at 3 am in the morning, i typically wake up feeling haunted.

there's a lot to worry about. there are the immediate practicalities, like money and my studies and my responsibilities. and then there are increasing circles of concern over ever vaguer issues: my children (particularly aiden), my sister, my parents, my nieces and nephews, the cohesion of my family in general, my energy and environmental footprint, global warming, terrorism, overpopulation, non-sustainable lifestyles and practices, the end of the world.

actually, when i articulate it as a list, it all doesn't seem so bad, even the end of the world stuff. i mean, not to say that it really isn't happening, and people aren't stopping their mad rush to deplete any and everything, but let's face it- people have faced the end of the world before, and somehow, it keeps going: let's think about the middle ages (which was probably pretty mad max beyond thunderdome if you ask me), or the warring states period, or other chaotic times in various places around the world and throughout time... i have to believe that there is a capacity in the human spirit to look at all of that and somehow have faith in "everything," and maintain awareness and the practice of kindness...

if nothing else, bodhisattvas will work onwards, even when there is no (objective) hope.

***

but there's always a danger in "thinking" about problems. sometimes i think there's a disturbance of energy that wakes me up. something is trying to tell me something. and to "comfort" myself in waking thoughts, in the cold and clear analysis of things, somehow escapes the problem.

it is the same thing with death, i suppose. death is literally all around us. and yet, when we "think" about death (or "don't think" about it), it becomes a non-issue, even a comforting thing. but as soon as we deal only with the "thought" of death, we avoid the issue itself. there are many ways we can dress up our thoughts. we can think of "good endings" only, like the nice, warm ending of a full day when all business has been taken care of, endings that have closure and control, for instance- and think that death is always like that (which it is not)...

that's not necessarily "our own inescapably personal death" which we can NEVER know. i suppose that that never knowing is the real hard part of swallowing death. we and our need to cognitively master everything. death is the supreme not knowing, the supreme powerlessness...

and to even conceive of this 3am feeling as only being about "death"... well, it isn't.

many authors have wrestled with what is conveniently called an "anxiety," a fear of something which isn't particular, an unnamed and unnameable fear. it spawns all sorts of scaffolding to conceal it, to manage it, but at its heart, it calls into question all of our structures, all of our "management."

it is trying to tell us something (<-- itself a cognitive management).

***

some people wonder why it is necessary to go into the dark jungle naked of guns and company. it is because we need to confront the thing which most haunts us. we need to confront it, face to face, and see it, and be seen by it. what happens after that, i can't say...

"if you're slow," he said carefully, looking me in the eye, "they'll walk all over you."

i couldn't hold the pressure of those eyes, staring at me from beneath a mask of filth. i turned away, muttered "yeah" primarily out of politeness. liberated momentarily, gazing at some innocent gutter a safe distance away, my mouth started to work, disconnected. "like snails underfoot, shells cracking and snapping."

the boy tossed the cardboard sign away, actually stood up, the aura of his stench rising with him. "you know then," he said, reaching a dirty finger-nailed hand up. "you get it."

i stepped away, nervous. "get what?"

relentlessly, those penetrating eyes searched me out, pinned me down. "you know what happened," he whispered raspy. "you know what's going to happen."

walking in the dead
blades folding fast underfoot
so quiet, so quiet
i could hear my breath

i crossed paths
i should have seen its silver steps
but instead broke the air
with a crack like thunder

i could swear i heard a scream
in eggshells and yolk

i could swear i heard a scream
in sticky wounds exposed
and evaporating

but the night wears a mantle
heavy and apathetic
and i, painting death beneath my soles,
walked on.

i have been watching mad max beyond thunderdome for the past half hour... funny. has it been two years? yes, during one of my early blog entries, i recall typing as i looked over my shoulder at the second floor television playing this very movie. and in that entry, i remarked about how nostalgic the movie was, and how it reminded me of my 13th birthday, when we rented it and showed it at my party... time is funny in that way. it keeps winking deja vus at us, but to what purpose? is it to wake us up, or is it to give us the feeling that everything, every so-called waking moment, is just another spin on the turntable?

lightning is flashing in the distance, like periodic flash photography, or a broken intermittent strobe light. now, lying on the second floor bed, with the windows open, the air hangs still. and i can hear a low rumbling in the distance that seems to shake my very gut, the thundering of something unsettled...

are you listening to it too?

i wander the dark unlit hallways of my home, creep into the bedrooms, listen to the even snores, trace the expressions of peace in the sleepers into my mind. i am so thankful, so very thankful, for my wife and my children. they are my tether to this world. i think that, without them, i would have floated off so long ago, a bubble boy adrift in a solipsistic heady ufo-shaped balloon... with no one knowing that i was trapped in the attic...

***

lately, i have nothing to write, nothing to say. i am so beyond lacking motivation. i am drifting over my world, tracing its forms.

i listen to music, the same old radiohead songs, but now i am no longer passive as a listener, i deconstruct everything, i wonder where thom yorke sings from, i piece out the bass from the piano from the guitar, i try to analyze how the synthesizers produce the sounds that they do...

there is no innocence in art. everything has a purpose and an intent. when you get to understanding this, there's wonder, yes, but there's also a kind of grim awareness. it's as though you've seen what's in the magician's hat. magic still exists, there is still the illusion, and the intake of breath of the audience... but behind it all is a machine.

do you understand this?

***

the rumbling is getting closer, and louder. i can feel it within me now. i am hoping that it will summon rain, that the heavens will fall so loud that this empty hanging silence will be replaced by white noise, comforting white noise, the voice of billions of raindrops all shouting at me "SHHHH!" to be quiet...

***

someone next door is talking loud.

***

we found an envelope sent by my grandmother to willow for her birthday. strange, we never got around to opening it. it contains $70, and although my mom wrote the bland "happy birthday" message, i almost felt touched from wherever she is... it's strange, my grandmother was so much a part of my life, and now that she's gone, i continue to function. why is that? why is it that i only think of her in odd moments nowadays?

i haven't gone to her house in ewa beach. i've no reason to. and besides, i couldn't get in if i could... what would i find there, i wonder? an old house thick with dust and memories... a voice that i would long to hear. perhaps i would walk in the door and find myself following old patterns, like a ghost. i'd walk over to the refrigerator, peruse the contents, withdraw a coke, sit at the dining room table... maybe hear the tinny strains coming from the radio, some stupid show about "sokka gakkai." and i'd watch my grandma's back as she chopped something at the cutting board, the hot clean air coming in through the slants of the window louvers... and there would be a face turning to look at me, a face so warm and comforting that i would take it for granted.

would take it for granted.

***

why am i like this? i am immiscible. i could probably survive anything. like a cockroach. nothing breaks me up, shatters me. i only contain nostalgia like dead echoes in steel.

i once remarked that that was how my name originated. "rand" means "shield," and perhaps came from the sound of metal ringing on metal... i have a name, and i am someone, only when i impact/touch the world... but when "left to my own devices," i will sleep and dream the reverberations of purposeless steel...

steel an identity...