a perfect fit???

Oh great. Now, in the middle of my first semester at UH for the secondary education program (applied as an ENGLISH TEACHER), and after having taken the Praxis II (in ENGLISH), I receive a call today requesting an interview for... a SCIENCE TEACHING POSITION... Oh well. As they say, if you get lemons, make ... a sour face?

We'll see how they take the news during the interview. And if you don't hear about this again, well, let's assume you wouldn't want to hear about it again...

MR

there once was a boy
they called him "MR"
they told him it was short for mister
as they smiled that secret smile.


school was a room
an all day room
filled with kids that were
more animal or stone than kid
and a teacher who was
at best hostile
(because at least then he cared),
and at worst
self-medicated:
just like the stone-kids.


MR learned everything
and nothing in that room,
the world, they taught, was all walls
some he could see
like the chalkboard with the strange pictures
others he couldn't
like the one that made the words strange
and, when he tried to respond to them,
the same wall made the faces strange too,
made them mad, or screwed up, or
sometimes laughing.

MR didn't mind it when the faces laughed.
At least they were happy then,
and he would laugh too.
It would be the closest
the wall came to being a mirror.

The Pants Leg Not Taken

...Just a silly random thought...

It is one of the hardest things to do as a parent. Yes, that's right, putting on a pair of jeans on a reluctant and squirming little boy. For some reason, tonight, I thought of Robert Frost's cliche poem, "The Road Not Taken." I am paraphrasing, but imagine reciting it as you go through the process of navigating the "fork" in a pair of jeans:

"Two roads diverged in a sylvan wood..." (refering, of course, to that critical "fork" at the groin...)

"...And I" (meaning the "second leg") "I took the path less traveled by
and that has made all the difference." (because- imagine- if the second leg followed the first... you get something that happens far too often, Aiden's stumbling and boyish laughter...)

Tired, yet again...

Just woke up, can't get back (immediately) to sleep... There is always so much to do. I have been having a hard time fitting in appointments during the M-Sat workweek, so oftentimes, well, always, they "bleed" into the weekends. And with Lynn's sister (and Soukan and baby Ian) visiting from Minnesota, it's hard to find any breathing time...

I recently started listening to "Lynn's Freak Mix," a mix of music I made for her when we were still just dating. Here's a sample (it really is a freak mix):

1) "I think God can explain" by Splendor (sp?)
2) "High and dry" by Radiohead
3) "99 Red Balloons" by Nene (english version)
4) "Old bathwater" by No Doubt (I call this the bunny hop song, or in taiko speak, the don don dododon song)
5) "Teenage dirtbag" by Wheatus
6) "Misery" by Soul Asylum
7) "The Wheel" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
8) "Karma Police" by Radiohead...

etc.

I also threw in "Nanafushi" by Kodo and a few Debussy songs, including "Sunken Cathedral."

A lot of these songs are my favorite Karaoke tunes (or they would be, if they made Laser Discs of Dweeb songs). In particular, I like "Misery" by Soul Asylum. Back when I was in Japan, it was a new CD, and I listened to it like every day. So I suppose the songs on that CD evoke memories of that time.

Lyrics to the song:
"They say misery loves company
We could start a company
and make misery.

Frustrated incorporated..."

Jeez, was I frustrated back then. Feeling like, hum, not Sisyphus, but, oh yeah, TANTALUS (think of the mountain round here), surrounded by water but not having a drop to drink... I think when you are young, or at least you are still able to pretend you are, you can laugh a little at being alone, like it's just that you haven't found your "niche" yet, or that it's not you, it's something wrong with the world at large... But as time passes, as years pass, and nothing seems to change in your situation, you start to worry. Maybe, just maybe, something's wrong with your approach; maybe you've got a piece of spinach stuck on your front incisor; maybe your jokes are not only unfunny, but they reveal a bit too much about your idiosyncratic preoccupations.

Maybe, to sum it up, it's YOU.

...and then, worry worry panic (or as Nene sings: "worry worry super scurry"), the self doubt, the self examination begins, and every statement you make and every appearance you present goes through the uncertain censor, filtering, filtering...

It's a miracle, I suppose, that people like myself ever "got any..." Tripping over my own self-corrections... edited version of me.

***

The game we play in life, perhaps it only has a few set moves. Who knows how we inherited those moves, genetics or childhood experiences? But I think from a very early time, we only know how to react to the world in certain ways. If only we weren't aware of this fact, but like animals, almost seemed to rejoice in the way we react the same way to the same (or even different) stimuli, portrayed beauty akin to water that doesn't know anything other than finding a way down down down... But we always have the capability, the damnable (?) human capability, of stepping outside of our skin to look at ourselves "objectively", to critique, to "self-correct." And much as we talk of "civilization" and truisms like "history repeats itself," sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't all have just been better off without an overactive superego perched like a gargoyle over our experiences... Instead of a smooth and flawless performance on the stage of life, oftentimes we feel like there's someone loud and obnoxious jeering at our perceived mistakes, throwing popcorn and embarassing insults from the darkness and anonymity of the audience... We become an absurdity, a freak show, of OUR OWN MAKING.

The only moments of beauty I have discovered in myself have been those in which I was able to blind myself to myself, and just pretend that I WAS what I intended. Blindness, for me, is the secret to everything, my key out of my prison... There's a reason why Odysseus poked out the eye of the Cyclops, you see; it was the only way to steal away from the island.

(imperfectly recalled) Lyrics I am thinking about now (by some band I don't recall):

"Twenty years in this birthday suit
Baby's grown older, it's no longer cute."

***

It all comes back to the audience, I suppose. Who is your audience? Who are you really trying to impress?

The artist, paradoxically, tries to remove herself from the audience, aware that too many eyes spoil the performance... But then, why is she doing it in front of anyone anyway???

There have been papers I wrote for teachers I sought to impress, and the fact that, on occasion, I seemed to accomplish this, well, funny, but those are some of my best accomplishments... Does it matter that I can barely understand what I was talking about back then? Does it matter that no one in the general population can understand what I was talking about back then?

... this was an issue for a younger me, and for my younger friends, but it is still relevant... If you are surrounded by people who expect to hear things a certain way, then how, as a speaker, as a creative producer of language, is it ever possible to say anything NEW, to break the crust of experience? ... and forget saying something NEW, how is it ever possible to really say what you mean, to express "who you are?" Particularly if "who you are" isn't in the language of those around you...

DOES IT MATTER IF YOU ARE A WORD THAT THERE IS NO MEANING FOR? DOES IT MATTER IF YOU DO NOT BELONG IN ANYONE ELSE'S VOCABULARY???

What is art if no one sees it? What is a voice if no one can hear it? Is there a point to the artistic production then?

It's to the point, I suppose, because this blog is perhaps read by one person... occasionally... What is the point of its continuance?

I say art is produced in blindness, but then, it is produced for someone, even if that someone is more an "As If" who I imagine, the figurative and idealized READER who could understand the turns of thought I make... Is there, though, a larger purpose to something like this "blog," other than my own machinations?

the hate

there is within me
a without
that wants out
wants to pop me
like the soap bubble
it knows i am.

there is without me
a without
that wants in
the pressure of eyes
and the edges of mouths
waiting to curl up or down,
to shape words that
cut sharper than the teeth
concealed.

there is a me
that is barely me
that holds together
patchworks and compromises
that redraws the map
and replays the chessboard
every moment negotiating
with hurricanes and earthquakes.

sometimes
a face
is a dream of me
the me that would live
without without
and within within
a me i once must have
believed in-
must have-
before i learned
how much i
hated it,
hated me.

freewrite: necessary but necessarily inadequate

he said it was okay, that if one word followed another, somehow they would come full circle, and from the perspective of the reader, it would all make sense somehow, that the comfortable pedantic pace of writing one letter after another, and one word after another, like a hog snuffling the earth an inch before its snout, somehow this pace would lead to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to a full and intelligible narrative. and thus i did this. it was easy. and yet it was with a hollowness, the hollowness of not knowing where i was going, and suspecting that the reader would know this as well, would spot it like a burning birthmark on my forehead, and would dismiss my story, and myself, as being like so much empty nothing, like the talking that is so trivial it might as well be silent... or worse, to condemn me as mad. but then again, don't we all live this way, to greater or lesser extents? we pretend to know where we are going, where we came from, but in reality, there are only phonemes of our life that we process and throw out, and link together, each day succeeding the next, like we are fulfilling some grand ironic theme, like we are heading towards a happily ever after, or some more cynical destination. it is all pretend and pretentious, isn't it? all necessary. but all necessarily incomplete and inadequate...

nonsensical

eye and tooth
under the tiffany ring
i warned the tithing bucket
of the dream i had
no one mentions it
the bridge that passed
beneath itself
and the wide mawed wyvern
lolling the cliffside bones.

heavy aren't they
the rolling of the bird wings
thunder set and drooling
acid white and black thongs
rapier wit and razored dull edge
clawing the tendons
and toenails to be snapped
the petty stalks of grain
that filter golden the rumpelstiltzkin
betting yelling bellows.

Norbit the orbiting man

seven miles above the sky
orbitals drift aimlessly
not knowing what they circle
and not realizing what signals pass
through them
bouncing

they are
nodes for intelligences (?)
that could, for all intents and purposes,
want to blow everything up
or spy on a neighbor in her skivvies
or even (innocuously) find a way
to where you are.

how should they know,
how would they know:
an input antennae
and an output antennae
and the clarity of the signal
depends on having
not much in between.
eliminate the middle man
and you get a truer product
at the real dirty down price.

i place myself in parallel
and pretend to be the shadow
of one of them,
one of those satellites
falling across the empty places.

it's my form of astrology,
i am like sputnik rising
or hubble in retrograde
and my destiny is just as
meaningless and contrived
as theirs is:

god (s) send the signal
and i will
bounce it back,
through my eyes,
through my empty brained
and typing fingers.

if i appear,
it will be as
the glitch and error
of a faulty signal transfer.

Funny T-shirts

I saw a couple of really funny T-shirt sayings (worn by a really funny lady):

1) "Princess, having had sufficient experience with princes, seeks frog."

2) [kinda philosophical] "If a man makes a sound in a forest full of women who can't hear him...

IS HE STILL WRONG?"

Hahaha, I liked that last one, especially near Valentine's...

Yoki Daiko ROCKS!!! (without me, of course)

Yoki Daiko was the taiko group I played in while I was in LA. At the time, we were pretty decent, I'd say... But now, the group absolutely ROCKS!!! Check them out in a recent performance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFqAI3VRbDM&feature=related

A cool reference to (Japanese) chess

One of the most interesting (and easy-to-understand) references to chess in "literature" that I've recently come across occurred in, of all places, the Naruto manga. Shikamaru (one of the coolest characters in the series) is a ninja whose actual ninja power (ninjitsu) is somewhat weak; he can manipulate shadows, and through them, control a limited number of opponents. However, he is the strategist par excellence, and despite his young age, is often looked upon as the tactical leader in critical situations.

During one of the most powerful arcs of the Naruto series, Shikamaru avenges his teacher's death against two of the most formidable Akatsuki members, both essentially immortal. One of them is named "Hidan," and he's as close to immortal as someone can get. Hidan wields a strange scythe-like weapon, and worships some god of destruction. When he intends to kill someone, he performs a strange ritual in which he draws a circle in the sand. If he manages to wound an opponent and drink his blood, then he becomes "linked" to that opponent via a special curse. Any damage done to himself after the curse is applied (and while he is still in his circle) will be inflicted directly upon the opponent (sort of like a grotesque voodoo doll). So, if he stabs himself in the heart, his opponent will suffer a similar mortal wound. Keep in mind that he IS immortal, and anything done to him, even when he is not in his circle, will NOT kill him. At one point, he is even beheaded, and remains alive...

The other Akatsuki member is named Kakuzu. His entire body is threaded together via a special "fiber." He contains within himself at any one time five "hearts", many of them stolen from opponents he has vanquished. So long as any one heart beats, he remains alive. As he inherits the "elemental power" associated with any given heart, he potentially can control (simultaneously) five different elements (something not possible with a normal human being)...

"Hidan" and "Kakuzu" are names that indirectly reference chess pieces in the game Shogi (Japanese chess). Hidan is essentially like a Rook, and Kakuzu is essentially a Bishop. As Shikamaru contemplates a way to defeat both Hidan and Kakuzu, he meditates over a chessplay that pits a Knight (representative of Shikamaru himself, because his "intelligence" makes him move "unpredictably") against a Rook and a Bishop, in a play which apparently will only allow him to vanquish one opponent (allowing the other to vanquish HIM).

There's also a question as to who the King is? (i.e., who are you trying to protect?)

If you are interested, you should read the story arc in its entirety. Visit "naruto manga returns," a newsgroup posting ALL manga chapters. I will try to look up the actual chapters later...

Smothered Mate: An existential situation

As I am not a chess person by any means (in fact, I am pointedly NOT), I asked my friend Clifton if there were a chess play that was particularly significant, evocative. And he mentioned what is called a "Smothered Mate." I looked it up on google, and it looks perfect.

Again, I am not a chess person, but essentially "Smothered Mate" involves a checkmate accomplished by trapping an opponent in his/her own pieces/formation. In other words, the king is immobilized, not so much by his vulnerability (openness) as by his protection...

What is particularly interesting (for me, anyway) was that in the simplest example (on the site I read), it was the Knight that accomplished the checkmate (the knight seems appropriate for this move because of its ability to "jump over" obstacles to reach the king). In the stories I want to write, the Knight is a symbol, particularly for Randy and his reckless Don Quixote "style of play."

Recording further ideas for Marsilani

Okay, brainstorming session. Transcribing session. Whatever.

For "The Distance": Christine is wrestling with the guilt of having committed an abortion, and being a devout Catholic... She has been wrested from her "old context," her old school, and of course, her old "boyfriend," in order to make a "clean break" (another "abortion" of sorts) with her past. "It has less to do with being Catholic, and more to do with being Japanese," she realizes. The hypocrisy in that...

In the new school, Mililani, while pining away, and hoping to reestablish contact with her old beau, she "falls prey to" the infatuations of some idiot kid (okay, me) who fancies himself the modern day version of Don Quixote...

...you know, side note here, it's funny. We say "quixotic," we imagine that Don Quixote represents the ideal of chivalry, perhaps through rose-colored glasses, as though he lived in a quaint ("easy") time; but he himself lived in, shall we say, a "post-modern" age, a time that was a tarnishing of the supposed golden age of knighthood and chivalry, a Spain that was dusty with sin and corruption and hungry for the end of the world. The story comes alive if you read it, not from a distance, but as being concerned with YOUR issues, YOUR questions...

Central to the relationship between Christine and Randy is the image of the egg. The egg is a tool in some Guidance (?) / Health (?) classes to serve as a (cautionary) exercise in the responsibilities of raising a child... I have a vision of a demonstration of how to hollow an egg as being particularly upsetting to Christine (poking holes, "blowing" the stirred up contents out)...

An empty egg, a shell, this is precisely the way Randy relates to Christine, an appreciation only of surfaces. He himself, in his role as Don Quixote, is but a surface (in the "chivalry" and "knights" context, he is but an empty "suit of armor"). It is when the egg "cracks," that he comes to some realization of the inappropriateness and naivete of his "model" of relating...

More on this story in the next thought, which deserves an entry of its own...

Comments? Responses?

In my ETEC class, we've been discussing about the success or failure of blogs as collaborative forums. And a lot (okay all) of the discussion has been naturally falling upon the nature of the commentarium of blogs. What insures the success of the commentarium? Of course, a lot depends upon the quality/nature of the blog material itself; whether it is interesting, whether it actually sparks reaction...

When I mentioned Marsilani in class, and said that (at the time) I had only received ONE COMMENT, there was a kind of collective "awww" in the class, as though I were to be pitied. I countered somewhat, saying that, for me, the blog was a tool to exercise my writing and creativity, AS IF someone cared to read my thoughts... But the class implied that, without commentaries, without the hard proof, perhaps you ARE just "licking your ass" so to speak (sorry).

Recently, through this blog, I got in touch with a friend from a long time ago (from high school days)... [I had gotten in touch with another friend when the blog was first starting- I'm not downplaying that one, by any means...] In this, the blog has more than redeemed itself. My friend Clifton has additionally written the SECOND COMMENTARY on the blog, and truly exemplified the ideal purpose of the commentarium for me...

This goes back to the issue of the success/failure of the commentarium. Basically, as I imply in my comments on the class blog, the commentarium is like a democratic forum. The success/failure of a democracy depends largely upon the nature of the individuals who participate in it. There can be passive participation (body count), but there also can be active participation, the repeated voicing of individual reactions/thoughts... In the latter, there is a certain richness. A dialogue.

Particularly with a lot of the content of this blog, which is composed of a great many attempts at short story writing, comments are the only meager source of sustenance for me, the blogger... and I never realized how hungry I was, until I received this, my second commentary... PLEASE, READ IT!!! It's not just because I'm proud of it, but because it is a piece worthy of comment itself, a picture of life.

It is in reaction to "Short Story: Willow Weep for Me: Side A, Transplant/Transparent."

...and oh yeah, if you haven't figured it out yet, I am soliciting comments. Please. Anything to keep me going.

Juno... and thoughts

Today, my wife and I watched "Juno" at the Ward Theatres. It was my pathetic attempt at some sort of Valentine... I make a lot of excuses, but really, it's hard to be "romantic" when you have two kids, little time, and little money... Attempts to be "cutesy" and "spontaneous" somehow fly in the face of the expectations women have of this day. And I can't- I just can't- do much about it any more. I honestly feel, for some reason, that I am falling into a depressive phase of my life... Maybe more on this later...

So my wife and I watched "Juno." I heard a bit about it, even before the whole "buzz." Like I happened to listen to the Fresh Air interview of the writer (who also happened to be a stripper at one time, yo). And a few negative reviews of the movie (some said it was like what I call the "Dawson's Creek" [and arguably the "Marsilani"] phenomenon, where EVERYONE speaks with the author's tiring voice, EVERYONG [including teenagers] say profound and witty things on the fly). Well, even thus primed, I thoroughly enjoyed the film...

If you're going to see it, don't read further, because I'll spoil it for you. But among the characters is one played by Jason Bateman, who plays the potential adoptive father, a former "rocker" who is experiencing what is either a "mid-life crisis," and/or restlessness at a marriage with an inappropriate wife, or the confrontation with "parenthood" at an inappropriate time... There are elements of him that I think are in every man at this age (thirty something), to greater or lesser extents. I don't feel the restlessness can destroy anything within my life, at least not in the way of an upheavel or anything... No, I tend to take it on (or not) as I do everything else in my life, I shoulder it as a burden and a promise that I will (or likely, will not) be able to fulfill... And, eventually, I fall into a depressive funk.

...I think this blog, and many of my recent attempts at writing, etc. are my "Jason Bateman" moment (sorry, can't remember the dude's name in the "Juno" movie). They are my attempt to justify myself, my worth, in the face of my life. Don't get me wrong, I find immense value in my children and in my wife... But there is a dullness about domesticity, like the lulling of sleep (I have been SO fricking sleepy of late), a lulling that, while comfortable, whispers of death... Am I dying? Dreaming life away?

We attempt to force ourselves awake, keep an eye on the road, so to speak. But caffeine and willpower only go so far. Perhaps our metabolism changes at this age (maybe that's what yakudoshi's all about). I don't know... But there is a coloring of the world that is not quite the same as before.

I think of what my Ewa Beach grandmother mentioned a few weeks back, words that really stung me, but which I haven't really acted to address. My Ewa grandpa died a little over a year ago, and ever since, my Ewa grandma has been living it alone, occasionally visited by my uncle, my aunt, and us... Because Willow and Aiden haven't been seeing her very often, she complained to me that I was neglecting her. Well, she didn't say it so pointedly. But she told me: "I feel so lonely. You don't know what it is like to be REALLY lonely. You think you do. But you don't. Not until you get to my age, do you know."

And I know she's right. I feel like I'm standing at the edge of an abyss, at the edge of the island, and she's being tossed by the surf below. And there isn't a thing I can do to REALLY change things for her. I mean, I could try to go to her house more often (though when is there time?), but the loneliness she feels is fundamental... The best I can do, what I did then, was to just stay with her, for a time, really just stay and sit with her...

...life feels somewhat tiresome lately. As I said, I get sleepy more. Less excited about things. So many demands. And maybe I'll do them, and maybe I won't. The world doesn't change if I do, the world doesn't change if I don't... Oh, certainly, there are a thousand thousand ways to fall, and a definite one is to do nothing, because gravity and entropy are the laws of this universe, no one just floats forever... BUT why maintain things? The question interjects itself when you are weary... Interjects itself over and over and over. And at times, at times, you just don't have an answer, a ready answer, any more.

I have an awesome wife. She understands me. I don't think our relationship could have survived if she didn't know me the way that she does. As the father in "Juno" says, and I'm paraphrasing, the person you hold on to is the one who thinks there's sunshine coming out of your ass, day in, day out, whether you're on it or not, whether you're beautiful or ugly, etc. As our wedding song said, "Come rain or come shine." A hard rain's a 'gonna fall, or it feels like it lately, but at least I have someone to share the weather with. And that makes all the difference.

Pidgin English

There was a little discussion about pidgin English over in our Educational Foundations class. Not sure how we got to such a topic, especially when the class was supposed to be about the Historical perspective of Education... But when I made my comment, I tried to make it relevent. Here's what I said (in effect): There's this one local author who insists that, for literature to be authentically Hawaiian, it MUST be written in pidgin. I soundly object to this. While I am not denying said author's works as valid literature, I do object to his assertion that Hawaiian literature MUST be written in pidgin. Myself, I grew up in an entirely different context from Palolo Valley, such that pidgin is awkward and clumsy and, most importantly, inauthentic for me to speak. I am much more comfortable with formal (at least my version of formal) English. Am I denied the right to speak my stories simply because I can't clothe them in a "pidgin's" clothes???

Well, like I said, I tried to make this statement relevent to the discussion on history. So I started talking about how this author was simply trying to justify his "language," keep it, perhaps, from dying, because language is the voice of a culture, and the quickest way to make a culture die is to kill its language. Taken from this perspective, the author's views seem sympathetic; he's only trying to "keep alive" a perspective that is dying out, due to modernization and the Haole's plague...

BUT... Literature is a mirror to the society that it came from. But it isn't a static mirror. Society changes. The voice of society changes. So again, sympathetic as I am to the underdog, I can only speak in the voice I have inherited, which is middle class haole English...

BESIDES (and this will make me seem a traitor to the "local" perspective): Pidgin is more than a "language," it is an attitude, and that attitude is one that is "in your face", "casual." Much as I'd like to, I can't embody that attitude. I approach life from a distance, a polite distance, an irreducible distance, like the gap of an asymptotic curve... Again, just because I can't be "in your face," does that mean that I don't have a valid and relevant voice???

More catch phrases

Okay, so I was talking about "collective effervescence." Weber's a sociologist, so he takes the perspective that "society" (as a whole greater than the sum of its parts) is an entity of its own. I am perhaps misappropriating a water metaphor to describe his thoughts, but it seems easiest to use it. Society, like water, is hard to contain in a limited vessel; it always "leaks", it always "overflows." Similarly, although society ideally wishes to see itself as a united and unitary entity (it is this continual attempt that "binds" society together), it repeatedly eludes containment, it continually leaks out of the definitions it makes for itself... So society is at once both a holding together and a falling apart...

Where does the idea of "collective effervescence" come about? Okay, I'm getting to that. There are certain situations in which individuals congregate. And in this congregation, there is a high concentration of "energy" (for lack of a better word). It is in such situations that Weber's phenomenon of "collective effervescence" occurs, in which the concentration of individuals spontaneously "effervesces" into a collective awareness, an awareness that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I remember one of the students made a kind of visual joke about this concept. She said our class was like the congregation, and every now and then, "POP!" one or two people would jump up, just like soda bubbles...

simul iustus et peccatore - Latin for "simultaneously just(ified?) and sinful." This, I believe, was a statement written in one of the theological congresses (I can't think of the proper Catholic terminology). I (mis)appropriate this to describe the paradoxical "position" of man, as both a justified (through Christ) and sinful (as mortal man) being. Paradoxical, and absurd...

es gibt - Latin for "it gives." What gives? What gives indeed.

Recalling Max Weber: Collective Effervescence

Back at Williams College, in the Religion Department, there were a few "catch phrases," meant to capture/evoke key ideas in our readings. Here are a few examples (unfortunately, I can't recall exactly where they came from, or, for that matter, what their true significance was):

"obligatory excess" (mentioned a lot in Mark C. Taylor's class): basically, that in certain contexts, it is "obligatory" (i.e. socially forced and ENforced) for you to be "excessive" ("break the law"). The example of this is when most of the people do something "illegal/immoral", and then they say, "Come on! Do it! Everybody's doing it!" The reason there is an "obligatory" quality to such transgressions is that if EVERYONE does it, it is no longer "wrong." I.e. there is no one left who is free of guilt, and therefore, there is no one who can condemn the rest. I recall the Bob Dylan song: "Everybody must get stoned!"

"collective effervescence" (mentioned by Max Weber, sociologist, in "The Sociology of Religion"): this was a seminal text in our Sociology of Religion class. To be quite honest, I can't remember a lot of it, but I do recall key concepts being related to "concentration", "dilution", and, of course, "collective effervescence."

-well, the SPED class (interesting again) continues, so I will post more later.

Rock Star!

Someday, like when I'm in my forties, perhaps, I want to become a rock star.

No, really.

A long ago friend of mine, who has a busy and rich life, and who doesn't feel he has a creative outlet (imagine that), he is/was/is in a band. Someday, with permission of course, I may post up a few of his songs...

It is my dream to write/play songs that are Radiohead-esque... Not a lot of clangy OR acoustic guitar so much... but the kind of music you could put on your iPod and walk around in with a smooth kind of atmosphere like ghosts around you... Like you're swallowed by a lemonade cloud, and when you breathe, you swallow IT, and it tastes faintly sweet... That kind of music.

At one point in time, I was vainly searching for "summery" music. But it was kinda out of fashion in the nineties... So I instead fell into discordant music... Weird, but for a time, I was REALLY into NIN and KMFDM sort of stuff... And I LOVED (sometimes still do) techno/electronica... There was a song by a band named "Temple of Dreams," and it started off with this clip of Richard Dawson from "Running Man" saying, "Who loves you, and who do you love?" And then it had this ripping techno grind, and in the floating chorus, this smooth sexy girl voice sang, "Did I dream - you dreamed about me?"

Nowadays, that kind of music seems too angry... And while I am too cynical to fall instantly for "summery" music, I do appreciate something that is smooth and atmospheric. I don't know. Am I getting OLD?

In any case, that's the kind of rock music that we forty year olds would probably make.

What I'll make.

When I'm forty years old.

Powerpoint Production! ... and the nothing of my life.

For my ETEC (Education Technology) class, I will need to make a Powerpoint presentation incorporating different elements, like video, images, sounds, etc. Also, trying to make it a nonlinear format. We're supposed to do one about ourselves... This will be fun!

In fact, ETEC is probably my "fun"-est class... I've always wanted to have a class on technology, just a bit ahead of where I'm at, so I can explore my capabilities at expressing myself through software, etc. I would recommend it to anyone who "has ideas," but is just not savvy enough with the computer...

***

Unfortunately, I'm pretty blah right now regarding everything else... Just existing. My classes (the ones I am attending as a student) are actually all pretty cool, even the one I complained about earlier (the textbook and conversations with other graduate students, and a softening of my initial impression, have saved the class). I am fascinated by the complexities of the teaching profession; also, of course, slightly daunted and intimidated. But at this point, I still am naive enough to be optimistic...

The classes I teach, I'm okay with. Been discovering formats that the students seem to enjoy and learn a lot from. There are some students who bring up critiques (of me and the school in general) that I am not certain that I can address adequately... For example: there is one student who has apparently apprenticed below a Japanese practitioner of the Toyohari method... Our school teaches primarily TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine... which, as was pointed out by David, our school librarian, is actually a misnomer, and a "marketing label..."). So this student critiques the TCM approach, and our clinical procedures, stating that we are not "philosophically consistent," "we never tonify, we only disperse," and other things.

She has valid complaints, of course. BUT: we are expressly supposed to be a TCM school; AND clinic is NEVER a perfect, ideal situation... Interns are limited in time, supervisors have varying perspectives on the application of TCM (or even whether TCM style is appropriate)...

I offered an idea to the student interns on Wednesday. I told them that we could attempt to offer students the opportunity to practice different styles of acupuncture (Korean, Japanese, etc.). But I made clear that this will be a difficult thing to enact. We will have to create clinic manuals for each particular style, and if an intern decides to practice a given style for a period of time, they MUST commit to it. What I want to avoid is "haphazard" acupuncture, where points from all manner of context are "thrown into" a treatment, without any consistent philosophical basis... Of course, there are "empirical" points, or points that individual practitioners "discover..." but even so, there must be some philosophical basis upon which a given treatment depends, or else patients become nothing more than pin cushions...

This will be a difficult thing to do, unfortunately... And there are several questions that must be answered prior to the actual work. Questions like, what constitutes an acupuncture "style?" How is a style different from an individual interpretation of a style? Is there such a thing as an eclectic, or META-style?

I have distinct ideas of what I consider to be styles. TCM, for example, is a vast style with several "interpretations," but there are basic consistencies that hold across interpretations... There is no one Japanese style, however... There is the Toyohari school, various Five Elements "styles" (like Shudo Denmei's), and, of course, the eclectic Kiiko Matsumoto... Then there are all the microsystem "styles," like Koryo Hand Acupuncture, Auriculotherapy... I could go on near forever...

... anyway, that's the big concern in clinic, for me, anyway. Haven't even discussed this with other supervisors, or the president of the school. It might even be considered SUBVERSIVE that I bring such topics up... I mean, implying that there are other legitimate styles out there questions the TCM backbone upon which the school is founded... BUT: I feel we are doing students a disservice if we imply that there AREN'T other valid styles; when they go out into the marketplace, their competitors will be using a whole slew of styles. At the very least, we need to acquaint our students with some of those styles, so they don't feel completely overwhelmed...

***

... Another idea I've been thinking of is trying to "computerize" the whole intake analysis process... I've been thinking of this for myself as well. I would like to write a program that would allow students/patients to enter information off an intake form (perhaps even replacing hard-copy intake forms); the info would then be entered into a datasheet. The datasheet would then be compared against various databases (one for TCM style, another for Kiiko Matsumoto style, etc.) and results would be printed as percent matches with different patterns; for example, patient A matches 97% with Liver/Kidney Yin Deficiency, 50% with Spleen Qi Deficiency and so on... Again, this may be seen as blasphemous or subversive, but I think it helps to QUANTIFY information, if only to help clarify a practitioner's thinking... AND it could be used as a teaching tool, because students would actually be able to SEE why a given diagnosis could be interpreted as more likely than another, SIMPLY based upon the AMOUNT OF MATCH... I want to learn how to program (perhaps in html????) in order to construct such a intake analysis...

***

I have other aspirations for finishing Marsilani... Ideas are stewing about, and sometimes upon re-reading old material, I discover that perhaps things aren't half so bad as I imagined... (maybe I'm just in a generous and uncritical mood of late). I have ideas of radically rearranging a few stories, like Kipapa, Distance, Exit Stage Right, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, etc... Mainly the stories in the second section... Also: the whole Moth-Eaten story needs to be drastically reworked; maybe even the incorporation of a filthy dirty (I mean it) sex scene (first I've ever written, at least publicly).

***

I've got to register Willow and Aiden for school; Willow will be attending Mililani Ike (hopefully), which is just around the corner from where we live; Aiden will continue attending Children's House...

I need to work harder and more consistently with Aiden on such things as letter recognition. Willow is doing well, but I have to really get her up to speed on reading. Kindergarteners these days are doing what I think I was doing in the second grade!!!

Also: we will have Willow and Aiden take violin and percussion (snare) classes with this high school kid who lives nearby. He's an expert in the Suzuki method, and comes highly recommended... What's more, get this, he will only charge us $30 for each of them per month!!! I couldn't believe it myself... Too good to be true. Hopefully, they have the attention span for it...

Something this teacher said was interesting... He said that kids this age don't know what they want; if you ask them to "choose" what they want to play, they will only go for what is shiniest, or what parents want, etc. It is reminiscent of something I discussed with other students about in our Educational Foundations class, something related to Plato's Allegory of the Cave... In the initial stages, guidance is vital, because students are "so blind" that they don't know that they don't know... Also, with regards to "freedom;" freedom is NOT unconditional (or cannot be in a society)...

***

Lynn has a new hairstyle, her hair is cut short... Don't know why, but it is particularly attractive to me... Is it something "boyish?" Ugh...

Speaking of which. I ate dinner at Kent's over on River Street. River Street, if you don't know, is a sort of dirty nasty place. There are a bunch of Chinese gamblers playing Pai Gao, and a lot of "tweakers" (crystal meth heads), and homeless people, and REALLY unattractive hookers. And there are also a few transvestites... So anyway I was eating eggs, portuguese sausage and rice (what I ALWAYS eat there, don't ask me why) and I was sitting across from three gay men, two of them transvestites, one ALMOST looking like a homely skinny girl. As I was on the way out, one of the transvestites said, "Excuse me, can I ask you a question?" I was in a pretty open mood, so I hung around, said "Yes." And the transvestite asked, "What are you? Are you Chinese?" "No." And (s)he ran through the checklist: Korean? Filipino? Hawaiian? Finally, "Japanese?" "Yes." And then (s)he said: "Well, you are very attractive." I smiled briefly, said "Thank you, so are you." And I left the place, trying to not grin too ridiculously...

Not the first time I've been accosted and complimented by (gulp) a man. I wish I'd had that kind of luck with women... And I wish I'd had that kind of luck with women when I was single and desperately lonely... But that's all in the past. I've got my (now) boyish looking wife. And I'm happy...

Ideas for Improving (AND COMPLETING) Marsilani

Idea 1: Kipapa requires a massive overhaul...


a) Writing from the perspective of dead Hawaiian ghosts is difficult. I don't know Hawaiian, don't know Hawaiian culture, don't know squat. So to write from the perspective of O'okele (sounds close to Okolele) feels either like a lie, or (to cover up for the lie) too general and nonspecific to be "tellable-rich". Instead: incorporate the perspective of O'okele as a dream, a recurring dream that haunts Cliff... See next!


b) It would be a shame to have a story about Night Marchers and not have a frightening direct encounter with them... I mean, come on! And it just sounds so intriguing, that the only way to avoid "disappearing" with them is to 1) NOT look them in the eye; 2) [I SWEAR I've heard this] strip naked and lie prone; and 3) in any case, try to stay off their path!!! So I was thinking: Cliff and Erica happen to be in Kipapa, and for some reason or other get stuck there when the Night Marchers come; Cliff, in desperation, tears Erica's clothes off (at least her top) and throws her down; but he himself LOOKS at the Night Marchers as they approach... YET, for some reason, he is spared. (Another thing I've heard about Night Marchers: the only way you could possibly be spared if you DID look at them was that one of the spirits was an ancestor of your's). Cliff survives, Erica survives, although it is definitely a traumatic experience for the both of them... Afterwards, Cliff has the recurring "dreams", presumably of the ancestor that "saved" him...


The trouble with this is positioning: should the encounter with the Night Marchers happen at the start of the story, sort of like this trauma that inevitably forces Cliff and Erica together? Or should it be later, like the disaster that it is?

"Apollo-G"

I had an idea for the name of a character once. His name was Apollo-G.

Apparently, his parents had had an abortion for their first "child," and, feeling consumed by guilt, named their second child (a son) Apollo-G. G is the seventh letter in the alphabet. Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission after the disastrous Apollo 1 mission (which lost 3 crew members). Apollo 7 was therefore a confidence building mission for NASA.

This character, Apollo-G, by extension, lives a life that is always in reference to a sibling that never was. He is literally an "apology" for the abortion committed by his parents...

Jyumyo, "the body is borrowed, the mind alone is yours"

I visited my Ewa Beach grandmother yesterday. As always, over lunch (some curry that someone had given her), she gave me a talk on religion.

My grandfather died roughly a year ago; on February 9th, we are to have a year anniversary service. He died at age 92. His dog, Coco, a chihuahua, had to be given to a neighbor last year; apparently, he passed away a few months back. According to calculations and guess-timates, my grandma says that Coco was 92 years old as well (in dog-years).

This confirmed (for my grandma) that grandpa was supposed to die when he did (at age 92). She kept saying that it was his "jyumyo," his "destined time."

In Tenrikyo, there is much talk about "innen" (karma); from my grandmother's perspective, nothing is innocent, or "just happens"; everything occurs for a reason. Of course, on the surface, this doesn't differ with the way in which "normal" people view events; that is, basic karma is nothing other than the law of cause and effect, which most scientists would not question. However, in the context of religion, karma takes on a "spiritual," and therefore, questionable, aspect; in other words, "things happen" not simply because physical causes were present, but because they are "payback" for spiritual deeds (both good and bad) in the past. Adding this "spiritual" dimension makes karma moralistic in nature (or, at least, it can, potentially).

A long life, free of misfortune, is easily translated as being the result of "good karma." A short life, filled with suffering, conversely, is the result of "bad karma."

Yet all lives are filled with some misfortunes, some accidents. And we all know (or sense) that bad things often happen to good people (and vice versa). Where is the law of karma then?

The answer, of course, lies in the scope of our perception. Karma implies reincarnation, and therefore, the results of present karma could be the product of actions committed in previous lives... IDEALLY, then, karma is supposed to engender an attitude of acceptance... we cannot know what (good or bad) seeds we planted in previous lives, we can only harvest unconditionally that which grows in our present...

This brings us to the strange concept of jyumyo. If, as I imply, karma is this complex calculus of "good/bad," a computation whose origins stretch back further than we can see, a computation which is changing with each deed that we perform, then how is it possible that there can be a set "jyumyo" (date of death)? Is it stamped upon us like the frenulum left by the Angel Gabriel?

Just random thoughts...

Another thing that struck me during yesterday's discussion was the Tenrikyo idea/saying: "the body is a thing borrowed; the mind alone is yours." No, this is not talking about becoming some kind of body-snatcher... It is a way of saying that our physical body (and by extension, the physical body's experience of this physical world, i.e. "LIFE") is merely a vessel that is borrowed temporarily. The only thing we "possess" is our own mind.

Furthermore, according to Tenrikyo, God the Parent's intention is that we realize the joyous life. To simplify, God just wants us to be happy. The problem is, we don't know what real happiness is, nor how to get to it.

Supposedly, by following God the Parent's commandments to be sincere, and always help others, one utilizes the mind in a proper manner (one aligns the "self-possessed and independent" mind with the mind of God), and realizes the joyous life. Whether this has any effect on the "borrowed body" (and by extension the physical, causal world) is another question. [this goes back to the whole karma thing, I suppose]

Personally, I value religion in its call to consider and be aware of the internal workings of the soul/mind. Where I tend to shy away from religion is when it makes statements regarding the (expected) results of our internal work. I mean, should we do good deeds because we expect a good payback (harvest)? Or should good deeds be done because they are good?

In the modern world, I think, the whole model of "moral" causality is painfully seen as absurd. No one seems to get what they deserve. So if the basis for being moral/good is simply the incentive of getting good results, why, most encounter resistance simply because such a "moral" law flies in the face of all the evidence that they see everyday: i.e. Cyrus Bell, the 2 year old whose parents were addicted to ice, and who was dropped from a freeway overpass...

Goodness IS. Even if the laws of karma are broken, even if this world is absurd and cruel, goodness still is.

Jyumyo may be fixed, there is no avoiding our death. We accept and embrace the fact of it, the absurdity of it, and still (if we choose to) we try to be good.

Tai Chi: Chiu Style Taijiquan Form (at Yokohama)

This is the "second hand form" of Chiu Style Taijiquan.

Tai Chi: Chiu Style Push Hands Form (at Yokohama)

This is the "first hand form" of Chiu Style Taijiquan.