5/31/2020

i'm back, even though it is only a little while since i last posted.

i should also mention that the world is going to hell around me. i know that the background of our historical, hysterical situation is also feeding into a lot of the anger that i feel. at 2020, a few months before the election, this is the "great" america that trump has been working for. over 100,000 dead after a pandemic that trump repeatedly disowns ("not my fault"); and now, a race war, encouraged by our racist president. i think what's laughable is how things are so inconclusive and ambiguous on the ground with all the riots, and this asshole (and his ass puppet a.g. barr) have the gall to characterize the violence as being incited by antifa and the far left, when there is ample evidence that it is his own  "very fine people" in the neo-nazi white supremacy movements... so, yeah, there is a lot of anger at thtat. but it also seethes at the people around me, who happen to be trump supporters too. i work with a lot of them, believe it or not. for whatever reason, they support him. as someone once said, the charitable thing is to call them "stupid" or "duped"; because if they aren't, then they are racist, sexist, self-interested, greedy, ... the list goes on. btw, i should mention that my brother and my own mother belong to this group of supporters. it even goes to my family.

i think the white evangelical movement has been one of trump's biggest supporters. and i fear that that's where a lot of support for trump comes from locally. whether it's a good thing or not, a lot of local churches aren't really local; they are just local branches, or franchises, of national white evangelical movements, that espouse a lot of the gop talking points, you know, the complete bs you see on fox news. and a lot of these people, who are otherwise kind people, well, they just eat it up. some of the support comes from their anti-abortion bias... i'm sorry, but no matter what your feelings are about abortion, if you don't see how the gop has duped people into thinking they are about "family values..." as a fact, with planned parenthood and other organizations, abortion has actually been occurring at the lowest rate in history, due to women having other options to prevent pregnancy. banning abortions does not stop them from happening. it only makes it impossible or deadly for women of poverty to obtain it (because wealthy gop senators can always pay to have their mistresses go, say, out of state, to take care of their indiscretions)...

in any case, those are my views on things. worst president ever. and we knew what he was like when he was running. and now that we have a confirmation of our worst suspicions, there are people who still... STILL... eagerly follow his wishes. which makes me- i don't know, disappointed is too light a word- disheartened in people. people all around me.

so i guess i should also mention that aspect of things.

*****

i woke up feeling like- i don't know- like my heart was breaking.

i guess i should mention some regrets. my school had been having problems securing an ea or educational assistant for my class. my former ea retired last year. i guess i am low on the priority list. they say that it's partially because i'm more experienced, but whatever the reason, they could not secure someone permanent for my class. i had a couple of people serve in that role this year, including a young girl who i felt was doing a great job. i guess the unfortunate thing was that the grade level i had mentioned previously- well, she felt like she was a strong part of their team. which she was. and i don't fault her for it at all...

in any case, she was let go. it all happened abruptly, without anyone communicating anything to me. it happened over the covid-19 "break." i had communicated with her briefly over texts, and tried to secure a job for her (because i was concerned about her employment status). but i suppose i failed her in a couple of respects. number one, while there was this day at my school where they did send offs for everyone leaving, well, i guess because she had only been a temporary hire, she was not included on the official list. i suppose i could have argued for her to have a send-off, but i didn't. i suppose i also could have advocated for her more vociferously- but i thought i already did; i repeatedly wrote to my principal urging him to keep her, telling him how great she was. but my experience has been that much of what i say isn't taken into serious consideration anyway...

so i feel bad about that. again, i feel concern for her, and if other opportunities come up, i'll pass them her way... but i guess, as with all things, she probably felt most comfortable with the other women on that grade level, and considered them to be most like her "team."

*****

i suppose i have a long experience with being- i don't know- the second. i recall moments. like when i had to interview the wrestling (formerly football) coach for some newswriting story. and how he kept saying how great my brother was, and why wasn't i more like him? or at my japan grandma's funeral, how my grandma's friend didn't really want to hear from me, and repeatedly gushed about how my japan grandma had always talked (exclusively) about my older brother...

there's this feeling you get that the world loves someone or something much better than you. and you can't compete with that. you just kind of sink away with this- i don't know- disappointment in your heart. and that sets you off in this game, where you walk away and feel dejected... and then try to prove yourself in various ways, prove that you are just as good...

i hate that feeling, but it repeatedly comes up. students who love other teachers, even though you worked with them more closely... co-workers, same thing... it hurts because it feels like you don't have a place in anyone's heart. and that's when you learn to distance yourself from the world. that's when you learn that you don't have a place in its heart. you're like a second-class citizen, a refugee. and you serve, but you don't belong.

i guess that's what i am, essentially. a servant. a serve the children, i serve to better the world. but i don't belong in it. i'm not loved by it. the world only loves the glamorous and the strong.

the irony is that the world loves my brother. but my brother committed heinous crimes against my family, crimes that even today he does not admit. it's a similar thing with my grade level. i have struggled to understand what i did wrong with them, even though i served them, and i did a lot for them or on their behalf... i did those things, but i'm not a part of their "team."

now, when they ask me to take photos with them, etc., i just flat out say, "no." because why should we take a photo presenting something that is not real?

*****

lowly. i serve. i serve the children. i serve the garden. i serve. i do jobs. i do tasks.

if i disappear, you won't miss ME. you'll maybe notice for a time that jobs aren't being done. but maybe you'll find someone better, more like a real human being, to replace me. in fact, you likely will. and the deficit will be erased.

*****

i think i need to speak to my hawaii grandma (she is sort of like my guardian angel, the only person i felt comfortable to speak to, the only one who SAW me). and i need to meditate. it's all very raw, all very painful. but i need to return to the sense that i am okay, that i am a caring and gentle person, that i am a human being.

i cannot change the coarses of rivers and oceans.

but i can choose to sink or swim.

and i have to find a reason to swim.

*****

in that sense, my wife saved me. i am so thankful for her. because i have walked through life with such a deep sadness and dejection buried within. i have been hollow for so much of my life. and my wife saw me, and still embraced me. and that made me feel like a human being again.

5/30/2020

i'm out of routine, but just thought i would check in. this week has been rough in the sense that i had these projects to do, and things to take care of at work. i put aside all of my routines to finish those things...

the end of the year always brings some strange feelings. actually, most of the time, i am completely incapable of feeling much of anything. i am numb and dead inside. there's very little sadness. if anything, there is anger. and i move or act, not out of real feeling or sympathy or compassion or whatever, but because my brain says it is the appropriate or opportune thing to do. it sounds cold, it is cold, but i'm being real.

the fact that people are leaving my school, for some of them, yes, i do feel sad. i did enjoy seeing them and working with them. but for some, my feelings were either absent or ambiguous...

i suppose i should explain a bit. i'm not exactly sure how it happened, but a cloud, a pall, fell over my relationship with my own grade level. i sometimes associate it with the introduction of one particular teacher, whom i tend to have a difficult time with, but it's probably more than that. about three years ago now, i had a particular student who had been placed in inclusion, probably inappropriately. let's just say that it wasn't working out for that student to be in the gen ed class. although i was a co-teacher, i felt i had to devote more and more time to that student in other settings, even though i continued to try to have the student transition into the gen ed setting. in any case, and this is my suspicion, i think my withdrawal from the gen-ed setting was a matter of complaint for the gen ed teacher. that's my guess, anyway. the fact that she was pregnant later in the year didn't help matters...

in any case, things got really awful towards the end of the year. i felt that the entire grade level (all women) were allied against me. and i didn't feel like i had the recourse to ask what was going on, or why they were angry and not communicating with me. i tried to be helpful when i could, especially for my pregnant co-teacher, but i kind of got the cold shoulder (i.e., no response). i think i kind of withdrew by the end of the year. i did voice my situation to my vice principal, but she didn't seem particularly sympathetic, and in any case, didn't do anything to resolve my concerns.

i honestly thought about transferring schools at that point. i mean, i love my kids, i love working with the kids... it's sometimes the teachers that i have a hard time with. but ultimately i stayed, maybe out of complacency, maybe out of a sense that i had SOME ties at the school worth keeping.

anyway, things didn't get much better the next year, or this year, for that matter. let me tell you, that about four or five years ago, i was definitely a part of the team for the fifth graders. i and my ea. but now, i felt that they made a point to exclude me. they didn't communicate important stuff to me. sometimes when i required information to complete paperwork, they wouldn't respond.

in fact, that was the big problem towards the end of last year. when i requested some important info for one of my students, info that i needed to enter on essentially legal documents, then i didn't get a reply. let me tell you, for myself, if i had neglected to reply to some messages in a timely manner, i would catch some heavy flak. but i didn't get a reply after two days. and i needed that info to complete the document. so i complained. i complained to that teacher, and i complained to my principal and vice principal... and i got that one teacher really mad. but i felt justified in complaining, because i wasn't getting a response to my request...

in any case, the end result of that was that i got into trouble. at the end of the year, the principal, vice principal, that teacher, and the head of my department all teamed up on me, and essentially told me it was my fault, and that i shouldn't have been so impolite in the way i had responded. they said that i should have given sufficient time for the gen ed teacher to respond. i made some arguments that i would've been fine if the gen ed teacher had told me she needed more time or something, but she didn't respond period. and keep in mind that this was occurring over a background of silence on other things anyway.

that meeting also infuriated me, but as is the case with me, i just kind of said okay, and stomached it. in any case, it was too late to do a transfer at that point, and i was condemned to stay for another year.

to be honest, things weren't all that bad this year... i at least interacted with the teachers, did some of their science lessons for them, and stuff like that. and one of the grade level teachers helped me out a bit with my robotics team, which, frankly, no one in my school really gives a crap about (at least no one is willing to really help me out... after a few years of requests... let me tell you that i am the ONLY school that has a SINGLE coach leading a group of kids. most schools have TEAMS of people to work with their students. i guess i shouldn't be complaining, but yes, i am complaining, because i have asked for help many times. it always makes me think there is something wrong with me, that no one wants to assist me... my school always talks about teamwork and shit, but it's only teamwork with certain people or certain interests... but again, what i do, which included not only robotics, but science fair, and history day, well, i guess those aren't particularly important enough. usually they don't even want to mention what i do. or they don't give me time, like fucking five minutes, to announce something or request something... so there's my little rant about that. yes, to be honest, i guess i am bitter.)

anyway, to go back to this year. something kind of snapped in me this week. i just realized that there were so many negative feelings towards my grade level that i just didn't want to attend the farewell thing at all. i am not one to pretend any feelings. in fact, i have a hard time emoting period (maybe because it's buried under a lot of unresolved anger). so i just decided not to go. i mean, i do what's requested of me, i made posters for some of the departing people. but to physically be there, and say stuff that i don't really mean in my heart- well, it was just too much for me.

the thing is that i've felt less and less connected to the community of the school as time has passed. after all, i'm not a squeaky wheel. i run in silence. and i always return to the kids, the kids, the kids. the noisy people somehow convince the others. so i know that most of the school is kind of allied against me. they think all the less of me. so when i relate to others at work, i keep it on a certain level, where i will help them all i can, but i won't share my feelings with them. i'm just a nothing to most people there anyway. and my admin could care less. i dimly suspect that they would want me to leave, if they could, to get someone more effusive. and compliant.

whew. so i guess i do have a lot of bitterness and anger in me. i actually do wish people well. i wish the best for my former co-teacher. but i feel like- i don't know, it's the same with my brother- i feel like i've been unfairly rejected, but there's no way to change things. i have no voice to express my anger, my rage. i remember trying to express my feelings and how my brother would just turn to fox news or the sports. "huh, you say anything?" same with my grade level. and maybe i wouldn't want to say anything anyway, because- again, like my brother- they would pooh-pooh my feelings, and make like it was all such a little thing. and now, voila, it's all better. they would make it better, and not even apologize for anything. that's kind of how that meeting with my principal and that teacher went- where we kind of rushed through, and then my principal said, "well, i'm glad that's resolved."

i guess i kind of feel helpless, because i have no one at school to confide in. whereas they have their whole fucking team, their network of gossip and shit. i have to say, i am so used to that world. i grew up in that world, through middle school, high school, even college. i have always been an outsider. whether it's my awkwardness or my ignorance or whatever, i have never fit in. and i have always been the victim of that kind of exclusion. so what they are doing is nothing new. what i find hilarious is how they lecture kids for this sort of thing, when they do it on the daily themselves. that's why i say FUCK any sort of institutionalized groupings. anything like that. because it is all about bands of cowards hanging together.

i suppose the only thing i really worry about is that i have so internalized the anger and hurt and rage that i cease to feel. i used to believe that i was a naturally empathic and compassionate person. but now i'm realizing that i have so much anger in me that i can't feel for others, or feel much of anything for that matter. that's why i need to return to something. i need to meditate, return to gardening, anything, to release this anger, and to care about people, about my children, again. that's where the teaching is. not in any of this bullshit with other teachers.

i'm sorry, but at this point in the game, that's where my heart is.

*****

it's ironic, but earlier today, i was feeling- i don't know, anxious, sad. and it has been kind of rare for me to feel much of anything. when i get this feeling, it is something visceral, tangible. i actually feel it physically. as though i am this hollow drum with the skin held tight, vibrating at the slightest disturbance... and i felt that this was what i needed to write, or to do art, or to emote in any real sense of the word... and that much of what i had been doing up until now has been simply mechanical, because i had lost the capacity to feel. most of what i feel is this ineffable sadness. like i could almost break down and cry if i let myself. i know, it's weird. but that, i think, is my heart. i have a deep sadness in myself. not sadness necessary for myself, but simply a generalized sadness at the ephemeral nature of life, that everything that we love must change and die. it is generally a gentle thing. but like the sweet note of a violin, it can carry a world of emotion...

i was thinking that if i could return to that feeling, to always keep it raw and naked, that i would be able to write, or whatever. that i would have something to say.

that's what i intended to talk about when i decided to write this blog post... but then, in talking about this past week, i guess i started to feel sorry for myself, and wanted to complain about my situation. oh well. i guess it has been on my mind. in fact, maybe it was part of what broke through my shell... this realization of that inner turmoil, that anger within me...

but whatever. i will try to keep that flame, that feeling of something within me, going.

5/27/2020 (dream)

and, in a flash, it is now five days later.

i had a dream. i can't remember the beginning of it. but at one point, in a tour bus or something, we (i and the passengers) were watching other cars and buses navigate a particularly treacherous part of the road below. apparently, there was a bus parked on the side of the road (or maybe it had broken down?), and in impatience, some of the other vehicles were trying to find an alternate route... only, there was no way around it. just beyond the bend where the bus was stalled, there was a sheer drop over a river. and we watched as bus after bus would attempt the jump and would fail spectacularly...

after a time, i spoke to some of the passengers about similarly risky pathways. and then i was speaking to someone (this younger white dude) about risky pathways that he had taken. he mentioned (and pointed out in the landscape... or did the landscape itself change?) a road sloping up into the mountains. i mentioned something similar, but far steeper- and said something about how i would never attempt such a path, particularly if someone were with me- implying something about my own children...

in any case, we eventually ended up in some sort of inn, which was located, it seems in a cave of some sort. and i was in a room with one of the bass guitarists of radiohead, the one with the bowl haircut (that thome comments on in one video) and the apish arms, whom i never quite learned the name of, and (in this dream) imagined did not speak english as his first language... he seemed conscious of the fact that attention was upon him, and immediately dropped to the floor, imitating a scene from- i called it- cape fear. i don't know if there actually was a scene like this, but he was on the floor, as though handcuffed, and someone kicked him or something, and he dislocated his shoulder on purpose, yelling (in denero-ese) "fock you!" i laughed a bit, told him that was good. he said thanks in some halting spanish accent, and then said that because it was just he and his little brother, he would often have to come up with things to entertain him and pass the time...

i remember having this insight, that this was inside of a dream. and someone (me?) said, "ah, this is a true one!" and then someone else, in this british mad-scientist-y voice, creaked, "but how can you tell!?" and i imagined these old dessicated souls peering and mulling over forms in the flotsam and jetsam of consciousness, trying to find remnants of the old world- the living world- and most of the time failing. the "how can you tell" part was something about how the conscious mind, that devilish thing, could always recreate forms in its own image, according to its own memory, and thus pretend at reality- and the despairing "how can you tell" statement was because it was no longer possible to discern the "real" world of antiquity from something that was "recreated" and placed there...

i feel that this last was a commentary on original inspiration. it was probably a bridge thought, on the way out of the dream...

***

i went to use the bathroom in the dark, and i was gazing into the bowl, i thought of how the kappa's head is like a toilet bowl... draining away into the darkness...

***

when i close my eyes to sleep, i don't know why, but i imagine (or try to imagine) a different life... but something keeps me from a clear vision that i can feel... maybe it's just because my imagination has always been broken. i always thought it was, because it never seemed to work the way that they make it on sesame street, where you can close your eyes, and this clear alternate reality appears... no, there are always questions, distractions... you can always see the puppeteer's hands invading the show... but anyway, i felt as though i had dug myself in a rut, dug the bottom of the river with my own clawed fingers, and scooped out enough of the shit and sediment to create a trap of a sort, where the water would cycle and have a difficult time escaping... and i could see the waters of the river, and other shores, but i could never escape the rut i had made...

life is like that. we can see much farther than we can be.

i suppose i can't even conceive (in my imagination) of another relationship. it is- as vizzhini says- "inconceivable!" it's sad, i suppose. even in an escapist sort of sense, and even within my own head, i am not allowed of imagining alternatives in any way that i could feel... like, perhaps if i had opened a door into another life at this particular juncture... or, perhaps if i had gone to the summer country, free from obligations, and met someone there... it's impossible for me to "see" it or experience it. the devil is in the details, they say, and it's in the details that the vision is lost... what does she look like? why would she interact with you? what would she say? inevitably, the whole stage collapses upon itself.

...again: "ah, this is a true one!"

"but how can you tell!?"

life, the mind- it is a game of obfuscation- of make-believe... ever think of the words? make-believe. how we make something and then try to believe it. that's life, i suppose. but at a certain point, it's difficult. we know we made it... so how can we believe it? that's the rub.

i get scared sometimes, of old age. as my faculties diminish, and the only thing i have left to run away with is my mind, have i already imprisoned myself with my ravenous analytical consciousness? the one that dissolves all forms and dreams in its stomach and then refashions it all into usable proteins and sugars and fats??? all to build up my own towering edifice. (btw, not unlike my own minecraft adventure, this never-ending construction of a tower of rationality???)

5/22/2020 (2)

it is now 6:30 in the evening. i did my work, my calls. and then i tried to cycle through my routine. and now, it is the evening, and my wife and daughter are not home yet.

for some reason, i feel anxious. anxious sounds so innocuous. anxiety sounds more substantive. i feel anxiety. i feel the comparison game impinging upon me. the views of others. i suppose that's part of the switch too, the inevitable comparison game when it comes to others, the presence/absence game... and then the inevitable artistic turn that i gave myself, to pretend no one was there, to, as they say, "dance like no one is watching." it is all a game. you're dancing "like" no one is watching. but someone is always watching. whether it's you, or whether it is someone else. you can never be completely blind. you can never disappear completely...

why is it like that? why not, "dance like someone is watching." or "dance like someone you love is watching." it is because there is shame, and there is anxiety... as though we cannot show something of ourselves, because it won't measure up. it won't measure past their eyelids. they won't see us. they won't see us "as we truly are." ironic, to put it that way, because if we really were interested in the truth of it, then we wouldn't be concerned with the appearance...

i always imagined a zen master bypassed all of this appearance/reality bullshit. but my way of accomplishing it was not authentic. i still carry all of my psychoses with me. i still want to be better than anyone. i still want people to fall in love with me, to respect me, to acknowledge me. and failing that, i still want to disappear, and pretend that people miss me.

it's all such a stupid game.

*****

billy collins said something counter to what i am doing now. he said that "finding your voice" does NOT involve looking within. rather, he said that it is continually determined by the context. it is continually created by finding influences, perhaps the voices of other poets. and the grown up side of me agrees. i mean, heck, i wrote a response to my daughter's questionnaire in which i basically said somewhat of the same thing, that art is always within a context, and the challenge of art is always to be revolutionary, to be "seen" when the eyes have seen everything before.

nevertheless, i think... there's a way to find the authentic voice. there's a way to find the authentic issues within you... and if you don't struggle for it, if you don't examine yourself thoroughly, then maybe what you produce isn't really worth it, because it isn't- well, it isn't coming from- i don't know...

well, in truth, i have to say some parts of what billy said was right... my most insightful thoughts have usually sprung up from a "discussion" or "conversation" with myself... if i didn't "talk" to myself, then i would likely never have come upon certain insights.

*****

i've thought about recording myself just talking. but i guess it would be pretty weird (as though what i write here isn't already weird). especially with my kids and people around me.

*****

i despair at times. like i'm always wasting my time. spinning my wheels. there's always been this anxiety within me about that. as though there were maybe some more authentic life that i was supposed to be living. as though i am wasting my opportunity. but why? why is there always always always this better life? why can't i just be content? as it is, this obsessive routine i have is meant to offset the

5/22/2020

well, the date says 5/22, but it is actually (for me) the end of 5/21. it's just after midnight.

i regret writing things so personal in the previous entry. at times, i wonder who reads this stuff anyway.

it's true that for long periods of my life, i felt terribly alone and terribly depressed. i also always felt compelled to stay on this straight and narrow path, no distractions. perhaps there could have been liberation for me, had i entertained it, but something always kept me moving. in hindsight, it was ridiculous, actually.

i often often wonder where this feeling of imprisonment comes from. it is a feeling of being surrounding by whirling knives. to reach out, to step off the path, is to be cut viciously. so i never did. but the loneliness, it was also cutting in itself, but internally. a waste disposal system, churning and grinding me from within... an emptiness within, an emptiness without.

yesterday i remembered the emptiness of my undergraduate years. but there was severe emptiness in los angeles as well. in a way, it was more pronounced...

i recall sitting at seats in malls, or at cafes, so compelled to study on the one hand, and so desperate that someone would come and sit across from me and talk to me. i recall driving and walking to empty beaches in the middle of the night to do obscure forms that no one saw (a repetition of what i did in college, walking to trees in a graveyard, surrounded by silent snow, hitting the bark with my bare knuckles, secretly hoping that someone saw me, and felt for me)...

a trap. a vicious trap.

i always imagined there was some summer country. when i was trapped at williams, in the midst of all the snow that refused to melt, i dreamed of hawaii, and people in bikinis. or i dreamt of san jose, where there were anime stores. stuff like that. i dreamt of life existing elsewhere. and earlier in my life, i dreamt of japan, my figurative summer country, where things were always somehow brighter, and more real, than my pale reality... but in truth, but in truth...

*****

i'm returning to the notion of the switch. when you feel no one wants you, then it appears as though you have a choice: you could continue to humiliate yourself and be small and worthless, or you could set off on your own, "out and up," and gain momentum from the pushing off and away, feel a semblance of motion, and emotion, in your life... but again, it's always a false choice. secretly, after you pushed off, you would still want them to miss you, to regret ignoring you (even as you understand that they didn't notice)... and all of it is a play to get attention... you keep swallowing a more bitter pill, progressively more bitter and emetic, trying to make yourself really real. like you keep trying to make the other, the desired other, disappear, and yourself disappear. but it is all a hoax, a game. you can never swallow yourself... you can never make yourself disappear by eating your own pain, and concealing yourself in your gut.

you will still be you, all hurt and lonely.

but what alternative is there?

i hate hate hate being without respect. without love. that was what i knew early on. the rejection. the not-measuring-up. the feeling of complete worthlessness. and i internalized it, i think. like swallowing a razor blade... cut me up inside into smaller and smaller pieces...

*****

well, i'm starting to feel drowsy. i've got some writing and meditating to do, before i fall asleep. so i best be going...

5/20/2020

i'm here again. i have been managing to keep my routines going, steadily. as i progress in certain things, it gets harder and harder to move through it. for example, in japanese, i am working on grade 3 level kanji, and it takes me a long time to study and go through one rotation. but what keeps me going is the steady improvement. in my last cycle, i think i got 50 something kanji right. (there are 200 kanji in the grade 3 level)...

i was also meditating this afternoon. so many brief touches with memories. but nothing new, no epiphanies. i think that the conscious mind lays a web across everything, touches everything with its life-draining blight. so the forms of things are honored and preserved, but the life- well, that's gone. i guess one of my hopes in doing all of these processes is to break through the dominion of my conscious mind... sort of like that one time (was it one?) when i get drunk, just to see if i would lose control enough to experience somthing new (i managed to keep a pretty steady hold, even when i got extremely sick). i think the only time i "tricked" myself out of control was when i took a hit of marijuana in california... i might have mentioned this before, but after inhaling and not feeling much of anything for a few seconds, i suddenly had this vivid sensation of being completely outside of myself... and not in a "cognitive" sense. i was literally outside of myself, somewhere off to the left (i distinctly remember the specific location). i somehow could see myself from this external vantage point. and i recall it was enormously difficult to focus. and i remember giggling uncontrollably...

ANYWAY, all of this is a struggle to remove the veil of reality, or rather, remove the veil over reality, and discover something authentic and true. and, i hope, i suppose, to discover a narrative that will be easy to write. that will come naturally... none of this contrived crap. because the contrived story is simply an extension of the conscious mind- a scaffold constructed from the splinters of a long ago shipwreck...

*****

i had fragments of memories. my bedsheet in college was purple. it had large purple blossoms on it. and it was located next to this heater grate. and i remember this feeling of enormous despair, speaking into the grate of the heater. in the darkness. in this dark corner. concealed, though next to the window, on the first floor, that opened out into the quad. imagining at times that a face would appear at the window, curious, and looking in, but no one was there. no one was ever there. i remember listening to the tape of james bond theme music that my brother had sent over, not because i really liked it, but because it was something to cling onto. something to hold onto, something familiar...

*****

i remember the first day i went to williams college. alone. brand new things. buying a tennis racket. buying these grey williams sweats. running up and down the length of those stairs, towards the back of the quad (i think). towards that kwonsett hut and the golf course. places i rarely ventured actually. the ironic pillars. that sandwich shop. and eating at colonial pizza, with deedee, who i imagined had a crush on me. stuff like that. the innocence, the terror, the hope of it all... i hated myself back then. (i hate myself now). so incredibly awkward.

*****

i remember the snack bar in my senior year. how i was so incredibly lonely and desperate. how i would go to the snack bar simply to have something to eat. i think i always ate a bagel with cream cheese, and a bottle of snapple iced tea. the girl that worked there was a japanese freshman. cute. but i don't rob the cradle. and besides, i was not someone that anyone was interested in. i would just sit at the table... and study. and look out at the world through those windows. the light as it came in seemed cold and insipid. what was wrong with me?

remembering different faces, like vines to cling to, because without them, i would fall forever into despair. i was always looking for someone to save me. for someone to see something in me. so needy and desperate. i remember lily oei, for some reason, this vision of her living somewhere in new york, and i remember the excitement of thinking she could see me, running and skipping over black ice on the sidewalk, and nearly falling flat on my face. must have been my junior year, living with phil in that house, garfield? don't remember... imagining the place where lily lived. why? i didn't even know her, but i imagined her asian face held some style and some interest in me. what was wrong with me? why so desperate and alone?

*****

i remember winters in mission park. the cold halls, empty. the smell of abandonment. that feeling. my day stretched on before me, with no plans, and there was a false excitement in it, although it was thin ice over this underlying despair. looking at pictures at this desk in this room that i was borrowing, seeing people at some hike, imagining relationships... hearing, somewhere, perhaps in the floor above, some woman gasp and moan in sex. and feeling, again, incredibly empty and alone. hating that.

for a large segment of my life, i think when others were celebrating, i felt consumed (and i mean really consumed, like eaten from the inside out) by loneliness and depression. it was, it is, it was, crippling. i am so thankful that i seem to have exited it somewhat normal...

5/19/2020

the date has changed by one, but it actually has been two days since i last wrote in this blog... monday morning (midnight)... and now, tuesday evening. for some reason, i was struck with exhaustion in the middle of the day. i had just finished one of my last official iep meetings, and it left me feeling pretty tired. so i collapsed into the sofa while the rest of my family ate some dinner.

i'm awake now (obviously) having gained some sort of second wind. but i must admit, i lost a lot of time. and there was a kind of afterglow to my nap, in which my mind sort of meandered to this and that (unproductively). i made some unnecessary comments to stories on facebook... one detailing the grading issue for public schools in hawaii (to an article about the problem educators are facing with grading in the time of covid-19)... another about the problems of opening up apple stores (i think apple stores are particularly problematic, due to the endless touch screens)... random stuff like that.

i also put up a posting about the devastation of my more recent tomato plant. i looked at images of various tomato plant diseases, and found one image in particular that matched some of the things i had seen. in both my current tomato plant and its predecessor, there were these nodules on the stem, near the roots... they didn't quite look natural, but i had just assumed they were supposed to be there. but it turns out that they were "adventitious roots", that is, roots that the plant was attempting to create because there was a problem. so the disease is called tomato pith necrosis, and it's a monster. it's actually caused by a bacteria, pseudomonas corrugata or something. and it can be passed on through the grow medium, whether that is soil or clay pebbles... so i guess after the previous plant died, i should have either grown this new tomato plant somewhere else, or completely cleaned out the debris and detritus from the previous plant. but i didn't, so i'm here...

someday, i would like to document the varieties of plant diseases... and pests... and simple nutrient deficiencies... so that someone starting up an aquaponics or hydroponics system will be able to identify maladies, and hopefully address them. but right now, i'm too busy/lazy...

*****

billy collins spoke about the "turn of the poem." again, i like how he explains things, but i often feel he is a bit too formulaic (read, conscious). i often like to imagine that poetry is a largely unconscious (read instinctual, spontaneous) process... and to make too much of the form of a poem runs the risk of converting the process into an assembly line... that's my take, anyway.

*****

still despairing of writing formal fiction (or anything much, for that matter). it seems so far downstream. i think right now, i'm more interesting in realizing some sort of epiphany. of breaking through the planks. of drowning in the deepest ocean, swallowed by impossible monsters... and shat out filled with dreams on some naked shore. then, maybe i'll have something to talk about. maybe then i'll have no choice but to write and speak poetry... like a madman.

*****

what is a life, really? a brief opening (emphasis on brief). it pretends at things. pretends at eternity. pretends at stability. pretends at happiness... no, scratch that, i think- i know- the happiness is real. but somehow the happiness is always tied into the notion that it is fleeting. i remember the happiness of my young children, listening to them prattle... and even in that moment, i KNEW this was happiness... even while we are always planning on the next moment, taking care of things... i knew it was sufficient. that this was what it was all about... but time keeps passing, and things keep changing. my daughter now is not what she was, or what she appeared to be. neither is my son. for that matter, neither am i. maybe we are all like plants. tomato plants, or whatever. we have such promise, and innocence. but who knows what we will grow into? what blights or diseases we may face? what sun and light we may chase? what turns and tangles we may get into? the fruit we have, or lack? we can't know, we can never tell. but i love it all the same. i love my children, all the same. the only constancy that exists in life, is the constancy that we provide, that we create. and i- thank god- am still able to return to my life with a sense of love and appreciation... it is a good life. i still don't know what a life is, but i understand, viscerally, that what i have had so far has been good.

5/18/2020

the date just changed. i'm actually writing at the end of my sunday. literally, it is only 1 minute and 15 seconds into monday... but whatever.

today was dominated by my nephew's graduation. i made a sign (and did a pretty decent job of it, if i do say so myself). that pretty much took up most of my morning. and then, well, after working half-heartedly on a few aspects of my routine, then we actually went over to the street to wave and hold up the sign at just the right moment, when my nephew passed in the passenger seat of the car. it was nice, albeit brief. upon our return home, it was the same old stuff, until we headed over to my parent's house to eat dinner with the graduate. i know, technically, it's not allowed, but i'm pretty sure we're clean, and my parents are clean, or we would've had something by now. (okay, that's not a real justification, but whatever).

at my parent's house, i was for the most part not really listening or paying attention to much of anything. tinkered with the piano for a time. my parents were eventually watching a show called kirin ga kuru, about oda nobunaga's death or something (most of these historical dramas are about the three rulers of japan: nobunaga, hideyoshi, or tokugawa... or else, they're about the chushin gura (of which my ancestor is one). anyway, i had just read some story about nobunaga, or at least somewhat related to him, and to hideyoshi... it was a fictional account of a blind masseuse (by junichiro tanizaki), talking about how he had served oda nobunaga's beautiful sister, and how the ruthless nobunaga ordered the killing of his own sister's son (because he was a threat to succession or something)... and how hideyoshi was the reluctant person who carried out this deed; even though he lusted after oda nobunaga's sister... and how, oddly enough, hideyoshi was eventually to marry lady ochacha, the daughter of nobunaga's sister, who (as the narrator says) was the spitting image of her mother...

the story on tv was about mitsuhide or something, and i kinda got lost in my parents' explanation of it all. one cool thing was that my father recited something which is probably taught to all kids in japan as common historical knowledge, this three line "poem" which describes the different philosophies of these three famous generals... how to get a bird to sing? nobunaga would kill it, hideyoshi would get it to want to sing, and tokugawa ieyasu would simply wait.

anyway, after that, for some reason, my dad showed me this little shrine thing containing an accordion style booklet, with calligraphy detailing our family's lineage. he said it only went until his own grandfather, and that he had neglected to update it. i think he meant to entrust it to me or something, although my japanese is very minimal, and i wouldn't know what to do with it. "am i supposed to chant sutras to it?" i asked, and he kind of chuckled at that. he himself doesn't do anything of that sort...

i feel kind of ashamed about stuff like that. my grandma (on my mother's side) probably would have hoped that i would carry on the tenrikyo religion in our family. i probably would have, but my uncle seemed really possessive of the ewa beach house and the little shrine there. i don't know. not that having the shrine would have meant anything fundamentally different; i could still have done the daily prayers and such... but i guess having something physical would have- i don't know- tied me to that past. and that obligation. in any case, i haven't done the prayers in, like, forever... i think i didn't exactly agree with aspects of the religion, especially those having to do with set roles of men and women... i think the religion was tied to my fantasies of having a japan-born wife, honestly. that, and this idea of japan as this summer country... i don't know, i guess some fantasies die hard. i guess some motivations to do "religion" and be spiritual, are often tied to some not so holy ulterior motives. i honestly think at times that the women are a kind of conscious draw... but in any case, i haven't done much at all in the religion. and i likely won't.

i've always felt i was closer to buddhism anyway. i don't believe in anything institutional, or ritualistic. at least i don't think i do. but i do believe in meditation. not that i've seen tangible results... but when i feel messed up, muddled, or confused in side (and usually with me, that's accompanied by this vicious seething hatred of myself) then i end up meditating. or, let me amend that... i usually speak to "god", even though more often than not, what that actually means is i'm talking to my grandma... and often plead with her for clarity... and then, maybe, if i'm still not able to drop off to sleep, then i meditate. meditation for me isn't about the endpoint, even though maybe secretly it is. it's more a process of repeated recontextualization. like, my mind gets drawn or trapped in a certain pattern, and then eventually, i see myself getting entrapped, and there is a moment where i am not so attached to my mental cogitations, and then i forget and get entrapped again. it just keeps repeating... the notion, though, is that i start to see my mental machinations, and hopefully, the fixations, the patterns, start to thin out. and then, there is... what?

*****

kids are maybe seen as an extension of ourselves... so maybe if they don't succeed, is that a failing on my part? should i take responsibility for it? at this point in the game, i kind of despair about it... or rather, i'm pretty fatalistic about it. i mean, i will intervene, but it is always in a weak kind of way. i no longer feel compelled to "fix" things... am i being selfish about things? lazy?

*****

i'm thinking about really growing my hair out, and tying it up in a man bun. like a samurai or something. i wish, at times, that i had the air of a samurai. a kind of cutting glare. but i'm too soft, really... i am too merciful. and lazy... but at least, maybe, i will look- different? the wife gave approval to the idea...

*****

i liked a couple of notions that i heard in billy collins's masterclass. this idea that the strength of a poem is measured in the silence that it creates... and this other idea, that a poet is essentially trying to get out of the trap that he has created...

5/16/2020

today was another kind of low energy day. i did a sort of rush job on a farewell present for someone who's retiring from our school, and then blitzed over to whitmore village to deliver it. after that, most of the day was kind of blah. i did go shopping with lynn, and got a few things i needed (although i forgot about something critical, another something for someone else who's leaving my school). my feelings are kind of ambivalent about contributing to that particular someone's farewell, but i do think that people need my help. my wife thinks i shouldn't, there once was a time when i felt really low, like quitting from my school, due to this sense of ostracism that i felt, and this from people who up until then, i felt had my back. i guess i kind of forget about it, i mean, i don't ever, not really, but i get over it, and i function. but anyway, my wife thinks i shouldn't do anything more. but i guess i am still a sucker, a "helper." so i guess i will end up helping anyway.

*****

i had a thought about how we keep imagining that the attentions of another will somehow remake us. like maybe if someone were interested in me, then i would suddenly be interestING. but hey, i've been around this bozo long enough to know that, well, i'm not particularly fun to be around. i abide in deep silences. i'm always secretly compelled by this hidden mission or something inside my head. i can't really relax and have fun. i always imagine, that maybe with the right someone, it would be different. but it's all a lie, it's all a fiction...

sometimes it seems different, if it appears that i could make someone happier. but really, how long would that last? in the end, the illusions and the "misunderstandings" surrounding each and every one of us fade, and we are left with- well, with ourselves.

so i was thinking about this with relation to my conception of the "switch" that i had a couple of days ago. and how attention or no attention, the fixation is- seemingly inescapable. well, as gi joe says, knowing is half the battle. maybe awareness of this ridiculous fixation is part of how i dislodge myself from it. that is the hope, anyway...

*****

i think last night, i was fixated on... well. it's hard to say. but let's just say it's strange how certain appetites can seem eternal, they can seem to make promises of time stretching forever, but then once they reach a certain point of satiety, then all of a sudden those promises seem banal and silly... and then you are left with a kind of disappointment. because all of a sudden, you no longer want anything particularly much. and then you are left wondering, is life just about wanting things? about wanting and not getting them, or wanting and getting them? is want what stretches us into time?

what if, deep down, i don't really want anything?

*****

currently, i'm off track as far as writing "stories" or "poems" or anything formal. when i write in the notebook i've started, it's just a mad rush to put my thoughts down onto paper. i would say it's not as restless as that "writing down the bones" author spoke of, but it is still a kind of compulsion. i feel better about that kind of writing, because it seems truer. it doesn't allow pauses. i hate pauses. pauses are the discontinuities that force you to question yourself. to hate yourself...

i was thinking that a lot of what i am is infected by this insinuation, this despising voice... it hurts. and so i hide. i depart and i hide. i just want to live, with no pain. feeling the plenitude of being, blind if necessary. i don't want to see, because seeing hurts. seeing is shame. that's the underlying truth. maybe everything i am or do is in response to this fundamental pain. and that's where this whole salvific notion comes from, that maybe in the attentions of the right eyes, i could be redeemed. transformed into something that is free from any reproach. something that is immune.

i suppose that that's one of the reasons i don't like interacting with people nowadays. i can suffer my own illusions when i'm working with myself, but sometimes when i interact with people, all of a sudden, my whole narrative, my whole edifice that i've built up in my head, it just tumbles to the ground, and i'm left feeling incredibly stupid and empty. and i hate that feeling. i hate that more than anything in the world...

i just want to feel normal... easy. that's really all i want.

5/14/2020

i was feeling kind of down today, unmotivated... a bit tired, i suppose. i'm not sure why. there are little things that kind of set me off, and make me tired. interacting with other teachers, sometimes, makes me feel like this. it is the endless nature of the work. i don't know. in some respects, i have lost motivation. i mean, i just think certain things are fake, and much ado about nothing. i suppose as a younger teacher, i may have gone with full gusto into such things, but not so much nowadays. nowadays, i often see teaching as work, and i also see the learning accomplished by students as work. i don't pretend so much that it's supposed to be pleasant. i mean, it is, or can be, but it only comes after overcoming certain barriers within oneself, and then getting the "wheel" turning... i don't know. maybe i'm just kind of dark nowadays.

*****

i had an image, or an inkling, yesterday.

i took lynn over to kailua beach. and while i was treading water with her, i had this idea... there was a part in my kappa story, about how i would go to swim practice at rec i, and how the coach there was really mean, he would threaten to throw a slipper at our heads if we put our hands down while we were treading water... something like that. not sure what it had to do with my brother, really, but it was a tangible experience to talk about... anyway, i kind of thought about having an imaginary teacher, who taught me how to tread water... at that point of panic when the ground would suddenly drop off, and you could no longer stand on the bottom of the sea... what would you do? and how i was whipping my hands around swiftly and flutter kicking to keep myself up... and tiring myself out. and someone, this voice, tells me to slow down, just pace myself. and i do that. and then, when i was tired, i would just lie on my back and float. and the sky would open up above me... the blue sky in all its majesty... and, come to think of it, i could return to the image of the bowl. how sometimes i could look up into the sky and imagine that i was plastered on the roof over a vastness, and imagine that things were actually upside-down, and that i was suspended over this tremendous distance...

but i guess i lose myself. it was only an image.

oh yes, i imagined that as a child i had the ability to speak to toys. and that i could talk to the broken toys that my older brother had abandoned. that smiley caterpillar thing. i used to always feel sad for broken toys. created for a purpose, to spread joy, or something like that, with painted smiles on their faces (they couldn't help but smile)... but then neglected, broken, thrown away. this caterpillar thing, its plastic body was cracked, and eventually all you could see was its rusted metal spine. and i felt so sad for it. there was no redeeming it, so it was destined to be destroyed and forgotten, as are so many things... also, i remember owlie, my "stuffed animal." it had water bells inside its large belly. one of its eyes was missing. the other, a round patch, had a closed eye. i wonder if the other eye was open? and who destroyed that eye? i remember by brother tore my donald duck stuffed animal, tore the neck off it, and it had to be stitched. i think i loved it all the more for its wound... but in the story, i would imagine all of the toys broken, that i inherited... something like that?

*****

i can't compete. i won't compete.

there is this issue of false dichotomies. when you are locked in a duality, it may seem that freedom lies in "flipping the switch." like, if you are turned on, then the way out of the trap is to turn off. but that's actually false freedom, and it only affirms the trap of the duality... it is not breaking out of that duality at all.

so my decision to efface myself (because i cannot win the attentions of the world around me, and because i cannot prove myself worthy of anything), that decision or quest to efface myself only affirms the trap of that duality... the duality of worth/worthlessness, or attention/no attention. it's always just a pretend maneuver. like, how the errant knight goes off into the wilderness, peregrination, to "disappear," but it is only to win the affections through his suffering... it isn't true "effacement." same with me. all of my "struggles" are only so that i can ultimately win a measure of worthiness. my walking away is not a walking away from the need for affirmation. it's just a delay tactic, to see if i can circle around and win more upon my return...

how is it possible to really break out of that trap? and not simply flip the switch? but completely break it?

*****

oh yes, i have to remember, tomorrow i have that agriculture thing meeting...

oh well, i don't have anything else really to talk about.

5/12/2020 (part 3)

yes, i'm writing in my blog a third time today. it's actually part of my next "rotation." here are all the things i do in each rotation (or try to do...): i do some ab ripper x exercises (like 3 of them, because that's all i can tolerate, and not lose my motivation). then, i draw a portrait of a picture i find online. after that, i do some basic boxing, thai kickboxing, and judo drills. i don't really know why. i guess it's just to get myself moving. before, i used to do taijiquan, but i've realized or seem to feel that a lot of the moves, while graceful, have no implicit meaning or appliclation, and hence, ring somewhat hollow for me. i guess as an aging man, that sort of thing should be appropriate for me. but i guess i no longer believe in it as a practical, practiceable martial art... so anyway, after the martial arts stuff, i play songs on the piano. they are songs that i used to play, when i was younger... no, let me amend that. only one of them is from when i was younger. it even has the notation that my old teacher, mr. sam adams, used to write in (or have me write in). poetic statements and imagery to help me to visualize or "feel" different parts of the song. anyway, that song is the "first arabesque" by debussy. i also play nocturne in e minor (?) by chopin. and i have been trying to play the song that my brother used to practice early in the morning, a song that sort of haunted me: "rustle of spring" by christian sinding. that latter has been proving to be difficult because it keeps switching between odd intervaled notes (i don't know the technical way of saying this): like, in parts, i will have to play 7ths, or 6ths, or 5ths, etc., switching back and forth. anyways, those are the three songs that i play regularly. i also have been trying to play "dancing in the moonlight" by king harvest, although it's gotten to be somewhat boring due to the simplistic repetition of it. i suppose i could make it more challenging by attempting to sing along with the piano playing... but i don't know. anyway, after playing the piano, i'm supposed to go running with the dog. however, i sort of stopped doing this, partly out of laziness, but also partly because i'm starting to notice that our dog musubi is slowing down, and that i shouldn't push him to run at my pace any more... by the way, i am super out of shape. just a quick sprint up the hill of our street gets me winded. or, to be more precise, i don't usually feel it going up the hill, but immediately after, turning the bend and going downhill, i think i start to feel it. it's as though my heart and breath have geared up for the challenge of going uphill, and then the sudden disappointment of that downhill segment makes me feel "the chain rattling" within me. i also notice that i have a kind of wheeze on my exhale. i think that if i got more in shape, then that wheeze would diminish, or even perhaps vanish. at points in time when i was more in shape, like when my son and i were doing judo, then i notice that a lot of that wheeze would go away...

anyway, after running, then i read a chapter in some book. for a long while, i was reading "a tale of two cities" by charles dickens, but i recently finished it. so now, i've picked up margaret atwood's "the handmaid's tale," and am trying to proceed through that. after all, i did listen to her masterclass, and found her to be an excellent teacher. so far, i've read two chapters in the book, and i love her writing. she is very plainsong (as she puts it), but direct. some of the images (which all are purposeful, and striking) are extremely evocative and deeply meaningful to the plot. her prose, in fact, borders on poetry to me...

so after reading a chapter, then i do one more big physical thing, which is p90x. i've been doing segments of different workouts, like the shoulders and arms workout, or the chest and back workout, or the legs and back workout. nothing big. just a little something to keep me going. like today, i did 6 exercises out of the legs and back workout: 4 leg exercises, and 2 pull up (back) exercises... after the p90x workout, then i listen to a "class" in masterclass. right now, i've been listening to billy collins, a poet. i appreciate his take on poetry, although i do feel he's a little- how should i put it- formulaic? but then again, how would one teach poetry, without some sense of structure? some set perspective? i guess without eyes, you can't really teach...

so then, after the masterclass thing, then i write in my blog (which i'm doing right now). then, after that, i try to write in my story. for a while, i used the nanowrimo website, and would just time myself for about 30 minutes (i'm so wimpy right now), and then enter the new word count. but then i decided to write in a notebook instead (following both margaret atwood and billy collins- and also neil gaiman, btw). and it's not really possible (or easy) to get a word count from that. so instead, for the past two cycles, i've just made it my task to write a page or two (now, two) in the notebook... still, kind of disappointing crap, but one must hope that by continuing the process, things will get better.

after the writing, then i practice japanese. that's gotten to be a real bear. i'm working on the level 3 (probably grade 3) kanji, and that set has about 200 kanji. so instead of trudging through all 200 and getting most of it wrong, i've just gone through this process of reviewing the ones i missed before (writing them 3 times each), and then writing about 30 that i don't know each time i cycle through. my hope is that i will gradually pick up more and more of that set of kanji. in fact, on this most recent pass, i was able to write 8 of the kanji based on their meaning. i know, whoop dee doo, but it's a start. (i'm already proficient in the first 240 kanji!).

after japanese, then i do something in khan academy. i'm going through the html and css class. i really like the teacher, pamela, who is fun and easy going. i just listen to one "lesson," and then do one related project.

after that, i read 5 chapters in a couple of manga: one piece, and berserk. i'm really falling in love with berserk, despite its gory reputation. i appreciate the pacing of the story. and the main character, i find to be extremely sympathetic.

recently, i've tagged on meditation to my routine. so i meditate for 30 minutes.

and then, it's back to the start again!

*****

in between, i kind of go and check out the plants.

and that's it. that's been my routine of late, in between the daily work tasks of trying to contact and work with my students... or attend online meetings...

*****

i'm hoping to break through the planks of reason, as emily dickenson put it. i want to reach a place of plenitude. you know when you have a vivid dream? that's how i want to feel when i write. it's so clear and believable to me, even if it is mad, that it is a simple matter to write everything down. i imagine i would feel compelled to write everything down. not this frustrating trickle, this drip drip drip of putting words to paper... empty of inspiration, vapid words.

oh well, i feel that that's enough for today!

5/12/2020 (continued)

so my 9:30 was a no show. i used the extra time to check out my aquaponics plants. for some reason, although initial growth was strong, there has been a drop off. now, i notice certain leaves of certain plants are paling. i know that some of it may be because there hasn't been a regular ebb and flow cycle with the plants, due to clogs in the stand pipes, etc. i try to monitor that as much as i can. but i guess some other things could be low nitrate, for some reason. i also am aware of other nutrients that may not be present in my aquaponics systems. i was thinking, for example, of getting phosphorus stones, or of supplementing with fertilizer. i know that one aquaponics lady recommended supplementing with chelated iron, which i never did. but i think i will try to write something about all possible deficiencies, as well as all possible pests, from my perspective. i have already had to contend with powdered mildew on my cucumber plant. i used neem oil, sprayed it on all the places where i could see the telltale white spotting, and i seem to have conquered, or at least diminished, the problem.

the hydroponics plants seem to be doing well. i'm considering starting a second batch, but i have to wait until the plants (which i've grown from seed) are ready. i need to wait until the true leaves (not cotelydons) have formed... i'm considering trying that nutrient film technique eventually, and maybe using the remnants of the rain gutters as the water transport canals. but that will be later on.

i still have to fix both of the rain catchment systems. one definitely can capture water when it rains, but it has a leak. i'm still not sure if the leak comes from where i put the little faucet in, or if there is a crack in the bottom of the barrel (at one point, i did drop the barrel pretty hard on the ground, and it looked as though there were spiderweb cracks on the bottom). i will use some kind of sealant to prevent any leakage. the other one must be sealed too, but for some reason, nothing is ending up in that barrel. i don't know if there is a blockage further up in the rain gutters; i suspect not, since at one point, i did hear water dripping into the elbow that i set up. but for some reason, no water is actually ending up in the barrel. maybe i set up the elbow attachment to the barrel such that the water is not ending up into the barrel's hole, and is instead, going somewhere else... but i'm not sure.

*****

writing has become something of a problem. i don't know what i'm trying to say. and i guess what i end up writing sounds so contrived that it really loses me as a writer. i simply don't want to write it. and the further in i get, the more artificial it seems. i guess i could just stick to writing feelings out. the frustrations i have. but that hardly makes a story. it is more a situation, dialogue, action, that make a story. and not a lot of shit happens in my actual life. that's why i make stuff up. i try to make stuff up to represent or augment or highlight the situation... but a lot of it is fake, and the fakeness, the contrivances, show.

but part of the problem with my brother's story is that my feelings are at once too strong, and too ambiguous. how is it possible to communicate ambiguity without falling into the trap of saying nothing at all? and how is it possible to write about what cannot be written about? how to avoid sounding whiny or preachy? it all frankly wears me out.

oh well, better get back to the grind. surprisingly, it's almost 11, and i have another meeting to attend...

5/12/2020

it's morning, on a tuesday. i will be starting my sessions with students soon. normally, by my cycled routine, i usually write in this blog sometime in the evening. but for some reason, the way things turned out, i'm writing this now, in the morning.

not much to report. i think i'm doing better with my drawing. it used to be difficult to draw faces, still is, frankly, but i think i'm getting better at it. in particular, a difficulty is, for some reason, making eyes symmetrical. well, not exactly symmetrical, because when you really look at and draw eyes, you find that they are anything but... but what i mean is, drawing eyes so that they "look right," and look true. when i do a face, i usually go on something of a journey. i notice in the last portrait that i drew, i started somewhere in the neck, then went up to the lips, then one side of the nose (usually the shadowed side, because it provides me more shapes to work with), and then one eye (usually the right eye, right from my perspective, not the right eye of the actual face)... and then i started to begin the right forehead... it's only then that i begin to attack the left side of the face, sometimes from the bottom up, sometimes from the top down... the left eye is a test. if i can pull off making it "look right", then the entire face is imbued with a sense of realism...

i guess i'm always doing what they call a contour drawing, that is, drawing edges. but if you really think about it, there are edges to almost everything. sure, there are edges that are soft, and those are difficult to capture via a line. but you can basically draw the shape of, say, a shade of color. that's what i do. it's how i "capture territory" when i draw... eventually, i would like to explore color, but that seems it's own empire. right now, i just do a passing job at capturing what they say are values. that is, i put more weight or darkness on certain things, and less on others. the most fun is keeping things white. if there is so much brightness as to make things indistinguishable, then the best thing to do is to leave it alone. sometimes, there's a magic in this. for example, in the most recent portrait i did, there was a reflection on the iris, so much so that it would not have been true to the image to draw the edge of the iris. so instead, i left the edge out, and almost made the reflection an extension of the white cornea. but the overall impression was that that blank space that i had put in was a reflection of light. i guess the eye understands and translates the image appropriately- if you are true to what you draw.

i wish writing were similar...

oh well, it's about 9:25, so i'm going to set up my meeting with my first student... be back later (maybe).

5/9/2020

today is saturday.

en route to target, shopping with my wife... she made a comment, or rather, passed on a comment. she told me that my mom thought i was too proud. and then that led me to this rambling discourse about the anger that i held inside of me... anger, primarily at my brother. but also, anger at my mother for repeatedly entreating me to "kowtow" to him, in order to bring the family together... anger at my family for concealing the crime, the disgrace, and promoting a hypocrisy, or lie, that allows one (my brother) to live admired and respected, while my sister went to jail... the reversal of it all. how i hate it. even now, it makes my blood boil...

and it's killing me.

as in the car with my wife, i admitted, i don't know how to forgive. i don't think i want to. part of it's the fact that no one knows about it. everybody accepts the status quo. and i am supposed to keep the secret too (although i risk it every time i write in this blog)... the concealment is part of what causes that anger to seethe within me... it only grows and grows. it consumes everything. it fills me with tension, with restlessness...

i think, at times, that that is what keeps me from truth. but to get there is difficult. it means a kind of surrender that i'm not willing or able to commit to. i mean, i feel as though i've surrendered, and been humble all my life. and it leads only to more resentment and abuse...

of course, if i were thinking zen, then i would admit that i hadn't gone far enough. that i hadn't experienced the radical humbling that completely effaced and dissolved the self... but i am afraid. there, i feel, is the way of death. and it is through the gauntlet of more and more fracturing, more and more destruction of who i am. the monuments i have built to my self...

*****

i still imagine...

when all the doors are closed... what purpose is there to live?

i am hoping to push things, to stir things, to settle things... and thence, perhaps, to see the depths? the clear depths? the waters so clear you can see fathoms deep to the ancient buried drowned secrets? and the wonderment of who you are, of who i am?

those places, in dreams, that allow me to access the underwater worlds. i must visit and explore. and find out who i am...

*****

billy collins spoke about his writing process. like margaret atwood, he foregoes typing directly into the computer. i now understand why. while it may seem productive to be able to type fast, and delete all errors... like you are going directly to the final product... well, in doing that, you erase the entire process of writing. the mess of it.

yesterday, during the nanowrimo timed writing, i neglected to continue the "kappa noodle" story, which, to be honest, is snarling in on itself, and becoming unwieldy and complex... and basically just wrote a 30 minute bitch fest. i was complaining about a lot of things... also writing a lot of unsavory fantasies... it was really a bunch of trash. i am not sure what i intended with it. but it probably felt like the better thing to do than to try to confine my thoughts to a dead, inspire-less amalgamation of words...

believe in process, above all else.

*****

5/8/2020

it is friday of yet another week. the weeks blur after a while. i have my routine and my plants to anchor me. without them, i think time would disappear. or be one endless mess, a mixture of watercolor days, insubstantial, boundless... edgeless.

i don't know what i seek. i don't know how to seek it.

i appreciate what billy collins said today, about "holding the pen loosely." i had similar sentiments, when i spoke about zen in my religion class. it's not about the question, it's about how you hold the question. it's about enduring through a question... it's never about killing the question, for the question is life.

i don't know if i really recall or remember it in my bones, that feeling. if anything, i'm an impatient killer. i want to arrive. i want to feel a sense of accomplishment. and yet, i don't have the endurance to go beyond beginnings. because the middle country, the middle ages, it's a dark and terrible place. i get lost. and i turn against myself, again and again. and there's no progression through, it is just a slogging through shit and mud and stink. and that's why i cut time, and invent new beginnings, over and over again. it's my quantum leap play, where i pretend ignorance of my life and circumstances, and approach it "objectively." it's because i can't deal with life on its own terms, in its own immanence. there must be a transcendent vision, a bird's eye view, to untwist, and unlose myself. and to invent and believe in cleanliness and purity again...

is that the error? that i can't push through?

*****

i don't deal with my son, or my daughter, for that matter. i'm incredibly selfish. my days reduce to checking my plants, maybe fiddling with things, working with students, eating, and working on my own routines. i don't interact much with my kids or my wife. i just do. and i wonder why i feel guilty. i love my kids, i love my wife, but i feel compelled. why? i feel compelled to do something, to be something, to always always be striving. why? is the sense of progression necessary? why is it necessary? why is there never the contentment to just be here? to just enjoy, and let flow? why must i always feel dissatisfied, empty, and move on?

again... why is there this restlessness inside of me...

*****

i wish i were still working at waikiki joy hotel, and had a girlfriend, maybe the cute short haired one, japanese, who worked at the cafe... singing karaoke. it would have been nice. but there weren't tides for me to stay there. it was always a restlessness. and a properness. walls set up and maintained. sometimes, many times, i wish i didn't have eyes to see, or to judge, and just, for once, enjoyed the world. without need to go anywhere else, or become anything else. just an endless enjoyment.

*****

and yet... all of this is false. i have so much already. why can't i appreciate it? why can't we both see and live our lives? we need some distance to appreciate what we already have? we need to lose things to love them? why is that?

*****

striving, stretching, for what? for whom?

*****

i think i need to meditate more... i feel... stuck. or something. and there's a corner of my vision occupied by something monstrous and haunting and guilt-inducing. a calamity about to occur. there are no happy resting places... there is only- a falsity? a false peace.

i often idealize the past, but i know it was consumed with that haunting... consumption. like something was eating the past, restless to eat me from the inside out. and so i kept moving. kept trying to discover a clean, untouched place to live in peace.

i think things are much better here and now. i don't feel that consumption as much. i don't wander the night, filled with guilt. but sometimes i wonder whether it is because i have numbed myself to life. and maybe in burying the demon mouths, i have also buried my heart...

*****

memories of kihyon kim, eating sour soup, at some restaurant, day in and day out. the falsity of that life. how i want to forget all of those false and empty moments. my life is so full of places that had no meaning. my memory is overflowing with the blind moments. the deadend progressions. the hopes that ended up nowhere.

i always have good beginnings of stories. but they never got anywhere. i always quit in the middle.

5/6/2020

sorry, skipped a day yesterday, because, well, i was tired.

i have included in my routines (don't really know why) the "reading" of manga. i read about 5 chapters of a couple of manga a day. i read "one piece" (don't really know why, except that it is one of the longest running manga in history, and it was consistently rated high in shonen jump, even higher than one of my favorites, naruto). i also read "berserk," which i find is a great story, filled with violence and darkness... i appreciate the pacing with which the author delivers his epic. i'm not sure if i could have that sort of patience, or if i have a vast space within me to imagine such a world from nothing...

***

i went to the food pantry today, which was at my school. i helped to pass out our little food offering, which was composed of a cabbage and onions, as well as some canned goods. it felt good to hand these things out to people. i wish it could've been something better. i worried that people would be disappointed at the offerings. but hey, food is food.

***

i know i was angry in my last postings. my brother is always a touchy subject with me. and as i've said countless times before, distance and absence only makes things worse for me. i start losing the capacity to appreciate things, to see things in perspective. i only see the negative contours. the shadows start swallowing up the form, until all i see is a blackness, and all i hear is mocking laughter.

i always think, in the end, that he is laughing at me. and by extension, god.

that's why i don't believe in it, that whole paternalistic, republican, white christian god. because it's fake. it's partial. it isn't the true god. the god i know is the one that hung out with the broken people. it's the god that was always broken himself, because only in knowing brokenness himself can he reach the broken. i hate perfection, because it is so false. nothing in the experience of man is ever, ever perfect. and to put that before us, that stinking perfection, is merely to push us away, to make us wallow in our self-disgust... i hate people who pretend that perfection. no, let me amend that, because i think it is natural to seek perfection, and perhaps it is noble and human to do so. but to pretend the arrival of it, or even the arrival of greater degrees of it, and to use that to judge the world. that is what i hate. watch fox news, and you'll see it in spades.

***

i hear the choppers, chopping the air. i feel a mild wind on my back, and wonder if it is from the ginsu knives of those helicopters.

the clouds won't give up their rain. i keep waiting for it, to fill my one constructed rain catchment system barrel. i keep waiting for it, to drown out and wash the world. but nowadays, the rain doesn't come. we just get this blaring sunshine that wilts some of my infant plants... it's just too brash and bright...

***

i like billy collins, although i feel his poems are a bit too- what's the word, clear? and too- folksy? i guess i prefer my poems to be either lyrical or obscure. to play with language to the point of breaking it. of course, i don't like my poems to be entirely obscure or mysterious. i found t.s. eliot to be completely unreadable. too many external references, too many foreign verses. i didn't get it. i mean, there were fragments of it that seemed sympathetic, what i mean by that is that i could resonate with them, like the hollow men part. but most of it? blech.

i think the danger of talking about poetry is that it can turn poetry into some sort of intellectual gimmick. and it isn't, it shouldn't be. it shouldn't just be a process. or rather, it shouldn't be a process that is coopted by the mechanistic rational mind. it should be a fracturing, or an exploration of the edge of a break... an incautious exploration that cuts the soles of your feet, and leaves you bleeding footprints- incautiously- over the landscape. it should be a- not knowing where you are going- that somehow ends up where you are supposed to be- but never giving the reader the expectant view of an arrival... i don't know.

poetry should shock. it should be the knife that impales your back. or the ice cold water that you fall into, when your weight becomes too much for the paper thin sheet...

***

sorry, that's all i have to say for today.

5/4/2020

today was a strange waste. i did a couple of calls with my students, but for the most part, i was running errands. i did some banking, and then wandered the stores looking for random items. the pearl city walmart was a waste of time, and filled me with a kind of despair. all these people, wandering around, looking for stuff. me included. desparate. disparate. whatever.

i felt tired when i returned home, but i had to go pick up my wife from town, and then take her shopping. i was happy to see her, and all, but i was still tired...

*****

sleep comes like a drug in god's country...

*****

there is sometimes an anxiety, like something is wrong. and it disturbs me, it ripples me, it prevents me from being comfortable within myself, and able to express the true art, the smooth and the calm. but then again, is art created by disturbance? is disturbance the motivation?

*****

i heard from my wife that my mother sees my brother every week. that's more than i see her. i don't know. maybe he and his wife are trying to get in the good graces of my parents, so that it won't seem strange when they claim the entirety of the inheritance. i'm sorry, but that's how i view them nowadays. strangers. greedy, manipulative, conniving strangers. i mean, they judge my parents, they wouldn't even allow them in their own home when they took the trouble to drive over to drop off christmas presents... but on their own terms, and in their own clutches, they are friendly, friendly, friendly. it's all bullshit. all selfishness and pretense. that's what i think in this moment, in this moment when i am stuck in my pride and judgment, locked in this perspective of rage and hate...

yes, i hate them. i'll admit it. and while i'm at it, i'll say i hate everyone who was ever duped by them (which includes myself). how the world loves a trump. it's the same with them. they can see the injustice of them bald in the face, and yet, oh, how convincing his drama and woes are! how everyone sympathizes with the noisemakers!

*****

i will bear my pain in silence. and no one will know i ever existed.

and when i speak, in my bleating way, muffled by my own clenched jaws, no one will listen.

no one ever does.

them that's gots, will get. them that don't, will lose.

i will always be the loser.

and i will glower with hatred for that, even as i can never change the law of the universe. the fact that the firstborn son is always beloved by heaven.

fuck that.

fuck him.

*****

in the darkness, in the darkness... i will always serve humbly.

my path is one of continual and continuous effacement.

because the alternative is rage.

and i am capable of infinite rage.

i am capable of black hatred and fire, and the gnashing of teeth, the smashing of objects... i can be rage and hate unto destruction.

they can laugh at me, as i shout, but i am capable of killing- if only that law that was set upon me, the constraint of the second born, was not always in effect.

i am reluctant to befriend anyone, to be grouped, because to do so betrays the pure loneliness, the lonely purity. i know what it is like to be an outsider, and to sympathize and understand the hypocrisy they judge the world with, i need to always be an outsider.

so i don't care about you. i don't care if you see me or not. i know what the right path is. i know what it is to serve. and i will serve in continually increasing obscurity.

i will disappear right before your eyes.

*****

i don't know how to release this anger. this hatred.

*****

i like growing things. i like checking them, caring for them, making little changes to support them. i suppose i inherited something of my grandfather in this. i like to think there is something positive in this instinct to grow. i hope there is. maybe it makes me seem kinder than i am.

because in truth, i don't- i'm a vegetable heart. something unfeeling.

i wish i could, but maybe i've numbed myself to the hatred so much that i can't really feel love either.

i would die for someone. because it would pretend at love. i can't feel it, but i could give myself up in its name. and maybe then people would suspect that i was a human being for once.

dream

just a brief dream. or rather, the memories that returned to me were brief. i remember some sort of call for someone named ayumi, and i kept wandering trying to find this person. like in the williams dream, i was unfamiliar with anyone, i didn't know who anyone was. i didn't know the deal, what the whole story was. i passed by a glass walled room, the office of grant. and i saw rows upon rows of materials waiting to be deployed, labeled in grant's distinctive handwriting... i seem to recall some sort of sense of disappointment that he felt with regards to me... as though i didn't "get with the program."

5/3/2020

i finished margaret atwood's masterclass. i find her extremely insightful and funny. i hope i have that sort of frank sense of humor (some would say dark, but i call it realistic) when i grow up. for that matter, i'm already grown up; i hope i can cultivate something like that at my advanced age... that sort of humor is not for everyone. it's not gentle. and it assumes a certain level of intelligence, i suppose...

now, i'm listening to billy collins, a poet. i like his take on how poetry is the history of the heart, and how it is basically passionate about (diminishing) time, and how most poetry is a call to action, to "live a little." i wish i could live a little. i feel, after my earlier dream, that i have always been constrained by things. constrained by this need to prepare for something. but never quite to enact, or spend. why?

i've always wondered at that. where did that come from? the moralistic sensibilities? was it something innate in me, from the start? or did it come from somewhere? i suppose we wrestled with the idea of an implicit (dis)order in religion class. that's why i wrote about the image of crystallization, and how one could initiate a crystal "wave" as it were by either adding a seed crystal (i.e., introduction of an order from the outside), or by scratching the surface of the container (i.e., the "deed" or original act of creation). but these debates led me no closer to extricating myself from my prison.

i often wonder what things would have been like had i been- i don't know- more open and sharing of myself. but i'm not sure what that would have meant. i mean, i do struggle to share in my own way. most of what i do is FOR something or someone. it is all preparation for some invisible guest. like putting on some tremendous production or something. so in that sense, i suppose i am trying to be generous of myself. in fact, i often feel that i am compelled to be so... but i suppose that's not what it really means. i suppose that's not quite way the advice (for it always was advice) was intended. i think people wanted to see the "real" me. whatever that meant. but all i could give was the prepared me. the produced me. the edited for television me.

deep down, there is incredible anger, and incredible lust. i wrestle with it all the time. but i can never bring it to the surface. it is so buried within me. so there is this inevitable lag, always this inevitable lag. there are times when people slight me, and i don't feel it. at least, not in the moment. maybe that's good, or i would be reacting to everything; and maybe it makes it seem like i'm super mellow, that nothing can get to me. but it's not really that; it's more that it takes a while for the lash to be felt, and by the time i'm ready to scream out, the moment has passed. it's sort of like a punchline... and i get the joke way too late.

and there have been a few moments when- well, i guess, i was being seduced... but i didn't feel it. not until it was too late. and now, i have all of these regrets, and nothing to do with it. i can't process any of it. it is like energy that curls in on itself in frustration. released too late... i don't know how to peel away the layers of skin between myself and the world. don't know if it would be wise to, anyway.

is meditation, poetry, etc. a form of control? or release? would they still say that if they knew what monsters would be let loose upon the world?

... as it is, maybe i already am a monster. not the wild sort. but the unfeeling, insensitive sort. i used to pride myself upon being sort of empathic. but now, i can hardly feel sympathy for most people. teachers, for example. i am one. and there are teachers leaving my school, but i could care less. or i couldn't care less. all i think about are the many moments when a certain teacher betrayed her oaths... put her own interests in front of those of her students. and i think that i'm not going to miss her very much. and i'm being truthful too. maybe it was because i felt betrayed by some of her antics... by some of her partiality. and if there's one thing i realize, i can't forgive people. there's a switch that is hard to reach, but perhaps because of that, once it flips, i can't flip it back...

*****

i suppose dreams are compelling because it feels like it is a truth, a felt truth. nowadays, i realize, i don't feel much of anything any more. i say i care about things, like my children, or my sister, but when push comes to shove, i don't do enough for them. i don't go out of my way for them. why is that? it's kind of a weariness, i suppose. it's also a kind of fatalism.

i'm also not gentle. i don't say things in cheery or encouraging ways. why am i so cruel? i just talked to my daughter about college, and made her cry. why did i do that? why do i do that? why do i feel that is necessary? is it really the truth, or is it that i feel she needs to be scared? does it even work, anyway? i don't know. i did mean what i said, about attention. you need to devote your full attention to each thing you do. (even i don't live up to that standard) maybe i'm being a hypocrit, because i don't do that. i don't talk to my son, or my daughter, or my wife, in a meaningful way. only to scold, i suppose. and i get into this mode where i- where it seems as though i am adrift in some current, and i can't swim against it. we are being pulled in different directions, being pulled apart. and maybe i'll claim i love them, when it's all too late- when i didn't do something about things when i could.

i don't know. i MEAN well. i always MEAN well. but maybe it's like all my teachers told me. i need to share of myself. if only i could figure out how. if only i could get myself to come out from beneath all of these cogitations and moralistic imprisonment. but as a child, i never got to play. i never relaxed enough to play, and be happy...

dream

i'm off cycle here, but i thought i would record a vivid dream i had last night. vivid dreams are extremely rare for me nowadays.

in this dream, i was back at williams, only it was a very different place. none of the landmarks were recognizable to me. at one point, i was getting ready to go to my first class, which, i believe, was a japanese language class held in "sawyer" (upon reflection, sawyer was the library, i believe). i headed in the general direction of where i believed that class was, but i got hopelessly lost. instead, i ended up in some sort of mall/class area. apparently, they had modernized to the point where a lot of classes were held in shops. for example, a store selling brass instruments also served as the music class. in fact, i seemed to have ended up in the music department or something. i remember thinking/feeling this sense that i had long lost, of this drive for perfection in everything... i felt it when i looked at the clear glass walls of this "music class" with some latin title... the sense of auditions... i don't know. in any case, i shyly asked someone, whom i assumed was some sort of professor- this sort of chubby mayan looking fellow- how i could get to the class i was looking for. he made some sort of comment that wasn't particularly helpful, and his boyfriend? and his wife? not sure, started piggybacking on him jovially...

in any case, i never made it to the class. i was feeling mildly panicked and tired by that point. it wasn't a great start for my year. i was already thinking of some sort of excuse, that i had only arrived on campus the day before, and wasn't particularly adjusted yet. i was thinking that i should have used my time before to scope out and search for my classes so that this calamity wouldn't have occurred...

i was walking back to my dorm. there was this open area in a park, kind of fenced off, and i noticed all these young college students (of which, supposedly, i was one) breaking out their cameras and taking pictures of something. when i looked, i noticed that this squirrel happened to be putting on some sort of show. it was munching on some nuts, and for some reason, looking mildly human or something. i'm not sure. but he was a sensation. i realized then that that entire fenced off area of the park was sort of an artistic installment or something, with shows occurring throughout the day. i even saw a buddhist monk- or a white guy dressed in monk's robes- pretending to act like the squirrel, aping after nuts or something... meanwhile, i was walking on an icy sidewalk to get back home, and periodically slipping whenever i stepped on a sloped part of the sidewalk. i was consciously thinking about the angle to place my foot to prevent myself from sliding, but it kept happening anyway.

i remember feeling acutely alone- different. it was, perhaps, the same feeling i had when i actually attended. always alone. why could i never enjoy life as those other students did? why did i not have friends (okay, i did have friends, but it wasn't easy for me to find or make them). i felt- sad.

i guess there was one other portion of the dream. i went to some sort of house. there were stairs leading up to rooms. only, there was some sort of strange arrangement. when i went up one set of stairs they ended in a wall? or a closed ceiling? then, when i went up the left set (for the stairs were paired), there was this strange arrangement, where when the door opened, a cloth? ceiling also lifted, but if the door closed, then the ceiling dropped. fortunately, i figured out that arrangement and walked into a darkened room. there was this female professor, black, with closely trimmed hair, almost bald. i mentioned something to her (i don't quite remember) and she brought out what looked like a box of macadamia nuts. when she opened the lid, she produced a drawing from willow, as well as one from me. apparently, willow had gifted her with this when she came earlier... i'm not sure. and she wanted to express her appreciation at this. i had this feeling, i don't know why, that the gift did not guarantee anything, and that this professor was just being gracious...

in any case, i also remember this moment where i saw all these people walking out of a building, this obviously gay man, bald, with a mustache, and bared arms, and other people. and i remember having this feeling of regret, that i could never have relationships with any of them, because- even here, in a dream, as a purported college student- i was married, and faithful. it's funny how there was that juxtaposition, that i was a young college student, but elements of my present, most notably my marriage and my daughter, still chained me to the future...

anyway, that's most of what i remember. it's impossible to capture all the details, because there were so many, but those were some of the most significant elements. no matter what, vivid dreams make me feel vast... like there are worlds within me. i don't really care what they mean or anything.