12/31/2017 (3)

what is the secret?  How is it possible to maintain flow in a world of fundamental discontinuity?  Someone is doing an airdrop.  It is Willow, sending this year's resolutions (or revolutions, as she quipped).  In any case, we are dealing with this issue right now.  How do live.  How do live, honoring a truth, and the flow of all things?

***

Memory is strange.  It departs frequently.  It is difficult to see it with any clarity.  And if it is not seen, what is the proof that it even existed, that it even happened?  How plastic (as an old classmate liked to say) it is.  How malleable.  I want the past, in order to feel the reality of it, to allow its reality to invest a reality within me.  So that I can be real too.

I remember the pond in which Oyasama (Miki Nakayama) was said to have attempted to drown herself.  Turtles.  And the water black.  Wondering what it was that motivated her to walk into the waters, and wondering what it was that motivated her to stop.

I am wishing, and regretting many things.  Perhaps that is the danger and consequence of memory, how it can cause an irrevocable regret, an acute awareness of all one's errors.  Maybe that is why it is simpler not to remember.  It is simpler to just proceed onward, forgetting everything from before.  Who is it that this is?  What is the purpose and point?

What is it that I want?  Out of this?  I keep writing in order to hopefully delve into something significant.  To find the truth of things.  But maybe we are just layer upon layer of tragedy, hiding nothing?  Like the onion.  That is the secret of that poem.  The truth of it.

What if people read this?  Who cares?  There is no significance to it all.  Musubi, the dog, is panicking and is jumping in people's laps.  He is terrified, and scared of all the noises, and he is trying to stop it by barking at it all.  Maybe that is me as well.  Anxious of it all, and making empty noises to try to convince myself that I could change the world.  The world doesn't care, there is no posterity, there is no point.  To despair is perhaps the hardest thing of all.  To sit in the full knowledge that there is nothing I can do to change or stop anything.  Why, the dog is asking, does the world not notice the end?  Why doesn't the world panic?

I asked myself this when Donald Trump was elected president.  It is as though no one cared that the most foul, evil person in history had attained the highest position of power in this land.  And I realized that there was a whole contingency of the population that was ignorant, and/or evil (morally bankrupt).  It is the way of things, it is the decline of our democracy that we are dragged down by our lowest common denominator, that we are so ignorant that we are malleable to the efforts of russians. 

12/31/2017 (2)

Selections.  The voices, the songs playing on the speakers.  Hearing it all, feeling the vibrations.  Imbibing the environment.  Wondering what is it that is the self?  The self is just a resistance, a hesitation, an iteration.  A pause.  An air bubble in the flow.  We are made of different stuff from our environment.  That is the truth.  If there were no difference, then we would not exist.  But we ex-ist, and therefore, therein, lies the problem.  We want to be one with others, with our environment, but we are always already different and separate.  And we are working so hard to establish a continuity, a smoothness with regards to our reality.  There is no one here to stay, to listen, to watch, to observe, the environment is always shifting and empty.

***

The drink beside me is melting.  The vibrations of the environment are sundering the ties it has to itself.  Water to water, in the form of ice.  And wondering at that.  And worrying, always worrying, that one loses something to say, or that the things you say will stray inevitably into a country of lost intentions.  Worrying about that.  Worrying about neglecting what needs to be seen.  Worrying about becoming irrelevant.  And the hope that one is contained and contains the truth, the implicit path.

***

My brother is built on conflict.  He defines himself by defeating others.  I hate that.  Especially because, as I was attempting to establish myself, he would continually destroy my creations.  He made me feel so fake and inauthentic; he made me feel diaphanous.  I wanted to be solid, to feel myself, and he would tear through me and stomp on me as though I was nothing.  And he and his fucking cronies would laugh at me, ignore me.  I hate them, and I hate them until the end of time.  What they did is unforgivable.  And the fact that they speak to me now that I have become someone cannot erase the fact that they committed that sin to that which had such a questionable and ambiguous relationship to reality at the start.

***

Here is an irony.  I commit the very same unforgivable sin that I convict my brother of.  That is, I feel I have been infected by the very qualifications that were imposed upon me.  I look upon Musubi, and other small creatures, as somehow not being worth the consideration or respect that I have; that there is a filter to reality that prevents them from being seen as "worthy."  People are doing this ALL THE TIME.  And it is partially a necessary defense mechanism.  Because we cannot give everyone and everything the consideration it is due.  It is impossible.  So why mourn, why feel guilt?

I recall this.  When I was the target of attractions by others, did I have any more sympathy for them than those I was infatuated with had for me?  No.  So there is no reason to feel resentment?  It still hurt.  The fact that fairness is an artificial construct imposed by willful spoiled brats (human beings) upon a reality that is fundamentally uncaring.  I simply

12/31/2017

A freshness.  I am thinking about Shadow in Gaiman's "Monarch of the Glen."  To chase each apparent thing.  I was also thinking about the irony of my daughter's English class, and about the emphasis placed upon literary analysis.  English class seems, all in all, to be a game of hide and seek.  In fact, a lot of such classes, including Religion.  There is an element of human behavior or consciousness or activity that is "implicit," that is, it is supposed to be "self-evident," or blind to its own machinations.  The blindness is necessary.  The blindness demonstrates that, in some sense, it is truer, or closer to the "source" (define source how you will, as inspiration, as God, as id, etc.).  And then there are whole fields devoted to unpacking the "first act" of art/religion.  It attempts to analyze the symbols, determine stylistic elements, etc.  And this is the entire game of much of academia, at least in the first two discipline fields (arts and humanities)...

So, the game implicit in writing is this...  You are trying to say something while pretending that you are saying nothing at all.  You are trying to move to a known destination, while pretending that you are completely blind, or at the very least, that the landscape  you are traversing is being revealed to you moment by moment, as the reader discovers it.  And the target that the writer tries to achieve is an effect of "not having been tried before," that is, something innovative and new.  But the problem with this is that, over the accrued history, everything has been tried before.  And the things that have not been tried before probably have not been tried because they are not functional, viable as a narrative experiment.  For the very narrative structure imposes forms and rules upon its subject.  Not everything can be told in a story, unfortunately...  It is a game of the right hand not knowing not what the left hand is doing, and vice versa, but then somehow working together and accomplishing something...

The problem of writing has thus been framed, or more specifically, the problem of the "blockage" has been thus framed as one involving a too active editor (the analytical portion of our minds) that squelches the life out of the "first" or implicit...

12/30/2017 (2)

my time is wasted by this incessant effort to rehash old things.  These are not new questions.  These are not new endeavors.  It is always the same story, the same issue.  I want to progress.  I want to move beyond some of the issues of my past, of my lack of a theme.

***

I am not "fun."  I have no patience for irrational decisions, or things which throw a wrench in things.  And this is why I likely cannot write something interesting.  I am always too fixated on "making things right."  Perhaps this is why I only like the beginnings of things, because everything is easy and "knows itself."  To go beyond that, to take too many footsteps, brings me into a foreign country where you lose your way, and your motivations become muddled.  It all becomes "messy."  And there is guilt in that.  An ugliness.  Perhaps this too is how I live my life.  I do not proceed haphazardly, to just "find out what would happen."  I sometimes wish that I had lived my life that way, particularly with regards to relationships.  There is so much regret in me.  Even my wife perceives this "mood" within me...

***

Chaos.  Perhaps it is in that that one comes to know oneself.  That there is a force within oneself.  That you could possibly trust in it, in the inconsistencies and lies of it...  [I hate the way my cursor keeps shifting.]  How could you see that, if you never trust that?  Why am I always reluctant to trust in that?  Why am I reluctant to trust in myself, in the myself that walks blind?  Because experience has determined that it only gets me lost...  what is the value of getting lost?  To learn to trust in myself, to trust in getting lost...

***

A hope for me lies in allowing myself to

12/30/2017

What is the point of most of what we do?  It is for the attention of others.  There is very little that has an implicit value; that is, there is little that is an end in and of itself.  What is the purpose of writing, for example?  Is it that there is a message within that comes out fully formed, like a newborn child?  I don't think so.  Everything that is written is written for someone.  But to whom?  And why?  And if it is written for someone else, doesn't that distort the meaning of it?  That is, isn't there supposed to be a blindness, a sort of unselfconsciousness of art, of literature?  I am struggling with this.  There is nothing natural about conversations for me.  To me, the other is still the other.  And the issue of bridging to the other has still become one that is inscrutable to me...

***

There is a vibration within me, but it comes from outside, always from the outside.  I cannot find the vibration that is me.  The feeling that is me.  The memory or the song that is me.  There is nothing to bind to, reliably.  There are only the bangings and clangings of the outside world, impinging upon me.  And though I complain about those distractions, there is the sense, the fear, that without those outside impingements, there would be nothing.  Not a silence that is still, but a silence that drowns, that obscures.  That is my fear, that life is untethered, that it is not connected to the outside world, and therefore is meaningless and irrational and irrelevant, a drowning thing, swimming in directionless circles, getting more and more lost in solipsism.  I want to hear my song, I want to hear it so I can return to it, and rest in the narratives that it sings...

***

Help me to find me.  Help me to find my song.  Then help me to find my voice.  Things happen in that sequence.  I am not to...

11/11/2017

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES

KAPPA-HEAD

“Let’s begin by talking about your brother.”

Dr. Cyprus’s voice is calm but firm.  Randy feels his mind settle around the psychologist’s statement, like solute molecules upon the surface of a seed crystal.  He feels his body settle into the yielding cushions of the couch.  His eyes train on a corner of the ceiling, and follow the edges of its square motif gradually across the room.

“My brother,” Randy begins, but pauses at the croak of his voice, and the hollow silence it leaves.  He clears the dry phlegm in his throat, and tries again.  “My brother, well, where can I start?  He’s always just been there.  There’s- there’s no beginning to him, as far as I’m concerned.”

Dr. Cyprus is nodding, or at least that’s what Randy imagines from his vantage point on the couch.  In past face-to-face consultations, Dr. Cyprus would always give a slight shake of his head whenever Randy spoke, perhaps as an acknowledgement that he was listening to, and responding to, what he was saying.  It was always a slight shake, with no real change in the angle of the neck.  It reminded him of the vibrations of a car antennae, disturbed into slight oscillation by the wind.

“Tell me the first memory that pops into your mind when you think about your brother,” he says, after a moment of silence.

At first Randy frowns and sighs at the seeming impossibility of the request.  Wasn’t he clear that there were too many tangled memories to even begin?  But without warning, images do begin to surface, and then out of those, one image floats to the top.  And before he even realizes it, he is recounting a memory that has imposed itself upon his consciousness.

“I am at the beach,” he says, closing his eyes.  “I must be two or three years old.  There’s a wind blowing, and I can feel the sand sting my skin and sometimes go into my eyes.  I look up, higher up on the shore, and I can see my parents and my brother sitting there.  They are looking at me, with this- this happy, expectant look on their face- like they are waiting for the punchline to a joke.  I think I am smiling too, in response to them- I’ve always been so stupid- so naive.  Anyway, a wave suddenly comes crashing down on me, and for what seems like forever, I am tumbling over and over in a roaring darkness, with salt water in my eyes, my ears, my nose, my throat.”

Randy pauses.  The memory of the ocean is real for him in that moment, and he feels disoriented, queasy even.  He has to flutter his eyes open to train upon the ceiling in order to restore his equilibrium, and his sense of the present.  After a few deep breaths, he closes his eyes and continues.

“When I come to- the world outside seems too bright and too loud.  Beyond the sound of the air, the wind- I can see my parents, my brother, and they are laughing, laughing.  I am on my hands and knees, and everything beneath me is soupy and white.  And then, I see a couple of things at the same time, and it’s almost as though they are all in sync- my parents, my brother, with that same expectant look- and the soup beneath me starting to suck me backwards, like the sea is inhaling me in.  I feel scared, I know what’s coming- and I reach a hand out towards my family, my brother on the shore.”

Randy again pauses.  He can feel his heart racing.  He almost expects a wall of water to crash down upon him, lying vulnerable upon the couch.

“So what happened next?”  Dr. Cyprus’s voice maintains that strange equilibrium between disinterest and concern.

“Well, of course, I got pounded again.  The wave fell, I felt myself tumbling over and over in the water.  And I swallowed the sea.”  Randy is about to stop talking, but there is a fragment of the memory that he did not expect.  He finds himself stuttering out the next words, like someone tripping over things in the dark.  “I was still in the water.  Still in the darkness.  And I called out- for help.  For anyone to help.  For anything to help.  And- and that’s when-”

When Randy doesn’t proceed after a few seconds, Dr. Cyprus prompts him.  “And that’s when what?”

Randy shakes his head, his hands out in front of him, fingers splayed like a fence.  “No, that can’t be true,” he whispers, half to himself.  “It can’t be.”

“What can’t be?”

“I-”  Randy shakes his head again, this time with greater ferocity.  “No.”

Dr. Cyprus inhales a long inhale.  It sounds like the hiss before a gas explosion.  Randy doesn’t hear the psychologist exhale.  Instead, Dr. Cypress begins to speak, in that same measured voice.  “You’re in a safe space,” he says.  “You can tell me what happened.”

It’s clear that

i'm feeling incredibly sad for some reason.

maybe it's because my school is hemorrhaging workers.  maybe it's because i feel completely disconnected from the people around me.  maybe it is because i feel so completely neglectful of my children, or of my other responsibilities.

12. Greeting: Write a story or poem that starts with the word “hello”.

hello
person inside of me
wake up
i want to feel again

there must be a memory
or a song
that can rekindle sensation
and a care

there must be a story
that can engage my sympathy
and attention
for more than a passing glance

my eyes are dead
and see the world
as a flat thing
the textures pulled
down and stretched thin
by the knowledge
that all mountains fall
and all holes have a bottom

that there is no secret
that won't disappoint

so hello you

hello!

respond.
responde si vous plait.

give me a stretcher
and carry me
through this death.

11. Dragon: Envision a dragon. Do you battle him? Or is the dragon friendly? Use descriptive language.

i am a dragon.  i live under the mountain.  essentially, i AM the mountain.  after all, i am its living beating heart.  i am fire.  i am iron.  i am death.

i spend long centuries sleeping, dreaming.  my dreams are of the shifting shapes of fire, and the attendant smoke.  all reality, after all, is fire and smoke: both the fire that consumes and changes the world, and the smoke that obscures it.  being the creator of fire is a lonely thing, for there is the inescapable knowledge that all things burn and flicker momentarily, and that the smoke and hubbub about it is just a precursor to settled ash.  there is nothing in the world that escapes fire.  the beings of the world, in fact, are all simply forms of captured flame, some burning faster than others.  the smoke are the words or deeds of those beings, pretending eternity, but only obfuscating the inevitable.  i too am fire, but a special long-lived flame, an ember burning at the contradiction of my own existence, that something that has mastered the secrets of fire and smoke still cannot make sense of what is an apparent emptiness and absurdity.

there is entertainment in the lives of little flames.  the little sparks.  so short-lived, they pretend to eternity.  with vision so narrow and brief, they generate such hot billows of smoke, words that lay claim to what they deem to be the universe, and what they hope to be eternity.  i laugh at them, chuckle at them in my deepest dreams, but secretly i envy them.  they are beautiful in their simplicity, their surety.  sincerity is a luxury sadly lacking in dragons.

to never stir to action.  every movement or thought ponderous and heavy.  the air around me is heavy with contradiction and ambiguity.  there is nothing that does not bely a world of shadows.  that is the lot of dragons, powerful though we may seem.

so small wonder that, when challenged by fool mortals, the longest lived of us do not immediately snuff them out.  for it is refreshing to inspire fear, and to simultaneously inspire hope.  and what harm, to expose a weakness or two?

perhaps, perhaps, a spark can extinguish a conflagration.

wouldn't that be a story?

10. Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

friendship. it's a strange thing for me. in many respects, i don't understand it. i don't understand how it starts, or how it persists, or how/why it ends.

my first real friend (outside of my own family) was kendall fick. i can't quite remember how we met. we both attended mililani uka elementary together, and i suppose that we were in the same class or something, but i can't recall exactly how our friendship started. but in any case, he was the first friend to invite me over to his house. i recall one day, playing in his garage with a hot wheels set, even though it was raining hard just beyond. kendall moved away in the second or third grade, and for a while, i didn't have that friend to play with (as it turns out, good friends leaving was to be a recurring theme in my life). somehow, though, we stayed in touch. every now and then, he would invite me to stay over at his house in town. i used to be so excited to go there, and thought it was so cool to live in an apartment in town (the sound of the freeway rushing by made me think that there was always something going on there... nowadays, i've come to appreciate silence). kendall lived in a variety of places, from the sovereign (an apartment building near central union church, with round holes in the concrete walls at the bottom floor), to this distinctive building near the kinau offramp that had brown awnings (?) on the railings, to a small house nearby a park abutting a cliff. i also had the opportunity to stay over with him at his dad's place in salt lake (his parents divorced at some point).

the great thing about kendall was that he always tried to remain positive. i didn't know it at the time, but he had encountered some bullying when he went to the first school after mililani uka. i also discovered that his parents divorced at some point. he never really talked much about it, and i was too naive and selfish to even bring the topic up. in any case, kendall opened up worlds to me. an avid reader, he introduced me to a lot of the fantasy series that i was to fall in love with. he also liked to write, and for a time, we traded stories back and forth...

i think during high school we had a sort of falling out. or at least we didn't correspond much with each other. i believe it happened sometime during my sophomore year in high school. that was a difficult time for me, i think. by high school, kendall had definitely cultivated friendships with his private school classmates. they shared far more in common with kendall than i, who was only an occasional visitor. i recall one day when the two of us went over to a track meet at punahou. i had already endured a season of track and cross country at my high school, and had quit (dramatically) by the end of my sophomore year. i didn't like competing period. but anyway, i was with kendall, and decided to run with him in the 200 m. needless to say, i sucked big time. and it was that feeling, that sense that i was no longer in the same league, that truly isolated me from him. we didn't talk much (or at all) after that. in fact, i think it was only facebook which brought us back into contact many many years later.

***

at about the sixth grade or so, i developed good friendships with a few kids at mililani uka. they were to be my first "group." three of them happened to live very close to each other, in their own culdesac, in fact, and i always felt jealous of them for their proximity to each other. it seemed that any time any one of them wanted to, they could just walk over to each other's house, whereas i lived halfway across town. every time i wanted to hang out, i would have to ride my bike a long distance over there...

anyway, the three friends were greg fastabend, brian mahoney, and ed lau. all smart, in their own ways. soon, when we went to wheeler intermediate, we developed more friendships with the military nerds: clifton oyamot, and others. we were to become the "nerds" of the school, occupying a corner of f-building.

people teased us all the time. in retrospect, i have to say that at times we deserved the appellations thrown at us (nerds). but in any case, it really felt like we were not socially acceptable...

i don't know. i'm not willing to recount all my friendships right now.

***

suffice it to say that i'm probably not a particularly friendly or thoughtful person. people seem to think that i am, but in truth, i really am not. i don't know how to get close to people, and i'm not particularly thoughtful in the way that really thoughtful people are. i'm polite, certainly, but i'm not really kind. i don't, for instance, pay attention enough to know the likes or dislikes of people, and because of that, most of my "good deeds" happen to be pretty vague and nonspecific. i don't know why i'm like that. i just am.

i also don't really fight for friendship when it seems things take a bad turn. i just sort of accept it and move on. again, i don't know why i'm like that. it seems really unsympathetic of me.

at the same time, i hate being alone. being alone seems so pointless. or rather, it makes existence pointless. so much of my life was spent (wasted) in isolation, with me longing for someone to accompany me, to befriend me. but i never made overtures. i really couldn't. i never felt like i had much (or anything) to offer anyone. i just had this deep deep sadness.

i've used this metaphor to describe the nature of some of my friendships. i've imagined my friends as being distant figures on other mesas. i couldn't reach them, but i could see them, and maybe communicate with them in a rudimentary sort of way. and we existed in parallel, perhaps under the same sky. but we weren't close. we didn't really share anything beyond a sort of proximity.

it's sad to think of things like this, but i feel it's true. it makes me hate myself, but hate doesn't really change facts. i think having this stone heart somewhat motivates me to try and pretend to be kind, but it's a lot of work, and at times, i get so numbed out by it that i just wallow in my own introspection.

i like to hope that with my wife lynn, that things have changed about me. and i think i do care about her, and my children, and my students, in deeper and truer ways than would have been possible before. i, for example, wouldn't hesitate to have myself killed, if it meant saving them. but somehow that's not true love, or true caring... and in an analogous way, the friendships i still have, they aren't true either.

maybe i'm being hard on myself, but that seems to be the prevailing opinion i have of myself nowadays. again, i wish it were different. but wishing doesn't change facts either.

9. Animals: Choose an animal. Write about it!

i used to want to be a falcon.  something predatory.  and my friend, he was a wolf.  it used to be a metaphor of sorts, me and my long distance relationship with the world, and he, nose to the ground...  after all, i was naive and idealistic.  still am.

i don't know what animal represents me nowadays.  especially after a lot of the illusions of youth have faded, and i'm aging.  i suppose wolves age gracefully.  or other canines, like bears.  they grow grizzled and long of tooth, and their age imparts a kind of earned wisdom.  not too many other animals do that.  i don't conceive of birds, particularly birds of prey, as aging gracefully.  maybe after a while, they simply lose the ability to fly, and their lives end soon after.

i wish to be a purposeful, intelligent animal, whatever i am.  something with wisdom.  something that is still dangerous, and therefore relevant.  i do not want to be harmless, toothless, clawless.  somehow to be feared is to be respected is to be important is to be alive.

i somehow wish that sensuality were included in the package of being this aged animal.  maybe it's possible, but the way society packages sensuality is that it is inextricably tied with youth.  it's hard to conceive of it as a "beautiful thing" as we grow older.  but maybe that's the point.  when you're young, you cannot conceive of any other beauty besides that of youth, there's a myopia of sorts in that.  but maybe when you're old, if you're not tied down by all of the false hangups of society, then you just sort of naturally morph into something or someone different, with different interests, and different perspectives, and different- appreciations.

i love my wife.  it may not be the same as when we were younger, in terms of levels or degrees of intimacy, but it is strong nevertheless.  i appreciate that i always have a partner to talk to, even in those dead hours of the night, when worries and dreams threaten to tear you apart.  there's a surface to touch, to make you feel that the universe has a skin.

***

i think i would love to be a mountain: still, powerful.  and in motion, i would love to be a river: relentless, flowing.  if there were an animal that could contain that level of spirituality, and embrace both dualities of stability and dynamic action, then that is what i would want to be...  but right now, i can't see it, can't conceive of, any single animal containing those qualities.  it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic image that i have...

so, sorry, no animals that i can conceive of as relating to myself.

***

well, i guess i could talk about other animals.

we have a dog named musubi that i like to abuse.  i don't quite understand why.  it's not because, as my wife thinks, i am jealous (he follows my wife like a shadow, and my wife dotes on him).  i suppose it's because i see a sneakiness within him...  the fact that he jumps on the dining table when no one is around, and tries to eat our leftovers...  the fact that he runs away any chance he gets, to spend time with his girlfriend across the street...  i don't know why, but those acts of "disloyalty," far from appearing cute to me, really sort of disgust me.  and i don't know why this is so.  i can appreciate that these are actually endearing qualities.  it's just- in me, there is something that has a hard time tolerating the weak and small creatures, that demand something that it is not their place to demand.

i've tried to moralize this: maybe, i think, it is because I was never offered a chance, a mercy (i have, actually).  maybe it is because the world was cruel to me (it wasn't, honestly).

i don't know.

8. Dream-catcher: Write something inspired by a recent dream you had.

no recent dreams that i can remember.  only murmurs and echoes.  i wonder at it, at times.

there are times when, on the edge of sleep, i wish that i could choose what i would dream about.  it would be the end of a story that i could not conceive of with my conscious mind.  my submerged subconscious mind would take the raw elements that i offered up on the altar of my threshold mind, and transfigure and transmute them, and imbue them with a life and emotion and sincerity that i lacked.  that is what i wish.

conscious life is a trap.  we see only what we want to see.  or more precisely, we see what we condition ourselves to see, which is not the same thing.  deep inside, we WANT to see something different, a liberation, perhaps, or a pathway out.  there are no pathways out, no crevices, in this reality that my conscious mind has constructed...  an impregnable fortress...  not that there are not concerns in this prison...  things that i have neglected.  i have a thousand worries.  but then again, those worries are the very fabric of this prison.

the true dreams, even those of terror, have little to do with the worries of my conscious mind.

the true dreams are vast.

***

a state of being that allows impossibilities...  it is necessary to act without purpose, or intent.  this is the contradiction or paradox of the true art, or the true dream.  although it has a power, its power is by its very nature untamable.  therefore, to "capture it", and to impel it to allow one to ride it... involves a kind of pretending, a lie of sorts.  a deception of ignorance.

***

the true dreams: a vast underwater empire, full of living things.  a seduction that is endless, and never consummated (a promise unfulfilled)...  other things, immemorable.

***

inspiration.

7. The Rocket-ship: Write about a rocket-ship on it’s way to the moon or a distant galaxy far, far, away.

been out of it somewhat...  ok, here goes.

the rocket ship of the future isn't the cramped affair of your grandfather's time...  in fact, it's far more expedi ent to transport a large number of people, in a giant ship that utilizes solar wind to move.  within space, large reflective wings made of a polymer of foil and carbon fibers unfurl.  these wings catch solar particles like wind sails, and the collected impacts of billions of these particles push the ship towards its destination...

as it takes a long time to get to the destination, most of the crew sleeps in suspended hibernation.  there are just a few people kept awake to run the ship.  it might seem as though those few are unlucky, but for the right kind of personality, it's actually alright.  there is this thing called ansible (from orson scott card's books) that allows instantaneous communication.  on the ship, you would therefore have access to the collected wisdom of humanity, and could spend practically all of your time (your true duties would actually be pretty minimal) reading, thinking, and developing yourself.

some might think it a lonely existence.  well, yes and no.  you are NOT alone.  there are a few others who serve as fellow stewards.  these individuals have the same psychological propensities as yourself, and among them, you might develop comrades, friends, or even lovers.  while there is reproduction allowed, it is strictly regulated...  in essence, the stewards continually replicate themselves, in order to insure that the destination of the sleepers is eventually reached...

of course, this sort of plan is a recipe ripe for disaster, and several science fiction novels and movies have explored precisely this situation, and the potential en route rebellion which occurs...

***

we are a species not meant for containers...  even self-sustaining environments, closed eco-systems, are seen not as wonders of technology, but as prisons.  there is a part of our psychology, or perhaps even our basic souls, that needs to transcend obstacles, and particularly walls.  we need to excel, go beyond...  it is in our very nature.

this is why there is an irony in long-distance, interstellar space travel.  the immense distances involved require some sort of suspended animation system, but due to the unforeseen problems involved in those distances, there is a necessary overseeing role played by a small population of individuals...  and those individuals must sacrifice themselves, and quell their innate tendency to desire to break a prison imposed upon them, in order to fulfill a larger task.

if there were a "spiritual prison" that these individuals could focus on, then perhaps that would compel them to remain in the physical prison of the ships.  yes, perhaps through the ansible, these individuals could focus on and correct problems of consciousness...  and that feeling of accomplishment, of liberating consciousness, might be the key that keeps them motivated in their roles as stewards.  who knows, among these stewards might emerge the next buddha, or bodhisattva...

6. Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

i'm not one for eye contact.  i think looking into someone's eyes is like staring at the sun.  there is something precariously dangerous about it.  at times, it has to do with the other person; and at other times, it has to do with me.

there is a book that i loved called "till we have faces" by c.s. lewis.  yes, while he is most well-known for his children's books, and secondarily for being a christian apologist, he was also someone fascinated with, and i daresay in love with, the pantheistic traditions of the greeks.  in any case, "twhf" was a reinterpretation of the myth of cupid and psyche.  the title comes from a statement by the protagonist and narrator, orual, who asks, "how can we meet them [the gods] face to face, till we have faces?"  this statement somewhat captures my problem, the problem of confronting others when one does not have a face of one's own.

some think that the inability to hold eye contact arises from some sort of falseness.  in one sense, i think this is true.  but it is not "lying", in the sense of speaking a specific falsehood.  it is rather (for me at least) the sense that ALL is insubstantial, that any claim i make of myself is smoke and mirrors...  and that there is the attendant fear, ever present, that someone will see right through me.

i find it easier to speak by looking at some obscure corner of the ground, and tracing the patterns with my eyes, as my words summon structure from the void within me.

***

it is nevertheless a special thing when people's eyes meet, in seeking to create a bond.  there have been times in the past when, despite myself, my eyes have been drawn to another, like compass needles helpless to swing, under invisible direction.  just before being caught, my eyes would always turn away, perhaps playing the game of looking in the complete opposite direction, as if by pretending a sort of symmetry of observation, i were absolving myself of the crime of my preferential gaze...

it would be a dream of mine, a flutter of the heart, to be caught, and for the glance to be returned in kind...  sort of like a hand reaching out across a void, and fingers brushing for an instant in the heart of that emptiness...  and then for the hands to reach out, to hold each other, to form a bridge across that nothingness...

but i don't think it really happened much in real life.  and if it did, i probably just "made it up."

5. Food: What’s for breakfast? Dinner? Lunch? Or maybe you could write a poem about that time you met a friend at a cafe.

this is a pretty unfocused prompt, but okay...

for breakfast, i don't really recall eating anything.  i got up this morning, and instead of eating breakfast, lynn and i laid down on the sofa upstairs together and watched "looper" on her ipad...

in fact, i think the first meal we had today was when we went through the drive through at mcdonald's.  i had a double quarter pounder with cheese meal.  it wasn't spectacular, but it was good as a burger: a bit on the salty side.  the bag with the fries toppled at one point (i was driving the car), but i still got enough of them, in handfuls, to make it worthwhile...

at taiko practice this afternoon, one of the women in the early (beginner's) class made gau for chinese new year's.  i thought this gau was excellent: good consistency, with a flavor that was composed of not just the brown sugar (i guess) that usually makes up gau.  there was a sprinkling of coconut flakes on it that added just the right texture and taste to it.  really good!

we went shopping at don quixote after taiko practice.  aiden decided that he wanted curry, so that's what we bought.  at home, lynn made it up: chicken with curry on rice.  and that's what we had for dinner...

sorry for the brevity and terseness of my response.  i suppose i'm not really into this prompt...

***

as for a poem about "that time you met a friend at a cafe..."  i can't recall such a time.  i usually use the "cafe" (i.e. starbucks) whenever i need a place to work, alone.

there were times in the past, like when i was in california, when i would work at a "cafe" (i mean, do work at a cafe), and have this feeling of longing making a slow burn within me.  actually, this sort of has a tradition that goes back to college days...  especially my pathetic senior year.  i recall going to the snack bar at baxter hall at odd hours of the day, and ordering something like a toasted muffin with butter on it, and a snapple drink, and just sitting there to work.  no one would ever see me.  no one would ever come up to talk to me.  i know i had a secret yearning that someone would want to talk to me, but no, it never happened.  and i would just dig myself deeper and deeper into isolation...

those were particularly dark days for me.

when i recall my past, i realize that i have, for long periods of my life, walked in the shadow of depression and loneliness.  it is difficult to get out of it.  no one, after all, wants to know of your sadness.  and when you're there, well, that's pretty much all that you are.

there is no sympathy for people who are trapped like that.  there's no understanding.

i think the one thing good about that time is that it gave me a sort of perspective, a kind of grim and dark humor about things.  and (i hope) it taught me to appreciate the company of others.  and (i hope) it taught me to empathize with loners and outcasts.

i somewhat hated (and maybe still do hate) people who "had it all together."  it just seemed so - fake, and far removed from my reality.  there is/was a truth in my brokenness that could not be systematized or mainstreamed, and the "completeness" of certain people seemed a denial and an affront to everything that i was...

...so i guess i was always looking for someone to be as broken and outcast as myself.  i hoped we would recognize each other...  feel each other's sharp and jagged incompatibilities and recognize them for what they were...  (and it would've been a plus, at the time, if SHE were japanese, with a nice body, and a sort of gothic sensibility... hahaha)

oh well, i think i sort of strayed off the topic, but...

4. Dancing: Who’s dancing and why are they tapping those toes?

i don't really understand this prompt...  am i dancing?  no, not currently, and rarely in general.  i'm just not a dancer.  i suppose that at one point, i liked to pretend i was dancing.  i would go to dances at my college and just do whatevers.  oftentimes it would involve slightly injuring my partners...  when there even were partners.  i had this sort of high-stepping thing i would do, slamming my feet into the ground...

i recall once when i went to a dance in santa monica, one with some young drama?  dance? girls.  and there was one wide-eyed girl who seemed at times interested.  i didn't really dance, but instead just sort of shifted my weight back and forth, trying to do my taiji stuff or something...  at times, i wonder what would have happened that night if things were allowed to proceed...  it's rare that things are open that way.  i mean, i have so many hang ups, and not many people are ever interested (or appear interested)...

so...  i'm really not good at dancing.  i like to think i am.  i like to close my eyes and just move to the rhythm.  i tend to like songs that are faster, that have a good beat...  not a square beat, but something a bit off...  and it helps if i resonate with the lyrics and message of the song too.  if any of these qualities are not present, i would almost rather not be on the dance floor.  it just sours my mood.  maybe i'm picky or something.

i used to like nin music.  techno.  but i didn't have the privilege of going to real raves, where free love and stuff were rampant.  the place i went, people mainly went to dances to stay warm and get drunk.  there was very little art and spirit and love to it.  and, frankly, now that i have the objectivity of time and space (hawaii), i realize that the pickings were pretty slim there anyway.

so...  i don't know how else i am supposed to answer this prompt.

well, i like dancing with people i love.  it's fun to see people get into it.

so again, going back to this strange prompt...  who's dancing, and why are they tapping those toes?  well, I am tapping the toes.  more like slamming on them.  it's me.  the terribly clumsy, enthusiastic dancer.

Writing prompt for 1/28

this is from a different writing prompt site.  just trying it out.

Ode to a playground: A place from your past or childhood, one that you’re fond of, is destroyed. Write it a memorial.

Let me think of a place from my childhood...  well, there once was a sort of playground on the courts near where the Waipahu Recreation Center is today.  I recall my grandmother leaving me there every now and then.  There really wasn't much there, honestly.  There was this tall "lookout" thing, which would NEVER be allowed nowadays for liability reasons.  I suppose you could climb up it (there were no ladders, or anything), and sit or lie at the top beneath shade...  But the thing that I really remember about it was the sound.  There were these holes in the metal pipes that formed its four support pillars, and whenever the wind blew, there would be this eerie whistling sound...

So I suppose there was that place...  some other images I recall from my childhood, all in passing, were this church.  I've seen it recently, so I know it still exists.  It was a Christian church of some kind, with a lot of open glass windows...  It looked like it came from the 50s, or at least my conception of the 50s...  beach boys music.  Bright blue skies.  The window of a Woolworth's store.  A bar called "Sloop John B."  All of these things in that day glow reality, with faded pages...  With people who all seemed blonde and tanned with tousled hair and eyes somewhat squinty from the sun.  All with broad smiles on their faces...

In many ways, that reality is gone, though whether it is because I have grown up, or because those places are physically gone, I'm not so sure.  Of course, my grandmother's house in Ewa Beach is still around, but I have no access to it; haven't had access to it in many years.  Right now, it is closed up (fenced), and my Uncle Masao who runs the place is either never home or is inaccessible.  Regarding that place, which, though not a playground, served as the background for most of my childhood memories...  I miss it dearly.  I remember those hot, quiet rooms.  The refrigerator that was always stocked with drinks for me.  I remember the Japanese radio station always blaring, with the kitchen windows open, with plastic bags suspended from the glass jealousies (to dry them); the flies buzzing, my grandma always standing at the cutting board, cutting something.  My grandmother always had time for me.  Whenever I had something on my mind, or she had some wisdom to impart to me... she would sit me down, hand patting my knee to hold my attention.  And, no matter what, I think I would always feel better about life...

I also remember the yard.  The uneven paving stones, the endless potted plants.

The bathroom, with the old sink, everything a kind of cyan blue.

The mirror at the end of the hall...

The room that was intended for the dog (Coco) and the matting on the floor to catch his piss.

Just some fleeting memories of a place that is now gone.

test twine posting

Zork I: Forces of Krill

3. The Vessel: Write about a ship or other vehicle that can take you somewhere different from where you are now.

this vessel that takes me some place "different..." well, first of all, where would some place different be? because, in my present cynical perspective, anywhere you are is precisely the same, because you are there. it would almost have to be different in the sense of being someone else. and not just someone else, but someone who is liberated from this current state of being. i know, i'm sounding buddhistic, but i've lived long enough to understand the feeling of being pursued by- i'm not sure what to call it- desperation? despair? unhappiness? and it is that which i have sought to escape all my life. different places, different times, different people- yes, in some small way, they have made a difference... but in truth, the circumstance of entrapment is always the same.

i would say that a "different place" (i.e. the place i would want to be) would involve a narrative where there was a progressive march towards a definite, desired destiny... although, maybe that sounds a bit too "fixed." actually, i sort of like destruction's escape: to always go up and out... and nowhere in particular. that sounds intriguing. maybe i would want to carry a door with me wherever i went, so that i could just walk through to the place i wanted to be. not just places i'd already been to, but places where i wanted to be. i guess like a teleportation door... and perhaps it could not just go anywhere in space, but also to places in time...

but in all places, i would travel as a sort of mendicant. i would learn everything i could about the world. i would stay in one place long enough to understand it, and then move on... there is a secret yearning in my heart, and i would follow it to each successive interest.

where would i go first? well, because i have a thing against pure escapism, i think i would use this door to help me to gain information on this whole hate movement in this country, and in this world, and attempt to undermine it, humiliate it, embarrass it, destroy it... and then, once that were done, then i would try to find other ways to help the world.

so... going back to the vessel... for me, it wouldn't be a "ship," it would just have enough room for me to pass through, a portable door.

2. The Unrequited love poem: How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back?

i suppose there's a certain sadness in me whenever i've "loved" someone who didn't love me back. of course, most of the time, i'd have to say i was more infatuated than in love. that is, it was a kind of love-from-a-distance thing. and perhaps i never really even wanted to be close to that person, because if that person ever did get close (i.e. reciprocate) then it would destroy the illusion i had of that person. it's funny; oftentimes, i would actually have this fantasy of dying for that person. it was an expression of this idea that, again, the existence of the infatuated person would cancel out my own existence...

this morphed into a lot of different compensations or versions. i read don quixote, and all that talk about chivalric love, and i'd laugh and think that it was so ridiculous. but in many ways, it was exactly what i did. i would long for people, but then have this certain giddy happiness at being "denied" (most of the time, no one even knew how i was feeling, btw). it was almost as though the infatuatee was in this separate heaven where everything was perfect and right, and i was in this purgatory just biding my time...

maybe i don't understand love at all. or at least, it's not love in the sense that others feel it.

i have always felt so thoroughly unworthy of love... maybe also respect. i have always felt so thoroughly despised. but again, maybe it was simply so i could remain a secret. an unknown factor. the hidden weapon.

i was never very close to people. but when i have been close, i.e. friendly, it has always felt dangerous. i'm not good at maintaining barriers, especially with people who have dared to enter my distant "gravity field," and for those that have been friendly to me (women that is), there was always the temptation to completely eclipse that distance... in my twisted head, that always meant intimacy (as if that actually solves anything).

nowadays, love is strange to me. i mean, not true love, the love that i feel for my wife, but that head-over-heels romantic type of love. even in fantasy, i don't believe it. or rather, it is so removed and incompatible with my present mindset that i can't even conceive of the possibility. i can't imagine a person who would ever express interest in me, at least not in a way that my defenses would not coopt. i think in many ways i'm impregnable. or completely dense.

as i get older, the possibility of "romance" (i.e., that trill and thrill) is ever more remote. i am an old man, and am happily, loyally married. and no one would be interested, no one could be interested in me. so...

love, the romantic sort of love, is only in memories, and even in memories, only existing as some kind of hollow echo; an unfulfilled promise.

well, i don't know what else to say on this topic...

writing prompt 1

so i'm trying to establish a routine that will keep me writing. as i mentioned YEARS ago probably, i am trying natalie goldman's method of free-writing. this is more stream-of-consciousness sort of writing, which attempts to bypass the editing mind. it's beneficial (i THINK), but it has the problem of being disjointed and fragmented, and largely unfocused. in order to practice a more focused aspect of writing, i am also going to use this blog to address writing prompts. right now, i am using a site called 365 creative writing prompts to supply the prompts. we'll see how this goes.

1. Outside the Window: What’s the weather outside your window doing right now? If that’s not inspiring, what’s the weather like somewhere you wish you could be?

right now, the weather's fine. it's a bit cool, which, for hawaii, is like in the 60s or even 70s. although it did rain earlier today, the streets are dry now. the only wet parts are on the grass (that's why i had to wipe down my dog's paws after we came in from our walk).

the sky is clear (at least as far as i can remember). the moon's a crescent. it's not yet the thinnest crescent, which (my wife always points out) is my grandmother's moon. it's supposed to represent my grandma because her smile was thin and bright, like a cheshire cat's. it's supposed to be a sign of good luck, like she's watching over us.

the air is pretty still. it isn't like the way it's been over the past weekend, with gusts up to 84 mph. the winds pretty much scoured the yard. it's funny, though; i suppose our yard is so congested with trees and plants that the wind gets split up and dispersed, and ultimately, nothing really gets blown around too much. the only things i noticed blown over were the black plastic garbage bin (which was empty at the time) and the conical wire planters.

i can't see directly outside the window at the moment, because we have it shaded up (the blinds drawn). but i know what's there. there is the little garden path that i planned out and planted so long ago. now, a lot of those plants are full-grown. there are a couple of strawberry guava trees in the front. then, there is a pink kokutan plant that has essentially grown into a large flame shaped tree. its leaves are large, and very different from what i consider to be the true kokutan plants, which have more rounded leaves. (in fact, i kind of doubt that the pink flowered one is a kokutan at all). i recall at one point, a lot earlier in its growth, how there would be a lot of ants on the kokutan plant. aphids too. but it seems to be doing very well right now. maybe too well, in fact.

across from the kokutan is a bottle brush tree. we once had a bottle brush tree in our yard, when i was growing up. it occupied the more shadowed part of the house, the side that was closer to kamehameha highway... actually, now that i think about it, there were probably two of those trees. there was another bottlebrush tree on the sunny side. i remember those trees attracting a lot of bees, because of their red "bottle brushes," which i suppose contain a lot of pollen. nowadays, those trees don't seem to attract a lot of bees; rather, i notice birds like the mejiro feeding off of those flowers.

i just had a memory regarding the bottle brush tree on the shadowed part of the yard. i remember trying to save a baby mejiro bird. i'm not sure if it was a baby, actually, as all of those types of birds are pretty small. but i tried saving it by (i think) feeding it with banana water. ultimately, it didn't work. i tried to make a little grave for it, and i believe i buried it beneath that bottle brush tree in the shadowed part of the yard.

... going back to my yard: after the bottle brush tree, there is a black pine tree. i remember it starting out so very small. now it is pretty tall, and it has a lot of dried needles. i wish it looked better, but i'm not sure how to prune it or train it so that the needles grow out in a nice pattern.

i'm skipping over a lot of the junipers. and oh yeah, there is one more round kokutan. i say it's round because i've kind of trained it into a ball.

the path is dirt, with 3-hexagonal paving stones. at one point, i tried to plant a sort of mossy ground cover. i forget what it was called. it took for a little while, but then it started to die away...

the yard is quiet. i wish more people would walk through it. it contains a lot of the same plants that my grandpa used to plant. in fact, a few of those plants are transplants from my grandpa's yard. i like to think that i'm carrying on my grandpa's traditions by growing those plants...

oh well, i suppose that i've pretty much addressed this prompt.

tonight my belly rumbles and boils...  a euphemestic way of saying i have the runs.

i attended judo with my son.  i was tired.  we haven't been going regularly; in fact, we basically skipped out all of last month.  so when it came time to do wind sprints, i kind of died at one point.  i suppose i could have- SHOULD have- kept running.  as one of the older people, i suppose i'm supposed to set an example for the kids...  but gods, i was heaving and my lungs were burning.  and did i mention i was tired?

earlier today, we had a teacher's workday at school.  which meant we had training seminars.  the morning one was good, but i was falling asleep in the afternoon one.  i honestly don't know what the point of the afternoon one was.  i suppose my attitude wasn't particularly good, but it seemed as though the instructor, who i seriously doubt implemented some of this stuff in the classroom, was just talking to fill time.  i could be wrong.  and i feel bad for imposing my critique on her; she seemed well-meaning.

***

as work begins, i'm not sure how much energy i can devote to some of the routines i've tried to establish in the beginning of this new year: reading, writing, drawing.  i still want to, and i will give it all i've got...

there was something i wanted to say...  oh yes, i somehow thought about one of studio ghibli's first animations: graveyard of the fireflies.  i kept hearing the theme.  it makes me want to cry, to protect children, the innocence of them.  i find that this feeling is in direct opposition to this other side of me, which i'm becoming more and more aware of: selfish, lustful...  i think that for most of my life, i've tried to maintain the former perspective or stance, of being a "brother," a protector, a self-sacrificing and gentle soul...  and there was this myth in my head that when i died, i would be redeemed somehow, and rewarded with everything that was denied me in life.  it's ironic, because even with the reward, it wouldn't be the same as enacting or actualizing the desires of that other side, which, frankly, is a lot about conquest.

in fact, a lot of my struggle is about reconciling fundamentally irreconcilable opposites.

***

i had an image in my mind of the side of our old house in Mililani: the wall, where we stored stuff like wood, where our old dog Jackie used to live; near the sandbox that turned into a mud-pit, where i got my first case of pinworms...  near the planted section of ferns, where the roaches used to have their city; and where our two later dogs ("owned" by my sister) Limu and Poki would wander through late into the night...  near the bottle brush tree.

there was the high wall on that side, and beyond it, the house of our neighbors.  i remember the twin girls that used to live there, jean and jan.

not sure why that image appeared in my head, but it did: pretty distinct.

the gaze of the other paralyzes.  that is its nature.  in the face of the other, we shrink, we shirk...  in darkness, we grow unbounded by our limits, but within light, in the eyes of the other, we suddenly have a finitude, and, in fact, we shrink away from our potentialities.

***

i felt a tension...  i feel a tension.

there is a state of being broken.  of feeling on edge.  and accompanying it is a perpetual tension...  i am not certain why this is so.

to clarify: i have been paying attention to my different modes.  one involves drifting comfortably over surfaces.  another, which oftentimes closely approximates or mimics the first, and in fact, probably depends on the first (or supports the first) involves "putting everything in its right place."  with regards to this second mode, i recall times when i was in elementary school when i would arrange all of my pencils in my school box just so, and would even be frustrated when the natural jostling about would disturb their perfect symmetry...  related to this: once, in college, when a woman walked across campus to "study" with me, and lay on my bed talking about how "tired" she was, all i could do was continue my studies, because that was what i was supposed to do.  it was an opportunity that i honestly didn't see or even think of capitalizing on at that time.  again, it all has to do with this second mentality or mode, which crystallizes me in a prison of steel.

a third mode involves the poetic existence, or at least, my approximation of it.  it has a certain attitude to it, and, as i mentioned, a certain tension.  it involves brokenness: wearing clothes that have holes in them, wearing an expression that has a near sneer on it...  speaking obtusely and frankly...  there is a rebelliousness implicit in it, as though the second mode has highlighted the contradictions implicit in all existence, and that i am forced to take this stance, because to be "artistic" and true automatically requires a kind of ejection and rejection...

i don't know if there are other modes of existence, but those are a few that i can categorize.  i have drifted in the first two modes for a long time.  it is rare (and probably not sustainable) for me to exist in the third.  the third, by the way, contains or allows passion.  TRUE passion, not the routinized passion that i embody today.  true passion in the sense that it is destructive, nonsystematic, perhaps anti systematic.  it doesn't give a fuck about tomorrow, or reasons why; it simply is, and does.

***

i'm trying to understand these, and also the way my mind/heart remember (or fail to remember).  i suppose this relates to my modes of being too.  the systematic mode sometimes remembers (although oftentimes memory does not play into the "system" because so much of what occurs in life is nonassimilable, or irrelevant); but even when it remembers, it does so sketchily, it mutated the memory to fit into a container.  the anti-systematic mode sometimes remembers, although because it is so thoroughly unsystematic, it only remembers "surfaces" and impressions.  i don't know how or why i cannot reconcile the two, but my relationship with my past is often- problematic.  i either don't recall, or i can't feel.  or both.

so, while i have been consistently "practice-writing" per natalie goldberg (yes, i'm on that track again), as before, i find that sort of writing is not fit for any sort of publication or even re-reading by myself.  it is mostly stream-of-consciousness stuff.  it rarely gets deeper than any momentary and fragmentary thought that passes into my head.  this always inspires frustration in me, and reflects a general problem in my life: this idea that there IS no story "existent" within me, that there is no shape or landscape that i can "express."  this means that any narrative that i construct would be wholly contrived, and what i've found is that i am not a good "contriver."  as it is, writing stories is an artificial process, and produces an artificial construct; how then, if there is no skeleton, no core, upon which to hang these rags and curtains?

ANYWAY, i figure that blogging is a good intermediary step.  while probably NO ONE reads this, there is this idea that someone does, or that potentially someone could.  and with the introduction of even the possibility of another, there is an immediate imposition of structure to my words.  i used to write about this sort of thing back in college.  i always wondered about the "ordering" of the world, not just the real world, but also the world of consciousness.  i (like many philosophers) primarily were motivated to understand this point because of their frustration with the world-as-ordered, especially because it came with a lot of existential guilt.  understanding how the conscious world-as-ordered formed would, they believed, help to free them from this guilt.

ANYWAY (as i have a tendency here to go off on large tangents)...  that's what i'm trying to do here.

***

i watched a great movie yesterday.  it was called "a monster calls."  it's about a young, imaginative, artistic boy (or should i say adolescent, not a boy, not a man) with a mother dying of cancer.  it deals with a lot of the anger and frustration and grief and, most importantly, guilt, that lies festering within him.  he calls out to a "monster", a giant humanoid that springs out of a yew tree that the boy can see atop a high field (graveyard, actually).  the monster visits him at 12:07 (i still almost come up with reasons for that particular number) and tells him paradoxical, ambiguous stories that have muddled (and multi-layered) interpretations.

it was a great, wise, touching movie.  most notably, i loved the use of the stories, which the boy (and the viewers) interpret on the surface; various interpretations, including how to deal with an imposing grandmother, or a "good start bad finish" father.  ultimately, though, the monster, like a zen master, is using the stories to point to the boy's own unresolved issues, particularly his guilt.  this guilt comes out when the boy is forced by the monster to tell the fourth story: his own particular nightmare.

***

i often wonder if there is a secret wound within me.  i seek it out.  i debase myself continually (because i do think that there is a lot of hate within me).  but there is a point where i lose focus.  and nothing comes up.  that is the key: that the "answer" wells up something within you, something forgotten, perhaps, or denied.  i don't think (or know) if i deny much of anything.  there are things i've realized about myself that i won't even disclose here, to this "fictional audience."  things that i was at first ashamed of, but slowly started to understand were just necessary parts of my being.

humans are complicated creatures, after all.  (this is something the monster says).  we are not all good or all evil, but mostly something in between.  i am so.  there are evils within me too.  but, (and this is something that the monster also says) what is important is what we do.

NEVERTHELESS, even though it is important what we do, we still need to face and confront and set free all of the contradictions within us.  if we don't, it's as though we are tethered to the ground, with a hefty knot holding us back from everything.

i have always felt confined.  i want liberation.  writing, drawing, everything are means to that end.  THIS is a means to that end.

there is an ancient, nameless guilt  it has pursued me across space and time, and still manages to find me...

i kept hearing the words (or rather the tune) to that song by the weekend...  and it morphed to other songs, like the one from arianna grande...  whoa, i am dating myself, because later when i read this, i will look back with sadness upon what has passed.  what used to be quaint, the background, is now irretrievably gone.

there is a critique from certain people, a judgment.  and the judgment imposes a slick, sheer silver wall that is impossible to climb or influence.  you will NEVER measure up.  in the face of that, i fall apart, i doubt myself.  there are so many things which i neglect, simply by existing, and this makes me feel like that...  then, in my mind, i run through a checklist...  i suppose that my son worries me the most.  but last night, i ran with him, and we sort of had a heart to heart.  he is so open and positive when i speak to him.  i love that within him.  sure, he has worries and anxieties, but he still paints them with such brashness...  in this, he is unlike me, who am simply a mass of worries, a ball on wound up tension.  when he spoke of becoming a teacher, there was a feeling of reassurance within me.

i have wondered, perhaps since the beginning, at the irony...  of how we can be so cruel to ourselves, so judgmental, and yet, extend such warmth and mercy to others.  it's not, and it never has been, about them "measuring up".  i suppose that i have ALWAYS held that misgiving within myself...  but my son proves me wrong: how he unabashedly moves out into the world, mess or no mess, incomplete or no...  he has a bravery that i admire.  and people (including me) seem to like that.  i love that.  why is that?  why is that allowed (thankfully!) but it can never apply to me?

is there someone that acknowledges everything?  i used to think of this as a lover, but there is no lover with the patience and space within their heart to accommodate all the shit that i have to offer.  that's something i realized real quick.  a lover comes to you with their own needs and wants, and it is simply a happy coincidence that those are met, temporarily, and imperfectly, within each other...  and you still have to be strong enough to stand, with all of your own internal contradictions...

i am sad, crying on the inside.  there is no true comfort in this world.  everything passes away.  nothing meets the ideal that you, fleetingly, set for it.  everything falls apart...  in such a world, to stand.  that is the miracle.  in this moment, i love my son, for what he can do.  i will support him, as best as i can.