2/5/2021

it's been a while since i last wrote. the weeks seem to be exhausting to me, no, every single day seems to be exhausting. i wake up tired. it is always so cold (we're being relative here), and it is always so dark in the morning. i don't want to get out of bed. i want to lie down and fall asleep and dream (or not) forever. but instead, at a certain point, i buck up. i make a choice to open my eyes and keep them open. there is a kind of wrenching, blurring sensation, as one eye or the other will start to buckle under the tremendous pressure. but then there is a moment of decision. it is always a kind of blind moment. it's funny how the only way we move is when we don't look. (i guess that's why it's "look before you leap." because if you looked while you leapt, well, you wouldn't leap). anyway, that blind moment gets me out of bed, nude, in the freezing cold, and somehow has me stumbling to the toilet, to the shower. there is the flipping of the light switch, and the sudden adjustment of my eyes to the waking world, the world of surfaces and colors. the antithesis of the dreaming world, which, while pretending surfaces and colors, is really just the dark undulating movements of vast undersea creatures of little substance. but enormous appetite.

i make my way through my day. i enjoy keeping busy. as soon as my kids start showing up (and they have a habit of showing up from very early to very late), i engage them, whether they like it or not. i start working one on one with them. i have to pack every day with these moments of engagement, and the sooner i start, the better. today happened to be pretty chaotic. we've been having the full complement show up (eventually), and they have a habit of demanding attention ("help") at every moment; sometimes, i can barely complete a thought or sentence with one particular student before two more are lining up with inquiries...

i haven't been keeping up... or rather, i have been just doing things very slowly... i feel particularly guilty about my taijiquan practice. i had been getting up very early (3 or 4) to do the full complement of exercises, the standing exercises and such... but again, with it getting cold, and with things getting busy, i've kind of foregone some of those things... and just slept in until as late as i possibly could. coming back home early hasn't helped either... i would usually collapse on the sofa, listening to the news on msnbc, still some salacious outrage about the booby traps of the trump administration... somehow the stories of competence coming from the present administration seem to draw my attention less than the utter ridiculousness and daily deluge of horseshit from the previous administration...

*****

i still have recurrences of "hope," of somehow returning to, or realizing, some great glory. it fuels some random endeavor in me, until the daily cycle just starts drowning it in me again. the routine keeps me tethered to life, somehow. it is like a backbone. it allows me enough structure to pretend a semblance of form... otherwise, i would just be tossed on the currents. a jellyfish. a man o' war.

*****

i listened to david mamet again, this time, talking about lies and truth. and the admonition to "never tell lies" and to "find the truth." yes, writing has become, in its own fashion, an attempt to discover the truth. i realize that my story has always been about my brother and me. there were these things that i could not write about clearly, and simply kept out. but now, i feel murmurings, the hints of possible dialogues... of course, not with my actual asshole brother... but with the brother that i confront within my head. i find myself (the fictional me in the story) saying my feelings directly, and that other brother within me answering... and the dialogue revealing the conflict and relationship more clearly than any "symbolic" whatever- construct- that i had been elaborately trying to fly... i had intimations of him talking about the "monster" within us all- "and where's your fucking monster?" and me, lacking it, wanting to be "clean." but the monster is within me too. in fact, it is the most monstrous monster. its baleful eye, staring up from the depths, encompasses the entirety of the horizon and the midnight sky.

i have also had thoughts about the dragon... about the river-goddess/dragon king, which i intend to encapsulate within one figure... zennyo or something or other. an ambiguous figure. it is believed that it became feminine in japanese consciousness only because of a mistaken character (kanji)... in any case, that ambiguity allows me to simultaneously embody the twin aspects, these two mysterious figures that seem to pop up into the kappa story, the "mother" and "father" so to speak, within one being... and i intend, or have intimations, of tying that dragon to my sister... and have her/his speech be about "lying." to breathe mists constantly, obfuscations... and to tell the tale about why the old system, the old matri/patriarchical system of river-goddess and dragon king, no longer worked with the kappas... and why the kappas struck out on their own and created their own "enterprise." it has to do something with an imperfect wish, struck upon the accumulated pile of shirikodama (souls)/wish-granting jewels... anyway, these are the random thoughts i've come up with...

i have been watching videos of people with tourette's... and aside from this notion that people with tourette's tend not to tic during sex... but only "good sex"... there was this idle comment that tourette's might be tied to a copper imbalance in the brain. which led me to google about the importance of copper in brain function. copper, particularly in enzymes, but even in free-floating form, is important to assist in the oxidation processes that go on in the brain... but too much copper can lead to neurodegeneration... don't know how i could tie that stuff in, but it's food for thought. or thought for food.

ANYWAY. i feel i have to work again, to find my "truth."