so mililani's "magazine" came out, spotlighting the history and "successes" of mililani town's 40 year existence on this earth... i had written a little thingie for it. while it wasn't perfect, i didn't feel it needed any editing... sometimes when people add words for "clarity's sake," it tends to ruin the rhythm of your prose, so that you come off sounding stupid (or, what's pretty much the same, you come off sounding like your AUDIENCE is stupid, requiring pedantic clarifications)...
anyway... wish i could finish marsilani. wouldn't it be the perfect juxtaposition to this "happy birthday" issuance? while i don't think my work is exactly critical of mililani, it does paint the town in a, shall we say, bloodier color... but the way my schedule's going, and my creativity- well, like that's ever going to happen.
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funny thing happened yesterday. i needed to clear out a whole lot of space, get our household papers organized and such, so i started using a shredder on all of our unnecessary (but sensitive) documents... anyway, when i stopped by my parent's house, strangely enough, my mom was doing the exact same thing: sitting beside a shredder, feeding old papers...
as i was about to leave with the kids, my mom gave me a plastic bag. "it's your old stuff," she explained. it seemed pretty haphazardly packed, so i considered tossing it before leaving my parent's house... good thing i didn't. i opened it at home, and discovered a whole treasure trove of memories. i found my journal from the 2nd and 3rd grades, complete with my "transcribed-from-memory" ghost stories (the "pirate's curse" from the alfred hitchcock ghost stories lp). it was these "transcriptions" that made me appear intelligent, enough to warrant giving me the g.t. test at the end of my 3rd grade... again, as i've stated before, i think if i hadn't "copied" those stories down, no one would have even paid me any mind... and i wouldn't be "delighting" the one or two of you who happen to stumble into my blog every now and then...
i also found, interestingly enough, some papers that my parents wrote on either the day of, or in the vicinity of, my birth. my mom wrote a checklist of things to do: get crib bumpers, etc. one of the items was: come up with a name. and at the bottom of the sheet was a small list of names: ryan, steven, randall... thank god they didn't name me randall. maybe i'm so used to it (even the austin powers jokes), but randy seems so much more me than "randall." "randall." it just, well, rhymes with scandall... it's rand with "dull" at the end. and i'm dull enough as is.
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got me to thinking about memories... it's weird. i've been to a few places, seen a few things. but at times, it seems like the past, well, it happened to someone else. i seem so consumed with adapting to the present, to "dumbing it down" to make sure it doesn't overwhelm me with its pressures and complexities, that i think i forget everything that came before. sometimes i think that if i could only summon up all my memories with clarity, bring it all to bear upon the present moment like a vast tidal wave, why, i wouldn't be so afraid of things, i'd be wiser than solomon... but: there are things i should remember but can't... like: i can't remember the configuration of our old house on aohoku place. i can't even remember how my room was set up. isn't that stupid? i lived there for almost a decade and a half.
and people... well, people seem strange to me even in the present, and sometimes i prefer to keep them that way. getting too close is... well, messy... i think i'm the kind of person who can only be intimate and loyal to a few. particularly with women (don't tell my wife). i mean, i'm as loyal as the sun and the moon, but if i didn't have this "spine" within me, i think i'd spill out my heart to anyone who'd open up to me... in fact, i think that's my dynamic: a desperate need to share, coupled with, shall we say, a polite reserve, a polite distancing. on the surface, i might seem "aloof," as they once called me in high school, but scratch just a little (or what's worse, compliment or caress me) and i'm the freshest wound beneath the scab.
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speaking of people. i just put up a facebook profile. look it up if you'd like (as if this isn't information overload enough). I HAVE NO FRIENDS !!! (sniff sniff). no, but i don't mind. people i want to correspond with, i already am corresponding with... and because i'm such a "reserved" weirdo, well, no one wants to touch me with a ten foot pole... it's okay, it's okay.
friendship, at least in large indeterminate aggregates, is highly overrated. heady auras, and all that. as if knowing a lot of faces makes you any more special... (or maybe i'm just jealous. maybe.)
when confronted by the whole friendship game, i was the sort who just wanted to disappear.
and the people that mattered in my life, well, they always just quietly crept out as well, and kept me company...
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