12/30/2020

it's a day later. it's cold. the air sits on my back. and i can hear the rain punctuating the silence outside.

i hate myself, i hate my writing. i think what i've done is a terrible thing. i have no idea where i've been going with my story. i thought that if i wrote it incrementally, that somehow it would amount to something, but no. it just feels like an ingrown toenail, turning in on itself, and wounding the foot in the process... something wrong. i have been thinking that it reflects me, that there is something wrong about me. that i am not interested in the same things as other people. i think about some of the ideas i have had for stories. they don't arise necessarily from the richness of experience. they are usually just coincident things, things that i find make some sort of interesting connection. but there's no heart, and no blood, in such things. what is the point?

maybe that's all i am. an interest in these connections, these blurs, these overlaps. it is like a snapshot taken of a deep ocean, and how the alignment of the sunlight, and the water, and the fish beneath, maybe give some sort of impression of depth. but so what?

i am a terrible father. i just read another chapter in "girl in the shape of a cloud," and by gods, how depressing it is. olive kitteredge was also depressing, about an inescapable and impossible life... i am thinking about my son, in particular. and how, i don't do anything to form him. i feel, at this point, that he is his own person. but i am also worrying, in the background, that he isn't driven, and he isn't particularly heading to any known, good trajectories. and why am i not doing something about it? i suppose i want him to be happy, but i am not providing him with the tools necessary to make a happy life. in the present, i am just giving him free reign... i am so laissez faire with things. is that right? is that wrong? i am so uncertain about things in my own life, how could i define a trajectory for my son?

*****

my dialogue is wretched. part of the issue is: i don't know what anyone wants. it is all just "figuring itself out." maybe it is because what is wanted, what i want, i cannot say. so i am constantly muddling about. i want to kill my brother. no i don't no i don't no i don't. i just want to- maim him. (this reminds me of dobby from harry potter or something: dobby didn't want to kill harry potter. only maim or seriously injure). or maybe i just want his respect. or maybe i just want to be like him, to steal something of his, and claim it as my own. it is all these things. how can i distill it into one thing? why is everything i write so wrought with ambiguity? i hate myself for that.

*****

why do we do the things that we do? is it out of feeling, or compunction? or blind routine? a pattern established, decided upon... and followed religiously? why do i do these things that i do, in this order? what would i feel if i didn't follow this path? i would feel lost, cast off. and the self-hatred would leap into me like a - what were those dinosaurs called? with their bird-like talons? the hook-shaped claws? they would stab into me and disembowel me instantly... i know that that hatred pursues me. it pursued me from ever so long ago. it is my shadow, inevitable. i cast it off only through distraction and routine. distraction and routine.

and concern for what i should be concerned about.

*****

the rain is coming down harder, pelting the earth now. and my skin is chilled. i hear the distance in the rain. the curtains of it coming down.

*****

i wish people listened to me, and found a heart in anything that i was saying. instead, i always am left with the impression that there was something off about me, something lacking. and people won't say it out loud, won't mention it politely... but they fold back into other narratives, because whatever i say only leaves them with a feeling of discomfort. like a glimpse of a gallery of misshapen, hideous artwork. or a symphony played off-tune...

that's me.

12/29/2020

on sunday, we finished a 12-week writing workshop. it was a wonderful experience. for the first 6 weeks or so, it was more about timed writing to impromptu prompts (is that an oxymoron?). sometimes it was words, sometimes situations. we had to write everything in dialogue format, because i guess it was a writing workshop primarily geared towards writing screenplays. and besides that, i suppose that dialogue (and related action) really drives a plot, and distills it into the visible. a lot of that narrative, expository crap that i'm into (still am, unfortunately), it bores the pants off of audiences...

so, yeah, the first 6 weeks was like that. and then the last 6 weeks, we had writing "homework," where we had to bring in 4 pages to do a read-through. i think it was good for me, ultimately, because the workshop held me accountable to do that regular writing. i mean, i have been trying to routinize writing, but i suppose by having it actually "read" by other people, well, i guess it made it more official or something. anyway, i thought i started out okay. i decided to work on "kappa noodle," which is a story i'm writing about my relationship with my older brother. i know i still have a lot of raw feelings about my stinking brother. i have a lot of unresolved hatred. probably misplaced, but it's all there, nonetheless...

(did i mention? maybe in previous posts: but just to be clear, i haven't spoken to my brother in like ten years now. it all had something to do with my daughter and his son, just a little misunderstanding, but my brother and his scheming wife overblew it... and then started to get into hypocrisy territory. because while he was defending the honor of his then seven year old son, and started talking about "honesty," and started likening my daughter to my criminal sister, well, he neglected to mention about how when my sister was seven, he apparently molested her, and then after confessing to it, started backtracking and saying how that was a "lie." i suppose a lot of that sort of blew up in my face... it's funny, how i had, and my family had, up to that point, "buried" the issue... my sister was a fuck-up, it was all her fault, we never really, really believed her anyway, did we? and my brother was the (is the) upstanding citizen, great father, defender of honor. bullshit. BULLSHIT. i suppose that, in writing this story, i explored a lot of the ways in which my older brother sort of always was like that. i know that the story has been colored by my negative present perceptions of him and his family... and i have struggled, really struggled, to make him more redeeming than he perhaps was... but...

in a lot of ways, the story is a trial. my brother is being put on trial. and the voices of the two "lawyers," one yagoro and one kappa-chino, are the two voices in my head. kappa-chino's voice is the one talking about how i SHOULD hate my brother, i should rip his world to shreds... while yagoro, while not overtly defending my brother, claims i should sort of let it all go, keep going with my life... i don't do a good job of it, i think i wasn't particularly clear about where i was going with it, but in retrospect, i think that's what it all boils down to. should i kill my brother? or should i just move on?

[by the way, moving on means burying something... in the story, it doesn't really have anything to do with my sister, it all focuses on MY personal relationship with him... but, yes, it has something to do with burying a part of myself. my hatred for him.]

it's hard for me to relate any more to the love and respect i had for him. yes, on the surface, he is respectable. and, no matter what i or anyone says, he does work hard, he does stress out a lot, he has enormous passion and talent... all of that is incontrovertible. but i suppose what i wanted to point out was that it comes at a cost. and it comes with a theft. a fundamental hypocrisy. someone pays the price for it. someone always does. and it is the invisible people, like me, or my sister, who pay for it.

*****

ANYWAY. whew. i really started to loathe my story after the 12th week of the workshop. in the end, i think it was good that i was forced to regurgitate all of that. i know it was inconsistent, really wordy, really- boring. exhausting, really... but as i wrote it, i think i started to get a clearer picture of how to clothe this idea in a plot. because, up until that point, all i had were these images- not really full incidents, more like little memories, divorced from context... like pictures at an exhibition or something. and i didn't have the skill or whatever to weave them all together into a single narrative. to be honest, i wasn't (and still aren't) sure exactly what impression i wanted to give of the characters. i wanted to express ambiguity. but ambiguity is a tricky thing. if done right, the audience feels the internal conflicts. the hypocrisy. but if done wrong, the audience just gets lost and disconnected, like: "where the fuck is he going with all of this?" i actually think i strayed into the latter territory, because, to be honest, i really wasn't sure where i was going. this, even though i have been wrestling with this story on and off for like years.

right now, i have a few ideas for how to improve the story. first of all, as i have these two characters, stuffed animals named dd and owlie, who are ostensibly his only and imaginary friends... and as they don't really have anything to say during the "trial" portion of the play... well, i was thinking of having them be in a parallel storyline. perhaps when the main character "falls down the well," so to speak, into this other world, well, he gets separated from his "friends." and while the main character undergoes this trial (which, apparently, is a great device for this sort of exploration of memories... because you can jump into and out of them, and then have a debate over what it all meant)... a trial being a very static, stationary event... well, the other two characters are having an actual journey, through physical trials, to reach and reunite with the main character... i think it could potentially accomplish a few things: give those two characters more "living" parts; create a sense of journey in tandem with the trial, because the trial itself may seem so non-moving; provide opportunities for more resonant discussions and images, that could "inform" the events of the trial... anyway, that's the idea for now. because, again, after my 12th week performance, i almost thought of divorcing myself from this effort once again.

*****

i've been listening more to david mamet. while i hear there is controversy about his hyper-masculine plays (because, apparently, that's what his plays tend to be like), i do like his hard and fast discussions about the structure of plots... and the need to keep and maintain the trust of the audience. stuff like, if you don't win your audience over early, then they won't be willing to suspend their ignorance and wait for you to tell your story later... so you need to hit them hard and fast with a good joke in the early part of the play. (he likens plots to jokes with clear punchlines- only essential information reaches the punchline).

*****

i've been reading 3 books at once: dh lawrence's "sons and lovers", which, apparently, is his most autobiographical work... although he was known for scandalous, pornographic works like "lady chatterly's lover..." it's okay so far. i wasn't sure where he was going with it, and it took me a while to develop a liking to the style. sometimes it's hard to translate the- i don't know, scottish? english? speech. especially the speech of morel, the miner (father).

i've also been reading "olive kitteredge." in this latest chapter, she attends the funeral of a former student... or, rather, the former student was the widow. it was- interesting. but it is a chapter about how she continues to struggle with her life, or absence of a life, now that her husband is essentially a living shell of himself after his stroke, and her son voluntarily estranges himself from her in her moment of need... she is coming to terms with a life gone astray. she actually has considered suicide. and perhaps her limited interactions with people all have to do with trying to "place" herself on this spectrum of suffering. maybe she wants to find someone who has it worse. to gloat? or to take notes on how to continue to live? the oddest moment was when the widow matter-of-factly takes a paring knife and considers seriously killing one of the funeral guests... and how olive casually walks her back from this...

i've also read a chapter in "cloud in the shape of a girl." this was the strangest chapter yet. it was about how grace, the daughter, is trying to come to terms with her life after her mother's death. how she has to somehow keep the family going, if not restoring them to their previous unstable unity. in the process, at the end, she has sex with this gross, goofy older man named les moore... it's not as though she wants to. it's almost just this inevitability or something. i look upon this as grace living through the karma of her mother and grandmother, who were both unhappy, and at one point, both had extramarital affairs with unlikely characters... (grace's (real) father, in fact, was one of those)... i think grace was pulled along by this shape of destiny, or something...

*****

but aren't we all...

12/26/2020

it is the day after christmas. it was a pretty uneventful christmas at our house. maybe i am being lazy, maybe i'm just using the covid-19 as an excuse, but i hardly put any effort into christmas this year. we didn't put up a christmas tree (but we did put up decorations in the yard). i did write a "santa note" to the kids, just out of form; it's basically a regurgitated and distilled "parental note." but i hope they took it well.

i suppose i've been reading a lot about the passage of time. about people who live with each other in retirement, about unexpected tragedies (strokes, etc.), about living with the burden of old age and decrepitude. mainly about how to pass the time, when there isn't as much left of it. and there isn't anything really big to look forward to. i've also read about people dying, and about how people have to take care of the burden of tying loose ends, making an ending "appear" finished, for appearance's sake. a lot of it makes me question the socially constructed reality that we imbibe every day. that reality posits a kind of sexy, virile patina over everything. it is always the bold conflict that draws our attention, not the humble, and invisible, day to day struggles. but in truth, most of life is that invisible struggle. that getting up, that getting down to do shit... that's really what life is.

life is, or should be, about connecting with others. i think i've largely forgotten that during this whole covid crap. i would like to, but it just seems... i don't know...

*****

so, yesterday (christmas day) we went over to lynn's friend's restaurant, and i ended up washing dishes with the kids. it was a real chore. some of that food was burnt into the pan. i used the metal scrub pad so much that it started fragmenting in my hand. also the industrial detergent soap that they use started to eat away at my skin. at one point, i felt like i got a shard of the metal scrub pad stuck in the pad of my middle finger. i squeezed it until a drop of blood (and hopefully the shard) got out...

i actually enjoy working hard like that. it makes me feel alive. it also makes me feel like i'm doing something. if you stick me in a room with people, and have me socialize- well, that kills me. i'd always rather be doing something- killing something, cleaning something, whatever. even singing. but conversation- it always makes me anxious. and i probably bore my conversation partners...

*****

in fact, this returns me to an image i have... people are like gravity wells, like black holes... and so long as i am moving, doing something, protecting myself with contexts and responsibilities... then i am fine. but if you allow me to drift, then it feels as though i will inexorably crash into and through people... so i keep things busy in order to protect myself, and others...

*****

i just returned from visiting my parents and my neice and nephew. they are all doing alright. my nephew is back from his first semester in new york city. i imagine he's living it up there. i just imagine that because that's the sort of person he is. he is the center and life of the party. i suppose if i were younger, i'd almost be envious of that sort of life. but i guess as you get older, you start becoming more- i don't know, realistic about things. maybe cynical. you start to understand that not only would you not experience that sort of life now, but you probably wouldn't have experienced it when you were younger. it's you, after all. inescapable you. and that's okay. it's just you start to understand yourself and your reality as something particular that doesn't always match the circumstances of others. you might call it karma, or whatever. i just think at a certain age, or stage in life, you start to accept your karma, and not imagine that things could be or should be better...

or maybe it's just the age. and the turning of the wine in me.

in any case, i realize that there's less in me that is willing to overexpend myself on fruitless endeavors. i'm more of a concerted effort sort of person now. concerted, and purposeful. at least with the purposes that i invent for myself (because ultimately, there are no ultimate purposes left)...

12/21/2020

i read another story from "olive kitteredge" today, this one about an old couple who appear content in their waning years... but for whom there is some secret infidelity (what is it with her and old people who cheat on each other?). i know, it's a common theme, mortality leads one to search for renewal and a passing distraction... i feel it myself, even though the better part of me knows better. or maybe (and maybe this is more to the point) i don't get into trouble because i'm so boring and lazy... i think that's true. i wouldn't know what to do with myself if i were to cheat. it just seems like so much work. and for what?

i don't think i'm capable of falling in love or in distraction any more. maybe most of that has burnt out of me (i don't think that's entirely true... or else i wouldn't talk about it so much). but, yes, again, maybe i'm too pragmatic or stupid or something, but most of those zepellins get shot down way before they can cross too far into my horizons... and they explode quietly, noiselessly, in fact. deflating clouds of nothing.

i think there is a cynicism within me that has put a scab over most of my feelings. a manhole cover. and because of it, i'm incapable of truly appreciating things... most of what i "feel" is a slightly regurgitated, watered down version of the real thing... a pale abstraction... i think maybe for me that's what the restlessness is about? but then again, it is just the same thing, a need to make things alive, again, and forever.

*****

i also read a bit into "girl in the shape of a cloud" or something like that. another great book, another great writer. i'm at this point where the mother, the middle "girl" in what is turning out to be a triad, has come down with lung cancer... and her daughter's reluctant adoption of the role of "caretaker" for the family... of bridging unbridgeable gaps... the mother, in perhaps one of her more lucid moments, speaks of the "non" fairy-tale romance of herself and the girl's father... perhaps more to humanize him, and to help the girl appreciate him...

*****

david mamet talks about structuring the plot. he uses this idea of the three uses of a knife. in act i, the man cuts his bread so that he has something to eat to give him strength to work and earn enough to win the girl. in act ii, the man uses the knife to shave his beard so he looks decent enough to win the affections of the girl. and in act iii, he catches the girl in bed with another man, so uses the knife to cut out her lying heart.

i'm not sure where my "play" is going. i never intended it to be a "play," but perhaps it is as good a format as any. i had an idea of the ending, just as david mamet's hero does... but drama demands a kind of shift or switch, or at least a reimagining of the ending. it can't be a smooth journey, or else why would we need to hear about it? i'm just writing each act as it comes along... but maybe i'm just getting myself more and more lost...

over the week, ideas sort of come into my head. i don't really pursue them, but it seems as though clouds, like stormclouds, are coagulating and assembling- perhaps to form something terrifyingly lightning infused... or else, at the very least, something dark and obscuring.

*****

okay, the air is getting cold. i think i'm going to get a blanket. see you.

12/19/2020

it's been a busy week. it was the last week of classes, for one thing. in addition to a couple of ieps, there was a lot of work to do for christmas. i drew pictures of all of my face to face students. i realize that they were imperfect, but i felt they were still fair representations of them; plus, i wanted to pass along the message that i wanted them to see themselves as i saw them: as smart, capable individuals... on top of that, i learned that my awesome educational assistant would be switched out next quarter. her replacement is also great, a very experienced educational assistant... but the fact is that i had grown accustomed to my other ea, and so had all the kids, so switching mid year like this will definitely have consequences...

so, yeah, the week's been pretty packed with stuff.

i'm feeling a lot of despair with regards to my writing. i feel as though i've gotten irretrievably lost within the plot. i'm not sure what anything means any more. there are large ghost shadows that loom and insist on being told or talked about... but i don't know what their actual significance is, or how they fit into the larger plot...

*****

i think i'm coming to treasure sleep more and more. a few days this week, i didn't do my morning routine. i've given a few excuses... some legit and others not. for example, i did have to do a lot of iep work, and that took a lot of time. i also needed to finish a few drawings, and that took a lot of time as well... but no matter what, there is this nagging sense that i'm shirking my routines... at times, i wonder why i continue doing them. maybe i am a machine who only feels content with himself if the parts within him are moving, gears turning gears and such. ironic, since i like to, or prefer to, envision the world in "organic" terms; organic, here, meaning unconscious, oblivious, but natural. the alternative, the "engineered" or "purposeful" vision of life, mostly feels like too much work. and it also feels artificial. the fish doesn't "practice" at swimming; it breathes the water and is the flow within the water. it is forgetful of itself, because who needs to remember oneself?

*****

i've been semi-reading this book by betty edwards called "drawing on the dominant eye." i'd practically learned how to draw using her book "drawing on the right side of the brain." now, i'm not so sure what her message is, but she's pursuing this line of thought about the significance of eye dominance, i think using it as a signal for personality traits or something. in any case, i've tried a few of the tests, and found that it seems i'm left-eye dominant, meaning my right side of the brain dominates. i could be wrong though. i think part of the reason i draw, and play the piano, and read, and write, is so that i make myself as well-rounded as possible, i.e., rely upon both ways of thinking... but maybe it's not working, and is just leading to a more thoroughly confused state.

*****

"the only thing i ever really wanted to say was wrong was wrong was wrong."

this is a lyric from the sundays song, "here's where the story ends." i'm not sure why i recall it right now. i think it's because i know that the restless part of me, the one that looks out upon the world for some sort of toehold of recognition, or romance, or whatever, is usually horribly wrong. i am constantly misjudging the world... i feel that it is primarily filled with impatient eyes and ears... it recognizes when things ring hollow... which is most of the time... and so, by the time i work up the courage to speak something, some little insight, maybe to express some attraction or what not, i am so thoroughly off the mark... so most of the time, it is right and good for me to hover in the silences... my thoughts, nothing more than drifting clouds...

*****

i marvel again and again at the miracle of my wife. she has such love and sureness about her. she has been hurt before by the world, but i don't think it's turned her in any way (at least that i can see). myself, i know, there is a cruelty within me, and a heartlessness. it comes from my periods of alone-ness. i think, for a time, my heart turned and involuted upon itself, and flooded me with darkness and old dead blood... i don't think a part of me ever fully recovered... maybe i will never recover. i don't think i feel as much empathy or sympathy for others any more. i think i intellectually appreciate suffering, and respond appropriately. but it doesn't hit me in the heart any more, maybe because i lack one. i think i'm more pragmatic about things. about people. some of my students, for example... when they cry, i no longer respond with anger, or with pleading; i often offer some trite words, and walk away. i have found that either alternative doesn't solve the problem. sometimes you need to give children the time to weep. you can't treat outbursts always as things to be "solved" and hidden away. at least that's what i've found. some people think i'm heartless for doing things like that, and in some sense, in the emotional sense, maybe they're right. but it's not because i have given up on my students, or anything like that. if anything, it's because i really want what's best for them... and i'm not going to overly indulge them with pity or whatever...

*****

the time is drawing thin, my friend. thin as a thread of spider silk. holding a heavy sharp thing above us all...

dream - 12/13/2020

i just woke up from a dream. it left me somewhat disturbed.

in my dream, there was a girl who was very sick. she was surrounded by friends and family, who would give her little gifts. after i left something with her, i stayed in the background. she had something upset her; i'm not certain if it was something to do with the gift i left her. but in any case, she said some pointed words, something about how people were so afraid to be with her. they thought that leaving gifts with her would make her feel better, but really, she could care less about them. she thought it funny that, as soon as she was suffering, no one would say anything about it, they would just stand back and watch. i felt as though her comments were being directed at me. but there were too many people around her, too many eyes watching.

later, i sat beside her. i had overheard something about how she had first contracted this illness in the fifth grade, and ever since then (i think in the dream, it was 4 years ago), she had been isolated in the hospital. i said something trite and sympathetic, about how that must have been rough. it was a little nothing to say, but i think she liked that i was sitting there talking to her.

there were images or memories i had of gossiping old women, and useless old gifts. there were images of disease, of a particular disease where being bitten by a spider or contracting this disease made your intestines turn into crickets or something. i saw this happen on a tv screen.

and i awoke feeling, as i said, mildly disturbed. there is a little soreness at the back of my throat, which i hope isn't anything...

*****

it's 4 am. i actually have quite a bit of stuff to do, so i'm debating about what i should work on. the story i'm writing is bugging me more than usual. i think, internally, that i'm wrestling with the plot. i'm at the point where it's very easy to get lost in it- to consider what is essential, and not essential, in it- to changing things around so it seems to work better. it's hard work- work that requires fiddling with things and then letting things run their course... nothing straightforward or direct about it.

at the same time, there are pressures from work: i've two ieps to write, and i've got to draw the portraits of all my students.

also, i've been keeping my early morning routine of meditating and then doing taijiquan pretty consistent. this morning, i'm probably going to break that streak...

oh well.

12/9/2020

i am at the acupuncture school right now. i actually don't have to be here. i am administering the final for the class primarily via distance (meaning students receive and send an electronic copy). there were a few in person students, but as there weren't really any questions regarding the final, i'm just sitting here waiting.

what sucks is that i got a speeding ticket driving here. i'm not going to comment on it right now. but it just sort of put me in a bitchy mood. like, i didn't even have to come here, and i am ending up paying for the stupid ticket for the privilege of my optional appearance...

*****

i read a story in "olive kitteredge", which is an excellent book, btw. in the latest chapter, called "starving," an older man named harmon basically finds new life in a relationship he has with another woman. i should say that harmon has been married (bonnie) for many years, enough to have raised 4 boys, all now gone out of the house... the empty nest syndrome hits him hard, much harder than his wife, who seems to find a kind of empty joy in little craft projects and her weekly book club. bonnie also doesn't "accommodate" him, and even tells him, with finality, that that aspect of her life was over... so i guess that sets harmon wandering... he learns the slang from a couple of younger twenty-somethings: "fuck buddies." and realizes, somewhat ashamedly, that that's what he and this other woman, daisy, are... fuck buddies... but eventually, due to a tragic and heartrending event- the intrusion of a desperately anorexic young girl into their "cozy" relationship- well, it somehow transforms harmon and daisy into something more.

the story is called "starving," and, on one level, it is about the young anorexic girl. however, on a parallel track, it is about harmon, who comes to starve for life... even after living what most would consider a full life. some might superficially label this a mid-life crisis- and perhaps there are some aspects of that- but to me, it expresses more the notion that life ALWAYS hungers for life... and that there are those that feel this, sometimes acutely... and there are those that sort of give up on life- on all its newness, its relentlessly unfixed nature... harmon understands, at the end, that choosing one (his relationship with daisy) will destroy what he already has (his marriage and life with bonnie)... but in a certain sense, it is not a choice. because who, "infected" by life, would choose death?

*****

anyway, it is now a day later. i always end up doing this. i start to write an entry somewhere, and then, due to circumstances, i can't finish... and i have to pick up the loose thread and go with it.

*****

i don't know, i'm sort of mixed, not about the story, but about its portrayal of commitment as death. yes, it is always a relentless draw to think about other lives, other loves, other possibilities. and familiarity, the oblivion that comes from living with the patterns of those you "love," well, it can seem akin to a sort of death. but in the surrender to that, there is also a miracle. this, i have to believe.

i also think that people never really stop growing or changing. just because it seems as though things are "fixed," there is always someone or something restless within us that is trying to come to be. i'm thinking of counting crows lyrics, although i think they were sung with a darker significance... nevertheless: "beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody, there's a dead man trying to get out."

*****

i'm trying to keep to certain routines, and miraculously, i've been able to do so. i get up at around 4, and then meditate for 30 minutes... the main problem i have during my sessions is that i wake up with some sort of random snippet of song in my head, and for the life of me, i can't get it out of my head. i think it's something like my ego or a shadow of it trying to assert its control over the acid of my awareness... it tries to pretend a sameness within me... anyway, after meditation, i do my taijiquan, based on adam mizner's instructions. i basically do 25 minutes of standing meditation, which is getting easier, although the last 10 minutes (poses that involve putting 90-100% weight on one leg) tend to be very difficult, to the point where i'm sweating and vibrating... after that, i do 10 minutes of fang song exercises, basically simple movement exercises that get things moving. and then i do the small snippet of the 37 movement form made famous by cheng man ching...

i also do a few ab exercises, and some chest/back and shoulder/arm exercises from p90x. just a little bit. i think it's best to break things into small increments... otherwise they become insurmountable (psychologically) and they just don't get done...

so i manage to do that every morning. and in the afternoons, i set about on my routines... like drawing, playing the piano, reading chapters in different books, stuff like that. it pretends at life, this routine... this "forced" immersion in different aspects of culture. but so far i like it. it makes my mind active.

12/4/2020

 i am currently in school. i am waiting for a particular student who has a habit of not showing up for his session. if he does show up, he tends to be very late. i think, for this afternoon, i'm simply going to sign out of the google meet at the 15 minute mark. it's standard policy at the college level to simply leave the class if the professor doesn't show up after 15 minutes... why can't we apply the same standard to students?

things have been slower lately. i have been struggling to work through some of my routines, and i suppose at times that they have felt compulsory, rushed... like i'm just doing them for no particular reason. i also think that a few of the things that i try to do, particularly those that seem to be difficult... i have kind of backed off of them. for example, one of the things that i do is work on something from khan academy. currently, i'm trying to rewrite a memory game using javascript to incorporate a bunch of different features. the difficulty for me has been issues with functions that are called recursively by the program, even out of sequence. if something runs constantly, then how can you do something "before" it, or "after" it? i guess i'm more used to "old school" programming, where there is just one stream, and you can more or less control what gets done and when... in any case, i kind of backed off of this. i started to do other, lesser things, but a part of me couldn't help but feel that this was a cop-out.

i guess there is something important about finishing things. it has some sort of psychological effect. it confers a feeling of solidity to you. as long as you decide something in advance, like, i'm going to write 4 pages, and you do that- then you feel as though you have accomplished something. sure, those 4 pages could be pure shit, and they may not really progress the plot of your story very much... but they are 4 pages... i know that when neil gaiman talks about "finishing things," what he means is that you pursue things to their natural end, not some arbitrary mini-end points that you invent for your convenience. i'm not ready to do things to that extent... i mean, i have, and frankly, it used to stretch me so thin that i felt worn out and transparent. and the other issue is that i have so many other obligations... so to obsess over a single thing only left me incapable to function in the countless other dimensions of my life. so i had to apportion things, for both my sanity and my continued functioning. it was a compromise. a necessary one... sure, there may be miraculous works that i don't create, because i don't allow myself to relentlessly pursue my muse... but so what.

the funny thing is that i think my brain sort of likes this cyclical routine, and the pauses in between allow it to come up with ideas and solutions unprovoked. i think there is much to be said for the passive aspect of consciousness (otherwise known as the unconscious mind). we acknowledge its power, but in attempting to yoke it to service, we actually cause it to slip further and further out of reach. there's something to be said for ignoring things, forgetting things... because when we are no longer actively concerned and working on something, sometimes that's when the unconscious, like a shy voice, babbles out ideas into the ether...

for example, currently, with my kappa noodle story... i imagined a few other characters, notably someone called kappa-rate (supposed to be read like corporate), and maybe some sort of jokester called kappa-chino... they were supposed to be the new school kappa, different from yagoro... they were supposed to be a part of a global enterprise to find the "unwanteds" and turn them into the new army of kappa, who had as their goal the overthrow of the human race... yes, i had this idea in my head, but i wasn't sure how i wasn't going to execute it. largely this was due to the fact that i had a notion of a journey... something about how the main character was trying to find his way back to the surface world... but at the same time, i wanted there to be this internal tug-of-war... and that tug-of-war had to do with the feeling that my brother was worthy of hatred and destruction, or whether he ought to be forgiven. the latter is inconsistent with a "journey," in the sense that a journey progresses into new vistas, whereas a "tug-of-war" is a static situation... i also didn't know how kappa-rate and the others would fit in. were they antagonists? (well, actually, they were to be seen as antagonists in a certain sense, no matter what)... and how was i to present the memories? were they supposed to come out naturally in the course of the "journey?"

this morning, as i was doing my standing postures, it sort of came to me. i should turn it all into some sort of tribunal. that would allow me to incorporate a series of little vignettes/memories, without fear of dragging a journey. a tribunal is a tug-of-war, a matter of deciding guilt or innocence. and besides, it would parallel the events in the "five chinese brothers" story, which this is ostensibly an undermining of...

so, yeah. after this, according to my routine, i've got to write at least 4 pages in that story, so we'll see if i can execute it. but i think things are coming along, if not perfectly, well, at least they are coming along. and i suppose that's the best i can hope for...

*****

but, yes. lately, i'm cold. i'm tired. i'm not particularly excited. sure, there is hope on the horizon, but oh, what devastation we have seen in the interim! what betrayals of character! i was thinking of the term "faithless elector," and i think it's appropriate for our times. things only work if there is faith in things working. without that "faith," everything falls apart, and there is no sense in coming together for anything. there is only the nagging fear of betrayal, ad infinitum...

*****

okay, so i better get back to work. i'm going to clean up this room, and then make some deposits, work on editing my daughter's essays (she's applying to college- hard to believe), work on an iep, and then get down to the business of writing my 4 page assignment...