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.