the wind is high again tonight.
***
this morning i dropped a flash drive with my thesis on it in my prof's mailbox. don't know why she requested, or why sending an electronic version via email wouldn't have sufficed, but i drove all the way to uh to obey. hopefully, it's enough.
had an appointment with a patient and friend. she enjoys listening to cds of different speakers that inspire her as i work on her. this morning's selection was carolyn myss. i appreciate myss's matter-of-fact and in-your-face critique of "american spiritual intuitive callings" and such, and i agree with her assessment of how our modern society tends to develop hokey notions for "how to live spiritually" in ways that are entirely divorced from reality. like vegetarians don't fart or even defecate; all of those green leafy edibles, when digested, produce only "spiritual thoughts", and the fresh scent of body mint or something. i mean, give me a break.
myss claims (and i agree, in my own unintuitive, cloddish way) that our problem is not that we aren't intuitive, but that intuition is such a constant flooding of information, literally a fulguration of insights, that we have to drown it out or at the very least process it slowly simply in order to remain sane. i do believe that passion, inspiration do work like this, and we have to routinize or somehow "step down" the high energy of impossible dreams and demands...
anyway, after this appointment, i visited my sister at her place, where i worked on two of her roommates. it was nice to see my sister, even if it was a brief visit, and i was actually preoccupied with treating people. she reminisced about the time when i made a raw herb formula called shi xiao san (literally "sudden smile powder") for her when she was experiencing severe cramping after giving birth to my niece. running joke is how bad it tasted. if you know what's in shi xiao san, you'd understand...
picked the kids up from school, took them home, and did the whole drill with them: homework, then piano, then violin, then taiko... they are usually too tired to do much else after that, although if i had my way, we'd also train soccer... we go to aunty joan's house after that for dinner, and as a reward for their efforts, they take turns playing "plants vs. zombies" on my itouch. willow always discusses strategy with me, particularly as she's playing on the last level. aiden doesn't really have a coherent strategy; he plays as he speaks, with flashes of interest and a kind of monotonous repetition of favorite "phrases."
we met lynn at aunty joan's, had a nice dinner of portuguese bean soup... uncle ferman talks news and politics, and is amazingly upbeat for someone who's lost a dear friend this week to cancer/stroke... i'm not much of a conversation partner, but i try to keep things going, offering comments with a touch of cantankerousness to get a laugh and a smile...
and then it's home again, home again, jiggitedy jig. a bath, a story (tonight was issunboshi, from island heritage press; it's actually a wonderful book that i used to have when i was a kid! princess miyuki was and still is incredibly beautiful), and then to bed...
usually, everyone kind of drifts off, and i'm left to my own devices... decided to watch "battle royale," this japanese movie based on the manga of the same name. VERY twisted movie. but still, if you've got the stomach for it, i'd recommend it.
***
life has its own rhythm. i think of it in terms of acquisition of goods and appreciation of space, oscillating. in one phase, we are interested in getting things, in filling up our lives. in another phase, we are sick of things, we use them up, or perhaps they remind us too much of the past, or of our nausea with who we were or are, and we start to shed things, clear space, simply to find breathing room.
right now, we are in the latter phase. i've been going through the upstairs room, what we euphemistically call the "art room" (because it's where the kids do a lot of their drawing/painting/whatever) and where i tend to hang out late at night (because it has a couple of comfy sofas and a nice cross breeze). i've had to get rid of a lot of crap, just so that there is more space here. right now, it looks good: bookshelves cleanly stacked, the kids' art supplies neatly tucked away in organizer drawers.
i'm
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
a dream.
my friend kendall came up to me, reminding me of some goth festival of acts that he was performing in, and which he'd somehow reserved a spot for me to do something. it was the actual night of the event, and i panicked, and (in the way of dreams, and, sadly, of life) i half committed, my mind wavering at what to do, and my body uncertain of direction. i wished my friend kendall well, he was already dressed up for the occasion, his face made up in white grease and black lip stick, like brandon lee in the crow...
i wandered the building aimlessly. it was vast. i on occasion left the building, despairing of saying or doing anything meaningful. i had a folded piece of folder paper in my pocket, and i thought idly of writing my thoughts, my immediate thoughts, as i had a habit of doing in my blog, and then somehow at the end (depending on the crowd's reaction), mentioning that i had self-published a little book, a pamphlet, really... so i was paying careful attention to what went on around me.
acts were being performed on some secret stage, to some crowd... at one point, i thought i found a dressing room, and thankful for what looked like white stuff to put on my face, i sat before a mirror and started applying the stuff... only, it was far more gooey than it seemed on other people... i started to half-suspect that it was food. i noticed a container with small bits of white rice, for instance. nevertheless, i continued to make-do with the make up, i found a thing that looked like a grease pencil, and started writing on my face, only it was a kind of dirty brown, not clean black. oh well...
i got caught up with a group of potential audience members trying to find their way in. at one point, i recognized one person as a famous author, accompanied by his girlfriend. son of gabriel garcia marquez (i heard his interview on fresh air yesterday). i remembered something that he said distinctly, and thought it would be a pithy thing to say on stage (though i can't recall it for the life of me now). anyway, the group we were in kept bifurcating as people chose different paths to get in. eventually, i was climbing a staircase (a narrow one) with the marquez boy and his girl. we broke into a forgotten section of a parking lot, dark and filled with ticking clocks, the small portable alarm kind. and a bit beyond, in the shadows (it was night) was a man snoring. i thought that this must be the parking attendant, and he used these tiny clocks (literally hundreds of them) to determine if specific cars had overstayed their welcome. we backed down.
somehow i got separated from the other two people, and found myself wandering the building alone. i eventually found a weird room shaped like a spiral, with a spiral staircase, which was shaped more like a chair (hard to describe). if i sat in the chair, and turned a lever one way, then the staircase disappeared, and the chair began to spin (slowly or quickly) up or down. i did so, as i appeared to be on the 89th floor, but then panicked as i spun quickly, and there was basically a metal column of nothing below my dangling feet... and i started getting very dizzy besides...
at one point i appeared in a orange-light (afternoon) hispanic barber shop. some very curvaceous barber shop ladies, dressed in tight fitting outfits, were "interrogating" one of the older gentlemen seated for a haircut... there was a musical feeling to the whole thing, and i wasn't surprised when they started breaking out into a song, which i could understand and couldn't, something about marital fidelity... (thankfully brief section of the dream)
after that, i recall being near the grand staircase of the building, overhearing the woman who was in charge of the whole event scheduling some kind of drama activity for special education kids. she said something about "dumbing things down" for the special education kids (VERY offensive), and i saw the woman she was with stiffen in response to that remark. i then heard that woman (the one who stiffened) say something snide in response, something with the word "stupid" just to subtly reveal how offensive the first woman's statement had been...
later, i approached the woman, whose name was rose. i told her i had been scheduled to appear for the goth festival, but somehow missed my time. laughed about that. then i told her that it wasn't the best idea to say "dumbing down," as that was particularly offensive. gave her some advise for how to "accommodate" the children...
and that was that.
end of strange dream.
my friend kendall came up to me, reminding me of some goth festival of acts that he was performing in, and which he'd somehow reserved a spot for me to do something. it was the actual night of the event, and i panicked, and (in the way of dreams, and, sadly, of life) i half committed, my mind wavering at what to do, and my body uncertain of direction. i wished my friend kendall well, he was already dressed up for the occasion, his face made up in white grease and black lip stick, like brandon lee in the crow...
i wandered the building aimlessly. it was vast. i on occasion left the building, despairing of saying or doing anything meaningful. i had a folded piece of folder paper in my pocket, and i thought idly of writing my thoughts, my immediate thoughts, as i had a habit of doing in my blog, and then somehow at the end (depending on the crowd's reaction), mentioning that i had self-published a little book, a pamphlet, really... so i was paying careful attention to what went on around me.
acts were being performed on some secret stage, to some crowd... at one point, i thought i found a dressing room, and thankful for what looked like white stuff to put on my face, i sat before a mirror and started applying the stuff... only, it was far more gooey than it seemed on other people... i started to half-suspect that it was food. i noticed a container with small bits of white rice, for instance. nevertheless, i continued to make-do with the make up, i found a thing that looked like a grease pencil, and started writing on my face, only it was a kind of dirty brown, not clean black. oh well...
i got caught up with a group of potential audience members trying to find their way in. at one point, i recognized one person as a famous author, accompanied by his girlfriend. son of gabriel garcia marquez (i heard his interview on fresh air yesterday). i remembered something that he said distinctly, and thought it would be a pithy thing to say on stage (though i can't recall it for the life of me now). anyway, the group we were in kept bifurcating as people chose different paths to get in. eventually, i was climbing a staircase (a narrow one) with the marquez boy and his girl. we broke into a forgotten section of a parking lot, dark and filled with ticking clocks, the small portable alarm kind. and a bit beyond, in the shadows (it was night) was a man snoring. i thought that this must be the parking attendant, and he used these tiny clocks (literally hundreds of them) to determine if specific cars had overstayed their welcome. we backed down.
somehow i got separated from the other two people, and found myself wandering the building alone. i eventually found a weird room shaped like a spiral, with a spiral staircase, which was shaped more like a chair (hard to describe). if i sat in the chair, and turned a lever one way, then the staircase disappeared, and the chair began to spin (slowly or quickly) up or down. i did so, as i appeared to be on the 89th floor, but then panicked as i spun quickly, and there was basically a metal column of nothing below my dangling feet... and i started getting very dizzy besides...
at one point i appeared in a orange-light (afternoon) hispanic barber shop. some very curvaceous barber shop ladies, dressed in tight fitting outfits, were "interrogating" one of the older gentlemen seated for a haircut... there was a musical feeling to the whole thing, and i wasn't surprised when they started breaking out into a song, which i could understand and couldn't, something about marital fidelity... (thankfully brief section of the dream)
after that, i recall being near the grand staircase of the building, overhearing the woman who was in charge of the whole event scheduling some kind of drama activity for special education kids. she said something about "dumbing things down" for the special education kids (VERY offensive), and i saw the woman she was with stiffen in response to that remark. i then heard that woman (the one who stiffened) say something snide in response, something with the word "stupid" just to subtly reveal how offensive the first woman's statement had been...
later, i approached the woman, whose name was rose. i told her i had been scheduled to appear for the goth festival, but somehow missed my time. laughed about that. then i told her that it wasn't the best idea to say "dumbing down," as that was particularly offensive. gave her some advise for how to "accommodate" the children...
and that was that.
end of strange dream.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
the wind breathes in waves.
it is a mixture of
exhalations
air spent
carelessly
in mid-thoughts and mid-gestures
from uncorked lungs
and far away lives unstoppered:
the first halting cough of an eight year old
trying to hold in his first, "cool" drag.
the smooth whistle spinning through
a chinese girl's hair as she spins
through a mid-air dive, confident as a knife,
slicing miracles.
the third to the last sigh
of a man whose remission proved temporary,
blurring out on waves of morphine.
lives mixed in invisible colors
and dragged and staining
across shadowed landscapes,
nibbled by hungry leaves
and gobbled whole by stranger lungs.
despite an adulterated history,
how the wind always tastes fresh.
it is a mixture of
exhalations
air spent
carelessly
in mid-thoughts and mid-gestures
from uncorked lungs
and far away lives unstoppered:
the first halting cough of an eight year old
trying to hold in his first, "cool" drag.
the smooth whistle spinning through
a chinese girl's hair as she spins
through a mid-air dive, confident as a knife,
slicing miracles.
the third to the last sigh
of a man whose remission proved temporary,
blurring out on waves of morphine.
lives mixed in invisible colors
and dragged and staining
across shadowed landscapes,
nibbled by hungry leaves
and gobbled whole by stranger lungs.
despite an adulterated history,
how the wind always tastes fresh.
fragment:
"i knew your father," says the man. he approaches me with a somewhat awkward look on his face, as though he is uncertain of himself. when he is close enough, he shirks some of that awkwardness off, and appraises me with a clumsy, slanted grin. "yes, you certainly are your father's boy."
i smile faintly. for some reason, i am unafraid of the man, even though, by objective standards, he looks strange and "off." he is gangly, and asian, though i have a hard time telling whether he is japanese or chinese or korean. there is a certain kind of face that resembles a monkey, with somewhat wide eyes and pouty long lips curved into a perpetual smile, that can overlap different races, and he has that face. perhaps it is that face that allows me to trust him. there is something comical in the eyes or the lips, something unabashedly open. "how did you know him?" i ask.
he smiles suddenly, and his teeth are alternating silver and dirty yellow. his eyes look down, folding crow's feet at the temples. "we used to work at the silk-screen factory together," he says, "back in our bachelor days. back when i first came here." for a moment, he seems lost in a memory. then, he catches himself, looking at me with a smile that could almost be interpreted as sneaky...
i smile faintly. for some reason, i am unafraid of the man, even though, by objective standards, he looks strange and "off." he is gangly, and asian, though i have a hard time telling whether he is japanese or chinese or korean. there is a certain kind of face that resembles a monkey, with somewhat wide eyes and pouty long lips curved into a perpetual smile, that can overlap different races, and he has that face. perhaps it is that face that allows me to trust him. there is something comical in the eyes or the lips, something unabashedly open. "how did you know him?" i ask.
he smiles suddenly, and his teeth are alternating silver and dirty yellow. his eyes look down, folding crow's feet at the temples. "we used to work at the silk-screen factory together," he says, "back in our bachelor days. back when i first came here." for a moment, he seems lost in a memory. then, he catches himself, looking at me with a smile that could almost be interpreted as sneaky...
disclosure
i have been thinking lately of the paradox of the internet... of social media like facebook or twitter... of blogging... and the dangers of disclosure. i suppose that, in an idealistic world, it would be possible to represent oneself fully to the world, to truly express how one feels about this, or what one thinks about that, without potential repercussions. this is what makes the internet rich and interesting, after all... people truly expressing themselves with (true or false) representations... like the individual pixels comprising an ever-changing portrait of society.
but we do not live in an idealistic world. too much disclosure puts one at various levels of risk. there are the obvious risks, of course, the kind of risks we hear warnings about, of putting personal identifiers online, like our phone number or social security number or whatever. and then there are the less clear, difficult-to-avoid (or even predict) risks, such as expressing oneself and offending someone in the process. some of these sorts of risks can be classified in terms of political disclosures (expressing one's "common sense" views on political ideology, which, as it turns out, may not be so common, or at least, not universal) or religious affiliation. it's sad, but expressing views that one holds near and dear to one's heart oftentimes cannot be appreciated or even tolerated by others. and, if one does not want to "make waves," one begins to self-edit remarks, to prevent offending anyone. the result is either silence, or a monotonous sea of apolitical, areligious, unrevealing remarks... the richness of the internet has been reduced to a flat canvas of fear...
there is the argument that people should reserve their remarks to those who would agree with them. but this leads to the figurative "echo chamber," where people simply "preach to the choir." this leads to the fragmentation of society, the shattering of the common image. for the internet and society to truly be rich, all discourse should be present, from the unpleasant and disagreeable, to the strongly affirmed and agreeable. only then can we know each other, only then can we hope to be "heard" by a different ear...
***
i recall (from somewhere) the notion of the panopticon. the panopticon was intended to be an instrument of control. each individual lived in a separate isolated room, but one wall of the room was made of glass, and open to view of everyone else. although no one could communicate with immediate neighbors, it was still possible to see others, living lives in other windows. and thus, it was possible for the notion of always being seen, of a paranoia of sorts, to exert an insidious and invisible control of the behaviors of all individuals in all rooms... no one spoke out of turn or did anything untoward, simply out of fear (respect) of this nebulous other that was always present and always absent.
are we turning the internet, this ubiquitous instrument of representation and expression, into a panopticon? who needs a big brother when we have invented a whole slew of "others" who are ready to jump on and judge every slight that we commit, every mispoken thought?
***
in a discussion with my friend kendall and his girlfriend, i tried to articulate why it is that i blog. i had a difficult time of it. if indeed the blog is merely a journal of sorts, then why not keep it locked up and private? why do i write all of these personal, and potentially damning, thoughts, and broadcast them to who knows where? ...
why indeed... for anyone who ever has written (as a form of expression), you are aware that all writing is produced for an audience. even if that audience is not a distinct person or even group, there is a hidden reader guiding the shape and content of any given piece of writing, shaping it through the contours of his/her invisible ear. in a very real sense, every piece of writing invents a reader; it is almost as though every word shapes that (possibly fictitious) reader, through gauging what he/she can accept, what he/she will find challenging, what he/she will possibly turn away from...
the reason blogging is essentially a disclosure, a secret-sharing, is precisely because that is what writing is. writing's very purpose is to share secrets. and to keep writing "private" is to bottle up what was inherently intended to be sent to the winds, to be caught up by whomever happened to be stuck in the same storm.
writing, blogging, and, yes, any form of disclosure on the internet, is (secretly or not, consciously or not) exhibitionist. and what's wrong with that? people are constantly bottled up by circumstance and imperfection; we all need an outlet where we can share who we really are... what is so wrong with this?
it is for this reason that i blog on occasion. i want to share a piece of myself with the world, even if that piece is at times incoherent, ill-formed, whatever... i share of myself with full knowledge that i am a person in process. i don't pretend to be someone who has arrived, and has "thought everything out." far from it. and i'm sure i've shared damning secrets. in fact, i know i have. but if i listen too much to the "voice of reason" that tells me to tone it down, or to edit things for my own safety and protection, then i defeat the very purpose of my writing, of my blogging. to a great extent, this experiment, the driving force behind it, is this very "making-vulnerable" of my soul (in comfortable degrees, of course). it is to risk oneself beneath the eye of the world.
understand this: only if everyone commits this risk will the world be free of fear.
as one of my professors, mark taylor, pointed out, to eliminate the fear of wrongdoing, there must be "obligatory excess." or, as dylan put it, "everybody must get stoned."
i urge everyone to take a risk and express yourself to the world, in comfortable degrees. not everyone will agree with you, but who cares? in the end, no one will agree completely with anyone else, and we weren't meant to... in the end, everyone will (paradoxically) appreciate their sameness only after everyone appreciates their fundamental and irreducible difference. we are all together in the fact that we are all crazy and alone...
but we do not live in an idealistic world. too much disclosure puts one at various levels of risk. there are the obvious risks, of course, the kind of risks we hear warnings about, of putting personal identifiers online, like our phone number or social security number or whatever. and then there are the less clear, difficult-to-avoid (or even predict) risks, such as expressing oneself and offending someone in the process. some of these sorts of risks can be classified in terms of political disclosures (expressing one's "common sense" views on political ideology, which, as it turns out, may not be so common, or at least, not universal) or religious affiliation. it's sad, but expressing views that one holds near and dear to one's heart oftentimes cannot be appreciated or even tolerated by others. and, if one does not want to "make waves," one begins to self-edit remarks, to prevent offending anyone. the result is either silence, or a monotonous sea of apolitical, areligious, unrevealing remarks... the richness of the internet has been reduced to a flat canvas of fear...
there is the argument that people should reserve their remarks to those who would agree with them. but this leads to the figurative "echo chamber," where people simply "preach to the choir." this leads to the fragmentation of society, the shattering of the common image. for the internet and society to truly be rich, all discourse should be present, from the unpleasant and disagreeable, to the strongly affirmed and agreeable. only then can we know each other, only then can we hope to be "heard" by a different ear...
***
i recall (from somewhere) the notion of the panopticon. the panopticon was intended to be an instrument of control. each individual lived in a separate isolated room, but one wall of the room was made of glass, and open to view of everyone else. although no one could communicate with immediate neighbors, it was still possible to see others, living lives in other windows. and thus, it was possible for the notion of always being seen, of a paranoia of sorts, to exert an insidious and invisible control of the behaviors of all individuals in all rooms... no one spoke out of turn or did anything untoward, simply out of fear (respect) of this nebulous other that was always present and always absent.
are we turning the internet, this ubiquitous instrument of representation and expression, into a panopticon? who needs a big brother when we have invented a whole slew of "others" who are ready to jump on and judge every slight that we commit, every mispoken thought?
***
in a discussion with my friend kendall and his girlfriend, i tried to articulate why it is that i blog. i had a difficult time of it. if indeed the blog is merely a journal of sorts, then why not keep it locked up and private? why do i write all of these personal, and potentially damning, thoughts, and broadcast them to who knows where? ...
why indeed... for anyone who ever has written (as a form of expression), you are aware that all writing is produced for an audience. even if that audience is not a distinct person or even group, there is a hidden reader guiding the shape and content of any given piece of writing, shaping it through the contours of his/her invisible ear. in a very real sense, every piece of writing invents a reader; it is almost as though every word shapes that (possibly fictitious) reader, through gauging what he/she can accept, what he/she will find challenging, what he/she will possibly turn away from...
the reason blogging is essentially a disclosure, a secret-sharing, is precisely because that is what writing is. writing's very purpose is to share secrets. and to keep writing "private" is to bottle up what was inherently intended to be sent to the winds, to be caught up by whomever happened to be stuck in the same storm.
writing, blogging, and, yes, any form of disclosure on the internet, is (secretly or not, consciously or not) exhibitionist. and what's wrong with that? people are constantly bottled up by circumstance and imperfection; we all need an outlet where we can share who we really are... what is so wrong with this?
it is for this reason that i blog on occasion. i want to share a piece of myself with the world, even if that piece is at times incoherent, ill-formed, whatever... i share of myself with full knowledge that i am a person in process. i don't pretend to be someone who has arrived, and has "thought everything out." far from it. and i'm sure i've shared damning secrets. in fact, i know i have. but if i listen too much to the "voice of reason" that tells me to tone it down, or to edit things for my own safety and protection, then i defeat the very purpose of my writing, of my blogging. to a great extent, this experiment, the driving force behind it, is this very "making-vulnerable" of my soul (in comfortable degrees, of course). it is to risk oneself beneath the eye of the world.
understand this: only if everyone commits this risk will the world be free of fear.
as one of my professors, mark taylor, pointed out, to eliminate the fear of wrongdoing, there must be "obligatory excess." or, as dylan put it, "everybody must get stoned."
i urge everyone to take a risk and express yourself to the world, in comfortable degrees. not everyone will agree with you, but who cares? in the end, no one will agree completely with anyone else, and we weren't meant to... in the end, everyone will (paradoxically) appreciate their sameness only after everyone appreciates their fundamental and irreducible difference. we are all together in the fact that we are all crazy and alone...
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