i am still at school. i'm waiting for my 1:30 to show. actually, i WAS waiting for my 12:30 to show up, but he hasn't been coming on for a few days now. i'm actually pretty disgusted by it. i mean, i keep calling mom to remind her, and even after all this time, he doesn't show up regularly...
what it means for me, at the moment, is that i have a few spare moments to do some writing.
at the moment, it is raining pretty hard, even though the sun is shining bright. there's a smell in the air, the smell of rain... but it is a particular smell that summons in me vague memories of when i was young... i have images of the commute to japanese school, when we would have to ride our bikes through these neighborhoods in mililani to get from the elementary school over to the high school... these hills around the nob hill subdivision, with the sidewalk panels that would go click-clack when you rode your bikes over them... glimpses of residences through slat wood fences... and an image of a flower growing on crumbling concrete stairs, accompanied by this music which i later misrecognized as pachelbel's canon (i think there must have been a sesame street thing, just a wordless portion showing a similar flower slowly growing in the sunlight)... there are also vague images of the district park, of fields of grass that i didn't particularly want to be around, because it meant prolonged p.e., occasions for other kids to show their stuff, when all i wanted to do was find a book to read, or a place to dream...
anyways, those are some of the images that come to mind...
*****
the past couple of days, i've tried to be very regular and regimented. in the early morning (i try to get up around 4 or so), i meditate for half an hour, and then i go through my taijiquan routines. there are some loosening up exercises that i do, and then some standing postures that i attempt. i really am enjoying the course set up by adam mizner, and hope it produces in me some real results. i really would like to authentically fajin, for one thing, but it sounds like, to him, fajin is only just preprimer stuff...
*****
what are some of my thoughts... i guess i realize i've always been "missing out" on life. or perhaps i've never really been "missing out" on anything. because what life is there apart from the one you're living? we speak of different alternatives or different choices, but maybe it's all just like this view from a river- while you are being pulled on the currents. yes, you can see life, you can see other possibilities- but you can't necessarily be at all of those places. i mean, the current is pulling you too fast. maybe you could, if you really tried, if you really wanted to, but wouldn't you be missing out on other opportunities? and wouldn't you be using up your energy, your life, in the meantime?
i remember when i was younger, how i always felt so dissatisfied with my life. i always imagined that there was somewhere else, another "stream" where i was supposed to be. maybe it was another place, or another job... most of the time, it was proximity to some special person. yes, i always imagined that being coupled with someone would be salvific or something. like all of my concerns and problems would disappear... of course, i placed unrealistic expectations on what a relationship like that was supposed to be like, and probably as a result, it never materialized. i mean, how could anyone have satisfied those extreme demands?
anyway, i felt such a loathing within myself, because i always felt like i had "missed the boat." the only way i could hide- temporarily, of course- was to attempt to disappear within art. i felt that art- ironically, or paradoxically, without an audience- could save me because in the moment of performance, neither myself nor the other existed. there was simply the concentration upon "it."
... now that i'm older, i feel less and less dissatisfaction with my life. does that just come with getting older? i mean, i do feel yearnings, but i also feel- how should i put it- more solid? more content? i feel at times like this big fat mountain. the weight of my accretions, and my "settling" for a certain set of circumstances... well, maybe it's hard to feel much of anything nowadays. there's the longing for memories, even if, as i well realize, the past wasn't all that great. again, the past was haunted by that inescapable sense of loneliness and loathing... so which was worse? which is better? it's hard to say...
from my present perspective, i guess i would just like to have the capacity to appreciate my past. i guess i just want to feel like i could still feel the past living inside me, like a memory... most of the time, i fear i'm really dead inside, like a hunk of steel... there may be vibrations within me, echoes from some unknown past, but they only make vague shadow-sounds that i can no longer hear clearly...
well, gotta get back to work, students are coming on now.
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