when there is no hope, then everything will fall to pieces. entropy and all of that.

the idea put forth by the show "quantum leap," that "another" could jump into your body for a period of time to set things right, it is a premise that i attempt to enact in my daily life. of course, i don't literally believe in or wait for "another" to jump in; however, i have to pretend a fresh perspective day by day, and oftentimes moment by moment, in order to go on. because i know at times that life can seem screwed up, problem-riddled, and if i don't believe in this "fresh pair of eyes" that comes in to save things, then i might as well let everything go to shit. because it will.

wrestless

hi all,
i have taken a long hiatus from writing to this blog.  perhaps life grows uneventful.  or perhaps life is so eventful, that there is no space within the heart or mind to sit back and comment about it.  not sure which is applicable in the present case...

i have been reading, off and on, joseph conrad's heart of darkness for a very long time.  and this evening, while sitting at dominos, waiting for pasta and cheesy bread for my son, i finally finished the story.  so, as i'm reading about kurtz's final words (the horror!  the horror!), i am in one of the most mundane of all places, as far from death and the dark wilderness as one could be.  the irony did not escape me (or, rather, i did not escape the irony).

i worked for a time at the endless job of weeding my front lawn.  i have visions of somehow pulling every invasive weed out of the lawn, and then providing sustenance for the remaining straggling grass in the form of water and fertilizer.  visions, yes, but i never seem to get past the first step!  weeding makes you humble.  it makes you realize that things must be wrested from disorder constantly, without end.  to stop, and "rest" in the status quo of things leads to entropy and infestation, and all those other words that we habitually dread...

which led me consider how "wrest" and "rest" (although homonyms) imply vastly different orientations towards life.  to "wrest" something (like meaning, or order) means to pull forcibly, often with a twisting motion.  "wrestle" comes from "wrest."  to "rest", on the other hand, implies a passivity or a placement.  i consider images of "wrestling with god" or "wrestling with death", and also the paradoxical/contradictory/parallel statements of "resting in god" or "resting in death."

much as we would not like to see it, life is struggle.  it is endless struggle.  it is not an easy path up a lazy river.  it is a serious endeavor, beset by fog and snags and a hostile darkness...

and, i'll be honest, i am tired, and not so ambitious.  i have been doing more "resting" and less "wrestling."  and who's to say i am wrong?

today, i took the kids to the hawaii state library.  while they searched for manga, i looked for books that i wanted to read with them.  i found a book called "dear mr. henshaw" by beverly cleary.  it was a newberry award winner.  i remembered reading the book sometime, i'd like to hope it was in the sixth grade, because that's about the age of the main character in the story, but i'm actually thinking it was later.  it was one of those books that happened to be lying around, and that i'd picked up on a whim.  anyway, as i skimmed through it, i remembered what an important book it was for me, how seemingly innocuous but deeply moving.

it was the story of a boy (at the outset, in the second grade) who writes letters to his favorite author, mr. henshaw.  as readers, we never get to read mr. henshaw's responses back to him over the years.  we only hear how the boy responds to them (sometimes with anger, as when mr. henshaw reflects an assignment back on him, and has him answer 10 questions).  in any case, the boy yearns to be an author like mr. henshaw, and takes a lot of the advice he gives him to heart.  he starts a diary (and in it, writes everything in letter format, addressing all of his entries to a dear mr. (pretend) henshaw).  we learn a great deal about the boy, leigh botts, whose parents divorced, and who lives with his mother near the central california coast.  much of the story centers on his yearning to be with his father, who is a trucker with a dog named bandit.  in fact, it may be argued that leigh's relationship with mr. henshaw is a surrogate or substitute for the relationship he wanted to have with his father.

the story is somewhat sad, and in the end, there is no real resolution (as there isn't in real life).  he does get to meet with his trucker father, and somehow has, if not a heart-to-heart, at least an acknowledgement of the regrets and the distance of their relationship.  it ends (and i'm paraphrasing here) with something like, "i felt sad, but i felt better."

***

i like to think it was a book like that that made me, at one point, want to write.  but i'm not sure.  i recall wanting to write with some of my "nerd" friends back in intermediate school.  i think the first time i got "serious" with writing fantasy was with my distant friend kendall, who, at the time, was living in town and attending st. patrick's school in kaimuki.  i think that if it weren't for that friendship, i probably wouldn't have developed as serious an interest in fantasy, and in writing, as i eventually did.  i recall that, at one point, we would work on chapters and read them to each other.  i always thought his ideas far surpassed my own; his writing as well, which happened to have such great word usage and imagery...  one of his stories started off with someone who traveled a great distance in something resembling a sarcophagus (or i might be channeling something like rendezvous with rama).

my stories often were like reboots of the hobbit or something.  always about some grand quest.  i think what i was longing to write about, and recapture, was this feeling of camaraderie, of people doing something important, and in the process, finding friendship...  if leigh botts had his absent father, i suppose that friendship was something of an absence for me...  not that i didn't have great friends, but i guess i always wanted something more of them, like a "goonies" relationship or something.  instead, we were always just loners in parallel or something...

***

i woke this morning at 3 am.  i felt empty inside, as i often do.  thankfully, my wife was sleeping on the couch perpendicular to mine.  i massaged her calves (as i had promised to do, but fell asleep), feeling for the "grinding" areas where the tissue adhered, and worked them to a smoother, more consistent feel.  i thought about things.  infant ideas.  like the word cell.  how it could be a prison cell.  or it could be like a cell, a small piece of something alive, working blindly to a purpose.  like love.

i wonder at times about love.  for a while, i have imagined what would have happened if i had followed some of the infatuations of my youth.  maybe it's like memories burning off or something.  it's not that i don't love my wife, or that i'm not happy or something.  it's just that- i'm getting old, and i get haunted by the feeling that somehow i missed out.  missed out on other lives, and, yes, sensuality/sexuality, and just experiencing the intimacy of being with another person; a relative stranger.  i suppose that that's young person talk, irresponsible talk, but i'll be honest: i've never been with anyone besides my wife.  and i "lost" mine at such a late age.  i've often wondered what was wrong with me.

there is a place for that sort of "irresponsibility," but somehow, i wasn't allowed, or didn't allow myself, to follow that.  and i wonder if i missed something...  and sometimes, when i meet some people, and particularly when there is a hint of generosity or kindness, i feel tempted to respond in kind, without boundaries...  but i can't.  and i suppose there is the fear that, as i get older, those doors of opportunity will close with a kind of dark finality, and i'll be "stuck" with this life and with no exit.

whew, sounds so dark.

i want to reassure everyone at this time that i am faithful to a fault, and would never do anything.  i love my family, and would never jeopardize it on a whim.  but i think life is, if nothing else, this sort of relentless restlessness, an unceasing vibration, and i want to reassure myself, remember, that i am alive.  that i am alive too.

***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkXqArE9Vc4

i met with my sister this morning.  i brought two of her children with me, so that they could visit with their mother.  for most of the visit, i stayed quiet and just listened to the back-and-forth between mother and children...  it was sad for me, i suppose.

***

the world, this island, this person... nothing can be totalized or "summed up."  there is so much- difference- even within one individual's memories.  nothing really leads up to anything else.  there is diversity in perspective...  we like to imagine, or symbolize, life as a pathway, but it really isn't, or it isn't always like that.  at times, it is like a landscape, with no visible paths, no place to go...  and we stare at its diversity and wonder at it, wonder at our place in this world.

***

i have fallen in love so many times.  and it breaks my heart that i cannot touch this world, i cannot mean anything more to this world than be a face among a thousand other loveless faces, that i cannot be something more to it than... what i am.  i am sometimes driven to distraction by other lives, lives that i cannot possibly touch.  it makes me feel so sad, and so empty inside.

at times like these, i coast.  there is no sense in volition during such times.  you are guided by the emptiness, and the silence, which i think (despite the despair and sadness) is something akin to god.  because i do think god speaks through silences.  he listens to you so that you can become.

***

time passes so quickly.  so torturously swift.  i am halfway through a dream, and it wakes me, in destructive increments, to the end.  what is this love in the midst of a fleeting dream?  what does it mean?  i wish you well.  in another life (but there is no other life), i could've been more...  but then again, i probably would have been much the same, which is an almost, which was actually nothing at all.

what's that movie, high fidelity?  i never saw the whole thing (for shame!) but i recall john cusack's character organizing records "autobiographically."  music sort of timestamps things, i suppose.

so: i recall picking up this album (along with ok computer, another seminal album) on a brief trip to san francisco, to attend a kiiko matsumoto (acupuncturist) conference.  the conference was at some wharf, and next door was some import car convention.  i recall seeing these "slick" people in their neon cars, and, compounded with other impressions of the city (open green spaces with people reading, ultimate frisbee), wondering what life would be like in such a place, and with someone.

i WAS accompanying someone, who was a close friend, and also my ticket for a place to stay...  i recall that, during that trip, she disclosed a secret to me, and from the moment of that disclosure, i remember feeling simultaneously very protective of her, and at the same time, incredibly distant from her.  this was the album that played in the long car ride back to l.a., to this awkward and pregnant silence.

middle of nowhere

there is a feeling of emptiness whenever someone leaves.  it is as though a piece of yourself, something that you had taken for granted, has gone.  and it's not an obvious piece, like an arm or a finger.  it's something internal and vague, like maybe someone stole a kidney in your sleep and left nothing but some neat, near-invisible scar.  it is an emptiness inside.

and suddenly, i wonder what it is that is missing.  i was being all business-as-usual, operating like a juggernaut through each successive day, with each task before me producing a focal point to be broken and resummoned, again and again and again.  the faces of those around me, and beside me, the conversations i had with them, out of peripheral vision, they were collateral conversations about the weather, or something else harmless and inconsequential...  i, they, could've been something more, but they never were allowed to be...

and now they are gone.  they have left.

and, yes, i can live without it, without them.

but i wonder if that isn't the problem?

***

i sometimes feel that there is a danger within me, like a vast abyss.  and i push words, and put distances between myself and others, to keep people from falling into me.  i guess i only have two switches: polite and reserved, or- something dangerous and beyond intimate, identity-consuming...  there is a sadness in not being able to let people in, but it's a necessary sadness.  there is no alternative but to hold the world at bay from this gravitational pull within myself.

peng jin

this is a video by ian sinclair, explaining the difference between quality, method, and technique.  quality is primary, and in taijiquan, that quality is "peng".  usually "pengjin" is trained via pile standing practices.

perhaps that last post wasn't the best way to start off the new year… but i suppose i was just being honest. that perhaps is my biggest challenge right now.

i am the younger brother.

people have been telling me that it is my responsibility to bow down to my older brother and restore relations somehow. i keep telling them that i have been doing that all my life, and it is not my call anyway; my brother decides when to call it quits, and if any one (especially me) tries to convince him otherwise, then he just ignores me. same as when, whenever i would try to tell him something important, he would turn on the tv to fox news or espn, and whenever i would solicit a response, he would flat out ignore me or make a comment about obama or whatever. treat me like a piece of shit.

my brother, as he prides himself, has so many friends. so what does he need a brother for anyway?

it's funny, i keep referring patients his way, and then they return telling me how wonderful he is... and then, not long after, they start looking at me funny, because all professional courtesy aside, he probably can't help but let slip how much he loathes his brother (if he even admits he has one; he currently has no sister, after all). and these are people i work with.

there is a secret i could tell. i have kept it because i wanted to protect all parties involved, and because i don't think it's my place to tell it... but it's kind of like bilbo and smaug the dragon. my brother is so self-righteous, that this vulnerability tempts an arrow... but no, i wouldn't do it.

i'm sorry, i just have so much anger and rage towards my brother. at times like this, i can't help but think about it, with everyone speaking about peace and harmony and everything. the world (as always) sees him as this successful together fellow, and looks at me as his piece of shit brother. and maybe they're right. after all, he can stomach the hypocrisy, and belch out insults my way, while i glower in silence with all of this stuff that i still dare not say... everybody thinks it's my role to beg for forgiveness.

i am the younger brother.