i got a chance to visit my long lost sister today. my parents asked if i could deliver her driver's license to her working place. i didn't expect to actually see her; her instructions were to deposit the license in an envelope on the working place door. but when i walked up to the place, the door was actually open, and there were people inside. as i called to the people to signal that i was going to leave the license in the envelope, my sister responded and came out from behind some curtains.
she looked thinner than when i last saw her (that's a good thing), and seemed a lot more alive and active. at first, i had a hard time registering that this person was actually my sister. sure, i'd seen her in passing, whenever she stopped by my parents' house to visit her kids. but this seemed to be the first time in a long while that i'd actually seen her "alive." her words were colorful and funny, but i couldn't really "hear" them, as my eyes were drinking her in. i recall one observation i had was that her eyebrows and eyes were really starting to resemble my dad's... kind of a downward turn that made them look inherently and inescapably sad and distant.
anyway, i told her that her youngest daughter was in the car, as we were planning on taking her and my own kids to some art thing at ala moana. so she asked to see her. i led her over to the car where everyone was waiting. as soon as her daughter saw her, she cried out "mommy!" and ran out of the car to hug and hang onto my sister's leg. it was touching, and kind of sad...
***
i love my sister, and miss her dearly. her path has always been a harder one (largely, though not entirely, of her own making). it doesn't seem so long ago that she was that vivacious kid that used to tag along with me wherever i went. how our paths have diverged! i feel a deep sense of loss in the distance that time and experience has put between us. i hope that on some fundamental level, we are still the siblings that we once were...
***
anyway, nowadays, and at the present moment, i am feeling very very tired. i sleep a lot more than i can afford to, but i still don't seem to get any real rest. i still long for something to happen in my sleep, for something to restart within my soul... i still want to feel clean, restored, and ready to engage with the world. instead, there is this persistent need to hide away and hibernate...
my hands feel vague and warm. i think when my heart settles low, as it does when i am in this sort of weary, fixated mood, then the energy tends to flow into my hands... it tingles. i like this feeling, though i am not sure how effectual it makes me for anything...
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
i've been pretty tired at work... my mind has been preoccupied with family issues. there is a deep schism in the family at the moment, and it looks to be permanent. i, for my part, cannot see any way to resolve it, except to hold to the vague promise of time healing all wounds...
i keep wanting to sleep forever... it seems like rest doesn't come when the world is unsettled like this. i feel so sad for my parents, for the crap that they have to put up with... as my father somewhat snidely remarked: kodomo wa sonna mon da ne... which roughly translates to: "kids... what can you do?" my mother, meanwhile, has clung to her recent (at least in my book) faith. i'm glad she has that, even if, in my somewhat jaded perspective, it seems kind of like a hypocritical clutch of the good book... no matter what, my parents deserve to be happy, and, failing that, a modicum of psychological comfort...
***
there are large moths that visit the eaves of our house regularly. far from a sense of foreboding, i like to think that they are ancestors, come to check on us. when i am on the verge of sleep, i like to imagine their wings, fluttering the dust of their wisdom upon me. i like to hope that one of them, my grandmother perhaps, will come to me in my dreams and have a chat with me, as they did when we were all in the same living moment together...
if anything, i need the solidity and comfort of their presence now.
***
winter is coming. in recent nights, it has gone from cool to cold, and it has become harder and harder to wake up and get the day started. winter is the season of quiescence and a beckoning kind of sleep... it is the season of seeds frozen in the hard earth.
i recall the white mantle, how it smothered all time, in other places and other lives. i recall how it seemed to last forever. i recall walking cold and empty hallways, hearing the echoes of other lives, occupying the space left behind by other people like air within a frozen bubble, probing the boundaries of myself, yearning to be free...
now in this other life that i now lead, i am undeniably content. there are real lives that love me, and that fill me up with a gratitude and a sense of connection to this world... and yet, at odd moments, that old lonely meandering returns, like some ghost restless within an empty husk.
i suppose we cannot entirely kill who we were. who we are.
i keep wanting to sleep forever... it seems like rest doesn't come when the world is unsettled like this. i feel so sad for my parents, for the crap that they have to put up with... as my father somewhat snidely remarked: kodomo wa sonna mon da ne... which roughly translates to: "kids... what can you do?" my mother, meanwhile, has clung to her recent (at least in my book) faith. i'm glad she has that, even if, in my somewhat jaded perspective, it seems kind of like a hypocritical clutch of the good book... no matter what, my parents deserve to be happy, and, failing that, a modicum of psychological comfort...
***
there are large moths that visit the eaves of our house regularly. far from a sense of foreboding, i like to think that they are ancestors, come to check on us. when i am on the verge of sleep, i like to imagine their wings, fluttering the dust of their wisdom upon me. i like to hope that one of them, my grandmother perhaps, will come to me in my dreams and have a chat with me, as they did when we were all in the same living moment together...
if anything, i need the solidity and comfort of their presence now.
***
winter is coming. in recent nights, it has gone from cool to cold, and it has become harder and harder to wake up and get the day started. winter is the season of quiescence and a beckoning kind of sleep... it is the season of seeds frozen in the hard earth.
i recall the white mantle, how it smothered all time, in other places and other lives. i recall how it seemed to last forever. i recall walking cold and empty hallways, hearing the echoes of other lives, occupying the space left behind by other people like air within a frozen bubble, probing the boundaries of myself, yearning to be free...
now in this other life that i now lead, i am undeniably content. there are real lives that love me, and that fill me up with a gratitude and a sense of connection to this world... and yet, at odd moments, that old lonely meandering returns, like some ghost restless within an empty husk.
i suppose we cannot entirely kill who we were. who we are.
Monday, November 12, 2012
there is something within me that cannot be reasoned with. i can call it madness, but is a heavy boulder mad? is a wild creature mad? whatever is in me just doesn't do what it's supposed to. it is something that doesn't "get with the program." we take it as a matter of course that there are things in the outside world that resist us. but what about when it is within us?
religion, dreams, the metronome-like flailing of a soul trapped... these are all my possible reactions against the dead-weight of this thing...
i plead with it. i deaden my eyes in an attempt to see something that might spark a motivation within it. i sleep, hoping that on the morrow, it will have diminished, and i can move forward, freed from its burden. sometimes these techniques work... at other times...
***
again, we refer to religion. not the dead religions. not the religion that others have pantomimed over the centuries.
religion is a repetition of the movement of binding back the wordless, the ineffable, only on our terms. we confront a wordless thing in a wilderness we have set aside within ourselves, and without ourselves; we make ourselves lose all volition and control so that it may speak in a voice that cannot be ourselves, but still must be relevant to ourselves. and in this way we convince those other wordless things within and without to adopt a sacred constellation, and move forwards towards some vaunted purpose.
in my sacred constellation, there are real people (most now gone), and possibly unreal beings (or possibly real interpretations of unreal beings), and stubborn principles. my grandmother, my sister, all of the teachers and friends that i have left behind, miki nakayama, the path through the wildnerness, the poverty of the wanderer, the life of "found" art and blessings, ... and an idea of blood and family, and an unspoken oneness with all people and things.
i speak and plead with aspects of this constellation to get myself to move, but there is a part of me that remains unconvinced. unconvince-able. invincible. i am helpless before it. my recourse is, as always, to be powerless before it...
***
there is a current schism in my family, and i fear that it will be permanent. perhaps the faults were always already there, and it only took a small trigger to bring those cracks to the surface. i apparently tried to bridge these fractures, but perhaps i didn't try too hard; and perhaps, deep down, i didn't even really care.
***
i had an insight, perhaps a flash of self-pity. there are the winners, and there are the losers. the winners are the ones with the voice and the power. they steal the voice of the losers, and step on the faces of the losers to keep them downtrodden. the daily life of the loser is a tragedy, but it is awash in countless days of tragedy. and the world looks upon the loser, and says, ah, but that is their lot.
so when, on a fluke, the dog has his day, oh what a mournful day it is for the winner, to feel, for a moment, a reversal of fortune! and how the world mourns with him! and how the world comes to look upon the loser with contempt, for it is the loser's one day of victory that has brought sorrow upon the winner!
the loser does not want to play the game. but perhaps the refusal to play is in itself a ploy, predetermined or not. the loser has become so accustomed to not playing "with heart", that it is difficult to even know if he was a heart left; if he truly cares about something to put himself at stake. the loser has adopted a wisdom, that there is something in the world more important than being right. he does not do things to obtain victory over another; he simply wants- what? and would he fight for it?
***
the flailing is dying down. a quiescence must fall upon the soul. it must play possum another night, and perhaps on the morrow find the bonds that resist him loosened or untied.
***
i will love this world. i will embrace it. i will hold this moment. it will burn me away, but i will hold to it. and perhaps one day, i will disappear. there will be no me, and no control, and no resistance either. there will be...
religion, dreams, the metronome-like flailing of a soul trapped... these are all my possible reactions against the dead-weight of this thing...
i plead with it. i deaden my eyes in an attempt to see something that might spark a motivation within it. i sleep, hoping that on the morrow, it will have diminished, and i can move forward, freed from its burden. sometimes these techniques work... at other times...
***
again, we refer to religion. not the dead religions. not the religion that others have pantomimed over the centuries.
religion is a repetition of the movement of binding back the wordless, the ineffable, only on our terms. we confront a wordless thing in a wilderness we have set aside within ourselves, and without ourselves; we make ourselves lose all volition and control so that it may speak in a voice that cannot be ourselves, but still must be relevant to ourselves. and in this way we convince those other wordless things within and without to adopt a sacred constellation, and move forwards towards some vaunted purpose.
in my sacred constellation, there are real people (most now gone), and possibly unreal beings (or possibly real interpretations of unreal beings), and stubborn principles. my grandmother, my sister, all of the teachers and friends that i have left behind, miki nakayama, the path through the wildnerness, the poverty of the wanderer, the life of "found" art and blessings, ... and an idea of blood and family, and an unspoken oneness with all people and things.
i speak and plead with aspects of this constellation to get myself to move, but there is a part of me that remains unconvinced. unconvince-able. invincible. i am helpless before it. my recourse is, as always, to be powerless before it...
***
there is a current schism in my family, and i fear that it will be permanent. perhaps the faults were always already there, and it only took a small trigger to bring those cracks to the surface. i apparently tried to bridge these fractures, but perhaps i didn't try too hard; and perhaps, deep down, i didn't even really care.
***
i had an insight, perhaps a flash of self-pity. there are the winners, and there are the losers. the winners are the ones with the voice and the power. they steal the voice of the losers, and step on the faces of the losers to keep them downtrodden. the daily life of the loser is a tragedy, but it is awash in countless days of tragedy. and the world looks upon the loser, and says, ah, but that is their lot.
so when, on a fluke, the dog has his day, oh what a mournful day it is for the winner, to feel, for a moment, a reversal of fortune! and how the world mourns with him! and how the world comes to look upon the loser with contempt, for it is the loser's one day of victory that has brought sorrow upon the winner!
the loser does not want to play the game. but perhaps the refusal to play is in itself a ploy, predetermined or not. the loser has become so accustomed to not playing "with heart", that it is difficult to even know if he was a heart left; if he truly cares about something to put himself at stake. the loser has adopted a wisdom, that there is something in the world more important than being right. he does not do things to obtain victory over another; he simply wants- what? and would he fight for it?
***
the flailing is dying down. a quiescence must fall upon the soul. it must play possum another night, and perhaps on the morrow find the bonds that resist him loosened or untied.
***
i will love this world. i will embrace it. i will hold this moment. it will burn me away, but i will hold to it. and perhaps one day, i will disappear. there will be no me, and no control, and no resistance either. there will be...
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