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