12/28/2021

as each day passes, the dreaded approach of work gets closer... i enjoy this idyllic time away from those hard responsibilities... abundant food. but nothing to do except what i want to do. i get to explore my interests. i get to relax into myself.

last night, i had a pretty freaky dream. it was mainly freaky because i spoke (shouted) out loud in my sleep (according to my wife). there was this room and i saw a screen or something, and a shadow across it. i had a sense that there was a great evil that had possessed the screen. so i and two other people, i believe my wife was one of them, were about to enter the room. i told them that we had to say this prayer or something, in order to exorcise the evil spirits. so when i walked into the room, i was full of fear, but i was trying to shout the words of this prayer. and i could feel my voice get muted by the shadows, so i struggled to say things louder... and just as i was about to repeat everything, i guess i woke up- or maybe was woken up. my wife was saying that i had shouted in my sleep...

i just finished watching salman rushdie's masterclass. he had a lot of great insights. one thing he said was that you should decide whether you are a minimalist or maximalist. i guess i would class myself as a minimalist. he also said that you should decide whether or not you're a planner, or whether you like to improvise. i would say that i rather like knowing where i'm going, as long as it doesn't deaden the journey, if you get my drift. another thing that he said was that you should get close to the bull. i suppose he got this line from ernest hemingway, who used to watch a lot of bull fights. what he meant was that, when you write, you should do something dangerous. dangerous in terms of subject matter, or maybe artistic danger, meaning you are attempting to do something highly incongrous or challenging... and finally, he said something about how you should just get rid of things that aren't working. don't really try to fix things. just get rid of them...

maybe that last would be helpful, if only it didn't lead to me just ditching projects...

*****

i still hate my brother. i'm trying to meditate on it. but it's not like it leads to any sort of solution, in that there's no way for me to "feel good" about it. it's the same way with republicans in general, i suppose. i mean, perhaps at one time in the past, there was a way to appreciate their views, their conservatism, their stances on freedom of business, etc. but now, it's simply wrongheaded, and dangerous, and there is no reasoning with them. so i can't just "feel good" about them, or let it go. i mean, i can refuse to take responsibility for everyone, and i can simply focus on my little corner of the universe- and being good and kind to those "under my watch." but somehow, the hatred has a way of insinuating itself into everything, polluting everything. i can hold the feelings, and my reactions to them, in a dispassionate way... and when i focus on the "moment," i can sometimes divorce myself from the "meanings" that people and ideas are supposed to hold... i think, at times, that that is the relativistic versus the absolute understanding in buddhism (and the nondual understanding that they are not in opposition to each other)... i worry at times that going too far in blanking my feelings will make me lose touch with people. i worry that i am just not compassionate or caring, and that i do things out of an idea of caring, but not out of genuine feeling. i worry at times that i don't feel much of anything any more. and that becomes problematic for writing, because if you don't feel, then you can't write and make anyone else feel. you'd be faking it all the time.

*****

maybe i am faking it all the time.

*****

from the absolute perspective, there is no point to life... in that there is nothing that i can do that will really have lasting (eternal) significance. but i do them anyway. it's like that line from the soul asylum: "you can't believe in yourself. you can't believe in anyone else. so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"

*****

for me, perfection comes in feeling the current of life run through you. it comes in isolated moments, in blind tasks, that i can imbue myself into. there must be a tension, or rather, a pressure, in the flow. in order to feel it, there has to be that pressure/tension. if you withdraw the goalposts, and make the end interminable, and you eliminate the simple point, then things go slack, and there is this feeling that "anything goes." i don't like that. i distrust it. i find it messy. some people might say that there is liberation in that, but i guess i'm a planner, and i guess i like to know where it is i'm going... despite my longing and wish that i were a romantic individual, i really am not. my only strength is i like to please people, and will immerse myself in the pleasure of the moment- the blindness of it, the feel of the skin of another's soul... the current of a dance... and maybe i am that way with life as well, when i can feel it.

i like- or i idealize- the moment when i can make someone happy. unquestionably happy. but i don't necessarily think about "what's best" for someone...

*****

what is it i'd like to say? i'm not sure...

12/21/2021

it has been quite a year... i feel tired and overwhelmed. i just want to drown in the simplicity of every day life. there are always things to take care of. there are always things to worry about... lately, i've begun to feel the weight of time... like, i recall thinking of investing in the start of a project, and then worrying about the regret i would feel in a year, or two years, or more, years wasted of a life rushing to its end. somehow as i get older, the activities that i partake in have more weight. or perhaps they should. or perhaps they shouldn't. but in any case, the question has arisen. when you've got less gas in the tank, then you really start to think about where you're going, and whether it really is worth going there.

in my last writing, i wrote about how my heart is incremental. and i think it is... i long for a quick stroke of brilliance, like writing in some luminescent, silvery ink, a wound across space and time that would be immediately recognizable and palpable. but i am not like that, i don't write like that... and yet, i was thinking that art is not life, and that if i am not like that, then perhaps i need to really meditate and peruse my thoughts, and distill them to a heightened purity that can then be expressed... that's the idea, anyway. to be honest, i haven't really worked that hard on my writing. there have been so many- SO MANY- other things to worry about...

i think- as i often do nowadays- about sexuality and intimacy. it is a funny thing. it's an analog to life in general, i feel. if you don't feel it, if you don't feel turned on, then you simply can't play. you aren't interested in playing... if the river of life doesn't fill you with its current, if you don't get pulled and pushed and tossed by it, then... in a sense, you aren't alive. and anything you say or do- well, your words will be "dead in the water" so to speak, heavy stones that aren't moved, and do not move... you can't turn someone else on, if you aren't already as well... i also thought about that aspect. to sit apart, uninvolved, to feel a kind of quiescence and peace and stability- these are things that are desired, in this chaotic world- but at the same time, that sort of stance would negate the possibility of participating in life... at least in a way that is authentic.

and as i get older, i realize the futility of that, the sexuality of it all (which, as i said, is an analog for other things). it is a dying light, the last flickering of a flame in the winds of winter. and yet, i cling to it. for what alternative is there? i know, there will come a time when it will all snuff out. and then it will only be the pale shifting insipid light of memories, the ignus fatuus, that will glow about and above me like the stinking false fires of the dead... but in this moment, i will live. and i will help others to live. to feel life, to feel alive... i am still on this side of the divide, and i will burn it up with all the passion that i can muster...

*****

i have been thinking again about amphibians. creatures with "two lives," that can live in water and out of water. but instead of being an advantage, these creatures are half alive. they are never master of their element, but captives of it. they can never leave water fully behind. and instead of dominating both realms, they are prey in both realms. true, their life cycle embodies a complexity that is absent in other species. but what gain is there in that complexity?

in the same sense, we have words like "ambiguity" or "ambivalence." to be two is not to be better. if anything, these result in a cancellation of motion. a lack of clarity.

when i speak of my heart, i understand that i am, like a frog, an amphibian. i understand two realms. i feel two currents. but instead of gaining anything from this, it always makes of me an insubstantial being... i cannot be purposive without questioning purpose; i cannot "simply be" without feeling i am wasting my time and life. there is no simplicity of being in me, there is always, always, always, a relentless questioning and mockery...

i wish i could convey this in a way that would be understandable and "clear," but in every expression there is that ambiguity that both is an expression and betrayal of the message.

11/30/2021

i've been reflecting on why i tend to be so incremental about things. it's like my heart doesn't have the capacity for grand emotions. i can only capture fragmented moments, little vignettes. sometimes they pretend at greatness, sometimes they can be evocative, but they are like the broken fragments of a mirror, capturing only a tiny portion of some larger, unguessed image. i can't see things whole. i can't feel things whole. in narratives, as well, i cannot envision the entire arc of the story. i can only capture brief snapshots of things, snippets of conversations, etc.

i have wondered why my heart is like this. i have often spoken before about how different i feel. or rather, how i don't have the capacity to feel. how my impressions are like these muffled vibrations... i am guessing at a message whispered through a concrete, unfeeling wall.

i have blamed people, like my brother, for this. i have said that my brother took the "high path" of feeling, the place where he is allowed to complete the circuit of his desires, and express his thoughts in arcs of neon, impossible to deny, impossible to ignore... whereas i am like a morning fog... if i act, it is without apparent intention, a molecule here and there, until i obscure vision...

yasunari kawabata wrote a book called the "master of go." in my mind, i envisioned it as the conflict between my brother, who is forceful and violent in his assertion of his desires, and the "master," who is inscrutable, ordinary, and who works "in increments" that are hard to read. the book chronicled the loss of the master to the "new way of playing," the style of logic and "strategy" (in a derogatory sense). i have always liked to believe in the master's style, of living in a way that was at once both natural and simple, and intuitive and impossible to read or defend against... again, like the morning fog... before you know it, formations have arisen from the mist... i have longed to be that sort of way. the way of intention, it has always stunk of my brother... i have always claimed that my brother "stole" that pathway from me. he was the "king of the hill" with regards to his desires, so i had to learn to walk a different path. i blame him, but at the same time, i wouldn't want to, or perhaps, i wasn't capable of, being like him...

i blame him, because my way of being, of living, of conceiving, of communicating, is likely frustrating to those around me, and to myself. my own desires are always muted, or unsynchronized. there are times when i wish i could have been like me, when i could feel my own desire clearly like a broad river of light, connecting me with the world... i wish feelings could flow from me with the force of their own pressure. but the current within me is weak, meandering, mysterious... sometimes stagnant. but mostly subtle to the point of dissolution... and i hate that at times.

this makes me kind. in the sense of harmless. but i am not the "bold" kindness, the kind of kindness that demands gratitude. i have always preferred to help people and disappear in the helping. because frankly, any sort of praise stinks of my brother's way of being, of him interposing himself between the sun and the earth, as though it were he that was the blessing that kept the fucking universe alive. i HATE that. i don't know exactly why i hate it so much, especially because i long for myself to be like that in certain moments to free me...

because i am the way that i am, i have always looked to others to "free" me... to "read" the subtle inscrutable feelings that i myself have a hard time feeling and freeing, and to thence translate me into some clear message of love. it was always good intentions, after all... and i felt that if only someone could feel my signal, then i would be understood, and a circuit could be closed... but no one has the time or capacity to do this. angels, maybe... but no one real, no one human. and to be honest, i'm not sure if they would be reading something within me, or actually rewriting me into some sort of figure that i really wasn't. that's the thing about fog and clouds. it's all subject to interpretation... maybe only a reflection of the shape of the observer's mind... maybe that's all i am, is a shapeless, formless thing that just longs to be solid, held... but which is only a transitory phenomena between falling water and rising water...

i don't know how to write any more. most of the time, purposive writing, writing to complete a play or a story, it just seems to "lose its steam." again, i think i'm not meant for long form (or even short form) narrative. it isn't how i live my life, or experience time. i am fragmentary... and i don't know how to accurately capture that in narrative form of any length... i have ideas of how to write with my heart in it, but most of the time, i have a hard time even feeling if i have a heart. it is so distant. it is so frustrating...

it would be easier if i really didn't have a heart, but i do have something, something with inertia and weight, that resists all efforts to move indiscriminately... it is like a heavy bear tied to a chain or something. i can't speak to it, and it could kill me or eat me, but it mostly just sleeps, and keeps me from moving forward... it is my burden, my weight. yes, that's what my heart is like sometimes, a grumbling mass, sleeping and reluctant and indecipherable.

11/26/2021

my most recent post was written because i felt compelled to write. i believe i woke up early, haunted by these feelings of immense sadness. right now, i'm writing out of a routine, so the words might feel stunted and forced.

yesterday was thanksgiving. it was nice. we (the four of us, now: my wife, my son, my dog, and myself) went to diamond head grill to buy an expensive thanksgiving lunch. we're missing my daughter, or course, who is spending thanksgiving with her two high school friends over at uc irvine. in any case, it was a tradition of sorts for us to pick up our thanksgiving meal from diamond head grill, and then eat it at some nearby park. although we had invitations to celebrate thanksgiving with the in-laws, frankly, we were never comfortable going there, sitting amongst the lazy, half-asleep, somewhat strangers who were all watching the football game (which i never cared much about). it was nicer just to be amongst ourselves, the four (or five) of us. oh well, let me amend that... sometimes it would be us. at other times, lynn would have to be working (or sleeping to prepare to go to work) for black friday over at godiva... this year, now that she's working for see's, they don't seem to do the crazy black friday thing, so things were laid back enough for us to eat together...

later on, we went over to uncle ferman's house (lynn's uncle) to eat thanksgiving dinner (of course, we never once mentioned the fantastic lunch we had had over at diamond head grill). the turkey at uncle ferman's was, predictably, dry. even dousing it in gravy didn't do it much justice. but it was nice sitting with aunty and uncle and talking. uncle ferman seems to enjoy my company, and talks politics and history. he lived in wahiawa for the better part of his life, and knows the area that i work very well. so he asks about whether this store has reopened or what has replaced that restaurant. stuff like that. meanwhile, some asshole plays fireworks in the neighborhood, setting musubi off running and crazy... so i have to hold him firmly, listening to his heaving panicked breathing as the background for the conversation.

*****

i'm getting old. that's always at the background of my thoughts. there's a time where you start to wonder whether there's a point in doing something... or anything. i mean, is it going to lead you anywhere? not really. is it going to change your life's trajectory? not really; things seem to be going downhill, impelled largely by actions taken long ago... and on the downhill path, you can't really change where you're heading, now, can you?

but even faced with this despair, we have to live, don't we? we have to entertain ourselves. we have to continue to harbor hopes and dreams. maybe as we get older, more of those hopes and dreams involve other people, my children, for example. but there are ridiculous dreams that i still keep to, and keep to myself. yes, they are absurd. they have no rhyme or reason. they have no point. but i guess i still have to honor them. it's better than pretending that they don't matter... because to a certain part of myself, maybe the stubborn childish part of myself, they still do matter. they matter a great deal.

maybe life is learning to affirm that part of yourself. at least a little bit.

11/17/2021

i couldn't sleep.

for some reason, memories of my time at williams surfaced. it all seemed closer somehow, like the tides had exposed the ghostly shapes of the sea floor to the moonlight, and i could see it all, its contours, its hideous emptiness. i realized how sad i was for most of my college life. i could see the infinite hope i had placed in those years, and how each day, particularly towards the end, seemed to be this growing despair that nothing was ever going to happen, that no one was ever going to save me. yes, that was (and maybe secretly is) my mentality with regards to relationships, that it was all about some kind of salvation or something. that by finding someone, really finding and connecting to someone, it was going to suddenly change the world... and, to be honest, it did, it does, but not in the way that i was thinking... it honestly felt like it just wasn't possible during the "high time" of my life, that there wasn't the right synchronization of myself, or anyone else out there, or even just the music playing at the time...

i recall how someone out there put out my name as being synonymous with- i don't know, everything clumsy and stupid. it was only when a friend of mine came across the term ("you pulled a randy otaka") that it came to light. and now, when i look back into myself, across all these years, i definitely can see it - dressed in stupid tie dye shirts and layers of clothing in the cold winters of the berkshires, always apparently hopeful, living on mountain dew and noriko sakai songs- impossibly hopeful, but only hopeful because of the incredible despair i carried within me. there was no one there. there wasn't anyone who could've taken me out of where i was. and so, i think i was just biding my time, waiting for the lights to change or something.

i'm so thankful i had some friends to "wait" with me... to make me feel somewhat normal.

*****

relationships are strange. miraculous. serendipitous. merciless. i don't get them. i don't understand why they can't happen when you need them. i don't understand how they start, or why they sometimes trail off.

*****

i think in some senses that i made a decision to become like stone. there is the vibration of a child within me, a frustrated child, who was not meant to follow his feelings... it just never was the right time for him, it wasn't appropriate for him to be let out into the sunlight... and to survive, and to live, and to have a structure- a backbone- it was necessary for me to turn into stone. to be the support for the situations in my life...

i think children like me, because they implicitly see that i am harmless. i am a memory of a person. i collect the warmth of the sun, mainly because i can no longer burn with my own feelings any more. i can pantomime their joy, because i understand its incompleteness within me, as a distant, sad memory. and i am generous in that respect, because what i want is gone, and i can simply be what they want....

but in the world of my peers- which, increasingly, don't exist- i am a non-entity. i am duty. i am work. i am responsibility. i have no real feelings, fresh and hot, of my own. i can communicate memories of feelings- but not the feelings themselves... because there has always been a disconnect- an inability to relate- and that part of me that can truly feel is sealed off- again, a distant almost absent vibration trapped in the heart of stone upon stone upon stone. the inertia of the material that makes me.

for me to be saved, i must be irreparably broken.

*****

i think we return to a time, a moment, as we grow older, when it seemed possible (even though it probably never was). there is a window into a self when hope and the world seemed to speak to each other, at the very least... maybe there was a small window, for a brief period of time... and maybe back then i was happy, in the sense of me feeling - i don't know - i could be free.

there is a different, truer sort of happiness i have felt- of the joy of my children- of the happiness i feel when i help someone... i say truer, because the happiness of others always feels unquestionable, because it doesn't deal with my own waning heart -

okay. i suppose that's enough rumination.

10/23/2021

 posting here:

...it at times pains me to admit this, but it is entirely true.

over the summer, i took on the task of teaching a therapeutic ethics/clinic safety course at the acupuncture school. it was the first time i had taught the course (and indeed, i hadn't even taken the course at my school, because it hadn't been offered). i had decided early on that i wanted to make the ethics portion of the class open-ended; although i would share the ethical codes of different governing bodies and entities, i tried to maintain that the ethical realm was fundamentally personal, and therefore, subject to interpretation...

bad idea. or, rather, good idea, but wrong context.

it quickly became apparent to me that there were (and are) many in the acupuncture community that hold an anti-vaccine stance. there are many reasons for this, some possibly legitimate (...possibly...); but in many cases, it boils down to a distrust of "the medical industry" or "big pharma." i completely understand this, even if i don't entirely agree with it (or rather, i don't generalize it to the point of distrusting it in all instances). it is the motivation that drove many to alternative medicine in the first place (practitioners AND patients)...

i guess things came to a head (somewhat) when i got to the clinic safety portion of the course. i had to share information about different infectious diseases, and the precautions we had to take in order to prevent transmission to patients. and, of course, i had to talk about THE communicable elephant in the room, so to speak: covid. as soon as i started talking about masking precautions and about vaccination, i began to hear strong objections: questioning of fauci, questioning the cdc guidances, questioning whether it was even really as bad as the "fake" media claimed it was... i was somewhat at a loss as to how to respond. it's one thing to hear these sorts of conspiratorial slants when talking to people in normal, everyday contexts (it's why you never give away anything about yourself nowadays)... but to hear these sorts of objections in what is ostensibly a medical context?

it was extremely difficult for me to proceed.

i found (find) myself the only consistently masked individual at the school... i am probably one of only a few who are vaccinated...

i love and respect my colleagues and students, and i know them to largely be caring, compassionate individuals. but in regards to these matters, i must say that an opportunity to demonstrate an ethical and professional stance with regards to covid has been missed... it's ironic, but my insistence that ethics be fundamentally personal was precisely the weapon i intended to be used against the present wave of conspiratorial, anti-institutional nonsense... instead, that weapon was taken to further entrench people in an "i decide what's right" mentality...

ok, that's my rant to some aspects of my profession...

10/15/2021

it has again been quite some time since i wrote an entry for this blog... life has been all-consuming. my work, in particular, has dominated my attentions. let us say that the entire covid issue serves only as the background for a majority of my concerns. i have several difficult cases this year, which- truth be told- should not be my responsibility, but are... my room, which is already full, is constantly changing to accommodate new "guests," students who require semi-isolated environments. i'm now debating whether to create a third such environment for a third "guest," all the while addressing about a dozen different students... very different students... at the same time, my robotics materials have migrated from my portable to be stored in a classroom near the library (requiring me to weekly set everything up in the library, no small task, and put it all back away again), to now being given a room of my own to store and do robotics in (which i have yet to see)... it has all been a kind of dream, a floating feeling... and as we are not yet to a normalized season, with true tournaments, i often have the feeling that i'm just going through the motions... it is difficult to teach students mechanisms, especially intricate mechanisms like this thing called a "choo-choo mechanism", which turns the rotational motion of a motor into the pull and release of a catapult... i think (like myself, if i'm honest) a majority of the students are "playing" at ideas, as they have hit a wall in terms of their creativity and capabilities... and while i'm trying to provide them with ideas and options, i think that, largely, this crop of students doesn't "get it." eventually, i'll have to set a deadline for the vex iq stuff, just get it done with, no matter how infeasible and inoperable a majority of the student robots are... that will allow me to move on to other sorts of challenges...

anyway. there's that. and there's concerns about finances and such. again, we're struggling to pay for, save for, willow's college. and there are also concerns about how willow is doing, not just academically, but simply how she's getting on with her chaotic roommate, and things like that. it's hard to feel powerless to solve your child's problems... i mean, there are things i can do, but ultimately, my daughter has to wrestle with and figure things out on her own.

*****

i'm getting old... we conceive of a lot of things, i conceive a lot of things, including, well, sexuality, in terms of standards that probably no longer apply... or perhaps will no longer apply. the dreams i have with regards to these matters are, frankly, ridiculous, not at all related to my reality. but then again, is that what fantasies are supposed to be? in any case, there's an overwhelming sense of "what's the point," after all this time, that repeatedly intrudes and ridicules what i'd "hope" for... ultimately... i feel at times as though i need to shift my vision of who i am or what role i am to play... a lot of my desires, etc., are frankly a nuisance. they distract me. they fill me with longing. but they are not relevant. and, so long as i am haunted by them, neither am i.

i can't conceive of how things would happen, anyway. my mind's eye is so skeptical of anything, that all such fantasies are fragmented, insipid things, dream figures... nothing convincing. i can't remember that feeling that, perhaps, i used to have, of people being doorways to entire other universes... maybe they are, but those doorways are for other people to "walk" through... for me, people might as well be walls...

i recall how vulnerable i used to be. how silence was so dangerous. words were things you threw at each other to keep yourself from falling into other people. i remember that it was impossible to look into people's eyes (maybe, in a sense, this is still true) because if i did, i would fall into them. or i would disclose something that i didn't intend to... i always needed (i always need) to look upon a surface as i speak my thoughts, to trace the patterns of the tiles on the floor for example, in order to find a - in order to believe in- something solid. it's like the formation of a crystal- how you need to have a seed crystal to formalize a pattern and create a crystalline wave...

at times, i wish i could experience other people. but i only experience people in all-consuming ways. (or maybe i long to be all-consumed, even if i would never ever risk it). in truth, i'm such a routinized, self-contained individual that it would be impossible. i'm a stodgy old man now, and anything truly self-destructive and passionate would be seen as an inconvenience, no longer proper and appropriate for someone like me, someone with stiff knees, and failing eyesight...

*****

i feel somewhat content with the writing i have produced via the writing workshop classes... maybe it's because of the (undeserved) positive praise that my fellow writers have heaped upon me... we always remain positive to each other... but in any case, i have a sense that what i've written has a solidity, a believability... and a point. it is "something." and now, i feel confident of reworking, editing, coming up with new ideas. like today, i came up with an additional scene, set in an imaginary world, called "styx and stones." more thoughts, ideas, to resonate and reinforce some of the themes of the play...

*****

oh well, nothing much more to report. i'm trying to get back into my routines, i'm hoping this fall break will allow me the opportunity to do that... but we'll see.

dream (9/26/2021)

i had a dream in which i was riding some sort of plane or transport somewhere, i think with phil (though i'm not sure right now). anyway, once we arrived, i was trying to get myself together, and took a while to find my shoes. once i did, i was getting our things- not from baggage claim, but from this hallway or something. we had a lot of things. anyway i was pushing this cart full of our stuff... then, there was this point where i approached this place where they were digging out some sort of ancient ship. i could see the shape of the ship (top view) embedded in the side of this orange-rocked hill. the path that i needed to take ran up the right side of this hill- into this little cave. i went in- and discovered what was perhaps the body of a child- i wasn't sure... i found little shoes, and little socks- but it was indeterminate whether those were on the body of a child, or were just placed there... in any case, as i discovered these, someone mentioned (or i realized) that there had been some child missing. below the shoes and socks that i had discovered was a bookshelf, filled with books from some sort of publishing series (with the same patterned covers), only the books ranged from children's titles to more advanced stuff... it seemed like what someone would have picked up at a garage sale, not knowing what to get to help a child learn... and that was pretty much it.

9/1/2021

hello... how are you?

*****

it has been a long month or so. school (elementary school) has started up again. the acupuncture school finished, and then (yesterday) started up again. and we went over to california for a week to drop off my daughter to berkeley. (oh yeah, and during that week, i got to meet and briefly hang out with a couple of old friends, one from college, and one from high school).

the thought i've had (and still have) is that life is short. i've said it before, and you've heard it so many times that it loses its meaning. but i'm here to tell you, from this side of life, that it's true...

*****

there's an episode within cowboy bebop (this now old anime show from the later 1990s, i think from 1996)... one character, faye valentine, had suffered amnesia after some sort of cryogenic sleep... her character post cryo developed into this wry, self-sufficient gambler type... but she could not remember her life from before... anyway, in this one episode, she and her friends discover an old vhs tape that her previous self had recorded, as a message to herself... i guess it's been done before, like in that arnold schwarzenegger movie (total recall)... but this was much better, and far more poignant... because in the video, faye is a teenager, with all the innocence and hopes and dreams of someone on "that side of life," who wants to give a message to "cheer herself on." she comes up with a cheer (and performs it with pom poms), and the message is "don't lose, me!!!" but when she says it, it keeps coming out as "DON'T LOSE ME!!!" ... which is sad, because that innocent hopeful self is gone and forgotten, a part of herself that she can no longer remember...

i sometimes feel that way. i mean, i can remember the past, but only in traces and shadows... sometimes i think the "meat" of the past, the thing that gives it the most content, is probably the most insubstantial part of it, the part that has proven itself to be unreal... the hopes you felt, for instance. the air of possibility... i can sometimes feel it, or sometimes relate... sometimes... but only from the outside. and maybe it's because i've seen a bit on the other side of life, how so many things never came to fruition, despite my cherished belief that they would... i've seen other kinds of happiness, other kinds of fulfillment... and developed other hopes... but sometimes it feels like, in the process of living, we are always leaving behind other pieces of ourselves, other "faye valentines"... and sometimes that is sad.

i also have been reflecting on who we live for. sometimes you don't even realize that you were living for someone else, trying to earn someone else's respect, until they disappear, or die. my grandmother, for instance... i guess, secretly, i had wanted to write stories to earn her respect... maybe a lot of people. my parents, etc. but as i get older, and as the stars slowly wink out from my constellation, i realize... maybe there's no one left that i care to impress... no one connected directly with me, i mean... and i start to think, what's the point? i mean, i portray it as a negative thing, but it's also liberating... i also have realized that this compulsion to write, or tell stories, even if it's futile... by a certain point in life, you have to try, because it's the river you're on, and you can't fight it. maybe all the vicissitudes of life are just realizing that you can't fight what you already are. you can only pretend, or distract, but it will always come back to you, pushing you, wounding you, killing you, even...

i am tired. i am sad. but somehow i take joy in the little things, day to day. i like to talk to people. i like to laugh with my students sometimes (even as they frustrate me)... i like to look at my wife when she doesn't think i am looking. and make my face look weird or stupid (it's not hard). i like to talk to my son, in that way where you are trying to be casual and not too judgmental... all of these things, all of these people, i love... because i know what time and memory will do to them... right now, i love them in a gentle sad way. i think that's the one gift i have right now, is a kind of appreciation of people and things in my life- because it all goes away. even (or especially) because i will have to, i am always, going away...

life is short.

life is short.

life is-

7/24/2021

i am in this writerʻs class... the way it usually runs (at least for now) is the instructor gives a prompt (usually a word, although it could be a scenario), and we write lines for a script for a few seconds to a few minutes. anyway, at one point, the instructor said "worry", and i wrote "worry has a time, and that time is 3 am." what was funny was that another student in the class wrote something along similar lines. she wrote: "3 am... i wake up each morning and i worry until sunrise." it was a funny/odd connection...

...but itʻs 3 am again (or maybe more precisely, itʻs 4:20).

i recall, when the kids were 10 years younger or so, that i would wake up and haunt the halls of the house. i would go into the kidsʻ rooms and whisper, "i love you," like some kind of ghost (i would do the same to my wife, sleeping in her dreams). i canʻt remember what would disturb me. there is always always always something in life to be anxious about... money matters. the trajectory of your children. health issues... always there is, and always there will be...

there is always also a perpetual sense of regret, and it is something that doesnʻt necessarily grow, but it just seems more prevalent, more ever present. iʻve come to the conclusion that itʻs largely ridiculous to feel too much regret, or rather, that it is an inevitable part of life to feel regret. life is all about choices- choices that are made or not, or rather, choices that weʻre aware of or not. i think to breathe is a choice. even to dream in the depths of sleep is a choice. and weʻre constantly making them. weʻre largely blind to them, we canʻt help but be, but we still make them. and each choice wends a path through this woods, through this rapids, and even if we lay ariadneʻs web behind us, we will never be able to remake the choice, to redo it, to go back. and thereʻs inevitable regret in that, this idea that things could have been different. and perhaps they could have, but thereʻs no use in bemoaning that, because itʻs gone... and anyway, we have so much right here, so many other choices to make, so busy-busy-busy making choices...

what i want to say is this: life is incredibly incredibly short. i know we always hear that, we always perhaps say it ourselves. but it is. you think youʻre one thing, and youʻre so busy taking care of becoming that one thing, and then before you know it, youʻre something else. the world has changed. people are gone. people have grown. and the towers you thought you were building for one moment- for example, that swing set and that backyard play area you were working so hard to cultivate- why, the children are too old, and they donʻt want to play there any more... all these investments you make turn out to be irrelevant to the ever changing present...

i think my writing is a stubborn dream. and i hold to it. it may be irrelevant... but i think itʻs not so much about producing anything that would be read or celebrated by anyone else. itʻs more about me attempting to bind back my life, and find a meaning in it that perhaps only i would appreciate...

*****

among my insights (lately)... i keep associating my brother with the first chinese brother, the one who swallowed the sea. and i have a story for that association, about how he swallowed so much water teaching himself how to swim- and perhaps tears- that he essentially swallowed a sea. and how he might say that it was all for the sake of others- like myself- that he did this. when actually, it was always for himself... i also have ideas about this idea of trajectories. one of deanʻs friends is a literal rocket scientist, and i wanted to have this notion that, because of his friendship, my brother gave this friend the confident to have faith in trajectories, and to become a rocket scientist... but in the process, i wanted to say that he stole away my sisterʻs trajectory (in the story, she is the dragon princess, which is actually a carp that wants to jump a waterfall to become a dragon... only, she canʻt). the message is, yes, my brother has contributed to the world- the larger world- but it has come at a cost in terms of what he has taken away from my family... something no one ever talks about...

i also wanted to make mention of urashima taroʻs treasure box, somehow. this thing that holds time. "time in a bottle" essentially... and why anyone would want to hold back time?

*****

wherever and whoever you are, try your best, live your life, fulfill all your nagging obligations... just do your best to do what is right... because truly truly truly: life is short. life is so incredibly short.

7/21/2021

i apologize for not being more diligent in writing in this blog. to be honest, iʻve been busier than usual, even though it was the summertime. i have been trying my best to earn enough money to send my daughter over to berkeley, which costs about $60,000 a year (at least). so i took on a couple of classes at the acupuncture school, and taught summer hub (summer school). i also have a gig developing an online lesson on hawaiian shark teeth, through nprʻs educator phenomenon forum. so between those three things, itʻs been pretty hectic. not to mention just sort of keeping up with other things, like the car maintenance, or coaching robotics. i get tired at the end of the day, and i just stopped doing my routines...

sometimes keeping busy keeps me from thinking about things overmuch. like the fact that my daughter will be leaving soon. it seems so swift, the passage of time. i remember not so long ago when i would hold her up in the air laughing... or i would do her hair in pony tails so she could go to preschool... her happy laughter. when did that little girl transform into this woman? iʻm not sure... i suppose it happened at the same time that this youngish father began to turn old and decrepit, lol.

iʻm still working on the writing of that stupid story. at times, i have faith that just hanging with it will eventually lead to something. it seems sometimes that persistence opens up a new pathway, a new perspective on the writing, and iʻm able to proceed just a little... but then, i end up writing myself into blind corners. it gets really frustrating. thereʻs no core, or structure, that can prevent you from making these mistakes, because you are the one weaving this house of lies from thin air. you make the walls, you make the rooms, and if itʻs not believable, well, that omnipotence of creation comes with a price, because you can definitely make something incongruous and ridiculous; nothingʻs stopping you from doing that.

i havenʻt drawn anything in a while.

i also havenʻt practiced japanese in a while.

i also also havenʻt done taijiquan in forever.

and my health is probably going. i just eat and sleep. and cough. i have this insistent nagging itch and irritation in my throat. itʻs definitely not covid, but itʻs just a sensitivity in my throat to the things that i eat: especially greasy things. i wish the irritation would settle down, but it hasnʻt gone away in probably years. i suppose that now that i have insurance, i should visit a doc and get it checked out. but i tend to put things off when it comes to my own self-maintenance... heck, maybe iʻve got cancer, colon cancer, who knows...

there really isnʻt much to update you all on. my life is just routines that i put off and routines that i honor. iʻm just trying to survive, and keep up with the endless obligations. i hope you are alright, reader, and things are going okay for you. i think that the way the world is going right now, we all just need some moments where it seems like things are alright... i think if you narrow your focus, and your context, you can at least pretend a peace. like, i canʻt control tomorrow, and i canʻt answer for yesterday, but in this moment, in this inescapable, fleeting moment, i can just- i donʻt know- be...

and with that little piece of bs, iʻll leave you... till the next check in.

dream 7/11/2021

i canʻt recall all the details of this dream. i do remember standing next to this beautiful woman, in a room with people all lined up, as in some kind of dance. and we would all be cued to do the motions for some kind of dance. i recall one "line" of the song had people clapping their hands, and the woman suggested that i clap behind my back (apparently that was more "in style"). the line wrapped around the room, and so i could see the back of one large dude somewhat across the room. he was wearing this big t-shirt. he was a big framed korean dude. anyway, it seemed as if he was looking for some "company" (i recall the word "sticky" as in warrior), and the person who headed the place (i guess you could call him the pimp) laughed at him. and then when i saw the big dudeʻs face in profile, i could see why. his head was somewhat chinless, and resembled the pale extension of some worm, with his neck rising up straight to his buck-toothed maw. and the skin was covered in pink and purple zits. he certainly didnʻt look desirable. but i thought to myself that i was sure that all sorts of ugly went through whorehouses, and the workers couldnʻt be picky about their clientelle... still, it seemed as though he wasnʻt going to get any that night.

somehow the dream transferred over to the big korean guyʻs line of work. he was apparently some sort of delivery boy in a very cutthroat and competitive field. he would ride/drive this compact one seater (it resembled some sort of bicycle, only it had a thin shell of some sort of flimsy metal wrapped around its entirety like a burrito). i watched as one competitor raced down this grassy hill, only to crash and tumble down the slope, while the big korean guy had discovered a hidden path around the slopeʻs periphery...

near the bottom, as he was waiting to get his delivery accepted (it looked like he was selling a bunch of different kinds of cigarettes), he noticed one of his other competitors lying in the shade. it was a girl, but she looked like a boy. her hair was cut short and sloppy. she was lying in the grass, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, with twigs all over her. you could just see the shape of her nipples poking sharply, through the t-shirt. apparently, she was the master at this game of competition, and here he was, seeing her in a moment of rest...

[thatʻs all i really remember/]

dream, 6/6/2021

this was a morning dream. meaning, i had already woken up once, but still in that sleepy grip, lapsed back off again while the sun was already up. i dreamt i was back in williams, but again, a williams i would say i had a hard time recognizing, or navigating through. i supposedly had a beautiful room, in one of the "wings" of this building, but as much of the building was still under construction, i was having a very difficult time getting to it. there would be entire sections of the building that were closed off. so i remember kind of making my way around to get to where i was supposed to be. on the way, i think i stumbled into some forgotten places. it looked as though at one point, i was clambering over a storage space, and looking into a lot of flotsam and jetsam from students over the decades: a mirror with the profile of people cut into it. other things. at the same time, i came to the realization that it was friday, and that all the "kids" were itching to party. and i thought how odd it was, and how i couldn't really feel that, or feel the same way.

there was that feeling, of not measuring up. it was strange, but i wasn't at williams as in a memory of the place. i was conscious that i had already graduated. i had already "passed" this place. but somehow i was back, perhaps to earn a different degree or something. there was this notion that the only place i could perform to a higher standard was here, because i was pushed to excel here. everywhere else, i was only degenerating...

*****

i recall now that there was an earlier part of the dream, one in which i was travelling back somewhere. i had some sort of strange (but cheap) vehicle; it was elongated and yellow, with tapered ends. at the "center" where the driver sat, there was some sort of (motorized?) wheel. basically, the thing ran almost like a fulcrum, with the ends gently going down to the ground as i moved... only, at one point the tip of my vehicle kind of broke... i believe me father was there, i recall him talking to me. and other people. and all around where other inventions, similarly strange vehicles. this was on an old cracked sidewalk... 

dream, 5/18/2021

i remember walking around with this huge backpack. and these two kids asked for something back, something i carried in the backpack for a long time. and i remember them going in and taking them, two dolls. the kids were siblings, and they missed their dolls, the ones i had been carrying for an inordinately long time. i recall that the bag seemed cavernous as i looked into it. i saw other dolls, other things. and scraps of paper, some with writing like "free william faulkner" from a student that i doubted had ever read faulkner. also, a room, a library, with walls of glass, and very colorful art projects, one in all yellow and green... there seemed a purpose to my journey, but then again, it seemed like i was just looking... can't recall other parts of the dream at the moment...

i've been inordinately tired. like super tired. i think this whole graduation thing (my daughter just graduated from high school) is really bearing down on me... well, there are so many other things. thinking about how to pay for college. my mother's amnesia.

dream 5/13/2021

so some time has passed, and i can't remember all the details of the dream... i remember driving out of the garage at my home when i was in high school, the two story one in the middle of the culdesac. i wasn't quite in control of the car, maybe was reaching for something behind me as i reversed, so at the last moment, i flipped the gear to park just so that it wouldn't run into anything else... there was another car at one point, and we (there were others in the car too) had to wait... and then it was again a rolicking ride out of the culdesac and into the looping block...

at some point, i got out. i was driving some sort of mini-scooter, motorized. i was taking these obscure back pathways around the block, behind people's lots. there was actually one point where the ground dropped sharply away, next to this fence, and i had to get off the scooter and sort of walk things down to get to the other side... anyway, i managed to complete the block on the scooter. it actually took my out of the way of where i needed to be... and i realized that i would have to run my way (?) back to where the car was, so i could continue to drive to work...

oh yes. in the background was this sneaking suspicion (?) that i was late for work. so all the while that i was scootering around this block, i was thinking about what was going on in the classroom... people were trying to operate things without me... it was now one hour late, and i hadn't contacted anyone to let them know what was going on... just general anxiety about stuff... so i suppose that's why i HAD to run once i completed the block (again, not sure where that scooter thing went)...

and that's it. boring.

preliminary thoughts, mother's day; 5/9/2021

 my grandma mitakara always spoke of innen, roughly translated as "causality." it was an idea, common to buddhism, of the ways in which past actions (sometimes even in past lives) shaped the present. there was this notion that patterns repeated, sometimes across generations, due to some unacknowledged or unaddressed causal factors...

it's funny, but in 2009, after my grandmother's funeral, and before the epic falling out i had with my brother, i had concerns about what my grandmother's death would do to our family. it was she that tied us all together. before her death, we would have get-togethers every now and again at the ewa beach house...

it was common knowledge that my mother didn't get along all that well with her siblings, my aunty kiyomi and uncle masao- all the more reason why those occasional get-togethers were so vital. so i guess in 2009, a bit after the funeral, i had written a message to my then fb friend brother and my cousin about this, suggesting that we, as the grandchildren, make an effort to have our parents (and uncle masao) get together periodically to continue the tradition and wishes of my grandmother; perhaps hosting some informal lunch or something... i had even thrown out suggestions for rules of engagement, just in case things got out of hand... the message was dated 7/9/2009.

it's now 2021, and i suppose our efforts failed. to be honest, i can't even recall that effort, or even that i had that idea. the irony was that i had this inkling to contact my brother via facebook, just to send him a message (but of course, i can't, as apparently, i have been blocked from messaging his personal account; i can only send messages to his "professional persona," which would likely be monitored by people other than himself). the reason, i suppose, was that i felt a lot of things were coming to a head. my daughter's graduating next week (not that he or his family were expected to celebrate that)... but more than that, is the fact that tomorrow (today) is mother's day.

my mother, i fear, is developing dementia. it's not unexpected, i know, for people her age. but i suppose it's ominous and sad because she is such an involved person, involved in the sense of always extending both invisible and tangible lines of support to all corners of the world (and, of course, our family)... my mother has always been someone who only offered the bright and generous side of herself to the world. it is only in off moments that she discloses (beside herself) the things that sadden or concern her... the dementia, i suppose, betrays the secret rifts in her heart.

today being mother's day, i know that one of those rifts were those severing my brother, sister, and i. i know that one of her wishes was to have all of us kids together under the same roof, sharing a meal.

5/8/2021

yes, it has been over a week since i last posted. again, a lot has been going on. i started teaching a new course at the acupuncture school, on therapeutic ethics. i had to prepare for the class, and actually am still working on it to make it the best that i can. i had to change a lot of the prepared statements from a previous instructor, because he spoke a lot about "spirituality" and "religion," which i feel are precisely the worst things to talk about in a class about ethics. i think, first of all, that one of the biggest dangers or downfalls of a professional of any sort is to think you are an expert in any and all things, and i think once you start straying into "spiritual" guru-hood, you are asking for trouble. i believe that professionals should be humble. they have a specific expertise, and they can be masters in that field, and can provide advice, etc. related to that; but once you start going outside of that, and speaking to people about problems or issues which you could not possibly understand intimately... well. that's how ethical boundaries are broken.

just my opinion, of course.

it's not that, personally, you can align what you do with your spirituality. it's that i feel that should be a private matter. if it makes your actions resonant with your personal beliefs, then fine. do that, believe that. i think the trouble lies in claiming some sort of superiority to your clientelle in those fields. and as "spirituality" nowadays tends to have this all-encompassing reach... again, i feel like i'm just recycling my argument. it's dangerous.

i'm preferring to make the class as open-ended and ambiguous as possible. i'm trying not to make my own personal viewpoint authoritative. i DO intend to share the codified ethics of various organizations and levels within our profession, just so that students know what the legal stance is, regardless of their personal morality or communal ethics...

*****

school is slowly winding down. i think the kids feel it. they're certainly acting like it...

i may have mentioned but my daughter is going to attend berkeley, which has a $60,000 a year estimated price tag for out of state students... there are no grants for out of state students, which means that we would have to depend upon loans. needless to say, i'd rather not do that. of course, she's attending at the worst time for us, financially. i may have mentioned my wife lost her job of 20 years due to the pandemic. she's been trying to find new employment, but it hasn't been easy. meanwhile, with my state job, and its crappy union benefits, i've had to foot the bill for our family's health insurance, which is exorbitantly expensive... for teachers in our state, paid pretty much last place when cost of living is taken into account... for these teachers to be forced to take such a huge cut out of that shit that they pay us, just for basic medical insurance... it's an insult. and now, our family is reduced to one fourth of what our income used to be... and being held to pay for my daughter's college at the same time.

so again, that's why i'm working a bit more classes at the acupuncture school... i have these stupid ideas of finishing my book and trying to sell it. but i think most people buying it would be doing so out of pity. i've realized long ago that no one really wants to read my stupid stories, and as i age, i have less compulsion to tell them, and less memory to find them... so... it would be nice if our financial situation pushed me to write a masterpiece, but i guess you can't force a cannonball out of a pistol... just doesn't work that way.

*****

i get inspired at times... i think i'm inspired, for a time, whenever i listen to salman rushdie. i really like the guy... a very knowledgeable and patient instructor, frank... but when i run up against myself... against the dead weight that is me... it gets very frustrating.

*****

i listened to some electronic music from french??? they had this song called "hometown." the video just sort of tells the story of 4 separate strangers who each encounter some sort of phenomenon that they cannot explain, a "signal," i guess, and they each get inspired in different ways... i was thinking of utilizing that "feeling," the feeling of seeing something you can't explain, in the next story, on "kipapa." seeing the night marchers... usually we connote it with horror, because that is what you are supposed to feel when seeing those macabre lines of torches... but perhaps it could also connote a sense of wonder. and maybe a feeling of commonality with those isolated few who happen to see it too. you belong to a sort of club... and the idea of having it inspire people to attempt to capture that signal again... the idea that life is empty and meaningless after having seen something wonderful and terrifying like that... i would like to convey that somehow...

4/28/2021

it has been a week or so... time is seeming to drag.

there are anxieties about a lot of things... our ability to pay for my daughter's college (she made it into berkeley), particularly as i must now foot the bill for our exorbitant health insurance costs, as my wife lost her job... she's now working for a different company, but she's experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety at it, because there are a lot of new things, and the pace is much faster... i'm trying to take on a few more classes at the acupuncture school, and they are on subjects that i'm not necessarily an expert on. i'm also more pressured to finish my writing, and offer it up for sale, probably on a pity-basis (i'm using this to help fund for my daughter's education)... probably need to look for a second or third job as well.

in the midst of all this, it's hard to keep my routines. it's hard to have the peace of mind to decide to pursue these things. i guess it's just sheer compulsion that keeps me going, that makes me do these things, even as their point becomes questioned by the events taking place...

*****

i struggled to write my four pages this week. i've been writing the "tales" told by different kappa, each with a name + less, like "sightless" or "heedless." this past week, i wrote about the tale told by "heedless," about how i basically stole and lied my way into a position of recognition, and later about how my artistic "style" developed through errors i had made. i think that last point, about the nature of creativity as a blurring over of clear mistakes, i think that certainly continues to be relevant.

*****

well, gotta get back to work.

*****

i hate being a hardass...

at times, i can see the way people are, and the collisions that are inevitably going to happen. and i try to talk to both people, and warn them about what's going to happen. but it's like they're already primed for what's about to happen, and all my talk is futile, like trying to hold incredibly strong magnets apart from each other. sometimes i come out hard against one side because i can see it as "the problem," but then afterwards, i regret speaking so harshly, and have to do some damage control... i know all this must sound obscure and mysterious, but it is all part of the daily life of a teacher... i intend the best for my students, and when i must be cruel, i must always be careful to communicate that i care about them as well.

i'm so tired, though.

i wish... they could see the future as clearly as i do... the challenges they will face. then they would understand why i urge them to do certain things, or be a certain way. why must it be that people only learn their lessons accompanied with the bitter taste of regret?

dream 4/21/2021

moments in the dream: i recall little things, fragments. like how there had been a problem with my family, and then i found a note put up by my college friend daniel; he had actually snuck into our house, and put up a note close to where i slept on the couch... i didn't fully read it, i just noted the neat handwriting, and the emphasis of certain words... and i felt at once happy that he had cared enough to do this (haven't heard from him in many many years) and embarrassed that he had broken into the house and seen it...

i know we were somewhere meeting about something... but the part i really remember was walking with this group of people across a field... no, we were outside of this building, walking in the parking lot, and to the right of us was this large field. normally, it was completely empty, but on this day, it was filled with people: a soccer game for kids was going on, and aside from the field being full of kids and refs, the borders of the field were filled with families cheering... and we commented on how unusual this was, especially after being in the pandemic so long...

and then, suddenly, we were on the field. we were still walking, but we were in the middle of the field, surrounded by soccer players. i sort of got out of the way when the ball was kicked, on its way to the goal... we eventually got beyond the field, but not before i heard the coach/ref? this old japanese guy. i noticed all the spectators on one side were these older japanese people, like maybe this was a community of grandparents watching their kids... and i remember thinking of this sort of community. i saw this young (like 12?) japanese girl, for some reason, i had an impression that her name was hatsue, and i had some thoughts about what it would be like to speak to this girl if i were that age... some notion about asking how she felt about me, and how, if she were to take five minutes or more to not respond, then it would be clear that she wasn't interested at all... i recall speaking to a young boy (the brash son of a friend of my wife's) about such things as dating- or maybe he brought it up- but he commented about how boring it would all be, and how he couldn't tolerate being 5 minutes talking to anyone...

i recall looking at the pavement, which was slightly cracked, and feeling this music pulsing through the floor of it... some howard jones theme...

oh yes, i also recall something about kaimi (this counselor at my school)... something about how as i was leaving a meeting at this building... there was a book or something... that i was supposed to pick up. and a comment that left some sort of impression that i was respected, at the very least... i don't know...

4/20/2021

things are alright, i suppose... i like to think that the one enduring quality that i am developing is perseverance. not much of what i do ends up clean. and by clean, i mean, not much ends up in a result that matches its intention within me. there are so many interruptions and... discontinuities... i believe in little's class on sociology of religion, we (i?) basically concluded that much of religion had to concern itself with the problems of discontinuity...

all in all, work is a happy place. certainly, there are difficulties, but they aren't insurmountable. certainly, i would wish that my students were more motivated, or that they "got things" quicker... but i wouldn't be in this job if i couldn't maintain a belief that there's hope in hopelessness... i like to think that, no matter what, some part of my love and intention seeps into these kids, and whether they "get it" during my tenure with them, or afterwards, it results in these kids "waking up" to the possibilities that i see in them. that is always my hope.

*****

as far as my writing's concerned... well, i guess it's going... i guess. of course, my cycles are getting wider and more spaced out, so there's more time to forget... more time to neglect... oblivion can be a good thing or a bad thing, i suppose. maybe a little oblivion is what keeps us from complete despair. if we remembered how terrible things were, then maybe we wouldn't have the courage to ever get up and do them again.

*****

inside, i suppose i am feeling very tired. i'm tired of the world. i'm tired of myself. i'm committed to my obligations, to my students, to my wife, to my family. maybe they are the tensile wires propping me up nowadays. but there oftentimes doesn't seem to be any intrinsic interest in much of anything... also, if i do evince an interest in anything, it often seems accompanied by a kind of guilt... as though someone in the back of my head were saying, "why are you wasting your time?" believe me, it doesn't matter WHAT you do, or how JUSTIFIED you think your actions are... that guilt will always return to haunt you... a lot of times lately, i just try to lie down and almost sleep it off... because there's nothing you can do to reason with it.

*****

my grandmother passed away in 2009, so that means it's been about 11 years now. i've been thinking a lot about this sort of thing, about how (unconsciously) you motivate yourself by attempting to prove yourself in the eyes of an audience. oftentimes, it's people like my parents, or my former teachers, or my grandparents. but as that audience somehow dissipates and disappears, you're left with this doubly empty feeling. doubly empty, because you realize that such external attentions were the motivating factor, and not something more "intrinsic" or "true"; and because you realize that this person, or that person, was a part of the pantheon of gods that you sought judgment from... and that whatever you do, they won't even see it any more. so what's the point? i don't care what most (99%) of mortals think. i wanted to impress YOU. and you're not even around to see it any more... i wanted to make YOU happy, and you've been gone so long...

i'm reminded of soul asylum lyrics:

"and you can't believe in yourself.

you can't believe in anyone else.

so why sit and wait for the new world

to begin?"

why do anything? why do anything for anybody?

i try to understand this, not in a pessimistic negative way... rather, i try to use this sort of statement to purify my intentions. i like to think, or in my idealized mind, i feel that: art is blind. it is a pure expression of some truth... but i'm a realist nowadays, and i also understand that i live in the real world, and tasks are not completed without some motivation, without some gas... and that's true of art as well. we don't do art unless we believe in an eye or an ear that would hear it. and we don't do art unless we've somehow fooled ourselves into believing in the beauty of what we're trying to say, hard as that is to do. it is a double obfuscation, art is... double, triple, etc., always with the goal of forgetting oneself...

4/17/2021

it's been a busy week... aside from regular work, i've had to work on the taxes, and continue the chore of cutting down that stupid tree... and there were other things: oh yes, the final. and discussions of increased work over the summer, because i'm taking on a few classes in the acupuncture school that i'd never taught before... so with all that going on, it's been somewhat hard to keep up with my routines. in fact, i'm getting into this mode where all this busy-ness is superseding any of those writing plans. i'm frankly despairing of it all... secretly... but if i hold things at a distance, it seems as though i can do it.

i've been thinking about neil gaiman. i thought his work in "the sandman" was excellent. i haven't really REALLY liked some of his later work: like the graveyard book or american gods. i think i liked anansi boys mainly for the tone of the story, which seemed a bit more overtly humorous. but i felt like there were a lot of holes in the graveyard book and american gods... by holes, i mean things that could've been explained better or more precisely. maybe i'm such a pedantic reader, but i like being told what's going on, or at least, i like being told in a way that makes me feel like it all makes sense... even anansi boys had some holes... for instance, who was the bird woman, and how was she connected to tiger? 

bottom line: i like stories that are complex... rich... but that somehow make sense, almost in an intricately mechanical way. which is why, for me, stories are so damned hard to write. because if i see inconsistencies in a story that i am reading, well, you can damn well be sure that i'll catch them in anything i write... oftentimes before i even put my fingers to the keyboard...

right now... i have been wondering what i'm trying to get at with the kappa noodle story. it just seems so cruel. my brother seems like an asshole. i mean, he is, in several respects, but he also isn't. and i don't think i do a good enough job at making him a multi-leveled character. and myself. i mean i usually portray myself as pathetic, because it's often true... but in this story, there is no sympathy for the main character. there's no reason for anyone to like me in the story. and there's no real development or arc in the story as i had planned; he just experiences this weird event, ho hum... so i've been thinking about it more. it's not that i necessarily want to put a moral to the story. it's just that it doesn't work without it. there's no reason people want to read about how shitty your brother is. it then becomes just some pathetic complaint to the world. nothing more...

*****

sorry, took a break. er, brake. er, brake, Brake, BRAKE!!! what i mean to say is i took my two kids for their first day in official driving practice. it was fine. but scary...

*****

i had this idea of having two kappa, yagoro and kappa-chino. sort of like an angel conscience and a devil conscience. the bottom line would be that the protagonist needs to find his own way through life. not copy his stupid brother, who has a successful strategy in his own right. it's not really about right or wrong, but it is about finding your own authentic path. and for the protagonist, his pathway is not the flamboyant, successful, arrogant one. it is quiet and hidden, and based on small incremental actions. and so it is not as visible, not as obvious... it is based on gentleness and kindness. at least that's the message i'd like to say. not that the path of my older brother is either easy or wrong. but i think the world already recognizes it (too much), and it does not see the other path, or any other path... also, i think i wanted to hint (foreshadow) that even if the protagonist forgives his brother for the little abuses he commits to himself, there would come a time and an event when he (the little brother) perhaps could never forgive his brother. something irreparable. won't necessarily mention what it is...

dream 4/17/2021

had a couple of dreams. in the first, i had this infidelitous affair with a younger girl... i excuse it to myself by saying that, in the beginning of the dream, i seemed to be this younger person, perhaps that this was something that happened before i was ever married, but to be honest, a part of me always knew what was up. in any case, i felt i cared for the girl sincerely, and spoke to her through the night... and then as time passed, i realized who i was, and when i was, or at least it became more apparent to me, and i was struck by this profound guilt about my wife and family, and how i was to explain any of this, or live with myself for the rest of my life... when i somehow woke up, i was so incredibly relieved that it had only been a dream.

in the second dream, i was part of a team or crew of people filming some sort of movie in an abandoned town. the reason the town was abandoned, apparently, was that there was a volcanic eruption occurring at the time. anyway, we were wandering the town when it started to become overrun by lava flows. it was incredibly hot. so the entire crew started to go into this river which was adjacent to the town. eventually, we were all in the river, making our way to a far shore. one thing that was pretty interesting was that i could see animals moving in the same direction: fish, mainly. this huge dark shape moved past me, and at the end of it, this one fearless, brainless actor. was holding on to the tail of it. i realized it was a huge crocodile, and called out to my cast mates... in any case, we made it to the far shore, which was heavily wooded, and rocky, and somewhat unpredictable. i made my way along the shore, trying to pick out a path (in some strange sense, i became the leader, even though i was, as in my first dream, young, a boy even). anyway, i remember climbing over this somewhat muddy boulder, and seeing a near sheer drop off on the other side (even though another boulder was visible just a short distance beyond). the fearless guy said something about "when in doubt, just jump." but i talked him back out of it. i told him we needed to work our way around the boulder and see if there was a way around the drop off. so that's what we did. we eventually wound up on a ledge in front of this boulder. i didn't really think much of it before, but the boulder had this weird pattern on the front of it. the fearless guy pulled out a section of the weird pattern, and suddenly this door opened up in the boulder, leading to a secret cave beyond. i couldn't believe it, and congratulated the guy profusely. anyway, we entered the cave. at first it seemed like some strange temple, but then it turned into more or less ordinary living quarters... there were louvered windows, rooms with surveillance equipment, stuff like that... we stayed in that house- by this time, it seemed like i was leading some ragtag group of refugees...

and then, at some point, the house became part of a more civilized town; it was no longer in the middle of the wilderness. and the post office lady came to drop off some mail, at the same time that the proper owners of the house arrived. there was this big, swarthy hispanic looking guy who was the boss, and he demanded to know what we were doing there. i claimed to be the leader, boy that i was. while he slapped me fully in the face over and over, i recounted our tale; how we evacuated the town due to the lava flows, how we ended up in the river, how we stumbled upon the entrance to the house by accident. i was nearly crying by the time i finished (he had been slapping me throughout). i then wandered the house, calling my crew together- a lot of poor families, mostly vietnamese- and in a single room, told them the situation. i begged the boss to allow us to stay the night, and that we would be gone in the morning. he accepted this...

and that's pretty much where the dream ended.

4/10/2021

today was a decent day. i got up, and pretty early on, i started working on cutting down ficus tree #1. it's been a quiet obsession of mine. i would climb the ladder up, and using a long pole saw, would start to saw away at the next incongruous branch. i would have to rest every few strokes, simply because i am out of shape. but i would persist. i would imagine that, say, each 20 strokes, would get me incrementally closer to getting the branch or whatever to splinter and fall... actually, what usually happens is i cut 3/4 of the way through a branch, give up out of fatigue (or simply because it becomes an awkward angle... remember, i'm using a pole saw many feet above my head)... and then sometime in the night, during a wind storm or something, i would hear this ominous cracking sound, and then this thundering crash in the darkness... and i'd know that the branch had fallen. actually, there would be times when i would wake up in the night and imagine hearing that strange splintering sound... it's kind of like a thundercrack in miniature... a complaint of sorts that you can feel in your own bones... and then what comes afterward would be unpredictable... like a lot of the time, it would just turn into silence, a kind of suspended animation... and then at other moments, it would lead to a kind of staccato series of cracks, as though one end of the tree were sending signals back and forth through the cut, as though lignin threads were being snapped one by one, and the speed of those sounds conveyed a kind of collective panic, as though the support cables were snapping rapidly, and the golden gate bridge and all modern engineering had thrown up its hands in despair and just given up... anyways, so that's what i've been preoccupied with. today, i sawed through a major branch, in preparation for tackling the central trunk, that still has one towering crown reaching towards the house. that last one will be a challenge, but at least i've removed all the peripheral obstacles...

that brings me to the next challenge... i've had this idea of creating biochar with the waste wood. biochar is essentially charcoal, produced through a slow burn of wood in an environment of low oxygen. while not a fertilizer in itself, it is believed to produce ready carbon structures for other important soil microorganisms to take up residence. there are several ways to produce biochar, but i opted for the cheapest and simplest method, which involves digging a conical pit in the ground, and after starting an initial burn, covering that pit over with a metal plate (or something that cannot burn). the plate would essentially limit the oxygen going into the burn, so that the gases would circulate and reburn... (i think there are ways of capturing that gas as syngas or something, but of course, i wasn't interested in the burnoff). anyway, right at the start, i kind of panicked, because i was generating too much smoke, and i feared that my neighbors were going to call the fire department on me. so i think i doused it with water too early. the wood burned for many hours, puffing smoke through the dirt and the corners of the metal plate... but when i opened it up at the end of the day, i found several chunks of unburnt wood... a lot of moisture... so i messed it up.

i'm not sure that it's wise to make biochar in a residential neighborhood. too bad. i wish i could just process this wood and recycle it to better my soil.

*****

i listened to salman rushdie again, and i feel a sort of quiet hope. i also have been reading neil gaiman, both his "american gods" and his "anansi boys." i actually like the latter story better. "american gods" lacks the humor and lightheartedness of "anansi boys," and i actually think it needs a touch more of it. as it was "american gods" just seemed too dark, and the lack of a clear protagonist (or at least one with more of a character; shadow just seemed, well, like a shadow) just made the tale unsatisfying... but in any case, reading gaiman gives me hope that i too can create some sort of narrative. also the rushdie statement (and i'm paraphrasing) that the job of narrative is to tell truth. that's always been my stated objective, even if i get totally lost in the embellishment of my stories...

*****

i suppose i had an insight as i was sawing away at tree limbs... it wasn't anything profound. but it was this feeling that the important thing was that you kept going. you keep fiddling away at what needs to be done. you make mistakes. but the general direction remains the same. things get changed, incrementally, and incrementally, your art starts to match your vision. at least that's the hope. that's always the hope.

*****

secretly, in my head, i am considering writing my book so i have something to sell, and thence, help pay for my daughter's impossible college tuition. i may have mentioned that she got into berkeley. of course, she failed to list berkeley under the fafsa form, so they didn't give us a financial aid package. she's attempting to rectify that issue, but frankly, i'm not holding my breath. of course, she's trying to put up a brave face, and is claiming that she will go wherever we can afford, but i know in her heart that she wants to go to berkeley. so i need to find a way to pay for it. we're actually very poor, particularly after the pandemic... and yet. maybe there's a way.

dream 4/10/2021

i've been pretty tired lately. i don't know if i explained my "disease," but... i'd had an abscess on the back of my shoulder. although reluctant to get it checked out, i eventually did go in. the doctor incised it so that its contents could weep out (previously, i had been "popping" it). anyway, i was given a course of antibiotics to clean it out from the inside. it was a pretty aggressive course, two types of antibiotics twice a day. i was down to almost my last day last weekend, when i was struck with this sudden fatigue and fever. i ended up sleeping for most of last saturday, into sunday. it was off and on fever and chills with this near constant fatigue. i ended up calling in sick for monday. then on monday morning, i discovered that there was a rash all over my torso. at the time, it wasn't itchy; it was just red and splotchy. gradually, it started to progress onto my limbs, and my neck and head. so i went to the doctor's again. they weren't sure what it was, so they ruled out covid and the flu, and they did some bloodwork on me. they still weren't sure by tuesday, but they guessed that the antibiotics were causing some kind of allergic reaction in me. so i discontinued them (i had already discontinued monday's dose) and i was to just rest to recover. i started taking claritin to get rid of the allergy symptoms. i think i was taking more than the recommended dosage, because the itchiness would start returning with a vengeance... so long story short, i think that this fatigue is just a result of all of that, of playing yoyo with my adrenals...

*****

ahem, the dream. so in this morning's dream, i was in california. there was this feast at the tenrikyo church there (although it definitely didn't look like the honbushin over in california). everyone was there: my family. even my brother. i didn't want to see him, even in my dream... so anyway, my uncle masao was there, and he seemed genuinely happy to see me (that's not necessarily true in real life), and even invited me to his place (which used to be my grandma's house in ewa beach). i truly intended to take him up on the offer, because we haven't been to my grandma's since she passed away... then there was the meetup with my brother, awkward. in fact, i don't think i even really looked him in the face... i think there was the sense that he was jealous or angry because willow had made it into berkeley. but whatever. i also saw faces of people that recognized me... this guy that i might have associated with during my california days. maybe not quite a friend. but he recognized me, and seemed like he wanted to catch up... and even in my dream, i had this thought, this thought that i have in real life, that although it would be nice to have a friend like that, i know that there would be this inevitable disappointment when that person realized what a total bore i was.... it got me to thinking about what constitutes a friendship? how does it happen? why does it happen? i know, these are not deep questions, but they are of concern, especially for someone like me, who doesn't understand, or isn't necessarily even comfortable with, the whole issue of being close to people...

so anyway, up the street, there was berkeley. i imagined i could even see part of the campus in the distance. but at the same time, there was this christmas parade going on. and i was carrying this huge, longer than usual broom (why?). so i wanted to go to berkeley, to check it out, and maybe clean up the place a bit. but to get there, i had to navigate through all these performances of elves, and floats getting ready to be deployed. it was chaotic and interesting to say the least. i had to coordinate my push forwards in breaks in the dancing. i remember seeing this large white float that said omega... kinda thought it must have something to do with a sorority or something. i imagined a bunch of blonde barbie doll girls to be getting ready to deploy with that float... 

i never actually got to berkeley... i woke up sometime at that point.