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.
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