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.