sorry for subjecting you all to that "freewriting exercise." to be honest, i thought it would be okay since no one reads this blog anyway. and besides, most of my blogs are relatively "stream of consciousness" anyway, although there are a lot of darker, dirtier topics that i wouldn't dare post (they likely would make this blog a bit more exciting... then again, maybe not).

this morning, we (my family) went to ice palace. like most of the country, we are experiencing a lot of "weather" lately, here, in the form of frequent violent rain storms. so doing anything outside with my family (now that my wife has a rare day off) would be out of the question. options considered were ice skating, or bowling, or going to a museum. we opted for the former.

anyways... hadn't been to ice palace in ages. it opened in about 1982, and always served as a pretty cool place to go (no pun intended). i remember skating beneath that disco ball, dots and fragments of light dancing across the dark white of the floor, as i glided (in my mind) to the sounds of songs from michael jackson's "off the wall" album. dreaming of girls. and then afterwards, sitting, drinking hot cocoa (whatever i could afford), and feeling all cozy and warm. it was the coolest thing, the coolest place to be.

today, in the role of father, things were a little different, a little more encumbered, but it was great to see a burgeoning excitement in the faces of my kids, to introduce them to this cool hangout place, to the new activity of ice-skating. we hung out in the kiddie section, the kids pushing the "sleds" like shopping carts, while i or my wife would kind of hover along behind, giving gentle directional guidance in little nudges, or lifting the kids up when they would collapse... my skates were either too loose, or too big, so eventually, they started to splay my ankles outward. by the time we were ready to go, i was so desperate to get out of those skates that i took them off and WALKED across all that wet floor (in my socks!) to the locker to get my shoes. i was thankful for the feel of terra firma, flat soled, after that experience.

we were kinda tired out by the skating, but we still managed a brief trip to ice garden in aiea (i dimly mused how ironic that was, considering where we'd just been). i didn't order anything, but kinda stood around, looking at the cramped confines of the shave ice place. they have a case of pinned butterflies hanging up on one wall. i noticed that the dessicated thorax of one of the insects was lying in one corner of the display, and i tried searching for the butterfly that it belonged to...

back at home, i fell asleep while the kids played their wii games (they have been playing electronica far too much this break!!!). later, dinner, and that brings us roughly to now. pretty boring dull day. the weather, i feel, is really starting to bug me. dampen my mood. i'm not exactly a fan of sunshine, but i do think it's starting to be a drag, not being able to go out and play...

well, yes, another boring entry. i'm reserving my "private" freewriting rambles for my own computer, thank you very much...

timed writing, per "wild mind" rules

once again, i am trying to abide by natalie goldman's rules from "wild mind." one of the rules is to not stop the writing hand from moving. i think she wrote this in the time of pen/pencil and paper, and not so much in the technological age we live in now, but the principle remains the same... do not stop writing for the duration you set out. i have set a modest time of ten minutes, so... here goes.

today, i made a sirloin beef soup. i utilized the steak my wife made for dinner last night, not the one i ate, of course, but the remaining generous steak, which had been sitting bent in half on a plate, covered over with seran wrap in the refrigerator. i took the steak out, cut it in cubes, and - what's the word - cooked it in a pot (the instructions said a large sauce pan, but the instructions also said to pour in four cups of water, and what i had wasn't all that deep). i poured in the aforementioned four cups, brought it all to a boil, and then poured in the powdered soup and noodle mix, turned the heat low, and allowed the mixture to simmer for about 20 minutes. what i loved most about the whole procedure wasn't the end product (although it was tasty!); it was the whole process, the whole "neatness" and crispness of each action. of course, it was an easy, pre-made recipe. but i suppose that easy recipes like this make it much easier to realize the "zen" (i'm probably abusing the term) of things. that's not to say that "zen" (presence of mind) doesn't exist in very difficult, awkward, complicated tasks; it's all about the approach, the settling, the mindset, i suppose. but all i'm saying is that i approached the task of making this soup (for my kids) with a settled mindset, and the overall experience of it all was "great," simple, perfect. i like this, and if it is in my cards, i hope to keep it, to maintain it...

speaking of "zen" stuff... well, i started playing an app called "osmos" on our new ipad. it is a very well-done game. i think a lot of thought was put into it. of course, being the "contemplative fool" that i am, i read a lot into it, into the gameplay, into the mission of the game. basically, and simply put, you are a cell/orb/planet, and your objective is to absorb anything that is smaller than yourself (by touching it), and keep away from anything that is larger than yourself (which will absorb you). you maneuver by ejecting little pieces of yourself, and using the propulsion of such ejection... many insights in this. first of all, if you "move" too much, via continual ejection, then you diminish yourself, you lose size, and thus you complicate your situation (because the goal of the game is to get big, not small). reminds me that continual, nonstop action will only result in powerless restlessness. this is a truth of life, i have directly experienced this...

another truth which i have "gleaned" from the game is that: it matters little what intentions you have for the universe, if you are small and of little influence, then you will only succeed in getting absorbed by those around you, and all of your good intentions will be for naught. if you manage to strategically influence the universe (i.e., if you work locally, gradually absorbing those whom you CAN influence), then you will eventually have the MASS (momentum/inertia) to absorb others to your cause... this is true as well. it matters little what intentions you bring, and how "hard" you have worked (refer to the previous paragraph about excessive action), you must find a way to accumulate mass/wealth/influence, and primarily via understanding and "going with" the way of things, the tao, the whatever, to be in a position of advantage... this, i suppose, is where zen becomes "strategic."

we usually consider "zen" to be a philosophy of liberation, and we usually (especially here in america) consider liberation to be a wildness, an uncontrollable force that is good in and of itself. but in actuality, such "wildness," if left untempered by an understanding/awareness of the nature of things, the way of the universe, it only becomes a self-aggrandizement, a greediness on the way to the destruction of both the self and the world. that is the delusion that i feel we in the modern world are trapped in, the blind belief in our own "liberation" and "mastery." we must seek liberation, it is true, but we must also learn to align our liberation, our self-hood with what is best for nature and the world at large... this is the complexity of zen, the part that americans in particular are reluctant to acknowledge...

well, ten minutes is up. enough psycho-babble...

rain king

when i think of heaven
deliver me in a black-winged bird
i think of flying
down into a sea of pins and feathers
and all other instruments
of faith and sex and god
in the belly of a black-winged bird.

don't try to feed me
cuz i've been here before
and i deserve a little more.

i belong in the service of the queen
i belong anywhere but in between...

i understand a little now.

at the bottom, there is a naked choice. you either let the wolves and buzzards in to feast on your dead flesh, or you claim a circle of space around yourself that you call your own, and you guard it with your life. the first choice is the abdication of choice; it is the default of doing nothing, and allowing the hate of the world (for there is indeed hate in the world, floating ubiquitously, breathed in unawares) to consume you. the second choice is the harder, and somehow is the more overlooked, and that is to decide for sacredness and love and hope.

we deflect or abstract this choice in many ways. at times we claim that we don't care about ourselves, but for others, we will do anything. but as the hatred around us grows subtle and persistent, we realize that this is a false distinction. you cannot leave yourself out of any interactions with the devil. you must face the devil as yourself, and speak your name first and foremost in the list of those whom you will protect as you stand against him. if you do not, then you have lost yourself to despair and the gnawing hatred, and soon afterwards, those you swore to protect will have to protect themselves from you.

***

there is a lot of irrational hatred in the world, and it attacks me persistently. its face is presented in figures outside of me, but i know that the most vicious attacks come from within. it would do no good for me to attack the figures outside of me, for 1) i would transform into the very monsters that are attacking me, and 2) again, the real enemy lies within myself. so instead, i have tried to practice something which is very hard for me: i have tried to learn how to love myself.

i don't know what your experience has been, but i learned early on to denigrate myself. as i may have mentioned in earlier blog postings, it is a form of "one-upmanship" against the world, because who could be better at putting myself down than myself? the irony is that it is a penchant for defeating oneself before anyone else can, with the end result being the same, i.e., that you have razed your own town in order to save it from being razed by bandits.

so i'm "good" at destroying myself.

it is therefore almost against my nature to build circles of "love" around myself. it is hard for me to even conceive of what that "love" would consist of, or to speak about it. i suppose that love for me is this feeling of simplicity and belonging, of appreciation and appreciating. it is woven together by breath and poetry and the art of the sacred, which is always (in my mind) the blind art, the art that can no longer see for the lack of distinctions. it is also tied to the feelings of love that are shared between myself and those i hold dear, strung up by pearl-like moments of unspoken unity that i have experienced with significant people... i dwell in these things, because they literally hold me together. if i do not actively cherish these things, then the world, this howling, hate-filled place, will literally tear me to pieces...

***

those who play the game of hate... let them play their game. i choose to do a different thing with my time, with my life. i choose to create my life in my own image, in the blindness of love.

painkiller

it is important for the heart to be vague, for the heart to be blind. remember this. it is an essential truth.

the habit of the world is to understand, or to claim it understands. it issues judgments, some based on nothing more than suppositions or fear, and others based somewhat legitimately upon past experience. but it is wrong, a fundamental error, to crystallize one's experience and stand above the world, as in a prismatic tower, and divide the world into good and bad, into tolerable and hated, no matter what one thinks one knows of the world.

even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, one must always maintain the capacity to be vague, to be forgetful, to be open. for in this, the world can be created anew, and the next moment can blossom into something that hasn't been seen before. understand this, and you will always be young, and you will always have the capacity to learn and to fall in love. forget this, and you go the way of all who are "wise"; cracked and divided by their own judgments, furrowed and trenched like their own haggard, worry-ridden skin, they fall away still issuing their monotonous commandments to an unlistening, and long "irrelevant" world...

methylphenidate dreams

the water forced itself up through miles of rock
through all the dark resistant settling
and kissed the air and sky and light and life above

but so tired from its journey that its impetus
spread and lost its shape
flattened like a second meandering skin
across the surface of everything dry and waiting

this is not the way of men
they drink of water, but they hate and fear
its willfulness, its will-less-ness,
they tolerate its passage through towns
only when bound by concrete
and funneled belowgrounds,
in side-glanced channels or underfoot.

water without direction, exposed, is a thing despised.

***

i played with the water,
loved its burbling laughter,
entertained by its random clumsy touch.

but i live in the world of men
and man only recognizes what is in his own image
man only feels what resists him
with its own will and direction.

feeling nothing, no secret push and pressured flow,
i did a secret and unnatural thing
and changed the course and nature of the water
forever.

***

today it flows with direction and clarity
like a white line of intense light
there is a spark caught in its streaming
and a need to get somewhere, anywhere,
but in every moment, somewhere specific.

and, being a man, i recognize myself in it
and am happy for the moment.

for the moment, i do not wonder
if there is something lost
in what is gained,
i only know that now
this streaming brilliance
will be accepted in this world
channeled and directioned as it now is
now must be.

be with me
when the moon turns black
and conceals the way forward
through the tumbled lands.

hold my hand.

tell me:

"there is nothing to fear.
you've tried your best.
i've known your heart
was in the right place
regardless of what the blind
daylight may have, will have,
seen."

the ground may fall away
and pitch us into pitch
but as long as you hold me
i'll be alright,
everything will be
alright.

moon over
tumbled down
shadow drowned
happy lovers.

today, i visited my grandmother's grave for the first time. sad, isn't it, but i hadn't made time to visit her in all this time. then, today, after picking up my wife from work, and having a bit of time to kill on the drive from waikele to mililani, i just decided to visit the grave at mililani mortuary.

i had to search a bit for it. after i spotted umahichi uyeno (my great grandfather), i knew i was in the vicinity, and not long after, my wife spotted my grandmother's grave. while the kids walked around and my wife told some stories about grandma, i sat in prayer, speaking to her. it was somewhat cathartic.

time passes relentlessly, without pause or remorse. the death of someone so significant happens, and the calendar pages still flip, time passes "like clockwork," with no allowances, with no dispensations, with no evaluation. i suppose that's my excuse for not coming sooner. "i've been so busy." isn't that modern life? so busy stuffing our time with emptiness. not taking a moment for the true things, the things that really matter...

***

today, willow performed for a second time, this time at the neil blaisdell, for some holiday craft show. unfortunately, the pueo strings and the choir sang in a separate room, on a separate stage, so i'm afraid there wasn't much real "exposure" (the only people in the audience were probably mililani ike parents). it's okay...

i saw a face from the past, and had thoughts about adolescence, about illusions. although i do entertain many fantasies, in my working, every day life, i am a pretty efficient dream-killer. i can edit away any "missed opportunities" with the brilliant reality of my present. i can trace the false story lines to their necessary dead ends and inconsequential consequences... but for the empty moments, it's nice to remember fragments of when i was young.

isn't that what people are preoccupied with these days? trying to hold on to a fragment of some mythical apex of life... i too am caught in that preoccupation. maybe life is by definition a holding onto the living moment that is long gone, or is yet to be... some people, whether aware of it or not, use such false illusions as the sustenance for real accomplishments. what's the harm in that? maybe i see too well, or too darkly, for anything living to arise out of my dreams. and perhaps that is why i am starving for new dreams to dream.

so i guess i'm depressed.

you've probably known all along, what with my obsession with radiohead (you're supposed to laugh). but lately, i've been having inexplicable and sudden drops in energy, like all the time. and all the things that i used to love doing have been soured by this feeling of guilt. it's not so much that i am disinterested in the things i used to love. it's that they no longer protect me from this feeling of hate and recrimination that has pursued me since god knows when.

i am able to establish a facade (as with all things) for the people that i love, primarily my wife and children, and secondarily my students, but deep down, it's becoming an intractable, even impossible, situation. when something in you loses the capacity to appreciate life, then everything is relentlessly gnawed away by this huge beetle... it isn't as though the world is left alone to "hang out," without life, without love, it is actively destroyed, from within or from without, it hardly matters.

all of my machinations, to organize or to let go, they hardly matter. i feel i can no longer control the power switch. and, at some level, i feel that i no longer care about my own life. i only care about it to the extent that it touches upon the lives of others, most notably the lives of my children. i am staying up above for their sake, trying to address their deficiencies, trying to keep them happy. they are wonderful, beautiful beings, and i want them to feel happy and strong and capable- unlike myself.

i have prayed and spoken (a one-sided conversation) to god to help me. i have asked for counsel with my grandmother. i have reprieves sometimes. this morning felt good, when i was called early to come teach a tai chi class. the movements seemed to flow and carry me, even if i didn't feel buoyant or particularly joyful. and, after returning home, i was able to do a bit of weeding in the dew-ridden grass, musing about the work of bodhisattvas, to maintain equanimity and care in each moment, even though the task set about is impossible and endless. it is the peace that one holds that, possibly, changes the world, not what one actually accomplishes. it was a nice insight/feeling...

at home after dropping my wife off to work at the crazy mall, and unable to take the kids to capoeira because their uniform pants were dirty, i felt my energy drop off suddenly and sharply. i kept resurfacing briefly to give the kids instructions on the next task, oh so briefly... the rest of the day didn't go so well...

***

i am so very tired.

i see pictures of faces twisted into disgust and anger (their true forms?). yes, the world is always teetering towards a fundamental impatience. they want people to be a certain way, they are impatient when you don't adopt the right shape immediately. they are always looking for something wrong, and once they find it, they will pick at it and pick at it endlessly.

i could care less about the regard of most of the world. my interest lies primarily in those i serve directly. they are, literally, my salvation. they keep me awake. the rest of the world, with its shifting alliances and uncertainty, they are akin to the dream: immaterial, insubstantial, inconsequential.

***

it is raining right now. i woke after yet another unexpected nap, to find myself on the shore of midnight. i feel sad/guilty to have not taken advantage of the night, but then again, i would have felt paralyzed by my recriminations to have done anything much anyway. i woke to feel this dull fear and insight, that i had perhaps finally crossed over into the domain of depression... with the understanding that, in depression, it is not so much a dull disinterest, but a quiet desperation, a feeling that life is slipping away... no one wants to feel this way.

i wish the rain would last forever. i wish it would erode this conundrum from me.

when the rain falls, it unites the world. and it unites all those moments when we were huddled indoors, alone and high and dry from the storm. all those moments of promise and rest. all those moments i loved and hated. they are the same moment as now, mulling over the same undigested problems.

please, god, liberate me. if rain is your blessing, let it fall upon me tonight. let me feel alive, let me feel that is okay to be alive, that i have a right and a purpose to be alive, that i have a place in this world. i am tired of feeling like i haven't got a way to be, a way to go...

as shodo said, "michi ga mayottara, sagashite kure."

if you lose your way, find it.

i've lost my way tonight. please, help me find the ground beneath my feet.

i have been searching for a feeling.

there are certain actions that seem to approximate it. when i interact with others, and address their immediate needs (i.e., those needs which are immediately obvious, and do not require a leap of faith in my capabilities, nor reference to some overarching viewpoint of anything), then i feel as though i am fulfilling my purpose (at least, for the time being), and i do not feel so empty and haunted inside. but afterwards, when i am left to my own devices, and drift on my own inertia/momentum, that lack of a feeling comes back, gnawing away at me.

i attempt to address it in various ways. one aspect of me attempts to organize the emptiness by constructing lists, and then prioritizing from among the items on the list those which may either make me "happy" or at the very least get at an approximate heart of the problem. another aspect of myself has considered this attempt fruitless and impossible, and instead seeks to "drift" and appreciate the aesthetic surface of reality, in a kind of meandering, "thrown" way. there is no happy medium between the two perspectives, and i have a tendency to oscillate between these two needs, one for order and the other for freedom.

i suppose that, as i get older, the illusions i once constructed, and could sustain me, they become threadbare and worn out, and they can no longer fulfill the function they once had. what peeks through, or what slips in (i'm not so sure which) is the hatred which i have sought so hard to contain/push out. i am left vulnerable to its blows, to its incessant questioning...

i know that practically all of my entries reference this conundrum of mine, but i suppose that we always return to the problem that makes us. this is my hurt, my heart, my art. it is everything i know (against my wishes).

***

who am i writing to anyway? i have addressed this question as well. in the past, it was written in a more or less positivistic sense, an apologetic for what is either self-aggrandizement, or some shoddy, secular confessional. this is a central question, it turns out, because perhaps on some level, the blog, and indeed, everything i do, is in some sense a performance. who it is for, and who it saves, these questions are tied into everything that i am. they are, in essence, the "whole point."

why do we do anything? (notice how i include the reader into this problem, as though it is shared by him or her. this is a rhetorical turn, perhaps to make me feel as though i am not alone in this, ashamed and exposed.)

if i say nothing, then what is the harm? if i say too much, then what is the harm? something, someone inside of me is itching to get out. at the same time, something, someone inside of me is itching to out me. there is something of salvation and self-destruction in everything i write. i just wish i could piece apart the two, and figure out whose side i am on...

and whose side you are on.

***

of my life, i may say this, that despite the end results, i have always loved those that i came in contact with: my patients, my students, my children, my lovers, my friends, my family... but then again, what compels me to reveal this? is it because this is my last bastion, the anchor for all the falsity and denial that is who i am? is it because, without this one illusion, which i claim that is undeniably true, there will be nothing that i have left to hold onto?

because there are always limits, contradictions, hypocrisies, that i have committed. if i claim to love the world as much as i say i do, then why the gap between my good intentions and the results obtained? why?

***

perhaps (as i have stated so often elsewhere) my love has as much to do with self-effacement as it has to do with loving someone else. at the very least, loving the other draws attention away from my lowly self...

***

nowadays, i can feel the pressure building up in my chest. there is some kind of stagnation there, and soon, i sense, i hope, i fear, it will burst...

***

today, i took my children to the beautiful park. i pushed them on the swings as i used to, back in the earlier days; we went to the courts and played some soccer, and then i practiced throwing the football to them (underhanded, of course), calling my son "knuckles" and my daughter "yoshi". we went to the birthing stones below, which the kids wanted to scale, and i practiced through the motions of the second taijiquan form in that empty and tranquil looking clearing at the bottom of the park.

the happiest times in my life are when i am able to forget.

to let go.

i love the happiness of children. i think there is something of god and rightness in the true, kindhearted, oblivious laughter of children. i think i understand this as a miracle, and thus, children relate to me (or at least, used to). i think, i hope, that in my heart, i too retain the possibility of a child within me. it is this which can keep a person young and unsullied by the world, at least if they keep a piece of this in their heart.

i am so proud of my children. despite all my correctives, despite all of my "guidance," both gentle and harsh, i am so proud of them. they are kind-hearted children, the both of them, and i can say, without hesitation, that they are "good." no matter what happens, or where life takes them, in this moment, i know that they are the most beautiful things in this world...

***

i remember one morning when i stood on the roof of the temple, feet buried in snow. and shodo instructed me on how to shovel the snow off the burdened roof. i remember feeling so very tired, my arms heavy. i wasn't just physically tired. i was spiritually empty. i was filled with such despair and self-loathing. i had been there at the temple for three months by then, and i was no closer to enlightenment and peace than i had been at the beginning. if anything, i was further away, and lost.

where is enlightenment? where is peace?

in the winter, everything was smothered in white. the path to anywhere, much less some mythical place as enlightenment, was hidden. here, in the trackless white, there was nowhere to go, everything frozen and freezing. and like the cold, my heart was being turned to ice and stone.

i wanted to tell shodo this, but what was i going to get? sympathy? a quick rap on the head? what was it that i wanted? i wanted all of my burdens, all of my self-hatred, to fall away, just as shodo wanted all of that snow off the roof...

i did not appreciate how fortunate i was to be on that roof, to be in the company of a bodhisattva. i regret this now, wrestling with that same despair, that same feeling of weariness, that i had those many years ago...

"i think we've got a floater..."

***

it is in the things that people think are nothing, or what's worse, close to nothing. i believe in, i care for these things.

have you ever stopped to wonder why you do that?

he became sheepish.

isn't it because they never talk back. not with their own independent words. it is always please and thank yous. yes, a lot of thank yous. it is because nothing, or close to nothing, ever hurts you. because you don't want to be hurt, ever again.

he looks up, his eyes suddenly afraid. then suddenly, he clutches his head, and his gut clutches his body, so he looks like something wounded, doubly folded over.

***

and thus it was that the boy looked upon his life with different eyes. he saw all of the things he had collected, all of the things he had talked to, with different eyes. he put all of those things in a dark plastic bag, all of the words he had written, all of the memories, and with tears blurring his eyes, he threw it all away.

and last of all, he lifted owlie and donald duck from their vaunted thrones on his bed, and, carrying them under his arm one secret night (walking very gingerly so as not to sound owlie's water bells), he took them to the high canal, the one at the very top of the weedelia field, and he dropped them one by one off the bridge, into the cold, dark flow of the waters. you are better this way, he whispered to their invisible, disappearing forms.

and then he sat on the bridge crying for a moment, but only for a moment, because he now hated everything he was, and hate was a cruel master that didn't allow you a moment of rest; it was waiting to throw a rubber slipper at your head if you weren't always treading the water.


***

i- i thought you were a healer or something. that's what my dad said. but all you've taught me is to- to hate myself. and i think, i think that's how i was already sick.

look, you misunderstand me. you seem to think that i am some kind of caring, benevolent creature. i'm sure your dad told you other things about me: about how i drown children, or rape women, or steal their innards (particularly their livers, yum!) through their anuses, and eat them fresh and bloody while the victims watched... how i would steal a person's very soul, their shiki-dama, just so i could have it, and just so a person couldn't... why, pray tell, would i ever heal you? why would i ever care to heal you?

people are funny.

if you walk around carrying your own personal distance and innocence, eventually (most) people start to reveal an impatience and distaste. there is only a small window of time, a season, for a person to open themselves to the world like a flower or a bomb. if that season passes, then you're considered a bud or a dud. nothing revealed is nothing concealed as far as the general populace is concerned.

i carry good intentions, and a smiling yellow face painted on my head. but it isn't enough. i have a disarming slouch and a genetic bow, and i always make self-deprecating statements and apologies. but it isn't enough. people want something else. people want a person who sets them at ease, not through withdrawing, but through showing up a complaint or an insult or a joke. they want you to give by taking...

at this point, i don't care. a person who knows himself to be just a bumbling fool, somehow i believe that that sort of person has the secret to turning the world around himself into "what it is in itself." in the process of being oneself, there is the possibility, the allowance, that others will be themselves... somehow, i think that not responding to the "games and fictions" reveals the emptiness of most social machinations. people don't know what to say when their words aren't echoed back to them...

yes, i'm falling into the adolescent stand-apart trap. i'm still very immature in that sense. but what's worse is i'm jaded, and have come up with a whole slew of justifications for the way that i am. and yet... honestly, i'm fine with the way i am, quiet and awkward. i just wish the rest of the world were fine with me too.

***

i hope to sleep soon, and that sleep will kill me off completely so that i am born as someone else, motivated and relevant, like that quantum leap guy. i hope i become someone else, so i can run me in a better, optimistic light... we all need, at times, to be someone else being ourselves.

today i watched as the kids "played" at their last capoeira practice for the time being. i laughed as they did a version of "duck duck goose", using some sort of rattle to indicate who was the "goose." i noticed aiden practicing a couple of cartwheels in between the games. i intend to have the kids continue capoeira; they have a besoura (sp?) or batizda (sp?), some kind of ceremony where they get to meet and work with mestre kinha, the teacher of the kids' teacher...

i wish i were a kid again. i could have the chance to learn capoeira, with all the flips and kicks...

as i helped the kids with their homework afterwords, i couldn't help but start to pass out. after a while, i just sprawled out flat on the floor, falling asleep for a few minutes. it felt inevitable, like gravity.

i haven't been getting much sleep lately. there are a lot of things i have to do overnight, so much so that i at times despair of ever getting it done. and yet, i can't just sleep; my obligations prevent me from fully relaxing... it's hard. this morning, i was kind of "zombie-ing" through everything, going through the motions...

i took the kids over to my parents, and then drove over to icaom, where i taught the acupoints class. i enjoy teaching acupuncture point location; it's something that is somewhat precise; i like introducing people to the topography of the human body, finding all of its secret points...

***

now i'm back after the long drive back home... i want to take a shower to wash off the world, and then collapse into bed... at least for a few hours, before i wake to prep for tomorrow.

the monster i've become

i am discovering the monster within me...

***

today, we visited the psychologist to receive a formal diagnosis re: my son. and, with some relief, i learned that he is add-combined type (due to inattention and impulsivity issues) with some aspects of pervasive developmental disorder (another, newer label for autism spectrum disorders, i suppose). his iq is average in most aspects, except for processing time, which may be attributable to attention deficits... with the diagnosis, there is a name for my son's issues, and perhaps a way forwards.

***

but i am still wrestling with a newfound temper. i think i am a demon in secret. every now and then, when i least suspect, i show my true colors...

i want to stop caring sometimes, because it is the "caring," or the attachment borne of caring, that causes me to embody a demon (or a demon to embody me). there are all manner of evils committed in the name of caring. many shades of violence.

i am still figuring out how to care passionately about something, and yet not get drawn into fighting violently for it. i want to maintain some equanimity and peace, while still being involved... how to do it?

i love my children SO much. so much. and yet, i feel myself slowly (?) falling apart. i need time and order, i need things to fall and settle into place. but everything is going so fast, and demanding so much...

i would very much like to disappear for a time...

***

intermittent fuse
arc shaped flash, liberation!
moment satori

***

missing inaction

overflow
laughter and television
and the drawl of days too long

i prune abrupt
with bladed lids
and short words and shrift

i think
something waits for me
adrift
in drink
within some hidden sea

i'll weigh anchor with the broken chain
anchor with a broken chain
until a wake will
bring me back again

flotsam on familiar shore
broken, sick and sore

not wanting
wanting
more.

the past couple days have been pretty hectic. i am learning the finer points of my job, and trying to keep up with the responsibilities that accompany being a parent. it's been a bit overwhelming, so this afternoon, i just kind of cut the tether and let myself drift. i played a bit of piano (my latest preoccupation is a "kid a" cover i found on youtube), strummed the guitar that one of my acupoints students restrung (it's out of tune, or tuned in an unconventional way), and then felt the compulsion to do taijiquan (although i'm seriously out of practice). i think my energy wants to build and move... not in a compulsive way, but in a manner of fullness and heaviness, and in a manner which discovers the path of ease through its own gravity and weight...

my son mentioned to the persnickety neighbor that i am a mean dad; not sure if the idea was planted or not, but irregardless, it was kind of a blow to me. never imagined that i would be in this position, concerned about being thought of as "mean." but parenthood makes strangers of us all. the whole weight of concern over the well-being of a child and his future, well, it is impossible to address that in a balanced, "unmoved" way... i think that if parenthood does NOT change you in some way, then you either aren't being a good parent, or you're some kind of kangaroo, with a built in pouch for rearing... nevertheless, at present, i'm trying to approach things from a distance, floating like some unconcerned satellite. there is so little i can do from up here. and it is so easy to love and appreciate my son through the lens of the stratosphere...

i am really tired inside...

***

i was thinking about a day once when i drove over to queen emma park (nuuanu park), and it was a rainy, slightly windy day. i walked over to the basketball/volleyball courts, with the rock wall to my back, and performed all of the forms in my repertoire on the semi-slick asphalt. every now the wind would stir a fleet of raindrops from the branches of the banyan tree above, and there would be the slapping sound of their collective impact... i recall a peace in that place, but as with all such feelings, it was accompanied by a kind of loneliness, a kind of sadness...

this day was reminiscent of a thousand other days. i recall living in santa monica, and how, in the early days, i would drive alone to redondo beach, and try to rollerblade down the walk, just like all the other golden people. and i remember going to the pier at redondo beach (hermosa???) and feeling the sunshine and the grey green waves surging beneath my feet, and thinking how alone i was...

now that i am married with children, i realize the center, the heart that i was missing. i think i was always meant to be an accompaniment of some sort, the background to someone else's melody. i provide the structure and the undertones to bring the figures out and to life, in striking contrast to everything else... without my wife, without my children, i am nothing special to see. i am something that is slippery, that slides eyes away...

***

there is an eye and an ear that accompanies all art. but whose eye and ear is it? in the performance of art, the awareness of attention can be distracting and destructive, and it often becomes a practical necessity to "kill the buddha" (i.e., ignore the observers) in order to be true to an art. and yet, what purpose is art other than to be something worthy of an eye and an ear?

so again, whose?

art is a disappearing act. it is done, ostensibly for the ego of the artist and his vision, but in reality, for the purpose of killing the self as imperfection. it is to become lost in a process and an image and a sound that is larger than oneself...

is there really something to talk about? or are you just stirring the waters of a stagnant pond, picturing shapes and shadows in the outlines of ripples that you yourself invented? ...nothing speaks for itself... and when there is little feeling hiding within this empty receptacle, when the words cower before the gate of expression, shivering and naked under the scrutiny of the unseen eyes, there is no reason to believe that anything worth saying will be said, and convince anyone of anything...

maybe it is better to be quiet.

this is the way of the rat, to sniff the air for signs and portents, but trace the small shadows for crumbs and leavings. there is no overarching vision of the world, only hints and promises of a meal of refuse. there is no singing voice lifted up and uplifting, only the quiet of someone who has nothing important to say, and who does not really want to be heard in any case... mumbles and subterfuge.

folds, textures, details. the dimension of the small, microscopic, idiosyncratic. and prose and plotlines that are caught in the rut of a rat's haunting grounds, not daring to venture forth beyond the known and the long-since conquered...

i have nothing new to say today, tonight.

***

work on nothing

i am in a wandering mood this evening. met the kids at the piano teacher's house, sitting reading about reading comprehension and musing how i was going to incorporate the "reader's workshop" conception and system to a special ed class in which instruction must be individualized... helped the kids with their homework between attempts to snatch baby lizards from the tops of the neatly trimmed mock-orange hedges (i think the secret is to grab before you think about grabbing)... then home with a head full of idle thoughts on how to decorate the house for halloween, and what to do for friday's school halloween party...

the sky is pleasantly dreary, and i love the sound of rain as it insistently hushes the earth loud and quiet with white noise. the wind, loud and at times disturbingly violent, somehow feels clean, as tiny minced fingertips of breezes happen to stir through the barely open screens, stirring things gently... i am comforted by the way the vertical blinds will click softly, rattling like old bones at the touch of the storm outside...

i feel sorry for birds. i recall how, one day, after a particularly blustery storm, i walked across the parking lot at waikele with my kids, and we noticed a finch stricken dead on the ground. a few footsteps found another, and another, until i counted a total of ten such birds, all adults, all otherwise perfectly healthy, but all definitely dead, their talons clutched. it was somewhat traumatic to my children. i explained that when the wind blows, the birds have nowhere to hide, and they are tossed from their homes in the boughs and crashed against the earth... (not in those terms, not in so harsh a manner).

sometimes, when the rain takes over, and gets really loud, i swear i can hear voices shouting from the deep rain drainage ditch behind our house, as though someone were trapped down there, yelling for help...

***

i am a man full of plans. idealistic. but i am old enough to understand the limits of time and endurance. i also have come to understand that a single person contains many, many voices, and many, many motivations, and the higher motivations sometimes only win out after time is patiently doled out to the "lower" motivations. a lot of time is wasted. but i've come to understand (grudgingly, or complacently) that there really is little alternative: people are like blossoms, or crumpled paper, or origami (take your pick), and we only reveal our true shape through a slow, sequential unfolding process. we aren't in control, necessarily, of which fold will open first, or what shape everything will take in the process. in a way, the process of unfolding occurs through us...

and we have only to behold, in wonderment, at who we are, and what the world is in response to our flowering.

***

i look forward to halloween, but this year, there are no new heroes/villains to emulate/copy. i think i am going to recycle costumes. i am dressing as kakashi for the kids in my class, and for sunday, i may revamp my old crow costume. but we'll see...

in the meantime, i hope you, reader, are well, and take respite, and "work on nothing"...

tired, out of focus

today was kinda a bad day. it all started last night, when i kinda blew up at my daughter for going to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck when it was late and dark, and i had explicitly told her not to... i felt really bad after that, so bad that i just kinda wrestled with my own inner demons for most of last night. there is a whole lot of self-hatred seething beneath the surface, and with just a light scratch, a horde rises up to pull me under.

i couldn't get to work, to focus on the things i was supposed to do last night. i kept putting things off, thinking that i'd sleep for a couple of hours and wake up to get things done. but i wasn't sleeping, i was just lying there twisting and turning, my guts clenching with anger, like my whole body was some fist. i kept wanting to drift into oblivion, but it never happened...

the morning came like an unwelcome guest. i rushed out without saying an adequate goodbye to my wife and kids, and found a day disordered and panicked waiting for me. it was a feeling of impending doom that hung over my head the whole day, a day of feeling empty and unprepared and a minute late and uninspired... i hated it. i worked with the kids, who seemed restless and argumentative today, and felt so very tired. i do love the students i work with, but this day was... tough.

i feel dirty with the grit of the world on me. i want to take a shower and then envelope myself in oblivion. but there is always tomorrow looming... dread.

***

i did hear an interview of keith richards (guitarist of the stones), and i found him jaded and wise and interesting. one thing i thought was funny was his description of his fans early on in the stones' rise to fame, consisting of girls 13, 14, and 15 years old, who were desperate to touch and cling to any part of him... but didn't know what to do with him once they had him. keith had had many brushes with death, but he made an endearing statement, something about having no regrets or fears; "everybody has a knock up, a brush up, with death every now and again."

i hope to have that kind of humor about life when i am that age. nowadays, i just feel hunted by my own shadow...

***

shadows sucking marrow
leaving me hollow and skin barely standing
shivering within and without
scared of the slightest puff of the fake dragons
or the cuts from paper tigers.

it is not enough to do good things.
it is not enough to be good.
the hate finds you where you stand unawares
it finds you because it never left
it reminds you who's boss
who will always be boss
and whips you to do deeds
without the satisfaction of knowing
you're in the right, and
you're okay,
you're fine in someone's book.

it rips out the pages.
it spits out the words in garbles.
no one wants to read between the lines.
no one saves the man behind
it is too bored and disinterested a thing.

the kindness of strangers

tonight, i was reminded of how kind people can be. while i was driving home from a party with my son in the backseat, i ran out of gas on a main stretch of road. i had been riding on fumes, it turns out, unaware of how close i was pushing the envelope. i only had enough to drive on the side of the road near a turn, a very dangerous place. i turned on my hazards, and debated for a time how i was going to address the situation.

i had run out of gas before in more precarious situations. once (not very far from where i ran out of gas tonight) i pushed my then mazda glc over a couple of hills (kinda like sisyphus, urging the boulder over the hill and then slipping into the driver's seat to control the acceleration on the downslope), all the way to the nearest gas station. but tonight, i couldn't do it. different car, and my son was in the backseat, and there were too many cars zipping by to my immediate right.

i had just decided that my best option was to walk with my son over to the gas station (it was really really close - tantalizingly close in an empty gas car), buy a gas can, fill it up, and walk back to the car. just as i was exiting the car, another car stopped behind mines, with its hazards on. this big guy walked out of the car, and asked if i needed help. i briefly explained my situation.

"get in," he said, "i'll push you. this place is way too dangerous."

i was about to object, but he put his hands on the rear bumper. so i got in, and as he pushed, i steered. soon, we were just pass the turn where i ran out of gas, in a much safer location. i got out and shouted my thanks profusely. i shook his hand. he smiled, got back in, and was off... that was kind stranger #1.

so i walked over with my son to the nearby gas station. i asked to buy a gas can, but the two cashiers said that they didn't have any. i was kind of stumped in disbelief. there was a whole shelf full of automotive stuff, from antifreeze to brake fluid. and this was a GAS station. and they didn't have a gas can!? just to get my hopes up, one of the cashiers recalled that they had an emergency gas can in back, but warned me that they would need collateral, $10 up front. luckily, i had the cash. but unluckily, as it turned out, they couldn't find the gas can. desperate, i saw one of those huge 44 oz plastic mugs with the gas station's logo printed on the front. i also spied a large funnel. i decided to purchase these items in a desperate try to get enough fumes of gas into the tank to carry the car the last few yards over to the gas station, where i could fill in the tank properly.

make a long story short... it didn't work. the funnel, long though its shaft was, wasn't curved properly. while there is a small drainhole to catch gasoline to take it to the tank, i think that most of the gasoline from the cup was spilling out rather than going to the tank. i think i still might have had enough to start the engine, but when i tried, i think i must have flooded it, and caused the engine to sputter...

i was at a loss. i thought about walking further to a foodland, to perhaps see if they had a gas can there. it was just then that another car stopped behind mine.

this guy and a girl were in the car. the girl was in the car. the guy came out (looked like a typical local guy, just like the other dude), and said, "need help?"

before i even explained my situation, he said, "need a gas can?" and as though he had been watching my plight, he went to his backseat, where, voila, there was an old gas can. i accepted it, and told him i would hurry back with it after i was done.

"keep it," he said, his girlfriend laughing in the driver's seat. "i have more."

i was speechless. for the second time tonight, i found myself shouting "thank you" over and over again. the smile on that guy's face was priceless. he drove away, his hand raised high, as if to say, "take care."

so, with the gas can, my son and i were able to fill up the tank to a quarter full, and drive home...

***

let it never be said that people around here only look out for themselves. these people actively sought to help me, a perfect stranger, and they did so quickly and with utter generosity. i will never look at other people the same way. within the faces of strangers, there is the possibility of such kindness and generosity and love, that it would astound you. don't look far away for your heroes. if the situation were right, your heroes could be your next door neighbors, the people that pass you by on the street...

... and, i hope, if there ever is need, that hero could be me or you.

you know the rest

flight

it is 2:50 am right now. the alarm would have gone off at 3, but i stopped it.

the moon is bright tonight, casting its light with wanton abandon upon the blind and sleeping landscape. it paints a broad and spreading quadrilateral through the window, reaching all the way to my forearm, as i lie here on the carpet typing. maybe the moon wants to see me. maybe it wants to burn me with its cold reflective light.

it has been a trying, somewhat surreal week. there have been events occurring at my school that have been strange and traumatic. i've approached those events at a distance, and with a feeling (if you can call it that) of detachment and disbelief. a school is a community, a community that is built and woven out of the fabric of the larger community it occupies, and knitted and stitched tightly by the faculty and staff who work there. it is a community founded on the highest aspirations, to care for and nurture young souls. it is a shock when something happens to that community, when an act of senseless violence occurs... such an event sends shockwaves throughout the community, fraying the ties that hold the community together. in short, it makes us all feel alone, if only partially.

that is why there are so many efforts (worthy) taken by the counselors and administration to help us to feel that we are NOT alone in this...

my greatest concern lies with the individual who was directly involved in the attack. i hope that person is well. i hope that person realizes that the community of the school would like to help, to heal... we all pray for that person.

***

at times, (several, in fact) i feel as though my life is in a rut. don't get me wrong, it is a comfortable (more or less) rut, and i am thankful for everything within it, especially my family. but there are only so many ways to recycle thoughts and reflections from this little valley of mine...

i think of the children in mad max: beyond thunderdome, itching for a messiah to take them away from their "happy valley" and the forgotten trauma of the "pocky clips", into "tomorrow-morrow land." i think of them waiting for the winds to stir up, and uncover the buried 747 from out of the dunes, so that some stranger could summon up wings and allow all to fly...

this, even though what lay outside of the valley was desert and destruction...

i think, no matter what, that humankind must venture out. it is an instinctual need, even though we do not have wings, the need for flight. we must see outside of ourselves, we must learn how the edges of our horizons connect to other lands, other places, other ideas, other people. it is our way of not feeling alone and decaying. it is our way of feeling, of renewing ourselves. that is how i view flight, not as an escape from the world per se, but as a way to broaden a vision of the world, to discover something new.

after all, we all need to feel that this "isn't all", if only to appreciate what we have.

i rarely dream of flight, and even rarer these days is the dreamless sleep that carries me bodily from the old day to the new (daedalus glides unwaveringly over the glassy sungilded waters, having sacrificed the fecklessness of his only son, having sacrificed all dreams, concentrating only on navigating his manmade wings to the shore beyond)... i want that dreamless flight to happen, to allow the world to turn, and turn away, to keep the darkness of this night behind me, and awaken with the sun, a new person, in a new day.

i pray for this, the capacity to forget. in forgetting, we remember who we are.

(and in remembering, we forget who we are.)

recovery

i wish i didn't have to suffer my own ignorance. at times, at each new revision, i find that i cannot forgive myself for the mistakes i've made. i chant a mantra, "i hate myself," whenever i think of the person i was, the presuppositions i operated under...

i could flip things too. instead of looking at correctives from a more or less positivistic perspective, it could be that i am a fugitive, desiring peace, but constantly and relentlessly pursued by this baleful eye and mocking voice, constantly ridiculing me, staring holes through my naked innards. because, quite honestly, i feel that way all the time... guilt, shame, for my indelible imperfections, peccadilloes...

if one mantra is "i hate myself," another, spoken sharply and for mercy is, "god help me." i don't believe in a god i (or anyone else) can conceive, or i don't conceive (too much) the god that i believe in, but i like to think that it is a benevolent force that we (i) call on when i feel as though i am at the end of my spiritual rope. the "where i end and you begin." the blurry part where i am flagging and frustrated, and i need to believe that something or someone supports the ground that is falling beneath me... sometimes i talk to other "ideas" or "spirits" as well, including, most importantly, my own grandmother... shodo kawabe (who, if he knew, would probably strike me sharply with a stick for my incompetence and general wimpiness)... lao tsu... and, kanzeon sama, whom i always envision as this kind, benevolent, beautiful woman (i think i superimpose oyasama [miki nakayama] upon her as well)... kanzeon is the "one who hears", and i like to think that she hears me...

i don't expect a response, i don't expect anyone to move mountains for me... sometimes i talk to "god" just to let it out, so that i can continue.

the last mantra, spoken when i am strong and quiet, and decide to try for truth, is my koan: "who am i?"

***

i slept a lot this week. and the rest of the time, i drifted through familial obligations. don't get me wrong, i loved being with my family, i live for them... but i always felt haunted by the other things that i was failing at, always failing at... and i always have been pushing my kids (since that, i feel, is one of my failings) to practice, trying, in a meek and meager way, to keep them up to speed...

there are always other voices speaking through a parent. those who aren't parents don't understand. they think that you remain yourself when you become a parent, and you speak with the same "wisdom" you had as a child, the "wisdom" of one who believes in letting things go and grow as they would... no, when you become a parent, you hear so many other voices. and you pay attention to the world in a way that you never did before. you become concerned over morality, over the future, over a thousand things that you thought "went by themselves." when you are a parent, you realize that nothing goes by itself, nothing speaks for itself. you have to take all the voices of the world. you have to help your child to speak...

...and you don't. that's the paradox, i suppose. but those who are naive to think that parenting is just easy, take it easy, be hands off, well, they never had the kids that i do, and they never had the worries and concerns that i do.

***

anyway, i am drifting on tides. as time gets closer to pressing deadlines, i start to quicken, like water naturally builds its momentum and gathers itself together, just before the fall off a cliff. that's me... unable to churn myself, only circumstance can make me move...

dreams come and go. i wake every night at 3. i wander out of bed, still somewhat tired (or at least not motivated enough to face responsibilities in the empty and lonely time of 3 am, filled with persecutions and guilt). i go to the 2nd floor "art room," lie on the couch, sometimes with nothing to cover me but the pillows (buried, comfortably, as in a grave of softness), and pray. i talk to god. and then, somehow, as the sun is slowly coming up, i drift for a time into sleep. sometimes, the dreams that come to me in those last hours are happy, but i never remember them. they never sustain me. they are a brief respite from my pursuer, the hatred, the corrector, the revisioning of me... nothing goes without saying. nothing is said without a good editing.

***

tonight will likely be the same. the promises of all the things i sought to accomplish, left by the wayside in favor of other motivations, motivations that i cannot resist, because they are so apparent, so clear, so close, and so real. there is no will in me, just the appreciation of surfaces... sometimes, i justify this or am able to justify this lack of will by saying, for example, that it is good that i spend some time with my family, with my wife, my daughter, my son... and a part of me agrees, and believes this to be true... but really, it is because i am going through motions, there is no will left in me to move the sisyphisus stone. i must let life roll, and follow. for now, i follow the stone down the hill...

lately, i have been having aspirations to make my house and home self-sustaining. i have been peeking at aquaponics videos on youtube, and looking up how to start a honeybee hive (partially because of the whole colony collapse problem occurring worldwide, and partially because i enjoy seeing so many pollen-laden bees hovering over my growing allysum and portulaca fields - btw, allysum smells just like sweet honey!). i also idly think about installing solar onto our house (we still don't even have the basic solar water heater right now).

i worry deeply about the future of my family and society in general. hawaii is an isolated place. we need to import most everything we need from outside. even the majority of our electricity is produced via oil shipped in from outside. with fluctuations in oil prices, our energy infrastructure is extremely vulnerable. our food supply is also very vulnerable, as we don't have the agriculture to sustain our population, should something drastic occur, and shipments of food from outside cease.

there is talk of developing areas adjacent to the h-2 freeway. some of that land is prime agricultural land. there is also talk of developing the land along kam highway leading to the north shore, also prime ag land. now, i know that there is always a need for affordable housing here in hawaii, but let's face it, we live on an island, and we have finite resources and finite space. we cannot keep building indefinitely. there must be a limit to development. also, if we build over prime ag land, then we cannot "unbuild," and restore that land to its agricultural function. if we take away prime ag land, then we reduce our capacity to produce food for export, and, more importantly, food that could sustain us in the possible situation of a lack of food imports.

so i worry about that.

i don't like to be political about things, but quite honestly, republicans and the tea party are holding our country back in a time when intelligent and timely action is necessary. they speak of the national deficit, and somehow characterize themselves as "conservatives" (such a misnomer, and an ill-conceived political ideology), when it was their reckless policies that brought our country into the financial crisis it is in today. it truly disgusts me, the kind of blatant flat out lies and rhetoric that the republicans/tea party spew out in order to justify their baseless positions. they truly are the party of "no," as in "no future."

i don't understand the constituency of the republican party. in my mind, they consist primarily of the rich, who are selfish in the sense of attempting to safeguard their own wealth and prevent government oversight over their tax evasion and laissez faire economic policies (i.e. couched as "less central government"). and then, there are the helpless (and, i'm sorry, brainless) sheep (a lot of them poorly educated ["global warming and evolution are myths?!?"]) who are somehow duped into thinking that the republican party somehow stands for them. some of these people are convinced that the republican party is the party of morality; this, even though republicans have hardly advanced the cause of such hot button issues as abortion, and only pay face value to these in order to garner votes from the "christian conservatives." republicans try to say they are the party of the people, of the "small business owner," even though the tax cuts that they are all hot over would only influence the highest income brackets, and would have nothing to do with the so-called "mom and pop shops" that they seem to be speaking to and for. it's all a crock of s**t. honestly, guys.

i heard the end of the president's address this afternoon. and then, i heard the so-called republican rebuttal, delivered by the senator from wyoming (can't recall his name). he mentioned some platitude from the "west," something about how in the west, we all keep our promises. he then went on to say how president obama has failed to keep any of his promises. honestly. president obama has had to deal with a whole lot of crap leftover from the ruinous eight year republican rein, AND he HAS (unlike most politicians) actually delivered on several of his campaign promises, albeit in less than ideal form (largely because of republican bullheadedness and obstructionism)... i won't detail the senator's speech; let's just say that it was layered bullshit. same old same old republican speech strategy: a bunch of high-sounding lies, words taken out of context, no facts (or facts taken out of context and "spun")...

again, i don't want to talk politics, it is very bad to do so... but i can't stand how they are ruining our country, and ruining our world. if things head where they are going, then it will be a hollow victory for the rest of us to say, "i told you so" as the world goes to hell... thom yorke aptly captured the whole republican mentality in his song "idioteque": "take the money and run." yes, republicans, take all the money you can, and run... where? spend it... where? the world you deny and destroy is the same world you live in. you republicans talk about "tomorrow" (i.e., concern over federal spending, leaving a debt for "tomorrow") when it was YOU who created this problem; what about the environmental "tomorrow," the educational "tomorrow," the international peace "tomorrow?" all republicans are really concerned about, in my mind, is tomorrow's paycheck...

whew. sorry, had to get that off my chest. no one reads this stuff anyway... (hopefully?) and i'm not a politico by any means, hate politics...

interrupt.

***

poisoned as the tip
of a mountain
stabbing the belly
of the sky
dribbling clouds
scudding tears
unseamed pillows
let loose upon
a world thirsty
as cottonmouths.

***

it is a very difficult thing for me, this push and pull thing that is being a father. it breaks my heart, it breaks me apart. makes me crazy.

this afternoon, i came home from work. my wife was home, and had been working with my son on a shapes exercise. let me contextualize some of our situation with our son. lately, we have been hearing from "spectators" left and right about what we "should" do about some of his problems (as if we didn't know, as if we haven't tried). much of the "advice" had to do with "being consistent", "being stern", etc. again, as if we (or i) hadn't already tried... i had just resolved a few weeks ago to be a more loving and accepting parent (something which i still am, deep inside i know my son to be a miraculous and uniquely compassionate person), but i guess the combination of the "buzzards" around me and today's particular situation and exhaustion, whatever, it caused me to snap...

so for this exercise, my son had to sort shapes. and when i asked him what a particular basic shape was, he couldn't tell me the name of it. now, this isn't some obscure shape; it's one of the basic everyday shapes that pretty much any preschooler knows. i suppose that really shocked me. it just floored me. i had to walk away in disbelief.

"they" say that all it takes is working with a child, spending time with a child, to "get up to speed." let me tell you, i spend every free moment i can with my children, trying to help them. and still, after all the incremental improvements, after all the positive encouragement, etc., there are these moments where - well, where you feel the ground simply fall away under you...

i suppose i went on kind of berserk. i worked with my son on his shapes assignment, and then on his reading response assignment, with a kind of zeal... the shock i guess had forced the chorus of "spectators" around me to suddenly have a voice, an intense and insistent voice... maybe they were right, maybe all the "appreciation" and encouragement that i had sought to cultivate was wrong, maybe all i needed was to push him harder and harder... after all, i mean, come on, he didn't know what that shape was?!?

i worked with him for a long time. he was supposed to attend soccer this afternoon (a sport with its own host of problems for him), but i told him he had to finish his homework. in a dim corner of my mind, i could feel that this whole thing amounted to some kind of torture, me holding him to task, being relentless about keeping him up to some sort of "standard" of normalcy that the crowd had put into my head... things shouldn't be this way, and by god, i will force him to be where he should be... that sort of ridiculous notion.

let's just say that by the end, he was exhausted, and i was exhausted. i had shouted so much that the nosy persnickety neighbor next door was standing in her yard listening (perhaps debating on calling on a domestic abuse incident). it was embarrassing on some level, but to be honest, a part of me didn't care. "they" (the spectators, the crowd) weren't here, they didn't have to live with the burden of this problem, "they" only always have their stinking opinions and advice. OF COURSE my child has something going on... they never listen to all the good that he is, or the possibility that the way he is has little to do with how hard he tries...

and because i was weak, i didn't listen to this either. i pushed. i pushed hard.

and now it is 3 am and i can't stop thinking about how i took the low road, and tried to force my son to change. i wander into his room and out, i watch him sleeping with buzz lightyear and his protective silly bands around his wrist, and i think about what a monster i have become, i think about how i may be damaging this precious, caring, sensitive young soul.

and i hate the world for its opinions, its "well-intentioned" advice.

i am here with my son. every day is a lesson in catch and release. it's a gentle game, and the object is and isn't to get him to be better. the game is the game. i want to be with my son in a place where i can hear him laugh in his voice, i can hear his happiness, and not the happiness i have imposed upon him for being a monkey jumping through a hoop. love is holding hands, leading, and letting go. it's always a changing, shifting dance. i am his father, and in my heart of hearts, i know this. it's just- i wish the world would stop telling me i don't know what i am doing, that i don't know my son, or what's best for him.

i know him. i know him. please let me just play with him this game.

***

we appreciate a soul when we eulogize it. i try to eulogize my son every day. because every day the boy i knew may have died, and i will be seeing something new take its place. i will record in my heart everything i know about my son, in the time that i have. i want his laughter to be burned into me, i want the joy of sharing it to have a chamber in my heart, where it can live forever. no one will be able to take it away from me. definitely not the "spectators," who think they know better.

the relationship between a father and son, it is inviolable. it is the closest thing to a sacred thing that there is...

carius. curias. i think m

today i had a good day with my son. there were things that i could have said, but didn't; instead, we just played together. after his soccer game, we drove to toys r us, and we chose out action figures to play with. it is something he likes to do, play with them, and as it was something that i used to do (so long ago), i thought it would be a good thing to do together. he chose the toy story 3 hero set of small plastic figurines (with 7 characters). after that, we went over to the beautiful park in nuuanu, and played with our action figures on the jungle gym. it was great to just play with my son, not caring about what we had to do, or what anyone would think. i think that he had a lot of fun too. afterwards, we played a bit of soccer on the upper field of the park, with him aiming to hit the mango tree with his ball. it wasn't about skills or anything, just working the ball. then, we drove to costco for his suggested lunch, which was hot dogs, and stopped off at a store in the dole plantation center that sells some anime stuff. we looked around (aiden wanted to get a japanese transformer version of buzz lightyear, but i declined to buy it), and then drove home.

in the afternoon/evening, aiden, willow and i drove over to honbushin for the daikon festival. the kids always have fun at it. strange, but it's been almost every year that we've gone. it is kind of a watermark for us... was it a couple of years ago? i tried to do a sword form on stage. this year, it's all about the senior groups providing the entertainment, which is very different from a lot of other festivals. the daikon festival has been steadily growing in popularity, and on this evening, there weren't very many places to sit. the kids made a pinwheel, played a couple of games (tissue paper nets trying to catch rubber balls, tissue paper fishing lines trying to pull up balloons), made some sort of monkey-climbs-the-rope toy, and drew pictures for the mikoshi... and then, it was off to home...

i sat on the sofa upstairs, and tried to practice on the guitar, with a few finger strengthening exercises and barre chords. and not long after lynn came home, i kind of passed out.

aiden mentioned to willow (close to the end) that he'd had a great day. and for that, i was happy...

burnt

today my soul is burnt
from touching the world too much
today, from feeling
a frayed rope slipping
and stabbing,
red handed,
i felt me pulled
from my stand.

dry voice cracks and bleeds
unable to let loose of a silken
ribbon of pain.
it comes out in croaks
and starts,
an ugliness
that, once revealed,
wants a hide.

painted corners

to speak
is to paint yourself into the corner
of a round room.

the colors don't match
my chameleon skin
i prefer to remain
anonymous and invisible
and afloat in a world of signifiers

but still i play the game
we all play the game

so
know me
but don't know me
don't get a handle on me
but hold me close
please
close as the next newest and best thing
in the world

at least till tomorrow
when i update
and fashion changes
these emperor's clothes

ghosts in the walls

they say this place is h a u n t e d
they say things occupy the shadows in the corners of eyes
and in the walls things pass like
xray stares through air and people.

there are holes they say
within and between everything solid
more holes than you could count
even in a beatles song
more holes than you could fill up
with words and reassurances.

they are talking even now
in whispers half heard
a second too late after our own voices
reverberate on the hollow tile.

can you hear them?

they are passing through us now
the ghosts in the walls
flitting through us like
wind through raindrops
allowing us our selfish dreams
before we crash and mix
in the holes we all
come back to.

blah

a voice that is husky from all of the screams in the bathwater.
a husk born emptied of fluid of core of sperm of soul.
a soil less fragrant for the colorless and infertile dreams dyed in it.

is it grown up or groan up?
given up giving up to the downcast lid sky?

(no you haven't)

i am here
waiting
a pretend dead man in a pretend dead world.
longing for the real dead die done.

if a part of me lives still,
like a worm peeking hesitantly out and up

kill it please.

to those few (hello?) who tuned in regularly, my apologies. life has been busy, what with the new job. i have been a cog in this daily grind to produce viable relevant instruction for my expanded family of kids...

tonight, today, i exploded at my own two children. i arrived at my kids' piano teacher's house (my father had dropped them off). my son had just finished his lesson; he'd had a good session, largely because i sat down with him for a couple of hours the day before struggling through his pieces. but when i asked to see his homework, i was unpleasantly surprised to discover that he hadn't done a major assignment, and i hadn't even been aware of it, because he had forgotten to bring home one of his homework folders detailing the assignment since monday. i was also disappointed by the note from the teacher asking us to have a talk with him about his focus in class. now, the issue with my son's attention is nothing new; we have been struggling with it over the past year, and recently, have been seeking professional assistance in coming up with a name for it, a diagnosis to give this amorphous problem a border and a handle. but it still was upsetting for me to hear that it was cropping up in a new classroom...

and then, when my daughter came out of her lesson, i learned that she hadn't done a thing all week: no theory, no significant work on her pieces. that was the straw that broke the camel's back. i had been devoting a large amount of my attention to my son's piano playing, and had taken for granted that my daughter could handle things on her own, and i came to discover that she hadn't been practicing all week...

...so, i blew up. i don't know how else to describe it. came up with irrational punishments in the car ride home, including selling their precious ds's. this totally broke their hearts, and they were crying all the way home, moaning "no, daddy, no."

like the fifth little pig...

and i, their merciless butcher.

***

it is now almost midnight.

i had a long talk with my son, after he cried at the discovery that his ds was gone. no, i hadn't sold it, and i don't intend to, but i did take it away from him. i actually shouted (bastard that i am) about how he wasn't supposed to play it on a weekday anyway, so why was he missing it? of course that wasn't a placation of any sort. my son couldn't stop crying, his voice sounding like the fractures of some huge glacial wall... and i, i was this inevitable manmade environmental global disaster, called bad fathering.

eventually, i took the discussion to his bedroom, and, somewhat realizing the error of my ways, tried to talk in gentler tones. i learned from my son that his counselor had been talking to him about something called an ILAC (no doubt an acronym of some sort) which was like his heart, and how every time he was hurt, a piece of it broke off. mortified, somewhat knowing the answer, i asked him if i had ever caused pieces of his ILAC to break off. he answered yes...

i felt so terrible after that. i apologized profusely, tried to explain (inadequately) how much i loved my son, tried to explain how sometimes a father has to push his children in order to get them to stand on their own, and sometimes (out of inexperience or perhaps a lack of control) he pushes too hard. i tried so hard to explain myself, but i wasn't sure who i was trying to convince, or what i was trying to say... in the end, i was just left with this gnawing guilt. i am still chewing over it now.

i promised (inadequately) that i would try not to yell, that i would do my best to build up my son's ILAC in every moment that i had with him. at this point, he confided in me that one of the things that caused his ILAC to grow were his "jajas," his teddy bears, that he always held close to his heart when he was sleeping...

***

my son, i realized, has inherited the best characteristics of both my wife and i, and this is what is destroying him, leaving him vulnerable to the viciousness of this world.

when i was young, i kind of had this sense of empathy for all toys. i felt that they, like all children, like myself, were vulnerable. they were intended to be happy things, they were imagined to be happy things, but ultimately, they were subject to the whims of a world with a short attention span and a cruel and fickle heart. in response to this secret understanding of the nature of the world, i took it upon myself to love some of the toys under my care with a heart that was undying in its loyalty. i held onto "owlie" (my one eyed, sleepy, water-bell owl) and "donald" (donald duck with a mean and vicious sewn up scarred neck) to show a love for them that i knew did not exist in the world for those who deserved it, for myself... we may have slipped through the cracks, but in the sewers, i would hold onto these rejects (a reject myself), and rebuild a society, alligators in the sewers (ala radiohead's fog)...

my son has this same inherent empathy for toys, toys on the brink of being broken and forgotten. he, like me, has this understanding of the fragility of childhood and innocence, how the world paints a face upon it as though it is the happiest thing and time in the world, when in fact, in reality, childhood is a toy that is vulnerable to the whims of an attention deficient and largely uncaring world of "grown ups." it is the grown ups that are the children, fickle and immature. i had always known that, and i know this still, perhaps acutely so, now that i have become the enemy. but my son knows this truth just as well as i, and he lives it every day.

it's no coincidence that my son's favorite movie is "toy story 3", and his new favorite hero is woody. it's because the movie aligns with his basic philosophy about toys/children on the verge of being forgotten, toys/children who the world takes for granted as being happy and mindless, but who live out a day-to-day struggle to hold the attentions of the "children."

my son is a very caring child. he spots the outsiders, the least among all, and actively shepherds and cares for them. his heart is big, and populated with all of the forgotten denizens of the universe...

***

why is this world so narrow and cruel? there is a one-way path with a rushing current of an escalator floor, and we must shove everyone on it to move to- where? i try to stand aback and question it all, but the ground beneath my very feet is moving, the whole world is shifting and jerking with the speed of our momentum, and if i am to give my children a place in this world, then i, like everyone else, must push and shove...

there is no room in this world for gentleness, for peace, for idle chatter.

or so it seems.

***

i told my son that his heart, his ILAC, is the most precious thing in the world. i told my son that i would learn to be careful about it, that i would try my best to find ways to allow it to grow big and strong. it is a difficult promise, but it is one that i must strive to fulfill.

i hope someday that he can grow to have the heart that i should have had, had i NOT grown up...

sobbing in bathtubs, screaming through warm water.

the alyssum is growing, hesitantly. i go out to the planter box, and to the garden path, frequently, even in the nighttime, to check on them, to scrutinize their peeking double-leaved stalks breaking the soil. it has become exciting for me. in my head, i see the future, where the dark loamy earth will grow color and life, and draw the eyes to it like tired butterflies to a field of wildflowers... which, i suppose, is what an "alyssum field" is...

***

i have been bad today. no work done for my upcoming job next week. just a brief perusal of the curriculum, a walk-through in my head, and only in my head, because i didn't have a working pen at the time. i believe the secret to success in almost anything is front-end loading, but at the moment, i haven't the drive to do it systematically. as always, time or some mysterious internal process divorced from it will fuel my momentum, and i will drive myself bodily forth into what i need to do. i believe that i can only do what i need to do (and, regardless of whether i believe in it or not, it seems to be my reality).

i am anxious about my kids, my own kids i mean. i am no longer always there to tell them what to do. and besides, i cannot mold them in my image. they were born fully shaped. the love i provide is, of course, indiscriminate, and goes to fuel the growth of their own outlandish individualities and idiosyncracies. love is, after all is said and done, unconditional... (but we're not quite to the point of saying and doing everything, so in the meantime... i've some occasional pruning to do...)

***

i wonder about people sometimes.

***

i believe in ghosts. i don't understand how they exist, or what purpose they serve, or whether they are repetitions/echoes/shadows, or conscious entities that can learn and grow. i believe that ghosts are somehow clothed in/shaped by the beliefs of the host culture, which makes me wonder at the reality of/nature of culture itself, and its enduring "end game" religion. is there an objective "true" religion, or is religion merely a way for human consciousness to structure reality, even beyond death? silly question, i'm sure. but it seems to me that, with regards to ghosts, anyway, there are ways to appease them or communicate with them, but they all involve some kind of interaction clothed within a specific culture/religion. it's not as though you can use some all-purpose ghost-away repellant ritual; in japan, you'd use a buddhist ritual (depending, it seems, upon the beliefs of the ghost involved), whereas here in hawaii, i suppose they depend upon kahunas...

i don't know. stupid thing to think about, but i have been really fascinated/obsessed with ghostie things of late...

the liver's for planning, and kidneys give you skills, and follow-through. the spleen is the rhythm of thoughts, thoughtful thoughts that arise of themselves (like clouds condensing) and drift through transmutations effortlessly. the lungs are learning with each breath the lessons of holding in and letting go. and the heart sits in the center, keeping the time and reposing in the sightless palace.

life is carrying a kingdom around, swimming within you... without jarring it too much like waterbells, without overindulgence or starvation. somehow, taoism (in its truest sense) works for this inner kingdom, so long as we are not ridiculous in our search for the extremes of its capabilities. somehow everything goes without saying...

***

the trick in life is to find the right amount of force to apply to it. too much, and we leave our own imprint upon things, breaking the nature of what we touch. too little, and the weeds and the wildness take their mile and acre from our own cared-for territory. we are, and we are not, apart from/a part of our world. we must exercise gentleness (or at least be sensitive in our violence) or we destroy the thin skin holding everything in its right place...

***

i am re-learning how to be a gardener. gardening is patience. it is the holding onto a vision of what is as yet unseen. it is the love that patiently endures the seed's slow growth and the stem's unseemly directions and strayings.

some day, when the time is right, the investment of soil and water and sun (and, sometimes, attention) will reveal itself in a form that is lovable (and that loves you back) with each full leaf and shy blossom.

some day, when the moment is full, a plant will find its shape, somewhere in the interface between its own wild and blind seeking for the light, and the gardener's corrective pruning. no one knows the final shape; it is found, and lost again, and refound, with each passing season.

gardening is like parenting is like teaching is like life. it is patience. it is holding onto a vision of something as yet unseen. it is the love that is faith, for faith and love, in their essence, are one and the same thing.

deep within the seed, and beyond the straying stems, the gardener will find his garden.

today began well. i woke up early, and kind of flowed into my activities. cleaned up a bit, and then was drawn into gardening, and its interminable chores. i weeded some of the front sections, planted the last of the portulacas, raked and cleared the next 10 feet or so of the planter box beside the house, and did a LOT of pruning, particularly on the umbrella tree in the rear corner of the house. willow popped her head over the rim of the second floor window and called out, "i love you daddy!" about then, i stopped the gardening and went in. washed up a bit, and lynn made a great, simple breakfast of two eggs sunny side up + rice + spam + hot cocoa. i laid down after that, reading a bit of john loupos's book on taijiquan (as i am thinking of creating a formal curriculum on taijiquan for my niece and nephew). then, somehow, i got drawn into cleaning out the pantry closet: consolidating, throwing stuff out, stacking cans and boxes...

at about 12:30, willow, aiden and i headed out to taiko practice. we have a performance coming up this friday. we have a small group performing (us included), and that means that some of us (me) have to step it up a bit and play songs that we're not really familiar with. in particular, i've got to work on kansha and the taiko aerobics moves. hope i can do a decent job by this friday, but, if not, it's all in the spirit of fun.

returned home. kathy, marcus and kara stopped by, and we played for a bit with some water balloon grenades that i filled up. then, we (willow, aiden, lynn and i) headed to a party for lynn's friend kat. it was at the nichiren temple in nuuanu valley, a really pretty temple with a small fish pond with live koi in it, and a pretty large downstairs meeting room with a stage and a slightly off tune piano. as always, i kinda got drawn away from the "adults" and "peers" having their conversations, and instead watched the kids. at one point, kat's daughter meadow pulled me by the hand to the stage, where she insisted alternately that i sing at the mike or play at the piano. between hackneyed versions of twinkle twinkle little star, i tried my hand at "true love waits" and "spinning plates." somehow, the piano sounded off.

we just returned home, with aiden passed out and willow fighting sleep (she's still awake, flipping pages of some book in bed). an altogether nice day.

cup o' noodle.

his father poured the water, still whistling, into the styrofoam bowl, over the dessicated noodles and vegetable bits. the boy wanted to peek, to see the transformation from dry to wet and palatable, but the father unfurled the raised edge of the paper-foil cover and pressed the edges flat, concealing everything. as if to prevent the boy's intrusive curiosity, the father laid his chopsticks lengthwise across it, like a bolt in a lock.

as the boy stared hungrily and intently at the styrofoam bowl with its hidden contents, strange thoughts seemed to bubble in his head: how his own haircut was a bowl, not unlike the flat hemisphere of the styrofoam before him; and how noodle was another word for brain, probably because the brain inside of his head was just like a bunch of noodles, all tangled up. the boy had a strange thought just then: were his "noodles" cooked, or were they still dried up and frozen, waiting for someone to pour boiling water into his skull? and, if so, who? who would want to eat his boring, miserable noodles?

the boy's dreams were magnifications or exaggerations of his waking life. in a sense, they were truer versions, because they were the potentialities of his waking life realized, in brilliant and horrific detail. in his dreams, the boy was surrounded by a forest of giants, with faces hidden in the distant sky. the boy was not noticed by those terrible giants, and he darted hither and thither in the shadows of their dangerous thundering strides to avoid being stepped on. the ambiguity of the dream lay in the fact that, at one and the same time, he felt in danger of being seen by the fierce and burning star-like eyes of the giants, and in danger of NOT being seen by them. to be seen would have reduced him to nothingness beneath a withering gaze, but to not have been seen would have also reduced him, like a far flung and forgotten planet in the distant cold blackness of oblivion.

his brother was one among the many giants, perhaps the largest of them all. from a distance, he could see him (for it was only from a distance that his eyes could encompass his terrible height). he could see him look the other giants in the eye. he could see his brother converse with the other giants as equals, with a blithe and casual air that the boy found disconcerting. in shadows he gathered around himself, the younger, smaller boy pretended he were like his brother, that his eyes could dare to meet another's, that his voice could dare to speak. but, even in his dreams, his eyes wandered like water to the cracks in the earth, and his voice faltered, without enough air to lift it, and with nothing to say in any case.

the only words that passed his lips, mumbled almost unconsciously, were words of deprication. "how i hate myself," he whispered. shocked at the words, but more than this, shocked at the vehemence, the living FEELING that surged in them, he whispered them again. "how i hate myself." it seemed so true, in fact, the only truth. and as he spoke it yet again, this time with more strength and power, he discovered that he was unafraid to be overheard by the giants, for likely, it was something they already would have muttered, had their glowing eyes chanced upon his miserable, huddled form. and so, he chanted it again and again, like a mantra, and the words seemed to build with an intensity and force all their own, growing louder and louder. before long, he was practically shouting it, pounding his chest with clenched fists, feeling in the pain of the impacts a small measure of excitement...

on this side of the night, things were safe. wrapped snugly around by the sweet smell of an old blanket the color and texture of milky oatmeal, and surrounded by his twin avian companions, owlie and duckie, the boy felt a measure of belonging. it was the kind of feeling he imagined someone or something cherished by the world must feel, held within a gentle embrace. it was a good feeling, if inauthentic and fleeting.

shadows already cast themselves haphazardly across his room. he was somewhat ambivalent to them. on the one hand, he was still young, and lacked the cognitive machinations to convince himself that nothing monstrous hid within their black edges. on the other hand, he knew how liberating it was to dwell in darkness; after all, the shadows never ridiculed or rejected him.