today we went to the zoo. lynn, aunty joan, the kids and i. we took a slightly different route, and serendipitously, we were able to see a lot of animals that we had not (sometimes never) seen: a sun bear, a cheetah, the hippos, the sloths, the marmosets. the kids had fun. i enjoy the kids' enjoyment. it is what the world is for, at least in my eyes.
this evening, i tried to do the violin lessons with the kids. it has become my regular responsibility, my chore, to take them through this. lynn hasn't attended the violin lessons, and no longer knows where the kids are at. and besides, if i don't do it, no one ever does. my patience is always short. i hate the person i become when i work with the kids, but it seems like i am paying attention to all of these details that the kids need to work out, and they seem to pay very little. i don't know how to command motivation. i suppose i shouldn't, in any case. i should make things fun. i should take things easy. but when you care about anything, all of a sudden, you almost have to get riled up. i don't know...
this gets to the heart of things, i suppose. caring about something, someone, it "embodies" you into the human realm. and you have to get upset. if you didn't, then you either didn't care, or you insulated yourself somehow, which meant you were a step removed, which implied (although not always) that you didn't care.
i am someone who no longer knows what to care about, or perhaps who cares too much about the wrong things, and too little about the things that matter. i'm not sure. the world goes on either way.
i read somewhere once: perhaps it was in some astrology book or something. i read somewhere that i was not unlike a shield. a shield has a bright side and a dark side. a shield has two surfaces, one burnished and battered, and another concealed and concealing. a shield therefore knows an ambiguity, that the world is a place of impossible forces and collisions, in short, of ceaseless conflict; and it also knows that in the world, there are vulnerabilities that must be protected, must be kept intact. what self does a shield have, if any? it is a border. it is a darkness. it is a mute and deaf piece of metal that only sings its name when it is hit, only knows its purpose when it has stopped the intentions of one and furthered/protected the intentions of another...
i recall in that astrology reading that those who are shields were ceaselessly drawn to the darkness. it is almost a reflex. in the heat of battle, in the clang and clash of war, it is easy to know oneself; my name, for example, means "shield wolf," and i imagine the "rand" is the sound of metal on metal. in conflict, i would know myself, for i would hear my name echo and vibrate within my being.
but when all is quiet, and shields fall to disuse and rust, there is a sinking into the deadness within. if even the echoes die, what does a shield become?
the darkness is vast. and it has no heart.
i often wonder if i have a heart.
i talk about context. context is my battlefield. it is how and where i find my purpose. i complain about context, claiming that it "cuts" me from who i really am, but i also am aware that without context, perhaps there is no answer. i am a border that falls into the fray. without a fray, i am nothing.
***
freud, in beyond the pleasure principle, once described the "original" organism as a cell. some parts of the cell (the cell membrane) had to die, or in some aspect become inert, in order that the interior portions could survive and carry out the living processes. death, in other words, was essential to life. it was from this theoretical beginning that freud posited the existence of twin basal instincts, inextricably tied to one other: thanatos, the need to die, and eros, the need to love/unite.
i always loved certain passages from this book because they echoed something within me, that dead something, and the conflict within me that it inspired...
life sometimes can feel like the compulsion to repeat, a sort of post traumatic syndrome... ultimately, i sometimes feel we are always repeating, even when we think we are being "original."
there is nothing new under the sun.
***
from the apple store, i bought an electronic drawing pad. i hope it will make drawing easier and fun for willow. i want her to get into electronic drawing. she is an excellent artist, and i hope to encourage her to expand into this new and more dynamic medium.
(i also want to use it myself, someday)
if there is one thing i hope for, aside from being better at what i do (teaching, treating people), it is finding ways to express myself artistically, in a variety of media. it is the only way i think i can keep myself "alive." or at least pretend that i am. i don't necessarily do it for any sort of recognition; at least, i don't necessarily care if anyone recognizes worth in my work (although it would be excruciatingly nice). i do it as though i were wielding a dark mirror, to see my own shadow... or perhaps i just want to create a shadow, in order to prove that i exist.
Friday, March 27, 2009
people all need an out...
people all need space to exhale. a landfill canvas for their refused feelings.
the trouble comes when there is no room for it all.
no one pays any attention any more. perhaps it is due to a "short attention span," or perhaps it is because there is a finite capacity for collective attention. in any case, we have been filled near to capacity by the garbage and the beauty of our intentional and unintentional productions. our exhalations. exhortations. exhibitions.
we have all seen it before. and yet far from being satiated, our eyes are mouths hungry for more. we are jaded. less gets to us. so our eyes, green with envy for something that is no longer green, for this world that we have choked to death with our carbon dioxide breath, they look for that crack into the spectacular, the spectacle, which will quickly be faded over like a cataract over our lenses as the already seen.
(funny, how a cataract can be a river, and the obstruction to sight)
space, attention, patience, love. these are rarer and rarer commodities these days.
they say time is a scarcity, but that's not true. we have all the time in the world. and we have none of it. in any case, time is not the issue. it's us. it always has been, always will be. how we qualify ourselves with relation to time.
i am giving myself to the waste of time. to those things we devalue, but are the most valuable things in this world. give me space, pay attention, be patient with what will be stubborn and shy, love the unrecognized and unloveable. convention is for the convention goers. choose instead to allow what hasn't spoken to speak.
it is a fine line to walk, between gibberish and truth.
and there is real fear here...
on the edge of meaning, how do you know that you are still on the edge?
people all need space to exhale. a landfill canvas for their refused feelings.
the trouble comes when there is no room for it all.
no one pays any attention any more. perhaps it is due to a "short attention span," or perhaps it is because there is a finite capacity for collective attention. in any case, we have been filled near to capacity by the garbage and the beauty of our intentional and unintentional productions. our exhalations. exhortations. exhibitions.
we have all seen it before. and yet far from being satiated, our eyes are mouths hungry for more. we are jaded. less gets to us. so our eyes, green with envy for something that is no longer green, for this world that we have choked to death with our carbon dioxide breath, they look for that crack into the spectacular, the spectacle, which will quickly be faded over like a cataract over our lenses as the already seen.
(funny, how a cataract can be a river, and the obstruction to sight)
space, attention, patience, love. these are rarer and rarer commodities these days.
they say time is a scarcity, but that's not true. we have all the time in the world. and we have none of it. in any case, time is not the issue. it's us. it always has been, always will be. how we qualify ourselves with relation to time.
i am giving myself to the waste of time. to those things we devalue, but are the most valuable things in this world. give me space, pay attention, be patient with what will be stubborn and shy, love the unrecognized and unloveable. convention is for the convention goers. choose instead to allow what hasn't spoken to speak.
it is a fine line to walk, between gibberish and truth.
and there is real fear here...
on the edge of meaning, how do you know that you are still on the edge?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
later, they will contextualize his dreams and disturbances by saying that they were prescient, and a harbinger for things to come. they always do that, those scientists in their clean white smocks, dissecting things after the fact...
i had the nightmare. it was a dream of a bad dream sequence played back again and again. i told someone i didn't want to see it, i told them there was a chance that something might get out, but my voice isn't heard in dreams. i just watch. and they played it again and again, and with each iteration, things stayed the same, but things got worse and worse...
i can no longer imagine a different world, with a different ending. it is as though i were physically incapable of asking for what i want. the thread that i am has been woven in, and it has no freedom to fray and stray. i am a participant in this reality (some might say i create it, but that notion is far distant, like the whirring of a fly). i want things to be different (who wouldn't), but there is no capacity to imagine, must less believe, in an alternative...
the best an individual can do is to be gentle, be kind, be human. i am these things. perhaps that is why the dreams come. but then again, perhaps that is why the dreams can go no further...
children are not the ones we save. they are our salvation. and i will die at their feet, knowing what i know and seeing what i have seen, before i allow their innocence to be stained. i want them to live, intact and beautiful. that is my purpose...
i had the nightmare. it was a dream of a bad dream sequence played back again and again. i told someone i didn't want to see it, i told them there was a chance that something might get out, but my voice isn't heard in dreams. i just watch. and they played it again and again, and with each iteration, things stayed the same, but things got worse and worse...
i can no longer imagine a different world, with a different ending. it is as though i were physically incapable of asking for what i want. the thread that i am has been woven in, and it has no freedom to fray and stray. i am a participant in this reality (some might say i create it, but that notion is far distant, like the whirring of a fly). i want things to be different (who wouldn't), but there is no capacity to imagine, must less believe, in an alternative...
the best an individual can do is to be gentle, be kind, be human. i am these things. perhaps that is why the dreams come. but then again, perhaps that is why the dreams can go no further...
children are not the ones we save. they are our salvation. and i will die at their feet, knowing what i know and seeing what i have seen, before i allow their innocence to be stained. i want them to live, intact and beautiful. that is my purpose...
langevin and yandow
i am transcribing some of this from a summary of research found in a leon chaitow book:
Langevin & Yandow (2002) have presented evidence that links the network of acupuncture points and meridians to a network formed by interstitial connective tissue. Using a unique dissection and charting method for location of connective tissue (fascial) planes, acupuncture points and acupuncture meridians of the arm, they note that: 'Overall, more than 80% of acupuncture points and 50% of meridian intersections of the arm appeared to coincide with intermuscular or intramuscular connective tissue planes.'
Langevin & Yandow's research further shows microscopic evidence that when an acupuncture needle is inserted and rotated (as is classically performed in acupuncture treatment), a 'whorl' of connective tissue forms around the needle, thereby creating a tight mechanical coupling between the tissue and the needle. The tension placed on the connective tissue as a result of further movements of the needle delivers a mechanical stimulus at the cellular level. They note that changes in the extracellular matrix '...may, in turn, influence the various cell populations sharing this connective tissue matrix (e.g. fibroblasts, sensory afferents, immune and vascular cells)'.
The key elements of Langevin's research can best be summarized as follows:
*Acupuncture points, and many of the effects of acupuncture, seem to relate to the fact that most of these localized 'points' lie directly over areas where there is fascial cleavage; where sheets of fascia diverge to separate, surround and support different muscle bundles (Langevin et al 2001).
*Connective tissue is a communication system of as yet unknown potential. The tiny projections emerginf from each cell are called 'integrins'. Ingber demonstrated (Inger 1993b, Ingber & Folkman 1989) integrins to be a cellular signaling system that modify their function depending on the relative normality of the shape of cells. The structural integrity (shape) of cells depends on the overall state of normality (deformed, stretched, etc.) of the fascia as a whole. As Langevin et al (2004) report:
'Loose' connective tissue forms a network extending throughout the body including subcutaneous and interstitial connective tissues. The existence of a cellular network of fibroblasts within loose connective tissue may have considerable significance as it may support yet unknown body-wide cellular signaling systems ... Our findings indicate that soft tissue fibroblasts form an extensively interconnected cellular network, suggesting they may have important, and so far unsuspected integrative functions at the level of the whole body.
*Perhaps the most fascinating research in this remarkable series of discoveries is that cells change their shape and behavior following stretching (and crowding/deformation). The observation of these researchers is that: 'The dynamic, cytoskeleton-dependent responses of fibroblasts to changes in tissue length demonstrated in this study have important implications for our understanding of normal movement and posture, as well as therapies using mechanical stimulation of connective tissue, including physical therapy, massage and acupuncture' (Langevin et al 2005).
Langevin & Yandow (2002) have presented evidence that links the network of acupuncture points and meridians to a network formed by interstitial connective tissue. Using a unique dissection and charting method for location of connective tissue (fascial) planes, acupuncture points and acupuncture meridians of the arm, they note that: 'Overall, more than 80% of acupuncture points and 50% of meridian intersections of the arm appeared to coincide with intermuscular or intramuscular connective tissue planes.'
Langevin & Yandow's research further shows microscopic evidence that when an acupuncture needle is inserted and rotated (as is classically performed in acupuncture treatment), a 'whorl' of connective tissue forms around the needle, thereby creating a tight mechanical coupling between the tissue and the needle. The tension placed on the connective tissue as a result of further movements of the needle delivers a mechanical stimulus at the cellular level. They note that changes in the extracellular matrix '...may, in turn, influence the various cell populations sharing this connective tissue matrix (e.g. fibroblasts, sensory afferents, immune and vascular cells)'.
The key elements of Langevin's research can best be summarized as follows:
*Acupuncture points, and many of the effects of acupuncture, seem to relate to the fact that most of these localized 'points' lie directly over areas where there is fascial cleavage; where sheets of fascia diverge to separate, surround and support different muscle bundles (Langevin et al 2001).
*Connective tissue is a communication system of as yet unknown potential. The tiny projections emerginf from each cell are called 'integrins'. Ingber demonstrated (Inger 1993b, Ingber & Folkman 1989) integrins to be a cellular signaling system that modify their function depending on the relative normality of the shape of cells. The structural integrity (shape) of cells depends on the overall state of normality (deformed, stretched, etc.) of the fascia as a whole. As Langevin et al (2004) report:
'Loose' connective tissue forms a network extending throughout the body including subcutaneous and interstitial connective tissues. The existence of a cellular network of fibroblasts within loose connective tissue may have considerable significance as it may support yet unknown body-wide cellular signaling systems ... Our findings indicate that soft tissue fibroblasts form an extensively interconnected cellular network, suggesting they may have important, and so far unsuspected integrative functions at the level of the whole body.
*Perhaps the most fascinating research in this remarkable series of discoveries is that cells change their shape and behavior following stretching (and crowding/deformation). The observation of these researchers is that: 'The dynamic, cytoskeleton-dependent responses of fibroblasts to changes in tissue length demonstrated in this study have important implications for our understanding of normal movement and posture, as well as therapies using mechanical stimulation of connective tissue, including physical therapy, massage and acupuncture' (Langevin et al 2005).
Monday, March 23, 2009
nobody ever gets what's coming to them.
in heaven, as on earth,
money and privilege
and the blood of the invisible
and adulterated
grease the hidden wheels.
they've been spared the hard choices
the compromises
the sacrifices
steering lexuses
with leather-gloved hands
on leather-gloved wheels
they tap the controls
and the flies are brushed off
the windshield.
so has it been,
so shall it be,
forever and ever amen.
don't hold your breath.
life ain't no cinderella story.
and i never heard of a phoenix
springing from these ashes you sweep
and are.
they'll never get what's coming to them, you see.
but we'll try to live right
anyway
not for revenge, or for reward
but because it's the only
justice we'll find:
that we can choose
to be good
in a choiceless world.
in heaven, as on earth,
money and privilege
and the blood of the invisible
and adulterated
grease the hidden wheels.
they've been spared the hard choices
the compromises
the sacrifices
steering lexuses
with leather-gloved hands
on leather-gloved wheels
they tap the controls
and the flies are brushed off
the windshield.
so has it been,
so shall it be,
forever and ever amen.
don't hold your breath.
life ain't no cinderella story.
and i never heard of a phoenix
springing from these ashes you sweep
and are.
they'll never get what's coming to them, you see.
but we'll try to live right
anyway
not for revenge, or for reward
but because it's the only
justice we'll find:
that we can choose
to be good
in a choiceless world.
death of a tooth, or al dente
for years now, i have lived without insurance (or more properly, i have not taken full advantage of it). once, i was hospitalized due to an allergic reaction to an as yet unidentified something, and that required coverage. but for my teeth, i've gone roughly twenty years without a visit. i recall a couple of times when things were a bit rough; i had stubborn toothaches that i only treated with anbesol (or the equivalent) and some acupuncture. actually, come to think of it, it's the same tooth...
so anyway, roughly one year ago, at the gas station, i decided to "snap into a slim jim." i NEVER eat slim jims, btw. i was just hungry for any protein, and i didn't have enough time to even go through a drive thru (nasty!). i must have been pretty hungry, because the dried out slightly greasy fare would have made most up-chuck. anyway, taking "that other randy's" advice, i "snapped..." odd, something snapped back. i honestly thought that they'd put some kind of bone (a fragment of shoulder blade or something) in the slim jim, and reflexively spit it out. into the weedelia bushes. but then, my mouth still felt wierd. i felt around with my tongue, and noticed that one of my teeth (about the fourth to the right) had a different shape; in fact, it was actually kind of "ridged." when i looked in the rear view mirror carefully, i noticed that about half of that tooth had shattered...
snap forward to the recent past, yesterday. i'd been "polishing" that tooth fragment for a year, still refusing to take advantage of my wife's insurance (largely because i thought we needed it for the kids). and at willow's b-day party, while eating a catered sushi with takuan in it, i swear, the takuan was SOLID, i broke the rest of the tooth. again, it felt more like i had bitten something solid, as opposed to it breaking my tooth... but a quick exam in the bathroom, and a not-painful tearing off of the remnant of the swinging fragment, left a clean hole. i put the fragment in my pocket after wiping off some of the blood... but in the chaos of the party, i think i must have dropped it. oh well, easy come easy go.
i have a lot of dreams of tooth decay. and mortality. i often feel like i'm rotting on the inside. maybe rotting is just an extension backwards of the post-mortem process. we like to compartmentalize things that way. that way, pre-mortem seems like a "positive" life-affirming process, to be separated from all of that nasty maggot-ridden nonsense. but it's always going on. it's always a struggle to maintain order and life against the forces of decay and entropy. and not that decay is such a bad thing. it's a process, after all, that goes on always, all around us...
...or maybe i'm just spouting words from my tooth deficient mouth, when i should just visit the dentist.
(btw, i just saw charlie and the chocolate factory, new version, with johnny dep. it's awesome! i especially sympathize with willy's situation with his father. see the movie, you'll understand.)
so anyway, roughly one year ago, at the gas station, i decided to "snap into a slim jim." i NEVER eat slim jims, btw. i was just hungry for any protein, and i didn't have enough time to even go through a drive thru (nasty!). i must have been pretty hungry, because the dried out slightly greasy fare would have made most up-chuck. anyway, taking "that other randy's" advice, i "snapped..." odd, something snapped back. i honestly thought that they'd put some kind of bone (a fragment of shoulder blade or something) in the slim jim, and reflexively spit it out. into the weedelia bushes. but then, my mouth still felt wierd. i felt around with my tongue, and noticed that one of my teeth (about the fourth to the right) had a different shape; in fact, it was actually kind of "ridged." when i looked in the rear view mirror carefully, i noticed that about half of that tooth had shattered...
snap forward to the recent past, yesterday. i'd been "polishing" that tooth fragment for a year, still refusing to take advantage of my wife's insurance (largely because i thought we needed it for the kids). and at willow's b-day party, while eating a catered sushi with takuan in it, i swear, the takuan was SOLID, i broke the rest of the tooth. again, it felt more like i had bitten something solid, as opposed to it breaking my tooth... but a quick exam in the bathroom, and a not-painful tearing off of the remnant of the swinging fragment, left a clean hole. i put the fragment in my pocket after wiping off some of the blood... but in the chaos of the party, i think i must have dropped it. oh well, easy come easy go.
i have a lot of dreams of tooth decay. and mortality. i often feel like i'm rotting on the inside. maybe rotting is just an extension backwards of the post-mortem process. we like to compartmentalize things that way. that way, pre-mortem seems like a "positive" life-affirming process, to be separated from all of that nasty maggot-ridden nonsense. but it's always going on. it's always a struggle to maintain order and life against the forces of decay and entropy. and not that decay is such a bad thing. it's a process, after all, that goes on always, all around us...
...or maybe i'm just spouting words from my tooth deficient mouth, when i should just visit the dentist.
(btw, i just saw charlie and the chocolate factory, new version, with johnny dep. it's awesome! i especially sympathize with willy's situation with his father. see the movie, you'll understand.)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
glimmer - ick
there once was a fish with the ick
who never once thought he was sick
though covered in slime
he glimmered sublime
who never once thought he was sick
though covered in slime
he glimmered sublime
a week of impossible tasks...
i finished my literature review on reading strategies for little tykes. it wasn't my best work, definitely, but it was all done in an evening. for some reason, the compression of the last minute served to solidify my work into something definitely "there": not unlike impacted feces.
i am tired, with some time on my hands. yes, i still have to work tomorrow. the kids (my preschool kids, not MY own kids) are going to the zoo tomorrow. i'm going to meet them there. afterwards, i've a couple of treatments in aina haina, where the brilliant green day gold dust geckos sparkle like corrupted emeralds. and then, empty time, which is not really empty, because it is already foresworn and spoken for: willow's b-day is this sunday, and there is still much much much to do.
tonight, if i can remain awake, i will work on willow's animation. i don't know why, of all things i need to do, i am obsessed with this, but i am. perhaps it's the show-off in me. a new realm to manifest dreams...
***
my wife's corned beef and cabbage (irish fare) is awesome... i'm full right now, listening to willow trounce lynn at checkers, as aiden (naked) romps around wielding a plastic golf club. this is life in my household, and i, as usual, am distantly nonparticipatory. i sit in the middle of blissful domesticity, and i WRITE about it. i catalog it. i am empty, but somehow the words come, words that pretend solidity, pretend life.
i've got to give the kids a bath. push the routine that will roll into the next day and the next. i'm happy, i'm sad. life is...
i finished my literature review on reading strategies for little tykes. it wasn't my best work, definitely, but it was all done in an evening. for some reason, the compression of the last minute served to solidify my work into something definitely "there": not unlike impacted feces.
i am tired, with some time on my hands. yes, i still have to work tomorrow. the kids (my preschool kids, not MY own kids) are going to the zoo tomorrow. i'm going to meet them there. afterwards, i've a couple of treatments in aina haina, where the brilliant green day gold dust geckos sparkle like corrupted emeralds. and then, empty time, which is not really empty, because it is already foresworn and spoken for: willow's b-day is this sunday, and there is still much much much to do.
tonight, if i can remain awake, i will work on willow's animation. i don't know why, of all things i need to do, i am obsessed with this, but i am. perhaps it's the show-off in me. a new realm to manifest dreams...
***
my wife's corned beef and cabbage (irish fare) is awesome... i'm full right now, listening to willow trounce lynn at checkers, as aiden (naked) romps around wielding a plastic golf club. this is life in my household, and i, as usual, am distantly nonparticipatory. i sit in the middle of blissful domesticity, and i WRITE about it. i catalog it. i am empty, but somehow the words come, words that pretend solidity, pretend life.
i've got to give the kids a bath. push the routine that will roll into the next day and the next. i'm happy, i'm sad. life is...
Monday, March 16, 2009
willow turned six today. she really is a wonderful little girl. i am always happy when i think about her, and about how lucky i am to be a part of her life... the only sadness i feel is how, as lynn said to her jokingly, she will never be five again (or four, or anything else). her sixth birthday is, oddly enough, as much a vanishing act as it is a reappearing act...
i am feeling pretty tired right now. there are far too many things to do. i have to do an extensive clean-up of the house. this afternoon, i weeded the front sections, cut the grass, and (hardest of all) i pruned the snowbush hedges on the right side of the house, both on our side of the hedge and the (unfriendly) neighbor's side. with the latter, it really felt like i was cutting a path through the jungle, cutting all the branches that leaned into me, and pulling the weeds that had grown almost as tall as the stone wall...
i want to work on the animation for willow's b-day. i also would like to make a pika-chu for the pin the tail on the pika-chu game. i intend to make a pizza-chu, that is, a pizza in the shape of pika-chu... but time is so hard to come by.
***
in my last sped 603 class, the instructor gave an influential lecture on how to handle a crisis, a meltdown. it was interesting and significant on many levels. crisis situations were represented by an imaginary graph. in phase i, denoted calm, things were at baseline. ironically, the instructor highlighted that it is at this phase that attention must be augmented. usually, when the class is apparently calm, the teacher decides that things are "okay," and that s/he can use that time to, let's say, grade papers... actually, when things are going good, the instructor has to pay MORE attention, to proactively prevent situations, of course, but more importantly, to positively reinforce the good in kids...
i would like to write about other phases, but i'd like to make another point first. we talk nowadays about this condition called adhd. adhd is "attention deficient hyperactivity disorder." the implication with that diagnosis is that a kid is "deficient" in attention. but where exactly does attention come from? what is attention? is attention a capacity, or is it a skill, a learned behavior? it is a lot of things, ultimately, but i would argue that, if we thing about it as a need, akin to food, then the deficiency of it comes, not from a failing on the part of the child, but from a "withholding" of it, on the part of the child's caretakers. in other words, if a child is adhd (whether the diagnosis is valid or not), take a look at how the parents/teachers/caretakers actually "pay attention" to the child. more often than not, in our "attention deficient" culture, you'll see people AT MOST paying superficial attention to their kids. more often than not, kids are a burden. when kids are asking for others to play with them, there is almost a begrudging of them: "why are you bothering me?" "why are you taking so much of my time?"
... pay attention to children. always. not because it is a form of proactive control, which, paradoxically, it is. pay attention to them because attention is the most fundamental form of love and respect, and we must love and respect the (apparently) least among us, perhaps more than we love and respect ourselves...
***
i'm getting tired... returning to the crisis management thing: at a certain point, a phase denoted "acceleration" (which is actually phase five or so), the child WANTS to engage you. s/he makes provocative statements, and WANTS to get to you: "you're a f**king idiot," "my dad says you seem too young and stupid to be a teacher," "make me do it..." if you react, if you play into the game of engagement, then you ultimately will lose. "acceleration" means that playing into the one-up-manship game of engagement MUST result in one person or the other (or both) exploding. voila! crisis.
it may seem the hardest thing to do, but at this stage, a person has to NOT engage. give the person a direct choice. "sit down or i will call your parole officer." importantly, he added: "i will give you a few seconds to answer." then, in an almost bored way, turn your attention away. return to teaching the class. by no means should you: close space, engage contact, demand an immediate response. engagement, acceleration, WANTS a "push" so that it can "push back." THE MOST FRUSTRATING THING for someone who wants a fight is someone WHO DOESN'T FIGHT BACK...
for a case study in this, read "the chocolate war" and "beyond the chocolate war." classic books, even if they were written for young adults. i aspire to be jerry rainauld.
i think about this with respect to, not only teaching, but taijiquan, hell, life in general. politics. taijiquan works through keeping soft, through resisting the temptation to "harden" and engage directly... misdirection. keeping empty... i wish governments would take this principle to heart. so much suffering is caused by the failure to "disengage" during acceleration phases. can't people see the results? nothing good ever comes from a crisis. nothing good... clearly, there are situations when evil, when crimes against humanity, must be dealt with, and dealt with with swiftness and decisiveness. but in many other situations, it simply seems like countries throwing their weight around, or arguing justifications for actions, etc.
... i may seem controversial, but, for example, i disagree with israel's usage of military strikes on civilian targets. their justification was that hamas purposely used civilians as "human shields." but i ask you: if hamas had fired from civilian targets WITHIN israel, that is, using israelis and jews as "human shields," then would they have still fired rockets, etc. without hesitation? a palestinian civilian is as innocent as a jew... firing on civilians FOR ANY REASON is as absurd as shooting yourself to kill the fly that buzzes around your head...
(i don't exonerate hamas, by the way... i just feel that the israeli response was inadequate and counterproductive in so many ways...)
engagement is so tricky. there is something animal in us that feels its very existence is threatened by a taunt. it's hard to step away from that. but if our aim is PEACE or TRUTH (and it should be, it ALWAYS SHOULD BE), and not the animal need to be RIGHT, then we have to turn away from our near-instinctual need to justify ourselves, and try to see a bigger picture...
...well, nuff said for tonight. i need to rest, get back to other responsibilities...
i am feeling pretty tired right now. there are far too many things to do. i have to do an extensive clean-up of the house. this afternoon, i weeded the front sections, cut the grass, and (hardest of all) i pruned the snowbush hedges on the right side of the house, both on our side of the hedge and the (unfriendly) neighbor's side. with the latter, it really felt like i was cutting a path through the jungle, cutting all the branches that leaned into me, and pulling the weeds that had grown almost as tall as the stone wall...
i want to work on the animation for willow's b-day. i also would like to make a pika-chu for the pin the tail on the pika-chu game. i intend to make a pizza-chu, that is, a pizza in the shape of pika-chu... but time is so hard to come by.
***
in my last sped 603 class, the instructor gave an influential lecture on how to handle a crisis, a meltdown. it was interesting and significant on many levels. crisis situations were represented by an imaginary graph. in phase i, denoted calm, things were at baseline. ironically, the instructor highlighted that it is at this phase that attention must be augmented. usually, when the class is apparently calm, the teacher decides that things are "okay," and that s/he can use that time to, let's say, grade papers... actually, when things are going good, the instructor has to pay MORE attention, to proactively prevent situations, of course, but more importantly, to positively reinforce the good in kids...
i would like to write about other phases, but i'd like to make another point first. we talk nowadays about this condition called adhd. adhd is "attention deficient hyperactivity disorder." the implication with that diagnosis is that a kid is "deficient" in attention. but where exactly does attention come from? what is attention? is attention a capacity, or is it a skill, a learned behavior? it is a lot of things, ultimately, but i would argue that, if we thing about it as a need, akin to food, then the deficiency of it comes, not from a failing on the part of the child, but from a "withholding" of it, on the part of the child's caretakers. in other words, if a child is adhd (whether the diagnosis is valid or not), take a look at how the parents/teachers/caretakers actually "pay attention" to the child. more often than not, in our "attention deficient" culture, you'll see people AT MOST paying superficial attention to their kids. more often than not, kids are a burden. when kids are asking for others to play with them, there is almost a begrudging of them: "why are you bothering me?" "why are you taking so much of my time?"
... pay attention to children. always. not because it is a form of proactive control, which, paradoxically, it is. pay attention to them because attention is the most fundamental form of love and respect, and we must love and respect the (apparently) least among us, perhaps more than we love and respect ourselves...
***
i'm getting tired... returning to the crisis management thing: at a certain point, a phase denoted "acceleration" (which is actually phase five or so), the child WANTS to engage you. s/he makes provocative statements, and WANTS to get to you: "you're a f**king idiot," "my dad says you seem too young and stupid to be a teacher," "make me do it..." if you react, if you play into the game of engagement, then you ultimately will lose. "acceleration" means that playing into the one-up-manship game of engagement MUST result in one person or the other (or both) exploding. voila! crisis.
it may seem the hardest thing to do, but at this stage, a person has to NOT engage. give the person a direct choice. "sit down or i will call your parole officer." importantly, he added: "i will give you a few seconds to answer." then, in an almost bored way, turn your attention away. return to teaching the class. by no means should you: close space, engage contact, demand an immediate response. engagement, acceleration, WANTS a "push" so that it can "push back." THE MOST FRUSTRATING THING for someone who wants a fight is someone WHO DOESN'T FIGHT BACK...
for a case study in this, read "the chocolate war" and "beyond the chocolate war." classic books, even if they were written for young adults. i aspire to be jerry rainauld.
i think about this with respect to, not only teaching, but taijiquan, hell, life in general. politics. taijiquan works through keeping soft, through resisting the temptation to "harden" and engage directly... misdirection. keeping empty... i wish governments would take this principle to heart. so much suffering is caused by the failure to "disengage" during acceleration phases. can't people see the results? nothing good ever comes from a crisis. nothing good... clearly, there are situations when evil, when crimes against humanity, must be dealt with, and dealt with with swiftness and decisiveness. but in many other situations, it simply seems like countries throwing their weight around, or arguing justifications for actions, etc.
... i may seem controversial, but, for example, i disagree with israel's usage of military strikes on civilian targets. their justification was that hamas purposely used civilians as "human shields." but i ask you: if hamas had fired from civilian targets WITHIN israel, that is, using israelis and jews as "human shields," then would they have still fired rockets, etc. without hesitation? a palestinian civilian is as innocent as a jew... firing on civilians FOR ANY REASON is as absurd as shooting yourself to kill the fly that buzzes around your head...
(i don't exonerate hamas, by the way... i just feel that the israeli response was inadequate and counterproductive in so many ways...)
engagement is so tricky. there is something animal in us that feels its very existence is threatened by a taunt. it's hard to step away from that. but if our aim is PEACE or TRUTH (and it should be, it ALWAYS SHOULD BE), and not the animal need to be RIGHT, then we have to turn away from our near-instinctual need to justify ourselves, and try to see a bigger picture...
...well, nuff said for tonight. i need to rest, get back to other responsibilities...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
i saw these guys play once, at room whatevers in town. the lead guitarist (featured here) was then dating a coworker of my wife's (not sure if they're still together). anyway, i was just along for the ride, not expecting much. it is so rare that an old fogie with two kids like myself gets to go to a club and hear a band. but i was really surprised when i heard these guys play. they have a real intensity and players with real skill and power.
they're called "satellite grey."
i wish i had a video of them actually playing a song. but maybe this is equally interesting; here, they're making tracks, or "stems" (i think that's what they're called). you can kinda see the behind-the-scenes work in a recording studio. and the talent's pretty clear even in this partial glimpse.
they're called "satellite grey."
i wish i had a video of them actually playing a song. but maybe this is equally interesting; here, they're making tracks, or "stems" (i think that's what they're called). you can kinda see the behind-the-scenes work in a recording studio. and the talent's pretty clear even in this partial glimpse.
i should stop.
sometimes, you need what i am calling now pauses of silence and sincerity. talking/writing too much gives free reign to the (wordy) ego. the ego and language share a bond. both are essentially frameworks and negotiated boundaries, that want to claim a reality they don't possess. so just by overusing language, you reinforce the illusion and drive the conquests of the ego.
so again, i should stop.
i remember trying to articulate this problem in religion class. "you are trying to describe something, but in the very act of describing it, you separate from it and mutilate it. it's always already in you. before you can speak. so how can you say it?"
i believe i am sincere in my writing. it serves a purpose, to articulate an inquiry. but then again, am i just being an echo-narcissus? am i just writing to make a noise that will shut other people up?
on facebook, if i write something too "considered," then the responses are: a) silence (more common), b) reductionist perversity (second most common), c) ramped up intellectualism mixed (usually) with testosterone. occasionally (usually from a friend), there will be d) a tangent or an equally sincere inquiry.
i wish there were more d's in the facebook and real world, but it seems that when you voice your thoughts out loud, more often than not, others want to silence or outdo you. i never intend competition/confrontation. my interests have always been a playful inquiry into the truth...
mark my words: when too many hyenas and jackals come to play, you know that the real meat of the discussion has already gone.
so again (and again and again): i should just shut up.
sometimes, you need what i am calling now pauses of silence and sincerity. talking/writing too much gives free reign to the (wordy) ego. the ego and language share a bond. both are essentially frameworks and negotiated boundaries, that want to claim a reality they don't possess. so just by overusing language, you reinforce the illusion and drive the conquests of the ego.
so again, i should stop.
i remember trying to articulate this problem in religion class. "you are trying to describe something, but in the very act of describing it, you separate from it and mutilate it. it's always already in you. before you can speak. so how can you say it?"
i believe i am sincere in my writing. it serves a purpose, to articulate an inquiry. but then again, am i just being an echo-narcissus? am i just writing to make a noise that will shut other people up?
on facebook, if i write something too "considered," then the responses are: a) silence (more common), b) reductionist perversity (second most common), c) ramped up intellectualism mixed (usually) with testosterone. occasionally (usually from a friend), there will be d) a tangent or an equally sincere inquiry.
i wish there were more d's in the facebook and real world, but it seems that when you voice your thoughts out loud, more often than not, others want to silence or outdo you. i never intend competition/confrontation. my interests have always been a playful inquiry into the truth...
mark my words: when too many hyenas and jackals come to play, you know that the real meat of the discussion has already gone.
so again (and again and again): i should just shut up.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
full moon, or close to it
yeah, so it was a full moon, or close to it, last night. i could tell. i was feeling really crazy. writing crazy things. unable to focus. and this morning, i noticed at my student teaching that the kids were similarly crazier than usual. when one child goes crazy at the "asylum," the disease spreads like wildfire. the result, tantrums galore, and a lesson thrown out the window...
i participate in stupid facebook conversations i have no business participating in. truth to tell, i'm bored, and what they say about the ubiquitous nature of the internet, and how it's so much easier to be rude and insinuate yourself into conversations and situations that you would never, NEVER even dare to in real life- well, it's true. i still try to be polite. i don't precisely tell people off or anything. but i give my opinions, and they can be pretty lengthy and overthought. i suppose it's my form of "friendliness," the fact that i would supply considered responses. but i know it can be offputting. i know that I would feel put off. i'd probably think: "who does this idiot think he is?"
i don't care, particularly.
facebook is faceless. it is the not-face-to-face face to face. you can shout whatever you want to the faces from your past and your present distant acquaintance, and nothing will really happen. those who forgive you, probably already know you well. those who don't; well, it's an education for them.
i'm thankful for the few that do respond, and provide tangents for me to follow. example: i wrote, for my status, the idiotic and provocative statement: "soul is a resonating chamber." and my friend phil responded with a link to the "great seal bug," an ingenious surveillance bug that utilized a concealed resonating chamber within a wooden american seal. he also mentioned that ancient cultures probably had a high understanding of resonance, but when archaeologists encountered their "resonant" artifacts, they just thought of them as empty boxes.
...which is perhaps another way of talking about what the western missionaries considered, regarding the "souls" of aboriginal cultures: empty (soulless) boxes.
i don't know why i thought of souls being like resonating chambers. as i stated to phil, soul has always been a problematic concept to me. this has particularly been so with regards to the western conception as something which can be "lost" or "gained." this conception implies that the soul is some "piece" of the self, or aspect/artifact of the self, that can be gained or lost, somewhat like a seal, or a core. and yet, it is also something fundamental to the self, something which the self cannot do without, something essential...
overstepping the problematic western metaphysical conception of the soul, i prefer to think of it more in the colloquial sense. when someone plays music, particularly "soul" music (jazz, blues, whatever), there is the notion that "you can play the notes right," but they can lack soul. what is this soul? i think it was this that turned me to the conception of it as a resonating chamber. in itself, it is simply an empty space. but given the right circumstances, given the right vibrations, a resonating chamber can make the very air sing... it can give away state secrets (as in the great seal bug)...
if soul is a resonating chamber, then the implication is that it only "comes alive" when the appropriate frequency plays at its mouth. similarly, a person only truly "has soul" when s/he is engaged, "resonates," with something: another person, an activity, a concept, etc. resonance, soul, love, all of these things have something in common.
crazy thoughts...
my temper has been short today. i'm blaming it on lack of sleep and the moon... i'm feeling, and i'm sure i come off as (to pardon the pun) "so full of it..."
i participate in stupid facebook conversations i have no business participating in. truth to tell, i'm bored, and what they say about the ubiquitous nature of the internet, and how it's so much easier to be rude and insinuate yourself into conversations and situations that you would never, NEVER even dare to in real life- well, it's true. i still try to be polite. i don't precisely tell people off or anything. but i give my opinions, and they can be pretty lengthy and overthought. i suppose it's my form of "friendliness," the fact that i would supply considered responses. but i know it can be offputting. i know that I would feel put off. i'd probably think: "who does this idiot think he is?"
i don't care, particularly.
facebook is faceless. it is the not-face-to-face face to face. you can shout whatever you want to the faces from your past and your present distant acquaintance, and nothing will really happen. those who forgive you, probably already know you well. those who don't; well, it's an education for them.
i'm thankful for the few that do respond, and provide tangents for me to follow. example: i wrote, for my status, the idiotic and provocative statement: "soul is a resonating chamber." and my friend phil responded with a link to the "great seal bug," an ingenious surveillance bug that utilized a concealed resonating chamber within a wooden american seal. he also mentioned that ancient cultures probably had a high understanding of resonance, but when archaeologists encountered their "resonant" artifacts, they just thought of them as empty boxes.
...which is perhaps another way of talking about what the western missionaries considered, regarding the "souls" of aboriginal cultures: empty (soulless) boxes.
i don't know why i thought of souls being like resonating chambers. as i stated to phil, soul has always been a problematic concept to me. this has particularly been so with regards to the western conception as something which can be "lost" or "gained." this conception implies that the soul is some "piece" of the self, or aspect/artifact of the self, that can be gained or lost, somewhat like a seal, or a core. and yet, it is also something fundamental to the self, something which the self cannot do without, something essential...
overstepping the problematic western metaphysical conception of the soul, i prefer to think of it more in the colloquial sense. when someone plays music, particularly "soul" music (jazz, blues, whatever), there is the notion that "you can play the notes right," but they can lack soul. what is this soul? i think it was this that turned me to the conception of it as a resonating chamber. in itself, it is simply an empty space. but given the right circumstances, given the right vibrations, a resonating chamber can make the very air sing... it can give away state secrets (as in the great seal bug)...
if soul is a resonating chamber, then the implication is that it only "comes alive" when the appropriate frequency plays at its mouth. similarly, a person only truly "has soul" when s/he is engaged, "resonates," with something: another person, an activity, a concept, etc. resonance, soul, love, all of these things have something in common.
crazy thoughts...
my temper has been short today. i'm blaming it on lack of sleep and the moon... i'm feeling, and i'm sure i come off as (to pardon the pun) "so full of it..."
attraction is a metaphor
a suspicion of a rarefied fluid
housed in a pleasing vessel-
the shape of things betrays
and betrayed.
what would we do with
the form of the living
and willing, if it were
in our hands, in a room
with no echoes or consequence?
there are places we would not
should not go.
the irresistable.
a suspicion of a rarefied fluid
housed in a pleasing vessel-
the shape of things betrays
and betrayed.
what would we do with
the form of the living
and willing, if it were
in our hands, in a room
with no echoes or consequence?
there are places we would not
should not go.
the irresistable.
a soul is a resonant chamber.
those who are hollow,
and walk about hungry,
are not so soulless
as those who are filled
with the solidity of themselves.
if the right vibration comes
there will be a stirring in
the empty places;
the dead shall speak,
shall sing.
it will fall dead across
the stuffed to bursting ears-
to them, the sound will be flat
as flat as faces stretched
like water balloons.
those who are hollow
should not despair.
soul is a resonant chamber.
and it is the song of songs
waiting to shake the world
alive.
those who are hollow,
and walk about hungry,
are not so soulless
as those who are filled
with the solidity of themselves.
if the right vibration comes
there will be a stirring in
the empty places;
the dead shall speak,
shall sing.
it will fall dead across
the stuffed to bursting ears-
to them, the sound will be flat
as flat as faces stretched
like water balloons.
those who are hollow
should not despair.
soul is a resonant chamber.
and it is the song of songs
waiting to shake the world
alive.
Monday, March 9, 2009
other random thoughts
plot twists: what if a person could bifurcate into two alternate universes? however, like the heisenberg uncertainty principle, each half (or double?) could only know certain aspects of reality. one half would retain the consistent memories, because to it, its desires would have been fulfilled, and thus, there would be a "stream of consciousness" as it were. the other half would lose memories, or at the very least, lose memories of the person he once was; he would be free from desire, and hence, paradoxically, be empowered with the ability to "see desire." however, he would no longer know what it means to desire himself, and could no longer remember the stirrings of desire.
man longs for two things (at least): to participate (to be in love, to be at war, etc.), and to not participate (to be at peace, to sit in the throne of mastery). the two can have a cyclical or dialectical relationship; that is, one may serve as the goal of the other, or one may turn into the other (in the manner of yin and yang). however, it is equally possible that the two can be in direct conflict, as in the situation of a man who falls in love, and yet retains a deeply spiritual aspiration to be free from desire. this, in essence, is the "embodied" heisenberg uncertainty principle; you can only know the specific location, or the specific velocity, but you can't know both simultaneously... you can only know where you are, or where you are heading, but you can't know both simultaneously...
if the monk-half loses memory and a "taste of desire," then he is empowered with the ability to see desire, in the form of strings. these are the red strings that tie people to their destinies...
***
i can't seem to shake this funk. this morning i felt nauseous. i had to head into kaneohe to work on someone, and in the midst of grey drizzly rain, i did so, taking gulps of air to quell the need to throw up. i think i am quite adept at working through most discomforts, but i still need to pay back in the end...
my dreams have grown more disturbing of late. they have little specificity or clarity, but are more like water-color blurs of decay and rot... yes, at times, i feel as though i am rotting from within. i suppose i am. i guess i simply hate this feeling: of trudging through life as through shit or molasses. i have many aspirations, but i also have many (more) responsibilities... we must, of course, pay the piper... always pay the piper.
i slice up life into context. it is the only way i can stay alive, retain a semblance of responsibility. in this boxed up moment, there is clarity. i know what the problem is, i know what to do. but outside of the boxes, outside of the partitioned moments, there is only a roiling, swallowing sea... and i haven't even a skin to separate my innards from bleeding out into it...
while driving back across the h-3, the rain fell in rustling curtains, and the shadows of the mountains were concealed by their white. i thought of that white, of blank slates, of oblivion. and how danger loomed within it, the solid shapes of consequence hidden beneath their palimpsestic cover-up... sometimes the shapes of the trees would float up out of nowhere, and i would glimpse rivulets of white, the collected waters, dropping in waterfalls...
i thought about the "kipapa" story... this would be the mechanism of oblivion, and of entering the dream... not unlike the initial fog of elsinore (?) in hamlet... yet another fragment to incorporate.
man longs for two things (at least): to participate (to be in love, to be at war, etc.), and to not participate (to be at peace, to sit in the throne of mastery). the two can have a cyclical or dialectical relationship; that is, one may serve as the goal of the other, or one may turn into the other (in the manner of yin and yang). however, it is equally possible that the two can be in direct conflict, as in the situation of a man who falls in love, and yet retains a deeply spiritual aspiration to be free from desire. this, in essence, is the "embodied" heisenberg uncertainty principle; you can only know the specific location, or the specific velocity, but you can't know both simultaneously... you can only know where you are, or where you are heading, but you can't know both simultaneously...
if the monk-half loses memory and a "taste of desire," then he is empowered with the ability to see desire, in the form of strings. these are the red strings that tie people to their destinies...
***
i can't seem to shake this funk. this morning i felt nauseous. i had to head into kaneohe to work on someone, and in the midst of grey drizzly rain, i did so, taking gulps of air to quell the need to throw up. i think i am quite adept at working through most discomforts, but i still need to pay back in the end...
my dreams have grown more disturbing of late. they have little specificity or clarity, but are more like water-color blurs of decay and rot... yes, at times, i feel as though i am rotting from within. i suppose i am. i guess i simply hate this feeling: of trudging through life as through shit or molasses. i have many aspirations, but i also have many (more) responsibilities... we must, of course, pay the piper... always pay the piper.
i slice up life into context. it is the only way i can stay alive, retain a semblance of responsibility. in this boxed up moment, there is clarity. i know what the problem is, i know what to do. but outside of the boxes, outside of the partitioned moments, there is only a roiling, swallowing sea... and i haven't even a skin to separate my innards from bleeding out into it...
while driving back across the h-3, the rain fell in rustling curtains, and the shadows of the mountains were concealed by their white. i thought of that white, of blank slates, of oblivion. and how danger loomed within it, the solid shapes of consequence hidden beneath their palimpsestic cover-up... sometimes the shapes of the trees would float up out of nowhere, and i would glimpse rivulets of white, the collected waters, dropping in waterfalls...
i thought about the "kipapa" story... this would be the mechanism of oblivion, and of entering the dream... not unlike the initial fog of elsinore (?) in hamlet... yet another fragment to incorporate.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
bad bad bad
two roads diverged in a sylvan wood
and i / i diverged as well
i could not choose which way i should
nor allow that time would tell.
and i / i diverged as well
i could not choose which way i should
nor allow that time would tell.
random ideas
whatever happens to yakuza pinkies? after they are cut off, are they just dropped into the waste disposal? or are they kept, sort of as "collateral"? not that they'd be worth much... but then again, what if there were some secret worth? i believe that in japan, an invisible red (contradiction?) thread connects a person to their true love via their pinky (in chinese medicine, the heart channel ends at the pinky). what if, even after its severance, the connection to "love" or "destiny" remains? by severing the pinky, an act of loyalty, one essentially severs one's tie to "original destiny," placing oneself in the hands of the yakuza lords...
the image resonates with me. i intended to write about silkworms. i intended was to portray silkworms and their "silk" via a very pornographic image. i could alternatively use this: yakuza pinkies being silkworms, and their invisible red thread, the "silk."
***
i've also begun to rethink the "willow weep for me part two" story. i want to tie in, more explicitly, the imagined wanderings of my grandfather, before he passed on. in fact, his death is the trigger of the "unsettled discontent" that takes hold of the protagonist, his "midlife crisis." it is when he sees his grandfather's "freshly dead" body, and feels the pulse that is and isn't, that he begins to wonder about the nature of life, and in particular, his own life. and when he reflects upon the aimless wanderings of his alzheimer's-ridden grandfather, he begins to think about the failure to recognize home, and how it is analogous, oddly enough, to what he feels. i don't want to tie the two threads together explicitly, because that would make things too neat and tidy, but i would like them to occur in parallel, not precisely as the protagonist's explicit memories or imaginings, but as the retelling of an absent third perspective... we'll see.
***
is there a pattern to my psychology and my stories? i suppose so. i don't believe in "simple redemption." at the very least, it doesn't make a good story. i wonder if this makes me a "muck raker" or a bitter and cynical soul. i would argue that it does not. in "practice," in every day situations, i serve people patiently, and to the best of my ability. i sincerely wish the best for people. yet, somehow, when it comes to myself, and to my stories, things cannot ever be so simple. in today's common parlance, we speak of "complexes" as psychological snarls. if a person (consciously or unconsciously) makes his life "complicated," for whatever reason, is this synonymous with inventing a neurosis?
the image resonates with me. i intended to write about silkworms. i intended was to portray silkworms and their "silk" via a very pornographic image. i could alternatively use this: yakuza pinkies being silkworms, and their invisible red thread, the "silk."
***
i've also begun to rethink the "willow weep for me part two" story. i want to tie in, more explicitly, the imagined wanderings of my grandfather, before he passed on. in fact, his death is the trigger of the "unsettled discontent" that takes hold of the protagonist, his "midlife crisis." it is when he sees his grandfather's "freshly dead" body, and feels the pulse that is and isn't, that he begins to wonder about the nature of life, and in particular, his own life. and when he reflects upon the aimless wanderings of his alzheimer's-ridden grandfather, he begins to think about the failure to recognize home, and how it is analogous, oddly enough, to what he feels. i don't want to tie the two threads together explicitly, because that would make things too neat and tidy, but i would like them to occur in parallel, not precisely as the protagonist's explicit memories or imaginings, but as the retelling of an absent third perspective... we'll see.
***
is there a pattern to my psychology and my stories? i suppose so. i don't believe in "simple redemption." at the very least, it doesn't make a good story. i wonder if this makes me a "muck raker" or a bitter and cynical soul. i would argue that it does not. in "practice," in every day situations, i serve people patiently, and to the best of my ability. i sincerely wish the best for people. yet, somehow, when it comes to myself, and to my stories, things cannot ever be so simple. in today's common parlance, we speak of "complexes" as psychological snarls. if a person (consciously or unconsciously) makes his life "complicated," for whatever reason, is this synonymous with inventing a neurosis?
i recreated the conditions of the dream. i wore the same clothes. i slept in the same position on the same uncomfortable couch. i even read the same words i'd read before, and trailed off on the same sentence. but it never came. nothing came.
people say dreams are all in your head. but even if they are, then why are they so ephemeral and uncontrollable? why can't i make them come when i call, when i need to return to them? i had some unfinished business with that dream. there was a place i needed to get to, and someone i needed to meet. there was a promise that held me suspended throughout its duration. the journey through the jewels of that celestial crown, wonderful though it may have been, was only circumnavigating the whole point of it all. and i want to get to the point.
perhaps dreams are as real as the past. and, like it, they withdraw the further we try to reach. and, although "history repeats itself," the past and dreams cannot be repeated, no matter how much we would like, no matter how hard we try.
people say dreams are all in your head. but even if they are, then why are they so ephemeral and uncontrollable? why can't i make them come when i call, when i need to return to them? i had some unfinished business with that dream. there was a place i needed to get to, and someone i needed to meet. there was a promise that held me suspended throughout its duration. the journey through the jewels of that celestial crown, wonderful though it may have been, was only circumnavigating the whole point of it all. and i want to get to the point.
perhaps dreams are as real as the past. and, like it, they withdraw the further we try to reach. and, although "history repeats itself," the past and dreams cannot be repeated, no matter how much we would like, no matter how hard we try.
... in the later days of the empire:
perhaps those few that could see the shape of the times knew that their perspective was, at best, an anomaly; they knew that the larger population would actively and vociferously deny that perspective, and could therefore never unite in the collective effort that would be required to reverse conditions. some of these few went mad, delighting in orgiastic ecstasies, believing tomorrow would never come. some others held to what they deemed their responsibility in these troubled times, arguing with hoarse voices to a world that could not hear, feeling anxiety and panic and despair consume their humanity, until they too were driven mad.
and some, considering that the end of the world was not a sufficient justification for the end of their humanity, calmly lived their lives as they had always lived them, waking with the dawn, working an honest day, and returning to laughing children and loving spouse... sleeping deeply and well, with dreams of tomorrows that somehow transcended the real abyss interrupting the future.
this was the thinking of this misunderstood few: the end of the world had pretended to come many times before. there were the middle ages, for instance, or various periods of uninterrupted and pointless war. why would today's situation be any different? and even if this WAS different, and the world was unequivocably going to end, well then, so what? PEOPLE DIED EVERYDAY. the end was always coming to someone somewhere. and while it may seem different for the end to come piecemeal, as opposed to a all-in-a-piece, for each individual dying soul, such difference was academic. death would come to everyone, eventually. should certain death stop people from living, and the world from turning?
thus it was, at the end of the empire, that the greater part were ignorant, and the few bifurcated into madness and sanity. and those who isolated few who knew but remained sane, resembled in almost every way the vast ignorant masses...
perhaps those few that could see the shape of the times knew that their perspective was, at best, an anomaly; they knew that the larger population would actively and vociferously deny that perspective, and could therefore never unite in the collective effort that would be required to reverse conditions. some of these few went mad, delighting in orgiastic ecstasies, believing tomorrow would never come. some others held to what they deemed their responsibility in these troubled times, arguing with hoarse voices to a world that could not hear, feeling anxiety and panic and despair consume their humanity, until they too were driven mad.
and some, considering that the end of the world was not a sufficient justification for the end of their humanity, calmly lived their lives as they had always lived them, waking with the dawn, working an honest day, and returning to laughing children and loving spouse... sleeping deeply and well, with dreams of tomorrows that somehow transcended the real abyss interrupting the future.
this was the thinking of this misunderstood few: the end of the world had pretended to come many times before. there were the middle ages, for instance, or various periods of uninterrupted and pointless war. why would today's situation be any different? and even if this WAS different, and the world was unequivocably going to end, well then, so what? PEOPLE DIED EVERYDAY. the end was always coming to someone somewhere. and while it may seem different for the end to come piecemeal, as opposed to a all-in-a-piece, for each individual dying soul, such difference was academic. death would come to everyone, eventually. should certain death stop people from living, and the world from turning?
thus it was, at the end of the empire, that the greater part were ignorant, and the few bifurcated into madness and sanity. and those who isolated few who knew but remained sane, resembled in almost every way the vast ignorant masses...
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
reluctance
reluctance
1641, "act of struggling against," from obsolete verb reluct "to struggle or rebel against" (1526), from L. reluctari "to struggle against," from re- "against" + luctari "to struggle." Meaning "unwillingness" is first attested 1667. Reluctant "unwilling" is recorded from 1706.
what is now a simple unwillingness or hesitancy was once an overt act of rebellion... how we've tampened down the insurgencies, and transformed them to a mere distanced "nonparticipation." the struggles have all turned within, and churned so far beneath the surface that their only trace is halting speech and motion. an impotent impasse is reluctance.
1641, "act of struggling against," from obsolete verb reluct "to struggle or rebel against" (1526), from L. reluctari "to struggle against," from re- "against" + luctari "to struggle." Meaning "unwillingness" is first attested 1667. Reluctant "unwilling" is recorded from 1706.
what is now a simple unwillingness or hesitancy was once an overt act of rebellion... how we've tampened down the insurgencies, and transformed them to a mere distanced "nonparticipation." the struggles have all turned within, and churned so far beneath the surface that their only trace is halting speech and motion. an impotent impasse is reluctance.
Monday, March 2, 2009
strange: he recalled that, at a certain point, all alzheimer's patients degenerate to the "homeless" stage, the stage at which the afflicted individual would stubbornly proclaim that s/he needed to "go home," even when they WERE home. it was as though they no longer realized where home was. or, to put a twist to it, that they realized that home, in its truest sense, did not exist: never had, never would.
when put this way, he felt, in his mid 30's, a strange affinity with all alzheimer's patients.
when put this way, he felt, in his mid 30's, a strange affinity with all alzheimer's patients.
he arrived at 8:30. death had already been proclaimed at 8:20, by his older brother. still, as a matter of practice, or perhaps an offshoot of some morbid curiosity, he placed his fingers lightly upon the wrist of the deceased, to discern the radial pulse. a surprise, first of all, to feel the warmth of the body; how it was dead, and yet, it still held that most distinctive mantle of the living, heat. a surprise, next, to feel, with deep pressure, a pulse: no, it was not distinct enough to be considered a "living pulse," nor did it have the consistency of a heart behind it; but it was palpable nonetheless, a ripple-echo, like something left over and unsettled, long after the stone that was cast had sunk to the bottom of the sea...
he closed his eyes, nodded to his brother. with a strange giddiness, he agreed: his grandfather was dead.
he closed his eyes, nodded to his brother. with a strange giddiness, he agreed: his grandfather was dead.
neglect, negligee
negligee
1756, "a kind of loose gown worn by women," from Fr. négligée, from fem. pp. of négliger "to neglect," from L. neglegere (see neglect). So called in comparison to the elaborate costume of a fully dressed woman of the period. Borrowed again, 1835; the modern sense "semi-transparent, flimsy, lacy dressing gown" is yet another revival, first recorded 1930.
neglect (v.)
1529, from L. neglectus, pp. of neglegere "to make light of, disregard," lit. "not to pick up," variant of neclegere, from Old L. nec "not" (see deny) + legere "pick up, select" (see lecture). The noun is first attested 1588.
***
to be in the practice of neglecting one's life (if such a thing could be called a "practice") results in one becoming a figurative "negligee": a "semi-transparent, flimsy" thing that reveals all of your nude and embarrassing parts to your glazed eyes, and, perhaps, reveals them to the world as well... we only appreciate the solidity (and perhaps the shallow surfaces) of the world that we actively care for; and we only see through that world (into a kind of ruined ghost world) when we cease to attend to its beck and call... there are thus two worlds: one of attention and one of neglect. they interpenetrate, and depend upon (or don't?) the cares of the observer.
the tree that falls in the forest, with no one to hear, is thus NEGLECTED.
1756, "a kind of loose gown worn by women," from Fr. négligée, from fem. pp. of négliger "to neglect," from L. neglegere (see neglect). So called in comparison to the elaborate costume of a fully dressed woman of the period. Borrowed again, 1835; the modern sense "semi-transparent, flimsy, lacy dressing gown" is yet another revival, first recorded 1930.
neglect (v.)
1529, from L. neglectus, pp. of neglegere "to make light of, disregard," lit. "not to pick up," variant of neclegere, from Old L. nec "not" (see deny) + legere "pick up, select" (see lecture). The noun is first attested 1588.
***
to be in the practice of neglecting one's life (if such a thing could be called a "practice") results in one becoming a figurative "negligee": a "semi-transparent, flimsy" thing that reveals all of your nude and embarrassing parts to your glazed eyes, and, perhaps, reveals them to the world as well... we only appreciate the solidity (and perhaps the shallow surfaces) of the world that we actively care for; and we only see through that world (into a kind of ruined ghost world) when we cease to attend to its beck and call... there are thus two worlds: one of attention and one of neglect. they interpenetrate, and depend upon (or don't?) the cares of the observer.
the tree that falls in the forest, with no one to hear, is thus NEGLECTED.
unmade
you never appreciate the gravity
of your situation
unless you float-
or fall-
the way the world wants to
keep you all your own-
the way the sinews tightly
fold themselves around the bone-
you never delight in this, your solidity
with your pretended independent fluidity
the linking chains of thoughts and acts-
how long you never face the facts
that those self-same chains are
winding round your feet?
we are always already bound
bound up in this flesh and in this fold
and this prison our only liberation.
and in pause between intended motion
feel the free fall floating ocean-
what you are and what you can never do:
the unmade true that's undeniably you.
of your situation
unless you float-
or fall-
the way the world wants to
keep you all your own-
the way the sinews tightly
fold themselves around the bone-
you never delight in this, your solidity
with your pretended independent fluidity
the linking chains of thoughts and acts-
how long you never face the facts
that those self-same chains are
winding round your feet?
we are always already bound
bound up in this flesh and in this fold
and this prison our only liberation.
and in pause between intended motion
feel the free fall floating ocean-
what you are and what you can never do:
the unmade true that's undeniably you.
march funk
as usual at this time of year, i start feeling pretty blah... depressed. there isn't really a specific reason. i'm not happy about turning a year older, but then again, i don't feel particularly sad/afraid about it either. nevertheless, whenever my birthday comes around, i've come to expect a certain weariness/emptiness.
***
i had a thought about tides, the in and out of everything, and how, with a large enough perspective, everything balances out. with respect to people who are quiet or silent, not because they are insensitive or shallow, but because they have taken the world in too much, there is also a balance. so i thought: a quiet person can either save the world or destroy it, depending upon how s/he "outs" the potentials that have collected within. and the day when a person "outs" is inevitable. people are not like pits or abysses, no matter how they would like to pretend that they are (for that matter, the world is not a "landfill" either; we are currently facing the consequences of the world we have thrown away); people are more like high compression springs. we can take a lot of pressure, but at a certain point, something has to give, something has to release. it all depends upon how a person releases the collected flood that determines whether s/he will be of benefit or ruin to those around.
***
***
i had a thought about tides, the in and out of everything, and how, with a large enough perspective, everything balances out. with respect to people who are quiet or silent, not because they are insensitive or shallow, but because they have taken the world in too much, there is also a balance. so i thought: a quiet person can either save the world or destroy it, depending upon how s/he "outs" the potentials that have collected within. and the day when a person "outs" is inevitable. people are not like pits or abysses, no matter how they would like to pretend that they are (for that matter, the world is not a "landfill" either; we are currently facing the consequences of the world we have thrown away); people are more like high compression springs. we can take a lot of pressure, but at a certain point, something has to give, something has to release. it all depends upon how a person releases the collected flood that determines whether s/he will be of benefit or ruin to those around.
***
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