of unwanted children and monks resonates, if not with all elements in this single planned story, then with other elements throughout the marsilani work (as conceived)...

random thoughts: sick, sick, sick

i had a sarcastic thought today... something about how teaching is like a disease. and good teachers are highly communicable. bad teachers have their disease-knowledge cooped up inside of them, and they pretend like they're all deadly, but nobody can "catch" them... i aspire to be so virulent, that they'll name me after a plague... like "typhoid randy."

***

i am sick. AGAIN. i thought i was over the recent wave of disease, but i guess it was not one wave, but two. the kids have been sneezing snot all over the place, but i thought that was all something i'd built immunity to, so i didn't hesitate to remain up close to wipe their noses, etc... now i am feeling really wasted, and my head is starting to feel like a clogged up drain pipe. bummer bummer bummer.

i just got home, but the wife and kids are out, apparently getting dinner. which is fine, because all i feel like doing right now is crashing...

***

it has been a rough week (for me): the imovie project that rumi (my mentor/cooperating teacher) and i have been doing has been progressing, albeit with a few technical (technological) glitches... i've really enjoyed working with the kids this week, largely because i can sense that they're really excited about their projects. technology, and particularly "cool" technology like making imovies, i think it really motivates kids... tuesday was my observed lesson, which went well. it was my final lesson for the semester, and my observer was really impressed and commented about how well rumi and i seemed to work together. i agreed. it really has been a great experience for me, and i'll admit that i'll be a bit sad when the semester ends in a couple of weeks (i could end earlier, but i want to see the imovie project through)... wednesday, aside from clinic (and all the guilt i feel for not "systematizing" the clinic experience as i'd long ago promised), i had (along with two other students) a powerpoint presentation on language arts teaching strategies. ultimately, i think we did really well, although, to be honest, some of the other groups seemed much more coordinated in their presentations... and that brings us to today.

this morning, aiden had his children's house christmas program. aiden was a cow. although he was really cute, i have to say that i was a bit disappointed that he wasn't singing any songs, or following the gestures of the remainder of the class... it concerns me that he perhaps isn't maintaining the basic focus needed to pick up on what the rest of the class is learning... in many respects, aiden is "behind" willow. with willow, it was easy. i would feel concern over some aspect of her development, and it would seem like she would read my mind, and work to improve herself (tying her shoes, writing, reading). with aiden, interventions have to be explicit, and at times, forced. it kinda still shocks me that he still hasn't mastered his pencil grip, or that he has difficulty with phonics. now, when i see him every day (and i'm making a point to do this every day), i drill him on his phonics, i drill him on writing his letters (and maintaining proper pencil grip), and i try to have him count to twenty (something always gets lost between 14 and 16). today's performance kinda gave me the sinking realization that he might be behind in other respects as well...

...but ultimately, i love my son fully and unconditionally. i think about children who suffer from severe developmental problems. there is, i recall, a form of autism called progressive degenerative disorder; i believe, if i'm not mistaken, that it afflicts girls, and that there is a rapid, inexplicable loss of several capabilities, from language, to motor skills, to, eventually, breathing. such children don't live very long. i think about parents of such children. how are they to approach their child? for most parents of "normal" children, there is such a drive to achieve that they often lose sight of the fact that a child is a rare and precious thing... and that we have to cherish and love our children, and try to make life as wonderful an experience as possible...

i want to be the kind of parent that loves unconditionally.

there is a parent who happens to live nearby, and boasted that she was sending her child to punahou, because she didn't want her child to associate with the "mediocre kids." i HATE this kind of thinking. i mean, sure, it's one thing to want the best for your children, but to couch things in those terms, to constantly think of your child as being "better" than others... it likely becomes problematic, not for those (like me) who feel dissed, but predominantly for the child him/herself: put on a pedestal, unable to relate to the "mediocre" world...

i think about the realization such a parent would have to come to terms with if her child were diagnosed with "progressive degenerative disorder" or something...

so i guess... i want aiden to be the best he can be, but more than that, i want him to always feel like, no matter what he is or accomplishes, he is the "best," he is unconditionally loved...

the waters run gray in sleepytown, and in the drains they carry gray water into the black, and with an angry hiss that nobody hears they disappear into places that nobody sees. and after a time, the waters, that were once rain, and once gray, settle like the sediment in a place so black that the shadows lose and forget themselves. and in this place, in the depth of a pool that has forgotten the taste of light, lived the first kappa.

what's a kappa you ask? if you asked him, he wouldn't know. the kappa was a name given to him by the first people who had spied his kind, the japanese. and to them, he was something halfway between a ridiculous joke and a nightmare. they depicted him in waterbrush scrolls, a monkey-child with a bowl pate, doing mischief with foxes and badgers. and in ghost stories, or cautionary tales, they spoke of him in hushed voices, of how his kind crept out of dead pools at night, hungry for the livers and offal of children and women, sucked out through their anuses. a creature between dread and laughter. some thought him a myth, but then again, cryptozoologists claimed he was real, and a lost evolutionary link, broken, and dropped into the midnight places of the world...

a dream of jonny greenwood

last night was pretty crappy sleepwise. i have to admit, clinic is kind of something i dread. not because i don't like the interns, or working with patients. it's just, every week i promise that i will do more to systematize things, like creating a systematic clinic manual, and because of one thing or another, i always end up doing little or nothing... and every wednesday morning (which is inevitably a scramble), i'm reminded of that lack of progress...

nevertheless, in the waning (?) moments of my sleep (interrupted at about 4:30), i had a pretty cool dream. i was in some auditorium. towards the back row, with all the cool kids. at some lecture. and for some reason, i had a synthesizer in my lap. some cheap clunky thing, but it was a synthesizer, and it was portable enough for me to carry it around. and guess what? to my left, maybe a row back, was jonny greenwood from radiohead. and he had this really nifty synth, like a moog or something (like i know anything about synths), and when he spied mine, he came over, and introduced himself (like he needed an intro), and asked if he could mess with my synth. and in a moment, he started doing stuff with it i'd never seen nor heard before... he started playing this song that kept singing "atlanta, atlanta," which was weird, because i hadn't seen him input any audio into the synth, nor even record his own voice saying anything... and what he did was so- effortless, it was like child's play to him... play...

and i woke up feeling, i don't know, inspired. and cool. like jonny greenwood actually played on my synthesizer.

check out sharit's blog!!!

i just started perusing it, but it's really fascinating, interesting, and written in sharit's characteristic bright and humorous style. to those of you who don't know, sharit is a friend from high school who is the "cybrarian" at kcc, and who is interested in really cool things, like creating electronic records of the nisei veterans before it's too late. apparently, she went to brazil for an international uchinanchu (okinawan) festival, and returned with a neat travelogue (i notice there was a LOT of stuff about food...). just a really nice blog to visit, if you're into uchinanchu stuff, or brazil, or an intelligent, interesting traveler and scholar of the world and people.

oh, before i forget, here's the address:

gruacach.blogspot.com

thanksgiving

hey, sorry, didn't post anything up for thanksgiving. yes, it was a LOT of food. we went to two thanksgiving day celebrations, one at my grandma's house in ewa beach, and another at my father-in-law's in pearl city. both were nice. in between, i had to make honeyed yams because lynn was really busy getting ready for the crazy black friday sale over at her store in waikele (did you know that waikele opened at 12 am!? crazy!!!). i of course cut some of the yams too thin, which meant that it didn't cook very evenly. i didn't even try it. a word of advice, if you know you can't cook, don't be the poison tester for your own productions... unless you have no other choice. people said it was good, but then again, people are very polite. lynn, of course, told me straight in the face that i'd "compromised" it (ain't love great!? such brutal honesty...)

so lynn really really had it tough. she was making signs for some of the deals the company laid out. one of them was a teddy bear offer if you bought a certain amount of goods. i helped her out with the sign for it, telling her it might be topical to write: "bear market!" and for this "mixed set" consisting of hazelnut coffee (decaf), and white chocolate with raspberry mousse, among other things, i offered: "diversify with our mixed portfolio!" i don't know... maybe people don't exactly want to be reminded about how bad things are. then again, maybe there are some who would appreciate a little bit of gallows humor...

friday and saturday (and today, sunday) found me working on people... and there's a whole lot of work for school. this week, our sped class will be working on making iMovies for the folktales that they have written. and since i seem to be the resident expert on using iMovies, i've got to prepare our teacher-made video, and create notes for the kids on how to use iMovie... on top of that, our 611 class is supposed to do a presentation on language arts strategies, and i've got to complete a powerpoint for that, with a focus on written expression... in addition, my last observed lesson will take place on tuesday, which means i'm going to have to create a scripted lesson plan... also, icaom classes are winding down, and i've got to finish up my acupoints class successfully... we'll see how it all pans out.

i AM thankful for my life. i always imagine zen monks in the midst of the chaos of the warring states period. it must have felt like the end of the world every day for them, and yet they maintained the equanimity and mountain-like calm they are famous for. i need to do the same.

pawn: etymology

pawn (1)
"something left as security," 1496 (c.1145 as Anglo-L. pandum), from O.Fr. pan, pant "pledge, security," also "booty, plunder," perhaps from Frank. (cf. O.H.G. pfant, Ger. Pfand, M.Du. pant, O.Fris. pand "pledge"), from W.Gmc. *panda, of unknown origin. The O.Fr. word is identical to pan "cloth, piece of cloth," from L. pannem (nom. pannus) "piece of cloth," and some feel this is the source of both the O.Fr. and W.Gmc. words (perhaps on the notion of cloth used as a medium of exchange). The verb is first attested 1567, from the noun. Pawnbroker is from 1687; pawn-shop is from 1849.
pawn (2)
"lowly chess piece," 1369, from Anglo-Fr. poun, O.Fr. peon, earlier pehon, from M.L. pedonem "foot soldier," from L.L. pedonem (nom. pedo) "one going on foot," from L. pes (gen. pedis) "foot" (see foot). The chess sense was in O.Fr. by 13c. Fig. use, of persons, is from 1589.

demon

this morning, at 2 or 3 am, i woke up with this strong feeling in my gut... yes, it was back again... the old self-hatred. this inexplicable recrimination and guilt that has pursued me from i can't remember when... it is a feeling that claws at my life from the inside, hollows me out, claims that i am only a skin that has no right to fill out a smile, or bellow out a laugh, or even cry tears. it insists that there is nothing in me of substance or consistency... there is no reasoning with this feeling, since it has no basis in reason. my claims to the contrary fall into it like pennies into an endless well. the echoes of their descent rebound to me like a laugh, like a hissing angry want-to-do-me-ill sound...

i don't know how to respond to this feeling... there were times, when i was all alone, and nobody cared, when i would "invent a ritual" to mark and symbolize my internal hatred... as someone said in religion class, people get tattoos not because they want to permanency, but precisely because they HURT. there is something about pain that brings us close to some measure of truth... but of course, for me, the pain was purely aesthetic, a kind of tension, like muscles trying to break their housings... all self-hatred, in a sense, is aesthetic, at least when it is motivated by the ego... for the ego seeks control, and what better way to control things than by inventing an enemy that can never be destroyed, nor escaped from? so, as i was saying, an aesthetic ritual was invented... i would take things from my life, from my self, old letters, old things, that only reminded me of the confinement of my skin, only reflected the hollowness and emptiness of my life, and i would "destroy them." cd's, for example, since they seemed to be the most accessible and "shiny" offerings, i would slowly bend in my hands, repeatedly, until the hard plastic edges would begin to cut into my skin. over and over, i'd do this, and slowly arrange the pieces into patterns on my dorm room floor... and then, afterwards, i'd wrap my hands and bundle up into something warm, perhaps wearing my shin guards, and walk out into the snowy grove behind my dorm, out beyond the silent unhearing gravestones, and beneath the roar of the wind, i'd pound my fists into the bark of the conifer trees, i don't know why... back then, i pretended someone cared enough to see me, and then i hated myself for pretending this, claiming that there was no sincerity in my pain, because true feeling of any sort doesn't need an audience, in fact, it rebels against all audiences... but stubbornly, perhaps because there was at the heart of this stupid struggle, such a feeling of aloneness, stubbornly, there would be the residue of a hope, a kind of paranoia, a desire for someone to catch my strange figure (like a ghost) in the stormy night, someone to spare a thought for the oddness of me, someone to waste a moment in silent observation...

yes, i remember the dark times... days, weeks, passing, the struggle to maintain some facade of consistency, like styrofoam over a stormy sea... the nights were awful, alternating between a desire for exposure, to be seen, and this terrible clawing hatred that buckled me in the gut and found relief (only temporary) in stacking everything on top of myself, burying myself, concealing myself in a grave...

this is the feeling that i am always a fugitive of... i have always been a fugitive from. the voice that calls me nothing. the voice that says it knows me better than i know myself...

this is my demon. and my demon is so confounded with me, that i might as well call it myself, even though it is not. not me, no one else...

since it is unanswerable, since no philosophy or rationality can touch it, my responses have been largely irrational: again, the "rituals." or, my belief in "skin" and "blindness," the wisdom of oedipus, AFTER oedipus rex... he was wise, he knew the true stature of man, man who claims to be king over circumstance, man who is nothing other than a pawn for forces beyond his control or reckoning... how is it possible to continue after the realization? a continual contextualization, a continual blindness... to stand on the precipice of moments, and to just fall, usually fully unprepared, somewhat uncaring for the consequence... not a bravery, because what i confront in the outside world is nothing compared for the demon i cannot wrestle with inside...

sleep and dreams... i want to forget. i want to be clean... and now, i have those i love and care about more than myself... i can, for a time, be strong enough for them... i have to be...

attrition

yes, so i am finally opening up this blog again to "anybody." there was a period when i was posting things that maybe were a bit too personal; as it is, maybe i continue to leave things that i should have hidden. but it's far too late for that... i guess i was also feeling a bit overwhelmed. like a lot of people (but perhaps not to the same degree), there have been a lot of things going on... the economy, for certain, but also other things, perhaps not directly related to the downturn of things of late, but things that revealed themselves in the face of the more overt crises...

it was also sometime about now, last year, that i first began this whole blogging venture. so you could say that, at the one year anniversary, i decided to close up shop. bag it. keep it for posterity, but not let anyone read it...

i actually started a new blog, called marsilani2... but i only posted a couple of things on it, and when i come around to it, maybe i'll transfer those two useless entries here...

there's a phenomena that occurs when you allow yourself to share too much of yourself. at a certain point, you start to run empty or run dry, and you become intimately aware of your patterns, your endless repetitive patterns, because they keep turning up in everything you write, everything you think. when you run up against that realization, it can really stop you in your tracks, sap your will to do much of anything... we all want to feel as though we carry the potentiality of the universe within us (even though, deep down, i'm sure we all realize that we are "one-horse annies")... we all want to feel that there are sides of ourselves that are unseen, or barely hinted at, and these "facets" keep us fascinating, and relevant... but no, we are who we are, and who we are is, ultimately, finite... we as individuals are just glinting fragments of an endless unswallowable sea...

some updates that aren't really updates... i continue to enjoy teaching. in fact, i'm getting, i feel, better at it, in the sense that the kids and i have come to a relaxed and easy relationship. i think kids sense whether or not you're on their side or not (and ultimately, you have to be on their side, even when you're trying to coerce them into doing something they don't realize the importance of), and they may play with you, or "play you," but ultimately, they'll know that you're trying to help them... on that level, yes, i think i'm growing to "love" my students...

on another level, i'm thinking about pedagogy, how to teach all of the various aspects of language arts (and, for that matter, all subject matter). i am thinking about this partially for when i have to teach language arts, and develop a systematic and thorough program for my students. but i am also, of course, thinking about how to teach my own children (willow and aiden). it's actually quite fascinating... i never thought about how complex a thing reading is until i had to attempt to teach it to my own kids... actually, willow has no problem with it (as, i recall, was true of myself), but aiden has several issues with reading, and with any endeavor requiring focused attention. it frustrated (and frustrates) me to no end how he would "turn off" and become distractable whenever i would even hint at drilling phonics, etc. this, i think, is the essence of the problem for educators/parents... most, when confronting this sort of "wall," start to become the bad-ass disciplinarian... and, don't get me wrong, for some kids, like aiden, an element of that is necessary. but curriculum-wise, the "teacher" in me is always thinking about how to break a task down into its simplest, easily digestible components, AND how to make those components palatable, interesting even...

never let it be said that the job of a teacher is simply to know his/her s**t. more than that, you have to know how to teach what you know. i'm continually reminded of this. that's the fun of the game of teaching. that's the work of compassion involved in it. compassion. kuan yin, although commonly depicted as a version of white tara, kuan yin is able to manifest in many forms, each suitable to the needs of a particular individual, at a particular moment. in other words, compassion is flexible, resilient, and takes the appropriate form to meet the appropriate need. insofar as a teacher is compassionate, s/he must be the same as kuan yin, changing to best serve the needs of the student.

well, maybe that's enough nothing to write about for now... i can't think of many thoughts that have really run through my head...

oh yeah, here's one. it was actually from last week's npr talk of the nation science friday. instead of bailing out the big 3 auto makers, why not have companies like tesla and mini (which have been able to produce working electric cars that can go 100 miles on a single charge) take over the big 3 auto factories, and retrofit them to mass produce their electric cars? 1) innovation will make the big 3 competitive again; 2) cut down on dependence to oil, and carbon emissions; 3) the big 3 workers can keep their jobs... just a thought.

a great depression

there is a vast country between the idea and its fulfillment. there, i wonder, not knowing what buttons to press to get this machine moving. nowadays, i don't care any more, not for any intellectual reasons per se, but because i am simply too tired to care, i can't summon enough up to be inspired, to "get it up." i just want to fade away in the clean of dreams...

i dreamed tonight i was somehow moving back into a dorm room at williams... recalling phil mentioning something about wood house or something... seeing the old geography of the buildings, and suddenly remembering, having memories... only, these were contrived, in retrospect, because the rooms were never like this. all the things in storage. old buildings, renovated. my kids were still with me, strangely enough. but all around was this loneliness, emptiness, that was so pervasive and accepted that it wasn't sad, only sad in retrospect. something missing. always missing. like i am so hollow...

no one reads me. i don't want anyone to read me.

please, i will accomplish one task, and i must fall away again. i must drown myself in tears once again...

sad

i don't know what to do... i am so tired.

my brother's house flooded out after he used the second floor bathroom... apparently, as they don't even live there, the pipes burst from, basically, neglect. the water flooded the second floor, leaked through the ceiling, and flooded the first floor. i haven't seen it yet, but it sounds something awful. apparently the water flooding through the ceiling was bad enough to cause one of the ceiling fans to drop down and crash...

add to that some bickering bs. lynn was a go-between as far as determining a list for thomas and irene's upcoming wedding. and she happened to ask jani whether or not it would be possible to get a babysitter for landen and landry for that night. i guess it kinda came out wrong or something, because this really upset jani (and later dean), who felt insulted that they were being asked to leave their kids at home... so much so, that they weren't intending on going to the wedding...

i spoke to lynn about this (i myself heard about it from dean, who brought it up as an aside, distressed, as he discussed the whole house thing). lynn is already under a great deal of stress at work, and she was very emotional about it... she eventually made her way over to jani's house this evening, and "clarified" things; afterwards, though, she vowed never to trust jani again. in a way, i can't blame her. lynn always has the best intentions, she is never sneaky or conniving; why would it be different when she was helping to create an invite list for her father's wedding? i don't understand why people "get insulted"; and even if they were, why didn't they just ask for the reasoning behind my wife's request instead of holding back a grudge?

in addition to this, i worry about my sister. i worry about how easy it is to just forget about her completely. but i can't trust her. the last time she actually made an effort to contact me, it was so that she could get my parents to lend her $50 for shampoo. shampoo!? i don't know if she is "in trouble" or not, but she's unable to be straight with me; she's been unable for quite some time now.

i'm very sad. i notice i have been neglecting a lot of aspects of my life. in terms of finances, we've been paying the bills: but i've had to hold back from paying the credit card, not to mention my back g.e. taxes... i have a secret ongoing frustration with lynn, who withholds her share of funds, so that every month, it is a scramble on my part to get enough money in to pay off our monthly essentials (mortgage, etc.). i kept promising that as soon as things settled down, i would collect enough to pay off everything, and i could relax again. but that never came. and with all this budget crisis bs, i'm afraid that the doe stipend i counted on to both reimburse me for the courses i've taken, and pay off my future courses- well, that could be gone soon.

i'm sad, down... i am unable to focus on the nitty-gritty details of my life. i neglect to keep up my schedule. patients, i fear, will lose patience. i appear to keep up, i am a very good special ed teacher, i do homework with the kids... but i'm not okay at heart, at root. i just drift through my days. i've been far too addicted to facebook, as though hearing other people "talk" to me will make it all better. but already, i sense i have offended people; they don't respond to me, or not in the same way... maybe, i think, it is time to back off from it; and also this blog, i think it's time to turn it off for a while, make it into strictly a personal log...

i am tired. bleeding. i want to sleep forever... i'm happy about obama, but not so happy that it makes me forget all the serious bad that is in my family. i need to be strong, but there is so little that i can do. i mean, my brother has a serious problem, i've thought he did, for quite some time. he is in a stressful job; his family situation is stressful. i wish he could calm down enough to obtain some basic wisdom, but that's never going to happen. and as a result, he's going to keep firing managers, and his kids are just going to drive him up the walls... i don't know how to provide guidance to people. i'm more of a step in and take care of it kind of guy myself... i would like to do that, but i'm not authorized, and right now, i just don't have the strength...

i want to help my parents so badly too, but am not in a position to do so...

god help me god help me...

god help my brother, god help my sister... keep my family safe, and while you're at it, give them some measure of peace. i realize that without them, i am nothing.

i am so tired. but give me the strength to help. i need to help. i need help.

another psa from sharit

Hi,

We're trying to spread the word about Frances Nakachi's upcoming dance recital! Please forward to anyone you think might be interested! :)

WHAT: Udui Kahuu Dance, A Gift for Eternity

WHO: Tamagusuku Ryu Senjukai Frances Nakachi Ryubu Dojo

WHEN: Sunday, November 16th @ 2 pm

WHERE: Hawaii Theatre 1130 Bethel St.

COST: $30


HOW: Call 528-0506 for tix info OR purchase online at http://www.hawaiitheatre.com



WHAT AGAIN:

This concert of traditional, modern and newly choreographed Okinawan music and dance by Tamagusuku Ryu Senjukai Frances Nakachi Ryubu Dojo will take you on a mystical journey to the Ancient Kingdom and the era of royalty, sharing the heart and lifestyles of the Okinawan people through dance. Okinawa has a colorful and unique culture and philosophy of that "Life is a treasure" which encompass in their daily life. Through this harmonious spirit, its rhythmical and graceful dance movements convey their expressive life stories of sadness and happiness.



Special guest appearance by Grand Master instructors from Okinawa! Yoshiko Tanita Sensei & Mieko Kinjo Sensei.


This concert marks the 10th year anniversary. The celebratory performance is dedicated to embracing cultural diversity and harmony. By sharing our rich Okinawan arts with our community, we help to preserve the legacy of the past for future generations.



Ippei Nifei Deebiru!
st

--
Shari Y. Tamashiro

can you believe it? bush's hail-mary...

in the waning days of his not-so-bright administration, president bush recently attempted to change (and make permanent) e.p.a. regulations concerning the burning of coal. previously, e.p.a. regulations set limits on the "tonnage" of sulphur dioxide that any given power plant could generate in a set amount of time, say, a year. according to bush's planned last minute changes, power plants would only have to keep below a certain RATE of sulphur dioxide production, irregardless of how much TOTAL sulphur dioxide they produced. to give an example: that's like saying it doesn't matter how much total gas you consume in your car, as long as you're driving below a 50 mph speed limit. power plants can now operate FULLTIME, without regard for total SO2 output, as long as they maintain their output below an hourly/monthly cap; ultimately, they are allowed (under this change) to produce OVER TWO TIMES THEIR CURRENT SO2 OUTPUT.

there's little doubt that this "hail mary pass" won't get enough support to pass.

so what is bush thinking? does he think this half-hearted effort will show obligatory "pay back" to all his big oil/coal supporters/cronies?

halloween 2008

me as tobi/madara uchiha, aiden as a dog, willow as a (certified organic) banana, and lynn as some afro-hippie.

turning google into an mp3 downloader

this is a trick that my friend phillip chin found. try it out!

Turning a Search Engine into an MP3 Downloader
http://www.haywirehacking.com/main/2008/10/11/hacking-google-turning-a-search-engine-into-an-mp3-downloade.html

Copy / Paste the code below into your Google search box:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3)...

a new set of goals

okay, so here's my present set of goals, in no particular order:

1) set up a system of incentives for the kids. i will put up a list of goals for each of the kids (for example, willow needs to work on her writing [she has a habit of writing certain letters backwards] and aiden needs to work on basics like tying his shoes and holding his violin bow correctly [he's getting better!]). i will assign each goal a certain value, in an economy of stars. each reward is worth a certain number of stars. for example, what we did today, going to windward mall and playing a round at "glow putt" should be worth 15 stars or so...

2) develop a grammar "puzzle" or "train." i want to do this partially for myself, but more importantly for my sped kids. wouldn't it be interesting and fun to actually "construct" grammatically correct sentences by piecing together words? grammar has rules, and these rules can be visually and tactile-ly (?) reinforced by pieces that can only fit together in certain ways...

3) develop a routine to incorporate "curriculum based measurements" of reading into every reading session. i could tape record students as they read, noting which words they mispronounce. from this i could determine the WRC (or words read correctly per minute), a great general quick-and-dirty measure of both reading fluency AND reading comprehension. students could chart (publicly) their WRC scores. my goal (and theirs) would be to quickly improve their WRC.

also, i want to fine-tune students' vocabulary development. by noting which words particular students have a difficult time on, i can give individual students the appropriate words to focus on. this would, of course, be in addition to any word lists assigned for any given week...

there must be a cheap way for students to all have tape recorders. it would be invaluable to have students READ their readings out loud and record them onto tape recorders. this would give us hard-copy evidence of students' reading strengths and weaknesses...

4) i want to follow similar tacks with my acupuncture students. i want to make all aspects of the diagnostic process as accessible as possible, as clear as possible. i made a rough draft intake form solely based upon the pulse. i need to fine tune this.

i also want to create an intake procedure to determine structural imbalances. this would involve using some kind of pressure-sensitive carbon paper to record the imprint of patient footprints, to determine if they are high-arched or flat-footed, etc. it would also involve taking photographs of the patient in front, back and profile. ideally, these photographs would be over a grid, to better "visualize" the postural aberrations. if we can concretely "see" these things, then we are better able to specifically address patient needs.

5) i need to meditate more, develop my "internal observer." someday, i want to incorporate this into my daily regimen...

6) taiji goals remain largely unchanged. i have started incorporating push hands into my taiji classes. so far, it is fun. i don't know how far i will take these concepts with some of my classes, but for now, i'm "exploring."

7) i need to better study my herbs. AND create mnemonics for my students, so they won't have to wrestle with these issues as i periodically must.

8) i would like to learn go and chess.

9) i want to draw, and effectively use and "see" color in my drawings. someday, i would like to paint. i also want to incorporate art into digital media, maybe after purchasing a drawing pad. willow wants to do this sort of thing, i know. eventually, i want to also purchase animation software (i think i mentioned this earlier) so that willow (and yes, me) can explore making cartoons.

10) garage band rocks. i have dreams about doing a lot of radiohead songs, first of all. i can now do the basic piano for "how i made my millions" (like, duh, it's so-o-o easy), and will eventually transfer what i can do to garage band. i want to work on my singing voice (HAHAHAHA) and see if it is salvageable... while we're talking purely in the abstract, i would also like to play the guitar. and the drums. i mean, i can "enter" these instruments in the appropriate garage band registers, but nothing replaces the original instruments in all their wonderful cacophany.

again, the world is wonderful, if you keep discovering new ways to see it (and, perhaps, new ways to get yourself in trouble).

how to lose all your friends in ten easy steps!!!

1. declare your political affiliations, and mention how "you don't understand how anyone can be" of the opposite persuasion.
2. bitch and moan about how terrible married life is, and how single people have it so easy (to single people)
3. or, talk about how sorry you are that so and so is single, and offer some "matronly" advice
4. hook up your single friends and watch the sparks fly! (usually, not the romantic variety)
5. say that your favorite karaoke song is: "we hate it when our friends become successful."
6. talk stink about people behind their backs
7. don't talk stink about people behind their backs
8. express your opinions, thinking people will appreciate you in all your glory.
9. don't express yourself, thinking people like you better as the reserved fellow standing on the wall.
10. write a blog entry about "how to lose all your friends in ten easy steps!!!"

guaranteed, or your money back!

have you ever seen exorcist 2? it's actually a fascinating movie, even if you're not particularly into horror, or demonology. it almost has a redemptive quality about it, not unlike the ending of omen 3, when damien thorne dies and the second coming happens...

in the exorcist 2, there is talk about a demon called pazuzu (or something), symbolized by locusts. yet there is something special about this demon. she (?) is immune to the madness of the swarm mentality... in a plague of locusts, it is this "madness" that causes locusts to wantonly cause uncontrolled and uncontrollable destruction. but supposedly, pazuzu (who possesses?) the girl from the first exorcist is actually what i term a pharmakon, someone who has taken the poison of the community in order to save it. while the world falls into madness, she alone is immune, and thus she alone has the power to calm the madness and save the world...

i think about this of late. there is, or has been, a sense of madness in my local environment... people on fire. i think about the fear and the panic of the stock market, and its power to topple down our house-of-cards reality... it's all psychological, or so they say... and so, perhaps all it takes is someone to be a pazuzu, a person immune to the madness. someone who can hear the silence amidst this cacophany. someone who can remain calm even as tomorrow slips underwater.

i don't pretend to be calm. in fact, more often than not, i feel myself losing fragments of control. i just don't show, or am not in positions where it can necessarily show... but i imagine heroes, or perhaps they are fools, who calmly concentrate on each successive task, each little thing, each request of a child, as though it held all the importance in the world... and maybe, nowadays, it does.

apology, but no rescinding

okay, so i apologize for my hateful remarks concerning a rival school. i honestly did like some of the faculty there, i just thought that, as a school, they weren't fulfilling their responsibilities... and i realize that, over the years, the school may have changed to become a much more quality institution. i think my comments were largely in response to this particular acupuncturist, who, via self-serving and impossible arrogant claims, basically wasted an entire two hour meeting which was supposed to be about curricular reform, reverse curriculum, clarification of objectives, etc. (important stuff). so to all you tai hsuan alumni out there, forgive me. i'm not going to rescind my previous comments, because they were based upon my experiences. i actually attended the school, and that actually happened to me... but i will allow that things have changed.

so, for whatever it's worth, i'm sorry...

why i hate tai hsuan

okay, usually i'm not a hater... i keep negative thoughts to myself (except when it comes to myself). but since one particular faculty member kept tooting his own horn and saying how "radical" his alma mater (tai hsuan) was, i just can't help myself...

i attended tai hsuan for one summer. it was a very difficult summer, because i was working three jobs, including summer school teaching, to afford tuition to that freaking school. i decided, ultimately, that the school was full of s**t, because they weren't teaching me ANYTHING. the classes combined students from all levels (including students on the verge of graduation) and were conducted in a kind of question and answer format. big news for you guys. if i don't know anything to start with, i can't even begin to formulate a question! and what's more, they expected me to learn, ON MY OWN, the names and locations of the 360 or so points. what the f*** was i paying them their exorbitant tuition for!!?? furthermore, there were some classes where the instructor wouldn't even show up... we'd wait 15 minutes, half an hour, and finally decide that he wasn't coming, class was cancelled...

during one of my last classes, i confided in a senior student that i was disappointed with the education i was receiving, and was thinking about transferring. her advice? "do it now, while you still can."

so i did. i went to emperor's in california, because the standards for licensure were much more stringent there. i figured they had to have a more structured curriculum (which they did). i have no regrets.

so to a certain acupuncturist, who claims he can treat stage 4 cancer with one needle, or by making an herbal formula without even seeing a patient, i have serious doubts about your "radical" alma mater... and everything else you may have had to say.

thom yorke, "the clock"

japanese spiderman

kahala mall stinks/ random thoughts

just to let you know. i'm at kahala mall right now. it looks like they're pumping s**t out in front of the whole foods store. the whole parking lot and front of the mall reeks of "leavings." i came inside to the starbucks, bought the obligatory "venti mocha frappuccino" (crap, i don't even particularly like the stuff) and sat down... i'm killing a bit of time until my appointment out this way, writing empty nothings, looking at the upbeat kahala crowd while away their day.

there are a lot of what i would call "business people," guys dressed up in aloha shirts, holding what seem like conferences across the little tables. maybe they are financial specialists trying to calm clients over coffee and scones. and then there are a lot of "kahala moms," always dressed sporty in tank tops and shorts, pushing their decked out strollers, occasionally giving lectures to their misbehaving children, lectures that sound like they are more for the ears of everyone around them than the actual child, lectures that show that they are great parents, and their children are somehow behaving "out of mold": "why are you behaving like that? you know that in our family we never behave like that. settle down, young man." and then, resignedly, they kind of give up the act, just let the kids "stir," and talk with their girlfriends about the kids' activities, relationships, whatever.

i suppose i should consider myself part of this crowd. it is the unspoken privilege of observers and narrators to be "above it all," or at least pretend it's so. who knows, someone may be commenting on me, this shabby looking kid with the wandering eyes and the quiet typing fingers. i suppose i'm not above reproach.

things have been hectic this week. hell, for a while. it's funny. when i'm in the midst of the fray, there are so many things i think i'd like to be doing: writing, practicing taiji, making music, whatever... but when there's a moment of free time, i have a hard time recruiting the attention necessary for much of anything. i waste a lot of time sort of glossing over things, visiting facebook like every ten seconds... i hate that feeling. i feel like i have to refocus myself, but a larger majority of myself just doesn't care enough to do that. there's something comforting, i suppose, in just "washing out," just "vegging" (as was hip to say in my generation)... like water rippling out across my borders.

maybe that's what dreams/aspirations are for: not that we actually reach them, but in the midst of our "business," they serve as a fictionalized counterpoint to allow us to go on. sort of like hope. convince yourself that hope exists, or at the very least, have faith in it, and you could lean out across any abyss holding weights isometric and outstretched, like forever... so i suppose, in a way, i shouldn't feel frustrated about not being able to follow my idling projects, maybe i was never really meant to.

***

i was thinking about teaching, penguins and the bodhisattva path. one paradox of the bodhisattva vow is that it speaks heavily about an "other first" prioritization with regards to salvation. it's not that you save yourself first, and then reach a hand out to the world to "pull it up and out." it's more like you are always lowering yourself so that others may "step on you." which makes me wonder...

i think i understand a bit of it now, though. as a teacher, as a TRUE teacher, you can never think you "KNOW" your subject, and just deliver it like a package to be unwrapped... you have to ALWAYS be like a penguin, continually digesting the world so that you can later regurgitate it to your kids... in other words, you have to continually "relearn" your subject and think of the best way to make it assimilable to your particular students. in a sense, a teacher is a perpetual student.

we assume that the curriculum is a constant, and the student is the variable. but it's not true. the curriculum, what is taught, changes depending upon the nature of the student. so in essence, a teacher continually relearns (or perhaps even learns for the first time) his subject as he teaches his student.

with regards to taiji, for example. sure, i thought i "knew" my forms. i had practiced them to the extent that they had become engrained in my body. but as i tried to teach what i "knew" to my students, i discovered that i had to "relearn" the form in a different way, put a new, accessible vocabulary to it. and in doing this, what i had known of my forms expanded. i came to see different angles to everything...

maybe the bodhisattva path is arranged the way it is because of this very insight. it is a fiction to believe that salvation is a destination, a constant. it is a happening. and you only allow it to happen by constantly readjusting yourself to it, such that it "opens" to both you and your student. salvation IS this very process, this salvific process of bridging two uncertainties...

the copper thief

honest abe
is turning blue-green
for the copper thief
in him he distills
all cheap and empty
well wishes, and the
worthless escapees
from pockets
too weary to hold.

he pulls veins from
the world they built
their tangled and connected
world, a wealth so
under-appreciated
it goes unnoticed
and secret running
juice, empty and insipid,
from hollow ear to hollow,
from bored intention to
the taken consequence.
like weeds he gingerly
plucks them, careful for
the roots, and paints them
the color of the sea
and envy, which they long
(servicable) forgot.


they say blood smells like
copper.
but in sterile
wound-holding
bandages
the world has forgotten.

so the copper thief
sets about and collects
and hoards the treasure
they've left behind
and unknowing.

romantique

it was a nice summer
one to remember
to remember
and now and then
i take it out
to polish it and
search for cracks

there was a moment
when you crested a hill
and the hot asphalt
around you shimmered heat
(or was that you,
was that you?)
and the scent of you
or that moment
was clean and sweet
as orange blossoms.

the world, even the sun,
captured in that single
drop of sweat on your cheek.

you brushed it away.

of all that we did
that is what i remember most
that feeling of hope and openings
like it would last forever
it would last forever
like it would.

but even with all my care
a bit of tarnish is
inevitable.
i'll still give it a last rub
like a genie lamp
and then, like the rest,
pack it up in
recycled newspaper
for another rainy day.

the od-noxious

[okay, so this is REALLY stupid...]

fins, i say.
finitude,
finito...

the extent of my wit,
i mock you in stupid ways:
how you surround yourself
with the FINery
the FINest things the world never laid eyes on.
sharply dressed in a good month's salary
eating food better clothed than ever i was.

i was always too wide
to be fine.
my world is thick with
compromises and contradictions.

"it's a fine line," you always
said, of life or truth or something:
"walk the fine line."
but my feet broke the edges
of shoes
and couldn't find your tightrope-
your fine silken spider web tightrope-
and i walked where i walked
leaving dirty wide footprints
all over the place.

you're much too polite to
say where i belong
and where i don't;
it's a distinction and discernment
to know such things
and to know when to say them
observations kept in check
behind a fine lined smirk.

and me, i'm much too rude
to know how to say goodbye.

thom yorke on "eraser"

thom yorke on principles

insomniac state

yet again, i cannot sleep...

it's been a somewhat hectic week, relatively speaking (i know with the financial crisis, it's probably been a hectic week for a lot of people). for myself, it's been a week of juggling work on patients with student teaching at aiea intermediate with doing assignments last minute for my sped classes with running wednesday clinic with doing homework and violin with willow and aiden... i am so looking forward to halloween. it's the one night when i can get dressed up as some weirdo and just be someone else for a time. actually, this year, since i run wednesday clinic, and since i've got a willing bunch of interns, we're going to dress up (even though technically it won't be halloween). the interns are supposed to be somewhat low key... i think the consensus costume is going to be "killer bees." something to do with bi syndrome and all that (a chinese medicine joke, sort of, haha). myself, i'm going to do my crappy cosplay thing. for halloween, i'm going as tobi/madara uchiha, but for wednesday's clinic, i might go as kakashi. all naruto characters by the way... or, maybe i should go as "the crow" (kinda old school, but what the hey).

i wish i had something more profound to say. of course, i don't think anyone really reads this blog. i do like to make it seem that somewhere amidst all this "stuff," this "domestic life," there is something of interest... unfortunately, no. nothing. i'm just tired, but wired, if that makes any sense... too exhausted to put any effort into anything, too awake and "wanting-to-do-something" to allow myself to drift off...

i guess i need someone to kill me. someone beautiful. with a wicked knife. someone to slip into the shadows silently, with eyes that love me, eyes that calmly seek to destroy me... wouldn't that be nice? after that blinding hitched-breath strike, connected by the tunneled blade, eyes locked for one brief moment, like a mirrored image so desirous of union with its maker that it shatters itself to pieces...

yeah. or something like that.

well, i'd best be going before i embarrass myself.

whoops, too late for that. too late for anything, except sleep.

more japanese ghost videos

japanese ghost videos

i love watching these... except when i'm alone.

"nice"

nice
c.1290, "foolish, stupid, senseless," from O.Fr. nice "silly, foolish," from L. nescius "ignorant," lit. "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (see un-) + stem of scire "to know." "The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj." [Weekley] -- from "timid" (pre-1300); to "fussy, fastidious" (c.1380); to "dainty, delicate" (c.1405); to "precise, careful" (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to "agreeable, delightful" (1769); to "kind, thoughtful" (1830). In 16c.-17c. it is often difficult to determine exactly what is meant when a writer uses this word. By 1926, it was pronounced "too great a favorite with the ladies, who have charmed out of it all its individuality and converted it into a mere diffuser of vague and mild agreeableness." [Fowler]

"I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should I not call it so?" "Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk; and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything." [Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey"]

copper thief

color

you can't change the world

you can't change the world
so don't even try
don't even try
don't
you can't stay the same
and there isn't a why
isn't a why
isn't

a dung beetle rolls
sisyphean, droll
with far more significance
than i
than i
pushing myself through
the day till i die.

a halloween public service announcement

ambidextrous

aiden is ambidextrous.

they say that the TRUE test for ambidexterity is a TIME LAG when an individual is confronted with a task involving hands... contrary to popular opinion, which holds that ambidexterity is an asset in which both hands "know" how to cooperate and efficiently accomplish a task, in truth, real ambidexterity is the embodiment of a CONFLICT between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, each attempting to assert control. for individuals with "false" ambidexterity, there is always a bias towards one hand or the other, such that a reflex response will always summon up the resources of the "dominant" hand...

today, in my daily struggle to work through the violin bow grip with aiden, he actually accomplished a fair rendition, with his LEFT HAND. i was about to correct the finer points of his bow grip when i realized that he was doing it with his LEFT HAND, not his right, as we had trained him thus far...

the day before, aiden took up a pen in both hands, and proceeded to draw an awkward but recognizable picture with both... we have issues with his pencil grip; he tends to grab the pencil too high, and with more of a fist grip than a "bird's beak," so we have been really paying attention to this... but that day was the first time i realized that he was equally skilled (or clumsy, depending on your perspective) with both hands...

this is something lynn and i will have to take into consideration as he develops... how to best accommodate his ambidexterity, and whether it is in his best interest, as has been "traditionally practiced" throughout time, to "beat it out of him," and make him a right-hander... no, seriously, we're just concerned about how best to take advantage of his hemispheric confusion...

...

the buzz of so many voices inside my head... at times, when i close my eyes and try to rest easy, faces flash under my eyelids, faces of people i've never seen before, somehow transforming in bursts to a thousand other anonymous others... afterimages leaving me breathless...

...

today's lesson went well, by the way. last night, on a whim, i decided to change the lesson plan to make the lesson more "visual." since we have an elmo (an overhead), i decided to draw scenes, characters, and items from the "little red riding hood" story. so after we would read a section of text, i would break out my little drawings and cut outs, and give students a visual reference to what they'd just read... it seemed to work. students seemed really into the lesson. and comprehension seemed to jump through the roof. hell, students were remembering details from the passage that i hadn't really picked up on...

one of the main setbacks of my lesson was the time. i do tend to have an issue with time management, especially when i am trying to cram a lot of stuff into the lesson... i fell short of what i had wanted to accomplish in the lesson plan... i also have to work on incorporating or eliciting responses from ALL the students. i have a few really enthusiastic students who are ALWAYS ready and willing to respond to any questions i may have. because of this, i at times don't get to the quieter kids, to hear what they have to say... but i'm learning.

i LOVE teaching, by the way. i love the excitement that students feel when they are engaged... i feed off of it... i love helping people feel excited about life, i love helping people to feel that their world is, and THEY are, interesting and worthy of respect...

i want to do this forever.

makudonarudo

okinawa: i wana ok?

wish me luck and buy me caffeine AGAIN

so this morning will be my second (midterm) observed lesson... am panicking slightly because it is a long lesson with many parts (and little cut out pieces), and am more than slightly worried that i will run out of time... but what the hey. i've passed larger things when i felt constipated... today should be no different (although "there will be blood..." yuck sorry).

so press your palms together, rub them like you're a freaking cricket trying to set itself on fire, and say: "get through the lesson you moron! just get through it!!!" my prayer request channel will be tuned to "moron" just to get it straightaway... and oh yeah leave a venti mocha frappuccino on the offering altar- the melted fumes will eventually evaporate into my blood and keep my eyes open to catch that "off task" 7th grader... hahaha

(i clearly need sleep).

psa: Sharit on HPR!!! LISTEN UP y'all!

passing on an important announcement to all you local folks (and anyone else interested). my friend shari tamashiro is going to be on the radio tomorrow!!! here's the info (from her email message...):

***
Hey!

I'm going to do an interview on Hawaii Public Radio tomorrow (Wednesday, October 14th), KIPO 89.3 FM at 5 pm.
The show is Bytemarks Cafe, hosted by Burt Lum.
http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/hpr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75

I'm going be talking about digital storytelling and some of my other projects. :) Hope you can tune in and listen to
my interview!!! Man. I've never been on the radio before - am a wee bit nervous about it.

If you can't catch the show tomorrow, then you can check it out online via podcast or MP3.

Podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HawaiiPublicRadioBytemarksCafe
Audio Archive (MP3): http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/hpr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=116&Itemid=82

HPR is also having their annual fund drive.
https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/pledge_form.htm

st
***


listen to it! shari is a passionate self-described cybrarian, interested in preserving information for posterity through digital media/storytelling. cool stuff. the future of the past. <-- Hey, maybe i should get a royalty or something for coming up with that phrase. but it describes her, and her work, to a tee.

dreams in mililani town

the undersides of your eyelids
are like planetarium skies
and you superimpose the street named
constellations all across the
curved surface

it gives an impression of depth

in the depth of your dreams
reach for the stars
search for the face
and your place amongst the
pagan gods-

and in the morning
bleary eyed, make sure to read
your latest daily horoscope...

the (stereotypical) experience of sex for a man

promises, promises
you give me i give you
the dilation of time and space
and the unfolding of a catharsis
that never ends
that always repeats
(but somehow never grows boring?)

i'll promise you the world
and i'll keep it
if you keep yours.,

,

and afterwards
falling so very short
you might want to talk
to make up for what's missing
but i'll already be
looking for it
in dead asleep dreams.

coke babies, radiohead - "easy listenin"

there seems little to say nowadays. time drifts by, there is a sleepiness and apathy, coupled with an impatience and frustration for something unknown and unidentifiable. we are, i am, floating in a surge, bare feet above the sharp and shifting surface of coral, white and polished and unthinking teeth. no footing is possible, there is no steadiness as the sea breathes...

i think about some of the old zen masters, living in abject poverty, during periods of unceasing warfare. how did they do it? i think about the bodhisattva vow. it always struck me as paradoxical. "there are innumerable beings in the universe. i vow to save them all." impossible, and yet a vow is not made lightly. what does it mean to swallow an impossibility? (a quote from some poet: "we are realists, we dream the impossible.") it means that, knowing there is no way to find completion, satisfaction, we work anyway, we live anyway...

there is something about completion that is so "ego" gratifying. it is an "i've got that under my belt" sort of feeling. when we try at tasks that are inherently fruitless/hopeless (which, ultimately, realistically, is everything that we do in this world), then there is no "end gain" for the ego, and it quickly "gives up." it is precisely at this moment that the bodhisattva vow seeks to hold us: even knowing you will never succeed, would you still? would you still devote everything you have, everything you are?

interestingly enough, it is not to be a "passionate" vow, one with dispersive acts, like the last hundred or so meters of a marathon, when you can "see the ending," and there is a sudden last burst of speed. again, there is no "completion," so there is no satisfaction ("rest on your laurels") for the ego; thus, nothing is to be gained from "pushing forth impatiently." everything must be measured against the sheer wall of impossibility. which means, ultimately, that everything must be ledgered into the "balance sheet" of this present moment...

there is so much talk about the present moment. when i allow myself, i realize that nothing exists outside of it. and yet, it is ungraspable, it has no edges to contain me... it is precisely the undescribable this which is always "present" and yet always slipping away... it is the one true comfort i have. no matter what impossibilities i may face, the foundation for all possibilities is that this moment is. i take comfort in the skin and the blindness of this moment (both skin and blindness are my fictionalized compartmentalized interaction with the moment: only the ego lays claim to omniscience and no boundaries, after all... hegelian totalitizing ego bs... [also republican-esque, btw whoops])

right now, there could be a series of crises... what to do, what to do? i am, like any stupid hawaiian, riding the tides. i sit and watch and wait, for that moment when i will be ready (for what!?), wait for the other shoe to fall...

... love those around you. love them well. love changes things, although it can only change things if it is given without expectation of change. funny, isn't it? it again hearkens back to the whole ego thing. if you swallow love as an impossibility, as something you can't "get a handle on," then it, like all things "impossible" (including death, absence, the "true things"), divides you into eternity... love is not a momentary thing, but it is something which you must sip at slowly every day, every moment, for as long as you live. love is so-o-o sweet, too sweet to appreciate in a flash and a gulp, it will only coat your tongue and leave you unable to truly "taste" it; take it in only a moment at a time, and you will know it... i believe in love...

... there is also a way. there is always a way. but it is never the way that we are taught/conditioned to expect (particularly in moments of crisis). there is an artful way that doesn't "know" where it is going, but negotiates abysses nevertheless. trust in that, trust in yourself... don't be so quick to "edit out" the messiness of who you are, and what your world is... "cleanliness is next to godliness," yes, but it ISN'T god, because god is ALL... again, think about loving yourself, and again, you can't swallow yourself in an instant, but can only appreciate yourself "divided across an impossible eternity..."

... i think of these things, and write them down, only because i need to. i feel afloat over jagged teeth, at times, drowning, i feel a desperation and a surge to panic and "lose it," but by writing these things, i "see" my truths (whether they are legitimate or not) and i hold to them. all things pass. ha, another platitude... but something, some words, have the effect desired, quelling dreams and nightmares for just long enough to fall back asleep...

matrix pong - very cool improv fx

mwahahaha

a broken marionette.

he saw it.

the delicate bent of its wrist
conveyed more to him, even in
its stillness, than all the motion
of the universe.

it seemed to hold its fingers taut
at delicate dissonance with each other they were
extending.

but the wrist, again, was broken
and in contrast with the fingers
revealed a certain despair, or
apathy, or sadness.

and this was truth.
he felt it
felt its resonance in him
it was a frozen and dead gesture
a sign from god, when he
didn't believe in god.

the contrast he felt
in common with it: a reach
believing most profoundly
that it would not
would never
arrive.

there was a scent of chocolate in the air.

it hovered, untraceable, a mist, a fog. he closed his eyes, drank in the smell, turning this way and that, blind, searching the winds. but it never revealed itself.

he opened his eyes again, and it was as though he were seeing it for the first time. curtains withdrawing. the play spread out in all its majestic color and pageantry...

there were many moments like this in his life, when he would distract himself and return, and it would be as though he were in it, but not. it was a habit. no, it was more than this. it was his true position. in dreams, he was an observer, no matter how relevant he seemed to the goings-on. and sometimes he felt that dreams reflected the truth, and that his waking life, with its seeming solidity, and its apparent laws of causality and intent, THAT was the dream. so even as he knelt to participate and partake of it all, it was as though he were watching everything from a seat in the darkness, drinking it all in so as to guess the significance, but not too efficiently- for he also wanted to be surprised...

fragment...

and deftly she moved the piece. it was a knight, perfectly played, the leap bypassing walls of pawns.

he was slackjawed, dumbfounded. "but- but i thought you said you didn't know how to play."

she smiled, wide-eyed, mysterious. "i don't," she said curtly. and rising up to go, her face already turned away: "i only know how to win."

can't sleep AGAIN

can't sleep. miss my wife. she grounds me (in all senses)... when i am untethered by my thoughts and dreams, one of my comforts is seeing her beside me, breathing. and to hear her mutter, "go to sleep," it's the command that i can't resist.

but alone, there's no counterpoint. and this bed is so vast and empty, i feel consumed by the blank and negative space. and my thoughts wash out without resistance. no one hems me in. no one draws my outlines...

i don't understand why i am dissolving nowadays. my words are uncontrolled, insipid, diluted of intent or meaning. somehow, they lay claim to another significance, but it is not the significance i would have intended, but is another voice. there was a concept i recall, from religion classes, that beneath the landscape, the familiar landscape of our language, it is not that there is a blank slate, but that there is another "truer" landscape, the swell of nameless hills and valleys, or the draws and repulsions of gravity wells and springs. it is naive to think that one could "get beneath" language, and yoke it to one's service, as one would an ox. language writes and speaks me, the more so when i see its absurdity...

i am empty, but i cannot stop writing. there is a flow of something, and regrettably, it comes whether it is beautiful or sewage...

i rely on others, on my wife, the rationality and sense and responsibility of life, to keep things inside... to serve as my second skin.

somehow, exhausted, this night will end. but until then, i try fruitlessly to end this interminable.

myoclonic twitch

if
by means of words
a heart is moved
and if a heart,
then blood
if blood
then limbs and fingers
if fingers then buttons
and buttons then worlds

why is it
so hard to believe
that words
could open eyes
and cease
or start
dreams?

skyfall

please tell me that beneath it all
there is something
something
a meaning superimposed over
guiding it all subtly
like the curve of the earth
or the sleight of hand
pull of magnets
i would like to believe
that we are not running
the whole show.

sometimes when i sleep
when i fall
and the words give up trying
and lie their laid claims aside
sometimes
everything settles back into
its skin-

the stars madly drifting
out of their sockets
and the flat of the bed
tilts wildly upending

-but everything settles back
into its skin

and even if the sky should fall
there's a place for it to
settle in

there's a place even for skies
to settle in

you can't tell me
that it all will come through
i can hear it
in your voice
but still
the whole show unrun
or run wild
will still have its curtains
falling down to the
stage.

the too literal

sugarless blues
and the woes and the woos
how the sway of the stillness
keeps 'way the muse

and the too literal
way the words i choose
why no one writes poetry
the way you tell the news.

varicose are these verbose cues
the blood won't rise with them heavy shoes
and without blood words lack the living hues
and so the words cant out in cyanotic blues.

cent-er

what cannot amount to much,
even amassed as a mountain of blue-green
what you disregard as not
worth the effort of a stoop
and a scoop

therein lies the mistake.

aside from superstitious blessings
a single penny could save your life.

ground yourself in what is
infinitesimally worthless
the asymptotically diminishing
be humble as that which
could buy any thought at all.

if you bend to pick one up
the one and all may bend to you.
after all, in order to rise
you need to stand on the
humble blessings of the ground
underlying.

shoot

there are some actions which schools nowadays consider "bad behavior." one of them is "shooting." i understand the reasoning behind this, particularly after all the school shootings... but let's examine the notion of shooting. to a child, it must be the preferential and less messy way to "interact violently" (or otherwise) with another. after all, a child usually feels powerless in "hand-to-hand" combat, particularly with an adult, or even a kid slightly bigger than him/herself. shooting is that magical thing, by means of which one's will is transferred across the distance to affect another. i mean, if i were a kid (which i pretend i still am), WHY WOULDn't i want to shoot?

it's kinda funny... shooting is easier to depict in tv shows, because it is "clean." in hand-to-hand combat, hitting and such, the blows are so much "messier" and violent. and yet, ironically, it is shooting that is the problem, PRECISELY because it makes violence (true destructive violence) so much easier. it keeps violence (or the results of violence) at a distance...

imagine a world in which the principle of shooting (long distance warfare) were an impossibility. i think war would be much less likely and appealing. we grow up in an age where violence (the consequences of it, the REAL injuries, etc.) is kept more or less at a distance from us. to most of us civilians, a war is just a plane flying over somewhere and dropping bombs. it is "held at bay." but if it were "in our face," if it always had to be, then maybe we would be less likely to commit it; and maybe our kids would be less likely to commit acts of real murder (via weapons that make killing far too easy).

...

here's another absurdity. you watch cartoons, and in them, for some reason, when a ROBOT gets destroyed, it is okay, it is supposedly much more palatable, than when a "living creature" gets shot... honestly, what's the difference? sometimes, robots are depicted with personalities (like in the latest star wars clone wars cartoons); do they have "less right to exist"? do they "feel nothing" when they are blasted into pieces? and can children distinguish the difference?

the effect on kids is the same. they will shoot, and shoot, and shoot. robot or no.

...

my son is in a shooting phase now. i honestly have ambiguous feelings about this. on the one hand, i realize that it is ultimately an expression of violence. but on the other hand, i suspect it is a natural part of development, particularly for boys, to bifurcate society into good and bad, and play roles that are, ultimately, about violence and subjugation, and do involve "shooting." i'd much rather have him do this than start randomly punching people...

i teach my kids about gentleness, about its importance. and compassion. about feeling empathy for others, particularly those who are weaker, younger, etc. i hope that this serves as a prophylactic against what i term "blind violence" or (synonymous, in my mind) "clean violence." violence ultimately "hurts," and to identify the pain in others as analogous to your own makes you far more reluctant to commit it wantonly...

unsettled

my mind has been racing, and the world has been a blur. lynn went away on a business trip on, let's see, thursday... so i've been managing things, taking care of the kids and such, pretty much on my own. today, we went to a birthday party at build-a-bear, then to the "beautiful park." yesterday, the kids went to expression sessions over at the contemporary museum of art in makiki, and built sock puppets (of, ideally, arctic animals, since that was what the story theme was). all in all, the kids have been really good, but i HAVEN'T... i've been a somewhat unfocused parent, just transporting the kids and summarily issuing orders. i hate being like this, but somehow, i am very temperamental; as willow says, "do you have a temperature today?"

ideas circulate through me like wine. restless, pointless ideas. i am reminiscent of the writer in sandman's "calliope," granted "ideas in abundance" from the sandman, so many ideas that he eventually goes made and scrawls them on walls with his own bloody fingertips...

i need to settle down, focus, integrate. i actually returned to an old practice of counting my breaths this morning, and it seemed to calm me down somewhat... as soon as i strayed off on a tangent long enough to break my count, i just "returned to the breath" and started back at 1.

there's a good deal of panic, and a good deal of reason for it, in a lot of things. a lot of signs, etc. even myself, pretty oblivious (perhaps on purpose) to everything, even i get worried now and then. but i still operate, function, even if i am a bit jangled. there are always things to do to keep you from really worrying...

... regarding "centralized life..." there really is a resistance to being centered. a centrifugal force. the only way to get to the center (the operational axle, the eye of the storm, where everything is "easy") is to BE the center. trying to get to it is as ridiculous as an ant trying to crawl his way to the center hole of an LP spinning at 78 rpms... BE a center.

if being a center becomes habitual, something, there is some accretion, something adheres... or that is the hope. perhaps you build up inertia or something. and if you have enough of it, YOU are a center of power, and the universe, with all of its myriad influences and forces, starts to turn around YOU. that's the ideal, that's the plan, anyway... but first, it's a matter of resisting all externalizing tendencies, and just centering, feeling, being.

i need to settle, integrate.

1-2-3...

i like the sound of rain, and the cool feeling of it as it seeps in through the open screen windows... especially late, late at night when people should be sleeping... it makes me feel like the world is protected by the encircling swath of clouds, the regulators of temperature, and that i am protected from that by my man-made house: a box in a box in a box... embrace in an embrace in an embrace.

...

once, i reflected that life was either moving in or moving out. it was an oscillation between those two tendencies... when you "move in," you try to get comfortable in the moment you occupy. you're more or less optimistic, or at least tolerant, either of the place you're in, or of your capacity to adjust/change that place. and you accumulate furniture and other knick-knacks to ground you, to stain you... when you "move out," you're leaving, perhaps you're sick of the present moment, but even if you're not, there is a part of you that pushes away from it, in favor of the next "nest." and you hold garage sales and "cleanse" yourself of attachments to the world. you travel light, or at least, put stuff in storage: "you can't take it with you."

in between, in between, who are you? and what is place?

i recall, in some of my old religion/philosophy courses, that in the post-modern world, the questions become less substantive, and more contextual... "who are you" becomes less a question of substantives, or at least the substantives keep "breaking down" and "breaking apart," and you rely more upon reframing such questions as, well, "reframings": "who are you" is better answered as "where are you." identity is framed and reframed continually by context...

...

have you ever repeated a word so many times that it starts to sound strange? like it is a weird and awkward shape in your mouth? not only unused words, but every day words, words like "the" and "and" that undergird and support our whole linguistic structure?

i used to do this every now and then (don't ask me why). a weird experience. it makes you wonder at language, and its whole claim to reality...

similarly, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, and wondered what precisely you are? what is it that endures in you, that connects that strange dream you had, or that moment of blind passion you had, or the everyday mundane boredom you feel while driving to work, or... etc.?

WHO ARE YOU?

the thing that stares out at the mask in the mirror, the thing that receives the picture through the mask... somehow it seems that it wasn't meant to see itself, wasn't meant to look too closely... the wonder of who we are sometimes breaks down the movie; like strobe-lighting a film...

YET: once you become aware of the arbitrariness and absurdity of your own "selfhood," somehow... well, i won't speak for others, but it made me understand others better. it made me more gentle. i can't quite articulate how. maybe it is in the fashion of how being aware of your own death, and being aware that all things die (that we are connected by our endings, or more specifically, by the fact that we all end), you are able to draw analogies to the behaviors/experiences of others... we are all "reactions" and avoidances of the fact of death, after all... so maybe we are also reactions and avoidances of our own arbitrariness, irrationality, absurdity... our pretend social construct self that appears to have a day-to-day enduring reality, that appears responsible, thinks rationally, is only the (necessary) avoidance of who we really are...

some people think that the above sort of thinking leads to anarchy and irresponsibility, but i'm more of the view that it's completely the other way around: that true society demands an understanding/experience of what it risks and what it avoids. inauthentic "moral" society is precisely the overcharged avoidance of ignorance, with all of its excessive reactions and abreactions to "bury" what it cannot stomach: most eloquently captured in the recent phenomenon, the "securitization of bad debts..."

...

have you ever wondered why it is that our capitalist system demands GROWTH at all costs? that growth is the final criterion for the "health" of a company? i think now we are facing the consequences (in ALL realms) of that flawed notion. our edifices of selfhood that we built to govern over reality (like a false and overbearing cloud) is now raining down upon us in mocking fragments. our incessant appetite for "security" has destabilized (made "insecure") our foundations...

...

i wonder when this phase of mine, this root apathy, will ever end. i tried to go to my sister's court date on monday, only to discover that it had been changed to later in october... i wanted to go, as a representative of my family (no one else is going). i wanted to go, to see her again. i wanted to go, so i wouldn't feel so guilty at living my life, living my shell of a life...

all the crises going on around me, well, they disturb me mildly, but i only care about me and mine, and of course, it is only the "lost sheep," that single stray, that preoccupies the shepherd. sometimes i FEEL her despair. i feel her turning inwards, collapsing in on herself, as she realizes they are no scaffolds or supports protecting her now... and i know that there isn't a ground within yourself, unless you catch yourself. you could damn near fall forever if you aren't careful...

i remember things about my sister and i... or i don't... she was always my accompaniment... maybe because i developed out of the "hands off no care" policy of my older brother towards me, that i was kinda the same way towards my sister... maybe she needed more interventions, more caring... i thought i did a good job taking care of her, riding with her to school and to japanese school, playing with her in my odd isolationist ways... but maybe i was just using her to appear like a good brother. maybe i didn't "see" her...

i wish i could go back to those days of innocence. riding to rec. center 3 in the saturday afternoons, going swimming together... taking her to mcdonald's and cashing in our gift certificates for ice cream cones... lying on warm chalk rock boulders at mililani high school, before japanese school started... i never thought anything was wrong. i never suspected anything could happen to us, to that...

...but maybe that ground that i continually return to, the ground of the past, it's long since ceased being HER ground, she has fallen through it, beyond my reach.

... she is sinking, and sometime soon, she may be floating.

everything repeats

i'm STILL a pretty quiet and nonsocial person... i have no real "colleagues," either in acupuncture, or at school... it's funny. you think you outgrow your old patterns. and maybe you do, in a sense, like that old story about the nautilus... but you still retain the same shape, only in a bigger shell...

here's my "explanation" for why i don't believe in camaraderie (in most situations), and have a hard time being "intimate" with people. i grew up with the expectation that the only thing i could do was offend or embarrass if i revealed myself... i learned that to be taken seriously, you must "sink then float." i learned that self-effacement was the way to respect... and that "if you hate yourself enough, then not only will people not have to do it for you, they may even feel bad enough to feel sorry for you." i know, bad philosophy, but when i attempt to look at things objectively, i realize that that has been my modus operandi like forever...

i don't hate people at all. i like them, i like to give people what they want, what they need... but fundamentally, i guess i don't trust people, or at least don't trust the "bonds" they seem to build. familiarity is impossible to me... it is only earned after this sense of parallelness, like another has walked in solitude, like me... it is only in owning up to the solitude and solitariness of each individual death... or something buddhist like that.

...just excuses i suppose.

maybe people (I) never change. we just learn to grow comfortable in our skins. in our fates.

more interesting etymologies: "vicarious"

vicarious
1637, from L. vicarius "substitute, deputy" (adj. and n.), from vicis "turn, change, exchange, substitution," from PIE base *weik-, *weig- "to bend, wind" (cf. Skt. visti "changing, changeable;" O.E. wician "to give way, yield," wice "wych elm;" O.N. vikja "to bend, turn;" Swed. viker "willow twig, wand;" Ger. wechsel "change").

this is interesting to me because i intended to use the loose rhyme "icarus vicar(i)ous" in the story "moth-eaten." i wasn't sure it was appropriate because we usually use the word vicarious in the context of someone who "experiences" things from a distance, through the filter of another, i.e. "vicarious pleasure." icarus, on the other hand, is precisely NOT the observer; he is the anti-hesitant youth who flew to the sun and plummeted to the sea...

yet in the story "moth-eaten," the subject is divided into two, and one of them can be seen as a "substitute" or "deputy" (old original definition) of the subject, "vicariously" experiencing what the other half cannot. so in this sense, "icarus vicarious" is appropriate...