7/29/2020

today was the first mandatory day for teachers to report to campus. i went to my room and "attended" the faculty meeting online via google meet... it was somewhat strange. i don't know if you all are aware, but we are headed into uncharted waters this year. due to covid-19, some parents are reluctant to send their kids to school (face to face learning), and even for those that do opt to have their kids come, we need to split them into two groups to allow for enough social distancing space (kids separated 6 feet apart means we can only fit a limited number per room). as teachers, we must accommodate ALL students, whether they are at home or at the school. that's the challenge facing us. and we must do that while maintaining, to the best of our ability, some general safety precautions: mandatory mask wearing, maintaining social distancing, frequent hand washing and hand sanitizing, frequent sanitizing of areas, no shared equipment, etc.

in addition to this, due to teacher and parent concerns, it may very well be that the start of our school year (or rather, the start of the students' school year) will be delayed by about 14 days (to august 17). we're all not entirely sure. although the general sentiment is that the board of education will make the decision at their meeting tomorrow to delay the start of the year, they may cave in to pressures from the general business community and mandate that we start on the "regular" start date of august 4. some of the comments of the governor tend to point in that direction, actually (august 4)...

what's my opinion? well, i will do whatever is asked of me. however, i honestly feel that the reopening of schools and the reopening of the economy should be contingent upon the state of the pandemic within any given locality. if the infection rate is trending upwards, then it's probably not a good idea to open up the schools. i frankly think that the big mistake america made was that they set up arbitrary timelines to start things up, even if there wasn't adequate monitoring and control of the virus on the ground. that led to horrendous spikes in florida and texas, for example... and now, we're in the state we're in.

the thing about hawaii is that, although it appears to have very low infection rates (today was our highest, breaking the 3 digit mark with 109) compared to other states, we are trending upwards. remember that we are an island state, and that we SHOULD have lower rates if we have things under control. so to have strongly increasing trends in the infection rate over the past week or so is disturbing... the other thing is that, while there is a big push to reopen our economy, what that means essentially is opening our state to travel from the mainland. and, frankly speaking, the mainland is a shitshow. california, which sends the most travelers of any state, is one of the states which is out of control. so if we reopen to tourists, we are basically reopening to widespread infection.

it's stupid, to me, really. i mean, i know that our economy is suffering. but we don't lead the issue or determine the timeline right now. the virus does. or, should i say, our management of the virus does. i used a metaphor to describe our plight. basically, reopening is the ice cream, and our management of the virus is the spinach. we get no ice cream until we finish our spinach...

*****

i guess i've been having trouble maintaining my routines. this always happens. the year intrudes, with all of its stress and impending priorities, and it ripples any and all of my plans. essentially, i'm a simple person. i can generally be happy by repeating things. not exactly repeating things, but "turning" things, as in a compost pile. getting air, burning and decomposing myself to become richer and richer. when more immediate priorities impinge upon my simple routines, then i neglect myself in my need to be "appropriate" to my circumstances... i forget myself, and a part of myself dies. maybe even putrefies.

i'm going to try not to lose my focus on my routines, despite what happens around me. (we'll see how long that lasts).

...speak of the devil... i'm being contacted to assist with gearing for some art project. talk to you all later!

7/26/2020

the big news was the hurricane. hurricane donald. no, i'm sorry, douglas. i was thinking of the other disaster afflicting our country, i suppose.

anyway, hurricane douglas has kept us all here in a loop. in the morning, the storm was tracking towards the big island. and then, later on, it sort of veered to the north, avoiding direct hits to both hawaii (big island) and maui (it did give them some surf, and a little rain, but nothing much else). by 11, they were worrying that it was on a course to hit my island, oahu, pretty directly. even if it veered a bit to the north, there was concern that it could do a lot of damage...

so, throughout this gray and humid day, we kind of did things to prepare. kind of. like i took in all the loose things in the yard and put them in the garage. and we cleaned up. my wife was worried that if there were a blackout, we needed the floors cleared so that we wouldn't be tripping over everything. yeah, right. there wasn't actually much to clean up off the floors or anything... but it was as good an excuse as any to clean the house.

later in the day, it became apparent that hurricane douglas was NOT going to make landfall on our island. it instead had taken a more northern route. as of right now (9:00 pm), we haven't seen ANYTHING here at my house: no significant rain, no winds. i believe that they're still tracking the storm to see if it goes anywhere near kauai (the most northwesterly islands in the chain), but my impression is that it's not expected to make landfall. could be wrong (there will be another update at around midnight).

but all in all, it was kind of a wasted day. all i did was follow my routines, in a kind of lazy way. i read some manga... played a bit of minecraft... worked out a little... drew another picture... played some piano... read some chapters in handmaid's tale and ottessa moshfegh... and now, i'm working on my writing...

regarding ottessa moshfegh... the stories are... disturbing. i suppose i'm a very naive and simple person. i think the stories i write are generally... i don't know... symmetrical? overly structured? i guess i dislike that about myself, but it's kind of inescapable. i don't like leaving things unfulfilled, i suppose. i don't like things that don't fit (even if i don't seem to fit). maybe i like a kind of progressive view of things, where, despite problems, we sort of evolve. come to an understanding... moshfegh's stories are NOT like this. they are stories of people who are trapped in the beginning, and remain trapped in the end. most of the time, they further obfuscate their situation by their choices (or lack of choices). i don't know what to think of them, really. maybe it is endearing, in the same way that i once found thom yorke's lyrics endearing... the plaintive cry of the hopeless and trapped, somehow is the only sound of liberation left... and all that. but in this case, i guess it's kind of a bridge too far. don't get me wrong. i think the writing is brilliant. fast paced, natural prose which disguises some ugliness and shockers. i just think... i don't know, the outlook... doesn't agree with me.

*****

i think my goal is to become like compost. like become this incredibly rich mixture... of course, i remain my own private pile. i consider myself a danger to myself and others... i often think that if i were to let my guard down, i'd react with the world irreversibly. my eyes are like cyclop's (from the xmen). if i open them, i could see right through you. and maybe you could see right through me. and all we would see would be this resonant emptiness... and maybe what would happen is we would fall into each other, inescapably...

yeah, right. haha.

my walls, my shields... are up too high. they prevent my nutrient rich mixture from getting adulterated... so there.

7/25/2020

ah yes, i just remembered, i had a thought about writing a story about drawing. how, when i draw something with attention to its details, it tends to make it bigger, so that by the time i complete the overall drawing, certain parts are out of proportion. i find i can usually draw faces pretty well. i wanted to talk about eyes, about how they used to be difficult, until i stopped thinking of them as eyes, and instead drew each individual shape: a triangle for one part of the cornea, a strange dark shape for the unreflected part of the iris, etc... the funny thing was that although the eyes did look right, i could never draw them as though they were looking AT you. there was just something that made them change the angle of their line of sight oh so slightly... i also had an idea of tying in the idea of the imperfect circle of zen... something about how the ends never match up.

*****

i had a pretty blah day today. i went to school, to my room. i think i've overall been wasting time over there. i try to clean things up, but frankly, i'm not particularly motivated. i mean, i feel like i'm giving up so much this year. i can't do robotics. i can't pursue my ag-tech dreams. i will just be trying to teach my ten or so resource kids. it saddens me...

after going to school, i headed home briefly, and took a brief nap, while listening to msnbc and its incessant reporting on the abuses of the trump administration. then, i picked my son up from his summer fun... oh yes, i did do a drawing. i think it turned out pretty well. i've been experimenting with drawing on colored paper, using a darker colored pencil to shade in the shadows, and then using a lighter colored pencil to shade in the highlights. i think i'm getting better at it. hopefully, this leads me to learning how to use color to better effect.

my wife wanting to go to the beach, so that's where we went. we met her newscaster friend and her daughter. while they talked, i sort of swam out and came back, swam out and came back. it was somewhat refreshing. i enjoyed (briefly) those periods where i would just float on my back like some tremendous whale, and watch the sky...

after the beach, we went to frost city, some froyo place. it was alright. although i wasn't really part of most of the conversation, at one point, i was asked about buddhism. so i told the story of my brief time in japan, in hokkaido, staying at the temple. i described the whole koan process, and how, every morning, after chanting and meditating, i would have to present my answer to the head priest there, and how, every morning, he would ring a bell signaling my abject failure. 3 months of that...

i told everyone that i didn't think the head priest was listening for a particular, set answer. rather, i felt he was listening for a kind of vibration, a sort of change in wavelength or something, which i had clearly not achieved yet... perhaps never will.

*****

oh well, as i said, kind of a blah day. so that's about it.

dream- 7/24/2020

there was a building we passed... as with most dreams, i can't recall the beginnings too clearly. but i was with a group of children. i think there was another woman with me, perhaps a parent of one of the children or something. i dimly recall the city, maybe it was a version of wahiawa or something, and i have an image of cracks in the sidewalk... in any case, we went to this building. i recalled that some of the children had had appointments (perhaps with a pediatrician or something) on a floor upstairs, but that they had missed them, and since we were all here, i thought we might as well stop by and see if they could be taken. i'm not sure why, but the children managed to take the elevator, while i opted to take the stairs. the strange thing about this building was that if you took the stairs, then you had to go through several floors of some promotion that they were having. it almost seemed as though the building were some kind of hotel, and each floor was doing an incredible presentation of their very best, perhaps for prospective weddings or something. in any case, i kind of stumbled up each set of stairs... i recall being on a landing, and hearing an announcement for me... apparently, all of the children had arrived, but i wasn't there, and they didn't know what to do with them. in any case, i gradually made my way up. i recall there was a floor done up like some indian palace. the ceilings were incredibly high. everyone was dressed up in fine tuxedos, especially the wait staff. i saw rich crimson tablecloths, and sherberts of brilliant orange... then, i was trying to find the staircase to access the next floor, but i couldn't find it. i saw this sort of boarded up central area. it looked old. there were these fogged up glass windows, and when i looked in, i could dimly see something, perhaps an old stairway. i attempted to pry one of the window/doors open, but i could see a roach desperate to crawl out, so i sealed it up again. i didn't want a roach or anything to mar the perfection of the presentation that the hotel was putting on. in any case, i followed that central area around its hemisphere, and discovered a sort of ride. some conductor within was controlling the ride. when someone was waiting, a "seat" of sorts appeared. the seat was very rudimentary. at first, i wasn't clear what i was supposed to do. there was a bar that sort of came down (like other rides at amusement parks). part of the bar was supposed to go behind your back, and the side parts were supposed to be support your forearms (and you were supposed to grab them). the seat, this red cushion, actually didn't seem to lock in the perpendicular position, and when i first got on, i felt like i would slide out (that led me to grab the bars). there were other people in this ride, notably this one guy sort of out of sight, maybe diagonally either above or below me. in any case, this "ride" explored the central area of this particular building. i got the impression it was some sort of mill or forge or something. there was the impression of hard stone, of it being impacted. at one point, without warning, the conductor sort of flipped us upwards, so that we could see the dome at the top of the building, which he said was constructed of hard stone. for an instant, there was this feeling of tremendous vertigo, as though i could slip out and "fall" upwards to the distant bowl. anyway, the conductor "flipped us" and i commented to the passenger nearby, "i wish he'd have warned us." we neared the end of the ride...

and that's all i remember from this particular dream...

7/23/2020

i've been sort of doing things out of order in my routines... maybe i'm worrying about the upcoming school year, and as a result, the structure of my life is starting to fall apart... but whatever. i'm also secretly mulling over how to manage the composting pile i've started, or the plants i've planted, or the worms, or the fish... i have this thing about trying to routinize everything. the routine is my way of trying to guarantee that i pay some attention to everything in my life. because it is so very easy to forget, and to neglect... it happens, inevitably, anyway... but my life right now is all about the attempt to hold it all together, in my heart, or in my head...

***break***

i've been going into school to set up my classroom. everything is in a jumble right now. 6 feet distancing... the fact that i can't do robotics (it's impossible considering the limitations under the pandemic), and that i can't continue to develop agricultural tech at the school... it kind of depresses me. i have decided NOT to bring in the aquaponics station back to the classroom. what would be the point?

while i was sort of working, i listened/watched videos about mitski. i only know one song by her, and it is "nobody." i thought it was somewhat... i don't know... as she puts it, the chorus is kind of like a semi-fugue... i know, i thought it was so naked. like someone simply putting out that they are incredibly lonely... in one respect i thought it was appealing, but in another... well, we clothe our intentions for many reasons, not the least of which is to hide our ugly parts... i also heard some other songs by her, on the npr tiny desk concerts. there, her songs sounded a lot angrier, and more folksy at the same time, if that makes any sense. from what i gather, a lot of her work SEEMS stream of consciousness...

*****

there is a part in the handmaid's tale (which i am reading slowly through now) where the commander admits that for men, variety is a necessity. that's why women have all of these dress up costumes (bunny, cheerleader, lingerie, etc.). it's because in order to be committed to one woman, he has to pretend that she is not one woman... and ironically, in the afterworld, the commander and all other men in power sleep with several woman, giving up even the fiction of commitment to a single woman...

i do think it hits a nerve. but it's probably true of both men and women. it's just that, for the most part, we've been in a patriarchal society.

i often wonder about faith. being faithful. i am. but there is an undeniable part of me that is restless... i yoke it in a variety of ways... but i think it is in the nature of people like myself to always wonder. the funny thing is that i cannot for the life of me imagine any other possibility than the life i have now. i mean, i try to, sometimes. i try to imagine what it would be like. but somehow i get lost in the little details (that i have to construct), and before i know it, i'm considering, say, the type of music that an imaginary partner would listen to, and what that would say about her, and then i'm no longer really interested in, or rather, i'm incapable of being convinced by, the relationship... i wonder if there's something broken in me. and i wonder if that's a good thing, that it is broken, because if it weren't, maybe i would, like a deluded sleepwalker, kill myself in the traffic of "disloyalty."

sometimes i wonder why people like me cannot be entirely satisfied with their present. i guess it's okay, as long as i don't betray things. betray people and commitments. my mind is allowed to wander. i can read about people and their lives... i can vicariously experience the world. i can train and develop myself to understand the world in deeper and broader ways... in that sense, it is wonderful. the liberation of it all.

but the world is full of doors and windows. and we cannot pause to open the windows and gaze at the view through them overlong. and we definitely cannot walk through the doors.

7/19/2020

wow, five days have passed since i last wrote. i'm not sure why, but things have been somewhat slow going. i guess some of my days have been dominated by meetings. i had an iep meeting to work out. i also attended a few meetings about matters of concern for our school. that really has been dominating the airwaves and social media of late, because it feels as though we're rushing forwards towards a disaster. i mean, we are really trying our best, but there is an undeniable risk that we cannot eliminate, no matter what, and everyone is fearful of what could happen. i honestly think that the failures from the top (the trump administration) lead to impossible burdens for everyone else. if our country had really worked on testing, then it would be possible to monitor to the degree where we could control exposure, etc. but many months in, the administration did nothing. and now, trump would like to pretend that the pandemic isn't happening, and isn't the worst it's ever been. forget about taking responsibility. he's just not that kind of person. you know, moral.

i also managed to do the taxes on april 15 (or 16). so things were a bit busy in terms of stuff like that.

*****

i've been kind of tired of late, like i'm walking through molasses. i don't know if it's the heat, or if it's something psychological. i honestly think that our entire country is suffering from tremendous stress of living with under this administration. i'm not being hyperbolic here. it is traumatic every day to read what new horror or travesty that he commits, and the gop allows... ah, but enough complaining.

*****

i tend to feel like i'm a little looser about things. maybe that's a good thing, maybe not. i tend to think that the artist does not live in the perfect house that he (or she) eventually constructs. that is, the end product (whatever it may be) may seem as though it were fashioned whole, as a "meant thing", as something thoroughly designed such that it seems as though god intended it... but the process is far more tenuous, risky, and messy. there is no assurance of arrival. there are several abortions. there is likely tremendous despair, unless, perhaps, you've powered through, and understand that an end is possible...

to believe too much in the myth of the perfect, as though you simply attain some entry into a rarefied field, and each action is iconic, and leads to consequence... to even begin to think of it as a narrative, i.e., "the story of how i wrote this story," as though each thought led to some successive consequence, or "learning," that eventually led to the finished product... that's never ever how it works. or at least it isn't how things operate in my experience... although i like to think it does.

i do believe in "tuning in" to something, like a muse or something. but it isn't experienced necessarily or always as some clear signal. rather, it is a hint, and a struggle... like a scrabbling through the dirt on an archaeological expedition... finding the edges of a coffin. finding the latch for the lid... all the while cutting up your hands and losing fingernails over the hard stones that you must scratch away the edges of and pry from the earth... (ah, if only i had my tools... but you never dreamed you would need to do this, and so you are always ALWAYS thoroughly unprepared for the reward of inspiration).

maybe i think this way because i'm listening to judy blume now (acclaimed children's author), and she, as she says, "scribbles" in notebooks on a given character, until some mysterious switch is turned and it becomes time to take the pieces and fragments that she's uncovered and somehow stitch them together to form a living body... i think david sedaris is similar, although for him, it sounds a bit less random and a bit less like opening oneself up to the vultures and ravens to drop scraps of the dead world, leavings of the psychopomps, and more like constructing a joke complete with punchline, and then trying it out on audiences, and refining the joke... i think sedaris is a bit more- how shall i put it- intentioned. even though, as i have mentioned previously, some of his work, like spirit world, seems to arrive at its conclusion as though a mist has arisen... but then again, i am mistaking product for process. i still think sedaris's process is a bit more structured.

*****

i finally finished "catcher in the rye" again (on the toilet). i had read it in high school, long ago. i had completely forgotten the portion near the end, where one of his teachers says to holden that "it is better to live humbly for a worthy cause than die for an unworthy one." i recall that those words had some sort of effect on me. i suppose that being a melodramatic teenager made me sympathize a lot with the idea of "dying for an unworthy cause." in fact, as i have often mentioned, i had this idea of "dying" and having my value only realized after i was gone... i guess it's kind of an immature idea, to feel like you hold a secret pain, and to give it up instantly means that you must vanish... it's so... teenager-y... but i guess, despite the smugness and arrogance of adulthood, i suspect we just repeat the same gesture, the same melodrama, only in more sophisticated ways.

maybe this blog is just a reiteration of that notion...

anyway, i recall reading towards the end of the book, and, maybe i was sick at the time or something, but i distinctly remember feeling "something" during the passages where holden was very sick, nauseous, or something, and he kept having the sensation of falling or sinking into the streets as he crossed them, and called out to his dead brother to save him each time...

i don't know. overall, i suppose it's an okay story. i think that sort of stylized writing wouldn't work nowadays, as i have said. but i could be wrong.

*****

i am also reading- and here i can write the name because i have the book right in front of me- ottessa moshfegh. i'm not sure what sort of person she is... i've read two of her stories... they are both short stories, written from entirely different perspectives... the first was about a woman struggling to come to terms with a divorce... the second with this pervy chinese man who uses prostitutes to come to terms with the imperfections of this idealized woman he's trying to seduce... i don't know, the latter story left a dirty taste in my mouth.

the style of writing changes completely from the first to the second story. whereas the first story used terse sentences, the second sometimes had a sort of lengthy, meandering way to it (wandering over a shithole chinese countryside, if you ask me... or it could've been some rural thai village... i don't know).

*****

well, enough. i've got to move on to my "scribbling."

7/14/2020

i guess it's been a couple of days since i last wrote in this blog. i was kind of stressing over taxes, which are due tomorrow. actually, i still AM stressing over it, since i don't have my wife's w2 form. there was a period during this year when some of our mail get sent back because we weren't diligent about picking it up, and i think that her form got returned or something... anyway, hopefully, she can access a copy of it online or something...

yesterday, i went over to a friend's house to pick up some duckweed. i had read that tilapias are omnivores, and aside from getting protein from their fish food, they actually appreciate eating duckweed. duckweed is, to me, really pretty. when you look at the surface of a duckweed pond, all you see is a surface of light green, made up of all these "pixels": the little duckweed leaves. they basically smother out the entire surface of the pond. i suppose that, aside from sunlight and water, they probably get some nutrients through fish (kind of like aquaponics)... there are some guppies (i discovered) swimming beneath the surface.

my friend lives in kalihi, near the top of liliha street. he actually lives on a street called "stream", because it runs right next to some stream. in fact, in his backyard, there is a canal where the stream runs. it looks a bit overgrown. there are these reed-like plants growing in there. but it's clearer than some "streams" that i've seen. my friend's backyard is similarly overgrown. there are a couple of trees shading everything. i believe one is a mango, and the other is some sort of citrus plant. in fact, in one picture i took of the stream, you can see a single tangerine hanging out above everything, like a tiny crayon sun. my friend is growing corn in the shade of the trees (not advisable). they actually look indistinguishable from california grass, the weedy grass that grows everywhere out here (not, by the way, "weed" or marijuana... that's a different kind of "california grass").

after visiting my friend, i went over to ala moana. i wanted to search out some of the books and authors that david sedaris had recommended. i didn't find all of them, but i did manage to select four books. i'm planning on being a bit more aggressive in my reading, because, as many writers have attested, writing is as much a dialogue with other writers as anything else, and if you want to be a good writer, you have to read a lot...

so... i have started to read a book by ... forgive me, i left the book downstairs... mossberg??? something like that. i read the first story, which was called "bettering myself." i like her style of writing. she writes short sentences which are often matter of fact, but which, on occasion, really pack a punch of sentiment... imperfect. open. brutally honest... the honesty is something that... i don't know how to do honesty...

*****

i caught a wolf snail and 2 african tree snails. i put them together in the same bottle, and watched the wolf snail attempt to devour the african tree snails. it was kind of sadistic of me. still, i was fascinated by the way that wolf snail (smaller) would maneuver around the shell of the african tree snail in order to find an ideal access point, and then stretched mostly out of its shell, spitting out its white "esophogeal tube" to consume the other snail... meanwhile, on the jar of the glass, i could see waves of peristalsis on the "foot", looking like parallel ripples on a shoreline... eventually, lynn had me "return" the snails to the wild. she felt sorry for them.

*****

i also worked on this older woman's neck. it's been a while, and i must admit that i'm kind of out of practice. but i think i benefited the woman. i can still feel hard, knotted tissue, and i'm able to sink in to work it...

...well, nothing much else to report now.

7/12/2020

it's sunday. we went over to the farmer's market this morning. i bought some oxtail pho (which i've yet to eat) and then, when we stopped off at longs, i bought a thai iced tea. i really shouldn't drink the latter, because i'm lactose intolerant, and i always pay for it afterwards (and maybe those around me do too). but, hey, it's good going down, right?

i've kind of been drifting through this weekend... not doing much. i have a hard time recalling what i've done. yesterday, i could've sworn that my wife and i went somewhere or did something, but i can't remember what. oh yes, yesterday, actually, my entire family (including the dog) went over the pearlridge. it was actually pretty crowded over there. a lot of people in masks, which is good, but not particularly practicing social distancing. we went ostensibly to get brunch, which was from that philly cheese steak place, charly's. my sandwich was meh. i couldn't even finish it... after that, i kind of escorted the kids to all their favorite places, which included gamestop, razor concepts, box lunch, and the new mini q... i don't know. maybe at a certain point, you start seeing that all of these little "entertainments" are pretty pointless. i mean, it's somewhat ironic, because i am all about trying to write stories and stuff, and yet, i don't particularly believe in "entertainment" for its own sake... what's the deal with that?

*****

i have been gradually working on composting. i am trying to read a few books and watch a few videos on composting. one book, the complete guide of composting, is this huge picture filled book that's just impossible to read. i mean, it meanders all over the place. it keeps referring to certain techniques (on page 168) without actually getting into it. hate stuff like that. so i opted to read another book, which is called the rodale book of composting. i guess this guy rodale was supposed to be some sort of expert on composting. it's somewhat better. the chapters i've read have all been explaining the science behind composting, and why the end product of good composting, this thing called humus, is beneficial to plants.

in my own yard, i've been collecting weeds, which i intend to use as the green portion of my composting. i've also been raking up dead leaves, to use as the carbon (brown) portion. oh yeah, i also have continued to feed my batch of worms... although i haven't set them up for success in a real vermicomposting bin... they are still essentially living in their own poop.

*****

why do we do what we do?

i guess, like nietzche implied, those that ask those sorts of questions too often are of "weaker" moral character, in the sense that they are separated from the flow of life for too long. when you are "in the moment" and "in the dream", you don't really question things so much.

so the problem isn't a "why" one. it's more of a "how." how do we re-enter the flow of life?

again, for me, i take no pleasure in the things that most people do... i'm pretty boring in a sense. i actually enjoy caring for things, and finding ways to improve myself. that's ALL i've been doing for this prolonged break, even if the results were pretty meager... sometimes i wonder if i'm missing out on something... honestly, though, if it weren't for the pressure of other people, i think i would just continue living like this... kind of like leon from the professional... before he met matilda.

7/10/2020

i guess i finished david sedaris's master class. as a bonus, he included a reading of "a spirit world." it was an interesting story. sedaris is good at lightly stitching elements together to form a sort of gestalt. it is reminiscent of the go master (from yasunari kawabata). i can't recall the two players in the game, but one is the acknowledged master (from the old school), and the other is a player from the new generation. the challenger plays in an aggressive, systematic way. but the old master plays in such a way that motive is mysterious. structures and formation rise up like the morning mist (i'm paraphrasing here, but that was the impression i remember distinctly). it is difficult to do anything, much less write, in this sort of fashion, to lead the reader along without really hinting where everything is going. i would like to- i aspire to- write like this. even if it is lost on a majority of readers, that, to me, is high art.

sometimes, it would happen. i would write something without fully realizing things, or being completely aware of things, and then at the end, or even at a successive reading, i would see a pattern in what i had constructed. that is the magic of writing, or of any art... the construction of a higher order or pattern, through the mundane stitching together of lines or words. it is like- looking at the surface of the sea- and at first only concerned with the play of light upon the surface... and then, not different from what you are already looking at, you see the underlying world beneath... with all of its wonder and horror... and you realize that you were ALWAYS looking at it, it's just you didn't SEE it. i always think that that is what is so wonderful about drawing... how you stitch together lines, shade in different shapes... and then gradually a face and a form appear off the flat of the page. and maybe even a feeling...

*****

the dog doesn't love me. i'm not someone who particularly engenders love in others. i'm sure there would be people who disagree with that, to my face, but it's true.

if my wife came home, then the dog would practically whine with excitement just inside the screen door. and then he would circle around her, and practically jump and lean his paws against her shins... that's love.

and when my wife is not home, then there is an emptiness within the dog. a chamber of the heart is unoccupied.

even when the dog comes up to me, lying in front of the computer, and sidles up against my body... i know that he is just settling. and waiting for what is better. what is true.

i have felt this way for most of my life. aware that the world just settles for me. aware that the world is always tolerating me, and just passing the time, waiting for what they would really like. what would really turn them on.

that's, i guess, the main part of me, this sadness.

i wish i could be what people wanted. i think that's what i really try for. that's what all this busy-ness is about. to be useful, for one thing. to be helpful. to be kind. to be productive... but there's a line that i don't cross. i don't actively try to be wanted. because deep down, i know that it can't be true.

the dog always loves someone else.

*****

sometimes, i feel like i am wasting my time. but a part of me, this summer, doesn't care. i'm not particularly restless. i don't really miss being around people. i think i "go out" primarily for the benefit of other people. i go out just to make the people around me happy. i mean, sure, i get some collateral benefit from going out too. like, i appreciate seeing other parts of the island, and such. but i would never go out alone, for instance. my eyes, my skin, for some reason, they don't connect to any internal want. i literally only justify things by the happiness of those around me.

at the same time, there is this internal compulsion. this dream of being better. i can question the absurdity of it. i can try to break it down. but at this point in the game, like george jetson on the treadmill, i can't stop it. it's a part of me. to deny it is to walk with this absence and guilt. so i play this game, even if it has no end, and is without a purpose...

maybe that is my "someone else." it is to be that which i promised i would be. i don't know if that makes sense... but.

*****

holden caufield only loves people when they are dead. isn't that funny? that is similar to me. not that i only love people when they are dead, but that i believe that people will only love me when i am dead. as a living thing, it is impossible to see who a person is. but in the "safety" of death, when all is supposedly said and done, and all accounts are settled... when there is no "threat" of yet another final word to mess up the ending of the story... well, it is okay then to cry about a person, and to claim how much you loved them and how much you will miss them... because they're no longer in the game.

isn't that so ironic? and fucked up?

i say "i love you" whenever i can. but is it a habit, maybe something simply done out of compulsion? why can't we "feel" an appreciation for those who are alive, WHEN they are alive? (and sometimes we can't even feel that appreciation when people are dead?) why are we so dead inside?

i guess that's part of my quest, through all these routines... i said it before, but i want to melt. because in melting, all that is dead and frozen within me will be freed. i think i could remember again. and maybe in that remembering, i could feel again. feel the richness of being alive. WHILE alive.

dream: 7/10/2020

i had yet another williams-ish dream. again, in this dream, there was some class that i was taking that i was doing poorly in. actually, it seemed further in the quarter, and there were assignments that i had not done. i recall looking in some file box, and seeing everyone else's "tests" turned in, but not mine, because i hadn't done it... there was a sense of mild panic in this, because i knew i couldn't make it up.

then there was another strange part of the dream, where dr. fauci, apparently my history teacher, came up to me, and asked to speak to me. when i went to his office, he told me that he hadn't realized that i had taken the same course before, and that he needed to improve my participation and morality (?) grades, because up until then he had been giving me low scores on these, based on my participation in class... i remember thinking, how could he make judgments on these things when i hadn't really turned anything in for the class?

in any case, i had this mild thought that i needed to talk to some registrar or something, because i was essentially paying for a class i had already passed before.

not much else in this dream... except this. when i returned to my dorm room, it felt so profoundly empty and lonely. unlike in previous dreams, there was no one around. i remember recalling that none of my friends were at the school any more. phil had already graduated. and i remember looking at the four walls of the dorm room and feeling incredibly... i don't know. i was starving, but i recall not really wanting to go out into that emptiness to get something.

7/8/2020

today was yet another uneventful day. but i think i got a lot done, in terms of my routines... i've been experimenting with color in my drawings. it's still very basic. i'm following the instructions from betty edwards's "drawing on the right side of the brain." she basically talks about using colored paper as background, and selecting (at first) only two colors to draw with, preferably one that's darker, and another that is its near compliment. so today, i drew on orange paper with a brown pencil and a peach pencil (i know, they aren't complimentary). i first start with the darker pencil, and try to shade in all of the darkest regions. this tends to take a long time, as i'm essentially mapping out the drawing with the dark pencil. then, there's this thing called "heightening," where you color in the lightest portions with your other color. it turned out okay, although i think ideally, what happens is that you have dark regions (delineated by your dark color) and highlights (delineated by your light color), and magically, everything else sort of gets "filled in" by the eye as the middle shades, basically the background color of the paper...

i also got a chance to meditate earlier in the day... it's a practice in being nonjudgmental. there's a lot of crap in my head... random stuff. like tunes that won't go away. or shapes in the carpet that keep arising to represent images or faces or things, only to dissolve into other shapes. or just people...

one thing that i notice is that certain people or situations have a kind of nervous energy about them. i don't clearly understand the associations, they don't make any rational sense, but in meditation, i can sort of detect that baseline disturbance. like, for example, i often think of people and their judgments, and it instantly carries this energy of weariness or defensiveness or despair... in a very minute way. but i notice that these sorts of thoughts will flash and shift my mood subtly. my hope is that, through meditation, and through awareness of these images/thoughts, i will slowly be able to "decouple" things... i recall that, i believe, charlotte joko beck (zen teacher) once talked about the importance of decoupling thoughts from feelings... and that the source of their compusive energy is this lack of awareness, this conjoining and confounding of thought-images with emotional energy...

*****

i've been doing my 4 page freewriting. it doesn't lead to anything "productive" in the sense of being publishable, or even remotely public. but i kind of have looked on the practice as a sort of free association psychological exercise. i try to write INSTANTLY each thought that comes into my mind. and as a result, it's strange, but i've started to remember things in my past. little details. i've mentioned this before, but it's really my hope that i can relive my past a bit more. for the longest time, i feel as though i've been dead to myself. i only recall the past in very general (and often negative) ways. for example, college was a time of loneliness and despair... actually so was post-college life... actually... so when wasn't i lonely and filled with despair??? but, like what i was talking about with meditation, that "image" of that time is just a symbol, something that is a frozen lake... there are still living fish swimming below the surface... and all i have to do is look closer, and "decouple" that association of sadness from that time and that place... and hopefully, everything will come alive again...

*****

musubi got sick from eating some tomatoes. my wife made an omelette for him, and put in some chopped tomatoes. we had googled it just before feeding him, and most of the articles said that tomatoes were fine to feed to dogs. as long as they were ripe. these tomatoes were pretty ripe, but not entirely. i think that's what made musubi sick. he's been very lethargic, and unable to do simple things like jump on the bed, or climb the stairs... it seems as though he's aged a lot. anyway, we finally took him to the vet today. the vet didn't really find anything particularly unusual... but we're going to do a stool test... and we did buy some antibiotics for him... so hopefully, we will have our good old musubi back...

one thing... i hate to admit it, but i am kind of abusive to musubi. not in any overt way. but i annoy him a lot. i kiss him, and stroke him, and he hates it. he growls instinctively whenever i approach him. i don't think he hates me. i mean, he comes to me a lot when i'm typing on the computer, and just sort of sits beside me, so that our sides touch. or he plays with me, bringing his rope toy or his banana for me to throw around. so a part of him tolerates me. but i'm definitely not his favorite...

i've thought a lot about why i can be mean to musubi. lynn mentioned that the way you treat a dog (or any other harmless animal) is how you really are inside. really? i guess i am a bastard inside... i tried to reflect on this. my excuse is that the dog repeats an issue i've had for much of my life. see, musubi LOVES my wife. and me, i'm just someone he tolerates. i'm always second fiddle. so the way i treat the dog is with this awareness that i'm not someone he really wants to be around. i think that this is a repetition of my situation with my brother. everyone LOVED him. and me, i'm just this pale substitute that people always tolerate.

i honestly think that way of most interactions. like with most people, i'm always thinking that they just want to get away from me. maybe it's mutual. maybe it's a projection on my part. because i'm uncomfortable around most people, i just keep thinking, what do they want of me? i suppose that i live my life trying to give people what they want, not because i really enjoy people (i don't- i feel uncomfortable around them), but because it seems as though that might make them happy? which leads to the issue of self-hatred... because i think my brother taught me to hate myself... and then i took the job upon myself... because if there's one thing i can do better than anyone else, it's hate myself...

dream: 7/8/2020

this is the second consecutive time i've dreamed of williams. apparently, i missed out on some english 100 class or something really basic... or i went to the first class and flubbed it. something about not doing the readings for the first class or anything. so i was really motivated to find the teacher of the class... i think part of it was that i needed to purchase the right books for the class (something about how i was having the class tomorrow, and i needed to buy the book today so i could read it). so anyway i was searching for the prof (in the dream, she looked like professor knopf, an actual prof i had, i think for medieval literature). anyway, i went to the correct floor, and was looking for her office. it was strange, there were some desks labeled with the correct number, but they weren't hers. some open air offices... open air, meaning that they weren't in separate rooms, and were simply desks sitting out in the hallway. and then when i went into a room towards the back, there were more desks. most unoccupied, some looking very old, and on the way to some recycling heap or something. and it was very noisy. there was the sound of some child running in the hallway...

there was some earlier part of the dream, in which there was a science student or something. someone who helped me out with gathering the basic papers for a few of my classes... some unidentified student, someone with glasses or something....

at this point, this is all i can really remember, although it seemed the dream contained more, especially in the outset.

there are always these common themes... something about finding a class, something about not doing all the readings... and struggling to make that right.

7/7/2020

i just listened to david sedaris again. this time, he talked a lot about his influences, and i jotted down a lot fo the authors that he considered to be "good." sometime, i'll make an effort to find their books and read them.

it's funny, it's actually somewhat rare for me to read a book in awe of the writing. i mean, i can appreciate things stylistically, but not much seems to resonate with me. i thought hemingway was a bit too sparse for my tastes... i'm not sure if his work would really work nowadays. i feel that we are a far more verbose culture (or at least we pretend to be), and that hemingway's writing (and i'm going primarily with "old man and the sea") is a bit too brutish. i liked dickens (again, i'm going by what i most recently read, which in this case was "a tale of two cities"), but his sort of ornate, baroque style of writing is far beyond me; maybe dickens, to me, is on the other side of the spectrum from hemingway. i think the scope of his plot is awesome, his mastery of so many characters... i don't think i could keep track of so many people and so many events... i got flustered even in plotting out minor things...

i'm also reading "catcher in the rye" for some reason. i guess like sedaris, i'm just cycling through some of the things i was supposed to have read in high school... and i did read "catcher in the rye," but for some reason, i don't remember a lot of the details. or maybe i didn't appreciate them as i do now, being an adult. as a teenager, and a pretty sheltered teenager at that, i didn't get a lot of the sexuality that abounds in the story (even though it is precisely about raging adolescent hormones). for some reason, my memory of "rye" ends somewhere near where the elevator guy/pimp snaps the protagonist in the penis. and in my memory, they weren't particularly oblique about it. i wonder if they'd changed the text since i read it in high school... anyway, i don't recall all these other episodes that i'm reading about... the sally hayes thing, about her dressing in some miniskirt so he could watch her ass as she skated... or meeting up with that sophisticate in the bar, and listening him talk (or not talk) about eastern philosophy and older women... don't remember much of that.

my opinion of salinger's work is that it- well, i know it was admired at one point- i recall attending some writing class where one of the students- a teenaged girl- was trying to write a continuation to "catcher in the rye." and trying to emulate that voice. that annoying voice. i understand it, but perhaps i'm at a different place in life, so i find that voice grating. i also don't find it particularly endearing when the author throws in references to his dead brother. it just seems too- i don't know- formulaic. it's almost like the author times it, so that once you get so sick of caulden and his melodrama, then he'll throw a bone about his little brother, so you instantly feel sorry for him all over again... it just stops working after like the tenth time or so. (btw, i find myself emulating that whiny voice just now. swear to god. :P ).

margaret atwood... she is a writer i admire. she writes in a pretty sparse way, but each detail packs such a punch. each detail is purposeful, and playful. she does a lot of little word plays... they are wicked and evocative. in many ways, i wish i could write like her...

anyway, i do have to read more. i think my regimen calls for only reading a chapter each time (i happen to read other books when i'm on the toilet... and for those books, the progress is- well, sporadic, just like my stools :P ). sometimes, with short-chaptered books, this tends to make the progression very slow. but at least i'm moving through stuff...

btw, forgot to mention haruki murakami. aside from "hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world," which was the first book i'd ever read by him, i don't really appreciate most of his work. i may have said this before, but some of his scenes are truly nightmare inducing. the one scene i always return to was when this japanese officer was slowly and methodically flayed alive by some mongolian. it was all the more horrific because, up until then, that officer was portrayed as some stoic, matter-of-fact, brave person. but under the hours-long methodical operation, he eventually is reduced to bouts of falling unconscious and screaming uncontrollably... until he is reduced to a pile of unbound flesh... i still shudder when i think about that scene... and the idea that there are many ways to die, and that you can seem brave when you choose a quick death... but torture... that's another thing entirely... to be pinned down and awake and aware of the incredible pain and the progressive destruction of what you had considered to be your sacred self... piece by piece... that is... i can't imagine it.

anyway, i digress. that scene was from "wind up bird chronicles," which, for some reason, i didn't really get. i mean, he always/often has these weird women. and i notice that in a couple of the stories, "wind up bird chronicles" and "norwegian wood," there's a kind of redemption found through this sort of waif like girl figure. something i found too strange and formulaic. but, yes, i sometimes think it would be great to be haruki, because he seems to "get around," at least in his stories...

"1q84", by the way, had so much more potential... it seemed to be a story that wasn't sure where it was going. and it ended in a very mundane way, to my thinking. i think there was so much more potential. especially as he seemed to be trying to make the association with 1984, well, then why didn't he help us to see the horror of that alternate world? instead, it was just some story about two plots gradually coalescing. a fucking love story. that wasn't really about love. (i mean the two characters were basically strangers, aside from one momentous occurrence when they were ten years old or something. it wasn't particularly convincing to me. but then again, i'm an anti-romantic.)

oh well. i'm feeling generally optimistic that something inside of me is melting. i will continue to work at my routines, and hopefully more and more of my past and me will come alive.

dream: 7/6/2020

i had a relatively vivid dream this morning. i was at williams again, only a different, unrecognizable williams. at least it seemed like williams at some points. i woke up alone in the early morning. i walked up to the bathroom mirror (though i did not really see myself in it... maybe if i did i would see someone else?). i got some shaving cream, and i recall that although it was a new bottle, it didn't come out smooth, so i shook it vigorously... and then it came out in this overly large dry styrofoam-like cloud that i smeared across my face... i recall the thought that there were all of these supplies outside- when i looked out a window, it seemed as though there were some garage or something with all of these supplies stored up. and i remember thinking what would happen if i stole something; would they catch me and kick me out? i recall thinking about them grilling me, and how i would eventually give it up... but anyway, it seemed as though the whole dorm started waking up, and i saw all of these people walking through and using the room. it was never like that at fayerweather or the dorms i was at, but for some reason, it was extremely crowded then. and there i was, walking around with my shirt off (thankfully i must have been wearing something below), and shaving cream on my face... and there were even girls there. i recall three asian girls dressed in black, making plans to go to their classes... i suddenly realized that maybe i was running out of time, and going to be late. i looked for my planner, and my schedule, and realized i had to attend some class outdoors at "lewton" at 9. when i glanced over at the clock, it was something like 8:50. i desperately asked where lewton was, and this one girl with large glasses answered, exasperatingly, (as though i definitely ought to have known this by now) that it was somewhere near west, or in the same direction as west, or something. (of course, i didn't know where west was either, but i tried to remember the direction she pointed...

anyway, that was about it for the dream.

i guess what was different about this one was that there were more people, and it seemed more intimate, as though they were coming into my life or something. in the last few times i dreamed of williams, for the most part, i was a stranger.

i also seemed to recognize some of the faces in this dream: ghosts, no doubt.

i don't know if i have mentioned it, but i seem to be recalling miscellaneous things about my past. it is my hope that something in me is starting to melt. the past is like a web that i'm starting to trace, like a spider. i touch a node, and there are vibrations that return to me, and each vibration summons up a related flash of a face or a voice or something... of course, i don't really have control, and there are definite limits to what i can see... but it is something. the past is not dead, and perhaps neither am i.

7/5/2020

i have been listening to david sedaris again. this time, the gist of his message was that you should be kind to people, and trust them. it was interesting. he is "living the dream," so to speak, as an author. he has sold 12 million copies, as he said, and had his work translated into 27 languages. but he didn't pursue the "traditional path" of being an author. he never submitted his work to a publisher. he never sought out an agent to promote his work. (that's not to say that he doesn't have a publisher, or an agent, now. it is to say that he never pursued them from his end.)

what happened, as he says it, (and i'm sure it was a bit more complicated than the way he presented it) was that he did a reading in a creative writing class... which led to an invitation to successively bigger and bigger readings (at which he would write new material each time; as he puts it, you don't want to be lugging around your one successful work...). eventually, someone called him to do a reading on npr, and voila, that led to a publisher asking if he had a book ready to go (which he did, because he had been constantly writing...).

that sounds like (pardon the pun) a fairy tale, if i'd ever heard one...

*****

in any case, i'm thinking of revising how i do my writings. this compulsory "poem" "story" thing is really killing me. the reason is because i usually just start writing whatever comes to mind, and as a result, there's no continuity (at least for the story). they are just 30 minute vignettes, and incomplete ones at that. i know i need a more disciplined approach. so i bought printer ink finally, and i think the idea is that i map out the work that i intend (and, really, in some format, i've had a general web of ideas for this book- it's just i always get tangled in the details and execution). i will write focused on some story in the book, and print it, and put it up... and then when i'm done, i'll try to do readings or something, in the fashion of david sedaris... or maybe not... i don't know. i'm not sure if there is such a venue for such readings, especially in the age of covid. maybe a zoom call or something. but i'm not sure if we can get people to commit to listening to such stuff... and in any case, i'm not sure if there would be the sort of reaction that sedaris got, the kind of reaction that would serve as feedback...

anyway, that's kind of the plan.

when i write, i'm going to still set a timer, but maybe longer. and again, it will be "disciplined," i.e., focused on a single work. and i won't shift to another story until i finish the one i'm working on. and i think i'll listen to music (on earbuds or something) to sort of tune out the world, and get into a kind of "zone."

i recall that sometimes the best writing i've done has been when i felt really... "smooth." like everything was okay. i don't know. it would feel like i was "in tune." like (and i'm not consciously making a radiohead reference) i was a radiohead, and i had turned the dial gradually until the music, the most awesome music, would come out crystal clear... no static.

lately, or maybe like forever, i've been plagued by anger. and hatred. and self-loathing. and shame. i'll tell you what that feels like, it feels like a fist in your gut clenches, and your teeth gnash, and you want to rip yourself apart... and you don't feel like talking or writing any more, because it seems like the eyes of the sphinx are staring down at each letter, and making it feel ashamed and worthless... and then the words that come out, the dead insipid words, are strung together like a weak and listless ribbon, pale and transparent, and floating off into the ether, unseen or unheard, by the audience who is listening to fox news... that's what it feels like.

i need to bypass the anger. i have to just get to the job and write.

story: 7/4/2020

there's this idea that if you go far enough away from your past, then you can escape it.

that was the theory behind my scheme to stay at a zen temple. i suppose it was a pie in the sky idea for a long time, and only started to get wheels on the ground when my japan grandmother found an article in the newspaper of a foreigner (gaijin) who got to stay at a zen temple in rural hokkaido. there was even a grainy picture of the gaijin. he looked like an anglo-american, but could have honestly been almost anything else, including something like me, a nikkei, a person of japanese ethnicity but american citizenship. the gaijin was standing in the middle of some sort of crop. it looked like cornfields, only the tops of the stalks only came up to his armpits. he was looking down at the crops, at an angle, and laughing. at least, it looked like he was laughing, in that kind of nervous, bemused sort of way you do when you know someone is taking a picture of you.

the actual text of the article (which, of course, i couldn't read) mentioned that this gaijin had an interest in zen buddhism, and was allowed to stay in residence at the temple, which was called tsurui-mura. my japan grandma tried to explain to me that "tsurui-mura" was a place famous as a gathering place for "tsuru" (or cranes), and that it was located near kushiro, a port town on the southwestern part of the island of hokkaido.

she then asked if i were interested in staying there.

i replied in an abstract, noncommital manner, one which reflected my general attitude towards life at the time.

i was already in japan then, but i wasn't quite sure what for. in a way, i was the rope in a mild tug-of-war of sorts between my hawaii grandma, and my japan grandma. i had graduated from college with a degree in religion about a year ago. i'll explain it here just to be clear (because many ask, and many assume): a religion degree from my school has nothing to do with "theology" or "christianity," but is the study of religion as a social, psychological, cultural phenomenon. some actually consider the religion department at my school "antireligious", in the sense that, from the outset, it divorces itself from the "practitioner" or "believer" perspective, and attempts to instead use secular, philosophical lenses to understand what religion is, and what role it plays. in any case, after returning home, i was honestly floating. i was working three meaningless part time jobs just to keep myself busy, but none of it was leading anywhere that i wanted to go.

i guess when i mentioned to my hawaii grandma that i was interested in studying and practicing buddhism because i'd already gotten a degree in the subject, then she jumped in and offered for me to go to japan to practice her religion, tenrikyo, instead. i shrugged, and said why not, and that led to me staying over in tenri city in nara, japan, to go through some religious training courses.

it was only after about half a year that my japan grandma showed me the article.

poem: 7/4/2020

your name popped up out of nowhere-
whole and correctly spelled-
a revenant from my high school days
sophomore or junior year perhaps.
we were in either a math or science class together
i'm not too sure
but we all sat in the back-
you (the only girl), me, richard, and
some other guy whose name i can't recall.

good times.

perhaps it wasn't your choice
to be surrounded by 3 guys
in the back of the class
but you played it well
and gave us an honesty
and i daresay sophistication
that we were sorely lacking.
you made the period something
to pause at.

it intrigued me-
to hold a stance,
to hone a style,
to have eyes
that chose where to look, and why-

that was rare.

i googled your name
(you don't understand how rare
it is for me to recall
anything whole)
and reconstructed a narrative from
fragments on pinterest-

stints in korea to finish up
high school,
then alabama, and finally
married in atlanta.

i hope you are happy,
me, i'm doing alright.

we didn't mean much to each other back then-
and we certainly don't now.
i've no illusions of that.
but somehow being stuck with
strangers four hours a week
always on the way to some place,
some time else-

it was nice.

7/4/2020

i had at first intended to write an entry last night, but we had people over. it was my son's birthday party last night (his actual birthday was on 6/29), and some of his friends came over to play smash. i know, it wasn't maintaining social distance, etc., and only one of the participants wore an actual mask. but these kids have been socially isolated for many months now, and we (all parents involved) considered them as safe as anyone else. in addition to that, my niece and nephew and his girlfriend came over (the first to help lynn bake cupcakes, and the second and third to eat stuff). i suppose the rules should have applied to them, but they kept themselves separated from the party goers.

anyway, i have been off and on doing my routines. it has been far more sporadic.

i listened to david sedaris again last night. i must say that his routine and commitment to writing are impressive. he says he goes through an average of 18 revisions or rewrites before he allows an editor to view things. and between revisions or rewrites, he actually reads his work in front of an audience to gauge their reactions. he talked about the concern of holding an audience's (reader's) attentions, and that, for him, he averages about 12 pages... he's definitely not a novelist, so he doesn't have to worry about, say, holding a reader's attention to page 274 or something.

one thing that really stuck with me was his distinction between "emoting" (cue the little violins) and "getting at the truth." he said that, unless you're writing for a hallmark special, you should avoid emoting at all costs, and instead get at the "peel at your skin" practice of getting at the truth... i.e., the heart of the matter. that's what real writing is about anyway. he also said something about how, as a reader, he's not interested in knowing "how you feel"; he IS interested in hearing about your problems. i think that's an interesting distinction.

*****

my writing of late has SUCKED. i am dry of inspiration. and, again, i am wary of writing the longer projects, because of the way it feels so boring and contrived. even if it is meaningful. i wish i could write in the 12 page frame, but frankly, my life is NOT funny, and i don't have a funny perspective on things. i find my wife is funny, she often says little funny observations... but i'm not. in fact, i have a decidedly dour and depressing take on life. and i don't know, i can't get to the meat of things in a short time frame, AND put out some sort of endearing or uplifting message.

i have imagined that it was partially due to my commitment. i mean, i am committed to writing, i think. but i don't rearrange my life for it. i don't put into place some of the practices that make writing a vocation. i just incorporate into my routine. and maybe that's for my protection, and for my sanity. i recall times when i would simply write and write and write myself into a corner, and then be filled with complete loathing, and be unapproachable by anyone. and besides that, while i obsessed about my writing, other aspects of my life would go to shit. so i made the decision to keep a routine, and just cycle through it... that would eliminate some of the guilt i felt about, say, not getting to any one particular thing... i mean, i would get to it eventually, but out of fairness, i would have to do everything before it. i imagined that i could increase my commitments gradually, as i evolved. for example, in piano, i can definitely play the 3 staples, and i have tried to expand to some more modern repertoire... and for drawing, i am experimenting with color now, hopefully in preparation for learning how to paint. writing, though... it is, how shall i put it, hard to progress.

i'll keep trying at it. maybe i will buy printer cartridges, and print out my writing, and post them up on a wall or something... some sort of visible reminders... and maybe get a little pocket notebook to jot down ideas that may come up (i believe gaiman and sedaris both do this; as well as the poet billy connor). i don't know.

oh well, happy independence day!

july 4 is a special day for lynn and i (though i haven't prepped anything special for her). it's the occasion when i proposed to her.

story: 7/1/2020

"move, you fuck!"

i am screaming in futility at the car immediately in front of me- a black toyota pickup truck. of course, there's nowhere for that truck to go, as it is just the tail end of a column of cars that stretches on into the distance, on the junction between the moanalua freeway and the h1. a part of me understands this, but most of me is just filled with an anxious rage, needing a target. hence, the outburst.

i don't look to my right, to my sister, who is sitting in the passenger side. maybe i'm afraid that if i do, some of that rage will seep out to her. it's because of her, after all, that i'm stuck in this traffic. it's because of her that i may not get back in time, back to-

"holy fuck!" i shout out. "no fucking way!"

there's one of those sporty-looking, tricked out race cars trying to cut in front of me. i hit the accelerator to close the narrow gap between myself and the truck. i successfully close block the car, and flash a glance at the punk in the driver's seat, who's caught angled across the lane strip, unable to proceed.

"rand," says my sister hesitantly. closer to the car i've just cut off, i suppose she takes the brunt of the hostile energy coming off of it. "calm down."

i don't even want to reply. i'm afraid that if i do, i might say something that i'll regret.

there's a tense silence, during which i grip the wheel hard, my eyes burning like the taillights in front of me.

"can you tell me about grandma?" kristine asks finally. "how was she?"

i want to explode at first, but stop myself. i take a deep breath, and let it out long and slow. my voice, when i respond, is quiet, if somewhat constrained. "not good," i say. "she was in a coma when i left. something about how her heart is really weak. and how her bowels are obstructed, like really obstructed, and all the feces and stuff is coming back the wrong way and toxifying her blood."

kristine is quiet after my clumsy report. i don't look at her, but i hear some soft sniffling, and i know that she is crying. i feel my anger softening a bit, but i shake my head and cling to it. it's the only thing keeping me together right now.

"did she- did she say anything about me?" kristine asks shakily.

i can't stop myself from retorting. "of course not!" i shout. i still keep my eyes on the road, because if i didn't they'd be flashing crazily and violently, and i can't let myself lose that much control. "i told you! she's in a fucking coma." i should have stopped there, but i didn't. "and why would she?" i added quietly, like a hidden knife.

kristine sobs, louder now.

i shut my eyes, sigh, deflating. "i'm sorry," i mutter clumsily. "i shouldn't- i shouldn't have-"

"that's okay," kristine murmurs in reply. and then her voice takes on a bit of an edge. "why would she care about a fuck up like me?"

poem: 7/1/2020

frost once wrote about fire and ice.
the ending of the world and such.
while walking my dog
i thought of another duality:
flow and freeze.

i've been having trouble
remembering my life.
it's almost as though i hadn't lived it.
sometimes a fragment would float up
and i'd examine it-
the shape of the bannister in a building i'd dormed in
or what i wore the first morning i'd arrived
at college sophomore year,
lying in the dew of a golf course-
stuff like that, with no context,
no meaning,
just a distant sadness.

i wonder why i can't recall more,
especially about people, and
stories, and how they broke my heart
or i broke theirs.

am i heartless?

do i even have a soul?

memory for me is sometimes like a flow
and in the flow of the moment,
when the world is stirred by your current
or colored streams swim through you
everything is alive and vivid and real.
but a flow never remembers things outside of itself-
(insert famous tale of not even stepping in a river once).

other times it is a crystal.
a dead thing.
but perfectly capturing the contours and details
of a moment.
sharp, but separated from time.

seesaws have a fulcrum.
frost's dualities were tied to destruction.
what is the sticking point
for me?

if i could find it,
i would break it
or melt it.
it's like the horcrux
keeping me from
killing me
and living me.

6/30/2020

i listened to david sedaris's masterclass on "ending with weight." or was it, "ending with meaning?" in any case, one of the most poignant things about the class was his attempt to reconcile or justify or explain or apologize for his actions regarding his sister tiffany. this sister, apparently, was very difficult. this is made clear in his essay, "the spirit world," in which he likens her to two crows that got into his apartment through the chimney. he says they poked through and shit on "everything that he loved." so it's small wonder then that when she confronted him at one of his book signings, he directed security to shut the door in her face. that was to be the last time he saw her. supposedly she was evicted from her home, raped, and then attempted, and later succeeded, at suicide.

he is frank about this. i noticed that he oscillated between talking as a writer, and expressing how he "found the ending" to a story that had been about psychics and such; and between talking as someone, perhaps, consumed by guilt, but not wanting to fully acknowledge that. he spent a full 18 minutes on this class, and much of it was dominated by a near soliloquy in which he- well, i already said it- how he sort of went back and forth. it sort of seemed like he intended to "go to this place" because there was a writing lesson in it, but in going to this place, he was immediately incriminated by what it revealed about him...

i wrote a story called taishokuten about my sister. while i never "shut a door in my sister's face," and while she is still alive, the story itself was my attempt to write about a similar desire to cut someone out of my life. in the story, the protagonist (myself) has seemingly attempted to commit suicide by putting his hand in the waste disposal unit... the story then goes backwards and forwards in time, in an attempt to explain the reasoning behind this thoughtless act. a lot of it basically ties in to my sister, and these feelings of guilt associated with her... guilt related to an abortion that never happened... guilt related to teaching my sister how to lie... things like that. there is a part where i visit my sister in jail, and i am tempted to tell her how she needs to make a clean cut of her life, that is, cut away all the bad things in her life, including all of her ties to the losers in jail... but it is just as i'm about to say this that i learn that she's pregnant with a second child...

(this actually happened, by the way. it wasn't the second child, but the third, at the time. i recall that moment well, when my mother talked with my sister, and i built up these words to say to her, as i stared at my hands... and then i eavesdropped and learned the truth. i remember how the words just dissipated within me, and how i felt so incredibly- i don't know- full of despair.)

... the end of that story is my figurative "door in her face." i basically wake up, with my hand intact, saying that it was all some sort of bad dream... a dream in which i HAD a sister, a sister whom i loved very much...

*****

today was a sort of non-day. i did a few errands, and by a few, i mean, less than three. i took my son to his summer fun meeting (he's going to be a junior leader again), and then picked him up (filling up the tank and buying a couple of hardware things on the way). oh yes, at about 1:30, my mom and i went to go look at ag-land in kunia. it was somewhat depressing. we saw one 1 acre strip that couldn't really be accessed, because the owners of the neighboring lot had dumped a bunch of dirt and gravel over what would have been the driveway. anyway, it wasn't much to look at. it wasn't flat land. it sort of occupied this narrow strip within a little sloping gorge. there was a fence on one side (the border of the next lot), and some banana trees on the other (the other border). the lot went "up to that tree," which was basically the end of that gorge... it was going for (no joke) $120,000. the realtor warned that if we bought this, we might be part of a lawsuit involving the illegal houses built in the area (technically as this area is zoned for ag, and only has potable water, and no utilities, it is illegal to build and live in a house... but people do that anyway).

oh yeah, i also talked to my state house representative, val okimoto. she told me that she too used to be a special education teacher, up until about 2010. we commiserated about stuff like ieps and such... she seemed particularly interested in the aquaponics setup i had (i leave the garage open all day so that the plants get access to sunlight)... if only she weren't a republican, i'd vote for her in a heartbeat.