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?
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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?
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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...
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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...
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